Trusting Evil

by Mary Leo

  We walk with the Captain following a yellow line down the middle of the floor. He tells us that there are three sets of iron gates in this tunnel we need to go through before we reach our destination. I take a deep breath. We’re inside a long corridor: clean gray walls, frosted windows on either side, brown cement floor that’s been waxed and polished to a high gloss. All the while we walk, the voices coming from somewhere inside the prison get louder and louder. The yellow line makes me think of Dorothy in some psycho trip to Oz. I can’t help humming the tune in my head. Somehow, the song helps balance me. Calm me. Perhaps if I click my red earrings together I can fly away home. The thought makes me smile. Makes me think of my apartment. My bed. Wish I were in it right now.

  I concentrate on the yellow line and the lyrics.

  Mike walks beside me, touching my hand and arm with his fingers, assuring me, consoling me, like a parent guiding his kid down a dark alley. I move toward his touch, desperate for any shred of strength I can find.

  Mike and a few key people from the movie’s production office organized everything with the warden and his assistant last week, while I was busy down on Maxwell Street convincing a couple of hookers and a good-looking drug dealer/pimp named Flukey Brown (who has a passion for pink) that they ought to be in movies. We needed to shoot a few street scenes. I like to cast the ‘real thing’ whenever possible. It makes for a better background; besides, the directors seem to like it.

  I wish I had stayed working on Maxwell Street. I felt secure with Flukey and his hookers. At least I knew who I was dealing with. This place is something altogether different.

  We enter our last set of gates, waiting for the first to slide open, walking through, then waiting again for it to slide shut behind us. As soon as the first gate locks down with a nerve-shattering clunk, the second gate starts its slide to let us through. “You’re now behind the wall,” Captain Bob says.

  Now there’s a thought. Securely locked inside with murderers and rapists—behind the wall.

  I go for a cigarette. Mike stops me, shaking his head a little, squeezing his face up in a don’t-do-it-now look, touching my hand. I let the cigarette fall out of my hand and back into my purse.

  A middle-aged, round, black man in tight green polyester walks up to us. The Wizard, no doubt. Next to him is a smiling, effervescent-looking woman in her mid-forties maybe, with permed brown hair and sensible shoes. She’s wearing a dark blue ultra conservative business suit but I know she’s pink satin underneath, just like Glinda, the good witch.

  “That’s the warden, Curtis Evans,” Mike whispers. “And Vivian, the entertainment director.”

  “Who, in their right mind—?” I start to say but never get to finish my question. Vivian answers my thought.

  “We’re so happy to have you here. The men are really looking forward to making this movie. It means a lot to them. Especially the men with families. They don’t get to see them much, you know…I mean the families don’t get to see the men. This way, some of the men with good behavior can both learn a new skill, such as movie making, and their families will get a good look at them. It’s great for morale. You know?”

  I shake her hand but I don’t know what to say. She’s just too damn positive. Perfect casting.

  Mike sticks out his hand as he walks towards the warden, a short, stern-looking man with bifocals he keeps down on his nose and peers at us over the top. Personally, I get the impression that he’s not too happy with our enthusiasm for entertainment. To him, life must be serious business, not to be taken for granted in a place like this.

  “Hi, we met last week. I’m Mike Holtzer and this is Carly Rockett,” Mike says turning his fervor off for a moment and looking as intense as the warden. I follow along, shaking the warden’s hand, only I don’t have to change mood gears; I’m already riding in overdrive.

  “Nice to meet you. I hope you’re feeling better today, Ms. Rockett. My wife has some pretty bad days, herself,” the warden says while shaking my hand.

  I want to kill Mike but all I can do is smile. “Yes, I’m much better today, thank you.”

  “It’s just as well. We were pretty busy around here yesterday. Richard Speck’s parole hearing. The reporters like to blow hype and get everybody worked up, especially the families. My heart goes out to those people, but Richard’s not going anywhere. Doesn’t even show up for his own parole hearings anymore. Wouldn’t ask for a parole, but some media up-and-coming got it into her head to use Speck to better her career and once again the families end up the victims. Speck’s our resident celebrity and the reporters won’t let him go, but that was yesterday’s news. We’re back to normal today.”

