Hard Sentences: Crime Fiction Inspired by Alcatraz

by David James Keaton

  I roll into a sitting position and lean my back against the wall. Something scurries across my shoulder, but I ignore it. Of all the days to relive, why does it always have to be that one? I know I’ll never get out of this place, but the thought of another hard reset terrifies me more than anything. To go back to those initial moments . . .

  I can’t think of anything worse. Not even the events that put me here, which rarely cross my mind these days.

  You’re hurting me . . . I can’t breathe . . .

  I sleep as little as possible. I stay up nights and listen to the icy water of the Bay crashing against stone, wind battering the walls around me. Some nights, the wind carries voices with it. The Indians on watch talking softly or singing a traditional song. Something about overflowing rivers and the end of the world. Something about the evils of the moon. It’s almost as if they’re singing about this place.

  “You think we’re making a difference?” I hear one of them say.

  “I don’t know,” says another. “I’m going back to school come September.”

  I rarely, if ever, converse with the other inmates. Thick walls and asshole screws make sure of that. Most times, the hallways are empty, but on occasion they fill with the shuffling of feet as throngs of gawkers are given a private look at where the animals sleep. Or is it slept? But mostly they just echo with the sound of their own emptiness.

  Six-thirty circled the yard, trying to find a spot along the perimeter to post up.

  What’re you in for? A fellow inmate asked. He scratched at his arm, leaving a series of white lines.

  I hurt someone.

  Naw, man. You’re supposed to say you’re innocent. We’re all innocent!

  It was an accident . . .

  Not the same thing. Trust me.

  Six-thirty stared at a loose stitch on the inmate’s jumpsuit. The man’s shadow circled them both as the sun crossed the sky.

  No, really, what’re you—

  The inmate suddenly made a sound like air escaping a tire. Six-thirty watched another man withdraw a long, thin piece of metal from the inmate’s side. Seconds poured out of the tiny puncture wound. He hadn’t even seen the assailant approach, and already the man had moved on, like a spirit. Dropped the shiv at Six-thirty’s feet. It earned him his first stint in the hole.

  Back in the ’40s, before it became my permanent home, they say a man went crazy in 14D. Screamed all night about there being someone in the cell with him. A pair of eyes watching from the corner, reflecting the light.

  Of course the screws ignored him, taunted him, even. Eventually, they got bored and went up to the roof for a smoke. And when they went back to look in on him early the next morning, they found him strangled, rats already chewing at his tongue.

  Probably just a mess-hall tale used to scare new fish. Take it from me, there ain’t no light in the hole. My eyes only shine when the men with the instruments point their shit at me through the bean chute. I’d say they were scientists, but they don’t dress like no scientists I’ve ever seen. Don’t talk like them, either.

  I saw what appeared to be a pair of glowing eyes watching me through the food slot. Reports of such phenomena were a common occurrence in 14D.

  “Dude!” Todd jerked back from the cell door. “Did you get that?”

  Danny whip-panned the camera.

  “Get what?”

  “I just saw two red fucking eyes in there.” He poked his finger towards the slot.

  “Are you sure?”

  “Yeah, I’m fucking sure. Look at the hair on my arm.”

  Todd pulled back a sleeve to reveal a toned forearm.

  “The night vision doesn’t pick it up.”

  Todd let his arm drop. Danny lowered the camera.

  “Dude, did you really see anything?”

  Todd’s scowl accentuated his widow’s peak. He slowly rolled his sleeve back down.

  “I thought I did. Do you want to shoot it again?”

  Danny shook his head.

  “I’ve gotta change the battery on this thing.”

  Six-thirty dropped his slop tray and sat next to his fellow GMTs.

  When they let you out the hole?

  This morning.

  You look like shit.

  Thank you.

  The table laughed. Six-thirty stuck his spoon into the mashed potatoes and it sank to the bottom. He pushed the tray away.

  I’ll eat it.

  A fellow inmate grabbed for the tray. Another inmate, the one who told him he looked like shit, nodded in his direction.

  You okay?

  Six-thirty just stared at the inmate drinking his potatoes.

