Bruce DeSilva - Providence Rag

“Good morning, Iggy. What the hell is…”

“Okay, let’s try it this way,” Mason said. “I’ll tell you what I already know, and you straighten me out if you think I’ve got something wrong.”

“I’m listening,” Paul Delvecchio said.

“On the morning of March thirteen, 2005, you were among a group of guards hanging out in the Supermax break room. Bob Araujo, Chuckie Shaad, Ty Robinson, Frank Horrocks, and maybe one or two others. Most of them were drinking coffee and making small talk. A couple of them were playing cards.”

“I’m supposed to remember where I was seven years ago?”

“You’ll remember this, all right,” Mason said. “It was the morning after Araujo was supposedly assaulted by Kwame Diggs, and he was telling everybody who’d listen what really happened.”

“And what was that?” Delvecchio asked. He took a sip of his coffee and sank his teeth into a leaking jelly doughnut.

“The way Araujo told it, he faked the assault charge on Warden Matos’s orders so they’d have an excuse to keep Diggs locked up. The other guards gave Araujo the hero treatment, shaking his hand and slapping him on the back.”

“Not the way I remember it,” Delvecchio said.

“So you do recall that morning.”

The prison guard slammed his fist on the counter.

“Here’s what you better remember, asshole. You better remember what happened to your fucking car. You know what kind of people drive a Prius? Tree huggers, socialists, and faggots. I got you pegged as all three. Keep this up and it won’t be your windshield that gets busted next time. It’ll be your fuckin’ skull.”

With that, Delvecchio got up and stomped out of Dunkin’ Donuts.

Diggs put the visitors’ room phone to his ear and scowled.

“What the fuck you doin’ to me, cuz? Why’d you put all that shit in the paper?”

“You get the paper in here?”

“The prison library gets it, yeah.”

“I put in all the things you told me, Kwame.”

“Yeah, but you also put in a bunch of crap that made me look like a liar.”

“Some of the things you told me weren’t true.”

“You played me, cuz. When I get out of here, I’m gonna fuckin’ wreck you.”

“That so?”

“Count on it,” he said, and slammed his cuffed hands against the Plexiglas.

Two guards roused themselves from the wall they’d been leaning on, gunfighter-strutted up to Diggs, and grabbed him roughly by the shoulders.

“Calm the fuck down, asshole,” Mason heard one of them yell, the words faint through the thick Plexiglas. The guards then talked quietly to Diggs for a few seconds. When the tension fell from his shoulders, they sauntered back to their post along the wall. But they kept their eyes locked on him.

“Tell me something, Kwame,” Mason said. “Do you think I’m going to keep looking into the charges against you if you threaten me like that?”

Diggs didn’t speak.

“How do you suppose you’re going to get out of here without my help?”

“Sheee-it. You ain’t been any help so far.”

“I’ve found out enough to convince me that you were framed on the drug and assault charges, Kwame. I just don’t have enough evidence to prove it yet.”

“Of course I was framed. Did you see the fuckin’ video?”

“Video? What video?”

“Exactly, cuz.”

“What are you trying to tell me?”

“Everything that happens in here is on video. There’s cameras all over the fuckin’ place. So how come they didn’t show no video of me whacking out guards at my trials, huh? Can you explain that ?”

That evening, as Mason headed home for the night, his newly repaired Prius was running rough. As he dipped off the Claiborne Pell Bridge and rolled into Newport, flames shot from the hood.

Firemen arrived in minutes and smothered the engine fire with extinguishers. A city cop arranged a tow and gave Mason a lift home.

“Bristol Toyota. How may we serve you?”

“Don Sockol, please.”

“May I tell him who is calling?”

“Edward Mason.”

“One moment, please…”

“Good morning, Edward. How’s the Prius treating you?”

“Fine and dandy,” Mason lied.

“So how may I help you today?”

“I’m working on another story about Kwame Diggs, and I could use your help again.”

“Man, that story in the Sunday paper really tore him a new one,” Sockol said.

“It did,” Mason said.

“Was the information I sent you any help?”

“It sure was. Thanks so much.”

“That’s great. But what’s this I been hearing about the Dispatch trying to get Diggs sprung?”

“Don’t believe everything you hear on the radio,” Mason said. “That’s just Iggy Rock trying to stir up trouble.”

“That’s what I figured. I gotta tell you, though. A lot of the guards believe that shit. Some of them are pretty worked up about it, so you better watch your back.”

“Thanks. I will.”

“So what do you need now?”

“Is it true that everything that happens in Supermax is caught on surveillance cameras?”

“Not everything, no.”

“What’s covered?”

“The corridors, the exercise yard, the visitors’ room… all the common areas. No cameras in the cells, though. Got to give the skels their privacy.”

“The guards’ break room?”

“No.”

“How long do they keep the tapes?”

“There aren’t any tapes. It’s all digital nowadays. The video files are stored on hard drives. We’re supposed to delete the old stuff every five years, but we don’t always get around to it, to tell you the truth.”

“Do you have access to the files?”

“Yeah. The hard drives are kept in my office.”

Careful, Mason told himself. If Sockol figures out what you’re after, you’re sunk.

“I don’t suppose there’s any interesting video of Diggs.”

“Actually, there is, although it’s not from the surveillance cameras. Last summer, the warden brought in some lame poet from Providence College to run a writing workshop. The idea was to help the inmates get in touch with their feelings or some such bullshit. We record all our education programs, so we’ve got video and sound of the whole thing.”

“Diggs was there?”

“Yeah. The inmates were supposed to write poems and read them out loud. Most of them just sat on their asses for an hour and laughed at the guy, but a few of them actually wrote something.”

“Including Diggs?”

“Uh-huh. The other guys wrote about their mothers or their dogs or how much they missed their kids. But Diggs? He wrote some rap lyrics about fucking blondes.”

“No kidding?”

“Yeah. Afterwards, all the guards were talking about it, so I cued the video in my office and watched it. Diggs was doing this bouncy little dance while he rapped about all the places he wanted to put his dick. Creepy as all hell.”

“Any chance I could see that video?”

“Uh… you can’t come to my office to watch it. That would get me in a world of trouble.”

“I understand,” Mason said, making his voice thick with disappointment. Don’t suggest the solution, he thought to himself. Let Sockol work it out.

The Corrections Department clerk thought it over, then said, “What if I made you a copy?”

“Could you? That would be great.”

“I could download it onto a portable hard drive and drop it in the mail. Long as you don’t tell anybody how you got it.”

“I promise.”

“Anything else you need?”