130. Tommy
Chapter One Hundred Thirty
TOMMY
I ncarcerated a few months ago. For life. Me: not happy.
“ T hey’re comin’ for ya, Tommy!” whispers Dinon from the cell next to mine. He’s always watching. He sees things before everyone. Me? I don’t care to watch. I like to keep to myself. Keep my head down. Maintain my virginity. And aside from that, stay out of the game. And there’s a deadly serious game in jail, just like in the movies and T.V., only it’s worse because it’s real.
I gotta get out of here.
“Who’s coming, D? Santa Claus?”
“Listen,” he hisses.
I straighten up on my elbows on the bed. Then I hear them. Multiple pairs of methodically advancing footsteps. They could belong to anyone. It’s the not knowing that’s got my teeth on edge and goosebumps rising slowly. I keep to myself in here. But I knew that couldn’t last forever.
“Shit,” I mutter under my breath, jumping down from the top bunk. The second I hit the cement, The Chain Gang appears in my doorway, a group of Italians I’ve carefully avoided. Until now.
“Well, well, well. Pretty Boy. If it ain’t the pretty boy who missed,” smiles Antonio who controls the gang as well as most of the Caucasian inmate population. He’s got a scar sliced across his neck from a near fatal knife fight in here last year. The other guy missed the near and went straight to the fatal. But what’s creepier is he doesn’t blink.
I ask with measured caution, “How’s it goin’ Antonio?”
“We were wonderin’ why you don’t sit with us? We noticed you keep to yourself and we were wonderin’ if you might be lonely. Maybe you need some friends.”
I blink. He doesn’t. I glance at the three guys flanking him. I look at Antonio again. I know this little speech of his means he’s got a job for me. If I don’t do it, I’ll be headed to the infirmary the second after I close my eyes to sleep. That’s what happened to the last guy. He didn’t make it back on his own two legs.
The truth is, I’ve got no one to turn to in here, and I need a friend. He’s offering me what he considers friendship, which is really thinly veiled indentured servitude. But if I take it and join them, I might have some protection. Either way, it’s a horrible life.
“What do you want me to do?”
“Can we talk in private?” he asks, pretending like there is such a thing as privacy in here.
“Sure.” I back into the cell and he walks in, but his ghouls stay back and turn around as though faced away they can’t hear us.
Antonio lowers his voice and his chin, looking at me from underneath his eyebrows. “There’s a guy who’s not treated me with the respect I deserve.”
My chest tightens. “Yeah?”
He stares at me. After a few charged seconds, he finally says, “Yeah.”
My knuckles itch, ready to defend myself as best I can. I'm beginning to sweat and I hope he can't see. But I’d lay odds he can. “Well, this guy must be a fuckin’ moron, then.”
At this, Antonio’s eyes dance with amusement, but that could mean anything from he thinks I’m funny to he thinks I’m dead. He nods a couple times–just short, slow jerks of his head.
“He is.” It seems like hours go by before he adds, “You know Morales?”
I blink again, which pisses me off. “Lenny Morales? Yeah.”
“You know how you missed with that gun of yours?”
I don’t bother to tell him I didn’t miss, I just didn’t kill Brendan when I shot him. “Yeah.”
“Don’t miss again.” He holds my eyes with meaning, and turns to walk out, casual as can be.
“I don’t have a…” I start to say gun but he stops me.
His hand goes up and he looks at me around the over-developed mound of his shoulder. “Get creative.”
“Hey Tony, guards are comin’ this way,” one of his ghouls whispers.
“We were just leavin’,” Antonio says. “And don’t fuckin’ call me that.” He walks past the guy and the ghouls all share a look. I watch my doorway empty again, wondering how I’m going to kill a guy with my bare hands. I don’t want to do that. I’m not a murderer. I’m a thief. Yeah, I shot my ex-friend, but we’re all capable of everything given the right circumstances. It’s not like I walk around thinking of ways to take people’s lives. Their belongings, yeah. Their lives? No.
Before I have a chance to soak in exactly how screwed I really am, my doorway fills with a guard’s surly glare.
“You’ve got a visitor, Pretty Boy.” The second he says that nickname, I realize he's working with Antonio, and the sense of foreboding deepens. A frown involuntarily appears and I try to hide it before he sees he’s gotten a rise out of me, but I fail. Ignoring his slimy, victorious smile, I walk out and he follows me, headed toward Visiting. As we pass Dinon’s cage, I glance over and lock eyes with him. We’re on okay terms, which means only that we don’t want to rip each other’s throats out. He just stares back at me, not showing any sign of his thoughts.
The guard barks, “What are you staring at, Washington?”
Dinon looks away, and witnessing it, a part of me dies inside. We’re all just trained dogs.