  You see the man in there? Ol’ You-know-who?

  Six-thirty looked up, a flash of fear in his eyes, a flash of light.

  I am the man.

  The table went quiet. The potato drinker slowly lowered his tray.

  I awake in the dark of the hole. How did I end up here this time? How long have I been asleep? For all I know, time goes backwards when I’m asleep. There’s no way to keep track inside the black.

  Some inmates say the beating of your heart is the closest thing to a ticking clock. That’s why they call it a ticker. That, and it’s like the timer on a bomb, counting down, only you have no idea when it will explode.

  I listen past the metronome of my pulse. The Indians are quiet tonight. Maybe they’ve given up their protest and gone home. Any time I’ve asked the guards about it they look at me like I’m queer. I know better than to bring it up with my fellow inmates. No tours tonight, either. I’d give anything for some company.

  I’ll never forget what happened next. We may have been finished with our investigation, but apparently Alcatraz wasn’t finished with us . . .

  Todd pulled out the Spirit Box as Danny changed the battery on the camera.

  You know we’re not rolling,” Danny said over his shoulder.

  “I know.” Todd held the box out in front of him. It issued a blanket of white noise.

  “I hate to tell you, but people are gonna get tired of the whole ‘it happened off camera’ shtick pretty fast.”

  Todd didn’t respond. He just bore imaginary holes into the box’s digital display. Danny got to his feet and hoisted his camera bag over his shoulder.

  “Come on, man. It’s almost morning, and we still gotta shoot the utility corridor.” Danny started walking down the hall. “Maybe we’ll hear Capone playing his banjo in the shitter.”

  Todd continued to stare at the display. Halfway down the cellblock, Danny stopped, turned back. Todd had already disappeared from sight.

  “You coming, man?” Danny said.

  “Man . . .” said the box from the darkness.

  What’re you in for, anyway?

  Six-thirty looked up from the laundry he folded. A man with red skin stood across the table from him. He wore a thick, wool uniform, different from the rest of the inmates.

  I’m innocent.

  The Indian laughed.

  It’s one thing to say it. But if you want people to believe you’re innocent, you have to believe you’re innocent.

  Six-thirty looked down at his open palms. The Big Hand and the Little Hand, his son had called them.

  Get back to work! The guard on duty hocked a loogie and spat on the ground. Six-thirty resumed folding.

  What’re you in here for? Six-thirty asked.

  Killed a guard.

  What guard?

  That one.

  The Indian nodded towards the guard behind them. Six-thirty turned to look, but there was no one there. When he turned back around the Indian was gone, too.

  I stand in the corner of the hole, watching the man sleeping on the floor. At least I think he’s asleep. It’s hard to tell, considering I can’t really see him. But I can smell him. And as bad as I must smell, he smells worse. I don’t know how the guards got him in here without waking me.

  I clench and unclench my big hand and my little hand as I think about what to do
. The dampness in solitary is murder on the joints. I can yell for the guards, not that they’d come. Or I can wait it out, see if this guy wakes up. Squeaking heralds the arrival of vermin, and I kick to keep them away from the body. I decide to yell.

  The bean chute slams open. I look up, only to have a bright light pointed at my face. I turn away, seeing spots, as the guards demand to know who I am and how I got in here.

  Send 'im a

  Chicago Sunset

  by Nik Korpon

  The needle winked at Capone, a tiny glint of light off the sharp tip.

  “Don’t fucking look at me like that,” he said.

  Unfazed, the doctor said, “Keep your arm still,” before sticking the needle through Capone’s skin and pushing down the plunger, a double dose of penicillin flooding through Capone’s flesh. The doctor pressed a cotton ball against the injection spot, pulled out the needle.

  “What’re y’all playing Sunday? Any new songs?” the doctor said.

  “Not sure yet. Working on a thing or two.”

  The doctor stuck a piece of tape over the cotton ball and said he’d see Capone at the same time tomorrow, then the guard led him away to garden duty.

