The Four Stages Of Cruelty Part 20

"COs?"

"And secretaries, nurses, maintenance workers. In a few instances, senior people on the warden's staff. Everyone getting their little taste. When Hammond was in extreme isolation here, for instance, the gang activity in Ditmarsh-and, incidentally, in several other state prisons connected with Ditmarsh-continued unabated. He just ran things the same way he ran them up top, maybe better."

"But he was completely isolated. MacKay told me his mind was a mess."

Ruddik shook his head. "Not true. He used COs to do his business for him. The FBI figured this out too late. From the group of COs that looked after Hammond exclusively, about a quarter of them were later charged with corruption. They did his work for him while he was locked up below. The Ditmarsh Social Club was rotten."

"A few of them committed suicide."

"The FBI would have arrested more if they hadn't. But once COs started killing themselves, the prosecutor got cold feet. Some people felt it was not guilt, but the pressure of the investigation that drove them to suicide. So the order came to back off."

"So what happened to Hammond?"

"The extreme isolation tactic, if faulty in practice, seemed like a good idea. So the FBI tried removing top gang leaders from their natural habitats and dispersing them to various prisons throughout the country. They were handled only by special guards and administrators. Family visitations were cut off and contact with lawyers restricted. Effectively, those inmates were made to disappear."

"Sounds good to me." I did not mind the idea of the worst inmates getting treated as such.

"Hammond entered that program voluntarily. He was one of the flags.h.i.+p members. That's how he got out of Ditmarsh."

"And Hammond turned," I said. "He became an informant and started making anti-gang speeches."

"Some of the agents behind the program predicted that would happen. Once gang leaders were separated from their gangs, they would be out of danger and free to leave the code of the lifestyle. Maybe they'd start trading information for privileges. In fact, that's the story we started to tell."

"What do you mean story?"

"We wanted to discredit or stain the reputations of the leaders who'd been dispersed, so we spread the rumor that they'd become witnesses of the state and been given new lives even outside of prison, that their cooperation had paid off big-time."

"And that didn't actually happen?"

Ruddik shook his head. "No one except Hammond."

He pa.s.sed me a poor photocopy of a newspaper article. The Contra Costa Times. March 8, 1992. In the picture, a man who was obviously an inmate stood at a microphone, answering questions on a crowded stage. His arm was extended outward, cutting through the air. The same bearing and posture as the picture of Hammond I'd seen in the Time article, except the face was not blocked by a black line. Still, despite a close look, I did not recognize him from the current inmate population at Ditmarsh.

"Hammond was different. He didn't want to disappear, and he convinced someone high up he could do more good if he went public and spoke out against the gangs. He gave speeches to new inmates, telling them about the choices they had available to them during their time in detention. He had a very effective message of personal development and avoiding gang activity or drugs, very self-help oriented. A four-step process: Shed your past. Change your thinking. Adopt new behaviors. Make a better future happen. Administrators and counselors ate it up. And what wasn't to love? A high-profile murderer and gang leader was expounding personal growth and a rejection of drug use, criminal acts, and self-destructive behavior. He started doing a monthly series on tape ca.s.sette, and they distributed it to penitentiaries around the country in the hope that his message would have a major impact."

"Brother Mike said they were compelling. They made a difference on the prison population."

Ruddik nodded. "They sure did. A non-gang movement began to grow. And Hammond was heralded as a kind of revolutionary of reform. They put him in Time magazine." Ruddik pulled out a photocopy, and I leaned in to see the close-up with the blacked-out eyes again. "Then they discovered that Hammond's tapes contained coded statements."

"What do you mean?"

"Some researcher in a criminology program started noticing key phrases and repeated words. Then a snitch came forward to dish that Hammond's group had undergone a power struggle or a coup prior to Hammond's disavowing gang life. From a number of isolated pieces of intelligence it was possible to start st.i.tching together the whole cloth. Hammond had been undermined by his lieutenants. Once he lost that power, he looked to improve his own life first; then he set forward on an audacious objective. Through the taped messages of salvation, reconciliation, and personal responsibility he was undermining his old gang by sending out orders to a newly established criminal organization. He recruited, gave orders, developed new business lines."

