Hard Time

by Sara Paretsky

  CO Cornish grabbed my arm and told me I needed to get back to my cell to cool down. And what was my name? Warshawski? “You’re new, right, oh, in the jail wing. Then you shouldn’t be down here for prisoners’ recreation. Jail–wing recreation is in the mornings.” I opened my mouth to say I’d been ordered down here at three, but shut it again. Don’t trouble trouble, my mother always warned me, and trouble won’t trouble you.

  A woman CO, one of only two or three I’d seen since arriving, was appointed to escort me back to the jail wing. “Lucky for you Miss Ruby spoke up when she did. Otherwise you’d have found your bail request doubled for sure.”

  “Miss Ruby? Who is she?”

  The CO snorted. “Miss Ruby thinks she’s Queen of Coolis because she’s been in prison a long time, at Dwight eight years before they opened this place. She cut her husband into little pieces and put him in different garbage cans around Chicago, claimed it was self–defense if you can believe that, but the judge didn’t buy it and gave her thirty years. Now she’s a churchgoer, and the lieutenants and some of the CO’s treat her like she’s holy. And she has a lot of influence on the young girls, so it doesn’t pay to go up against her.”

  We had reached my wing. The CO signaled to the guard behind the control panel to let me through. She stood on one side of the airlock and watched it close around me. When the door on the other side opened to decant me onto my floor, she took off again.

  The wing had a shower room in between the cell block and the guard station. I knew the guards had cameras trained on the showers, and they also could come in on unannounced inspection, but I needed to rinse off my sweat and blood: Angie had given me some pretty serious bumps. When you’re in the middle of a fight—or game, for that matter—you don’t notice the cuts and blows. It’s only later, when the adrenaline is wearing off, that you start to ache.

  I didn’t have any soap. I had learned this morning that even the most basic toilet items like toothbrushes and shampoo had to be purchased from the commissary and that I had to have money deposited in a trust account at the prison before I could buy anything. It was a nice little racket, like a company store for sharecroppers. You’re there, you’re a captive market, and they can charge you whatever they damned well want. Even if my five remaining dollars would have covered the cost of basic toiletries, I was told I couldn’t open my trust account until after the holiday weekend.

  I dried myself with the threadbare square of gray toweling I’d been issued when I arrived yesterday and put my pants back on. They smelled pretty unpleasant, but at least they fit.

  At five we were all ordered into our cells for a head count and then escorted down to the dining hall. I hadn’t realized yesterday that you had some control over what went on your tray and that salads were available on request. Tonight I asked for a salad and extra bread and rolled lettuce up into a sandwich, which I ate while walking to the table. I tried to eat some of the overcooked meat and beans on my tray but still couldn’t deal with the roaches. I suppose if I had to stay here any length of time I’d learn to overlook them, but I was still too finicky in my ways.

  Within five minutes of my sitting down I’d been identified as the woman who “took out Angie.” A woman across from me told me I’d better look out, Angie was one of the West Side Iscariots and they were panting for revenge. Another one said she heard from her girlfriend that I used karate to wipe out Angie and could I teach her how to do it. One woman, with a dozen braids done up in colored ribbons, said Miss Ruby told a lie to save my hide, but three others spoke up hotly.

  “Miss Ruby never told no lie. She spoke the truth, she say Cream here did not pull a knife, and she say Cream and Angie just playing basketball, not fighting, which is the gospel truth, right, Cream?”

  “It was the most physical basketball game I ever played,” I said, which somehow satisfied her.

  The woman with braids said, “No, it’s true—Angie, she dissed Miss Ruby, stole her shampoo out of the shower, so Miss Ruby, she was lying in wait to teach Angie a lesson, that’s why she stood up for the new girl. Even though she’s white.”

  That started a hot argument, which raged as if I weren’t there at all: was I white or Spanish or black? The one who’d nicknamed me Cream insisted I was black. With my olive skin and dark curly hair I could have been anything; since there were very few white faces at the tables, they assumed I was part of the majority culture, although most of them decided I must be Spanish.

