The squeak of cheap shoes on linoleum. The flutter of fluorescent lights. Then doors fell open before me, one after the other, and there was a blast of chill and the gray, flat light of an overcast sky.
I walked out. Snowflakes danced down to my shoulders and hands. The guards pointed the way toward the bus I’d be taking to a halfway house. I thanked them, bag in my hand, and started walking.
I smelled exhaust and seawater and winter wind and snow. I smelled the tang of a Swisher Sweet and the rot from a Dumpster. I did not smell freedom. None of it smelled free to me. Maybe I’d forgotten what that smelled like.
WHEN YOU GET out of prison, it’s like visiting a foreign country: you watch, amazed, as people go about their inscrutable tasks that feel loaded with threat, meaning, subtext. What would have been impossible for you to do a mere week ago—getting a soda, opening a window—is white noise to them. You realize that these people are not yours, nor are you part of them. You can walk through a city where you once belonged, but now you’re an alien.
This was the world I now lived in. I slept at the halfway house (“ST. MART N’S MEN’S TRAN ITION L HOUS NG” read the sign), awoke every day at 6:30 A.M. (expecting each time to hear the blare of the morning alarm), and applied for jobs, with no response. That was no surprise: I wasn’t in the front of the line for work by a long shot.
I wandered the city. It felt so strange to move freely. I was so used to tight rooms and winding corridors, to the musty aroma of underoxygenated air. . . . To have the sky spilling in on me from all directions was terrifying and thrilling.
One day, while waiting on one corner for the signal to walk, I looked up and saw a woman standing beside me. There wasn’t anything especially notable about her. Her heavy winter coat was wrapped around medical scrubs, like she’d ducked out of her workplace to run an errand. She was neither beautiful nor ugly. She wasn’t even plain. There was nothing about her appearance to make an ordinary person take note, but when I looked in her eyes, I saw it.
Nothing.
Well, not nothing. Her eyes were there, like actually in her skull, but there was nothing in them. There’s a spark to eyes, an aliveness when there’s an intelligence behind them, looking out, watching, learning. You forget it’s there, and only realize what’s missing when you see the eyes of the dead, or those in drugged stupor, or—a third option—those like her.
She looked at me and said, with a note of some irritation, “Can I help you with something?”
I was so surprised to see her move and speak, I had no idea what to say. It was as though a mannequin had suddenly come to life. She scoffed, assuming, I guess, that I was a perv, and when the walk sign came she hurried away.
I DIDN’T KNOW what she was, but I suspected, and it was a pretty good suspicion. Better than a guess. I’d seen men with empty looks in prison, but that was the norm. The men inside were beaten down, defeated, dispirited. They had surrendered to a life without possibilities or choice, but there was more in those men than there had been in that woman.
I began following her without intending to. I was half a block behind her for five minutes before I even realized what I was doing, and let’s be honest, what I was doing was dangerous—for so many reasons.
Maybe trouble was exactly what I needed. I had a ticking clock and a lot of grudges, and I was either going to spend my days watching the sand dribble out of the glass or I was going to settle some old scores. I knew which one I wanted to do, but the path of least resistance is sometimes hard to resist.
I felt the need growing inside me, all the time. I had to do something. I couldn’t let it all go. I wanted justice, or at least something that felt like justice to me. I was going to rebalance the scales of my little corner of the universe, and I’d do it with a hammer.
That was the plan, anyhow, until I saw the woman. Because she was so like them, the ones who had put me in prison in the first place. She reminded me of decisions I’d made, questions I’d never gotten answered. More than anything, I had to know if she had . . . well, if she had done it.
If she had, then I had to know why, because if she’d had to make the same choice I did, she would have been asked the same question I’d been asked once. Only her answer had been different.
She turned the corner at a coffee shop. I rushed to catch up, but when I came around, she was waiting. She leaned against the building and looked at me, those dead eyes revealing nothing, her lips twisted in maybe amusement, maybe pity.
“Jesus,” she breathed through pursed lips, sending a lock of blond fluttering against her forehead. “You again. What do you want?”
I realized I was panting, blowing out puffs of wintry breath like a chimney. “You did it, didn’t you?” I said. “You got the offer and you took it.”
She looked frightened or caught or guilty. And then she didn’t. She steeled herself and met my gaze. “How do you know? Who told you?”
“I don’t know how I know. I just . . .”
“Just what?”
“I just . . . looked at you. And I knew.”
She watched me a second longer, maybe gauging if I was a threat. Finally she said, “I took it. Yeah, I took it. I’d have been an idiot not to.”
There were so many things I wanted to ask her, to make her explain, but I knew I could not have that conversation. It would take hours. So I asked the most important question I thought she might be willing to answer: “Do you feel any . . . different?”
She thought about it. Shrugged. “I guess I feel different because my life doesn’t suck anymore. My kid’s kidneys aren’t failing. I’m not about to lose my house. That feels different.”
“That’s it?”
“Yes. That’s it.”
I was silent. She couldn’t have known it, but her simple answer had reached inside me, broken me up, crumbled me to dust. I felt faint, but I didn’t fall. I stumbled backward, nodding to her, and managed a weak, “Thanks.”
