Mr Nice

by Howard Marks

  Rules of prison gang initiation varied. Some would require the carrying out of a random killing within the prison. Being British and a famous non-rat, I could avoid most conflict by being nice, charming, and eccentric; but I never felt safe. I would have to choose my friends carefully.

  Terre Haute boasted quite a few notable mafiosi. Apart from Gennaro ‘Jerry Lang’ Langella, the most senior Mafia member, one found John Carneglia, Victor ‘Vic the Boss’ Amuso, and Frank Locascio, high-rankers in New York’s Gambino crime family, the facilitators of my New York airport hashish scams. There was Anthony ‘Bruno’ Indelicato, son of Alphonse ‘Sonny Red’ Indelicato and a capo in the crime family of Joseph ‘Joe Bananas’ Bonanno. Also in Terre Haute were Sicilian Antonio Aiello of the Pizza Connection case and Joey Testa of the Philadelphia Mafia. I made friends with them all. The Italian Mafia, like the bikers, ‘truced up’ against the common enemy when inside and postponed their differences, seeming very resigned to doing their time. The outside operations they still headed were continuing and prospering through the prison’s telephones and visiting room. Their main concern was the quality of the prison pasta and availability of keep-fit facilities. Classified somewhere between the Italian Mafia and a street gang are the Westies, a no-nonsense New York Irish criminal organisation. A few of its members resided at USP Terre Haute, including its highly intelligent and charismatic boss, Jimmy Coonan. The rest of the prison population was made up of psychopaths, spies, perverts, and sophisticated, high-profile individual criminal personalities serving decades of time.

  One of them, Corsican Laurent ‘Charlot’ Fiocconi, became one of the best friends I have ever had. Charlot’s case was the last of a series that became immortalised as the French Connection. In 1970 he was arrested in Italy, extradited to the United States, convicted of heroin smuggling, and sentenced to twenty-five years. In 1974 he escaped from a New York jail and went to the middle of the Brazilian jungles to mind his own business. He stayed there for seventeen years. He met and married a beautiful lady from Medellín, Colombia. In 1991 they were both arrested in Rio de Janeiro in connection with cocaine charges. The United States locked him up in Terre Haute to finish his sentence.

  Another prisoner with whom I developed a strong friendship was Veronza ‘Daoud’ Bower. He had been a Black Panther in the 1960s. In the early 1970s he killed a cop. He had been in penitentiaries ever since. Daoud had grown waist-length dreadlocks and had devoted his twenty-odd years of continuous prison life to playing chess and Scrabble, perfecting his own physical fitness, and studying and practising various healing techniques. He could do several thousand push-ups non-stop and relieve or cure virtually any ailment. Daoud was the only non-native American Indian who participated in religious sweat-lodge rituals.

  The prison staff varied from fat military megalomaniacs to fat and demented local Ku Klux Klan rejects. Indiana is the state with the highest incidences of illiteracy and obesity and traditionally has been host to many fervent Ku Klux Klan supporters. The hacks’ hobbies included shooting animals and brawling in bars. One hack was busted for running around bollock naked, another for bringing in dope, and another was dismissed for participating in a convicts’ pornography racket. The prison chaplain was busted for bringing heroin into the prison.

  A new arrival at the prison must find himself alternative official employment within forty-eight hours to avoid being forced to work in the kitchen for $25 a month. There are scores of different jobs available in the libraries, laundry, classrooms, and other common areas. While Desert Storm was in full swing, I presented myself to the prison’s Department of Education and was interviewed by a likeable and intelligent hack named Webster. His teenage sons were fighting in Desert Storm. He gave me the job of teaching English grammar to prisoners studying for their General Education Diploma (GED), a qualification regarded as equivalent to a high-school diploma. My pay was $40 a month. On my first day I faced a classroom of seventeen young Blacks, most of whom were looking at the rest of their life behind bars. Correctional Officer Webster sat at the back ready to step in if there were problems. There had been in the past, like the time a mutilated and bloody corpse was found in the bathroom. It had always been difficult for a prisoner, even with the protection of a hack, to teach other prisoners because he dared not display any authority or superiority and could not even begin to appear to be administering any kind of discipline. An inmate teacher, if not cautious, could find himself regarded as a semi-hack or jailhouse snitch. I was scared, but I applied the usual rule: never show your fear.

