by Gary Mulgrew
Another week passed and still no sign of Tank or the stamps. Thankfully AJ had dropped the subject, and although it continued to niggle at the back of my mind, I comforted myself by thinking it was only $6.40 worth of stamps. Hardly worth dying for. I would just ignore Tank in the future and definitely strike him off my Christmas card list. I’d forget about it and chalk it down to experience. But things aren’t that simple in prison.
A few weeks later, AJ was back at me, but this time the message was more serious.
‘You need to deal with the Tank, man,’ he said suddenly as he sat down beside me one day. ‘Everyone in my Range was talking about it last night.’
‘Quite the sewing circle up in your Range, isn’t it?’ I quipped, trying to mask my annoyance that the subject hadn’t gone away.
AJ frowned. ‘Word is out, Scotland. Word is you ain’t no shot-caller. You a soft touch. Tank jacked you for a couple books and you ain’t doin’ shit about it. That’s the word. That you don’t have the balls.’
‘Yeah well . . .’ I mumbled, feeling threatened and annoyed at myself for trusting Tank and creating this mess. ‘It was only a couple of books and I can’t do anything to screw up my transfer.’
AJ was on top of me for that response straight away. ‘Shit, Scotland! Don’t be such an asshole.’ He was angry now. ‘It wouldn’t matter if you gave him one stamp and he didn’t give you it back. You can’t allow that to happen. And don’t forget sump’n. You walk alone in this Yard. You got no backup, Mr Fucking smartass Scottish shot-caller. Even the ABs wouldn’t have let this shit happen to you. You were so fucking clever with that, weren’t you? Well, they know you’re isolated and now you’ve just shown them you’re an easy-touch bleedin’-heart white boy all on his own with nothin’ to back it up.’ Leaning right into me, pointing his finger at me, AJ was more pissed off than I’d ever seen him. With anyone. And that was saying something. He followed it up by slapping me on the head.
‘Alright, alright, for fuck’s sake!’ I said, annoyed. ‘I get it about the stamps. I get it! Now what the fuck should I do about it?’ I knew he was right. I had seen it in operation. I knew that if the word got out you were a patsy or a soft touch, you’d be a target for every lowlife gang-banger in the place. I’d seen people’s entire commissary – their weekly supplies from the prison shop – being handed over: unopened letters, books, radios, sneakers – you name it, they took it. If they wanted it and you weren’t prepared to fight for it, they’d take it.
‘I’ll tell you exactly what you’re gonna do. You’re gonna get your stamps back, or you’re going to get your ass kicked trying. That’s what you’re going to do!’ screeched AJ, seemingly more annoyed with me by the second. As I started to digest that thought he went on, ‘What the hell were you thinking? You s’posed to be a motherfucking banker dude, and you don’t know shit about lending! Didn’t you tell me good bankers only lend to the people who don’t need it? No wonder the fucking world e-fucking-conomy’s gone to shit, Scotland; it’s got motherfuckers like you running the show!’
I almost smiled at that – somehow, AJ always hit the nail right on the head – but for now, I was just overcome with misery at the thought of what lay ahead. Doing nothing was not an option.
‘This is how it’s gonna work,’ AJ said, ‘and there ain’t no other way, so just listen. You need to demand your stamps back, and you need to demand them back now, someplace when everyone can hear you. He’ll tell you to go shit, then you have to try and at least get one good hit on him, before he busts your ass into sorry little pieces. Then when you come back from the infirmary and after a few weeks in the Hole, things will be cool between you and Tank and you’ll have respect back in the Yard because they’ll know you’re no easy touch because you were prepared to go toe-to-toe with the Tank.’
‘That’s a plan??’ I said, feeling genuinely afraid. ‘I’m trying to get home, AJ. I can’t get into a fight.’
AJ lapsed into a haughty silence and left me, for a while, sitting with my head in my hands. I knew he was right. I’d lent hundreds of millions of dollars throughout my career; I’d even once arranged a short-term bridging loan of $3bn to allow a major British utility to be acquired. And yet two $3.20 books of stamps looked like being the worst loan I ever made.
