Bruce DeSilva - Providence Rag

It was costing the state a hundred and fifty-seven thousand dollars per convict annually to run the facility, nearly four times the average for the state’s other prisons. Taxpayers didn’t complain. This was a rare case of them getting what they paid for. No one had ever escaped from Supermax.

Inside, a dozen sad-faced women sat on two rows of molded plastic chairs that were bolted to the waiting room floor. Three of the women were attempting to shush their unruly children, who seemed to think this was a playdate. The rest of the women didn’t look as if they had the energy to make the effort. Mason, the only man in the room, stood in a corner with Felicia Freyer, Diggs’s new lawyer, and tried to stay clear of the mayhem. He thought she looked like a polished diamond among the slope-shouldered women.

After what seemed like a long wait, a single prison guard dressed in a gray uniform with black piping on the pants legs stepped into the room and passed out sign-in forms. Mason hurriedly filled his in, not marking the box you were supposed to check if you had ever been convicted of a felony.

Then another guard entered, holding a drug-sniffing German shepherd by a short leash.

“Do not attempt to pet the dog,” he shouted.

The pooch meandered through the narrow room, failed to alert, and was led away.

The first guard collected the paperwork. Then he muttered something into a radio fastened to his left shoulder, and a steel door rolled open. The guard led Mason and Freyer through it, the three of them stepping into a claustrophobic steel compartment about the size of a small elevator. The door rolled shut behind them, and Mason heard the lock clank. Fifteen seconds later, a similar door in front of them buzzed and slid open.

Mason and Freyer stepped out into a long, narrow room lined with twelve cramped booths. Each was furnished with a single blue plastic chair. Mason pulled one out for Freyer and stood beside her, peering through a thick Plexiglas partition smeared with greasy handprints and no telling how many years’ worth of dried tears. Beyond the partition another steel door slid open, and Kwame Diggs lumbered in, his big hands cuffed in front. He wore leg chains and an orange jumpsuit. A tan patch on his chest held his six-digit prison number: 694287.

When he was arrested at the age of fifteen, Diggs had been a five-foot-ten, 250-pound behemoth with close-cropped naps, a mild case of acne, and lips that snarled for the camera. In prison, he’d grown into a giant with a shiny shaved skull and a neatly trimmed goatee. His face, Mason thought, looked disconcertingly jolly.

Diggs approached the partition, his gait part grizzly bear and part furniture mover, and dropped into a plastic chair that looked too frail to hold his weight. He raised his big cuffed paws and picked up a black telephone receiver. Freyer already held its twin to her ear.

Behind her, women and children were filing in and taking their places in the other booths. A guard hollered, “You’ve got thirty minutes.”

“How are you today, Kwame?” Freyer asked. She paused for his clipped response. “Well, hang in there. This is Edward Mason, the reporter I told you about. Will you talk to him?”

Diggs nodded.

“Good,” she said, “but first let me give you a rundown on what I’ve been doing on your case.” As she talked, Mason kept checking his watch, the half hour they were allotted ticking away. Finally, Freyer handed Mason the phone. It crackled with static, like a long-distance call to Rwanda.

“’Sup, cuz?”

Mason was surprised by Diggs’s voice. It still had a trace of child in it.

“I’d like to ask you some questions if that’s all right.”

“Sure, no biggie. If I don’t like ’em, I’ll just rip this partition down and twist your fuckin’ head off.”

Mason reeled back from the glass. Diggs threw back his head and howled.

“Man, you shoulda seen your face just then. Just kidding, cuz. No way anybody can break through this glass. Folks done tried it, believe me.”

“We don’t have much time,” Mason said, “so can we get to it?”

“Shoot.”

“Back in 1996, you were convicted of contempt for refusing a psych evaluation.”

“Yeah.”

“Why did you refuse?”

“Lawyer told me to.”

“Haggerty?”

“Yeah, him.”

“Why didn’t he want you to take it?”

“He said they’d use the answers to get me locked up in the crazy house.”

“But after you were sentenced to seven years for contempt, you changed your mind?”

“Hell, yeah. Wouldn’t you?”

“They say you were evasive during the evaluation.”

“The dude in the white coat kept asking why I killed all those people. I told him I didn’t.”

“But you did, didn’t you?”

“Same answer, cuz.”

“What else did they ask you?” Mason said, although he already knew from reading the case files. There had been a lot of questions about why Diggs was so angry. He’d insisted that he wasn’t.

“It was a long time ago,” Diggs said. “How the hell am I supposed to remember that shit?”

“Fair enough,” Mason said. “Let’s talk about the time you were convicted of having drugs in your cell.”

“Weed,” Diggs said. “The screws be sayin’ they found weed under my mattress.”

“And did they?”

“Come on, man. I’m jonesin’ for a joint right now, straight up. But you seen the security in this place, right? No way I can get any drugs in here.”

“So you’re saying it was planted.”

“Not exactly.”

“What, then?”

“They didn’t even bother to hide the shit in my cell. Probably just grabbed a baggie from an evidence locker so they could wave it around at the trial.”

“What about the two assaults on prison guards?”

“Never happened.”

“No?”

“No.”

“You never got mad and hit somebody?”

“Be wanting to, sure. Plenty of times.”

“And why would that be?”

“The screws are always fuckin’ with me. Tossin’ my cell. Blaggin’ my burn. Tearin’ up the family pictures my mama sends me. Spittin’ in my food. Every day calling me names. Child killer. Pervert. Nigger. Anything to get me to take a swing at ’em.”

“Blagging your burn?”

“Stealing my cigarettes. Which they did all the time before the fuckin’ warden banned smoking in here.”

“When they mess with you, what do you do?”

“I laugh at ’em, cuz. Just laugh and give ’em a big ol’ pickaninny grin. Back when I was on the street, I used to get hot about shit like that. Some kid called me nigger in the school yard, I’d whup his ass and rub his face in the dirt. But I’ve had a lot of time to work on my self-control in here. Believe me, I’m way too smart to give them bastards what they want.”

“So they made it all up?”

“Yeah.”

Mason asked Diggs for the names of prison guards he might talk to. All Diggs knew were a few last names.

Glancing at his watch, Mason saw that his time was nearly gone. “I’d like to come back and see you again. Would that be okay?”

“Sure. Ain’t like I got anything better to do. Meanwhile, can you do me a favor?”

“What?”

“Send me somethin’ to read.”

“What do you like?”

“Black history,” Diggs said. “I already read all they got on that in the prison library. I been askin’ my moms for more, but she don’t get me nothin’ ’cept shit about Jesus.”

“Time’s up,” the guard hollered. “Phones down. Form a line at the door.”

Gloria sipped from her can of Coca-Cola and peered into the cage in Mulligan’s kitchen.

“Is it a boy or a girl?” she asked.