Help I Am Being Held Prisoner

by Donald E. Westlake

  By now, I had become resigned to the fact that whenever the warden sent for me it was going to be another of those damn notes, and all I hoped as I followed Stoon across the yard and through the administration building to Warden Gadmore’s office was that this time I would have a good solid in-prison alibi. This thing hanging over my head was the only serpent left in my paradise, and I wanted to be rid of it.

  But when we walked in the Catholic chaplain was also present in the office, standing to one side, hands folded together in front of his chalk-stained black robe, and I got confused. What did he have to do with anything? Father Michael J. P. Flynn his name was, and though I’d never had any direct dealings with him, I had seen him around the prison and I knew who he was. But I wasn’t Catholic, so why was he here? And why was he glowering at me in that disapproving way?

  The warden was also glowering, giving me his had-enough look, his no-more-Mister-Nice-Guy-look. He was also giving me something small and white and crumpled. “Here,” he said. “Take this and read.”

  “Read?” So I’d been right. “Another prisoner message,” I said.

  Warden Gadmore turned and nodded at Father Flynn, saying to him, “You see what I mean? Isn’t he convincing?”

  “Not particularly,” Father Flynn said. A heavyset middle-aged man with a round white face and black hair emerging wildly from his head, eyebrows, ears and nostrils, Father Flynn was known to be short-tempered, and at the moment he seemed more than moderately angry at me. Glaring in my direction he said, “Be careful how you treat that. It’s the Body of Our Lord and Savior Jesus Christ.”

  “The what?” I bowed my head to look more closely at the thing the warden had handed me. It was like an underdone Ritz cracker, round and white, slightly soft, folded in the middle. “It looks like an uncooked fortune cookie,” I said.

  “Very funny,” the warden said. “Open it, and read your fortune.”

  “Open it,” I echoed, and I didn’t like this at all. “Be careful with it,” Father Flynn warned me. “I consecrated the entire batch before I noticed anything wrong, so that is now a Holy Wafer. It is the Body of Our Lord and Savior Jesus Christ.”

  This time I understood him. What I was holding was a small round of unleavened bread, the wafer used by Catholics in Holy Communion. Once I’d unfolded it to its normal flat circle I could see exactly what it was.

  I could also see the note in it; a narrow strip of paper, just like those in fortune cookies. I didn’t have to open it to read what it said, but I did anyway.

  Printed. Tiny letters, black ballpoint ink. I refuse to repeat the words.

  “The thing that gets me, Künt,” the warden said, when at last I looked up from the sacrilege in my hands, “is the timing.”

  “Timing, sir?”

  He pointed at the wafer and note in my hand. “That was done,” he said, “three days after the episode of the bottle in the vegetable soup.”

  “What?”

  “The note in the bottle,” he said, “occurred on March seventh, just one month ago tomorrow. The Communion hosts used by Father Flynn are dated when they arrive here, to assure freshness, and the carton containing that particular host was dated March tenth. On that date, the carton arrived at the chapel, and spent the first night in a side room. The following morning Father Flynn locked the carton in his storage area in the chapel, and never took it out again until this morning. The only time those twelve hosts could have—”

  “Twelve?”

  “Yes, twelve,” the warden said.

  Father Flynn said, “Don’t deny it, man. Guilt is written all over your face.”

  “Father— Warden—” But what was there to say? So the warden went on without further interruption: “The only time the hosts could have been tampered with,” he said, “was the day and night of March tenth. Just three days after you gave me your solemn word this sort of thing would never happen again.”

  “No, sir,” I said. “I never promised you it wouldn’t happen again. I couldn’t make a promise like that, because I’m not the one doing these things.”

  “Künt,” the warden said, and his manner was more grieved than angry, “do you remember what I told you back in March, three days before these hosts were treated this way?”

  “Yes, sir,” I said.

  “I told you at that time,” the warden said, “that if such a thing ever happened again, and you failed to have a solid alibi or a provable alternate explanation, that I would take you off all privileges, and I would keep you off all privileges until such a thing happened yet again. Because that’s the only way to prove your innocence.”

