Psycho Save Us

by Huskins, Chad

  He learned later that it was estimated that there was one psychopath for every one hundred or two hundred people. People just like him were all over the globe, floating throughout society, not experiencing any real emotion. Psychopaths assumed that emotions were all part of a societal game, and that they had to be better at the game than anybody else if they wished to get the upper hand. That’s why psychopaths didn’t know they were psychopaths, because they assumed everyone else felt the same way.

  Dr. McCulloch had put it like this: “Try to convince a blind man that there’s color. You can’t. He has to take it on faith. Faith, and the testimony of others. But he’ll never see. He can use the same words as others to represent them—white, black, red, blue—but he’ll never have any command over those words, he’d never share a connection with them the same way you or I do, Spencer. When it comes to emotions, you’re color blind.”

  Upon further research in the prison library, and on Dr. McCulloch’s recommendation, Spencer had read up on psychopathy and those that had studied it the most. According to what he’d found on the subject, most psychopaths actually never killed anybody—but if they did they didn’t give a hoot. Indeed, it was mostly normal, emotional people who got caught up in their emotions and killed others. Most people in prison were not psychopaths. Most psychopaths lived (ostensibly) normal lives. They mimicked the most socially acceptable behavior, sometimes too well, and knew how to predict the outcome of a conversation. Thus, they were great liars and manipulators.

  The most shocking discovery Spencer had made had been when he’d read just how many world leaders were suspected of being psychopaths. Apparently, many modern psychologists agreed that psychopaths were everywhere, completely undiagnosed, the secret leaders of society, and said that one must be a psychopath (at least to some degree) in order to have the mental fortitude run for public office. Emotional people couldn’t handle the rigors of campaigning, of being caught in contradictions and having your family’s name dragged through the mud. It took a great and mighty ego to be the leader of the free world, to see yourself as the Prime Minister of England, or to view yourself as a great civil rights leader that others must follow. To Spencer, this suddenly explained a great deal of life, because this meant even the good guys in history were mostly psychopaths.

  “Can I ask a question?” Pat said presently.

  “Sure.” Here it comes. He’s gonna ask me if I’ve always known what I was.

  But to his surprise, Pat asked a very simple question. “What part did ya score highest on?”

  Spencer cocked his head and tsked. “There’s only one way to score on the PCL-R. You get a zero if the trait doesn’t apply at all, a one if it applies somewhat, and a two if it fully applies. I got a two on everything besides parasitic lifestyle an’ grandiose self-worth, for which I scored zero. However,” he said, having something spring to mind, “my old friend Dr. McCulloch said that I scored a two on something that most psychopaths show no aptitude for whatsoever, an’ that was in the section of criminal versatility.”

  Pat smirked. “You a versatile muthafucka, eh?” He pronounced it versa-TYLE.

  “That’s what they tell me. An’ that’s why I was put away from the rest o’ the inmates within the first month that I got to Leavenworth. Dr. McCulloch was very honest with me. He said that he was gonna recommend to the warden that I stay away from the common rabble ’cause he thought I might, uh, how did he put it?” Spencer spoke in the thick Jersey accent McCulloch had tried to cover up, but never to any avail. “ ‘Inspire loyalty in convicts less intelligent, and who might follow you once they figured out you are a superior thinker.’ In other words, they were worried I might get a bunch o’ guys together and we’d escape.”

  “Did ya?”

  “Nope. I did it all alone. Well, mostly.”

  “Alright, alright, enough o’ this shit, muthafucka. How did ya do it?”

  Spencer tried to paint the picture for him. He started by describing the flight from Washington down to Kansas. He got to ride “Con Air” for the first time, feeling notorious amongst some crazy serial killer who was missing an eye, a small Italian shrimp who claimed to be a member of the Gambino family, and a couple of contract killers from the Latin Kings who were all chained up in their own separate cages, same as him.

  Then, Spencer described the long, lonesome drive up to Leavenworth Federal Penitentiary, how he’d sat there looking neither right nor left. Most of the men around him had stared out their windows at the green fields, taking in the last view of the outside world they would see in a long time. For some of them, this would be the last view they ever got of that world.