“You said no?” she asked.
I nodded.
“Why?” It was the incredulous voice of a parent speaking to a child who had done something utterly stupid and inexplicable.
“It seemed like the right call at the time.” I turned away.
“Hey,” she said. “How did you know? What gave it away?”
I almost said it was her eyes, but then I stopped myself. Obviously she did not know, and I didn’t think it was right to tell her. Even though this woman had done something unspeakable, it wasn’t my place to judge her. She was already, in a very real sense, damned. There was no need to make her feel like crap about her appearance.
THERE ARE A lot of ways to go to prison. Most of them are stupid. Criminals, after all, do criminal acts because they can’t make a straight living, either because circumstances prevent it, or because they can’t figure out how to get their shit together.
I was a little of both. Me and my friends Marco and Teddy had been busboys at this restaurant for what felt like years. In truth, it’d only been a handful of months, but when you’re young, time is different: the days move slowly when you’re miserable, and in that steamy restaurant, elbow deep in gray water scummed over with old cheese, they moved even slower.
So when Marco heard that we could make more money as movers, Teddy and I jumped at the opportunity. He didn’t mention that we’d be moving gambling machines. And he didn’t mention until after we’d already worked a few jobs that what we were doing was highly illegal. By then we’d been paid, many times over, and it’s hard to say no or think straight when you’ve got a wad of money burning a hole in your pocket. So we kept going back to the well.
At the time, it seemed like things could never go wrong. That’s the problem with being young: it seemed like it would be beer and dancing and money and pussy forever. But when I look back on it now, all that was over in an instant.
I remember everything about how it ended. When you’re in prison, that’s all you ever think about. So much more than getting out.
I
remember the call in the night. Marco’s girlfriend, telling me Marco was hurt. Then I remember rushing into his apartment, the tile of his bathroom a raw, brilliant red, lakes of blood stymied in their crawl across his floor, and the gray-white hand twisted in the shower curtain.
When I pulled the curtain aside, it was not Marco: it was an old man, white, midfifties. He was dressed like a security guard, and his throat had been slashed so wide I could see inches into his neck.
Then I heard the sirens. I remembered how Marco and Teddy had been so secretive the last few days, always pulled aside to talk to the bosses, presumably arranging a big score.
What I remember most, out of all of it, was the way their eyes had looked the night before I was arrested. Empty. Dead. Something had been in those eyes once, but it was gone. They had smiled at me, and it had tasted false and wrong, like someone had drawn a smile on a mannequin.
When the cops brought me in, booked me, and questioned me, I learned piece by piece that a huge amount of electrical equipment had been stolen at the docks. The guard had gone missing along with it: to be found, of course, in Marco’s bathtub, beaten about the face and bathing in several gallons of his own blood.
They never found the thieves, but they’d found me, and they were intent on keeping me. Among all the riffraff in Marco’s apartment, they’d found a Glock with my prints on the barrel hood, a Glock whose handle just happened to have traces of the guard’s blood on its grip. The bruising on the guard’s face matched the pattern of the grip. And while you can explain away some fingerprints on a handle, a fingerprint on the inner workings of a gun is a tall order.
I told them I didn’t know anything—even how my fingerprints got on the gun. That went down about as well as you’d think. They asked me who else was involved. They told me it would go easier if I gave up the guys who had left me flapping in the breeze. They used words like deal and probation and first-time offender, but even a fuckup like me knew what that meant. They wanted me to flip.
In some distant part of my mind, I’d always known things could go south. I hadn’t believed it would, but I’d known it might, and I understood there was a way you accepted these things. You took your lumps. You did your time. You didn’t sell out your friends. A man who turns on his friends is vermin—that’s why they call it ratting. And he deserves to be dealt with like vermin. I wasn’t going to go that route.
I stayed silent, and they seemed to accept that pretty easily. They didn’t beat me. They didn’t press me too hard on accomplices. They didn’t need to. They had a crime, and they had a suspect. Somewhere some suit who worked in the D.A.’s office was saying they had enough to convict. Why sweat the small stuff?
So that was that. They were done with me.
I spent my first night in jail that night. The first night of what would be fifteen years.
I DIDN’T SPEND it alone.
I’m still not sure when he arrived. He was just there, like he’d always been there, slouched in the cell across from me.
“You look,” he said, “like someone in a world of hurt.”
I looked up at him. He was a thoroughly unremarkable man: skinny but not too skinny, with salt-and-pepper hair but not that old, his eyes a plain, dull shade of brown. His clothes were nice but nothing particularly special: he could belong anywhere and nowhere.
“What?” I said.
“I said, you look like someone in a world of hurt.”
I looked away, said nothing. I was terrified. I was angry. And I was aware that there was a very good chance I’d be spending a lot of time in a place like this.
“I’ve seen a lot of people in your state,” he said. “Tons. God, I can’t even count ’em. I’ve seen so many folks at the end of their ropes, I guess there must be rope ends all over the fucking place. I really do.”
“Shut the fuck up,” I moaned.