  It felt strange, almost familiar, to hear Speck referred to by his first name and then to be called a celebrity, as if he and Arnold Schwarzenegger shared the same status.

  “Anybody mind if I smoke?” I ask while I light up.

  “No, that’s fine,” the warden says. “There are only a few non-smoking areas and we keep it posted.”

  “Great, that’s great cause I intend to do a lot of smoking.”

  “She’s trying to quit,” Mike says with understanding sympathy in his voice. The guy never gives up.

  Vivian leans over and whispers, “My mother used to lie in bed with a hot water bottle on her stomach for five days, poor dear, but I found that if you kneel down and keep your bottom in the air and your forehead on the floor for five minutes all your cramps just disappear. Whoosh, they’re gone. I’ll show you later in my office.” She gives me a reassuring shoulder squeeze as if she’s now going to take over the role of big sister.

  I want to scream.

  Of all the excuses Mike could have used yesterday, why did he have to pick that one? What’s wrong with the flu? Couldn’t I just have had the goddamn flu? Why do men like to use the old “she’s-on-the-rag” excuse? As if it’s the end-all of female excuses. What shit!

  “Everything’s all set up for you in the theater. It’s just down the tunnel and out through the courtyard to another building,” the warden says as we continue on down the yellow brick road toward an open doorway.

  Once outside in the courtyard, we walk in a tight group along a cement path. The grounds look like an extremely large backyard, with a mowed lawn and a few trees for afternoon shade. Only there are no kids playing on a swing-set or in a sandbox, laughing. Instead, the inmates scream obscenities at us out the windows of the surrounding buildings. Most of the voices come from a massive tan building, three or four stories high with plenty of windows. Vivian seems oblivious to the ranting. I try not to focus, but “What size is your cunt, bitch?” comes across loud and clear along with “White boy, let me have that pretty ass.”

  Mike rakes his hair and adjusts his gym bag on his shoulder, pulling it in to align with his hip. One of his many nervous gestures. The gym bag contains a Polaroid, a few packs of instant film and some blue stat sheets to sign up the inmates for the movie (blue sheets for boys and pink for girls—Mike’s idea of an efficient filing system). A few other crew members should be here already but so far we haven’t run into anybody.

  We keep walking. Can’t think about where I am or what would happen if any of these bad boys got loose. Have to concentrate on something good, but the voices keep pumping up reality. Their screams piercing the air, making me feel like I’m all tangled up in barbed wire. After a while, I can’t distinguish any individual words. They all blend together in some venomous din. As if the screams have a personality of their own, an evil personality that resonates from the air. A hot September air that wraps itself around you and pushes at your soul making you hate being human, hate being trapped, so you scream out your rage using your most vile phrases attempting to shock whoever might be listening to your world. Your hell.

  Chapter Five

  The room we finally end up in is just off the stage in the theater—an honest-to-god building dedicated to entertainment. What a concept. It’s a vast expanse of high ceilings, seating for about one hund
red (orange-cushioned chairs, bolted to the concrete) but room for several hundred more, a full-size stage (with matching orange drapes) and windows all around, the bars on the outside—not to distract from the ambiance. There’s a bank of offices over the front doorway with windows that look down on the main floor. Wonder what goes on in there?

  A group of about seventy-five inmates waits in the seats along with a couple guards. Everyone laughing. Talking. Staring up at the stage. Anticipation on their faces, as if some event were about to begin. Maybe a few of the inmates will get up and do a little soft-shoe…maybe not. A Johnny Cash concert, perhaps: lights get dim, a figure walks out on stage, a bright spotlight catches the man in black as he begins a rousing chorus of Folsom Prison Blues. Why not? With somebody like Vivian around, he probably already made an appearance.