Eventually, when he felt he’d made enough of a point by ignoring me and thumbing through his magazine, AJ put it down and spoke again calmly. ‘If you don’t fight, Scotland, then you ain’t gonna be worth shit in this Yard. You’ll be somebody’s bitch by the end of the week . . . and me, Chief, New York or Toro won’t be able to do nuthin’ for you. Your transfer will never happen anyway because you’ll find yourself in trouble just about every day.’ He let this wisdom sink in for a while before continuing. ‘I’ll be embarrassed to be associated with you. You’ll bring shame to this here library, and to librarians everywhere.’ That was stretching it a bit, I thought, but I could see his point. I took a deep, weary breath – the breath of a man who has at last appreciated the size of the mountain he has to climb.
After a while longer I turned to AJ again. ‘OK, here’s what I am going to do.’ I hoped I sounded more determined than I felt. ‘The NBA semi-finals are on right now, yes?’
‘Ahum,’ AJ nodded.
‘The Lakers are playing tonight and that’s Tank’s team, right?’
‘Ahum.’
‘So he’ll be watching it?’
‘Yup,’ said AJ, ‘prob’ly betting your stamps.’
‘He bets?’ I asked, surprised.
AJ lay his head on the desk and banged his fist on the table for effect. ‘You dumb Scottish, skirt-wearing asshole. You didn’t even know that? You didn’t know the Tank is one of the major gamblers in this place? That’s his bag man, that’s his thing . . . tell me you at least checked that out?’ he pleaded, looking right at me. My stony, scowling face told him his answer. ‘Jesus,’ he groaned, resting his head once more onto the table, ‘how did you ever get this job?’
It was the CAMPARI test. Banking class number one, day one, lesson one, that’s what they taught us – assess every loan under the CAMPARI mnemonic: Character, Ability, Means, Principal, Amount, Repayment and Interest. I hadn’t applied even one of those criteria to Tank; I hadn’t even started that process. Instead I’d invented the new mnemonic SLAAB: Seemed Like An Alright Bloke. What a banker I’d turned out to be.
‘So Tank will be watching the TV tonight,’ I went on. ‘And the room will be packed?’
‘Yes,’ AJ responded mournfully, seemingly losing his belief in me by the minute.
‘OK. So at half-time, I . . .’
‘End of the second quarter.’
‘What?’
‘We call it the end of the second quarter.’
‘Whatever. At the end of the second quarter, when everyone leaves to get coffee and stuff, I’ll grab the remote control and when the game restarts and everyone including Tank settles down to watch it, I’ll switch the game off and say it’s not going back on until Tank returns my stamps!’
I wanted to say ‘darrraahhh!!’ but resisted the temptation and just grinned instead.
‘Are . . . you . . . the . . . dumbest . . . stupidest . . . motherfucka . . . in the entire history of prison?’ AJ began slowly, shaking his head with genuine emotion. ‘Have . . . I . . . wasted . . . all my time on your sorry white Scottish ass? They will beat you up so bad that they won’t even bother taking your sad motherfuckin’ body back to little old Scotland to your mamma. You come between those dudes and the play-offs and you are a dead Scottish guy. Shit, they’ll kill every other dumb-assed Scottish guy who is dumb enough to stray into Big Spring prison for a hundred years in the future!’ He would have gone on I think, but I stopped him.
‘AJ,’ I said, as I grabbed him. ‘I was joking. I get the point. I’ll deal with Tank. I’ll deal with him tonight.’
‘You will,’ AJ concluded, ominously.
The NBA play-offs meant the TV room was packed for more than an hour beforehand, and
rowdier than usual as it was the fifth game in the play-offs, and vital in a way you had to be an American to understand. I wasn’t exactly going to be watching the match, anyway.
The last time I had faced an incident in the TV room – with the Aryan in my seat – I had survived by stumbling through things before I had time to really think them through or to fully contemplate the ramifications of my actions. This time it was different. This time I had had plenty of time to think it through and I had a good idea of the ramifications. My choices were stark. Ignore Tank, make no attempt to get my stamps back and lay myself open to what would almost certainly be a systematic programme of extortion – if I was lucky – and if unlucky . . . well, at that point I would move deep back into my ‘fucking catastrophic’ list of rape, sodomy and being someone’s sex toy for the next few years. The alternative was to publicly have it out with Tank, try and lay one shot on him, then hope that the subsequent beating he would be required to inflict on me for the sake of his own credibility wouldn’t end up causing me any permanent damage. I didn’t want to end up as one of those ‘Thriller’ extras who answered the chow-call each evening, hobbling down on my crutches to get some cockroach burritos before the great stampede consumed me.
