Four Feet Tall and Rising

by Shorty Rossi

  6

  Slumlord

  y the time I got to Folsom, there were guys wearing “J” numbers and by wearing, I mean literally wearing. Physically, we wore our numbers on our clothes. These were numbers that were ours for the rest of our lives. They’d never be reassigned. If we ever ended up back in prison, we’d wear the same number. It was like having a Social Security card painted on your chest.

  You could tell a lot about a guy by the letter in front of his numbers. The earlier his letter was in the alphabet, the longer he’d been behind bars, and the more respect that earned him. The letter was part of your street cred. The lower your letter, the higher the status. If a guy was wearing a “B” number, we could tell that he’d been in prison for at least twenty years. In all my years in the system, I only ever saw an “A” once. I wasn’t sure whether to bow in front of the guy or feel sad for him.

  I had some amount of cred ’cause I had an “E,” and because of that—combined with the Legend of Shorty, and the nerve and the heart and the balls I had to put my life in jeopardy to live among the Bloods—the threats on my life began to subside. The Crips ignored me entirely. I’d managed to survive as a white Blood at Nickerson, at County, and at DeWitt, so they decided just to let me be. Outside the prison, they would’ve been my enemies, but inside they became my allies. The only guys still holding a grudge against me were the Aryans, and after a few more failed stabbing attempts, they finally just gave up. Guys weren’t friendly, but they weren’t hostile anymore, and after six months, the warden felt like it was safe enough to put me in the desk clerk job, answering phones. It was mindless work, nothing like getting to TA for the classes at DeWitt, and not even close to running the cat rescue program, but it was good to have some place to be for eight hours a day.

  Once I had more freedom to move around, go to work, and meet people, I started making friends across all the color lines. Everybody got to know me ’cause I’m a pretty likable person, which I know is hard to believe ’cause of my TV persona, but it’s true. I will have a conversation with anybody. I get along with all kinds of different people. I respect everybody until they give me a good reason not to. In prison, I changed guys’ minds. “That son of a bitch who came in here was supposed to be the most evil bastard, but he turned out to be a likable little fuck.”

  I got along with my cellie, J.D., okay. When you shove two people into a tiny room, you are bound to get on each other’s nerves, but we managed. Then J.D. was released, and I had to get a new cellie. I had a friend in another building who wanted to move to Four Building, but he wasn’t allowed to come over because of his job. I was worried they were gonna stick me with some idiot, and I knew for sure they weren’t gonna leave me the space to myself. I wanted to be able to control who moved in.

  I’d become friends with a guy named Ray, even though he was from San Francisco and he wasn’t a Blood. He was Fillmore Street Mob. In San Francisco, at that time, there weren’t big gangs like the Bloods and Crips. It was divided up by smaller territories of where people were from. Guys identified themselves as Potrero Hill Projects or Hunters Point or Fillmore. They weren’t into the gang signs and colors the way the gangs in L.A. were. All those guys ran with the Bay Area crew. That group included guys from San Francisco, San Mateo, Valeo, Oakland … Within that group, there were the smaller divisions of neighborhoods. We called them the 415 Guys. The 415 Guys were friends of the Bloods if something happened, and some guys mingled, but mostly the 415 Guys stayed on their side of the yard and we stayed on ours.

  Ray and I didn’t know each other very well. The cell beside me held a guy named O’Dell, and he and Ray were friends. Ray spent a lot of time outside my cell, and we got to be friendly. He didn’t like his cellie, and he wanted to move, so when J.D. vacated the top bunk, Ray asked to be moved in.

  This wasn’t business as usual at Folsom. Ray and I were from different gangs, and the officers considered our living together a safety concern. But Ray was okay by me, and eventually, we convinced them it would be fine. It was only supposed to be a temporary solution until they could find more “appropriate” housing for both of us.

  When you’re in a room that’s six feet by nine feet and you can totally ignore each other, that’s a good cellie. After dinner, we’d get back in our cell. Ray would take the top bunk. I’d hit the bottom bunk, and he’d turn on the TV, or I’d put on my headphones and we wouldn’t speak a word. Some nights, we’d play card games or we’d take turns cooking with our stinger. We got along, and Ray ended up being my cellie for the next four years.

