Hard Sentences: Crime Fiction Inspired by Alcatraz

by David James Keaton

  Sean pointed at the squat warehouse atop piles. “There’s Pier 40! And I bet that’s The Clearwater!”

  Corey grimaced. “A little louder, butthole. I don’t think they heard you in Sausalito.” And he blew a streamer of smoke to conceal a shiver.

  “Sorry,” Sean muttered. He slid hands down his jacket, personally magic-markered with peace signs, anti-war slogans, and song lyrics by The Birds and The Doors, an emulation of any number of returning vets he’d seen on TV. He checked his watch. “Boat leaves in ten.”

  Corey pitched his half-smoked butt. “Let us endeavor then.”

  TRANSCRIPT EXCERPTS

  Recorded at Holy Light Retirement Home, Miami, FL, 6/2/16, 2:00 p.m., EST.

  INTERVIEWER: Sean Able Paredes (SAP), 59, owner of website, The ApolloInitiative.com.

  SUBJECT: Meryl Leonard Fross (MLF), 91, former Alcatraz inmate.

  Time stamp: (4:32 of 19:51)

  MLF: Remind me again why we’re talking?

  SAP: Oh, as the email said, I’m writing a book. On the 1962 escape?

  MLF: A book, huh?

  SAP: Mr. Fross, you approached me, remember?

  MLF: Yes! So I did. Sorry. Noodle ain’t what it used to be.

  SAP: Whose is? Do you remember the dates you served?

  MLF: Just 4 months in ’62, for armed robbery. Before transfer to McNeil Island.

  SAP: And in that period, you gained intimate knowledge of the escapes of Frank Morris and John and Clarence Anglin?

  MLF: Oh, indeed I did.

  SAP: Okay then. Let’s begin.

  Getting aboard The Clearwater wasn’t hard. Not for Corey.

  He approached the two men loading boxes of Campbell’s Soup and drinking water, and asked for passage to Alcatraz, claiming to be Hopi from Arizona.

  The two men—genuine Indians—sized up the boys. Swapped dubious glances that wilted once Corey tossed them each a fresh pack of Salem’s, and they were off.

  Passing under the Bay Bridge an hour later, the ornery chop nudging the repurposed trawler perpetually west, they at last spotted the mound of Alcatraz in the distance sifting through an inbound veil of fog. Campfires pinpricked the southern headlands, the government having cut off the power and water that very morning.

  “Did you know a Geronimo contemporary did time there after the Civil War?” asked Sean. “That as many prisoners were native peoples as were gangsters?”

  Corey tried to pass off his seasickness as ants-in-the-pants discomfort. “That a fact?”

  “A stone-cold one.”

  They said nothing more on route, having exhausted their words on the bus ride from L.A. In hushed, excited bursts, they spoke of the famed stash of contraband supposedly accrued by the four wardens of Alcatraz, hidden away in the mansion by the lighthouse. And while Sean also looked forward to mingling with the Indians who’d staked out the island for over a year, claiming it as tribal land, Corey’s lure hinged on the possibilities of booze, grass, and girls. He consigned the famed 1962 escape and Indian affairs to tourists. Yet he was willing to share in the grounding risk with Sean, what with both their parents collectively new-aging under the presumption their boys were headed to 4-H camp in Big Sur.

  That lie alone sold him on the exploit.

  Time stamp: (7:08 of 19:51)

  SAP: Wait. Earlier you said you only spoke to Allen West in the yard. Now you claim he was your cell neighbor?

  MLF: Yuh-huh. His cell was B-140. Mine was B-142.

  SAP: And West told you escape details?

  MLF: In a roundabout way. The man was a terminal mutterer. Happened a lot inside. The isolation and all. I guess he figured he was being quiet, but at night you could hear fleas fucking in the basement. He kept repeating the plan: raft to Angel Island, then swim the Raccoon Strait to Tiburon, then steal a car and drive north. Sometimes he’d even mention a boat to San Diego, and contacts in Mexico. Man, Morris kept shushing him day and night. He was West’s neighbor opposite. Cell B-138.

  SAP: Did you know Frank Morris?

  MLF: Naw. Seen him in the mess, of course, but he carried a bad air with him. Like if he’d caught you staring, he’d have chewed out your eyes.

  SAP: Never heard that one.

  MLF: So you really spent time on The Rock with them Indian squatters, huh?