"He started a second gang in California?"

Ruddik smiled. "No. Far better than that. He franchised nationwide. He generated dozens of small gangs all over the country. Wherever three or more men met to discuss his teachings, when we thought they were talking about Hammond's bulls.h.i.+t self-help message, they were actually focused on illegal entrepreneurial activities. With the small numbers and the lack of gang signs or credos or ethnic affiliation, it was all too micro level for us to pay attention to, and so they mostly operated below the radar screen, as isolated cells. When the FBI figured that out, they stopped f.u.c.king around and took Hammond off the grid for good. No one's seen him since the fall of 1995. You don't even hear his name anymore. He's nowhere to be found."

"But you must know where he is?"

"Are you kidding me? They don't design those domestic rendition programs with traceable addresses. They've got prisons inside prisons inside prisons. Files and cross-files and double-blind files."

"But you think Crowley was helping to spread Hammond's message? Is that what the comic book is all about?"

"I don't know, but there's someone out there who knows more than he's admitting."

"Who?"

Ruddik pushed the newspaper photograph in front of me again.

"All the network modeling I showed you before, all those lines and nodes didn't lie. Look closely. Recognize anyone?"

I leaned forward, scanning the faces, randomly at first, then one by one. When I saw what Ruddik wanted me to see, I couldn't believe it. I felt that hard pit in my chest, the exact spot where betrayal goes when it gets stuck, and a little groan escaped my throat. Younger. No beard. Wearing a dress s.h.i.+rt, the sleeves rolled up, leaning into Hammond's shoulder. Described in the inscription as his spiritual adviser.

Brother Mike.

STAGE IV.

37.

He fixed the toilet by thrusting his hand into the bowl, past the t.u.r.ds and floating paper, pulling out a sock wedged deep in the pipe. Nothing. He retched until he saw little bursts of sparkles. Then, miraculously, the bowl cleared itself out with an air-sucking gasp.

At breakfast, they were out of milk, so he put the cereal bowl down and opted for greasy fried eggs and potatoes. He still hadn't got used to the color of the eggs, a radioactive orange yolk surrounded by a slippery gleaming white. Farmraised, a kitchen worker said. On what f.u.c.king farm, Josh thought, taking them just the same.

No milk for coffee either. He took a mug of watery Tang. Then he looked back up and around, wondering with the usual dread where he would sit. The only table available to him was the one for those too afraid to sit anywhere else.

It was near the door, no different to the eye from any other table in the room, but everyone who sat there was disdained. Carriers, diddlers, snitches, and skinners, a former gym teacher everyone called professor, a businessman with sores on his face. The whole rotating crew smelled of fear.

He took a seat next to an old man with an Eastern European accent and no teeth. The sound of the soft eggs slurped and then gummed up. Josh stared down at the plate and set to spooning his own food, avoiding eyes. Two men sat down on either side of him, and he pretended not to notice. Then he saw a large hand reach across his plate and scoop up a finger-ful of potatoes.

"Now, that's f.u.c.king good," the man said, licking the food off his fingers.

Back straightening, Josh fought the urge to push his plate away.

"Look at me, boy."

Josh looked. He recognized the face right away. Cooper Lewis from his new range. The one with the cut who'd visited him in the infirmary. Orange goatee hairs streaked with gray, broad and yellow teeth. Lewis was the kind of inmate who enjoyed making a spectacle.

"Fenton gone, and you show up. That doesn't sit right with me."

The fact that Lewis needed to explain his bad treatment gave Josh the feeling of small victory. He kept his gaze steady. "Fenton told me to transfer in, and I did. He said I was the kind of guy he'd like to have around."

"Oh, he's f.u.c.king modest, isn't he," the other man said.