Neither scenario seemed to assist my chances of staying out of trouble – the one definitive and useful piece of advice I’d been given by the authorities. ‘Do your own time’ was the saying. Stay out of trouble = transfer home. Trouble = no transfer home. There was a third option, going to see Tank and requesting a relatively ‘tame’ beating, but it all came back to the same thing. So much here was about how you fronted it, and I risked making things much worse by trying to take Tank into my confidence. I needed to face him. I needed to front up. I’d made such a hoo-ha about being in the Scottish gang of one; now I had to live up to that billing, organise myself a respectable beating and hope that the cops would take a more enlightened view if I was the victim rather than the perpetrator.
Tank was in the room and had nodded over to me when he came in. AJ was there too, looking nervous. My heart was racing and the waiting was agony. It was too noisy during the game to hear much of what anyone was saying, muffled as it was by our earphones from the radios we needed to hear the sound. The game was tight and the Lakers were losing, which seemed, to my dismay, to make Tank more agitated. Eventually, the second quarter ended and people started taking their headphones off and either standing to stretch or heading out for coffee or food. Tank got up and made a move towards the door. It was now or never.
‘Eh, Tank!’ I shouted loudly, still seated, deliberately looking not at him but forward to the TV. The murmur died down almost instantly.
‘Tank!’ I shouted again, on autopilot now and still not looking at him. He turned around and looked at me, seemingly surprised. Before he could speak, I faced him and as forcibly as possible, with as strong a Scottish accent as I could muster, I said, ‘Where’s my fucking stamps?’
Tank looked aghast, genuinely surprised, and everyone looked from him to me and back again.
‘I got you, Scotland, I got you covered,’ he replied, hesitantly. Before he could continue, I spoke brusquely to him once more.
‘Just get me my fucking stamps,’ I said, jabbing my finger at him with all the menace I could muster, as I looked square from him back to the TV and placed my earphones ceremoniously back into my ears. An age went by as my heart pounded.
From the corner of my eye, I could tell he hesitated for a second and I thought he was contemplating a lunge for me, no doubt to compress me into a Scotch egg, but thankfully the huge man hesitated just a second or two longer and then ambled out. I didn’t sigh with relief or give away any emotion, but I noticed my hand was trembling violently. It shocked me, until I thought about just how scared I actually was, and how little I was looking forward to my self-induced Tank beating.
I caught AJ’s eye and he nodded me the type of nod you give someone when they volunteer to be shot first and you realise you’re going to miss having him around.
I’d figured Tank wouldn’t do anything in the TV room, so in many ways this was the easy bit of my master-plan. He didn’t want it known that he didn’t pay anyone back, or else his credit – if he could still source any in here – would be in ruins. No, he was going to wait a day or two, maybe a week, before he broke my body into little pieces. Hopefully he’d do it somewhere quiet, and AJ said that as long as I still could walk and check myself into the infirmary, the cops would respect me if I said I fell. Not much of a plan, I knew, but that was all I had. At least I had sent out a public message, though, that I would defend myself. But the whole thing – the whole charade, the games, the rules in this place – felt overwhelming; so hard, so dangerous and so frightening. As I sat there, trying to stop myself shaking, I reminded myself again of the prize: home. Cara, Calum, Julie and her kids Issi and Jamie, my mum, my brothers, Celtic games, watching Scotland getting gubbed at rugby, my family, my life. All of that was worth taking a beating for – for that I would take ten beatings and more.
Half-time in American sport takes an age, so I decided to pop back to the Range to get a water refill. As soon as I emerged from the TV room towards the Range, Tank was in my slipstream.
‘Hey Scotland! Scotland!’ he called after me as I walked quickly toward the Range. Ignoring him while mass hysteria broke out in my mind, I got myself into the narrow corridor that snaked round toward my Range. Tank’s massive, paw-like hand gripped my right shoulder.