  SAP: About 9 months, yes.

  MLF: That a fact?

  SAP: (laughter) A stone-cold one.

  MLF: Man, if I had a buck for every swarthy some-bitch claimed he camped with them Alcatraz Indians, I could’ve bought The Rock myself by now.

  SAP: You don’t believe me?

  MLF: Look, Poncho, everyone needs their stories. Their myths. Lies and self-delusion keep the clocks wound.

  SAP: What if I told you I slept on the warden’s bed, too?

  MLF: Really? You know, from my cell, I could see the top of that damn house from the gallery windows? Always daydreamed of dropping a monster shit on Warden Johnston’s pillow. Too bad your people burnt the place down.

  SAP: Well, accidents happen.

  MLF: That what it was? ’Cause my understanding, official report was inconclusive.

  SAP: As you’ve said, people need their stories. Let’s get back to West and Morris . . .

  Three days of tent speeches, fire-dances, and waving at the ubiquitous Coast Guard cutter circling the island, and a state-of-the-union meeting for all 324 inhabitants of Alcatraz was finally called by the acting leader of The Indians of All Tribes in the recreation yard.

  Sean waited by the north service entrance of the warden’s house when Corey finally appeared.

  “Is that blood?” Sean asked of the smears on Corey’s arms and forehead that the cutter’s sweeping lights inflamed in quick bursts.

  Corey glanced at his skin, and shrugged. “Nope. Just helped this crazy Navaho paint some graffiti on the water tower though.”

  “Well, we probably had an hour, tops,” said Sean. Corey had been toking steady from the moment they’d docked, and Sean wondered if his friend even realized the terra cotta shade of the paint he used matched that of the Golden Gate Bridge. “You sure you’re ready for this?”

  Corey noogied a knuckle into Sean’s chest.

  “Hell yeah I’m ready! As in an I-just-met-this-cool-beatnik-chick-from-Oregon-who’s-aching-for-some-liquor ready, you catch my drift, son?”

  Sean nodded despite the guilt riming his veins. Not the safe, lilywhite guilt of anticipation on the ride over, but the ice-hard shame of actual violation in progress. He’d come to sympathize with the American Indian Movement and their mission. Between his explorations of the cellblocks for escape clues, he’d befriended some of the leadership and inquired of their personal stories, but when asked to reciprocate, he’d found himself twisting his half-Mexican, yet privileged, heritage into a yarn of subjugated Aztec plight.

  “Now to get in . . .” he said.

  Corey winked, then dropped suddenly to all fours with a dramatic flourish and crawled to an array of potted petunias by the door and lifted the only spray of purple amongst pink. A brass key winked underneath, and he grinned up at Sean, eyes glinting naughty. “It’s a prison, son. Cigarettes equal gold. Now let’s find us some booty.”

  Time stamp: (12:13 of 19:51)

  MLF: I’m telling you, Poncho, they drowned! Ain’t no way they survived those currents and that cold. Not the Anglins, not Morris with his goddamned genius IQ. Didn’t you see the movie? Even Eastwood couldn’t have swum that shit.

  SAP: I’ve studied Alcatraz my whole life, Meryl. I know all the tales. Give me something not from Wikipedia.

  MLF: Okay. West blubbered all night in his cell after he couldn’t break through the roof, whining how he also screwed up busting out of a Florida pen the year before. He admitted to guard help there, so research that. Runty-looking bastard. Always stunk of moleskin. When the guards dragged him out in the morning, his things were still tied around his ankle.

  SAP: Interesting.

  MLF: Still don�
�t believe me, huh?

  SAP: Frankly, I question if you even did time on the Rock.

  MLF: Yeah? Well screw off then.

  SAP: Between 1,557 and 1,576 prisoners served in Alcatraz, depending on the lists. That’s a 19-prisoner disparity. Maybe you were too transitional. Possible they kept poor records for turnarounds under 6 months.

  MLF: I personally know of ten men who did short time there before transfers. I’ll give you names. If you can’t find at least one, feel free to call me a liar.

  SAP: Convenient, since they’re likely all dead by now.

  MLF: Know what? I don’t believe you either.

  SAP: Believe what?

  MLF: Your bullshit. That you were ever there. With the Indians. Living in the warden’s mansion before it burned.

  SAP: Except I know exactly how that happened.

