Help I Am Being Held Prisoner

by Donald E. Westlake

It was Stoon. I stopped, paralyzed. He’d recognized me last night after all, the dream was over, it was all over, it was all coming to an end. And just when I’d met Marian, whom I realized in this first instant of loss that I needed terrifically, I needed her the way I needed lungs. How can you come right out and say you’re in love with a woman you’ve known for seven hours? By having her taken away from you in the eighth, that’s how.

  “Warden wants to see you, Kunt,” Stoon said. He made a thumb waggle over his shoulder. “Let’s go.”

  I went. Despair, doom. And how could I keep from implicating the others? Phil and Jerry and Billy and Bob and Max and Eddie and Joe. Once I admitted how I was getting out of the prison, they would be in as much trouble as I was, no matter how much I tried to protect them.

  So I wouldn’t tell, that’s all. I would clam up, I would button my lip, I would keep my trap shut. You ain’t gettin nuttin outa me, copper.

  Stoon, about to enter the administration building ahead of me, turned his head and said, “What?”

  Had I said that aloud? Good God. “Frog in my throat,” I explained.

  “Tell him to shut up,” Stoon said, and entered the building.

  We walked down the corridor together, and at a given point I turned left and walked into Stoon’s elbow. “Oof,” I said, and he said, “Watch it, Kunt. What’s the matter with you?”

  I pointed down the side corridor toward the warden’s office. “Aren’t we—?”

  “Just come with me,” he said.

  So I went with him, on down the main corridor to a staircase, and then up two flights. I had no idea what was going on. All I could think about was that Stoon had recognized me at the party last night, that I had lost Marian just as soon as I had found her, and that I must keep silent about the tunnel and the others. I must.

  The administration building was three stories high, so once we’d climbed the second flight we were on the top floor. Nevertheless we went up one more flight, narrower and darker than the first two, and bewilderment was beginning to take precedence in my mind over terror and despair when Stoon pushed a metal fire door open at the top of the stairs and the two of us stepped out onto the roof.

  Warden Gadmore was there, with his topcoat on, his hands jammed down into his coat pockets. There was a cold damp wind up here, but it wasn’t the only reason I was shivering.

  The warden gave me a discontented look, saying to Stoon, “Well, you found him all right.”

  “Yes, sir.”

  The warden considered me for a moment, while I tried to figure out why we were going to talk about my unauthorized absence from the prison on the administration building’s roof. I noticed that his hair looked thinner and skimpier in the wind, that frills of it whisked around his circular bald spot, and that he was looking decidedly less sympathetic than when I’d first seen him.

  “Well, Kunt,” the warden said, sans umlaut, “what do you have to say for yourself?”

  “Nothing sir,” I said.

  He looked out over the roof. “Are you proud of yourself, Kunt?”

  “Proud of myself?” It seemed a strange phrase under the circumstances. Also looking out over the flat roof, trying to work out exactly what the man meant when he asked that question, I noticed for the first time that lines seemed to have been drawn in the snow. Scuffed in the snow, someone moving back and forth, creating lines and angles by dragging his feet through the inch or so of snow on the roof. Lines and angles making some sort of design, like letters, like…

  “Oh, for God’s sake,” I said.

  The warden looked back at me. “Did you really think,” he asked me, “you could get away with it?” The lines nearest me, in the snow on the roof, said PRISONER. The next row of lines, out there across the roof, black lines in the white snow, said, BEING HELD. And the farthest row of lines said, HELP I AM.

  “I,” I said, and shook my head.

  “You aren’t going to deny this, are you?”

  In imagination I suddenly visualized the way this must look from the air, to anybody in an airplane passing by. Giant letters in the roof of the building, requesting help of the passing world because, after all, the writer was being held prisoner.

  It was not because of the party! Stoon had not recognized me! I had not lost Marian!

  I was grinning from ear to ear.

  “You find this amusing, Kunt?”

  Relief made me reckless. “Yes, sir,” I said. “I think it’s pretty funny. Can you imagine somebody going by in an airplane, he looks down—”

  “That’s enough,” the warden said. He was beginning to be angry.