  I can hear Mike work the room. “First, I want to say thanks for showing up here today. This is great—great. I suppose Vivian told you a little about what we’re doing.”

  A voice yells out, “We wanna see Schwarzenegger. When’s he gonna be here?”

  “In a few days. We have to get everything ready first.”

  Another voice, “We get to see him up close?”

  “Might, if you’re in his scene.”

  “We all gonna be in his scene?”

  “Can’t promise that, but he’s cool. Never know what might happen. Likes to meet everybody. Pretty friendly.”

  Another voice, “We gonna get paid?”

  “Yeah. You’ll get thirty-five dollars a day, plus a carton of cigarettes. We’ll probably need all you guys, but not every day. If you’re used in a scene and they re-shoot, we’ll call you back to the set. If we only work you for a couple hours, you’ll still get the thirty-five plus cigarettes. Pretty good deal. Right?” The inmates call out their agreement. Mike continues. “Okay. So what we need you to do is go into—”

  His voice fades as the rumble of the men getting ready to come into our room drown him out. Vivian and I are seated at a metal table inside a small, beige room. If it wasn’t for the window, I’d be hyper-ventilating. Tight. Too tight.

  Mike and four inmates enter with Captain Bob. The Captain tells them to line up against the far wall just on the other side of our table. One of them is a white man. I’m afraid to look. What if he’s Speck? Can’t handle this. Not now. Not in here. I’m thinking I should have never agreed. I can’t breathe.

  “Just relax,” Vivian whispers. “Everything’s going to be fine.”

  I throw her a look, like ‘what are you talking about?’

  Am I that obvious?

  Have to screw up the courage. Have to look.

  I glance up.

  One of them has dark blond hair. Speck has dark blond hair. I look away and try to light up a cigarette. Vivian stops me with that Nancy Reagan swinging finger and points to a no smoking sign. I put the cigarette down and take a better look.

  Speck isn’t among them.

  “You guys have any questions?” I ask, letting the air out of my lungs.

  One of the inmates speaks up. The one I thought might be Speck. He’s a short white man, about twenty-five, wearing round glasses and a crew cut. Doesn’t look anything like Speck. I wonder if I’d recognize him if I did see him? It’s been more than twenty years.

  “It true we get to meet Schwarzenegger?”

  “Well, it all depends on the time factor and the work. The talent pretty much keeps to themselves, but Arnold’s different. He’s real outgoing. So who knows? Maybe.”

  The four men seem pleased with my answer. I start asking some questions while Mike takes the head shots with our Polaroid. I don’t get their names, just their numbers—that’s the only way we can identify them—and they don’t get our full names, just in case they want to identify us.

  Crew Cut and the black kid standing next to him bring their hands up around their heads, like they’re about to fix their hair, but then don’t.

  “Arms down. Stand straight,” Captain Bob orders. The black kid doesn’t listen and Mike snaps the picture. “You’ll have to take it again,” the Captain demands while holding out his hand, waiting for Mike to rip off the picture and hand it to him. He does. The room gets quiet. The guard tears it into four pieces, and tosses them on the table.

  The kid looks down at the floor, puts his hands at his sides and brings his head back up for another picture. The only sound is the click from the camera.

  I break the silence. “We need some men to be skinheads. Any of you in the mood for a close shave? The pay goes up twenty bucks each day, plus you get to stand around with the talent.”

  Three of them nod and mutter, “Sure.”

  The black kid, who is maybe nineteen, answers, “I got me a problem with that. My head ain’t so nice no more. Took a bullet. That gonna mean I can’t be in no movie?”

  “Would you shave your head?”

  He shakes his head no and runs his fingers over the obvious groove in his skull. “No ma’am. I can’t.”

  I look into his eyes and for an instant I see a vulnerable young man. Wonder what the hell got him locked up in this place. Whatever that was, had to be bad.

  “Let’s go,” Captain Bob says. The men start to move away from the wall toward the other door. The two guards exchange inmates like game pieces and so the process begins. I do my job, Mike does his and the guards do theirs. The day passes without incident.