  MLF: Yeah? Injun reprisal? Getting back at whitey?

  SAP: You really want to know?

  MLF: What’s the catch?

  SAP: Your full confession that you’re not Meryl Fross, but are in fact, Frank Morris.

  The boys borrowed the full moon and slicing shafts of light the Coast Guard provided to move about the mansion.

  Corey whistled upon entering the foyer. Marveled at all the oak paneling and detailing the plain exterior belied.

  “Fancy-schmancy,” he said. “Wayne Manor had a baby.”

  “Did you know Al Capone tried to bribe Warden Johnston into letting him sleep in one of the mansion bedrooms instead of his cell?” Sean asked.

  “That a fact?”

  “A stone-cold one.”

  Corey simpered at Sean’s sluggish gaping of the space. Of everything since their arrival, really. He’d long worried of his friend’s faraway gazes. Of eyes that pushed at outlying barriers, and of a brain that perpetually approached escape velocity, threatening to leave the world behind.

  “Paper, rock, scissors,” Corey announced suddenly.

  “For what?”

  “Just play along, huh, butt-wipe?”

  They shook fists three times, and Sean’s scissors caved under Corey’s rock, and Corey said, “You get the downstairs, I got the upstairs. Holler if you find anything.”

  Corey took the stairs two at a time, just as the Coast Guard cutter brayed its hourly bullhorn call for their peaceful retreat from Alcatraz.

  Sean explored the living and dining rooms. Studied all the paintings and photographs on the walls. He poked his head into the maid’s quarters, then into a game room of pressed-tin ceiling tiles and a billiard’s table the size of a Cadillac Fleetwood, and eventually he wandered into the parlor.

  Behind a walnut desk, several glass cases had been inset within the bookshelves, and when he peered in he couldn’t believe his eyes.

  Four papier-mâché masks of crude half-faces resting on velvet pillows.

  From what he’d read, he knew the hair was real, smuggled from the prison barbershop. The “flesh,” a composite of water, toilet paper, and sawdust from the woodshop. And as the cutter’s lights swept through the windows, he beheld a rapid snapshot of each decoy of the men who’d broken out, glimpsing them how he imagined the passing guards did at night, and he realized that for split-second looks, the masks passed muster. Just as he was about to call out to Corey, the other’s voice yelled from upstairs for him to come up.

  Sean ascended the stairs, and at the top landing made out a sliver of flickering yellow at the end of the nearly pitch-black hall. He pushed open the door and entered the southernmost room, likely the warden’s master suite. A large four-poster bed and fireplace. A pair of tall windows framing a dolled-up San Francisco across the Bay.

  “Corey?”

  “In here,” came the muffled reply from a side door.

  Sean peered in. Old clothes draped in butcher paper hung from rods along both walls. At the rear, they’d been shifted aside to reveal a secondary door, low and narrow.

  “Corey, you won’t believe what I found downstairs!”

  A moment later, Corey emerged cradling a box overflowing with Playboy magazines and bottles of whiskey. “Glad now I brought so many cigarettes?” he replied, smirking.

  “Holy crap . . .”

  Corey nodded. “Eureka, son.”

  Time stamp: (14:04 of 19:51)

  MLF: See, that’s bullshit, too. Morris hailed from DC. I’m Baltimore, born-and-bred.

  SAP: Ex-cons are creatures of habit. They think they’re clever, even after caught lying red-handed.

  MLF: Ha! Shows what you know.

  SAP: How’d you survive that swim? How’d you avoid the dragnet afterwards?

  MLF: Mine ain’t to prove. You’re the DA, Poncho.

  SAP: Your flips are showing, Frank.

  MLF: How’d that mansion really burn? (Sounds of paper rustling)

  SAP: Your last registered license plate in 1997 was Georgia, 1441ZA. AZ1441 was Frank Morris’s prisoner number. You asked specifically for this room for the view. Room 831. The reverse of Frank’s cell in Alcatraz, 138. You claim birth directly across a river. Hell, even your initials are reversed. Meryl Leonard Fross. Frank Lee Morris.

  (Clicking sound)

  MLF: What’s the piece for, Poncho?

  SAP: For the truth. I got you, jailbird. And my name’s not Poncho. And it’s not Sean either.

