The Ways of Wolfe

by James Carlos Blake

  15

  Because of the infirmary’s store of drugs, inmates may not work there except under the direct, on-site supervision of a senior corrections officer. When the crew presents itself at the door, CO Mason is seated in the waiting room and chatting with the doctor. The day’s last ailing prisoner has been treated and discharged and the doctor has his coat on, prepared to leave. He takes up his bag and says he hopes to beat the rain home but won’t take bets on it and says so long to Mason.

  In addition to the waiting room, the infirmary comprises an examination room and a rear storeroom containing a large industrial desk and an assortment of high shelves and multiple-bin lockers. The job is a general cleanup plus stocking a load of medical supplies that were supposed to have been received that afternoon. But as Mason informs them, the delivery agent has phoned the main office to say he’s running late. He’d had a flat tire just north of Fort Stockton and won’t get to Zanco till about 4:30. No putting the delivery off, either: Zanco is the guy’s last stop at the end of a two-hundred-mile, daylong route. If he doesn’t make the drop today he won’t be this way again for another two weeks, and the doc wouldn’t be happy about that.

  “Me and you and whatever guy you pick are gonna stay and stock the stuff,” Mason tells Axel. “I’ll cut the others loose soon as the cleanup’s done.”

  The workday ends at four o’clock with another head count in the cell blocks before the inmates are released to supper and the last yard period of the day. However, if an inmate is working on an overtime job, the officer in charge can vouch for his presence at the work site by phoning the duty officer in lieu of sending him back to his cell for the count. Axel and Cacho know that Mason has already contacted the duty officer to apprise him that the infirmary tasks won’t be completed until well after four, so he’ll have the crew escorted to the mess hall from here, and that he and a pair of convicts—Wolfe and Ramirez, inmate numbers thus and such—will be staying at the infirmary to receive a delayed delivery, cartons of medical equipment that have to be handled carefully and sorted and stocked. The job will take till six o’clock, maybe longer, so he’ll be late turning in the maintenance reports.

  Shamming a doleful look at this extension of his duty day, Axel turns to the others to make his choice. They avert their eyes.

  “Ramirez, you’re it,” he says, addressing Cacho.

  “Chingado,” Cacho mutters through his teeth. And makes an “up yours” hand sign to the grinning others.

  16

  “Coupla weeks after you left for college,” Billy said, “I got in a fight and hit the dude over the head with a beer mug and was afraid I’d killed him, so I quick split. Then in San Antonio this fella offered me a job shuttling hot cars from one part of Texas to another. Went real good for a few months before I got pulled over for a dead taillight on a five-year-old Mercedes Coupe. Did two years at Goree Unit before I got paroled. My last few months there I got to know a robber named Gary Duval who was getting out two weeks before me and needed a partner. Asked was I interested and I said yeah. When I got out we met up and he introduced me to the robbery trade. Near to five months ago. We hit nothing but bagmen who make daily collections from the street sellers and then deliver the week’s take to the dealers. I tell you, bud, I never known juice like it. The gamblers got a saying, maybe you know it. They say won money is sweeter than earned money, and I guess it is. In gambling, though, the money’s the only thing at stake and your biggest risk is going broke. But every time you go out to do a robbery you’re staking your ass, and that risk beats just everything. It makes robbed money the sweetest kind there is, let me tell you. Anyhow, we worked out of Port Arthur, where Gary rented a house. He’d buy tips on bagmen—their pickup routes, where they lived, all that—and we were doing two rips a month. By “we,” I mean me and Gary and a driver named Bud. We always used a stolen car and Gary and I carried cut-off 12-gauge pumps. We’d hit them on the morning of delivery day. Wait down the street from where they live till they come out. Most of them got a bodyguard who usually does the driving. When they got in their car, Bud would zoom up and block them and Gary and me would jump out and poke the shorties in their faces on either side of the car and Gary’d strip the bagman of his piece and the money while I took the driver’s gun and snatched the keys outta the ignition, then we’d jump back in the car and get gone. We were doing good till one night little more than two weeks ago when Bud starts coughing blood and we take him to the emergency room and two days later he dies. We still didn’t have a driver when Gary goes to this bar in Bridge City with a redhead whose husband’s on the road a lot, and they’re drinking at the bar when hubby comes through the front door with a revolver in his hand. The way the bartender told it to the cops the hubby never said a word, just bam-bam-bam-bam, shot Gary four times. People screaming, running out the doors. Wifey tried to make a run for it and bam-bam he shoots her in the ass and down she goes. She’s still crawling for the side door and he’s walking toward her and reloading when the bartender pulls his own piece and shoots hubby in the brainpan and that was all she wrote. I heard about it on the radio the next day, and there I was with zero partners. That was two days ago. The kicker is, three days ago a fix-up guy Gary knows—one of those guys who for a price can fix you up with information, partners, buyers, whatever you need—he’d called Gary to ask were we interested in meeting a San Antone guy in need of two partners for some kinda major league score. Said the guy was Mexican but spoke good English. It’d cost us a grand for a meet, same as the Mex. Gary’d been wanting to move up from bagman rips, so he says yeah and goes and gives the fix-up the money and gets the time and place for the meet, which was at this fancy little café four nights from then.”

