Against Nature

by Casey Barrett

  I thought of dungeons and jails and violations. I remembered my time spent inside Rikers as a young felon, locked away for dealing weed, the horrors I’d endured. I considered Cass there. My former island of incarceration was her new home. I wondered if her lawyer was still alive. Cass, so secretive, so dishonest with one true friend, and now there she was, up on double-murder charges with no lawyer, no one left to help her. It was cruel to feel a streak of schadenfreude, but I believed Uli, and Crowley too, maybe even Lipke. I was a cuckold that never even had the pleasure of consummation.

  For so long I’d accepted her secrecy, romanticized it even. Plenty of relationships are one-sided, and those protective of their privacy always maintain an upper hand. I’d submitted to that dynamic from the beginning. My questions were brushed aside until I stopped asking; her questions were answered in waves of words and revelations about my past. I shared it all because I needed someone to talk to about it. She was my therapy. I presumed myself to be a lot more interesting than I was. Everyone has a past. Almost everyone thinks his or hers is more fascinating than the next. I was sure of it. I’d experienced the heights of wealth; parental betrayal and heartbreak; lost it all; done hard time; come out a badass. I had stories to tell. And Cass listened to them. I told myself I was respecting her privacy by not doing the same. Fool, arrogant fool, I had been another of her slaves. I was too blind to see it. It wasn’t sexual, not in the way I longed for, but she held a power over me that I could not resist.

  She still did. The moment I arrived home I looked up the visitation schedule at Rikers women’s prison.

  There were no visits permitted on Mondays or Tuesdays. On Wednesdays and Thursdays you could see inmates from one p.m. to nine p.m. On Fridays, Saturdays, and Sundays the visiting hours were from eight a.m. to four p.m. I had vowed never to set foot on that island again. Suicide sounded better. I tried to repress most of it. I couldn’t remember if anyone had visited me there. My father was locked away in a prison in North Carolina; my mom drank herself to death a few years earlier. Were there friends from that era who cared enough to come say hello? There must have been, but I couldn’t remember a single one.

  It was Friday evening, approaching midnight. I could be there in eight hours. But first my body was demanding recovery. I couldn’t begin to tally the drinks I consumed. Didn’t want to. After this was over maybe I’d go back on the wine-and-weed wagon that worked so well in my time with Juliette Cohen. But not yet, my mind was anything but limber.

  I poured myself a nightcap. Savored the sweet bourbon burn. Plugged in my dead phone and took my beverage with me to bed, set it on my nightstand, where a healthy man’s water might have gone. I picked up the Nick Tosches again, Me and the Devil. More dark visions, more indictments of what this city had become. I set it on my chest after a page or two. Sleep came quick. I was treated to another drowning dream, a recurring favorite. I’m in a swimming pool surrounded by fellow swimmers. Naked, able bodies are nearby. Anyone could reach out to help, but no one does. I try to take a stroke, turn my head for a breath. I can’t. I’m paralyzed. I sink under, beneath bodies doing blithe laps above. Strong limbs and ripped torsos, blind to my struggles, the applause of splashing. I panic as I reach the bottom, silent and helpless. If I’m lucky, that’s when I wake. If not, the nightmare really begins. I black out and the demons invade, taking me down farther. The pool bottom melts away. I’m pulled into a dark, wet earth, toward something I identify as hell, but can never see. It’s only blackness and the shrill screams of demons all around.

  A restful sleep it was not. I woke at seven, with the deserved headache and dry mouth, and a subconscious terror that the dream was an all-too-real future. I made it to the bathroom in a sweat, gulped water from the tap, and then stood under the shower until I drained every drop of heat from the pipes. Coffee, Advil, the usual morning Band-Aids, they weren’t helpful. So I cracked a Beck’s and sucked it down. I started to feel better after the second one.