  Our cross-color, cross-gang friendship was just another example of my ability to get along with all the gangs, all the races, and to move freely among them. The guards had never seen nothing like it, and neither had the inmates. It afforded me a level of respect that superseded gang affiliation and all the accepted rules. Maybe it was my size that protected me. Maybe it was the thing that made me most vulnerable to danger that actually kept me safe.

  Whatever the reason, when Four Building’s housing clerk got rolled up for drugs and thrown into the SHU, the warden promoted me to “slumlord.” Everyone was shocked. Me included. There were only five slumlords in the entire prison. It was the most coveted job, second only to being the warden’s assistant. Its only duty was to make sure all the beds were filled, orchestrating the moves between five different buildings and between cells, but that meant dealing with every gang, every officer, and every administrator at Folsom.

  Slumlord jobs went only to the guys who had done a lot of time, or who had a lot of power, and I didn’t qualify as either. I had an “E” number. There were plenty of guys wearing “B,” “C,” and “D” that stood in front of me, rank-and-file. There were gang leaders who’d been itching for that job for years and years. I’d barely been at Folsom for a year, and suddenly I was gonna be in charge of Four Building. It was an outrage.

  But the warden was tired of the housing clerk position being used as a way to ferry in drugs. In prison, there was access to any drug you wanted. The drugs came in through the guards, or were smuggled through the visitor center. The idiots either swallowed them or crammed them up their ass. They were easier to get behind bars than they were on the street. Just ten times more expensive, and very often, the housing clerk or slumlord of each building controlled the flow of the merchandise. Pot and heroin were most common, but if you had a taste for something else, you could find it.

  I’d basically grown up around drugs, and I’d been a frequent recreational marijuana smoker, but thankfully, I didn’t have the addictive personality that a lot of my friends had. My cellie Ray struggled to stay sober; it was his greatest battle. But when you’re fourteen and your dad lights up a crack pipe and hands it to you to smoke, addiction is probably gonna be an issue. Ray really never had a chance against it.

  Even when I was smoking cigars or cigarettes or marijuana, there was always a time when I could stop. Especially pot. I started smoking cigars when I was in seventh grade, and I smoked them all through prison, but I was always too scared to try heroin after seeing what it did to guys. There were guys my same age that once they touched it could not stop. I was a dangerous man, but I wasn’t a stupid one. When it came to drugs, it just seemed stupid.

  My only weakness was pruno, prison-made alcohol. It was the worst-tasting stuff, but it did the job, especially if you hadn’t been drinking for days, weeks, or months. The guys on the third floor made it ’cause they lived on a less-patrolled tier. They’d collect any type of fruit, like oranges, apples, bananas, or raisins, and then they would steal a yeast packet from the kitchen and some sugar, and let that ferment in their cells. In Four Building, if you got caught with pruno in your cell, you got kicked out, or even worse, the deputies would purposely pop open the container and pour it all over your crap. That would make a stinky mess.

  If I had a drink of that stuff, whooooo. There were a few times I was schnockered to the point where I needed help down the stairs. The corrections officer
s would see me and tell Ray to put me to bed. I’d get too loud. It was my only vice, so the officers looked the other way, as long as I kept my mouth shut. The warden probably knew about my pruno weakness, too, but he also knew that I didn’t use drugs and I didn’t sell. He’d watched me navigate friendships and change the minds of even the Aryans about me. He thought I was the right man for the job. I wasn’t so sure.

  The day the warden offered it to me, I sat Ray down in our cell to talk it through. Taking the slumlord job was a real risk. It didn’t officially pay more, but of course, it did in other ways. There were perks, from being able to control who lived where to having access to my own office, and the freedom to roam from building to building. But there were also some real minuses to consider. Gang leaders would be pissed ’cause they wanted the job instead. A lot of the older officers made it clear to the warden that I’d been spoiled too fast. They felt it was too easy for me. Giving me the slumlord job was like rewarding a troublemaker. I had stirred up a pile of shit, and somehow come out smelling like a rose. Ray agreed. He said, “You just got everyone off your back and now, you’re gonna have to be careful again.”

