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To Summer Clarkson Savina
ACKNOWLEDGMENTS
I’m pleased to have an opportunity to acknowledge and thank the people who have supported and encouraged me in my writing efforts. First, thank you to my wife, Ellen, but those words seem terribly inadequate. Also, thanks to Dave Rutkin, who’s supported me every way he could think of, ever since the first book. Thank you, Josh Bank, for years of support and invaluable advice. Thank you, Mike Greene, Norm Siegel, Lorenzo Carcaterra, Dermott Ryan, Dave King, Franklin Tartaglione, Emily McCully, Liz Diggs, Billy J. Parrott, Richard McMahon, Nick Utton, Jamie McClelland, Richard Weininger, Victor Schiro, Dan Barrett, Deborah Brunetti, Ernie Boone, Robert Bidinotto, Craig White, Paul Faulds, Richard Guerin, Robert Stuart, Mark Luetschwager, Buddy Baarcke, Lydia Condrey, John Glendon, Tom Campbell, Steven Wiencek, Jeffrey Scott Beckerman, Frances Jalet Miller, Judy Collins, Sunny Solomon, Joe Hartlaub. And deeply felt thanks to Keith Kahla, my editor, and the team at St. Martin’s.
PROLOGUE
James Beck had about ten seconds before bones broke and blood hit the floor.
It was his fourth day at Clinton State Prison in Dannemora, New York, and Beck knew he was about to be robbed.
He’d been in lockdown while they finished his intake process. Now he walked in a line of inmates, slowly making his way up a stairwell leading to the cell assigned to him on the fourth floor in A block. In his left hand, Beck carried a brown paper bag holding personal supplies: toothbrush, toothpaste, soap, shaving cream, tobacco, and papers.
Clinton was Beck’s third prison. He’d been incarcerated for sixteen months. First in Rikers, then in Sing Sing. Long enough to know a new fish, a white guy, unaffiliated, holding a bag of supplies, would be a target.
Normally, there wouldn’t have been so many prisoners on the stairwell, but guards on the third floor had decided to stop everyone and search them for contraband. When they finally let the inmates back onto the stairwell, Beck found himself surrounded in a tight space where the guards on the landings could only watch the line of men above them or below them, but not both.
The two inmates who had planned the rip-off didn’t much care about what Beck carried in the paper bag. They wanted to know if the white-boy fish would give up his possessions without a fight. If so, they could feed off him forever.
Beck figured the man behind him would be the muscle. He had about fifty pounds on Beck. He’d do the grab. The one in front would do the snatch. Beck hoped he wouldn’t try to shank him first. It would be impossible to defend against a blade in such a tight space.
But Beck wasn’t going to wait to defend himself. He was going to hit first.
The moment the guard above looked away, Beck rammed his right elbow at the face of the big man behind him. But his attacker was already moving, too, trying to get one arm around Beck’s throat, the other around his chest.
Beck’s elbow banged into the bigger man’s right forearm, missing the face, preventing the chokehold, but not stopping the attacker from getting his other arm around Beck’s torso, trapping Beck’s left hand. As Beck kept ramming his right elbow at him, the big man lifted Beck off his feet as the inmate in front of Beck turned and fired a punch at Beck’s face.
Beck leaned back from the punch and drove both feet into the man in front of him, pushing all of his weight into the attacker behind. Beck and the bigger man fell onto the next inmate in line, knocking down him and three others. Beck landed on his attacker, whose head smacked into a stair with a wet, cracking sound, but he still kept his grip on Beck.
The inmate above grabbed the handrail and jumped up, trying to land both feet on Beck’s chest.
Beck kicked up at the man, catching him midair between the legs, doubling him over. He fell onto Beck, who shoved him off, broke the grip of the half-conscious attacker under him, and rolled away from the pile of fighting, flailing inmates. Beck grabbed the handrail and pulled himself onto his feet, shouldered and elbowed his way out of the scrum of fighting, stumbling, cursing prisoners.
Guards from above and below shouted and pushed their way toward the melee, calling for help on their radios.
Beck joined the rush of men exiting to the tier below, running into more guards who grabbed and shoved the inmates against the wall, yelling for them to spread wide and get their hands up.
Beck felt a fist smack into his kidney, nearly sending him to his knees, but he managed to get into position, head down, hands against the wall, unmoving.
It took about an hour to sort everything out. Nine men were sent to keeplock cells, including Beck, where they were locked down for two days while the prison staff investigated what happened.
Nobody claimed they had been in the fight. Everybody professed ignorance, or said something vague about a guy who fell, or maybe got pushed by another guy.
The COs had little doubt about what had happened. Beck’s supplies had been found on the steps. Clearly, the new fish had been attacked, but they couldn’t prove that Beck had fought back.
Normally, the guard staff might have decided Beck was a victim and let him off, but word had already come to Clinton that James Beck was a cop killer. So even though Beck stuck to his claims that he had no idea what happened and had committed no violations, because he’d lost his supplies they’d found him guilty of violating Rule 106.10: “An inmate shall not lose, destroy, steal, misuse, damage, or waste any type of State property.” Worse, they claimed it involved an assault and inflated the violation to a Tier III offense.