  “Whoever did that,” I said, still smiling broadly, “has a sense of humor I really like.”

  “You did it, Kunt,” he said. “Don’t waste my time with denials.”

  I didn’t care about anything. I hadn’t been found out, that was all that mattered. “I’ll tell you two things, warden,” I said, “and they’re both true. One, I didn’t do that sign there or the one in the license plates. And two, my name isn’t Kunt. It’s Künt, with an umlaut, and it always has been.”

  “We’re not talking about your name, we’re—”

  “Well, we goddam well ought to,” I said. He stared at me in astonishment, Stoon shifted from foot to foot behind me in outrage and disapproval, and I roared on. “My name is Künt,” I said. “It’s not that hard to pronounce, if you’d just make the effort. How would you like it if I called you Warden Gadabout?”

  “What?”

  “I may be a prisoner, but I still have my name, and a man’s name is—”

  “You certainly are a prisoner,” the warden snapped. “I’d begun to think you’d forgotten that. Stoon, you will place Mister Koont in a cell in the restricted area.”

  Solitary. A little late, I closed my mouth.

  “Yes, sir,” said Stoon. “Come along, Kunt.” He pronounced it wrong.

  28

  There’s a difference between solitude and solitary. I had solitude in my one-man cell in the regular cell-block, and I was happy for it. But now I was solitary in a different one-man cell, and it didn’t make me happy at all. I had nothing to read, nothing to look at but the concrete block walls, nothing to do but sit on the hard metal bunk and think about the errors of my past life. Particularly my recent past life. Particularly on that goddam roof.

  What would they do to me now? Warden Gadmore had said, in our initial meeting, that he was going out of his way to give me privileges rarely extended to a newcomer. Would those privileges be taken away, now that I had yelled at the man on the roof of his own administration building? Would I no longer have a job at the gym? Had my stupidity, my big mouth, taken the gym and the tunnel and Marian and all the rest of it away forever?

  I was kept in solitary over the weekend, and when I was taken out on Monday it was only long enough for a meeting with the prison psychiatrist, Dr. Jules O. Steiner, a seedily dressed man with five o’clock shadow and shoulders covered with dandruff. He didn’t seem particularly competent or intelligent or sympathetic, but he was the only contact I had with the world of authority, so I opened up to him completely about my name and the practical jokes, the connection between the two, and their regrettable conclusion in my outburst on the roof. He listened, asked a few questions, made a few notes, gave very little reaction, and at the end of the hour I was taken back to solitary for two more days.

  On Wednesday afternoon I was again taken out—I was like a pie being constantly pulled out of the oven by a nervous cook— this time by Stoon, who once more marched me to the administration building. But not to the roof; we went directly to the warden’s office, where I found Warden Gadmore himself in his usual place behind his desk, reading a dossier on me that had grown noticeably thicker since the first time I’d seen it.

  “Warden,” I said, before he said anything at all. “I want to apologize for my—”

  “That’s all right, Künt,” he said. He pronounced it right! Without irony, without malice, without pr
ompting, he pronounced it right. With the umlaut. And when he looked up at me I saw that he was sympathetic once again. “I’ve just been reading Doctor Steiner’s report,” he said. “I think I understand you better now, Künt.” Twice!

  “Yes, sir,” I said. Did I dare to hope?

  He lowered his head, showed me his pancake, studied the report. “I see here,” he said, “you still deny you had anything to do with that business on the roof.”

  “The message? That’s right, sir, I didn’t do that.”

  “I also have a report,” he said, tapping another sheet of paper, “that says you were locked in the gymnasium all that night.”

  “Yes, sir,” I said eagerly. Stoon was an awful presence behind me, but I surged forward anyway. “I was in there all night long,” I said.

  “At least we can’t prove otherwise.” Bunk bunk; he was thinking again, drumming his fingertips on my dossier. “I notice,” he said, “you do admit several other antisocial actions since arriving here.”

  “I’ve stopped all those now, sir,” I said. “It—it took a while to quit. But I’m through with it now.”

  “Yes. Hmmm.” Bunk bunk.