  It just seemed stupid to turn down the opportunity. Here I was, my whole life, wanting to be in charge of a corporation, to run an organization, to be “the boss,” and fate had just handed me a job that sure as hell looked an awful lot like boss practice. No, it wasn’t a Fortune 500 company, but it wasn’t that far off from being in real estate … and good old Donald Trump had done pretty well in real estate. Every business has a hustle. It’s just what you hustle. Trump had hustled land and buildings. I’d hustle jail cells. I told the warden to sign me up.

  Things changed for me really fast. Every morning, I got up and went to my office, where there was a giant corkboard on the wall with all the prisoners’ photos tacked up under their assigned cells. You could look at that thing and know exactly who was supposed to be where and with whom. Each day, someone was paroled or transferred ’cause of their job, or, if they wanted to go to school, they had to move to One Building, or if they hated their cellie and couldn’t get along anymore, they’d ask for a change of scenery. I’d count up the vacant beds and cells that I had, call the intake building to see who was moving in, and figure out where to put them.

  There was always a list for Four Building. Everyone wanted in. Four Building had single showers ’cause it used to be used as the SHU, and the showers were designed to hold one prisoner at a time. It was much safer than the other buildings, where they showered guys one hundred prisoners at a time. It was a big perk of living in Four, and I was even more spoiled ’cause once I was the slumlord, I could jump in the showers at 4:00 p.m. while all the other guys were heading back to their cells. I’d have them completely to myself, and still make it back to my cell in time for 4:30 count.

  So every day, I had tons of requests to move to Four. I’d make the rounds of all the other buildings to speak with the slumlords to negotiate deals for certain moves, to scope out any problem people beforehand. Mostly, it was an excuse to stretch my legs, and have some freedom. I could have called them instead. I preferred the walk. I knew by showing my face around, I’d have more juice. I was free-range.

  Suddenly, I was wheeling and dealing. I no longer needed money from outside people. To get a good cell from me, it would cost a guy around $20 to $50, to pay off his current building’s slumlord, and then another $20 to $50 on my end. If he wanted a cell with two doors, or one of the cells at the end of a tier that had more peace and quiet, those cost more. If he wanted a specific cellie, that would cost four or five packs of cigarettes. Some guys would just hand me two cartons of cigarettes and say, “Move me upstairs or move this person in.” After that initial $50 down payment of sorts, they were good with me. Anything else they wanted was a favor. Now, if some guy showed up with just one or two lousy packs of cigarettes, I’d give him the eye. A pack or two wouldn’t get you much help from me.

  With that said, I was fair. I didn’t charge somebody more ’cause I didn’t like them, or ’cause of the color of their skin. I didn’t charge them more if we were supposed to be enemies. Word spread quickly among the inmates that I didn’t play favorites, and the job seemed to get a lot less risky. Guys weren’t so pissed or jealous. Most of the guards appreciated that there was less violence among the prisoners, and a substantial reduction in the drugs that made it to the floors.

  Every so often, I’d get a problem inmate who made my life a living hell. Rick James was one of those guys. He showed up in 1996. He was transferred from another prison and was a real pain in the ass. The lieutenant from Three Building walked over to my office and told me, “I need you to put Rick James into Four Building. He needs to be in a more protected, less violent area.” I wasn’t crazy about the idea of him coming. After my experience with Todd Bridges at County, I knew having a celeb on the tier was gonna cause problems. There was nothing I could do to stop it. They brought him over to the first floor, and I found him a cell. Guys immediately started paying him to sing songs.

  Rick was a drug addict, and one by one, he lost cellie after cellie. Every time I put a guy in there, Rick would cause them to fuck up. Guys were trying to stay clean, but Rick just couldn’t keep it together. I’d finally had enough of his bullshit. Rick and I got into an argument, cussing each other out. I didn’t know Ray was standing behind me. Ray was a huge guy, very muscular. The next thing I knew, this fist flew over my head and knocked Rick James out.

  I spun around. “What the fuck was that for?”

  Ray just shrugged. “I got tired of him being a crying bitch. That is all that man ever did. Cry about everything.” Ray spoke the truth, but it wasn’t gonna save him.