  * * *

  It’s only ten miles to Rikers Island from Union Square, but few New Yorkers could find it on a map. It sits at the mouth of the East River, next door to LaGuardia Airport. Technically a part of Queens, it’s separated from the free world by a mile-long bridge. For those dreaming of the shortest escape route, it’s less than a hundred-yard swim from the eastern edge of Rikers to LaGuardia’s nearest runway. I spent many days in solitary thinking of what I’d do when I made it across that strait. Maybe run unseen across the tarmac and stow away in the luggage belly of a departing plane.... Get lucky and find it was a flight to the Caribbean, where I’d manage to sneak off to the nearest beach and run into those turquoise waters and swim away. Then I’d emerge near some fine resort and find work as a bartender, where I’d screw visiting cougars after pouring them rounds of strong mai tais. Such are the thoughts that get young men through time inside.

  The fear was coming back stronger than expected as we passed the welcome sign before the bridge. It was burned into memory: RIKERS ISLAND, HOME OF NEW YORK’S BOLDEST. I always wondered about that last adjective. It seemed such an odd, mocking choice: Bring me your bold convicted masses. We’ll beat that boldness right out of them.

  Then we were traveling over the East River to the land of the unwanted. The water below was the color of slate. It hardly rippled in the windless morning haze. A hot day ahead, promises of the suffocations of summer. At the center of the island the prison complex sat like a joyless fortress. My old Haitian cabbie let me off in front of the Benjamin Ward Visit Center. The fare was forty-five dollars; I gave him sixty out of appreciation for not asking about my destination. He took the bills with a nod, drove off as soon as I closed the door. I wondered if Lyft did pickups out here.

  Visitation schedules were divided according to inmates’ last names, A–L one day, M–Z the next. Fortunately, today was the A–L turn, so Cassandra Kimball could accept visitors. She was being housed in the Rose M. Singer Center. How did one earn the honor of having a jail named after oneself? I pictured Benjamin Ward and Rose Singer as a pair of sadistic wardens that ruled for decades over these doomed masses. And when they died and the city pushed through more funding for upgrades, their names could live on in eternity over new centers that housed new generations of criminals. Or maybe Ben and Rose were lovely people, full of empathy and forgiveness for these lost souls. I doubted that. I’d done my time. The captors were more dangerous than the captives.

  While I waited, I remembered the alternate reality of time inside. It didn’t just pass slowly; it stagnated. The red arm of the clock seemed to stop flowing at times, or even circled counterclockwise. You soon learned to stop watching it. I slumped in a steel chair and stared at my phone. There was nothing from Detective Miller, nothing from Juliette Cohen. They wanted me out of their lives. I brought little but pain and suffering and danger.

  “Lawrence Darley?” called a female guard. “To see Cassandra Kimball?”

  I leapt up. The prospect of seeing her stripped away all self-pity. I was escorted onto a shuttle bus with the other morning visitors, mostly black and Latino moms with children in tow. I found a seat up front next to a large Latina with fresh ink covering fleshy arms.

  “Where you headed?” she asked.

  “Rose Singer Center? The women’s jail.”

  “Rosie’s, yeah, I been there, few years back.” She shook her hair extensions at the memory. “These boys like to think they’re all hard, up in here, but I tell you what, there some ladies over in Rosie’s meaner than any dude in any of these hotels.”

  “What were you in for?”

  “Some bullshit, the ex had a bunch of coke at our place, couple keys. I didn’t even know about it, not that it mattered when they came crashing in. Carlos wasn’t even there and guess who took the fall?”

  Yeah, I’d seen that movie. Another conviction that solved nothing; punished the almost innocent.

  “I did thirteen months here myself,” I told her.

  She raised an eyebrow.
“You? What’d you do?”

  “Used to deal some weed,” I said.

  “I feel you, yeah, I knew plenty of dudes went down for that bullshit. Little over a year, huh?”

  It didn’t seem like much, unless you’d done it. She had, and she knew what it meant for someone who looked like I did. “Bad times, weren’t they?”

  “Spent most of it in solitary,” I said. “But not enough.”

  “Shit’s fucked up when you’d rather be locked down in a hole, ain’t it?”

  I nodded, fought off the flash of repressed memory.

  “So, who you going to see? Girlfriend got busted or something?”

  “Something like that.”