"G.o.d as my witness," Lewis said. He stuck his finger into Josh's egg yolk and brought it up to Josh's mouth. Josh's jaw clenched hard as the finger felt around his lips and gums. He jerked his head to the side, and the finger traced across his cheek. The jack could see it all, but looked away.

"You got very smooth skin," Lewis said. Then the two men rose up and left.

Josh wiped his face and drank a mouthful of Tang to get the awful feeling away from his lips.

In the infirmary he could move around almost at will, and even leave the ward whenever he asked. Here he was confined to the drum or the narrow range for much of each day. They all were, but when the drum doors opened, the other men could hang out at the rail and talk, or take showers, or gather in the rec area with its three bolted tables and small plastic chairs, card games, puzzles, and a few paperback books. You hung a sign outside your drum if you wanted a special trip to the library or the gym or yard, but Josh's sign never got answered. There was an area the size of a double cell with six showers inside, but Josh was not allowed into the room with his towel. The first time he tried, an inmate told him they were all reserved, though only two showerheads were in use. The next morning, he saw a chance before chow lineup but got pulled back by a jack and told the showers were off-limits until midday. He didn't bother to try again. He couldn't even get his laundry washed. You put your laundry in a little bag outside your door in the morning and the range cleaner got it back to you folded the next day, but Josh's laundry got kicked across the hall, and when he tried to bring it to the laundry himself, the range cleaner told him to leave his f.u.c.king machines alone.

The only inmate who spoke to him was Screen Door. They knew each other from Brother Mike's art cla.s.s. She pouted with sympathy, whispered to ask whether he was getting along all right, even appeared at his drum door one time and told him what happened to Fenton.

"They were all in s.h.i.+elds and helmets, come busting into the range and drug Fenton out of his cell like he was an animal. He took it chill as can be, reminded them to put everything back the way they found it, but those COs found enough here and there to bust him down to dis. It was a shock, you know, and everyone wondering why he got knocked, figuring someone must have had something against him or known something they shouldn't, and the next thing, you show up. And someone said you were special treatment in the infirmary, with not even a cough or a sniffle, and that's why they fingered you."

He asked Screen Door to leave him alone. He wanted isolation. He would have stayed in his drum twenty-four hours a day if it wasn't for hunger. It forced him into bravery, made him drop into line with the others and put up with the shoves and words and even the time someone stomped on his foot so hard he thought it was broken. The smell of food emanated from the other men's drums. You weren't supposed to cook, but everyone had hot plates, rigged up with live wires stuck into sockets. Breakfast and coffee in the morning, late-night snacks, strange ethnic food. He swore he smelled pancakes and bacon one day, steak and onions one night. It almost killed him. In the evening, before lights-out, he could only lie in his cell and listen to the noise, the tremendous noise, of music and shouts and conversation and televisions, as though a traffic jam and an orchestra and a political rally and a football game were happening at once, every sound picking up speed as it bounced off concrete and steel, whirling around like particles in an accelerator, becoming some other form of matter. And then silence, utter silence in the middle of the night, and nothing to do but think.

On the walk back from the cafeteria the next day, his third on the range, Screen Door told him to be prepared.

He asked why. He wondered what could be worse than now.

"They're h.o.a.rding," Screen Door said. "I seen guys bringing back extra food in their pockets. Making heavy brew. Not getting high so much, saving their stash. All their laundry done. Push-ups and sit-ups like they in training. Writing long letters home. Some guys even praying. That means there's a s.h.i.+t tornado spinning this way. I got my eyes open."

They mounted the stairs.

"If you want, I'll sneak you food back from the cafeteria. You can lay low. Avoid the surprises."

They entered the range and stopped at Josh's drum. It was free time. The drum gates were open.

It was kind advice. A month ago he would have slunk away gratefully and hidden in his drum in embarra.s.sment and fear. "I can't do it anymore, Screen Door. It's now or never."

And he walked to the back of the range.