  “Yes, sir,” I said, and I could practically feel myself grow shorter as I stood there, slumping down into myself.

  Off privileges. I’d always known it was a possibility, but I’d done my best to ignore the knowledge. I’d made no real effort to find out who was actually leaving these notes around, and now it was too late. Off privileges. Indefinitely.

  That was the worst of it, of course. The gym, the tunnel, Marian—the whole outside world—were being taken away from me, and there was no way to tell for how long. Would it be a week before another message, or a month, or a year? There was no pattern in the damn man’s actions, no real guarantee that he’d ever strike again at all.

  Oh, no; he had to do it again. He couldn’t stop now.

  A year and a half before I was eligible for parole: eternity. A year and a half without Marian, without going through the tunnel even once?

  I was going to be a prisoner.

  Help, I thought.

  “I’m sorry, Künt,” the warden said, possibly because my despair was showing in my face, “but I see no alternative.”

  “No, sir,” I said.

  “That’s all,” he said. “You may go.”

  Father Flynn said, “That’s all?” He, I’m sure, would have preferred to see me burned at the stake.

  But the warden told him, “Until we have proof one way or the other, there’s nothing else to do.” He nodded to me to leave.

  “Yes, sir,” I said. But as I started out Father Flynn called me, saying, “You. Whatever your name is.”

  “Künt, Father,” I said. “With an umlaut.”

  “I’m not going to forget you, Künt,” he said. “Nor I should think will several of the good God-fearing Catholic boys in this institution.”

  “I didn’t do it,” I said, but he’d turned his back on me.

  And so I left the warden’s office to go spend my season in Hell.

  46

  The month between Wednesday, April 27 and Friday, May 27 was the most horrible month of my life. In the first place, I was in prison.

  Well, I hadn’t been before. I’d been a visitor, a roomer, hardly a prisoner. But starting the twenty-seventh of April I was a prisoner, and no mistake.

  What does a prisoner do? He gets up at seven-thirty in the morning and cleans his area. He eats breakfast. He exercises for an hour on the yard and spends the rest of the morning in his cell. He eats lunch. He exercises for an hour on the yard and spends the rest of the afternoon in his cell. He eats dinner. He spends the evening in his cell. He goes to bed. Much later, he goes to sleep.

  What else does a prisoner do? Once a week he gets permission to go to the library and get three books. If he has full privileges he works at a job somewhere in the prison, but if he only has partial privileges he at least gets to wander around much of the prison area during the day and he gets to see a movie once a week and he gets to sit down in the library and read a magazine. But if he has no privileges he sits in his cell and tries to read his three books a week very, very slowly. No movies, no wandering around, no job, no nothing.

  It is all extremely boring. Boredom is a horrible punishment, just about the grimmest long-term thing you can do to somebody. Boredom is very boring. It’s very bad. I don’t know how to establish this point without becoming boring, and God knows I don’t want to do that.

  The only respites I had from b
oredom were the occasional attacks made on my person by good God-fearing friends of Father Flynn. They were potentially dangerous, since they usually came after me in bunches of ten or twelve, but I quickly learned that whenever a tightly massed group of mesomorphs moved toward me I should move toward a guard, so they never managed to do much damage. However, it was the one time that my belonging to the gymnasium tough guy group didn’t protect me from the violence endemic to a prison situation, and it helped to make me feel even more remote from my former existence.

  I had little opportunity for practical joking, and in any event no desire. I was too depressed. I lived for the occasional verbal message from Marian passed on to me by Max—a written note would have been too dangerous to carry around—and every morning I woke up hoping that today another note would be found: today, today, today.

  But it never was. The bastard had stopped again. Day after day went by, and no messages, and every day without a message was another day for the warden to become more convinced that I was the guilty party after all.

  Until, on Friday, the twenty-seventh of May, Guard Stoon came to my cell to escort me once more to the warden’s office. Feeling suddenly alive again, I said, “Did something happen? Another message? Is that why he wants me?”