  Was I off? Was I scot free? I found I was leaning toward the warden so precipitously I was about to fall forward onto his desk. No, no; that would never do. I leaned back, shifted my feet, waited.

  Bunk bunk.

  He sighed. He did his squinting act up at me, reading my face. “I wish I knew,” he said, “why you persist in denying this one thing.”

  “Because I really didn’t do it, sir,” I said. “I really didn’t do it. I’d tell you if I did.”

  “It may be,” he said, “against all the evidence, it just may be that you are telling the truth.”

  Hope, a wide-winged bird, soared up within me, over the mountain peaks of doubt and despair.

  “But—”

  The bird faltered. A few feathers fluttered away earthward. Is that anti-aircraft fire up ahead?

  “—I’m still not entirely convinced,” the warden said. “There’s also the matter of your outburst the other morning.”

  “Sir, I am truly—”

  “Yes, I’m sure you are. And I do have more understanding on that score, now that you’ve had your little chat with Doctor Steiner.”

  “Yes, sir.”

  “However, it did happen.” Bunk bunk. “I’ll tell you what I’m going to do, Künt.”

  I hardly notice the proper pronunciation. I was leaning forward again. “Sir?”

  “I see you don’t have a cellmate,” he said. “I’m going to put a man in there with you that I hope will be a good example to you. His name is Butler, and—”

  I said, “Andy Butler, sir?” I gestured toward the garden outside his window, now sleeping beneath its white blanket of snow. “The gardener?”

  “That’s right,” he said. “You know him?”

  “My former cellmate,” I said, “Peter Corse, introduced me.”

  “Fine,” he said. “Andy Butler has been in this institution a good long time. He knows the ins and outs of life around here better than just about any other man in the place. You listen to him, watch him, emulate him, and you’ll be a lot better off, Künt, believe me.”

  “Yes, sir,” I said. “Thank you, sir.” A cellmate, that wasn’t so bad. Andy Butler, he was a nice old guy, he wouldn’t be any trouble at all.

  “In order,” the warden went on, and I knew at once that the bird of hope had flown too soon, that a new cellmate wasn’t the worst news of the day after all, “for you to begin right away to get the advantage of Butler’s companionship, I’ve decided to take you off privileges for the next two weeks. That means you won’t be working in the gymnasium, nor will you have the unlimited yard privileges that accompany a work assignment.”

  Two weeks. Christmas and New Year’s. (It was only later that it occurred to me even this cloud had a silver lining: the two weeks would take me safely past the rescheduled bank robbery.) Two weeks away from Marian, away from the entire outside world.

  All right, so what? Two weeks wasn’t forever. I could survive. “Yes, sir,” I said. Then, struck by an awful thought, I said, “Sir, when the two weeks are up, will I be going back to the gym?”

  “We’ll decide that at the time,” he said.

  The bird dropped down dead, and when it landed in the pit of my stomach it was heavy and cold. “Yes, sir,” I said.

  “All right, Künt,” the warden said. “That’s all.” He started to toss the dossier in his out-basket.

  “Sir!” I said, feeling sudden urgency.

  He paused, the dossier in his hand, and looked at me with faint irritation. “Yes?”

  “Sir, I—” I tried to organize the words to get this point across. “There’s some people in this prison,” I said, “that I pulled tricks on, when I first came here, that if they found out it was me, sir, I don’t know what they’d do.”

  “You should have thought of that at the time,” he said. No sympathy on this point at all.

  “I was still under the compulsion then, sir,” I said. “I’m not anymore, I’m cured, as you’ll definitely see. But if those other convicts, sir, if they find out about me, about what I did, there’s some of them that might even go so far as to kill me.”

  I’d caught his attention. He put the dossier down, not in the out-basket. “Hmmmm,” he said.

  I said, “Sir, if we could not mention what I’m being punished for, I mean the message on the roof, I promise you won’t regret it.”

  He squinted at me. “What are you suggesting?”

  “The reason for the punishment, sir,” I said. “If we just made it insubordination, without the other thing, that I anyway didn’t even do, but if we could leave it out, and…” I ran down, my argument exhausted.