  ‘My name’s Howard Marks, and I hope to be able to help you study for the English grammar section of the GED exam.’

  ‘Hey! Hey! Hey! Webster! Webster! I ain’t trying to learn no motherfucking thing from no motherfucking cracker. There ain’t nothing no motherfucking White dude can tell me. Nothing. You know what I’m saying? There ain’t nothing no motherfucking White dude can tell me.’

  ‘Now, now, this is an equal-opportunity prison,’ said Webster, in an attempt to pacify and control Tee-Bone Taylor, cop killer and second-in-charge of the Vicelords.

  ‘Webster, it ain’t like that. You be welling, man. Don’t be laying no racist government crap on me. I ain’t trying to hear that motherfucking shit. This cracker don’t be knowing more than me. He ain’t chilling in no projects like me and my brothers. What does he know? Hey! Hey! Hey! Teach! Teach!’

  ‘Call me Howard, please.’

  ‘I said Teach, Teach. You want to teach. I call you Teach. You know what I’m saying?’

  ‘Okay, call me Teach.’

  ‘Teach, what gives you the motherfucking right to teach me English?’

  ‘I am English, Tee-Bone,’ I lied. I usually corrected those who called me English. I was Welsh. These guys would have never heard of Wales.

  ‘So? Is you saying that makes you speak better English than us niggers here?’

  ‘Of course. We invented the language.’

  ‘We has our own language, Teach.’

  ‘I accept that. And it’s no better or worse than English. But if you want to pass this English examination, I honestly want to help you.’

  ‘What motherfucking use is English going to be to me, Teach? I ain’t trying to be disrespecting your language or dissing you about no motherfucking thing, but I ain’t trying to be no writer, Teach. You know what I’m saying? I ain’t trying to be no writer, Teach. I don’t be seeing no streets again, Teach. This motherfucking Government got us homeboys here till we die, Teach. We niggers ain’t trying to be no badass Americans. If it wasn’t for you crackers, we wouldn’t be here. Our ancestors was brung here against their will from our own country in chains.’

  ‘So was I. And you know who brought me over? A Black US Marshal.’

  Tee-Bone stood up.

  ‘What the fuck is you saying, Teach?’

  ‘You know what I’m saying. Whoever we are and however we got here, we all want to get out. Look, guys, I’ve only just got into this system, but I’ve already worked out that there’s only three ways out of here: you pay a lawyer a few million dollars, which none of us have; you get over the fence and give government lunatics like Webster here some target practice; or you write your way out.’

  ‘How is you going to write your way out?’ asked a young Washington, DC crack dealer.

  ‘Listen. Most of us got more time than we deserved. Some of you shouldn’t even have been convicted. The Government lied and cheated about how much dope you did so they could bang you up forever. Blacks get hit harder than Whites. A lot of people out there want to put a stop to this government racial harassment. A lot more people don’t even know it’s happening. Even some of the judges don’t believe it’s going on. It’s only judges, a few honest politicians, and some powerful individuals can change things. I don’t mean to be rude, but most of you can’t even write a letter that these guys could understand. And they’re the only ones who can get you out of this shit. Don’t tell me you’re going to lie down that easy
. I meant it when I said I was brought here in chains. The DEA came to my house in Europe, dragged me and my old lady over here, and left our three children without a mum or dad. I hate your fucking Government more than you ever could.’

  ‘Okay, Teach. Chill out. You’re not a bad dude. I know where you be coming from,’ said Tee-Bone. ‘Teach us some cracker rap, Teach.’

  ‘Sure. Now why did you guys choose to speak English rather than Spanish, Portuguese, or French? These guys fucked you around just as much as we did.’

  ‘Give it to us straight, Teach.’

  ‘Because you have good taste. You gave us the music. We gave you the lyrics. Now we’ll start with punctuation marks. Do you know what they are? What’s this?’

  I wrote a full-stop on the board.

  ‘That’s a period, Teach.’

  A Rastafarian Posse member objected.

