Shirley Murphy - The Cat, The Devil, The Last Escape

Lee hadn’t heard that name in fifty years. “Gimpy, you old safecracking buzzard.”

Hobbling along fast, Gimpy joined him, his eyes laughing beneath bushy gray brows. His hair was gray now, and he was maybe some heavier. “When the hell did you get in, Boxcar?”

“Just transferred in from Springfield. How long have you been here?”

“Two years, doing five. I might make parole one of these days.” The little man scowled. “My last safe job went sour.”

They’d been just kids when they’d pulled a few jobs together, Gimpy opening the train safes slick and fast. He was the best man with a punch and hand sledge Lee had ever seen. “Do you remember . . .” Lee began. He was silenced by the loud blast of a Klaxon, the sudden blare brought ice gripping his stomach. Gimpy nudged him out of the way as four guards ran by, followed by two medics carrying black bags and a stretcher, their white coats flapping.

“It’s in the furniture plant,” Gimpy said. They moved toward the industries building, where a short spur track ran from the loading platform out through a sally port in the prison wall. A freight car sat on the track, guards and inmates milling around its open door, pulling out heavy crates.

“Furniture crates,” Gimpy said, “desks for the military.” There was a lot of shouting, the sound of wood being pried and splintered. A guard and two prisoners eased a body out from the collapsed wooden crate, lifted the bloody figure onto a stretcher.

Once the injured man had been carried off, four inmates pulled the crate out. Lee could see the false bottom the man had built, splintered now and crushed. Gimpy said, “He must have squeezed into it after the crate was loaded. Maybe the crates on top shifted. Doesn’t say much for his carpentry.”

Lee shook his head. “An ugly way to go.”

“Hell, Boxcar, no one’s ever broke out of this joint, something always goes bad. One guy had a gun smuggled in by a guard, got himself rifle shot before he got through the main corridor.”

Lee looked up with speculation at the thirty-foot wall, but Gimpy snorted. “Not over that wall, nor under it neither. Wall’s a dozen feet thick at the bottom, and sitting on solid rock. I’ll do my time right here,” he said, shifting his weight. “No one could get over that baby.”

When they parted company Lee headed for the classifications office, moving up the steps and inside past rows of desks where prison personnel sorted though files or sat talking with inmates, men fidgeting nervously in straight-backed chairs or slouching with bored disdain. The room stunk of sweaty bodies and stale cigarette smoke. Lee’s classification officer was a soft little fellow in his forties: slick bald head, white rumpled shirt, his tie pulled loose and his collar unbuttoned. He laid his unlit pipe on the desk among stacks of jumbled papers. “I’m Paul Camp. You’re Lee Fontana? You just came in from Springfield.”

Lee nodded. Camp gestured for Lee to sit down and handed across a printed set of rules, a meal schedule, and a laundry and mail schedule. “I do three jobs here. Classification, parole, and counseling.”

“You think I can get a job in industries? I like to be doing something.”

“You’ll have to see the doctor first. When I get a slip from him, you’ll have more freedom, we’ll see what we can do. You can go on over to the hospital from here.” Camp gave him directions. “He’ll want to see you every week for a while, to check on the emphysema.” Then the jolt came. “Twice a week,” Camp said, “you’ll be attending group counseling sessions.” He handed Lee another short schedule.

“I don’t need group counseling. What do I want with that?”

Camp studied him, then thumbed through Lee’s file. “You may not think you need the sessions, but I do. If you had used a little restraint, Fontana, if you hadn’t gotten into trouble in Vegas, you’d still be out on parole.” He fixed Lee with a hard look. “Unless, of course, you wanted to be back behind bars.”

Lee’s belly twisted. “Sure I did. I have what the shrinks call a subliminal need to be confined, to be shut in by high walls, safe from the outside world and with all the prison amenities.”

Camp just looked at him. Lee couldn’t decide whether the counselor’s eyes reflected anger, suspicion, or a suppressed desire to laugh. “The Federal Bureau of Prisons, Fontana, has moved into the age of treatment. Just go to counseling, it’s the policy. Just go and endure it.”

He left Camp’s office swallowing back a cough, hating modern prison ways. He’d rather take a beating than be forced into their fancy headshrinking show. Why couldn’t they leave him alone? They’d locked him up, they had him where they wanted, so why couldn’t they leave him be?

As he headed for the dispensary beyond the officers’ mess, the thirty-foot concrete wall loomed over him and over the big exercise yard. He could see two tennis courts laid out, where six inmates in cutoffs were batting the little white balls. Two more guys were playing handball, and beyond the empty baseball diamond, on the oval track, several men were jogging laps—the place was a regular country club. His own first time behind bars, when he was eighteen, he’d had a rock pile to exercise on. Did the guards here in the South spoon-feed these punks and wipe their runny noses before they sent them out to play?

The dispensary waiting room was painted pale green like most government offices he’d seen, a color that was supposed to be restful. He wondered how many billions of gallons of that stuff the government had bought, allowing some big company to make a killing. Half a dozen inmates sat on folding metal chairs waiting to be seen by the duty doctor. Lee took a chair. He’d waited maybe twenty minutes when he got a shock that spun him around, looking.

“Lee Fontana?” a woman’s voice called out. A woman? In a men’s prison?

A young woman stood in the doorway holding a clipboard, and she was some classy lady. Dark, wavy hair cut short and neat, curled softly around her smooth face, dark eyes smiling at him through large oval glasses. The skirt of her short white uniform hit her just at the knee, the uniform accenting the curve of her hips, and was zipped down the front low enough to show the soft curve of her tanned breasts. He stared at the nametag on her lapel, but taking in a lot more. Karen Turner. Every male in the room was staring, their expressions just short of a drool. She smiled and motioned to Lee. Rising, he followed her as eagerly as a hungry pup. When he glanced back, the men were still looking. She led him into an office, handed his file to the thin-faced doctor, smiled at Lee again and left, brushing past him. She smelled good, a clean soap-and-water scent. He stood looking after her, then turned to the drawn, tired-looking doctor. His nametag read JAMES FLOYD, M.D.

Lee took off his shirt as Dr. Floyd directed, trying not to flinch as the icy stethoscope pressed against his bare chest. The doctor listened to his heart and chest as Lee breathed deeply, in and out, taking in as much air as he could manage. He took Lee’s blood pressure, looked down his throat, thumped his back. While Lee pulled on his shirt again, Floyd made a number of notations in Lee’s file.

“Everything’s as fine as it can be, Fontana. You had excellent treatment at Springfield.” Floyd handed him a slip of paper. “Give this to your counselor. I want you back here in three days. After that, once a week.”

“Will I be allowed to work?”

“I think you could take a job, something that won’t stress the breathing.” He filled out a release-to-work form and handed it to Lee.

Lee said, “I’ve never seen a woman working in a men’s prison.”