  “Meaning tomorrow,” Axel says.

  “Meaning tomorrow. But my problem is—”

  “You need a partner,” Axel says. “I’m in.”

  Billy gawked at him. “Jesus, man! Just like that? I thought I’d have to talk and talk and you’d still say no on account you’re—”

  “I just want to know, why come to me?”

  Billy grinned. “Well, hell, you never did lack for sand or, well … strike me as a toe-the-line sort. I’ve heard some of the stories they tell around Brownsville about those old-time Wolfe badasses and their outlaw ways. Always had a hunch you might have a touch of those ways in you.” Only now did Axel grasp how well Billy had come to know him. Quicker than I’ve come to know myself, he thinks. “Good hunch. Like I said, I’m your huckleberry.”

  “You’re sure? I mean … you got a family, dude.”

  “I know what I’ve got.”

  “You can’t say nothing to your wife. I ain’t saying she can’t be trusted, just that—”

  “She’ll never know a thing.” Axel put his elbow on the table and raised his hand as if challenging him to arm-wrestle.

  Billy laughed and clasped it. “Amberlight Tavern, downtown,” he said. “Eight o’clock tomorrow night. I’m Billy Jones, you’re Axel Smith. Wear a jacket.”

  17

  The infirmary is a more orderly venue than most and its cleanup is quick and easy. They’re just finishing up when the storm crashes over the prison. The rain pounding the roof, thunderclaps ripping and blasting across the sky, the detonations tinkling the glass containers in the cabinets. When the overhead lights flicker, the other Mexican, Santos, says, “Ay, dios!” and makes the sign of the cross. With his back to the others, Cacho looks at Axel and silently mouths, “God loves us.”

  Now there’s only the storeroom to attend to. It’s at the back of the infirmary, its rear door abutting a circular driveway where convicts requiring hospitalization are picked up and where medical shipments are delivered. The room’s sole window overlooks the driveway and glows with every lightning flash. Wind gusts fling the rain against it like gravel. Axel tells the crew to set the big trash bags next to the back door and he and Cacho will take them out to the Dumpster after they unload the coming delivery. “We’re anyway gonna get we
t unloading, so what the hell,” he says. He glances at the digital clock on the wall. It’s ten after four.

  Mason ushers the other three men of Axel’s crew back out to the waiting room, where he phones for a CO to come and provide the mandatory escort for them through the administration annex. Axel and Cacho stand at the storeroom window and stare out at the storm, the panes framing a rain-streaked view of the main fence about forty yards away and the high guard tower alongside it—Number Four Tower—its square booth bordered by an outer walkway. A narrow access lane connects the infirmary driveway to an inner perimeter road that runs all the way around the prison.

  The lights are on in the tower booth and the guard inside is a vague figure. From his vantage he has a clear view of the infirmary door. One of his duties is to keep a close eye on every vehicle that makes a delivery there. He is another of the inside men.

