Defense of an Other

by Grace Mead

  “So what? I’m sure your momma’s proud, but what’s that got to do with me?” Tyrone asked.

  “You just got here,” Matt said. “Your case should still be in front of the trial court or on direct appeal before the Louisiana appellate courts, which is good. It means you have a better shot at winning. I’d like to review the record of your trial and help out with the legal briefs. In exchange, I’d like a job in the library and protection.”

  “You gonna write down that fancy education and job so I can tell my lawyer?”

  “I already have.” Matt looked around to make certain the guards weren’t watching, then slipped Parnell a sheet of yellow paper that spelled out his qualifications. He’d handwritten the most important resume he’d ever submit on thin, cheap paper, chosen because it was easy to conceal.

  “I can get you a job in the liberry, but that means gettin’ you out of Building 6,” Parnell said. “I can prob’ly get Tyrone out too, if he’s willing to go out with the rest of us again. But you gonna do more than review my file. You check out, I’se gonna set up my own little law firm in here.”

  “That’s fine. Can you protect me in the general population?”

  “See, thas why it ain’t a good idea for the fresh fish to talk to me. Anyone at this table think I can protect the faggot lawyer?”

  Every other man at the table laughed and one guffawed—howling and slapping his knee, then wiping tears from his eyes. These men would follow Parnell’s slightest suggestion without hesitation, and with feigned or real enthusiasm. Even their mirth menaced.

  “Yeah, I can protect ya. Won’t be too hard neither. But you gotta remember somethin’. Our deal’s gonna piss off Bill somethin’ fierce, ’cause you’re white. And you ain’t gonna be doin’ any work for him. I can protect you from him as long as I want, but thas just another reason you gonna work real hard to stay in my good graces.”

  “That’s fine. I will.”

  “And one more thing. I fucking hate lawyers,” Parnell said. “On the outside, you assholes take lots of money and never guarantee nothin’. I spend that money on guns or drugs and some motherfucka don’t give ’em to me, I put a cap in his ass. In here if’n you don’t get me results, a new trial, shorter sentence, some shit like that, then they’se gonna be consequences.”

  “I understand,” Matt said. “I think your lawyer will tell you I’m smarter than anyone you’ve had working for you. And I figured there’d have to be some sort of guarantee.” Matt’s stomach sunk as he spoke and the exchange reinforced that failing to manage this client’s expectations could be fatal.

  “And another thing. I think I’m gonna go ahead and have you transferred and if my lawyer don’t recommend you, then we’ll have another bitch in the buildin’. So you better hope you get a real good recommendation.”

  “Okay,” Matt said. He managed to hold himself together. He and Tyrone walked to their table, where Matt attempted to bypass chewing, swallowing and tasting to skip to digestion. He forced himself to eat the meal; the stress was taking a toll on him and he’d lost at least ten pounds in the last couple of months—he had to keep putting food into his body, even if it sat in his stomach like a hunk of cement.

  When Tyrone and Matt returned to their cell, Matt asked, “Are you all right with a transfer to the general population?”

  “Yeah, I been here a long time. Nobody gonna blame me for what you do or don’t do. I’m gonna tell folks that you paid me for the introduction and Parnell didn’t give me no choice. When he hears ’bout the money, tho’, Bill’s gonna want to get his hands on you even more. You workin’ hard to make those folks notice you, so you best get results for Parnell,” Tyrone said. “You may be smart, but such a thing as too smart.”

  *

  Matt spent the next day digging ditches, but as he was preparing to leave for dinner a guard came for him and Tyrone. The guard was about five-eight and a 180 pounds. He had dusky hair, pale greasy skin, and bug eyes with a copper nametag that read Ted Cook.

  “All right,” the guard said. “Durant and Jansen, you guys are getting transferred to my building, Building 2. I don’t know why, but Parnell asked for you. You guys are gonna have to miss dinner tonight.”