  • • •

  The last of the inmates walks through around four o’clock. I’m exhausted. Vivian’s just getting started.

  “I wasn’t here for the last movie,” she says, “and I understand that it was quite the nightmare. I don’t see how anything could go wrong this time. I met Mr. Hill, the director, and he seems like a man in control. I don’t think he’d ever let any of his people have sex with the inmates like the last director did.”

  “The directors can’t control what the talent does off camera.”

  “I guess not, but Mr. Hill seems like such a strong leader. Are most Hollywood directors like him?”

  “I don’t really know. Haven’t given it much thought,” I tell her while I stack all my blue papers so that Mike can collect them. She’s starting to annoy me.

  “Oh, this is all so wonderful for morale. Couldn’t you see the excitement in their eyes?”

  I stop to look at her.

  “Is that what that was?”

  “Do you think you met any future stars among these men?”

  “You’re kidding, right?”

  Vivian gets a concerned look on her face.

  “Yes,” Mike says, interrupting my next thought. “All of them have potential. You can never tell about a person. And what about you, Vivian. You ever think about being in the movies? You could be the next Meryl Streep.”

  Vivian blushes and plays right into Mike’s hands.

  “Me? Oh, no. I could never be a movie star. I’d have to live in L.A. and you know what they say about L.A. I’d be too scared.”

  Again I have to stop to look at her. Who is this woman? Doesn’t she hear herself? She sounds nutty, like some kind of spinhead. I open my mouth to spit out the perfect wisecrack, like “oh, and you feel safe here at Stateville?” but Warden Evans walks in. A man of reality. I let my wisecrack die.

  “All set then?” he asks.

  Mike answers, “Yeah, all set.”

  “Good. I’ll escort you out.”

  Mike shoves the stat sheets, with the pictures attached, into his black bag and we all turn to go out the way we came in. Somehow we end up in single file, Mike right in front of me and Vivian in front of him. It’s as if we’re back in grade school. Or maybe it’s the effect of the guards—Warden Evans leads and Captain Bob brings up the rear.

  “Single file now. No slouching,” I whisper into Mike’s ear.

  He turns toward me a little and smiles.

  When we hit the open courtyard, I can feel my body letting go of some of the day’s tension. The sky is an intense blue and there�
�s a slight cooling breeze making a low rumbling sound as it comes off the fences and surrounding towers. The taunting from the inmates has diminished substantially, and we walk in silence. I try to remain calm. Not allowing myself to think about where I am. Where Speck might be. Glad that I got through the day.

  Still in single file, we walk down a cement path towards the tunnel we came through this morning. A group of people, probably from the movie, three men and a tall blonde woman, walk across the courtyard on the other side with a guard. They’re talking and laughing about something. The blonde is carrying a personal video camera. Why would anybody want to take home movies of this place? They spot us and nod our way, as if they know us.

  Mike and I nod and smile in return. The thing about working a movie on location is that you meet a lot of people, both from the crew and from the world around you. Sometimes, it’s hard to keep up with all the new faces.

  “You know anybody?” Mike asks as he gawks at the blonde.

  “No, I’ve never seen her before.”

  “I said, ‘do you know anybody?’ Not ‘do you know the blonde?’”

  “Like you’re looking at anybody else.”

  “I might be,” Mike says wearing a sly looking grin.

  “Yeah, right.”

  “That’s the trouble with you, Carly. You assume all men think about is sex. There are other things we’re concerned with, you know.”

  “Oh? Like what?”

  “I can’t answer that right now. The blonde just winked at me.”

  “It won’t work, you know.”

  “What?”

  “You trying to make me jealous like this. Look, I have my own winking guy,” I tell him as one of the men, dressed in white, pushing some kind of cart breaks off from the group and heads toward us. He winks again and then rubs his eyes.

  “That’s not a wink. He just has something in his eye. The blonde actually winked. You’re the one who’s jealous. Not me.”

  “You wish.”

  “A little jealousy is good for the soul.”