Hard Time (19 page)

‘Don’t get too attached to anyone in here ’cause they’re always moving us around, and it hurts when you’re split from dudes you just made friends with,’ Billy, the hippy who’d vouched for me, had told me. To promote racial harmony following the riot, the guards moved half of our pod to other towers, including Troll, Doug and Lev to Tower 2. Losing my cellmates and my chess partner on the same day brought home Billy’s advice. I’d defined myself through friendships with relative strangers – primarily those three – and without their companionship buoying my spirit I felt lonely.

Into D10 the guards moved Busta Beatz, a young Mexican American who thought he was a rap star and arrived with a pet cricket in a box. He had an Eskimo look about him. A round face. Slanted chestnut eyes. Short spiky black hair. His skin was an Etch A Sketch of mismatched tattoos, including smiley faces on his fingertips, BUSTA in rickety writing on one forearm and BEATZ on the other. After taking his psychotropic medication, Busta Beatz would circle the day room with a vacant stare and rap. His attorney had filed a Rule 11, so he was undergoing tests for severe mental impairment. Something the psychiatrist should have taken into consideration for Busta Beatz’s Rule 11 was his love of red death. He couldn’t get enough of it! It was common courtesy for anyone who couldn’t eat his red death to give it to Busta Beatz. He received up to ten trays daily. By tray pickup, he was usually still eating, so he would bag the red death, put all the mustard he could scrounge into the bags, bite the corners off the bags and squeeze the red death into his mouth. This food lasted until the next day and made our cell stink of decaying meat.

Curious about this bizarre character who delighted in catching me off guard and pulling my pants down, I asked him about his life.

‘I’m State-raised. Foster homes, dawg,’ Busta Beatz said. ‘When I was 11, I was kidnapped off the streets by a guy and a chick. They took me to a house and made me take crystal meth. They kept me there while the guy raped me and his friends raped me. They’d suck me off and give me crystal and tell me everything was gonna be all right.’

I was shocked. ‘Hey, look, you don’t have to tell me this stuff if you don’t want. I was just—’

‘It’s all right, dawg. I can deal with it. They raped me for three days straight, then just dropped me off where they found me, so I went back to my foster parents. After that, I started to run away a lot. Did drugs. Sniffed a lotta paint. To buy paint and drugs, I shoplifted and robbed houses. I ran away to Phoenix where I didn’t know anyone, ended up living on the streets, mostly West Van Buren. The paisas there recruited me for their gang, Doble. They gave me a gun, so I’d go to 35th and Van Buren and stick-up shoppers. Doble took half. I kept half for paint, drugs and fast food.’

‘So you were busted for sticking someone up?’

‘No, for breaking into an empty house I was gonna sleep in.’

I encouraged Busta Beatz to get some books to improve his reading. He read erotica to a mosquito he kept on a small island of soggy toilet paper under an empty peanut-butter container. Worried the mosquito might escape, he ripped one of its wings off. Feeling sorry for it, he attempted to feed it a morsel of Snickers, but the mosquito backed away.

‘Bad mosquito! Don’t walk that way! I’ll have to punish you again.’

He rolled six inches of toilet paper to the diameter of pencil lead and hovered it over the mosquito’s rear. ‘You are not being a good slave! I’m going to have to spank your bottom again! Here I come!’ He tapped the mosquito’s rear as if the toilet paper were a cane. ‘Good slave! No! Bad-bad-bad-bad slave! I’m gonna have to spank you again.’ He did this for two days until the mosquito died – and then he ate it.

During the night, lying stomach-down on the cell floor, he wrote rap songs in the company of his cricket, which couldn’t jump away as he’d removed its legs. Practising his raps in a loud whisper, he often woke me up.

His most popular rap with the inmates was ‘Dead Body Hoes’ – about him defiling the corpses of famous women including Christina Aguilera and Britney Spears. The inmates demanded he rap that song every day.

When Claudia’s next visit wasn’t announced at the prearranged time, I waited a few hours and telephoned her.

‘What’re you doing home?’ I asked, worried.

‘They wouldn’t let me in,’ she said.

‘What?’ I asked, furious.

‘It’s really hard to visit. The staff are always giving me a hard time, and today one in particular had a problem with the way I dressed.’

I could tell she was about to cry and assumed she’d been insulted or possibly sexually harassed by a male guard. ‘Who was it? Which guard?’

‘Some fat lady at the front with attitude from hell.’

‘What did she say?’ I asked, angry at the female but relieved it wasn’t a man.

‘She said don’t try to come here no more unless I follow the rules for outfits and dress properly, so I started crying and asking her how I broke the rules, and she told me something along the lines of my shirt being too tight, you can’t show your boobs, or something. Yeah, like, basically, I’m not allowed to be showing the shape of my boobs. I wanted to show her the shape of my middle finger.’ We both laughed. ‘I was dressed like a schoolteacher trying to come there, and she’s telling me my clothes are too form-fitting.’

‘Take no notice. She’s probably just jealous of your looks.’