Beck received of sentence of sixty days solitary in the prison’s Special Housing Unit (SHU).
They shackled his hands and ankles to a chain around his waist and shoved him into an isolation cell about the size of a parking space. There was an open shower in one corner, a toilet with no lid, a built-in bunk, desk, a shelf, and a door that opened to a cage outside tall enough for Beck to stand in, but only slightly bigger than what might be found in a dog kennel.
A nauseating stench, produced by human waste and unwashed bodies, permeated the airless cell.
With a Tier III violation, Beck was allowed two showers a week instead of the usual three, two books or magazines instead of the usual five, no television, no headphones for a radio, no personal possessions other than a small bar of soap and a roll of toilet paper. He received a change of clothes every ten days, one thin blanket that had never been laundered, one polyester sheet for his inch-thick foam mattress, no pillow. And no shampoo or comb. It took five days for him to receive a toothbrush, toothpaste, shaving cream, and disposable razor that had to be returned after one use.
On his shelf, he found a beat-up Bible and a February 1994 copy of National Geographic.
All meals were served through a slot in the heavy metal door.
Out of spite, the guards in the SHU made sure that for the first week Beck’s meals consisted of water, a wedge of raw cabbage, and the infamous brick—a hardened loaf made out of carrots, potatoes, an
d bread dough. No human could possibly digest three daily servings of the brick. Beck managed to eat one brick per day by soaking pieces of it in water. He became so horribly constipated he had to stop eating on the fifth day. By the time they began serving him the usual prison food, he’d lost six pounds. He continued to lose weight during the rest of his time in SHU, eating food often delivered cold, sometimes with coffee grounds tossed on it, and three times consisting of nothing but an empty Styrofoam container.
From the moment he stepped into the small cell, Beck was determined to survive the Box. He immediately set out to clean his cell, which reeked of dried feces, urine, and general grime. Luckily, he had nearly a full roll of toilet paper. He folded a length of it into a tight block and used it to clean his sink, the rim of his toilet, and the floor around it before the wad of tissue fell apart.
He washed his hands, trying to conserve the half-used bar of soap, and spent the next hour doing calisthenics. Next, he tried meditating, first sitting, then walking methodically. After all that, less than three hours had passed on his first day.
Within four days, his notion of time slipped his grasp. Minutes could feel like hours. Days interminable. His concentration began fading in and out. His diet drained his energy, which made it harder to exercise.
He tried to find solace in reading, but found it increasingly difficult to absorb the archaic language in the battered Bible. By the third week, he had read the National Geographic so many times, he loathed even touching it.
He had to force himself to step out into his kennel cage for his hour of recreation because it exposed him to the screaming abuse of other prisoners and manhandling by the guards, which caused nearly uncontrollable waves of rage to come over him. His only compensation was breathing fresh air, but one day he found himself dodging wet feces the guards had manipulated a prisoner into throwing at him. No one ever bothered to clean the shit off his cage.
His attempts at meditation turned into obsessing about revenge. Twice he fell into screaming outbursts he had to fight to control. As time passed, he had to exert more and more energy warding off panic attacks. His first hallucination came thirty-eight days into his sentence, in the middle of the night.
On the forty-second day he ran out of soap, and yelled at the CO through the door slot to give him another bar, but instead found his water supply shut off for two days.
Beck knew about men who had come into the Box for minor infractions, and committed so many offenses while in the SHU they’d had months, even years, added to their sentences. The prospect terrified him. As did his fear that the SHU was permanently damaging him.
By the fifty-second day he was yelling, slapping his face to pull himself out of his paralysis. He felt as if his brain had frozen inside his head.
He avoided looking at the walls of his 105-square-foot cell because it often made him feel as if they were closing in on him. He paced back and forth for hours, head down, burning away the tension, trying to force all thoughts of mayhem and retaliation from his mind, banishing any memories of the outside, any moments of time spent with family or friends.
* * *
On the day they released him from SHU, Beck dared not speak while they shackled him for transfer back to the general population out of fear he would slide into an incoherent rage that would land him back in the Box.
Once showered, changed into clean clothes, and placed in a cell with a man he had never met, Beck raised an open hand at his cellmate, mumbled he was sorry, and laid down on his bunk to sleep, but mostly to avoid any contact or conversation.
He fell into a sleep so deep it felt like only moments had passed when the five-thirty A.M. standing count arrived. He drifted through breakfast in the mess hall, feeling half comatose.
When they released him to the yard, Beck felt more awake and connected, but much more nervous and uncomfortable about being around so many inmates. Even though the temperature hovered in the teens, he had been anxious to get outdoors because he could still smell the stench of the SHU.
Beck barely held himself together until he reached the yard. He headed for the north end because the guards avoided that part of the yard. If prisoners wanted to go there and kill or maim each other, it was fine with them. They’d eventually arrive to clean up the mess.