  Spencer described the front gate opening, and the large sign off to one side of the gate that read:

  LEAVENWORTH

  Proud of where we have been

  Proud of where we are

  Proud of where we are going

  Pride in a job well done

  He had shuffled off the bus same as all the others. The young man chained up behind him, a red-headed boy no older than nineteen, had already started crying. “I remember thinking, this kid’s gonna be fucked in his ass before the week’s out. An’ ya know what? I was wrong. It cost him two months of doing chores for other inmates to buy him safety from the blacks on D cellhouse who wanted him so bad you could smell it. His name was Tommy Svenson, and eventually he was sold for two packs o’ cigarettes. He was lured by one o’ these guys into a certain part o’ the shower room, which he was supposed to help clean. It was his cellmate who did him the first time, pretending he wanted to protect him outta the kindness of his heart. But it wasn’t the kindness of his heart, but the piece lower down on his torso that really wanted to help the red-head. I was in the shower the day it happened. He screamed. The guards had to hear it, but nobody did anything.

  “After that, Tommy was just a prison punk, passed around like a joint, shacking up in a different cell every few months because some low-risk prisoners they let do that. After that, they used him for his girlfriend on the outside, who became a mule—someone to sneak H an’ other shit in an’ outta the joint during conjugal visits and whatnot, you understand. She would come in with the stuff in her vagina, then slip off to the women’s bathroom to remove it and put it in her mouth. Prisoners were allowed to kiss their visitors once at the beginning of the visit and once at the end. She’d kiss her red-headed boyfriend, an’ Tommy swallowed the H an’ either vomited it up later or shat it out. He did all this to stop the rapes from the black guys, see?”

  For a moment, Spencer went silent. None of this had much to do with his escape, but he found himself thinking about it the more Pat pushed him about Leavenworth. He didn’t know why. Perhaps it was the thought of predators and their prey, and how it was the same all over the world. It was sometimes easy for Spencer to become lost in these sorts of thoughts. Dr. McCulloch told him that was normal for many psychopaths. It’s how they whiled away their alone time, thinking of how so many people were easily manipulated.

  “You ever been to the pen, Pat?”

  Pat shook his head. “Naw, dawg.” He said it with wonder, like a young boy hearing the story of the ancient haunted cave that only his grandfather had returned from.

  “It’s a fascinating place.” Pat laughed at that, but stopped when he realized Spencer wasn’t being facetious.

  He went on describing the basic processing procedures. He didn’t go into detail about having his asshole fingered. What Spencer did mention was that, while the inspections were going on and the red-headed boy was trying to stifle his sobs, he noticed that the guards had such dull looks on their faces. “There was only one hack who screamed like he meant it. His name was Brummel, and he hollered shit like, ‘This is my house! You understand me? You disrespect this house, you disrespect me! I will not tolerate disrespect!’ Besides him, the rest o’ the hacks at Leavenworth were dull-eyed an’ really just bored-looking. At least, that was how it appeared to me.”

  Spencer described th
e changes the American prison system had been going through at the time. Leavenworth was on its way to being downgraded from a level-four maximum-security prison; almost the highest rating in the nation. Luckily for him, the transition was happening around that time. The BOP, or Bureau of Prisons, had people in and out of there at all hours, checking this and inspecting that. The rotundas were going to be renovated to allow for better prison management, and there were going to be different areas for different groups—high-level gangsters would have their own section (the prisoners called it “turf” or “territory”), and thugs from groups like the AB or the Crips or the Bloods would have their own allotted section. Like many prisons at the time, Leavenworth was transitioning to smaller buildings spread out over a compound and relying on more electronic surveillance, rather than the large domed structures it had been known for where a mixing of all prisoners of all races had been the norm. This meant that the hacks (the guards) wouldn’t be as familiar with all the prisoner’s faces as they once had been.