In Visiting, I pick up the phone and watch my cousin pick up his on the other end of a bulletproof, fingerprint splotched, thick plastic window. He’s the only one who visits me ever since I spilled the beans to reduce my sentence for the shooting as my little fuck you to my father, the sonofabitch. With what the detectives found during the search of their home, it forced both of my parents to go deep into hiding. Over two hundred robberies have now been linked to us, and even more stolen property recovered that was thieved by my ancestors, dating all the way back to 1582.
The place was gutted.
I wasn’t a complete traitor with my testimony. I didn’t rat out Bruce or Uncle Paul, for Bruce’s sake. The way I see it, my cousin and I were born into this life and we couldn’t help that. They taught us young. But I gave my folks a chance to run, warning Bruce I was going to rat them out, so he could warn them. He’s our go-between. Otherwise they never would have escaped. Now they’re on the run, and that I’m fine with. Serves them right for doing this to me. It’s their fault I am the way I am. Why should they live a normal life when I’m stuck in here? Yeah, not gonna happen.
“How’s it going, Brucie ?”
His brown eyes harden, but then he sees my smile. “Don’t be like him. It’s not funny,” he grumbles.
“Well, you should know better than to come in here wearing that pink scarf.”
Bruce rolls his eyes. “It’s magenta.”
“Right,” I chuckle.
He waits for me to get serious. “How are you?”
I hit him with a stone-cold sober stare. “Seriously?” He shrugs, which irritates me to no end, forcing me to launch into him. “It’s two days to Christmas and they don’t exactly decorate in here. And this morning I got a visit from a guy who is offering friendship if I do something I don’t wanna do.” Off his look, I correct him, “No, not that. Worse.”
Bruce’s eyebrows knit together. “Yikes.”
“Yeah. So do me a favor and never ask me how I’m doing again? If you don’t have something good to tell me, then let’s just keep to the chitchat we normally have. I need the distraction. Alright?”
Bruce nods, but his attention leaves the subject as he shiftily glances to the crying lady next to him who’s flanked by two little kids, plus a baby on her lap. Then he glances to the guard standing by the entrance. The familiar gleam in his eyes when he looks back to me sparks my blood. But I don’t betray my curiosity. Neither of us wants the guards paying attention. “I’ve got really good news.”
Without inflection, I ask, “Yeah, what?”
Bruce casually mutters, “Do you know a Rita Sanchez?”
I make a noise. Everyone knows Rita in here. It’s hard to miss a five-feet tall Mexican transsexual with a crew of six fake-blonde fairy-dust blowers always at his/her side. “Yeah. I know him. Or her…or whatever. Why?”
“Ever see a little movie about hope ?” Bruce asks, one of his eyebrows starting to twitch nervously.
Shawshank Redemption–that’s what he means, the prison movie we’ve both seen a million times. Scenes from it flash before my eyes: The hole Andy dug in the wall with a rock hammer over twenty, long years. Him coming out the other end a free man, holding his arms up to a thunder-filled sky, pellets of rain hitting the joy on his face. Morgan Freeman’s last words as he took a chance and escaped his parole, searching for a life free from the branding of having been a criminal: I hope .
The power of my cousin’s question ricochets through my veins as I stare at him, understanding what he means to do, and that somehow Rita Sanchez is involved. This I’ve gotta see. My eyes tell him I know exactly which movie he means, and this ain’t it: “Serendipity?”
He doesn’t miss a beat. “That’s the one.” He looks down at his hand and glances casually to the guard to make sure the guy hasn’t moved. He hasn’t. Bruce turns to me. “Well, I’ve found my guy just like how Kate Beckinsale did in that movie. Isn’t that great? Rita knows the guy, that’s why I bring her up. You never thought I’d find love,” he says, knowing full well I’ve said no such thing, ever. “See, there is hope . So you just keep praying and as soon as the appeal date comes, you know I’ll be there, sending you luck.”
I feel like I’m an arrow stretched tight on a bow. “Oh yeah? You found someone? Well, I’ll have to catch up with Rita and hear all about him…” I stop as the phone goes dead. Our time is up. Bruce’s eyes slide up to the guard who’s walked up to take me back to my cell. Bruce gives him a tight-lipped polite smile and we both get up, exchanging one last glance with each other.
Before he turns to go, Bruce mouths, “Merry Christmas.”
Merry Christmas, indeed. Walking back to my cell, it’s a lot easier to ignore the guard’s ribbing me about my cousin being gay. “You and your boyfriend have a nice chat?” I don’t even blink, my mind on the seed Bruce just planted.
If I get out of here alive, I know exactly what my present is going to be to myself. I’m going to pay a visit to an old friend.
Our family plans how to escape from places for a living. After we rob them, anyway. Can it be done? From a place as locked down as San Quentin is?
I can’t wait to find out.