Beck wanted to be as far away as possible from the COs. He didn’t trust himself. He feared he might throw everything away and attack a guard to avenge what had been done to him, hoping they would shoot him, or beat him to death, and end the nightmare of his imprisonment.
The remaining sane part of James Beck forced him to do what he had done to survive the SHU—walk. Get away by himself.
There weren’t many prisoners in the north yard. All were in small groups except for a solitary figure standing in a slice of sun, face raised to the warm light, his hands behind his back.
Beck decided he needed some of that sunlight. Absorb some of the cleansing warmth. He had to get into the light, and if it meant passing the lone figure to get to it, so be it.
Beck refused to walk with his head down, or with any hint of deference. He strode purposefully toward the man, but kept enough distance to indicate he had no intention of talking to him, or accosting him.
The sound of Beck’s footsteps made the man open his eyes and turn toward Beck. Not surprising, since it would have been foolish not to watch someone approaching you in the north yard at Dannemora. Beck held both hands open, away from his pockets, to show there was nothing in them.
The other prisoner watched carefully. As Beck came closer, the prisoner’s expression changed. Was it concern? Preparation to attack? Whatever it was, Beck found himself stopping, almost against his will, and meeting the man’s gaze.
“What?” said Beck. One word, with enough of an edge to communicate to the man he’d better not give him any trouble.
“How long?” said the man.
It took a moment for Beck to get it. His brain still working slowly.
“Sixty days.”
“First time in the SHU?”
“Yes.”
The man nodded slowly.
“Did they win?”
Beck started to answer, then stopped. He thought about it. Really thought about it before he answered.
“No. Not yet.”
Paco Johnson nodded again, communicating a deep, profound sense of empathy and encouragement, even though he was a complete stranger.
“Good,” he said. “That’s good.”
Beck nodded back and walked on, feeling the human connection the man had made with him. It had only taken a handful of words, but whoever he was, Beck knew the man had changed his course.
* * *
Over the next days, months, and years Packy Johnson and James Beck forged a friendship and an unbreakable bond. At first, Packy concentrated on slowly guiding Beck back from the brink, asking him careful, pointed questions that pushed Beck to think and examine everything about himself, each question asked with the intention of helping Beck figure out what kind of man he wanted to be.
Packy Johnson had been incarcerated for most of his life, and had earned his status as a respected, righteous con long ago. Beck never asked Packy why he had decided to help him. Maybe it was part of Johnson’s contrarian nature to help a white man. Maybe it was Johnson’s curiosity about how a man with no criminal record had killed a cop. Whatever the reason, Beck didn’t question it. Nor did he question the unspoken understanding that each of them would watch the other’s back, share whatever they had, and suffer whatever the other suffered.
They might talk once a week, or every day. The conversations could be terse, or rambling. Beck learned how to do time, survive prison but, above all else, in the cauldron of hell that was Clinton maximum-security prison, James Beck learned the meaning and value of a true friend.
1
TUESDAY, MAY 27, 6:30 P.M.
NINE YEARS LATER
James Beck stood outside the Port Authority Bus Terminal on Eighth Avenue in Manhattan an
d checked his watch again. Demarco Jones had dropped him off in front of the main entrance, then driven off to park Beck’s custom Mercury Marauder. Beck had ten minutes before the bus from Eastern Correctional Facility arrived. He wanted to be standing at the gate when Packy Johnson stepped off that bus, but he didn’t know which of the 421 gates in the massive terminal was the right one.
Beck weaved around the line of people waiting for cabs and maneuvered past an obese black man wearing layers of clothing who’d parked himself in front of the entrance along with two overflowing shopping carts covered by a blue tarp.
Beck walked in, looking for the information booth. He saw it fifteen feet in front of him. A sign on the booth read: Please go to the Information Booth located on the 1st floor of the South Wing, 8th Avenue entrance for assistance. Thank You.
Shit.
He checked his watch. 6:32 P.M. He had eight minutes before the bus was due to arrive. Should he try to find the gate himself? He knew it was a ShortLine bus, but had no idea which gates were assigned to that bus line.
South wing. South wing. Maybe the ShortLine buses arrived in the south wing.
Beck turned and went back out onto Eighth Avenue and headed south, dodging slower moving pedestrians, sweating in the sultry New York heat and humidity. Typical New York spring. Last week, fifty-seven degrees and raining. Today, eighty degrees and sunny.
Beck remembered when he had come out of prison, five years ago. It was different for him. He wasn’t released on parole, so he had no restrictions. It was a crisp fall day in October instead of a muggy day in May. And he hadn’t spent the majority of his life incarcerated. Just eight years, but long enough so every connection to friends or family had withered or disappeared, so there was no one available to drive upstate and pick him up. He’d taken the exact same bus down from Eastern Correctional Facility just outside of Napanoch, New York. Because his conviction had been overturned, and he had a dedicated lawyer working for him, Beck had left prison with up-to-date identification, a working credit card, three hundred dollars in cash, plus an ATM card from Chase.
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