  “At CRC, my goal had been to match the profile of a lifer. But in Leavenworth, I felt it was best not to blend in. Instead, I went for a different approach. I disappeared,” he said, reaching out to the pack of cigarettes. With his Bud gone, he’d had second thoughts about Pat’s previous offer. He plucked a stick out and put it between his lips. “There are more than 2,000 inmates at Leavenworth, and though they weren’t being allowed to mix as much as before, they still mixed more than at most other joints.”

  “How could ya disappear, money? I mean, the hacks had to know yo face after ya beat that cop’s ass an’…ya know…bit his fuckin’ nose off,” he finished with a nervous laugh.

  Pat handed over his fancy lighter, and Spencer lit up. He inhaled with relish, blew it out, shook his head. “Naw, man. Only the feds workin’ the case of my robberies knew me. I had a bit o’ local fame when I attacked that cop, sure, but a few months had passed and I’d been at CRC for a while. By the time I got to Leavenworth only Brummel and Warden Plink made time to talk with me. I got the same twenty-two-page book with the prison’s rules an’ regulations that everybody else got, had a short talk with ’em about how things would go—I say ‘Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, you the boss, man, nobody but you,’ and then I’m on my way.

  “I was shown to my cell. Ended up in A cellhouse with a pedophile named Martin Horowitz for a cellmate. That was a bit o’ good fortune, because all he wanted to do was stay low-key, just like I had planned to do myself. Ol’ Marty actually glommed onto me pretty fast because I was the only person who would pay him any mind and who didn’t judge him. I didn’t like the guy, mind you, but I knew a Santa’s Little Helper when I saw one. I struck up conversations with him at night—never in plain sight of anyone else, never while jogging the blacktop track in the prison yard or anything like that, because I didn’t wanna be openly associated with him, because ya know what targets pedophiles make in the joint—an’ was glad that I did. Turns out, Marty had been in for nine years, an’ had survived with his own asshole intact by kissin’ the hacks’ asses, as well as providing Warden Plink on the goings-on of other inmates. He was a snitch. And sometimes, he helped out with filing work for the prison. He had earned that privilege and liked it very much. He lacked one thing: a friend. I was his answer to that.

  “So I listened to what he had to say. We would talk for long hours at night. At first it was just this an’ that—do you have any family, where are you from, how much longer you got on your stint—but eventually I got some o’ details about Leavenworth from this fat prick. There were exactly five hundred and three employees at Leavenworth, all of ’em broken up into groups,” Spencer explained. “Three hundred and fifty of ’em were hacks, but the rest were cooks, hospital workers, maintenance men, psychologists, counselors, teachers, an’ administrators. I learned a lot from him. I learned that the hacks earn less than anybody else in the prison, but the hacks have more clout—their word is Law.

  “However, I also learned that the hacks were also complaining about how much they’re left outta the loop. Marty told me that they despised oversight committees from the BOP who sent inspectors to check everything from the fire extinguishers to the inmates’ well-being. I heard about a hack named Pembry, who was getting a divorce. I heard the hacks were gettin’ pretty tired of unannounced inspections from the BOP. I heard about a secretary named Connie Ayers who got a transfer over to ADX prison in Florence and wasn’t happy about it. I heard about a hack named Middleton who the other hacks secretly hated because he was always kissin’ BOP ass, lookin’ for a promotion. But that’s all mostly tangential.” He added, “That means only slightly connected.”

  “I know what tangential mean, muthafucka. You ain’t the only one reads books.”

  “The important part is that Marty an’ me became close at nights,” he went on, blowing out another cloud of smoke. “Close enough that he tried to get freaky one night. I pushed him away, told him that I wasn’t ready for that kinda relationship yet, but that I was open-minded to it. This kept his interest in me, and in our talks, for a good while longer. Long enough to get all that I felt I needed.