  I yelled at Ray, “You are going to the hole!”

  Fortunately, Rick James didn’t see who hit him. I don’t know how he missed it. I don’t look nothing like Ray, that’s for sure. Ray’s black. I’m white. Ray’s huge, I’m small. It turned into a big investigation. The officers asked me what happened, and I said I didn’t know. I played dumb. “I just turned around and there was a whole bunch of black people, which one was I supposed to pick out?” A corrections officer named Steve Larson, who was a lieutenant and my boss at that time, said, “Come on, Shorty, you know who did it.” I told him, “I’m not telling you.” He whispered, “I just wanna know, so I can shake the man’s hand.” Turns out, Rick James was driving the corrections officers crazy, too. They hated him.

  For the next three years, I ruled Four Building as the slumlord. At the end of each day, I had to give a daily report to all the corrections officers about our numbers, our ethnicity balance, our gang affiliations, etc. There was paperwork for every minor detail. I didn’t mind. It was a small price to pay for the perks. I had so much juice, so much authority, so much power, I got away with everything. I became almost untouchable. The guards couldn’t mess with me, ’cause I knew all the lieutenants and the captains. If some guard was bothering me, I’d just ask my lieutenant to get them off my ass. Scott would tell them, “Don’t fuck with the little guy.” Sometimes, I even got the guards overruled, which was not always an intelligent thing to do. There were some guards who comingled with the inmates, and they would help set up other guys. You had to really watch yourself with those guys.

  When Ray was paroled, I even went so far as to never give myself another cellie. I kept my cell a single. Every now and then, if it got overcrowded, I’d stick somebody in there, but the minute something came open, I scooted them out. I was not the easiest person to live with. Then or now. But nobody else got to live alone. I pushed the personal perks of the job as far as they would go, but I never allowed the job to be used for drug trafficking or for setting some guy up to get beat down. I learned how to play fair and sort of forced the guys in my building to do the same. Not everyone was happy with me about that, but I realized I couldn’t keep everyone happy all the time. If most of the guys were happy, that was good enough for me.

  I got pretty good at m
anaging people and personalities. I got pretty good at negotiating terms, and talking shit out to find a mutually agreeable compromise. I learned to curb my temper and keep the peace, which took some doing. And more than anything, I figured out how to organize and manage a huge system, to keep it running smoothly, and to do it well enough that I didn’t have to be watched with an eagle eye.

  The more freedom I got, the more responsibility I took on, the happier I was. It’s gotta sound weird to people from the outside, but for me, the slumlord job at Folsom was one of the best things to happen in my life. It forced me to grow up and “get a job” in that legit sense of handling a business. It prepped me to be in charge. It gave me the experience I’d need much later to run my own company.

  I didn’t know it then, but looking back now, it’s pretty damn clear. Being the slumlord at Folsom was my unofficial MBA training program.

  There’s a myth that guys mark each day served on the walls of their cells, but that’s not true at all. The only time you mark the days is when you’re in the hole, and even in there, we were lucky enough to have books to read. About six months before my release, I started to feel a change in me. I did start to keep track of the days in my head, and it made me anxious all the time. Folsom was really getting to me. Things bothered me that had never bothered me before. Freedom was so close. I felt like I had to really be on high alert. Guys or guards that don’t like you will plant drugs or needles in your cell, or on your person, just to screw you out of going home. I became more careful with my temper, and trust me, that was hard. I had to be cautious of who I hung around. I didn’t trust many people. Instead of going out to the yard for rec time, I’d sit and play games. I did my best to keep out of trouble. I stayed inside more. When you went out to the yard, you had to stay out there for a set number of hours. You couldn’t just go in and out as you pleased. If I did walk into the yard, and I could sense that something was wrong, I’d turn right around and go back inside. If I heard about things that might happen, or that something was gonna go down, I made sure I was not around. I’d get myself to another building. If I heard gunfire, I’d just stay put. I wasn’t gonna risk ending up in a fight or in a situation that could keep me locked up. I even trained my friend Tony to take over the slumlord job. I relinquished my position, gave away any contraband I had stored in my lockers, and just bided the rest of my time. Better safe than sorry.