  “No,” Stoon said. “Nothing’s happened, no more messages, and it’s been a month today. That’s why he wants you.” And there was a grim satisfaction in the way he said it.

  47

  We were crossing the yard, me in the lead and Stoon behind me, when we met some new fish coming the other way, still in their free-world clothing. I was passing them, head down, brooding about my own troubles, when I suddenly noticed that one of them was Peter Corse! “Peter!” I cried, and stopped so suddenly that Stoon walked into me.

  Peter gave a great toothless smile and boomed out, “Harry, how are you! I told you I’d be back!”

  “Move along,” Stoon told me, and gave me a small shove.

  I moved, but shouted back over my shoulder to Peter, “How did you do it?”

  He too was being forced to move along. He cupped his hands and yelled, “I crapped in a graveyard!”

  There’s hope, I thought, there’s hope for us all. If Peter Corse can get back in here, I too can surmount my difficulties. After all, I have all my teeth.

  Yes, and half of his.

  48

  The warden was behind his desk, and Father Flynn was once again standing to one side. Stoon remained back by the door in his usual position, where he could comment on the proceedings by shifting his weight from foot to foot.

  Warden Gadmore said, “Künt, I’m sorry to have to say that absolutely nothing has happened since I took you off privileges.”

  “I know that, Warden,” I said.

  “This business with the communion hosts,” he said, “goes beyond a prank or a practical joke, you know. To a Roman Catholic, it’s a very serious thing.”

  “I know that, sir,” I said. “Some of Father Flynn’s boys have been trying to impress that on me.”

  “I hope you listened to them,” Father Flynn said.

  “It’s hard to listen to fists,” I said.

  The warden raised a hand. “Let’s not get off the subject,” he said. “The point is, this business of mocking religion is very serious, and Father Flynn wanted more action than a simple loss of privileges.”

  “Yes, sir,” I said.

  “Father Flynn,” the warden said, “wrote to his Monsignor, who telephoned the Governor, who telephoned me.”

  “Yes, sir,” I said. For the first time I was getting hints that maybe Warden Gadmore didn’t like Father Flynn all that much, but his personal feelings toward the priest weren’t going to do me any good at all. It had gone beyond that, I could see it already.

  “I wanted you to know,” the warden said, “that indictments are being drawn up against you. You’ll be appearing before the Monequois County grand jury sometime in the next month. The Governor’s feeling is that a trial will produce a definitive truth and end all this uncertainty.”

  “Yes, sir,” I said.

  “Unfortunately,” the warden said, “that means the whole truth will have to come out, Künt.”

  “Sir?”

  “Your former activities against your fellow inmates,” he said.

  My practical jokes. “They’ll find out?”

  “There’s no way to avoid it.”

  Father Flynn, eyes flashing, said, “Find out what?”

  “All in good time, Father,” the warden said, and to me he said, “I wanted you to be forewarned. If you can possibly mend your fences, I think you should get to it.”

  “Yes, sir,” I said. In despair, I looked past him, out at the garden, now a flashing panorama of spring colors. If only Andy could see that, I thought, trying to distract myself from contemplation of the mess I was in. All those flowers out there, sheets and trails and—

  “Hee hee,” I said.

  They both looked at me. Father Flynn frowned very heavily. Warden Gadmore said, “What was that Künt?”

  “Hee hee,” I said again. “Ho ho. Ha ha ha ha ha ha ha—”

  “What’s the matter with you, man?” The warden was rising out of his chair, Father Flynn was staring at me in astonished disapproval, and Stoon was moving up from the rear. “Have you gone—”

  “Look!” I shouted. “Look out there!” And I pointed at the garden. “Butler did it!” I yelled. “Butler did it!”

  Oh, that garden! Oh, my, oh, my, that garden!

  HELP spelled out in lavender-blue Sweet William amid banks of white pansies.

  I in a line of white English daisies, and AM in pink azaleas, both surrounded by a swath of golden alyssum.

  BEING in yellow tulips set off by white rock-cress.