  Capone scrabbled across the ground, the rocks digging into his knees, the dirt stuffed beneath his fingernails. Sweat rolled from his forehead over his temples, soaking into the cotton work shirt’s collar. He leaned back on his heels, setting the hand-spade on the ground and paused a moment, the salt-water breeze rolling off the bay cooling his brow. Sometimes, if he listened hard enough, he could hear the nasally honk of cars, the clang and clatter of trolleys, the “L” rattling past one of his warehouses, feel himself in the grandstands at Wrigley, the sun bleeding out red around the building as it disappeared beneath the horizon.

  A coolness settled over him. Capone opened his eyes to see a guard backlit against the sun, billy club in hand. “Beauty time’s over, 85,” he said. “Back to work.”

  Capone stared at the man long enough to let him know he’d bow to no man—there were more than thirty corpses to back that up—before bending down to pick up the spade and continuing to dig, loosening the soil to make it easier to pull weeds.

  The gardens were thick with hollyhock, with snapdragons and bleeding hearts. The only thing the garden needed was a couple cherry trees. He leaned forward, his face deep in the red and blue and purple flowers, and inhaled. His mother, Teresa, would’ve appreciated a bouquet of these for her kitchen.

  The sun was scorching away the shadows when he sunk the spade deep into the earth and felt a sharp click, like he’d hit a large rock or cinderblock buried in the dirt. The ground wasn’t the most fertile here, but it wasn’t particularly rocky either, especially not in the gardens. He poked the spade around, trying to determine the size of the impediment, but every jab was soft. He pushed the dirt aside with his fingers until he found the hard shape, scraping his index around the outline like excavating a bone, then pulled it out.

  It was barely the size of his palm, a crudely carved piece of stone, full of odd edges. Capone brushed away the dirt and held it out in the sun. It vaguely resembled the back of a human figure. The sunlight shifted, slipping behind a bank of clouds, as Capone turned the statue over in his hands. What should’ve been the face resembled the back of the head, and now what had been the back resembled a face. The more he turned it, the more it shifted, and he began to feel something in his hands—actually, felt something inside his hands, like the tremor of joy and fear the first time he fired a pistol, but more electric. Not electric. Powerful.

  “85!” the guard barked. His tone said it wasn’t the first time he’d called out. Capone slipped the statue inside his sleeve, turned around slowly, and gave the guard a severe look. “Line up for count. Grub’s in ten.”

  Capone could still feel the lingering tremor in his hands, even hours later at dinner. He half-expected to sink his spoon into the bowl of potato chowder and accidentally fling it across the mess hall. Maybe he’d get lucky and it’d land in O’Brien’s eyes, blind the guy. That mick had been riding Capone since the day he got transferred to the Rock from Atlanta, giving him looks then pretending he didn’t do nothing. If this place wasn’t such a stroll compared to the others he’d been in, Capone would’ve sharpened his fork against the concrete and stuck it in the mick’s throat until it came out the other side.

  “You gonna eat that zucchini?” Oakes said, sitting across from Capone.

  Capone considered the vegetables, then slipped the bowl to the old man when the guard looked away. Oakes was a librarian, came here after robbing a post office in Oklahoma. One of the postmasters had put up a stink; Oakes put two slugs in his face, then a couple in the boy working there just for good measure. He wasn’t a bad guy though. Capone liked him well enough.

  Capone set the bowl back on his tray once the old man was done. “You know what was here before?”

  “We had noodles and meat sauce yesterday,” the old man said.

  “No, here.” Capone jabbed his finger into the table. “This island. Before the big house.”

  Oakes pushed his wire-rimmed glasses up his nose, rested them on the sharp ridge where the broken cartilage had set unevenly. “Spanish settlers, a hundred-fifty years ago. The Union used it to hold prisoners during the Civil War. Sometimes Indians who didn’t want to move off the land.”

  “Indians, huh?” Capone ladled some chowder onto his spoon, dumped it back into the bowl. When he looked up to ask Oakes another question, he saw O’Brien glaring at him from two tables over.

  “The fuck you looking at, you fucking paddy?” Capone said, loud enough that the other men could hear but not so much to throw up flags to the guards.

  O’Brien held up his hands, as if saying, Hey, you got a bone, go blow, pal.