  “I had been assigned to laundry duty and cleaning work inside the prison, but I cordially volunteered for the crafts shop of the prison, which Marty had told me had a shortage of volunteers since no man liked to sew all that much. I was willing to learn and I picked it up fast. Did ya know that the furniture an’ clothing manufacturers inside Leavenworth have built chairs and clothes that presidents an’ politicians have worn? As gifts from the wardens, of course. Some o’ the prisoners there become quite the craftsmen and seamstresses. John F. Kennedy’s rocking chair was made there.”

  “Naw, I didn’t know that.”

  Spencer went on, looking at his solo audience through the billowing cigarette smoke. “I was worried that Dr. McCulloch might suspect something an’ deny me the job, but I suppose he never considered it, or if he did maybe he allowed me to do it out of clinical curiosity. Guess I’ll never know. What I do know is that I was able to gather the necessary textiles and materials over time to create what I needed.

  “I eventually volunteered for the kitchen and the metal shop, because there were things in those areas that I needed, but I didn’t always get those assignments. Maybe someone somewhere got suspicious. If they did, they weren’t in time to stop me. Besides Marty, I’d gotten to know a couple o’ guys from the TV room in A cellhouse who worked in the metal shop. They got me what I needed, an’ I got them what they wanted.”

  Spencer left it with that for a moment, enjoying another toke while Pat leaned in. Outside the office, the grease monkeys were still drilling away. “So I got what I needed. It only had to look passable, I knew. People aren’t very smart, even police officers—the cop that pulled me over was the exception to the rule—and especially not these hacks. They’re constantly on the lookout for an attack. Tension between inmates an’ hacks is so high you can almost feel it inside that place. But the hacks’re lookin’ for a surprise shiv in their back, not an Uzi. So, I reasoned, they’re lookin’ for escapees to dig holes under the fences, not a member of the BOP.”

  Again, Spencer went silent, just toking on his cig. He allowed Pat to sit there with a look of perplexity for a few seconds. Let him figure that one out. Finally, Pat did. His eyes widened just a tad, and his posture went straighter. “No way.”

  Spencer nodded. “I put on my passable suit with its red tie an’ all. I’d made it myself from bits an’ pieces in the crafts shop. I wore what I’m sure looked like a pair o’ pressed khakis, but was actually made outta the cloth they used for laundry bags in the prison. They didn’t look great, but they didn’t look like prison fatigues, either. I made ’em baggy enough so that my prison-issue shoes wouldn’t be too noticeable, just the tips. Hopefully, as long as the first stage worked out okay, nobody would be lookin’ at my feet.

  “So, I walked right up to Middleton—the hack that Marty assured me was always kissin’ ass an’ loo
kin’ for a promotion—and I started up a conversation. Almost none o’ the guards in that whole place could’ve picked me out of a line-up. I’d been so quiet, kept just to myself an’ Marty for the most part. I’d taken extra special caution against doing anything unusual in front of Middleton, anything at all, just so he wouldn’t know my face when it came time for me to walk out. So, when I saw him glance at my tie and then at my face, I knew I had him. See, the guys from the metal shop had gotten me what I needed—they didn’t know why I needed it, but they’d given it to me just the same. A metal tie clip and a matchin’ pin that were both shaped like handcuffs.”

  Pat slapped his desk, chuckling. “Just like when ya walked in as Agent Chalke at the SunTrust in Ole Miss.”

  “You got it, my brotha. And I had a clipboard with me, which I actually got from the red-head, Tommy, who by then was already getting his girlfriend to sneak in all kinds o’ shit and brought him gifts, some of which he was allowed to keep because of his good behavior.”

  “What did ya say to Middleton?”

  “I said, ‘How’s it goin?’ He looked back at me an’ said, ‘Not bad, sir. You?’ I had him an’ I knew it. He called me sir, after all. I told him I was just finishing up my inspection of A cellhouse, and then we both bullshitted about how things were going around the prison. I let him ask the question, ‘You from BOP?’ To which I replied that, yes, of course I was. I quipped that I wasn’t a nature hiker who’d gotten lost, and we both had a good laugh over that. A few more minutes of bullshittin’, then I asked him to please unlock the door to the prison visiting room.”