by Jack Tunney
“Thanks be to the saints ...” Crebbs’ relief was palpable.
There was a sudden violent movement in the water and the jaws of a huge alligator snapped around Crebbs’ waist. The Irishman didn’t even have time to scream before the gator rolled him under with a thrashing of its tail. One second Crebbs was there. The next second, there was nothing – just a swirling of water. Then an arm shot up from the swamp ten yards further out, only to disappear again immediately.
The dogs had moved back to sit at Trask’s feet. He turned toward me. He was fingering one of the leather pouches hanging from around his neck.
“Funny thing accidents,” he said. Then he began to laugh in a high pitched peal. He turned a complete circle waving his arms up and down encouraging everyone to laugh with him. They all did – guards and prisoners alike.
When he was facing me again he stopped his laughter as if he’d turned off his funny tap.
His black eyes bore into me.
“Welcome to the Sauvage.”
ROUND THIRTEEN
The Bayou Sauvage Penitentiary was not a model of architectural creativity. It was a functional structure of weathered and crumbling gray brick and cement topped with barbed wire, a sentry tower in each corner.
I figured we were close to two miles into the swamp. The lone road led directly to two huge wooden doors, which swung inward to admit first Trask and his dogs in his Jeep, and then the truck in which I was still shackled. Behind us came the truck carrying the chain gang we’d passed on the road.
Inside the walls things didn’t get any prettier. The blood colored earth reclaimed from the swamp supported two long cement block buildings, which ran down either side. One of the buildings was two stories and clearly the cellblock for the two-hundred prisoners forgotten in the Sauvage – murderers, rapists, and violent bank robbers to a man.
The building opposite had to be the guard’s quarters and the administration offices. I could also see what must be the prison laundry and cookhouse.
What was surprising was the back wall of the prison had a large open break in the middle, in which a dock of sorts had been built. There were three airboats tied up alongside two other flatboats. There was a silo on either side of the break, each with its own armed guard at the top.
To one side of the dock I could see the Sauvage’s version of a prison work program – a huge distillery for making the corn whiskey known as white lightning. Banister had said Trask used the prisoners to run the distillery, keeping a daily line of trucks, flat-bottomed skiffs, and airboats filled with the illegal hooch for moving across the swamp, or away down the one road leading in and out of the prison.
However, freshly arrived as I was, there was a more noticeable structure riveting my attention. In the center of the open courtyard was a huge cage formed with three inch diameter iron bars sunk into the ground and extending ten foot high. Iron bars were also latticed across the top. More bars had been used to make doors into the cage on opposite sides. The scuffed, hard packed dirt of the interior floor was close to twenty feet square.
Father Tim had once taken a group of St. Vincent’s boys to see the Ringling Brothers’ three ring circus when it passed through Chicago. One of the circus’ rings had been filled with the lion tamer’s cage. The ugly, ominous, structure in the middle of the Sauvage’s courtyard reminded me of a nightmare version – especially because of the rows of closely bunched benches surrounding it, allowing only for a narrow pathway ending at the cage doors on either side.
My chest began to throb when I saw the iron bar cage – the heat inside me rising. I had no doubt, before long, I’d be inside the bars fighting for my life.
I should have felt the fear it was built to instill.
But I didn’t.
Instead, I felt a raging lion inside me, furious to get out and destroy whatever man with a puny whip and chair got in the cage with me.
Deke unceremoniously unlocked my foot shackles from the truck. I was left with four foot of chain between my feet connected to the iron cuffs around my ankles. Walking was more of a careful shuffle.
Without talking, Deke led me to the long building on the left side of the prison. Inside, rows of cells ran down either side of a long wide walkway. A second row of cells ran along the tops of the ones on the ground floor. The walkway running in front of the second story of cells extended over the cells below, making them cooler, but darker.
As Deke shuffled me along the walkway, men in the cells moved to see the new addition to the population. It was eerily quiet. I’d expected taunting, but the silence was oppressive. However, it was not nearly as oppressive as the rank animal smell.