  18

  Cacho arrived at Zanco in the early spring under the name of Carlos Ramirez, the name on his Texas driver’s license, and three weeks later was assigned to Axel’s maintenance crew. They sat next to each other at the midday meal and the kid said to call him Cacho, which Axel knew was a common nickname for Carlos. There was nothing of the toady about him, and Axel liked his sense of humor, and when they finished eating they went out to the yard together. The kid already knew the rules of convict life well enough not to pry beyond the permissible limits of asking what Axel was in for and for how long. When Axel told him he was doing thirty for armed robbery plus another five for assault of a CO, Cacho said, “Damn, old-timer, you’re hardcore.” On learning he had been at Zanco for ten years, the kid said, “No shit? Man, I guess you know this joint pretty good by now.”

  “Like a zoo monkey knows its cage.”

  Cacho scratched at his ribs like a monkey and said, “Uh-uh-uh,” and they both laughed.

  They continued to converse through the afternoon maintenance jobs, shutting up whenever a CO or even another con was within earshot. At the end of that first workday together, when Axel said he was going to take a jog before supper, Cacho asked if he could join him. He considered for a moment and had to admit to himself he liked the kid. And so said, “Why not?”

  Thus did he accept the first friend he’d ever had inside the walls.

  Cacho told him he had been born in Monterrey and lived in Mexico all his life, mostly on the border, but was familiar with a lot of Texas border towns, plus San Antonio. He was orphaned at twelve when the bus his parents were taking to visit Sabinas went off a bridge and into a river. He then went to live with his much older half-brother, Joaquín, who had grown up in the riverside border town of Nuevo Laredo and now owned a real estate company there. Joaquín spoke English fluently and Cacho had learned it from him and from watching gringo TV shows.

  Before coming to Zanco, he’d been in two processing units at the start of a ten-year sentence for a fight he got into in San Antonio. He was standing outside a nightclub with his date when some dude grabbed her ass, so he went at him with both fists. Next thing he knew somebody was whacking him from behind with a club and so he tore into him, too, and fucked him up pretty bad—facial fractures, damage to one eye. Turned out the guy was a security guard. From jail he called his brother, who got him a lawyer who couldn’t do much against a dozen witnesses who’d seen him pounding the guard. He drew ten years for aggravated assault. The lawyer told him that as soon as he was processed into the system and assigned to a regular unit, another lawyer would go to see him and handle his appeal. Cacho had been at Zanco a week when an El Paso attorney named Somoza came to visit and promised he would visit on every Saturday to come.

  From the start, the kid was impressed by Axel’s store of knowledge and wanted to know how he’d acquired it. “I read, you oughta try it,” Axel said, but soon after admitted that he’d gone to college for three years.

  “You were in college and got jammed for armed robbery?” Cacho said. “How does that happen?”

  “I fell in with wayward companions.”

  “Yeah, right. I hear that happens to a lot of college guys, making friends with robbers and falling into the life. You got some strange ways, old-timer, you know that?”

  “So I’ve been told.”

  Other than the facts of having gone to college and of his prison record, Axel told Cacho no other truth about his past. He claimed to be an orphan, too, to have no living kin at all. The only visitor he got, he told Cacho, was an old college buddy named Charlie. It wasn’t so much that he didn’t trust the kid with the truth but that all his convict years had made it second nature to lie, to hide things about himself. The unknown truths about you are among the few things you can truly possess in prison, that you can refuse to relinquish. So he did.

  He had known the kid only six weeks on the day they were walking in the yard after the midday meal and Cacho said, “Hey, old man, what say we bust out of this zoo?”

  19

  At 4:20, Axel says, “Where is he?”

  Cacho shrugs. “Storm’s probly slowed him.”

  The escort guard having collected the other three crew members, CO Mason returns to the storeroom. He has locked the front door and flung the ring of keys into a corner of the waiting room. His face is drawn tight. Axel knows he isn’t looking forward to what he’s in for. Who would be?

  “What, he ain’t here yet?” Mason says.

  Cacho keeps his gaze out the window and says nothing. Axel doesn’t know whether to admire the kid’s cool or be irked by it.