‘Do you know if that counted as a visit?’

‘I don’t know. I’ll put a grievance in if it did.’

‘I wanna come down as soon as I can, next visit. I hope you don’t mind me in a baggy shirt. What makes me mad is half the other people come in wearing shorter or less clothes, and tighter than I do, with no problem.’

‘I’m sure they’ll let you in next time, love. I really appreciate what you have to go through to come see me.’

Claudia was allowed to visit, but no matter what she wore, that particular guard continued to harass her.

Young Marco was a new arrival to our pod. Within days of him moving into cell D15, he had the guards fetch two of his friends, Paulie and Hugo, from other parts of the jail to join him. No one was quite sure how he’d arranged this – I was flabbergasted – but rumours soon spread that he was the son of a Mafioso and bribery was involved. Someone said he’d won trophies for kickboxing, but he didn’t look the fighting type. He was short, with an innocent look about him, and usually smiling. He had large affectionate eyes and eyelashes long enough for women to envy. His thick brown tresses and olive complexion made him look unlike anyone else in the jail. From a distance, he seemed unimpressive, but close up the self-confidence he radiated swept you away. He was in for punching someone. We shared the same attorney, Alan Simpson.

Lanky and with stately slicked-back salt-and-pepper hair, Argentinian Hugo idolised Marco and acted in the capacity of his butler. The son of Italian immigrants, he spoke Italian, Spanish and English fluently. Although in his 40s, he was prone to emotional outbursts, which he put down to his South American upbringing. He wrote love letters to his wife signed in his own blood. He often wept during church services and while listening to inmates tell sad stories. He was facing deportation to Argentina, where he claimed he was blacklisted as a political dissident and the government would execute him on arrival. I paid him cookies to teach me Spanish, a language I was determined to master.

The stocky Italian New Yorker Paulie looked like a typical Hollywood Mafia goon. He had beady brown eyes, a boxer’s flat nose and hairy sausage fingers that dealt out a nutcracker of a handshake. Every few days, he vented his anger on Hugo, much to our amusement. But like Hugo, he was prone to crying, especially when talking about how much he missed his wife and kids.

Much to the astonishment of the guards and inmates, a drawing of the Italian flag and a sign went up on the door of D15: LITTLE ITALY. I couldn’t believe my eyes and laughed out loud the first few times I saw it.

As Gravedigger had been moved to Tower 2 following the race riot, we had no head of the whites. A white-boy meeting was held, which I wasn’t invited to. I knew the whites were voting on two candidates: Marco and Bolts, the skinhead with a tattoo of Hitler admiring Jews dying in a gas chamber on his chest. As most of the Aryans had been moved out of our pod following the race riot, Marco won the vote by a narrow margin, a result that amazed and gladdened the other races and me. Bolts was peeved, and I feared jail movements were such that it was only a matter of time before there were sufficient Aryans to launch a coup d’état on Little Italy.

‘’Ey, England,’ Paulie said, entering D10 with a scowl that made me squirm on my bunk. ‘I’ve come to you ’cause I know you’re the only one in here that’ll give me a straight-up fucking answer.’

‘What is it, Paulie? You know I’ll help you if I can,’ I said, sitting up fast.

‘You promise me you’ll tell me the truth no matter what I fucking ask?’

‘Of course I will.’

‘Well, then. Tell me this then: do I have a fucking anger problem?’ He stared at me as if he were a lie detector equipped to punish a wrong answer.

I pushed thoughts of
Why me?
out of my head and searched for something safe to say. ‘Here’s what I think, Paulie. You’re a really nice fella, but you do get a little excited every now and then. You’re an emotional person and everyone likes you.’ I hoped he’d leave it at that.

‘So you’re saying I do have a fucking anger problem then?’ he snarled.

I paused to find a better answer. ‘I try to stay as calm as possible during stressful situations, but I can see how you handle things a little differently and like to speak what’s on your mind.’

He looked up as if in deep thought. ‘So are you saying I
do
or
do not
have a fucking anger problem?’

Cornered, I risked being more specific: ‘I’d say you don’t have an anger problem, but you do get angrier than most of us.’ I studied his face.

He scratched his chin. ‘So you’re saying I do have
a little bit
of an anger problem?’

The jokey high-pitched way he’d said
a little bit
encouraged me to mimic him. ‘Maybe
a little bit
of an anger problem, but nothing to lose any sleep over.’

He leaned towards me, and I flinched. His hand appeared to be coming for my face, but it found my shoulder. Rocking my shoulder, he said, ‘Thanks, England. I really appreciate your honesty.’

Much to my relief, he marched out of the cell. He stomped down the day-room stairs towards Hugo, who was standing watching TV. He stopped when his face was inches away from Hugo’s and yelled, ‘England said I don’t have no fucking anger problem!’ He thrust his palms at Hugo’s chest, knocking Hugo over a table. I felt partially responsible. ‘You don’t know what you’re fucking talking about!’ Jabbing his finger into Hugo’s face, he yelled, ‘Don’t ever talk shit to me again about no fucking anger problem!’

