Noble Warrior

by Alan Lawrence Sitomer

  Puwolsky lunged and M.D. flinched, but the colonel’s meaty hand passed over McCutcheon’s lap and yanked open the glove box. “G’head. Check the registration.”

  Puwolsky threw the car’s papers into M.D.’s lap, and sure enough the registration proved the car belonged to a Ms. Madeline Vina on 13579 Sycamore Street.

  “I tell the truth, kid. I ain’t perfect by any stretch, but anyone who works for me—excuse me, works with me—knows I tell the truth.” M.D. put the papers back in the glove box as Puwolsky threw the car in gear and got ready to pull away. McCutcheon turned his head and looked out the window. Larson flipped him the bird.

  M.D. didn’t respond.

  “Your colonel,” Puwolsky said as they exited the parking lot. “Lemme guess. He doesn’t think you should do this, does he?”

  McCutcheon rolled his eyes, the answer too obvious for words.

  “Did he tell you why not?” Puwolsky asked.

  “’Cause you’re a dirty cop with a history of being investigated by Internal Affairs.”

  Puwolsky snapped his head around at the mention of Internal Affairs and opened his mouth to spit out a fiery defense of his actions. However, before any words escaped from his lips, Puwolsky reconsidered his response and spoke in a subdued tone.

  “Done some research, I see.”

  “Always.”

  “Then you’ve seen that nothing big’s ever stuck?”

  “That’s because Detroit’s too fucked up at the top to get anything right.”

  “Exactly,” Puwolsky said. “And that’s why sometimes we gotta break the rules. It’s the only way to get shit done. Me and your colonel, we’re not so different like that, are we?”

  McCutcheon ripped open a package of raw almonds. Getting some energy in him before entering the state prison struck him as a good idea.

  “I gotta feeling you are,” M.D. replied.

  “You’re right, we are. We are very different, son.” Puwolsky sped down the highway driving like most cops do: as fast as he wanted, with little regard for the rules of the road they expect civilians to follow. “I’ve burned through three marriages; your idol’s never been hitched once. I got four kids; he’s got zip. I coach a basketball team for inner-city youth down at the rec center; he wouldn’t know how to identify a volunteer if she lifted her blouse and waggled her bazungas at him.”

  “What’s your point?” McCutcheon asked.

  “My point is that you’ve been played, son.”

  M.D. shook his head. “Whatever.”

  “Listen to me,” Puwolsky said. “You do not have to do this. I mean that. You are still free to say no. Just give me the word.”

  They drove along in silence, each man thinking many thoughts, neither speaking to the other. Puwolsky turned the speed of the windshield wipers from medium to high as the intensity of the rainstorm grew. Forty-five minutes passed without a word between them until a white sign, its letters written in simple black print, appeared on the side of the road.

  APPROACHING JENTLES STATE PRISON

  WARNING: DO NOT PICK UP HITCHHIKERS

  “My offer still stands,” Puwolsky said. “’Cause once you cross through those gates up there, son, it’s an entirely different world.”

  “What do you mean, Stanzer played me?” M.D. asked.

  Puwolsky exited the highway, turned left, and drove up the long, single lane service road exclusively used by the prison.

  “I betcha he said you had to let the girl go, didn’t he? Fucking people who have never opened their hearts to love, they just don’t get it, do they?”

  M.D. stared at the wipers zip-zapping across the windshield, throwing spray off the glass.

  “Betcha he also said you needed to make your own decision about this, too. That he couldn’t make ’em for you,” Puwolsky continued. “Guys like him, they get off on getting in your head and making you feel like they really tried, but in the end, also making you feel like you have to make your own choices in this world. Thing is, all this guy has is his career. No marriage, no family, no kids…his career means too much to him—it’s his entire life—and now that his little experiment with you has gone to piss, he knows he might fry.”

  M.D. wrinkled his brow, the look on his face clearly saying, What do you mean, gone to piss?

  “The reason I am telling you this is ’cause I only work one way: I shoot straight, tell the truth,” Puwolsky said. “You’re just a pawn to guys like Stanzer. Always have been. He loses you, it’s just another chess piece. He loses his job, however, and he loses his complete identity.”

