Макс Коллинз - Shoot the Moon (and more)

The other guy playing cards was named Hopp. That was his last name. I never did hear his first name, or Elam’s either, for that matter. And as far as they were concerned, Wheaty was just Wheat, and I was Kitch.

And Hopp was Hopp. A heavy-set, sour-faced guy who never said much besides, “Deal the cards.” He looked like Don Rickles, but even balder.

I had the idea Hopp could kill you with his bare hands if he wanted to, and had the idea too that Elam would stick a knife in a buddy’s back for a dollar and a half.

“He also beat the crap out of his wife,” Elam continued, still referring to the accountant named Peabody who, two tables away, was studying the television set with the concentration of an advanced yoga student.

“How long’s he in for?” Wheat asked.

“He got sixty days. All he does is watch those soap operas, which are the story of his life, you know? Wives cheating on husbands and vice versa and people beating the crap out of each other over it.”

“But he’s such a little guy,” I whispered. Peabody seemed wrapped up in his soap opera, yes, but I whispered just the same: I wasn’t taking any chances getting a guy who beat the crap out of people mad at me.

“Yeah, well, his wife and her boyfriend were little, too. And he used a putter on ’em, sneaked up on ’em while they was together and tried to putt ’em to death. Ha!”

Hopp said, “Deal the cards.”

They seemed to be playing a rummy game of some kind. I didn’t recognize it, so it must’ve been a pretty obscure variant, I figured. There aren’t many card games I’m not familiar with.

“Are his wife and her boyfriend okay?” I asked. Still whispering. “I’d think you could get hurt kind of bad by a guy hitting you with a putter.”

“He’d of done a hell of a lot better with a two iron, I clue ya. Ha! Go fish, Hopp!”

“Go fish?” I said. “You guys are playing ‘Go Fish’?”

“Yeah. We been playing worse than that. We played Crazy Eights yesterday, if you can believe it. We been playing everything two guys alone can play, and neither one of us likes this two-handed baloney, lemme tell ya. And the accountant over there won’t play. He’s got his ‘stories’ to watch. Ha! You boys play cards?”

“Uh,” I said, smiling a little. “Do they, uh, let you gamble in here?”

Lunch was vegetable beef soup, barbeque pork sandwich and orange Jello with banana slices and marshmallows. And milk. “I love this place,” Wheaty said. Slurping his soup. “This place is better than Howard Johnson’s.”

For once I agreed with Wheat. The soup was great, and the sandwich was no slouch, either. And while I’m not much on Jello salad, as Jello salads go, this one wasn’t bad.

Elam, who was sitting next to Hopp across the table from us, said, “The sheriff’s wife does the cooking. She’s a real honey. Nice looking broad, too.”

Hopp said, “You been in here too long.”

Sometimes, when he wasn’t playing cards, Hopp said things other than “Deal the cards,” but it was always sort of startling when he did.

“What about dessert,” Wheat said. “Do we get dessert?”

Elam nodded. He spoke as he chewed his Jello salad. His teeth and the Jello were just a shade different in color. “Wait till you taste the homemade doughnuts in the morning. Melt in the mouth. Best jail I was ever in.”

“But isn’t it kind of, uh, run down?” I asked. “I mean, are most jails in this bad a shape?”

“Hell, kid, you don’t know when you got it good. Don’t you know a jail with personality when you see it? This jail’s been around. Half of Capone’s boys spent their summer vacations in this joint.”

Wheaty said, “You mean Chicago gangsters stayed here?”

I said, “In the DeKalb County Jail? How come?”

“Cook County Jail got so overcrowded, some of the neighboring counties had to take the overflow. My uncle was a bootlegger back then, told me all about it. Some of the people in charge here was on the take, so Capone’s boys got the regular red carpet treatment. I understand they used to let ’em out to go get a beer, take in a movie, go out on a date. Ha!”

“Lace curtain jail,” Hopp said.

“Huh?” Wheat said.

“Yeah, that’s right.” Elam said. “They called this place the lace curtain jail, ’cause the Prohibition crooks got treated like royalty. And you know something? We’re treated that way ourselves. Good food, friendly guards, lots of privileges, and that Bull Pen with its big cells and TV and tables and decent toilet and shower, if that ain’t home away from home I never saw it. Take it from me, I been in jails. This one’s a honey.”

“Even if it is falling down,” I said, not fully convinced.

“ Because it’s falling down,” Elam said. “The people running this jail, the sheriff for example, who has to live in here himself, feel so damn guilty about havin’ to run a rattletrap old place like this, feel so damn sorry for us poor slobs stuck in here, why they bend over backwards makin’ us feel comfy. Now you take a modern jail, all shiny and spit and polish, hell. The people running those places get to feeling like their tenants got it too good, got it soft , like a guy should feel lucky to be staying in such a nice looking new place with its chrome crappers and all. Ha! I tell ya something else, you get the worst damn chow in those places. Worse than army chow. You won’t find food like this in a new jail.”

We were eating downstairs, in a cell block similar to the Bull Pen but larger, with twenty cells (a row of ten on either side of the room) and bigger metal picnic tables than we had upstairs, two of them, where we’d been seated for the meal, the food already on the tables waiting for us when we got there. Three other prisoners joined the five of us from the Bull Pen for this and subsequent meals. A guard stood out in the catwalk and watched us eat.

Peabody, the accountant, was eating with a black guy at the other table. The black guy was small, skinny, boyish looking. He was probably about twenty. He was wearing a gray tee shirt and jeans. Peabody and the black guy were talking a mile a minute. It looked like they were planning a break or something.

Elam saw me watching them and said, “Hey. Don’t stare at those guys.”

“Huh? Oh. Sure. I didn’t mean to, uh...”

“That little spade’s a killer. He could have a temper. They got him in a separate cell. He’s in for killing his wife’s boyfriend.”

“Oh,” I said. Somewhat shaken. “I, uh, see why he and Peabody hit it off so good. They have something in common.”

“Hope to shout they got something in common,” Elam said. “They’re both soap opera freaks. The spade’s got a portable TV in his cell. That’s what they’re jabbering about, their soap operas.”

Wheaty said, “My mom watches soap operas.”

“Well,” Elam said, “if she comes to see you visiting day, you’ll have to introduce her to Peabody and the spade.”

Wheaty was too busy eating his Jello to catch Elam’s good-natured sarcasm. Wheat just said, “My mom’s not going to come visit. I’m not telling her I’m in the clink.”

“The clink,” Hopp said.

Elam said, “I take it this is the first time either of you boys has been in the, ha! clink. Do I guess right?”

We said yeah.

“So what are you in for? Now. You don’t have to say if you‘d rather not. First, lemme point out Hopp and me are generally bigger-time than county jail, know what I mean, but we lucked out, if you can call being stuck in the, ha! clink, lucky. We got caught with some TVs in the back of a van. The van was ours, the TVs weren’t. We got a year. We got another thirty-six days and then we’ll be back to chasing a little bit more profitable rainbows than TV sets. I even got a particular little rainbow in mind.”