  Ted cuffed them, which Matt thought excessive given prisoners routinely walked around without any sort of restraint. He then opened the cell door and led them to Building 2, where he unlocked their handcuffs at the front door, opened it, and led them in. Men trickled in from dinner in ones and twos.

  “Welcome to Building 2. I own this building and I don’t put up with no shit. Strip,” Ted said, staring at Matt. Many of the inmates from Parnell’s table in the cafeteria were lounging around.

  “What?” Matt asked.

  “You heard me. Get naked.”

  Matt began to take his clothes off, as slowly as he dared. He peeled the white t-shirt off, unsnapped his jeans, unzipped his fly, and lowered them to the ground. He stood there in his boxer shorts and socks.

  “I said I want you naked. Get rid of the fucking shorts.”

  Matt shucked his boxer shorts and socks. He reddened, knowing fright and embarrassment had caused his exposed parts to shrink. And his chest, shoulders and arms were spindly compared to the other men in the room.

  “Now bend down and show these guys your ass,” Ted said.

  Matt turned his back toward the room’s occupants and touched his toes.

  “Spread ’em.” Matt reached back and spread his cheeks and his heart leapt into the back of his mouth. He wanted to vomit. Had Parnell’s lawyer said he wasn’t qualified? This guard wasn’t going to have them run a train on him, was he?

  “Now,” Ted said. “Repeat after me. I’m a faggot lawyer who likes to take cock up my ass.”

  “I’m a faggot lawyer who likes to take cock up my ass,” Matt said. His eyes leaked tears and he gave thanks the other men in the room couldn’t see his face.

  “Thas enough,” Parnell interrupted. “Stand up and get dressed. Ted, this guy’s my new lawyer. My lawyer on the outside said he’s real fuckin’ smart, so you ain’t gonna mess with him ’less I tell you to. Understand?”

  “Sure, Parnell,” Ted said. He trailed off into a whine: “I was just tryin’ to have some fun.”

  “Well, don’t have your fun with him. Leave.” Ted scampered out of the room and Matt put his clothes back on as Parnell approached.

  “Don’t mind Ted. He’ll do what he’s told. He likes to pull that shit with fresh fish ever since he learned about those guards in them Iraqi prisons. He gets his rocks off by doin’ shit they weren’t even s’posed to be doin’ to Iraqis. And don’t get him started talkin’ about it. He won’t stop.”

  “Thanks,” Matt said. He’d managed to wipe his face with his t-shirt on his way up from the ground. He hoped Parnell couldn’t tell he’d been crying.

  “Make yourself comfortable. I already tole the guys in here you’se off-limits. Talked to my lawyer on the phone and he said you should be as smart as you say. He also say it take more’n bein’ smart to be a good lawyer.

  “You start workin’ in the liberry tomorrow. My file should already be there and you ain’t got too much other work to do. I also tole a couple of guys if you fuck up they gots dibs. Some wanna beat the shit out of you and some wanna fuck the shit out of you. You fuck up, I don’t much care what they wanna do. I promise it’ll hurt real bad.”

  “I hear you. Thanks,” Matt said.

  He surveyed the room, which resembled a military barracks more than a prison. Steel cots were covered with thin mattresses, sheets and polyester blankets. An open doorway in the back led to what he assumed was a bathroom, and on his way toward the back of the room and only open bed, he noticed a corner held a camera. He doubted its once-glowing LED light, now dull and lifeless, had failed on its own.

  A couple of hours later the lights blinked and a minute later went dark. As Matt lay there, unlike his first night in Building 6, he heard no weeping or sobbing. He saw a series of men retre
ating in pairs to the bathroom at the back of the dormitory. The sounds left little doubt about what they were doing.

  He turned over in his bed and resolved to get at least a few hours of sleep. He thought the spartan room, stripped of security devices, had one thing in common with Orleans Parish Prison and Building 6—all warehoused the bodies of lost souls.

  Chapter 19

  “Durant,” Ted barked from the doorway of Building 2. Matt shambled forward and, as he approached, saw Ted’s chin was coated with lotion, sweat and spittle. “You must be pretty special. Parnell tells me to leave you alone and now you get a new job in the library. But you’d best know, I don’t do everything Parnell tells me.”