  (Muffled pop)

  Under candlelight, they explored file-box after file-box, rifling the contents and wowing at the plethora of improvised shivs while chortling at Archie comics and stacks of Life Magazine defaced by the more creative and vulgar inmates. Mustaches on women. Peckers for men’s noses.

  Corey arrayed confiscated booze by proof level. Piled Playboys by year, and after a while, by month as another box overflowing with buxom covers was fleshed out. Sean marveled at his friend’s seemingly conjured-from-the-ether sense of organization. Suddenly he’d merged a museum curator to a horny tomcat. At one point, Corey dragged a box from the lowest shelf, opened it, and foot-shoved it to the side to join the “boring” pile, and only because he’d replaced the lid with a date printed on one corner did Sean notice it.

  “Holy hell, Corey!” he yelped, yanking off the lid.

  “What? Hey, have you seen a Bettie Page issue? Should be January 1955. I’d screw a chicken for a spread of that woman.”

  Sean pointed at the box and at last said, “6/12/62? That’s the date. The date they escaped.”

  “Who?”

  “Who? Frank Morris? The Anglin Brothers?”

  Corey’s mouth-O suggested a crowning egg in the offing before cracking to a raspberry. “Well there you go. Say, why don’t you take that into the other room and solve the great mystery, huh? I’ll handle the boobs.”

  But Sean was already halfway out with the box. He upended the contents on the merlot satin bedspread, puffing combers of dust in all directions.

  Dossiers on the three escapees made up the heaviest items, plus a couple that had aided and abetted, including Allen West, the fourth con who couldn’t cut his way to the roof in time. The remaining material consisted of handwritten notes on prison stationary, mugshots, guard interviews, and assorted schedules dating back a month before the escape.

  So absorbed he’d become perusing the ephemera that he almost didn’t notice Corey heal-toeing to the bathroom.

  “What’s up?” Sean asked.

  Corey froze. In his hands, a candle like the one in the closet, with a stack of Playboys tucked under his arm.

  “Nature calls,” he said, smiling sheepish, and shuffled quickly into the bathroom.

  The squeal of a draw bolt. Sean shrugged and resumed his study.

  The final item he cleared space for at the foot of the bed and accordioned open. A nautical survey of the Bay. Alcatraz and Angel Island. X’s scribed in red marker on the southwest shore of Angel, with three dotted lines leaving Alcatraz. From there, two dotted lines running north to Sausalito, with a third shooting west, under the Golden Gate Bridge and off the map altogether.

  Fo
r each set of lines, a set of three numbers ending in question marks, and his pulse double-timed. He’d seen enough McHale’s Navy and Sea Hunt to recognize coordinates anywhere.

  Had the escapees survived after all? Did these bearings reveal their destinations?

  So oblivious to time he’d become that at first he attributed the smell of smoke to his imagination going full-tilt. But then a flushed, coughing Corey stumbled out of the bathroom a moment later, a full grey billow trailing him.

  “We gotta scram,” he said, and stiff-walked towards the door, buckling his pants.

  The bathroom suddenly flared yellow and hot. Flames licked up the drapes, catching from the charring, wilting magazine opened at what Sean guessed was a Linda Gamble centerfold, carefully perched atop a soap dish opposite the toilet.

  His friend’s hangdog face hovered by the door. “I . . . tried to put it out,” he said, before turning defensive at Sean’s glare. “I accidentally kicked over the candle as I . . . Never mind! Leave that crap and let’s go!”

  Outside, and already the fire had blown out the bathroom window and a wooly, leaden column rose against the moon. Men were running from the rec yard, yelling for hoses and buckets. The boys ducked behind a garden wall and waited for a more substantial crowd to get lost in, but by then the whole mansion was engulfed, casting its secrets to the sky in flame and embers.

  Time stamp: (16:48 of 19:51)

  MLF: That’s a quality silencer, but you don’t aim too good, son. Pull 6 inches to your right next time.

  SAP: I wasn’t trying to kill you, Frank. Just expose you. It’s what I do.

  MLF: Then you do what you gotta, and I’ll do what I gotta. Let the world outrun us both.

  SAP: Not a chance. Goodbye, Frank. Gotta catch a flight.

  END OF INTERVIEW

  PROPERTY OF MIAMI DADE COUNTY POLICE

  Disembarking The Clearwater at Pier 40 the morning after fire gutted the warden’s house to its concrete bones, as several plain-clothed cops greeted the first of the exodus.