  “Italian,” I finally explained. There was more argument, over whether Italy was part of Spain. I let it flow past me—I wasn’t there to conduct geography lessons. In fact, I had a feeling that the less I flaunted my education, the better off I might be.

  They also wanted to know how old I was, and when I told them, the one with the ribbons in her braids exclaimed I couldn’t be, her mother wasn’t that old and I looked younger than her mother. I realized with a jolt that the women around me were terribly young. Only a handful could have been my age, let alone as old as Miss Ruby. Many didn’t seem to be out of their teens, certainly not over twenty–five. They probably yearned desperately for their mothers, or some mother: no wonder they clung to Miss Ruby and argued jealously about who she favored and what she was doing.

  I couldn’t see Miss Ruby in the dining hall, but they put us through in three shifts of three hundred. Even if she’d been in my shift I might not have been able to spot her in the throng. When I asked after her, they told me she was probably eating in her room: women with enough money or status could buy special food from the commissary. They said it was so expensive most of them did it only for their birthdays, but there was almost always someone wanting to buy a meal for Miss Ruby.

  My cellmate ate on the shift after mine, so I had the room to myself for forty–five smoke–free minutes. When she came in, I saw my prowess against Angie had affected her: she accorded me a nervous respect, and when I asked her not to smoke after lights out, she didn’t wait for us to be locked in for the night but quickly stubbed her cigarette out on the floor.

  Her nervousness made me aware that I was big enough and strong enough to seem menacing. It took me back uncomfortably to the year after my mother died, when I went wild on the streets of South Chicago. I had always been big for my age and I had learned early—partly from my hockey–playing cousin Boom–Boom, partly from experience—how to defend myself in the rough neighborhood where we grew up. But the year I was sixteen I roamed the streets looking for fights. It seemed as though after Gabriella died, I couldn’t feel anything unless I was feeling physical pain. After a while even the biggest boys stayed away from me: I was too crazy, I fought with too much insanity. And then I was picked up, and Tony found out and somehow helped me get over it. But I’d felt that same surge of maniac rage on the court with Angie, and I didn’t want it taking me over: I might be able to terrorize my jailmates, but I didn’t like what it would do to me in the process.

  I leaned over the top bunk and asked my roommate her name and whether she had a trial date. Solina, and no trial date yet. With a patient interest I wasn’t really feeling, I pried her story out of her, got her to relax over the narrative of her babies, her mother, the father of the children, how she knew she shouldn’t be doing crack but it gets hold of you, it’s hard to let go of it, and all she wanted was a good life for her children.

  At nine the loudspeaker interrupted us. It was time for the day’s final count. We stood in our cells next to our beds while the CO’s looked in, asked our names, checked them on a board, and locked us in for the night. Once again the hiss of the magnetic lock made my stomach turn over. I climbed to the upper bunk as the lights went out and prayed that Freeman would get a message from Mr. Contreras, track me down, and be waiting for me first thing in the morning with a check for my bail.

  Fatigue finally pushed me into an uneasy sleep, in which I kept feeling roaches on my face and hands. Sometime in the night the slamming of a door jerked me awake. I heard a woman scream. My heart began to r
ace again: I was locked up and could do nothing, for myself or anyone around me in peril.

  I thought of Nicola Aguinaldo, lying in a bunk like mine on the prison side of Coolis. How much more helpless even than I she must have felt, with no lawyer to bail her out, no powerful friends, alone in a strange country, getting commands in a language she barely understood. At least in her last letter to her mother she had said that—I sat up in bed. Nicola had told Abuelita Mercedes not to worry, that Señora Ruby was taking care of her. Miss Ruby, the powerful protector of young inmates.

  I’d been a fool to howl over the injustice of being sent to Coolis. I was right where I needed to be: in the heart of Carnifice territory, where Nicola Aguinaldo had last been seen alive. I turned on my side on the narrow bunk and fell deeply asleep.