  “Should I tell Parnell that?” Matt regretted his words instantly.

  “Why don’t you shut the fuck up? Go.” Ted colored. His reaction confirmed Matt’s guess based on the guard’s swift response to Parnell’s instruction the night before—he was controlled by Parnell.

  Ted didn’t bother with the handcuffs this time. Matt wondered if it was because of Parnell’s influence or because the threat of losing his new privileges guaranteed his good behavior, but suspected if he lost his new privileges it would signal a move by Parnell, not the guards.

  Ted and Matt climbed into an ancient, dingy truck and they traveled down the road toward the main complex of Angola. Ted led him to a large library.

  “Luther, get your ass out here,” Ted shouted.

  The black man who Matt assumed to be Luther had a short afro flecked with gray and a round face dotted with freckles. Luther’s gray hair was the only sign he was over forty.

  “I’m gonna leave you two,” Ted said. “Durant, you might wanna check out the Observer website while you’re here. You’ll figure out why you’re so famous.” He sneered, revealing nicotine-stained teeth.

  “I’m Luther Johnson.” The librarian extended his hand. “Not quite sure how you got this job, but you’re going to help me out around here. They supposedly brought you over from Wheaton so you could fill their book orders. They fill out requests for books at dinner and you’ll provide them with their books in the cafeteria.”

  Matt noted Luther spoke with the measured pace of a man who’d educated himself late in life. He attempted to banish the thought immediately—was he being racist? It seemed to matter in a way with Luther it didn’t with Parnell. Maybe Luther was just thoughtful and deliberate. “My name’s Matt Durant. I got this job because I used to be a lawyer, and I traded my legal services to Parnell for protection.”

  “Ah. That would explain why they sent over Parnell’s legal file, then. I wondered about that.”

  “I’m just doing my best to survive,” Matt said. “Can you show me what I’m going to be doing?”

  “It’s not that complicated,” Luther responded. “We have a full set of law books with state and federal cases. We also have a West Digest System that sorts cases by legal topic. I think a court may have had something to do with the availability of those law books, but they also keep the inmates happy. The guards would rather have the inmates harassing the courts than them.” Luther gestured toward various areas of the library as he described them.

  “We also have a pretty extensive collection of fiction. We even have some classics, history, philosophy and biographies. Prison is pretty boring, so even as hard as the warden works folks around here, some people get up to some pretty serious reading after a few years.”

  The rough-hewn pine bookshelves held old books that exuded the musty undertone common to all libraries, which made Matt realize he might be able to bury himself in books here just as he had in school, libraries, bookstores, coffee shops, offices and anywhere else he found himself throughout his whole life.

  “We also have computers,” Luther said, pointing to a wall in the main room lined with computers, boxy CRT monitors, and a couple of immediate successors to the dot-matrix printer. “About half aren’t connected to the internet and are just for word processing. The ones connected to the internet are monitored by an outside company and the guards, so we don’t have to mess with that.”

  “What am I going to be doing?” Matt asked.

  “You’ll file newly acquired and returned books, help maintain the library catalog and do some light cleaning. But today I think it would be a good idea to review Parnell’s file.”

  “Thanks,” Matt said.

  “Least I can do. You’re the one dealing with the devil. You know, Parnell was here at Angola for about ten years in the nineties for possession of pot—he somehow got his conviction and sentence reduced to that and I don’t wanna know how—but everyone in the state knew he deserved to be in Angola, so that’s where he ended up.

  “He took over huge parts of the prison. When they convicted him the second time, I think they sent him to Wheaton so he couldn’t build an army as large as last time. Fewer blacks are housed at Wheaton and even fewer are desperate enough to do the really dirty work. But Parnell’s still tough and ruthless. And he’ll do anything to keep the reputation he has at both prisons.”

  “I figured he was a serious player. But that means he can provide me with some protection, right?”