I thought about elbowing him straight off, like I’d practised with Sergei, but we hadn’t practised that with a ten-foot gorilla. I would only bounce off his chest. He was supposed to beat me up in a couple of days’ time, not today, dammit! I wasn’t ready! I had football tomorrow and I also wanted to have some quality time to say goodbye to my face before he rearranged it. I was breathing heavily as I turned around. So was Tank. In the close quarters of the corridor – we could both touch the walls either side of us – Tank seemed even more intimidating than before. The walls made me more afraid, as I thought about how easily he could smash my head against them, but I was trapped.
‘Scotland, what’s wid choo?’ he started.
‘I want . . . I need my stamps back!’
‘I said I had you covered, Scotland. I said I had you covered.’ Here we go, I thought, and steeled myself to try and belt him. He went on. ‘Why’d you have to disrespect me in front of all those people?’
Keen to get on with my losing fight, for some reason that question really annoyed me. It was as if he was suggesting this was all my fault. ‘You fucking disrespected me!’ I shouted at him. ‘You gave me all that shite about how you’re nothing in this Yard if you don’t have your word and you promised me, you fucking promised me, you would pay me back no matter what, and how everyone in this Yard “respects the Tank” and how I can count on you and your word is your bond and all that shite . . .’ I was past caring by this time and without realising it I was jabbing my finger into the Tank’s chest as he towered over me. ‘You fucking know I walk alone on this Yard and I am in a gang of one and if I don’t face up to you then I will be for shit round here and the ABs will have my arse . . . And I fucking liked you as well, ya twat and I thought you were a good guy, but now I’m going to have to fucking fight you . . .’
My accent and my anger probably made most of this indiscernible to the Tank but still I stuck up my fists and assumed the position Sergei had taught me, suddenly desperate to stick one on him.
‘ . . . and you’re going to kick the shit out of me but that’s still better than having those ABs own me, and this is all over two poxy books of stamps worth six dollars, and forty fucking measly fucking cents, ya fucking cunt . . .’ I tailed off, my fists still up, no breath left.
Tank looked shocked. Not scared. But shocked. He held up two, table-sized hands in a stop sign. ‘Wow, wow . . . hang on there, Scotland; slow down! Man, you talk fast,’ he said, still with his hands raised. We both breathed heavily and I joc
keyed for position a bit so I could stick one on the big prick.
‘A’ight, Scotland, a’ight. Fuck’s sake, dude. I’m feeling you. I’m not quite understandin’ you with that Scotch of yours, but I’m feelin’ you. I don’t want you beatin’ up on me or nothing,’ he added, as a smile began to spread across his face.
I was breathing very heavily and with my anger subsiding the corridor felt narrow and claustrophobic again. ‘I’ll get you your stamps back this week, Scotland. And I’ll give you two extra for loss of time,’ he went on, much more soberly. ‘But you make sure everyone in the Yard knows Tank pays up and covers some extra if he gotta.’
I looked at him for a moment or two, my fists still at the ready, before slowly nodding in agreement, still peering up at him. He playfully slapped my face a couple of times. ‘You was gonna take a shot at me, wasn’t you?’ he asked, genuinely intrigued at the thought of it. I simply looked up at him and nodded, not sure if I would have ever mustered a shot at him. ‘Well, I’ll be . . .’ he mused, seemingly rather pleased with the thought. ‘Good for you Scotland, good for you!’ He smiled. ‘You know I would have had to whip your ass though, right?’ he continued, more of a statement of fact than a question.
I felt so exhausted, so drained, I just nodded again.
‘You got some balls on you, Scotland!’ Tank concluded, appreciatively, and with one more playful slap he lumbered off. I shuffled in the opposite direction, back to my bunk, where I lay prone for hours, just staring at the ceiling, not knowing whether to laugh or cry.
Two days later my books of stamps were returned, with two extra stamps for good measure. I barely spoke to Tank when he delivered them to me; I just grunted ‘thanks’ and turned away from him to face the wall again. I had something more important to contemplate. In my hand I looked again for the hundredth time at a picture of my daughter. My now seven-year-old daughter. Her picture had arrived.
19
RAIN