  HELD in orange cowslip on a sheet of mountain pinks.

  PRISONER in a riot of blue pansies, Virginia bluebells, blue iris and blue forget-me-nots on a mat of white dusty-miller.

  “He knew!” I yelled. “When you threw Peter Corse out he knew he was next, he told me so himself!”

  They were all over by the window, staring out—even Stoon. I shouted at their uncomprehending backs, too relieved to do anything but go on yelling. “It was the style of the man!” I yelled. “The irony, the reversal! He wanted help because he wasn’t being held prisoner, and he knew there wasn’t any help, and this is what he did!”

  They turned slowly to face me. The warden looked stunned. “It wasn’t you, Künt,” he said. “It wasn’t you all along.”

  49

  Much had changed in the month I’d been away. Eddie Troyn had received an abrupt and unexpected parole, and had become a paying boarder in the Dombey house. He’d gotten a job as a tollbooth attendant at the big bridge just north of town, and I must say he looked well in his uniform; but he missed the prison, and would occasionally sneak in on his day off from the toll-booth to spend an afternoon in his old haunts.

  The new insider, taking Eddie’s place, was a jolly, stout check-kiter from Buffalo named Red Hendershot. Max told me that when Hendershot had turned over his twenty-three hundred dollar entrance fee he’d said, “Here you go, the first good check I wrote in seven years,” and they wouldn’t let him through the tunnel until the check cleared.

  There were other changes. Phil Giffin, Jerry Bogentrodder and Billy Glinn had pooled their nine thousand dollar bank profit, had rented a big loft downtown, and had opened a sort of school devoted to the martial arts; judo, kung fu, all that stuff. Max had grown very serious about Della, so much so that they were making plans to both return to college—she was also a dropout—once he got out of prison; in the meantime, Max wanted me to move out of our apartment because Della, in my absence, had moved in. So I wound up living with Marian, which wasn’t at all unpleasant.

  A few days after I got back, they gave me a surprise welcome-home party, in the Dombey house. All the insiders were there, plus Marian and Alice Dombey and Della. Toasts were drunk and I became maudlin. Th
ere had been questions during the past month about the reason for my removal from privileges, but I’d evaded them all—until tonight. Tonight, when Jerry asked me just what had gone wrong to get me in trouble, I put my hand on his massive shoulder and I said, “Jerry, it’s a long story.” And I told him about the notes; the ones in the license plates, the one in snow on the roof, the one in the bottle in the soup, the one in the communion wafer, and finally the one made of flowers. By the time I’d finished my audience had grown, and several people wanted to hear it from the beginning, so I told it all over again. And then Alice Dombey, of all people, said, “But Harry, why did they think it was you?”

  I knew now I’d gone too far to turn back; plus I was a bit drunk; plus I was maudlin. I was in a confessional mood, as when Andy’d had his farewell dinner. “Well,” I said, drawing it out, “it’s because I used to be a practical joker.”

  That one settled slowly. Phil got it first and Billy Glinn got it last, but they all did get it. The eyes looking at me became increasingly speculative, and then increasingly flat. Marian, standing beside me, put both hands on my arm, and I could feel that she was trembling slightly.

  Joe Maslocki was the one who finally broke the silence, saying, “Maybe you better tell us about that Harry.”

  So I told them. “My parents were German refugees,” I said, and I went right on through. It took them a long while to like it but when Della started laughing Max followed suit and a while after that Jerry began to grin, and then Billy chuckled some, and one after the other they found things to amuse them in my past depredations.

  Phil was last and the least amused, and when I got to the bank robbery attempts the best he could show was a strained smile while the rest of them hooted with laughter. But it was far enough in the past now, and the robbery had at last been successfully pulled off, so nobody got really angry. In fact Joe Maslocki told me, “You’re fucking ingenious, Harry. If you’d applied yourself to crime, you could have got rich.” And a little later Max said, “Harry, I understand the smoke bombs, and I understand sabotaging the truck. But what I don’t understand is, how did you do that storm?”