I could see most of the cells held two bunks, a small toilet, a shelf on either side, and a small one bar window in the back wall, set high above the toilet. Even with the bar removed, an average man couldn’t fit through the window hole.
At the end of the walkway there were two cells, one on either side, approximately three times the size of the other cells. The fronts were covered by poorly fitted sheets of metal, which effectively hid the interior. Deke unlocked one of the doors and swung it open. Heat poured out with a physical force.
“Sweat box,” Deke said. Unlocking and removing my wrist and leg manacles, he shoved me inside, slamming the door closed behind me.
I stumbled in the dark, falling to my knees. Then I heard a chuckle and knew I wasn’t alone.
A deep voice rumbled. “Mickey Cohen says, hello ...”
ROUND FOURTEEN
I rolled myself to my feet and moved until I could feel a wall behind me.
My head was spinning ...
Mickey Cohen ... Mickey Cohen ...
It couldn’t be ...
Slivers of light between the metal sheets placed over the cell bars were the only illumination. My eyes were adjusting, but not fast enough.
A heavy blow struck me in the chest.
Heat surged within me and I heard whoever hit me howl in pain. It had been a strong sucker punch, but I’d barely felt it. I knew I’d been hit, but the effect, which should have been debilitating, was negligible.
Legba?
I heard another set of feet off to my left shuffling toward me. Instinctively, I pulled my elbows in and put my forearms up to cover my face. The punch when it came grazed across my defense as I slid toward my attacker.
There is a world of difference between boxing and street fighting. However, I been in both situations enough time to know the best way to survive is to beat the flinch.
One of our strongest human instincts is to flinch – the body’s autonomic reaction to draw back or shrink from what is dangerous, to wince when pain is forced upon us. It is an instinct telling us to run, a split-second when the body and brain freeze. Flinching guards you from the unexpected. It is one of the few instincts we are born with and never lose. It’s why you throw your hands out when you fall. The flinch is what makes you pull back from danger.
But flinching in a fight can get you hurt or killed.
Fighters know all about the flinch. Successful fighters understand how to overcome it and use it to their advantage.
Flinch instinct was to curl up in a protective ball, to let the mention of Mickey Cohen’s name stun me into inaction, to let the odds against me dictate the beating I was clearly supposed to suffer. But the flinch and I are well known to each other, and I’ve learned how to redirect the flinch instinct into positive action – to use the flinch to respond in a situation instead of allowing the flinch to make me react to a situation.
Even before my second opponent could strike at me, I was moving toward him – effectively cutting down the power of his punch.
At its best, boxing is a gentleman’s sport. That doesn’t mean boxers are gentlemen, but at its purest, boxing follows a code of conduct. It is raised above simple brawling through the poetry of the human form, the elemental, stripped down, elegance of one man pitted against another. While nobody ever plays boxing, it is still a sport.
&nb
sp; Street fighting is survival. It is dirty, nasty, and one of the lowest forms of human endeavor – but I was good at it. As an MP, I hadn’t survived the worst ports of call the Navy had to offer without being very, very good at street fighting. The danger was, I too often reveled in it.
I slammed my forearms down onto the body I knew was in front of me, feeling a satisfying crunch of collar bone and a shriek of pain. I grabbed fabric and swung the man in my grasp a hundred and eighty degrees, putting him between me and the first attacker. I slid my hands from the man’s chest to his face, working by feel in the dark, grabbing his skull and gouging my fingers into his eye sockets – all the while pushing him backward in to the first man.
Through the cacophony of confusion, I kept pushing until the off balance bodies in front of me hit the back wall. Then I dropped my shoulder, driving it in to the first man’s rib cage, hearing a bone shattering crunch and then a guttural scream. Finally, I brought my knee up with a blast of power into his unprotected groin trying to drive his wedding tackle up into his throat.
The screaming stopped abruptly, the body in front of me going limp. I stepped back letting the body drop, then immediately crouched and drove my shoulder forward again into the other man who had been pinned against the wall.