  To M.D., Puwolsky was a jerkhead whose words didn’t add up. Stanzer had never been like that with McCutcheon. No, his colonel might not have supported this choice, but Stanzer had never done anything to make M.D. believe he could not be trusted. “I know you don’t believe me. If I were you, I probably wouldn’t believe me either,” Puwolsky said as the vehicle cruised up the service road and silver spirals of barbed wire fence appeared on the horizon. “But that’s because you don’t know all the facts.”

  “What facts?”

  “Me, I told you the truth from day one. I told it to you straight about the death of your gym buddies. I told it to you straight about the fact that your father sits inside those walls up ahead. And I told it to you straight about the danger to your girl. But Stanzer, he’s Mister Fucking Mind Game. Been lying to you since the beginning.”

  “What beginning?”

  “The very beginning. The get-go. What, you need a map?” Puwolsky said. “They had their eyes on bringing you in to do their undercover dirty work ever since that day Freedman called in, playing the ‘favor-for-an-old-friend’ card.”

  “You know Mr. Freedman, my old high school science teacher?” M.D. asked.

  “Me, no. But my department was looped in on the search for your sister when she was abducted, and I know that it wasn’t just an accident that you got plunked into Wit Sec soon thereafter. Usually it’s the middle class or even the rich folks that get that kind of protection. Families from the ghetto? No offense, but we don’t have the resources to protect all the people from the ’hood who need an angel to look out for them. Your ticket got punched because they saw value in you.”

  “Who saw value in me?” M.D. asked. For the first time, Puwolsky’s words did make sense. When Gemma had been abducted, McCutcheon turned to the only person he could—Mr. Freedman, his high school science teacher—and Mr. Freedman was the one who brought in the FBI.

  That’s how Gemma was saved. That’s how Sarah was found. And that’s how McCutcheon ended up in a white van bound for Bellevue.

  “Lemme guess: not soon after you were taken away to some new city you’d never even heard of, they fed you that ‘Come fight for the red, white, and blue’ shit. The ‘do your duty, higher calling, America needs your service’ line. That how they get you?”

  Puwolsky read McCutcheon’s face, a furrowed brow telling him everything he needed to know about the answer.

  “You were played, son. You were their target before you even knew they existed, an experiment to see if teenage operatives in the field of battle could work at a realistic level. Before you knew left from right, I bet you were raced through training, told how great you were, and sent off on missions to see if your boat could float. The downside? Not you being wounded or even dying. No one gives a shit about that. The downside has always been awareness. Notoriety. Recognition. A public knowledge that our government is willing to risk the lives of kids by placing them in the line of fire.”

  The prison’s guard tower came into sight. Two men wearing green rain slickers carried high-powered rifles with scopes as they walked across a catwalk one hundred feet above the ground. “But your boat did float,” Puwolsky said. “Which turned out to be great and terrible. Great because you kicked ass but terrible because word got out, and now some suits in D.C. want to get one hundred more kids just like you up and running. But other suits in D.C. still believe in the Constitution. That second
group went bat shit and now they need someone to flambé for all this. Stanzer’s career is on the doorstep of being a political piñata unless you never existed. Everyone is in full denial mode right now. No more missions, no more targets; the program is going to be shut down.”

  M.D. remained silent.

  “That’s why you’re in this car now, son. Because Stanzer is cutting you loose. If he had any more assignments for you, do ya really think he’d have let you go? Your unit is over, your papers have been burned, and your entire existence is being washed off the map.”

  “You saying he wants me dead?”

  “Nah,” Puwolsky answered. “Not at all. Guy probably cares about you. But know this…he cares about himself, too.”

  The Cadillac pulled up to the front gates of Jentles State Penitentiary, an institution built in 1896. It started as a rectangular facility of three hundred cells able to hold up to six hundred prisoners, and operated on the “Two Bucket System.” One bucket for human waste, the other for fresh water. The only rule: don’t mix the buckets.

  Prisoners who caused the guards any grief would have their buckets mixed.