Into D14, Marco moved another friend, Nick, a Golden Gloves boxer, who’d won many fights in Tower 5. Slightly bigger than Paulie, his handsome, friendly face made him seem less fierce. He puzzled the inmates by obsessively shaving all of the hair from his arms and the back of his hands with a stolen razor he kept hidden in his trash bag. When he wasn’t knocking people out, he was mild-mannered and an erudite conversationalist. I discovered he traded the stock market, and we began sharing finance books. Our fiancées befriended each other at Visitation.

When Nick invited me to his cell to drink the juice of stolen oranges freshly squeezed by Hugo, I figured we were close enough for me to ask about his charges. ‘You seem out of place here, Nick. How’d you get busted?’

‘I was set up by my fiancée’s ex,’ Nick said, perched on the bottom bunk.

‘How?’

‘He’s a rich guy, a martial-arts expert. He was hassling Susan, so I pulled out a knife, and he tried to kick it out of my hand and it got stuck in his foot. Not only did he call the cops and say I assaulted him, he filed a police report saying I stole 500 thou from him. Then he filed an insurance claim to get the money.’

‘How come the cops aren’t busting him for that?’

‘The cops are in on it with him. He’s paid them off. So I’ve got armed robbery and kidnapping and all these charges for defending Susan.’

Before my arrest, I thought dirty cops were a figment of movie-makers’ imaginations, but I heard many stories in the jail that rang true.

‘Did I ever tell you about my first day at Towers?’ Nick asked.

‘No. What happened?’

‘You’re gonna love this. After suffering two sleepless nights at The Horseshoe, they finally ship me to a cell at Towers. It’s a nightmare. I’m exhausted, but it’s still before lockdown. Anyway, I’m trying to sleep, and I hear two black inmates next door arguing over a pair of slippers. One says, “Whose are these shoes?” The other says, “Them’s my motherfuckin’ shoes.” Then the other one shouts, “Well, they’re my motherfuckin’ shoes now!” I hear “Oh no, they isn’t,” and “Oh yes, they is.” I’m thinking,
What is this madness?
and then it gets worse. One says, “You touch my motherfuckin’ shoes and I’m gonna stab your ass.” The other says, “You ain’t gonna fucking stab nobody – no, sirree!” “Don’t make me do it,” shouts the other. I hear “Don’t lay one finger on my shoes!” and then I hear a scream, “
Aaggghhhhhh!
”, and one of them comes rushing out of the cell with a golf pencil stuck in his chest. I’m thinking,
What am I doing here?

‘Anyway, it quietens down. I’m lying there, tired, but still too nervous to sleep, and then they call “Lockdown!” This homeless-looking guy enters my cell and gets on the bunk below me. I’m finally trying to get some shut-eye, and I hear this weird noise. I do my best to ignore it, but on it goes. I still can’t sleep. I’m really curious, so I peep down over the end of my bunk and see this guy jerking off.’

‘Wow! I haven’t had a celly like that yet,’ I said. ‘It’s probably just a matter of time.’

‘Fortunately, Marco knew where I was, and he got me moved to Tower 5 the next day. There was a lot of crazy violence in Tower 5, but nothing’s as bad as the shock of your first few days of being in jail.’

Due to Nick’s association with Marco, the guards allowed his visits with Susan to exceed the maximum time allowed. If Claudia were to arrive at Visitation with Susan, Nick said, he could have the guards extend my visits, too. Visitation time was golden, and I was honoured to be included with Marco’s perks. I desperately wanted to break the news to Claudia but couldn’t on the recorded phone lines or in a letter the mail officer might intercept, so I waited until her next visit. She was delighted. Showing up at the jail with Susan even put an end to the harassment from the female guard.

During the extended visits, Nick and I monitored the guards. Whenever they were distracted, we leaned forward and kissed our fiancées above the newly installed table divides. Stealing those kisses became the highlight of our week.

‘I got five kisses in,’ Nick boasted, as we walked back to Tower 6 after the strip searches.

‘Only three,’ I said.

‘Marco gets legal visits,’ Nick said.

‘What do you mean?’

‘Look, you can’t tell anyone what I’m about to tell you.’

‘You can trust me, Nick.’

‘He had Officer Hoover put his girlfriend into the computer as a legal visitor.’

‘You’re kidding!’

‘She came dressed in a business suit and they both got put in a private room.’

‘Lucky bastard! I can only imagine what he got up to in there.’

‘Officer Hoover told him not to go all out and get caught having sex, but they fiddled with each other, and she gave him head.’

I was flabbergasted. Every week I’d heard an incredible story about Marco, but this one topped them all. ‘I’ve never seen an inmate run the guards like him.’

‘They won’t do it for me. Marco has more pull. Don’t mention this to anybody. We don’t want to get Officer Hoover fired.’

November 2002

Me at eight months old with my dad at our house in Widnes, Cheshire, 1969.