He grunted as all the air was driven out of him. I pushed away, keeping my balance, letting him stumble forward, unable not to trip over the body on the cell floor in front of him. As he fell, I wrapped my left hand around my right fist and smashed downward with both arms. His head was where I’d blindly judged it to be, the power of my blow hitting the back of his neck and sending his head straight down to bounce off the floor.
I was seething with adrenaline. Sweat poured off me in sheets. I felt more animal than man. I threw myself at the cell door. Bars on the inside, a sheet of metal on the outside.
I’d expected resistance, but it wasn’t locked ...
I stumbled out into the walkway as the door swung open on well-oiled hinges. The bright lights seemed intensified and I was again as blind as when I was thrown into the darkness of the sweat box cell.
Something flat and hard crashed down on my back, pain shooting through me. I was hit again from the other side. This time, I saw the flat of an ax handle crashing down and had a split second to fight the flinch – not to tighten up in anticipation of being hit.
Fighters, boxers, get hit all the time. You get used to it. You know you have to go with the hit, ride it to rob it of as much power as possible. Our human instinct is to tighten up, but the result is deeper and more permanent damage. By not flinching – not tightening up and anticipating the next blow – instead of crushing vertebrae, the second blow hit just below my neck on the muscles of my shoulder. It hurt like hell, but I survived the blow.
The other key in a fight is making your opponent think you are more damaged than you actually are. You let your opponent judge you by their own standard, by how they think they would react if they had received the same punishment. You lull them until you are in a position to strike.
I lay flat and unmoving on the rough concrete floor of the cell block’s walkway. My eyes were closed, but all my other senses were alert. The warmth I had been carrying in my chest was spreading through my body. It felt as if it were glowing across my back and shoulders dulling the pain where the ax handle blows had fallen.
I didn’t know if I believed in voodoo, but I did believe in whatever magic Mademoiselle Charlotte had thrust into me. I couldn’t not believe. I could feel it flowing through me like the blood of lions.
“I think I kilt him,” a voice said on my left. I recognized it as Deke’s. He didn’t sound remorseful.
From the angle of the first blow, I knew there must be a second man standing to my right. I kept my eyes closed listening, not moving, letting Legba – or whatever it was inside me – work his spell of strength and healing. Mademoiselle Charlotte had proclaimed, He will make you strong. Stronger than you are. Stronger than Kalfu. Now was not the time to be a disbeliever.
Then a pair of boots shuffled and I knew there was also somebody standing in front of me. “You better hope you didn’t kilt him.” It was Lucas Trask. “If you did, you’ll be finding yourself in a grave next to him.”
One of Trask’s boots kicked my right shoulder none to gently.
I consciously let out a suppressed groan.
“Not kilt then,” Trask said.
I heard him walk around me to the sweat box cell door. I imagined him looking inside.
“This boy be some kinda tough bastard,” he said. “Big Willy and Garth are cottonmouth mean and ape strong and they ain’t moving. Probably don’t even know what hit ‘em.”
“But I got ‘im, boss. I got ‘im.” Deke was getting excited.
Lucas Trask chuckled. “If you say so, cousin. Now, pick him up and toss him in eighty-one.
Deke and the other guard, who I could see through slit eyelids was Deke’s partner from the prison truck – Calvin Trask – dragged my dead weight down the walkway. I sagged heavily against Calvin while Deke unlocked the door to cell eight-one.
As soon as the cell door swung open, I peeled myself away from Calvin and stood next to him grinning.
“Thanks for the lift,” I said.
Both men were so surprised by my seemingly impossible recovery, they didn’t move.
I looked over at Deke.
“I’ll just have to owe you the payback,” I said, and then walked confidently into the cell, immediately stretching out on the too short sleeping platform mounted on one wall.
There was a silence of confusion, then the cell door clanged closed. I listened as Deke, Calvin, and Lucas Trask seemed to argue softly before walking away. There was a distant thunk of a heavy door as they exited the cell block.