  In the late nineteenth century Jentles gained fame as one of the worst penal institutions in the United States, and since that time it had done little to lessen its reputation. Many had tried to shut it down. Many times, too. But the D.T. was like a nonstick frying pan; no matter how much the heat had been turned up, nothing stuck. Lawyers filed lawsuits, journalists did exposés, and at one point, even the church refused to send any more clergy inside to provide spiritual guidance for the prisoners after two of their fathers were beaten by gang members for refusing to play the role of drug mule, so the fiends inside could score their dope.

  Inside the D.T. a chicken bone became a shank, mice became meat, and year after year mentally healthy people entered but institutionally deranged madmen came out. Over and over the case had been made that the D.T. violated the Eighth Amendment of the U.S. Constitution, specifically the prohibition against cruel and unusual punishment against those in detainment. As one of the briefings said:

  “An epidemic of beatings by deputies as well as by inmates, barely edible food, poor sanitation, and inadequate medical care puts the jail’s residents in a constant state of risk and harm.”

  Like most lawsuits against Jentles, it was still being shuffled around in someone’s case file inside the Court of Appeals.

  The D.T. stood as a house of monsters housing monsters who had committed and were still committing horrible crimes. Yet, where were all these monsters supposed to go? Without an answer to that question, the D.T. just kept right on rolling on, business as usual. Eighteen hundred men called the Devil’s Toilet home, and while indoor plumbing, electricity, and telephone lines had arrived since the gates first opened, the guards still ruled the complex with the same mentality as they did more than a century ago.

  Old habits die hard.

  Puwolsky waved his badge at an armed guard standing in a gray box, and a sheet of metal ground its way open, allowing the Cadillac to pass through the perimeter. A second gate with a second guard box stood inside the first. Beyond stood an unmistakable stench of violence, abuse, and death oozing from the prison’s walls.

  M.D. spied a chimney in the back corner, smoke rising from its bleak stack. A place so primitive, M.D. thought, they still burned their trash.

  “You may not like me, may think I’m a fuck, but from day one I have told you the truth,” Puwolsky said. “Your father is inside. That is the truth. The High Priest is inside. That is the truth. Your father sold you out to the High Priest and if you don’t go inside and take his life he’s going to kevork up your girl. Detroit can’t stop that. Only you can. That is the truth.”

  Puwolsky pulled up to the guard manning the second gate.

  “Name’s Puwolsky, I’m on the list.” The colonel had to practically shout to be heard through the downpour. “Notify Krewls I’ll meet him in back by delivery.”

  The guard checked his clipboard, found Puwolsky’s name, and waved the vehicle through. “Make a left at the fork,” the guard shouted as rain crashed down on his slicker. Puwolsky rolled forward again and M.D. watched as the gate closed behind him.

  “What’s that mean, they’re gonna kevork her?” McCutcheon asked.

  “You know, kevork. Jack Kevorkian, that Doctor Death physician-assisted suicide guy,” Puwolsky said. “Some of his muscle will grab her and make the murder look like a suicide. Probably tie it to her love for you to make it seem all the more legit.”

  M.D. swallowed hard, feeling as if he might puke.

  “Don’t be so shocked. This is D-town, post bankruptcy, and there’s a war going on for the soul of the city,” Puwolsky said. “The High Priest, his kind of ruthlessness is unprecedented. That’s why he needs to be stopped. That’s what I’m doing here. That’s what you’re doing here. It’s black and white.”

  M.D. looked to his right. Cement, brick, iron, and steel. Not a blade of grass, not a tree, not even a rebellious weed.

  “Look, kid, I knew you didn’t know any of this stuff, and I ain’t gonna hold it against you if you say no to me and want to turn around right now. You say the word and we’re gone, because the truth is, if you go in there, I can’t protect you. All I can do is yank you out once you say you’ve had enough,” Puwolsky told him. “But your first chance to pull that plug won’t come for at least three days. That’s seventy-two hours from now. In one way it’s forever and in another, it’s not that long at all.”

  “Why three days?”