  “I see.” He thought about it, so deeply that he didn’t even go bunk-bunk. Then, decisively, he nodded. “It’s a valid request,” he said. “If you’ve stopped the practical jokes.”

  “Oh, I have, sir!”

  “Then we won’t mention any of that,” he said. “At least for the next two weeks.”

  “Thank you, sir,” I said. “Uh—”

  “Yes? What else?”

  I wasn’t sure how much he knew about the trusty subculture. I said, “Sir, that would also mean the trusties, any prisoners working in your office, or—”

  “I understood that, Künt,” he said, and gave me a surprisingly flinty smile. “I really do know what goes on in my prison,” he said.

  Well, yes and no, I thought. “Thank you, sir,” I said.

  29

  Andy Butler was sympathetic, but in order for him to be sympathetic I had to tell him an awful lot of the truth: the practical jokes I’d pulled here in the prison, mainly, so he’d understand why Warden Gadmore was so convinced I was the one leaving the help-i-am-being-held-prisoner messages. “I had no idea you were doing that sort of thing,” he said. His kindly face was full of a combination of sympathy and humor. He did see the funny side of it, thank God, which was a bit more than I could do at the moment.

  I said, “But you’ve got to keep it to yourself, Andy. Please. If some of those guys find out—”

  “I won’t say a word,” Andy said. “Guaranteed.”

  “Thanks, Andy. Thanks a lot.” But it seemed to me things were getting too tangled. There were too many secrets, with too many people knowing too many fractions. One wrong conversation, in or out of the prison, would blow the whole thing sky-high.

  My friends at the gym were properly sympathetic. “Tough titty, pal,” Phil commented.

  I asked Max if he’d get word to Marian James that I wouldn’t be seeing her for two weeks, and he said he would. Of course, in making the request I did have to admit that Marian knew the truth about us—another secret, another fraction, another person I had to trust to keep things to himself. Max, obviously, shouldn’t let Phil and the others know I’d told an outsider about being a prisoner. Good God, the complexity of it all!


  Anyway, Max was a little disgruntled at first to learn I’d given his secret to Marian, but when I explained about Stoon being at the party he agreed I hadn’t had much choice. He himself had managed to miss Stoon by missing most of the party; when he and Janet had finally come downstairs most of the guests had already departed.

  So. One way and another, I now had secrets and portions of secrets being held for me by my mother, the seven tunnel insiders (with an extra parcel just for Max), Andy Butler, Warden Gadmore, Fred Stoon and Marian James. Let just one of them say one indiscreet word and the whole tottering structure would come collapsing onto my head, like the bricks falling one by one onto Oliver Hardy’s head as he sits in gloomy fatalism in the fireplace.

  I spent the rest of Wednesday, after making my deals with the warden and Andy Butler and Max, fretting about the house of cards I had built, trying to think of some way to shore it up a bit here and there, and Wednesday night was full of dreams about floors, lawns, chairs, platforms and airplane bottoms giving way beneath me. After a night of sudden drops, I was so twitchy by morning I was almost ready to say the indiscreet word myself and get it over with.

  Then Andy stepped in, with a distraction that more or less saved my life. He was traditionally Stonevelt’s Santa Claus in the Christmas Eve pageant put on every year by the prison amateur theater group, known rather wistfully as the Stonevelt Touring Company. STC, generally called Stick by its members, assayed high in Joy Boys, and put on five or six plays a year, tending mostly toward comedy. Their version of Stalag 17 had a great echoing vibrancy to it unavailable in other circumstances, and the production they did of The Women had to be seen to be believed.

  Anyway, Christmas Eve was coming up next day, Friday, and Andy asked me to help him with his costume and props. Grateful for anything at all to take my mind off the shrinking ice floe I was standing on, I threw myself into the production, becoming a kind of extra stagehand, which startled the Stick people and made them very happy. They never, they explained to me, had enough backstage people; if I would like to make ‘grip’ my in-prison career, they would be delighted to have me. Some of them, I think, meant that in more ways than one. In any event, I thanked them all and told them I’d think it over.