  The shuttle bus pulled to a stop and the driver called out the Rose M. Singer Center. Stepping off, it occurred to me that I had more in common with these fine, suffering folks than the Juliette Cohens of the world, despite my delusions of still belonging to my original caste.

  Inside Rosie’s I was escorted into a brightly lit visitors’ room with prisoners slouched before their spouses or lawyers or other loved ones. Guards stood watch around the perimeter, looking bored. The chair across from mine was empty. A few moments later a line of orange-clad women came shuffling out of a cellblock door. I saw Cass before she saw me. It was the first time the sight of her didn’t produce a sexual pang. She saw me and tried to smile.

  Sitting down, she said, “Well, orange will definitely never be the new black.”

  We frowned at each other, unable to break the ice.

  “It’s good to see you, Duck,” she said at length.

  “You too.”

  “Can you believe this shit?” she asked. “Eddie says he’ll have me out soon.”

  “When’s the last time you spoke with Lutelman?”

  “Couple days ago, why?”

  “He was attacked yesterday,” I said. “I saw him wheeled into an ambulance.”

  “What? Is he gonna be okay?”

  “Dunno. They were trying to get his heart restarted.”

  “You were there? Where, Duck? You gotta fill me in here.”

  “So do you, Cass.”

  “I don’t know what that’s supposed to mean, but could you please tell me what’s happened to Eddie? If my lawyer is dead, that is going to be a serious problem.”

  “I was supposed to meet him,” I said. “I contacted him after I got back from Miami. I figured you would have been in touch. He agreed to meet at the bar downstairs from his office.”

  I studied her face.

  “And then?” she asked, impatient.

  “And then someone attacked Lutelman outside the bar while I waited inside. Seems to be the same guy who’s been creating havoc since you called. When I went out to see what was going on, Dr. James Crowley approached me in the crowd. You remember Crowley, don’t you, Cass? He certainly remembers you. After the ambulance left, we went back inside and had a chat.”

  The crumbling of her face was worse than anticipated. It confirmed the lies.

  “He told me about you two,” I said.

  “Duck . . .”

  “He told me how you were cheating on Victor Wingate with him. You know, your dead love who was pushed to his death?”

  I waited for her to interrupt, but she just looked back with weary, beaten eyes.

  “I also met with Dr. Lipke,” I said. “Down in Miami. And perhaps most important, I spent last night with Carl’s widow, Uli . . . at your personal dungeon on Orchard Street. Seems you and Uli were quite close, until you killed both men.”

  Her face grew hard, a fierce glare appeared in her dark eyes. “So now you think you know me, is that it? You think you have it all figured out?”

  “I don’t know you at all,” I said. “That appears to be the problem, doesn’t it?”

  “Duck, I can explain the rest, but right now you have to believe me. I did not kill anyone. I’m being set up. And now they got to my attorney. Fuck.”

  She shut her eyes, squeezed her fingers against them, shaking her head. I wished it stirred some sympathy, but I wasn’t feeling so generous.

  “You know, I can maybe see Wingate, you pushing him off that waterfall, a moment of impulsive madness. Calling me, insisting to the cops that it couldn’t have been suicide, all very clever. That part I can see. I’m not happy about being used, but it makes a certain sense. But Carl Kruger, Cass? Did you have to kill him too?”

  “I did not kill anyone,” she said again.

  “Your prints were on the murder weapon,” I said. “Care to explain that part?”

  “My prints were on that javelin because Carl handed it to me. He let me hold it the last time I saw him. He didn’t let anyone touch it, ever, but we bonded and he let me.”

  “Uli told me that Carl didn’t trust you. She said your foursome was like a family, except for the tension between you and her husband. She said he never warmed to you, and when he learned of your relationship with Crowley, he was outraged. Then when Wingate died, Uli said, he was convinced you did it.”

  “Uli said that?”

  “She did. Care to explain why she might have that opinion?”

  “I can’t,” she said. “I don’t know why she would say that. Carl and I, we were friends. He was a good man.”

  “I’m not inclined to believe everything that comes out of your mouth at the moment.”