But he didn’t. He sat up and leaned against the wall at the far end of the cell, all nonthreatening-like. “Now, the thing is, I don’t usually see them in such a sorry state for long. You know why?”
“I sure as shit hope you’re not going to tell me they find Jesus.”
He was quiet. Then he burst out laughing. He laughed long and loud, a rough, throaty laugh that sounded like it hurt. “Oh, man! That’s good. That’s some good stuff, it really is. Shit, no! That Jesus stuff, it only works on folks who are buried deep in.”
“Deep in what?”
He flicked the bars of his cell. “Deep in bars. Folks behind bars behind bars behind bars. And that’s the only place it lasts, too. Once they get out, poof, it’s gone. They forget all about it. Back to their old tricks, y’see.” He smiled. “No, these people . . . the ones whose fortunes really turn for the better . . . they find something different.”
I glared at him. I wished he was dead. Him, and Marco, and Teddy, and the detectives who’d asked me, seriously, a total of six questions, because they’d known they had me dead to rights. “What is it?” I asked angrily.
“Oh, now hold on there,” said the man. “Let’s not blow our wad just yet. You don’t want to jump into this, now do you?”
“I didn’t even know there was a ‘this.’ ”
“Well, there is, and you’re trying to jump into it. To get what I’m offering, you have to give something up. You have to give me something. It’s an exchange. Get it?”
“If you want my ass, man, you can fucking forget about it.”
He smiled. But I noticed his eyes didn’t smile. Most people when they smile, even if they don’t mean it, some part of their eyes move. It’s just what a human face does. But his . . . didn’t. “No,” he said. “I want something a little bit more valuable than your anal virginity, my boy.”
“What?”
He leaned forward, the top of his forehead poking through the bars. “Son . . . do you believe in the soul?”
I stared at him. Then I burst out laughing, just as he had done. “You’ve got be fucking kidding me! Oh, man. You seriously had me for a moment!”
He didn’t laugh: he just kept smiling through the bars.
I asked, “Are you, like, some drunk that’s in here every night, and this is how you get your kicks?”
Still, he did not laugh. But then he said, “You know, I’m not surprised to hear you laugh. Marco laughed too, when he heard my offer.”
I stopped. The world went dead. “What?” I asked. “What did you say?”
He kept smiling.
“What the fuck was that?” I shouted. “What the fuck did you just say to me?”
“You’ll want to keep your voice down,” he said. “Otherwise the guards will come, and you’ll never hear the rest.”
The man leaned against the wall and folded his arms. He half closed his eyes like he was remembering something sweet. “Here’s the deal,” he said. “Marco took it. And Teddy took it. That’s why they’re out there and you’re in here. But the good news—the real good news, my friend—is that when you take it, you’ll be out there, too. It’s as simple as it sounds: you give me your soul, and I give you an easy life.”
“So, what,” I said with a snort, “you’re like the devil or something? Like in the stories?”
“Stories are stories,” said the man, “because reality is so much more complex. Here’s how it works: I’m not going to offer to make you rich, a movie star, or any of that. I won’t make you immortal or irresistible to women. All that is crap. What I can offer you is an uncomplicated, pleasant life. You won’t get sick before your time, you won’t end up living on the street. You’ll be luckier than most people. The things you shoot for will have a better chance of working out. Hopefully some high flying, but absolutely a lot of smooth sailing.”
“Uh-huh,” I said. “Okay, that’s swell. That’s a pretty good pitch. Now, I’m going to get some sleep.”
“You want to get some sleep?” he asked. “You’d rather get some sleep than, say, be set up for life? You’d rather get some sleep than get out of jail free?”
“Doesn’t work that way. I can get you out of here, but the clubs and the models are up to you. And I can’t give you the goods without getting the payment. That would be bad business on my part. I will promise to get you out of jail in exchange for what I’m asking. All you have to do is agree. Even if you don’t believe me, then what do you have to lose? And if I’m right, then you’ve got your proof, plus so much more.”
I was awake now, and I was paying attention. The thing was, somewhere along the way, I started to believe this guy. This wasn’t just an annoying cell mate, this was a business negotiation. I told myself I was being ridiculous—it was fear and fantasy thinking—but I believed him, not myself. On some level, I understood that his offer was for real.
It wasn’t just the sincerity in his voice, the confident ease with which he delivered a sales pitch I knew he’d delivered countless times before. There were other things. The cell was colder than it had been before, and the air felt charged, like just before a storm, and there were pockets of heat. The man was not attractive—he kind of looked like Andrew Jackson on the twenty-dollar bill, with his long face and high forehead and dour expression, but that was not it. He looked perfectly normal, yet he was also off—his eyes and nose and mouth sat on his face slightly wrong, like their proportions were mixed up, but just so slightly you couldn’t quite say how. The color of his skin seemed strange too. I had never seen a shade precisely like that—no, I decided, not the shade but the color saturation. It made him look like a man out of an old photograph.
“Can you prove all this?” I was interested now for sure. Not interested in the deal precisely, but in the situation. “Can you show me what you’re talking about is real?”
Dark Duets Page 25