He saw eyes looking up at him as he pa.s.sed each drum. He felt a few men dislodge themselves from the rail or their bunks and stare after. In the rec s.p.a.ce, he saw Jacko, Lewis, and two other men sitting at the center table playing cards. He hoped Jacko would put in a good word for him, some connection from their time together on New Year's Eve. The men looked up, amused and astonished to see him standing before them. Lewis's smile was pure joy, and Josh noticed he was missing the teeth on the left side of his mouth. He'd never seen such men before Ditmarsh, and now he could smell their onion breath and body odor, see their bare feet in sandals, their hairy backs and knuckled hands, their gold caps and earrings.

"I just came here to tell you I had nothing to do with Fenton getting shelved." He spoke loud, as if to the room. "There seems to be a general misunderstanding about that, and it's f.u.c.king wrong." He could hear music still, and a few televisions, but no one said a word, bemused grins all around, the best soap opera they'd seen in weeks. "I'm doing my stretch here like anyone else, and I sure as f.u.c.k don't need any trouble."

He had nothing left to say. His hands were empty, his chest rose up and down with the difficulty of breathing.

The four men at the table stared at him as if they'd never been so flabbergasted in their lives. Then Josh got a subtle, respectful nod from Jacko, and the thread of a smile. There was generosity in his eyes, an appreciation for b.a.l.l.s and character.

Getting no other signal, Josh took Jacko's nod as acceptance, turned around, and walked away. He'd let them know he was a stand-up guy.

The great force blew him forward and to the ground. His ears popped, and all sound came to him through a depth of ocean. Pain stamped him everywhere, a hundred blows to his head and back. Wild eyes above him, fists flailing down. The bridge of his nose became an ax splitting his brain in half. Then he was jerked upright and dragged down the hall. His legs scrambling to keep up but getting no purchase, his eyes squinting away blood. He wondered why the walls around him were leaning in and heaving out.

He didn't remember who got him to the hospital or how. He rested on a gurney, staring at the high brick ceiling. He thought of Stephanie and started to cry.

"Stop it," someone said.

He tried to sit up and pull a piece of tape or cloth away from his face. It was impossible to breathe. A hand on his chest pressed him back, and he realized they were trying to kill him. Would it be a release? Only after his strength was gone and the silence became a frozen landscape in his head could he hear the voice telling him to calm himself, that everything would be okay. The gently pressing lie.

He found his steady shallow breath, as though rising up through deep water. Officer Williams's face. Her presence confused him, and then he felt the compa.s.sion in her hand, the gently pressing palm, and began to discern the words.

"Your jaw is fine, but they had to st.i.tch your mouth and tongue. You've lost four teeth. Your nose is broken. They packed your nasal cavity with a half mile of cotton. You have to calm down and breathe through your mouth. Take slow, even breaths."

He did as he was told. He wanted the rea.s.surance of that voice above him forever, but then it disappeared into the darkness. When he opened his eyes, he saw her above him again, standing with two other jacks. He watched them until they realized he could hear, and they moved away.

In the morning he was able to sit up and allow soup to dribble into the corners of his mouth around his huge tongue. After lunch he was able to stand. By afternoon he could walk. He made it out of the sickroom and walked around the infirmary down the hallway. He pa.s.sed the man with no face, and then his old drum, and Crowley's. He walked on, hearing rebukes and warnings, like a ghost's voice in his head.

Later, he stood in front of his mirror. His eyes were a racc.o.o.n's. His skin looked as though he'd fallen out of a car and skipped along the pavement. Three of his top teeth and one on the bottom were missing, an old man's b.l.o.o.d.y gums. His tongue was too thick to feel the s.p.a.ce.

That evening Roy showed up at his bedside.

"I just got out of dis."

Josh stared, ready for the accusations, knowing he had no explanation to give.

But something in Roy's sober expression rea.s.sured Josh that it was all good.

"I'm sick of this in-between s.h.i.+t," Roy said. "I'm ready to get back to the block, are you?"

Afterward, he wasn't sure Roy had been there at all.

38.