  36 Bail? Why Leave Such Cool Quarters?

  When Freeman Carter arrived Tuesday morning, he was appalled at my decision not to post bail. “I agree two–fifty is outrageously high: that’s because it’s Baladine and Carnifice. I couldn’t get the judge to lower it. But Vic, there is every reason to post it and no reason to stay in here. Frankly, you smell awful and you look worse. That makes a hell of a bad impression on a jury.”

  “I won’t smell so bad when you’ve deposited money into an account for me here and I can buy soap and shampoo,” I said. “And I’m not going to stay in here until my trial—only until I find out what I want to know.”

  That made him explode. “You pay two hundred dollars an hour for my advice, which you proceed to flout, but I’m going to give it to you anyway. Get out of here. If you stay in here on some cockamamie scheme to rout out corruption in Coolis, you will be hurt worse than you have ever been before in your life. And if you then call on me to glue whatever’s left of you back together, I will not be a happy man.”

  “Freeman, I won’t claim my brain is in top gear right now. Being locked up is distorting, I agree. But for the last three weeks I’ve been ducking missiles that Carnifice and Global Entertainment have been launching at me. I was sure you’d understand if you watched the video I asked Morrell to send you, the one showing Baladine’s tame cop looking for coke he’d planted in my office. For once in my life I did not go out of my way seeking to make an enemy: they came and found me.”

  We were sitting in a special meeting room for attorney visits. It was utterly bare except for two plastic chairs separated by a table that was bolted to the floor. We had to stay in our respective chairs, or the guard watching us through a glass panel would remove me. Supposedly the room was soundproofed, but for all I knew they were taping everything we said.

  When I talked to Freeman Monday afternoon, during my fifteen–minute slot for phone calls, I insisted he bring a camera with him to photograph the fading remains of Lemour’s attack on me. He’d harrumphed a bit on the phone but came with a Polaroid. When he saw the marks on my face and arms, his eyes widened with anger and he took a dozen shots. He was already planning the complaint against Lemour, but it made him even less able to understand why I wanted to stay at Coolis.

  I pushed my palms together, trying to marshal my words. “It all started when I stopped to help Baladine’s ex–nanny three weeks ago. Until I find out why that matters so much to him and to Teddy Trant, I don’t think there’s going to be much left of me even if I do leave Coolis. The answer is here, at least the answer to what happened to the nanny, to young Nicola Aguinaldo. If I had money in a trust account and some bills for feeding the guards, I should be able to learn what I need to know about her in a couple of weeks. Maybe less.”

  He thought I was quixotic as well as insane, and he argued persuasively: I may have thought I wasn’t going out of my way to needle Baladine, but why didn’t I leave well enough alone as he’d asked me when he was dealing with the State’s Attorney about my car last month? And prison was a destructive environment. It wore on you physically as well as mentally, warped your judgment and your ethics.

  “You know that as well as I, Vic: you did your share of criminal pleadings in your days with the public defender.”

  “I know it from being here four days. I got entangled with the leader of the West Side Iscariots on Sunday and I’ve been watching my back ever since. I hate it here. I’m lonely. Even if the food wasn’t horrible, the dining hall is so covered with roaches you have to keep brushing them off your legs while you’re at the table; every time the locks shut on our rooms at night, my stomach twists up so hard I can’t sleep; there’s no privacy, even on the toilet.” To my dismay I could hear my voice cracking on the edge of tears. “But if I let you bail me out, the only thing that will save me is to close up my business and hide out someplace. Even if my self–respect would permit that my finances won’t.”

  “You can’t convince me those are your only two choices, but I can’t stay to argue. I have to get back to Chicago for a court appearance.” He looked at his watch. “Anyway, you’ve already made up your mind to be pigheaded, so there’s no point in my arguing with you. Tell me what you want, both in bucks and in permitted goods, and I’ll send Callie over to your home to collect things. I’ve got an intern who can ferry things out here for you and do the basic paperwork on the money.”

  Besides the clothes I was permitted (two bras, two pairs of jeans, three underpants, five shirts, a pair of shorts, and a modest set of earrings) I told him what I most wanted was to see Morrell. “I want to see any friend who will make the drive—I listed Lotty and Mr. Contreras and Sal on my visitor’s sheet—but will you ask Morrell to come out here as soon as possible? As far as the money goes, I’d like three hundred dollars put into a prison trust account.”