  At 4:25, Axel whispers to Cacho, “Flare’s in twenty minutes.”

  “I know it,” the kid says, without taking his eyes from the window.

  “This thing’s fucked!” Mason says, pacing on the other side of the room. “You shitbirds got no idea what the hell you’re—”

  “He’s here,” Cacho says.

  A pair of blurred yellow headlights has appeared on the perimeter road. And now they can see the small white vehicle that always makes the twice-monthly delivery of medical supplies, a Chevy panel van of a sort widely used by florists. It turns onto the access lane and bears toward them.

  20

  The Amberlight Tavern was a low-tempo place catering to young business types. Soft music, hanging plants, booths all along a side wall opposite the bar. Billy had arrived ahead of him, and it took Axel a moment to spot them in the rearmost booth. As he made his way toward them, Billy saw him and gave a passing waitress a three-finger signal.

  He slid in on Billy’s side. He and Billy wore sport jackets, the Mexican a glossy blue suit. He was thickly black-haired, big-shouldered, with a brush mustache. Late thirties, was Axel’s guess. Billy introduced him as Duro Cisneros and they exchanged nods.

  “Smith and Jones,” Cisneros said with a smile, his voice a deep rasp.

  A tall blonde in a black pantsuit and red bowtie brought three large drafts and set them on the table. As she collected the two empties, Cisneros reached up with one hand to adjust her tie, eliciting a stiff smile from her, and Axel glimpsed a small red crescent on the man’s inner wrist.

  “So, Mister Cisneros,” Axel said after the waitress left. “Who are you?”

  “A guy in the same business as you boys, Mister Smith, only a better-paying end of it. I’m good enough at it I’m here and not in some cell, same as you. My favorite color’s blue and I like Pacino movies. Enough of the get-to-know-you?”

  “Fine by me. What’ve you got?”

  Cisneros leaned forward. “Bearer bonds. I told your buddy while we were waiting, but he doesn’t know what that is. You?”

  “Interest-bearing instruments. They’re not registered to the people who buy them. Not registered to anybody. Whoever holds a bearer bond can collect the interest on it to maturity or redeem it anytime, no ID required. But they make it too easy to evade taxes, launder money, all that, and the feds stopped issuing them more than a year ago. There’s a lot of them still in circulation, though, and you can still buy them in Europe.”

  “Your buddy sa
id you’re smart. College guy.”

  “That’s me. How much is the rip?” Axel said.

  “Seven fifty K.”

  “Jesus,” Billy said. “No shit?”

  Cisneros smiled. “No shit.”

  “What’s the play?” Axel said.

  “Jewelry store, but fuck the jewels. Pain in the ass to fence and too easy to get cheated. The thing is, the store’s also a laundry and a drop for an investment company does all sorts of illegit shit. It’s got no ties to any outfit, of that I’m sure. If it did I wouldn’t touch it. The store’s run by an old man, got a guard. Around ten o’clock on a morning not very long from now, somebody’s gonna stop by that store to drop off the bonds and collect some jewels. Then just before noon, somebody else is coming by to pick up the bonds. Only the bonds won’t be there anymore because we’ll have them. There’s a security camera that wouldn’t help the cops much even if they saw it, but the company’s not about to call them. They won’t want to discuss bearer bonds with them or the IRS.”

  “Your guy knows all this?” Axel said.

  “He does. That’s why he gets seventy-five. He buys the paper from us for six seven-five, I get two seventy-five, you each get two. If it’s not enough, we’re done talking.”

  Axel and Billy exchanged a look.

  “Why not we cash them?” Billy said. “Get another twenty-five apiece?”

  “Listen to you. Be the most you ever had in your hand and already you wanna bump it. The guy’s a pal. Him and me play straight with each other. He gave me the lead, he gets his cut.”

  “Who is he?” Axel said.

  “My business.”

  “How’s he know about all this?” Billy said.

  “His business.”

  “Yeah, all right,” Axel says. “But I take it the carriers are pros, which is why you aren’t doing the job by yourself, why you’re talking to us.”