Derek Haas - Dark men

“I didn’t know but I said I’d try. He said ‘good, good.’ Then he nodded to indicate a beefy prison guard standing behind the glass near the exit. ‘See that hack over there what looks like he ate too many dollar specials at the Taco Bell?’”

Smoke stops and laughs to himself. “You know how Archie do.”

I can’t help but smile too, but signal with my hands tumbling over each other for him to get on with it. It doesn’t do either of us any good to think of Archie in the past tense.

“He tells me the guard goes by the name of Nash. Archie says he’s been able to crack the code on most of the hacks but this Nash has been a problem. Says he’s tightlipped and none of the other guards’ll spill on him.

“Now, as you can imagine, most bulls take a handout here or there for favors, but not this Nash. He’s straight as an arrow and there was no chinks in the armor neither. He’s one of those true blue badges you hear about but never expect to see. And those are the dangerous ones. Because nothing can fuck up a connected con’s plans like a hack who won’t play ball. Suddenly, you find yourself transferred to the wrong cellblock, or your pleasantries are confiscated, or you’re eating at the wrong table in the cafeteria or worse. Balance of power is always a precarious thing in life, but in lock-down, it’s hanging by tooth floss, I’ll tell you that.

“Archie looks me over, and says, ‘get me something.’ ‘What’d’you mean, ‘something’? I ask back, and Archie gets that look in his eye he gets time to time that says ‘I’m smarter than you think I am.’ He looks down his nose at me and says, ‘What have we been talking about? Information, Smoke.’ He’s the first one to call me that by the way cause I had this pack of Parliaments I pulled out and lit up in mid-conversation. That’s the one good thing I’ll say about L-burg.. you can smoke inside that damn place. What happened to the world where we kicked all the smokers outdoors? Anyway, Archie keeps on, ‘Anything I can use on Nash to get what needs getting. One week. You find me some A-plus information and all your problems inside this box disappear like bad dreams in the morning light. Consider yourself off-limits for a week… nobody but nobody gonna be in your business, I guarantee that. And don’t forget something, Smoke. I believe in you.’”

Smoke fiddles with his unopened pack, turning the box over and over, occupying his hands. I have a feeling he’d like to pause the tale to step outside and light one up, but telling stories has a way of gaining a foothold on anything else you might want to do, planting its flag until it’s over. He looks up at me.

“So what the fuck was I gonna do? I’m like three days into this shitbox and I’m going to find out information on a hack no one else has been able to procure? A bull with a clean certificate? How the fuck was I gonna do that? But those words were there, Columbus. He said ’em and I’ll be damned if he didn’t mean ’em. ‘I believe in you.’ Those words were like, I don’t know, they had weight, man. You believe that?”

I nod and half of Smoke’s mouth turns upward. His eyes start to shine, but he doesn’t wipe at them.

“First thing I did was spend two days doing nothing but watching Nash. Marking his shift changes, seeing how he conducted himself, who he talked to, who he watched, hell, I even counted how many times he scratched his nuts. But there was nothing there. He just stood behind the glass and watched us with dark eyes.

“Now, he wasn’t always behind the glass and that gave me a bit of hope. The bulls took various shifts, sometimes behind the glass, sometimes in the corridor outside the rec room, sometimes walking the block, and sometimes out in the yard.

“I watched him, I watched him, I watched him, and this cat Nash did not give me a goddamn inch. Believe that. I started thinking maybe he’s a robot, like some android out of a space movie. C-3PO or some shit. Cons would try to talk to him and he’d just ignore their shit and give ’em a stare that stopped ’em cold.

“I was five days into my seven and I hadn’t come up with jack squat. Not a plan, nothing. My mind was racing. Maybe I just make up a story and tell it to Archie, but what would that give me? Seemed like I might as well grab a shovel and start digging my own grave out in the yard. But damn if your mind don’t play tricks on you in the box when you start running out of options. And those words were hanging over me the whole time… ‘I believe in you.’ I know it sounds corny as a holiday card, but I wanted that belief to be rewarded, made whole… that’s the only way I can describe it. I wanted to justify his belief. This man I barely knew. Had only spoken to once.

“Then I saw an opening. The slimmest opening possible. An opening that would add some years on my sentence and would put the ‘hard’ into ‘hard time’ if I got caught.

“See, one thing I’ve come to learn about this job is you gotta look at things from a different angle. I was trying to shadow Nash and pick up on a mistake or a flaw or some way to get inside with him, but instead, I should’ve been watching where he wasn’t. I didn’t say that right. Let me explain.

“I noticed that the guards went into a locker room just off of A block when they checked in. Various guards would be in and out of there all day, Nash included. When he came in, he’d be wearing a pair of khakis and an oxford shirt, but when he walked out, he’d be wearing a different pair of pants and the blue dress shirt that all hacks wore, you know? It came to me then and there. I had to get inside that locker room and see if there was any clue, any anything he left behind in his locker when he went out on shift.

“So there it was. All my eggs in that basket. I only had a day left, and how the hell was I gonna get into that locker room? Prisoners weren’t supposed to be out of A block at all, much less in the bullring.”

Smoke holds up one finger and flashes me a smile. “Except one inmate. One guy, that’s it. Little sawed off son-of-a-bitch named George Yackey. The Yack Attack, my ticket in. This con got the sweet gig of shining the bathrooms, sweeping the floors, picking up the dead bugs off the windowsills in the area called ‘A Extension’ but what the cons called ‘the bullring’ cause that’s where the guards went for break and change. Yack was the only orange jumpsuit allowed back there, twice a day, to clean up the ring and make it look nice.

“Now understand, the bullring wasn’t near the perimeter or even on the outskirts of the building, so it wasn’t like you had shotguns trained on you or the hacks would think you were trying to escape if they caught you in there. In a lot of ways, it’d be worse for you, ’cause if you were in the ring unauthorized, the guards would assume you were trying to fuck ’em in some way. Steal from ’em or what-not. And here’s a little fact about serving time no one talks about: if you make a legitimate attempt at escape… if you get caught climbing the side of a wall, or in a tunnel or gripping the undercarriage of a laundry truck as it drives off the site, the hacks don’t beat the shit out of you. Hell, they’re not even sore. They actually show you a little bit of respect. That’s the truth! Don’t ask me why it’s so.. best I can figure, they put themselves in the con’s shoes and say, ‘why the hell wouldn’t I want out of this dungeon any way I can? How’m I gonna blame this poor fool for trying?’ Sure, they’ll throw you in solitary for a month and take away privileges for a year, but when you walk down the block, they’ll give you a nod like ‘not bad, you crazy son-of-a-bitch. Not bad.’

“So if I was trying to escape, I might’ve had a bit of lenience if I was busted. But caught in their area? Caught in the ring? Those bulls’ll go to town on your flesh until they catch bone, I guarantee that. That’s lesson time to them. Gotta teach a lesson, right?