  I picked my words carefully for the rest of my request. “I know it’s a felony to bring cash in for someone in prison, so I’m not going to ask you to do it. If I could get four hundred dollars in bills, though, it might come in handy. Will you mention the idea—and the risk—to Lotty?”

  I wanted money in hand in case I needed to bribe some CO’s or inmates or both. In theory, there was no cash at Coolis: you got issued a photo–ID card with a computer chip when you were admitted. Any money in your account was programmed onto the chip and then deducted when you used the card, whether in vending machines, at the commissary, or doing laundry. The idea was you wouldn’t have gambling or bribing or drug sales if you kept out the cash, but in my four days here I’d already seen plenty of bills changing hands—and not always very secretively.

  Freeman frowned and said in his most austere tones that he would speak to Lotty, but only to advise her of the felony nature of my request.

  He finished making notes in his quick, tiny script and packed up his papers. “Vic, you know my steadiest advice as your counsel is for you to post bail and come home. If you decide to listen to me, a call to my office will get someone out here on the instant.”

  “Freeman, before you go, do you know why I’m here? I mean, instead of at Cook County? Was this some shenanigan of Baladine’s?”

  He shook his head. “I have to confess I wondered about that, but once you were arrested, even with Lemour involved, you moved out of Baladine’s orbit. The simple truth is, Cook County is always filled to capacity, and on the Fourth they started splitting at the seams. Women arrested at precincts on the far North or West Sides were automatically shunted out here. Anyway, Baladine is out of the country. He’s taken his family on some exotic vacation.”

  “I know: to the South of France. Is Robbie with them? I don’t know what became of him after I left the house on Friday morning.”

  Freeman told me that Baladine had wrested Robbie from Mr. Contreras in the middle of the night Saturday. The old man (“He’s been living with you too long,” Freeman said in an unnecessary aside) had tried to hold off a warrant from a Du Page County sheriff’s deputy. He only gave in when Robbie said he couldn’t stand it if they arrested Mr. Contreras; he would leave if the sheriff promised not to hurt the old man. Robbie’s father had taken him to South Carolina, to boot camp, before flying out to join th
e Poilevys and the Trants with the rest of his family in the Pyrenees.

  “I tried to talk to Baladine, but his staff wouldn’t give me his number overseas. They say he left strict orders that even though he has the kid back he’s not doing a deal with you,” Freeman added.

  “Freeman—if they don’t know I’m here don’t tell them. If anyone asks, let them think I posted bail and am lying low.”

  He gave me a queer smile, half loving, half exasperated. “As you wish, Donna Victoria of the Rueful Countenance.”

  He tapped on the window to let the guard know we were finished. I was searched, the guard spending more time than necessary on my bra, and taken back to the jail wing. Now that I was alone I felt unbearably desolate. I lay on my bunk, a strip of towel over my eyes against the light, which stayed on from 5:00 A.M. until lights–out at nine, and let myself give way to misery.

  37 In the Big House

  The next four weeks were the hardest of my life. I hunkered down and tried to learn the ropes at Coolis—how to avoid being beaten up by my sisters in chains, how to butter up the CO’s without having to have sex with them, how to keep myself busy enough that the pervasive helplessness and boredom wouldn’t drag me so far down I couldn’t function.

  I wanted to talk to Miss Ruby, to thank her for her help on Sunday, but mostly to find out what she could tell me about Nicola, and about getting work in the clothes shop. I let everyone I talked to know that I’d like to meet her, but except for a couple of times in the dining hall, where the CO’s kept us firmly in place at the table, I didn’t see her after that first day.

  Freeman’s visit did bring a material change in my physical comfort. True to his word, he sent his intern out with money for my account, along with my clothes allotment. The intern had a stack of legal documents for me to read and sign. In the middle of them was a letter from Lotty. She begged me to post bail in lines of such loving concern I was hard put to stick to my resolve about staying, but in a postscript she added, I helped Freeman’s secretary pack your clothes and mended various tears.