  ‘Wapen him, Teach. Him say “period”. Me say “fullstop”. Ah Jamaica me come from. In Jamaica a “period” mean a bitch bleeding.’

  The head of the Department of Education summoned me to the next room.

  ‘Marks, you’re teaching GED, right.’

  ‘That’s right.’

  ‘You don’t appear to have one.’

  ‘One what?’

  ‘A GED, Marks. I have no record of you having a GED or a high-school diploma.’

  ‘I don’t have either. That’s right.’

  ‘Now the powers that be might consider it inappropriate for a prisoner without a GED to be teaching other prisoners how to get one. You see what I’m getting at?’

  ‘But I’ve got a Master’s degree.’

  ‘There are plenty of people with Master’s degrees who can’t teach GED. The haircutting school in this prison gives Master’s degrees to people who can’t read.’

  ‘But I got my Master’s degree at Oxford.’

  ‘Oxford, Wisconsin. Who was your inmate supervisor?’

  ‘Not Oxford, Wisconsin prison. The University of Oxford in England.’

  ‘Well, no disrespects, but the United States Government is a bit wary of foreign qualifications. Generally, it doesn’t recognise them.’

  ‘It recognises foreign convictions.’

  ‘Maybe. I’m not a criminologist. I’m an education specialist, and I take the view that if the foreign qualification is meaningful, then the holder will have no objection to being re-tested by a more appropriate body. Shall I put your name down to sit the next GED examination?’

  I passed. Wearing a radiant blue gown and mortar board, I was presented with a certificate by a smiling, tongue-in-cheek Webster.

  In conjunction with a local university the prison’s Department of Education also funded and ran evening classes. I wanted to attend, but they weren’t available to non-American citizens. This really infuriated me. The US Government were tearing around the world extraditing people and then refusing them an education in prison because they were aliens. I went to see the head of the Department of Education to complain.

  ‘Yes, Marks, what’s the problem?’

  ‘This is straightforward discrimination. Why aren’t we aliens allowed to pursue further education?’

  ‘You have to remember, Marks, that each course a prisoner takes costs the American taxpayers $2,000. Have you paid much in the way of American tax?’

  ‘It costs the American taxpayer $25,000 a year to keep me here. Don’t you think it would make economic sense to spend 10% more and enable me to emerge as a useful community member rather than a biker or crack dealer?’

  ‘I don’t know, Marks. I’m not an economist. I’m an education specialist.’

  ‘It seems insane to me. And unconstitutional. Don’t you have something called the Fifteenth Amendment which prohibits discrimination on the basis of nationality?’

  ‘I don’t know, Marks. I’m not a lawyer. I’m an education specialist. Anyway, Marks, you should have thought of that before you came to America and broke our laws.’

  ‘I didn’t want to come here. I was brought against my will.’

  ‘Well, you shouldn’t have broken any laws after arriving here, whichever way you were brought.’

  ‘I haven’t.’

  ‘Then take it up with your lawyer, Marks. I can’t help you. I’m an …’

  ‘I know.’

  A correspondence course was possible. I applied to the University of London to do an external law degree. I was accepted and began some preparatory study in the prison’s law library. There was plenty of overlap between American and English law.

  Forty dollars a month is not much, even if one is provided with free accommodation, food, clothes, and leisure activities. I had significantly greater expenses than the average American prisoner because of the costs of making international telephone calls, the only way I could talk to my family. Furthermore, prisoners who had unpaid fines (I had one of $50,000) would be forced to make substantial monthly contributions to the debt under the guise of ‘The Inmate Financial Responsibility Program’. The only jobs that paid really well ($200 a month) were at the prison industry factory making army blankets for the US troops in Iraq. Fuck that. Everyone not helping the war effort had to find a ‘hustle’, an illegal way of making money within the prison system from those lucky enough to have funds or getting paid for doing their bit for Desert Storm. Possible hustles included stealing food from the kitchen, stealing knives from the factory, stealing all manner of stuff from the stores, making and selling alcoholic beverages, taking sports bets, doing other prisoners’ laundry, making customised greetings cards, painting portraits, giving blow-jobs, enforcing debt payment, and interior decorating of cells. Some prisoners became jailhouse lawyers, helping people attempting to obtain post-conviction relief from the courts. It was an ideal hustle for me, and I busied myself articulating other prisoners’ presentations to judges, lawyers, and Congressmen. A couple of early successes were achieved – a conviction overturned and a sentence reduced by ten years – and these ensured that I was heavily in demand. I never actually charged for my work, but I was almost always given something: food stolen from the kitchen, a tennis racquet, a Walkman, a hand-stitched Marco Polo jogging suit, a leather briefcase. Money Orders from New Jersey and Florida, all marked ‘remittance to inmate from family’, dribbled into my account. I made an average of $300 a month. It was more than enough.

