Andrew Vachss: Strega

"Yeah?"

"It's Burke. Tell your boss I'll meet him tonight on the third shift."

"I ain't got no boss, pal. You got the wrong number," he said, slamming down the phone. The Strike Force is making all Italians nervous these days.

The "third shift" means eleven at night to seven in the morning, just like it is in prison. When you're doing time, you learn that each shift has its own personality. The first shift, the joint is on its best behavior; that's when the visitors are allowed in and that's the only time the Parole Board comes around. The jerkoff therapists and counselors and religious nuts all make their appearances on the first shift too. The second shift is where you settle all your disputes, if you're serious about them. Prison fights only last a few seconds-someone dies and someone walks away. If the guy you stab lives, he's entitled to a rematch. And the third shift is where you check out of the hotel if you can't stand the room-that's where the young ones hang up in their cells. Prison's just like the free world: bullshit, violence, and death-only in prison it's on a tighter schedule.

Maybe you never really get out of prison. I don't have bars on my back windows-the fire escape rusted right off the building years ago except for the stairs to the roof-and Pansy was ready to discuss the ethics of breaking and entering with anyone who might show up-but it was another day coming on and my only goal was to get through it.

Inside the walls, they don't leave you with much. That's why the body-builders treasure their measurements more than any fashion model.

You can die for stepping on another man's little piece of the yard-or on his name. You either stand up to what they throw at you or you go down-it's that simple. In prison, you go down, you stay down.

The redhead was a standup broad. She didn't like doing that number in the park, but she went the route for her kid. She did the right thing-it made what I did right too. I'd never see her again. I didn't want to-the whole thing made me think of Flood.

Until Flood came along, I had survival down to a science. Like the redhead, she had a job to do, and I got brought in. She took her share of the weight and carried it right to the edge.

Flood was a state-raised kid, like me. "I'm for you, Burke," she told me just before she went back to another world. I was okay before I met her-I knew what I had to do and I did it. You don't miss what you never had. But ever since Flood, the pain floats around inside me like a butterfly. When it lands, I have to do something to forget. A piece of that song Bones used to sing in his cell late at night came to me:

I wish I had a dollar,

I wish I had a dime.

I wish I had a woman,

But all I got is time.

"Maximum Security Blues," he used to call it. Bones wasn't used to big-city jailing. He'd done most of his time down in Mississippi, on the Parchman Farm, a thirty-thousand-acre prison without walls. They didn't need walls-a man can't run faster than a bullet. Bones said he got his name years ago when he was working the dice circuit, but we called him that because that's all there was of him-he was about a hundred years old, as sharp and skinny as an ice pick. Bones did things the old way-he'd be so respectful to the guards with his thick Southern voice that they'd never listen to what he was really saying.

One of the young city blacks didn't listen so good either. Bones was sitting on a box on one of the neutral courts in the Big Yard, playing his battered six-string and singing his songs. The young stud came up with his boys, all dressed in their bullshit back-to-Africa colors, "political prisoners" one and all. I didn't know mugging old ladies for their welfare checks was a revolutionary act, but what the hell do I know? The only Marx who ever made sense to me was Groucho. The leader insisted everyone call him by his tribal name, and the new-breed guards went along with it. He rolls up and tells Bones that he's a fucking stereotype- a low-life Uncle Tom ass-kissing nigger, and all that. And Bones just strums his guitar, looking past the punk to someplace else.

The only sounds on the yard were the grunts of the iron-jockeys and the slap of dominoes on wood-and Bones's sad guitar. Then we heard a loud slap; the guitar went silent but the rest of the joint started to hum. The cold gray death-shark was swimming in the prison yard, but the guards on the catwalks didn't know it yet. Men were getting to their feet all over the yard, drifting over to where the punk was standing over Bones, holding the old man's guitar in his hands.

"This thing is nothing but an instrument to play slave music with, old man," the punk leered at him, holding the neck in one hand and the body in the other. "Maybe I'll just snap it over my knee-how you like that?"

"Don't do that, son," Bones pleaded with him.

The punk looked back at his friends for approval, all alone in his power-world now, never seeing the human wall closing around him. I looked past Bones to where Virgil, my cellmate, was closing in. Virgil wasn't raised to take up for blacks, but he'd back my play like he was supposed to when it went down. I hated Bagoomi-or whatever the fucking fool called himself-anyway. His revolutionary mission didn't stop him from raping fresh young kids when they first came on the cellblock.

But I was too late. The ancient guitar snapped across his knee as easily as a toothpick and he held one piece in each hand, his gold-toothed mouth grinning down at Bones. The old man's hand flashed and the fool's smile died along with the rest of him. By the time the guards smashed through the dense clot of prisoners, all they discovered was one more weasel who'd found the only true path to the Promised Land, a sharpened file sticking deep between his ribs. The guards paid no attention to Bones holding the pieces of his guitar and crying to himself. Their investigation determined that someone had settled a gambling debt with the punk, prison-style, and that the old man's guitar had been a casualty of the collection method.

I didn't know Flood when I was doing time-I didn't know there were women like her on this earth. I should have known that when love came to me, it would only be for a visit.

When the blues come down on you this hard, you don't want to be locked up. In prison, I had no choice. But in prison, I never had the blues like this. It was time to hit the streets.

ICALLED Pansy down from her roof, locked the place up, and climbed down the stairs to the garage. Sometimes when I get the blues I sit and talk with Pansy, but she was being a real bitch lately. She was in heat again-I didn't want to have her fixed-and every time she went into heat she'd rip up pieces of the office until she got over it. It didn't change the look much, and my clients aren't the particular type anyway.

The docks were quiet-a few sorry hookers hiding empty faces behind cheap makeup, a leather-laced stud hustler not smart enough to know the action didn't start until it got dark, a few citizens late for work. I was looking for Michelle, but I guess she'd taken the day off.

I thought about going up to the Bronx and scaring up the Mole, but I wasn't in the mood for a conversation about Israel today. The Mole loved the idea of Israel, but he'd never go.

Then I thought I'd find Max and go on with our gin game. We'd been playing almost a dozen years now, and he still had every single score-sheet. I was about forty bucks ahead. But the warehouse was empty.

The light at Bowery and Delancey held me up-long enough for one of the bums to approach the Plymouth with a dirty rag in one hand and a bottle of something in the other.

"Help me out, man?" the bum asked. "I'm trying to get together enough to get back home."

"Where's home?" I asked him.