There was a moment of silence, then a single hand clap rang out like a gunshot. Then another, and another – slow and measured. The slow clapping made its way down the cell block, past my cell, up and along the top tier of cells.
Three claps per prisoner, then the next prisoner with three more claps, and on, and on ...
The sound made me realized there were no secrets in a prison. The goons in the sweat room had been a welcoming committee. Even if they didn’t know I was a cop, they knew I wasn’t simply another hard time con – and if they knew, all the cons knew.
However, as I listed as to the hand claps rolling through the cell block, I understood these men had been waiting for me. Whatever I was outside of these walls didn’t matter. Inside these walls, I was something else ... Somehow, I was hope.
The clapping returned to its point of origin and stopped. It wasn't just applause – it was the sound of rebellion.
Inside me, Legba was content ...
ROUND FIFTEEN
I am not by nature a patient person. I have also suffered from minor claustrophobia since I was a child. Yet, as I lay in cell eighty-one on the wooden shelf substituting for a cot, I felt a perfect calm – a feeling of positive inevitability.
Not even thinking about how the goons had invoked the name of Mickey Cohen made a dent in my tranquility. It was all meant to be. Warmth filled my veins and flowed through my body, soothing all aches and bruises from the battering I had taken. The raging beast within me, which had escaped in the sweat box, was quiet, yet alert. I could feel him there, a part of me, yet not all of me – just the savage parts, all seared together ... waiting.
I could see things clearly in my mind. All my worrying about being recognized due to my professional fighting career had been groundless. I had been the target right from the start. A trap had been laid with Marcus de Trod as convenient bait. Yet, there was also much more going on here than it had first appeared when the photos of Marcus de Trod had turned up in Chief Parker’s mail.
Tombstone and I had always known the New Orleans Assistant Superintendent Guy Banister’s story barely held together. We had not questioned it because we were committed to following through with whatever game was in play. Now, how
ever, it was more than clear that for all his bluster and FBI background, Banister was as corrupt as the mobsters and dirty cops he was supposed to be prosecuting.
By aligning himself with Lucas Trask and his swamp family, Banister had picked a side in a power battle to control Louisiana organized crime. Voodoo induced or not, mob boss Carlos Marcello was in bad health and losing his grip, and Lucas Trask was primed to take over. Banister was jumping ship to the winning side.
I remembered in his dealing with Crebbs, Trask had declared his ownership of the prostitute Crebbs was convicted of murdering. Trask obviously believed he was in a position to take over Marcello’s crime territory. If Mickey Cohen had put Trask up to luring me in, he too must believe Trask was going to oust Marcello from power.
It wouldn’t have been hard to bait the trap. For some of us who claimed St. Vincent’s as home, the lessons taught by Father Tim – in the ring and out – had stuck. Father Tim and St. Vincent’s had given us the chance to make something of ourselves, a fighting chance in life. However, there were also those who lost the fight.
Orphans, by their very nature, grow up under dysfunctional circumstances. For every St. Vincent’s success story, there were other stories of lives filled with tragedy, crime, brutality, and simple mistakes. Everywhere men are incarcerated, you’ll find some who had passed through the doors of institutions like St. Vincent’s.
The tentacles of organized crime reached deep into every part of the nation. Mickey Cohen was a powerhouse on the west coast, but he paid allegiance to the east coast families and, through them, was connected to mob activities in the Midwest and the south. Using corruption and bribery, it wouldn’t have been difficult to locate Marcus de Trod – or someone else from St. Vincent’s – and have him transferred to the Sauvage. The tattooing in his armpits could just have been done more easily post mortem.
It was no stretch to see the connection between Cohen and Trask. Prohibition was a thing of the past, but there were still huge profits to be made from large quantities of illegal alcohol – white lightning – which required neither taxes, import fees, or declared income. An illegal distillery on the scale of what Trask had set up would be a gold mine. But like any other business, dependable distribution points were mandatory.