  Capone slammed his fists on the table, went to stand but Oakes laid his hands on Capone’s wrists. “Easy, Al. Easy.”

  Time was, a man would’ve got lead in the eyes for touching Capone, but Oakes was an okay guy, and anyhow, Capone was tired.

  Capone sat on the edge of his bed, banjo resting between his thighs as he tried to perfect a new run he’d been working on. Earlier in the week, he’d struggled with this arrangement, his claw fingers plucking the wrong string, his left-hand fingers tripping as they jumped from note to note. But now, tonight, the music flowed from the banjo, his fingers cascading over frets like a creek over river rock. He caught a glimpse of the statue sitting on the small table beside his bed, which made him pause. His hands thrummed with energy again.

  There was a muttering in the cell beside him. Ear cocked, he listened, waiting for O’Brien to repeat himself. When he didn’t, Capone spoke up.

  “Say it again.”

  Silence.

  “I know what you said, so say it again.”

  More silence. Across the hall, two inmates whispered to each other.

  Capone set the banjo down, walked over to the gate and pressed his face against the metal bars.

  “Say ‘To hell with you Sicilians,’” he growled. “Say it!”

  A loud metallic thwack beside Capone’s head made him stumble backward. The guard pulled back his billy club.

  “You got a problem, 85?”

  “O’Banion thinks he can run his mouth? Thinks I’m some fucking stronzo ain’t going to do anything about, does he? Thinks I don’t tell everyone in Chicago when to piss and where to do it?” He slammed his hands against the railing but the guard didn’t flinch, only gave him a long, considered look.

  “Lights out in ten, 85,” the guard said. “How about you finish up your practice.”

  “Lights out,” Capone spat. “I’ll put his lights out. Make that culo disappear.”

  The guard looked at him a beat longer before stepping aside.

  Capone shoved the banjo away and collapsed on the bed, his body suddenly tired, head filled with smoke. His arm fell to the side, slapping against the table, his fingers grazing the statue. He picked it up without looking, held
it in his hands, turning it over and over, examining every edge, every plane, the way the face remained ever-elusive. Like a man disappearing.

  Capone glanced at the thick cement wall that separated him and that mick fuck. He set his jaw and squinted his eyes, then gripped the statue tight and focused.

  Hastings stepped away from Capone’s cell, keeping one eye on the metal bars as if a disembodied arm would suddenly appear and wrap itself around his neck and hurl him over the railing. Warden Johnston had warned Hastings about Capone when he was assigned to this wing, but this? This was something else.

  Hastings glanced inside O’Brien’s cell, saw the inmate lain back on his bed with a blanket covering his legs and a book propped up in front of his face. A few hunks of dirt—clay maybe, as it looked grey in the evening shadows—speckled the floor at the base of the back wall. It was likely from yard duty, but Hastings had thought O’Brien was on laundry this week.

  Hastings rapped his baton against the cell. “90, you giving him lip again?”

  O’Brien didn’t respond. The book didn’t move.

  “I’m talking to you.”

  Hastings felt blood slush through him, felt the heat rising up his neck as he stared at the unmoving inmate. After a long moment, the book shifted a few inches to the side, enough that one eye, eyebrow cocked, was visible.

  “Whaddayou think?” he said, his Alabaman drawl making the sentence one long string of conjoined words. “I ain’t never even been to Chicago.”

  The book shifted back. Hastings continued his beat.

  A few days later, Hastings was doing the 3:00 a.m. count of his wing. O’Brien lay sideways on his bed, his legs stacked atop each other, arms curled around his head. It looked like there was more dirt on the floor, but it was hard to tell in the dim light. He’d have to tell the inmate to clean his act up if he wanted to keep a cushy position like he had. Hastings went to move on, then paused a moment when he realized he could only see O’Brien’s hair, no indication of a face. Just a blackness beneath the arms, like he wasn’t really there. Hastings’s hand was already going for his keys, his heart pounding at the prospect of an inmate escape, when O’Brien snorted hard and rolled over, his chest heaving like he’d been deprived air.