James Ellroy - Silent Terror

After morning chow on my fourth day in the “blocks,” the module jailer’s voice came over the PA system: “Lopez, Johnson, Plunkett, Willkie and Flores, roll it up for classification.” The electrically operated cell door slid open, and I joined the other men on the catwalk. A deputy appeared moments later, and led us down a series of corridors to a small room with blue-gray cement walls. A photograph of Sheriff Peter J. Pitchess, encased in a plastic sheath, was the only wall adornment, and the room held no furnishings of any kind.

When the deputy locked the door on us and departed, my colleagues descended on the photo with crayons, and soon the sheriff of Los Angeles County had swastikas on his collar points, Frankenstein bolts on his neck and a giant phallus in his mouth. The four hooted at their artwork, then an electrically amplified voice called out, “Good morning, gentlemen. Classification time. You’ve got sixty seconds to wipe off Sheriff Pitchess, then we want Plunkett, Flores, Johnson, Willkie and Lopez at the inside door in that order.”

Catcalls answered the ultimatum:

“I got sixty minutes with yo mama, punk!”

“Sheriff Pete too busy playin’ with my pee-pee!”

“Power to the pee-pee!”

I laughed at the two-sided ritualism, then ambled over and stood by the inside door. Two inmates were rubbing at the picture with saliva-soaked handkerchiefs. Just when the sheriff was chaste again, the door opened and a uniformed deputy pointed me toward a row of cubicles, muttering, “The one on the end.” I walked there, down a drab hallway with chin-up bars bolted to the wall.

A deputy was sitting behind a desk in the last cubicle. He pointed to a chair in front of him. When I sat down, he said, “Your full name is Martin Michael Plunkett?”

I wondered what kind of voice to assume. Seconds passed, and I decided to sound educated, in hope of getting a desk job. “Yes, sir,” I said in my normal voice.

The deputy sighed. “Your first time in jail?”

“Yes, sir.”

“Your first mistake, Plunkett. Don’t call deputies whose names you don’t know ‘sir.’ Other inmates consider that brownnosing.”

“Right.”

“That’s better. Let me run down your vitals. We’ve got you as 6'3", 185, D.O.B. 4/11/48, L.A. One count B and E, one count Possession of Burglar’s Tools, even bullet, three years’ formal probation, release date 7/14/70. Sound about right?”

“Yes.”

“Okay, now the personal stuff. What’s your occupation?”

“Librarian.”

“How far did you go in school?”

I glanced at the papers the deputy was holding; instinct told me his information was scant. “I have a masters degree in library science.”

The deputy drummed the tabletop with his fingers. “You’ve got a fucking masters degree at twenty-one?”

I chuckled self-effacingly. “From a small college in Oklahoma. They’ve got a special, accelerated masters program.”

“Jesus, librarian-burglar. Only in L.A. Okay, Plunkett. Are you a homosexual?”

“No.”

“Diabetic?”

“No.”

“Epileptic?”

“No.”

“Addicted to any mind-altering chemicals?”

“No.”

“Are you taking any prescription medicines?”

“No.”

“Are you an alcoholic?”

“No.”

“Good, I am, and it’s no fucking picnic.” The deputy laughed, then said, “Now the twilight-zone stuff. Do you think there are conspiracies out to get you?”

“No.”

“Do you think people laugh at you behind your back?”

“No.”

“Do you hear voices when you’re alone?”

“No.”

“Do you ever see things that aren’t really there?”

I bit my tongue to keep from laughing. “No.”

Stretching his arms, the deputy said, “You’re a paragon of fucking sanity, but let’s test your brain. What’s ninety-seven and forty-one?”

Without hesitation, I said, “One thirty-eight.”

“Go, Bookworm. One eighteen and seventy-four?”

“One ninety-two.”

“Two eighty-four and one sixty-six?”

“Four hundred fifty even.”

“You musta been burglarizing adding machines. What’s—”

Falsetto giggles erupted from somewhere in the row of cubicles. A high voice cooed, “I can play this guessing game just as good over in the Swish Tank at the Old County. I got sent there—”

The deputy rapped the table. “Pay attention, Brainboy. That’s Lopez trying for the Queen’s Tank; he thinks it’s safer over there. Here’s my change-up pitch. What’s four and four?”

“I don’t know,” I said, smiling.

Smiling back, the deputy looked over his papers, then said, “One psych question I forgot. Are you prone to night sweats or nightmares?”

For what seemed like an eternity of split seconds, I was without limbs, the captive of nightmare flashbacks that I thought jail had contained. Finally Shroud Shifter was there, whispering, “Slow and easy.” “No,” I said hoarsely.

The deputy said, “You’re sweating now, but I’ll chalk that up to first-timer’s nerves. Last test. Go over to the bars and chin yourself as many times as you can.”

I obeyed, attacking the bars, hoisting myself up-down, up-down, up-down, until I was drenched in day sweats that could only terminate in benevolent, dreamless exhaustion. When my muscles finally gave in and I fell to the floor, the deputy said, “Thirty-six. Anything over twenty is automatic Trash & Freight, so I gotta say you outsmarted yourself. Go to the holding room and wait; someone’ll take you to the T.F. dock.”

I got up and walked into the holding tank. The other inmates were there, embellishing Sheriff Pitchess with glasses and a Hitler mustache. The high-pitched voice I had heard in the cubicles trilled, “You sweaty hunk, aren’t you cute!” and I felt a hand on my shoulder. I pivoted, and saw that Lopez was giving me a vamp look, while the others were sizing me up for my reaction.

I held back, feeling something sickly sweet and mawkish. Then I got a jolt of terror that felt like someone was sticking a live wire into my brain. I looked at the three appraising and accusing inmates, and they turned into mirror-faced Charlie before my eyes. Lopez cooed, “I really groove on sweat,” and I hit him with my bad hand, then my good one, then bad-good, bad-good, bad-good until he was on the floor and spitting out teeth. I was zeroing in on his throat when the three inmates pulled me off and the classification deputy walked out, shook his head and said, “Lopez, you dumb shit, look what you’ve done now. Willkie, you take Plunkett to the Freight Dock; Johnson, you take Lopez to the Infirmary. You got a first-timer freebie, Plunkett. Don’t do it again.”

The inmates let me go, and Willkie gave me a gentle push out into the corridor. My vision was rimmed with red and black, and the throbbing in my hand felt like the restraining thread that kept me from exploding like a shrapnel bomb. Willkie smiled and said, “You’re good.”

Trash and Freight;

Listening;

Protective Invisibility.

The next six weeks of my sentence were spent juggling those pursuits. Assigned as a khaki trusty to the T&F detail, I worked the hardest job in the L.A. County jail system and received the rewards that came with it: a private cell, three meals a day from the officers’ dining room, and weekends off, with the free run of the honor trusty’s module — four tiers with ultrawide catwalks suitable for crap shooting, T.V. and card room, and a library filled with paperback Westerns and picture histories of Nazi Germany. The rewards were dubious, but, strangely, I came to love the work.

At 2:00 each morning, the module jailer awakened us individually, racking our cells one by one, then flashing a penlight in our eyes. I always snapped awake with a sense of relief. Since beating up Lopez, my sleep had been 100 % dreamless, but the fear of nightmares was always just a half-step away, and a quarter-step beyond that was the certainty that the jail/nightmare combination would be horrific.