  Hunting Marco Polo, by Paul Eddy and Sara Walden, was published and sent to me in Terre Haute by the Mail on Sunday, who wanted me to review it. I did. The book was written rather like a police manual but was accurate enough in its coverage of material with which I was familiar. One feature irritated me: its presentation of my arrest as the culmination of a chess-type battle of wits between equally armed opponents (me and Lovato). Lovato had a colossal federal budget and had the co-operation of fourteen different governments’ law enforcement agencies; I had a bunch of nice guys.

  Much had taken place outside the prison walls between my departure from Miami MCC and my receiving of a GED diploma at the end of 1991. In a sickening display of bullying and cowardice, the DEA persuaded the Dutch authorities to re-arrest Old John after his arrival in Amsterdam. They extradited him to Miami. He appeared in front of Judge Paine, refused to say anything other than plead guilty, was sentenced to time served, and set free. Balendo Lo pleaded guilty to money laundering and was immediately set free. Philip Sparrowhawk was extradited from Bangkok to Miami. He told the DEA everything he knew and was set free. Of the ten people extradited at enormous expense from all over the world, nine of them were almost immediately released once they had appeared in front of Judge Paine and pleaded guilty. I was the only one the US Government wanted to keep locked up.

  After his release, Malik went back to Pakistan. Then he went to Hong Kong, where he was arrested and extradited back to the United States. I have no idea why, or where he is now. But for sure, Lovato was involved.

  McCann was arrested by the German police in Düsseldorf. They found some hashish and a false passport in his ca
r. For some reason the Germans did not charge him with the 1973 bombing of the British Army base in Mönchengladbach for which they had been obsessively seeking his extradition for almost two decades. Instead, through courtesy of information supplied by Roger Reaves, they charged him with supplying a German boat and captain with a ton of Moroccan dope bound for England. Perhaps, like the Americans, they thought of it as a more serious offence. A German judge, McCann’s prosecutor, and McCann’s defence lawyer eventually came to question me in Terre Haute. I swore that I had nothing to do with any Moroccan hashish deal and that as far as I knew neither had McCann. McCann was acquitted, despite the German prosecution taking the extraordinary step of paying Lovato to make an eleventh-hour appearance at a German court to discredit my testimony. Fucking McCann. He still hasn’t got a dope conviction.

  By placing a notice in The Times, Lord Moynihan faked the death of his baby son to ensure that his even younger son would sit in the House of Lords. DEA Agent Craig Lovato was godfather to at least one of his sons. Then Moynihan actually died of a heart attack in the Philippines. Or so the world’s press would have us believe. There’s no corpse.

  In clouds of secrecy, Tom Sunde voluntarily surrendered to the DEA to be debriefed. He pleaded guilty to a dope charge and was sentenced to five years’ probation. His mentor, Carl, continued to search for President Ferdinand Marcos’s millions. In doing so, he stepped on the toes of the Swiss authorities, who sought his extradition from Germany. The Germans refused to give him up. Immediately afterwards Jacobi was arrested in Hong Kong pursuant to a United States extradition request based on DEA allegations that he had sold me information. Hong Kong declined to extradite.

  Roger Reaves was re-arrested. After escaping from Lübeck prison, he had decided to become a fugitive in America. The authorities recognised him and put him in a county jail. A tunnel was discovered in his cell. He was transferred to USP Lompoc, California. Ron Allen, the Chicago dealer who was with me in Pakistan, was finally caught. He pleaded guilty in exchange for a short sentence. Only Gerry Wills remained unbusted.