  Puwolsky reached under his seat and pulled out a file. On the front cover a seal read STATE OF MICHIGAN, DEPARTMENT OF CORRECTIONS.

  “Because Lester Rawlins, who is doing forty-five years to life for two counts of murder one, needs to be processed. Jentles doesn’t own the most efficient prisoner intake system in the world. It’ll take you a little bit to get things settled.”

  M.D. opened the contents of the file and saw a picture of himself next to his new name.

  Rawlins, Lester Alfred

  Prisoner ID# 8765KT76Z

  Eligible for Parole: July 2063

  Though the documents were forged, they looked real to McCutcheon. As real as it gets.

  “You have my word that if on Thursday you want out, I’ll pull you. Remember, I’m the guy who tells the truth.”

  The Cadillac made its way around the side of the prison and drove past a kennel of black hounds living under a thin, silver roof behind a chain link fence. At the sight of the vehicle, the dogs started barking, raging like feral beasts. If not for the metal fence keeping them quarantined, M.D. was sure, these huge animals would have attacked the car, biting bumpers and trying to break through windshields. These weren’t puppies, these were people chewers; and as soon as M.D. caught sight of the dogs he felt sure that more than a few unfortunate prisoners had been on the wrong end of their teeth and claws.

  The car came to a stop at the loading dock in the back and one thing immediately seemed clear to McCutcheon: Jentles State Penitentiary was a place where what happened inside remained inside.

  “So what’s it gonna be?” Puwolsky asked. “Are you going to go for the…?”

  “Cuff me.”

  M.D. extended his arms. Puwolsky paused for a moment before taking any action.

  Kid’s brave, he said to himself. Ain’t no doubt about that.

  After parking the car by the loading dock, Puwolsky reached under the seat and lifted a set of silver handcuffs.

  “Everyone said you’re a warrior, kid.” Puwolsky clicked the steel bracelets over McCutcheon’s wrists. “They weren’t lying.”

  On the outside, McCutcheon appeared calm, cool, and collected, but on the inside fear screamed through his veins. The sound of the handcuffs clicking shut triggered a massive surge of terror.

  He hadn’t expected the suffocating feel of the steel shackles on his wrists to set off his internal panic alarms they way they did. Especially not as suddenly
or as quickly or as deeply.

  But they did.

  He took a slow, deep breath and reminded himself that in a fight-or-flight world, fear kept people alive. Sometimes fear pushed people to great heights. But sometimes fear paralyzed.

  Ultimately, as McCutcheon knew, fear boiled down to choice. Fear could devastate him or it could propel him. Fear, as the martial arts taught, was nothing more than energy. The challenge for its students became to properly channel it.

  A very real sense of dread continued to grow in the pit of M.D.’s stomach. He knew he had to slow his inner world down, reflect on his feelings, and remind himself that there was only one proper way to deal with this torrent of terror.

  No, he could not control whether the fear existed, but he could take responsibility for his reaction to it.

  Stay here, he told himself. Breathe into it. Sit with this fear, don’t run or deny or hide from it. Listen to its message.

  Yes, this fear felt immense. But also, M.D. reminded himself, it would not last. No emotion was ever permanent.

  What was permanent then? McCutcheon asked himself. What existed past the clutter, beyond the ups and downs, beneath the seas of emotional turmoil?

  He answered immediately: My strength.

  Nothing had transpired yet. Nothing at all. McCutcheon was merely sitting inside a Cadillac wearing handcuffs he’d voluntarily put on and could still ask to be removed. For all the horrors his imagination could have created, all the anxiety he could have manifested by focusing on all the potential terror of entering an ominous prison as an undercover agent on a lone-wolf mission, as of that exact moment nothing at all had yet occurred.

  Love, he knew, was stronger than fear. Always. Did he still want to go in? McCutcheon asked himself.

  Yes.

  Am I sure?

  Yes.

  Why am I sure?

  Because my motivation stems from a place of love.

  So how, M.D. asked himself, was it best to go in, like a scared little child filled with worry and dread or like a brave and noble warrior owning courage, purpose, and strength?