  “Hey, I know where I’ve seen your picture before,” Luther said as recognition dawned. “You’re that lawyer from New Orleans who killed the guy in an alley in the Quarter.”

  “Yeah, that’s me.”

  “Well, I don’t know you had much choice other than to try to cut a deal with Parnell, then. You have a huge target painted on your back. You’re gay so every bull out there is going to assume you’re better at sex and might even enjoy it. And you were rich on the outside, which is another reason to hate you.”

  “I wasn’t that rich. My mother’s a nurse.”

  “Yeah, well, you were a lawyer making six figures a year. Men here have killed for a lot less.

  “Parnell’s file is right here,” Luther said, pointing to two boxes that were each two feet long. He had mixed feelings about the size of the file; it improved the odds of finding something useful, but it would also take longer. He was torn between diving into the file and checking the computer for that damned Observer article.

  After Luther had showed him to the card catalog, Matt pulled a chair up to a table. On second thought, he returned to the card catalog and searched for a treatise on Louisiana criminal law, figuring the book could serve as a useful shortcut. He assumed he’d have to take similar shortcuts to learn the relevant facts from the record of Parnell’s trial. He began by reviewing the opening statements, closing statements and jury instructions. He’d just started on the jury instructions when Luther interrupted.

  “We should go eat now if we want lunch,” Luther said. “You going to keep working?”

  “No, I should eat.”

  They went to the cafeteria at Angola, which fed hundreds of prisoners, and many nodded to Luther as they walked through the cafeteria to a table, where the seated prisoners appeared to have separated themselves from the others by age rather than race. White or black, all appeared to be at least fifty-five or sixty and Matt guessed that Luther might be older than he looked.

  “What’s happening today, fellas?” Luther asked as he put his tray on the table. He sat next to a grizzled white prisoner with more white hair growing from his large ears than from his liver-spotted scalp.

  “Bob and I were just talking about when things in here was the worst,” the man next to Luther said. “He says it was in the late seventies when the state cut back so much on money, but I don’t think he gets a vote ’cause he wasn’t here in the early seventies. That was before the courts got involved.”

  “How long have you been here?” Matt asked.

  “Name’s George,” the prisoner said.

  “Matt Durant. Sorry. I didn’t mean to be rude.”

  “No, not a problem. Not many new guys are interested in us. I been here for fifty years. Killed a man when I was twenty-two and I been here since.”

  “So what was the worst period in
prison?”

  “Well, before seventy-five or so, when the courts didn’t pay no attention to this place, things were pretty rough. Guards didn’t even try to hide the fact the prisoners were running the joint. There weren’t as many guards and a lot more trustees. Seems like we had a killing every day back then. I used to sleep on my back with a baking pan strapped to my chest so nobody could stab me at night. And I hadn’t even done nothing to make anybody mad.”

  “Are things that much better now?” Matt asked.

  George laughed and said, “You kidding me? You leave other folks alone now and don’t get on the wrong side of anybody, you got a real good shot at a peaceful life. Back then, if you hadn’t killed to get in here, you sure were gonna have to kill someone once you got here.”

  Luther had finished his lunch. “That’s enough with the history lesson. We’ve got to get back to the library. We’ve got work to do.”

  Matt stood and nodded to George. “It was good to meet you.”

  “You too, kid,” George said. “Good luck.”

  After returning to the library, Matt convinced himself he should take a break to check out the Observer article Ted had mentioned. He ran a search for “Durant” and what passed for an op-ed piece popped up:

  Jury Convicts Lawyer Who Claimed Self-Defense While Training to Kill

  Matthew Durant, a young New Orleans attorney on trial for murder, continued his training to kill up until the first day of trial. Durant killed Brian Cutler in an alley in the French Quarter. Prosecutors claimed Durant killed him to avoid being arrested for purchasing cocaine. Durant and his defense team argued he was defending himself after being attacked because of his sexual orientation. Despite the presiding judge’s exclusion of critical evidence, those jurors reached the right verdict and convicted Matthew Durant.