I think it was heartache that led me back to Brother Mike's house. The bundling of anger and pain reminded me of those times, three or four in number, when I'd been cast aside unexpectedly in a relations.h.i.+p. Of course, I could not help but think of the collapse of my own marriage, but that pain was different. With Brother Mike I wanted explanations, I wanted to know what had been true and what had been lies. This betrayal was elemental and threatening, touching the taproot of familial insecurity, like the suspicion that your father didn't really love you.

When I visited his office, I learned from one of the weak sisters that he'd been suspended from work for his contact with Crowley. That hit me hard. When I tried his home phone, it rang and rang, not even an answering machine to leave a message. And so I took up the one privilege left to me, established by his facade of friends.h.i.+p, and drove to his home, prepared to knock until he answered, to yell until he calmed me down. I wanted to be the child and hold him at fault for all the cruel failings of the world.

But when I turned off the highway onto his b.u.mpy, snow-chopped lane, another irrational thought came over me. The ruts in the lane looked deeper, more trafficked than I remembered, and I pictured other visitors and feared I would find him harmed. All the anger in me turned to worry. So I drove through that quiet forest a little too quickly for my own good, cras.h.i.+ng through the branches in the Land Rover like a mechanical rhinocerous, and burst onto the lawn before his house.

His car was not there. The house looked sealed. I left my engine running, a lack of commitment to bravery, and stepped out of the cab of the truck. If I'd had my .357, I might have unholstered.

The porch was slanted beneath my feet, the railing tipped ever so slightly toward the yard. There were vases with small plants in his windowsill. A tabby cat moved out from behind a curtain and revealed itself on the top of the sofa within. Darkness inside, and no response to my banging. I hollered his name with disdain and frustration, as though I had come for the rent, even though I just wanted to see the sweatered shoulders and that white top of hair emerge from some back room, befuddled by concentration, and hear his stammered offering of tea.

No mailbox to check. I tried to remember whether there had been a box out by the highway. I peered in more windows along the side of the house, and when I got to the backyard, I saw the low mound of tarps that was his kiln. A little lump came to my throat. He'll be in there, I announced to myself, slumped against the wall, eyes closed. I don't know why I felt so certain about it. I approached. The warmth had ebbed, but there was still an aura of old fire, a smell of hide even in the cold winter sun. I held my hand out. I could not hear that whispering river sound of flame whoos.h.i.+ng about. I started lifting tarps clumsily, searching for a door. Finally I found an entrance, low to the ground, like a tunnel into a snow cave or a sweat lodge, and I hunched over and snuck in.

The fire was gone, but the heat and the smell were still thick inside, a taste of ash and smoke. I couldn't see much at first, had no sense of the s.p.a.ce inside. It could have been infinite. And then little cracks in the darkness appeared. Hair-line fractures of light. Slants of shelves showed up with small figures squatting on them like ghosts. I touched the baked clay and felt the warmth; the surfaces were not smooth like porcelain, but rough and gritty, deeply lined. Perhaps it was too soon to move the pieces, but it seemed wrong that they were still here, left behind. I swept my foot low along the floor to make sure no one was slumped unseen within.

I was sweating in my clothes, wet from the dense heat and stewed in betrayal, my bones the marrow for a murky soup. I felt exhausted suddenly, worn out by the untrustworthiness of other people, the litany of disappointment and lies. Wallace had been the first betrayer, but that was incremental, almost gentle in development. I'd idolized him, and he'd rebuffed me with his bureaucratic disdain, and then the corruptions had begun to acrue. MacKay's betrayal was more complicated. I could not even articulate the reasons why the difference between his act and his true feelings mattered, except that I'd been led along by the former and left wanting by his lack of strength. And now Brother Mike was gone, too, somehow the harshest loss of all.

My phone rang. I didn't want to answer in the dark, so I plunged through the low tunnel and out into the light again. I saw that it was Ditmarsh, and part of me thought, this is Brother Mike calling me. He knew I was looking for him. He wanted to explain.