  “Then don’t, Duck. Get up and walk away. Go home and pour yourself a nice big drink. Drink your whole life away and pretend nothing matters. You’re good at that.”

  I almost did. Hands on my knees, my thighs tightened to stand. Instead I said, “Despite your lies I came out here this morning. You might want to remember that. Unless you have another slave lawyer ready to serve you, you might want to acknowledge that you need some help, and that I’m about the only one who can help you. Oh, and maybe you can also remember that you called me. You brought me into this shit, Cass. Don’t forget that.”

  We looked at each other until her face softened and her eyes averted. It was the first time I could remember ever having the upper hand.

  “Can I explain?” she asked.

  “You’d better.”

  Chapter 32

  By the time I returned to the free world, I was salivating for a drink. I wanted to believe her, I did. But life experience has not conditioned me to an instinct of trust in those you love. More likely, lies and disappointment and the worst being true . . .

  Save it for the therapist.

  Until her innocence could be established, I had a more pressing concern:

  Oliver Lipke, “son” of Eberhard, unhinged henchman of Dr. Crowley, a live-wire meth-head who’d managed to track my movements since I left him humiliated on that Hell’s Kitchen sidewalk. Every player, Cass included, appeared to be working hard at his or her own self-interest. Each insisted there was nothing to hide, beseeching me in various conversations to believe in their blamelessness. That is, all except Oliver, who seemed to be taking a sick pride in his spreading of mayhem, perhaps he was watching me now. I knew he wasn’t through. There was still more suffering to inflict.

  I needed to remember my aikido instincts. Instead of resisting, receive. Accept the bad energy and aggression and use it against itself. Don’t seek. Wait and respond. I could do that, as long as I treated the accompanying anxiety.

  Before I returned home, I stopped at the Old Town and washed down a tuna melt with a couple pints. There was a Mets game on the TV mounted high in the corner. A blond flamethrower known as Thor was pitching. I couldn’t remember his real name, but the moniker suited him. He looked like a Nordic god up there on the mound. I watched him strike out the side, then stared at myself in the mirror behind the bottles while the ball game went to commercial. Many drunken days and nights spent looking in that mirror. The Old Town never let me down. It felt better than home. Beneath the high tin ceiling the bartenders were friendly and fast; they started to pour your pint before coming over. At the straight-backed booths the waitresses operat
ed with unsmiling efficiency. It was a place you could picture Walt Whitman sauntering into a century and a half ago, a good-looking boy on his arm, a folded letter from Emerson in his pocket. The walls were lined with framed book covers, memorializing the writers who drank there. When I got up to piss, I reveled in the giant porcelain urinal, a masterpiece of the lavatory arts. The city was a fallen mess of bad taste and dumb wealth, but as long as the Old Town stayed open, all was not lost.

  I came out of the men’s room and felt almost optimistic. My back and ass were covered with welts, courtesy of Uli; my partner was locked away in Rikers; and I was being hunted by a dangerous addict with ties to power I couldn’t comprehend, but I was feeling sick enough to be totally confident. I’d dealt with worse. Or perhaps not, but I’d gone deep enough to know there is no bottom. There is no worst. All one could do was rise or fall with the tides of evil.

  I climbed back on my barstool and raised my arm for the bartender. The game was back on. Now the Viking was at bat. Syndergaard, that was his name. My phone buzzed as he took a ball low and away. Detective Miller, about damn time . . .

  “Hello, Lea,” I said. “Lovely to hear from you.”

  “Where are you, Duck?”

  “Having a drink at the Old Town, care to join me?”

  “Stay there.”

  “You coming?”

  “Yes. You are not to leave, is that understood?”

  “I didn’t intend to, but now you’re making me wonder. What’s going on, Lea?”

  “Stay where you are, Duck. I’m serious.”

  She hung up before I could tell her I didn’t appreciate the tone. I watched Thor stroke a single through the gap. I swallowed the impulse to get the hell out of there. Her manner did not promise positive news forthcoming. But where should I go? Home? Let whatever was coming find me.