Chapter Twenty-Three
CHAPTER TWENTY-THREE
Officer Kyle Piccardy arrived at Yates after his uncle, Deputy Warden Geoffrey Zabrowski, got him transferred here from the women’s prison, the better to keep an eye on him.
According to the jailhouse scuttlebutt—which is often more reliable than not—Officer Piccardy, a newlywed not long out of the training academy, had been indulging in a little third-shift sex with one of the women in his custody.
She was a pedigreed grifter who was open to a deal.
Some strings got pulled somewhere and an agreement was brokered.
In exchange for staying silent about the fact that Piccardy had knocked her up, she received a sentence reduction.
I guess you’d call it a win-win-win situation.
She waltzed out of prison and supposedly got the abortion, Piccardy got to save his job and his marriage, and Corrections dodged a front-page sex scandal.
The only losers are the men of Yates CI who now have to put up with Piccardy.
Piccardy and his best buddy, Anselmo, are on shift tonight.
Each is a dick, but when they’re working a shift together, it’s worse.
Cavagnero’s at the control desk, and when he pops open our doors, Piccardy shouts, “On the chow, girls! Chop chop!” Some of the other COs resort to name-calling, too—address us as vermin, losers, garbage—but Anselmo and Piccardy’s ridicule is usually gender-based; to them we’re ladies, bitches, pussies, cunts.
One time, something set Anselmo off and he yelled down the tier that we should all tell our mothers we should have been abortions.
Makes you wonder what kind of relationships these two have with the women in their lives.
Manny pushes our door open and asks whether I’m coming. I’ve got to take a leak, so I tell him to go ahead, I’ll catch up. Toss him a shoe to keep the door propped open so I don’t get locked in.
I pee, flush, remove the shoe. Leaving the cell, I run smack into Piccardy.
I haven’t seen him since the night Emily visited and the sight of him triggers my resentment about the way he treated her.
“Propping open a cell door, Ledbetter? You looking for a ticket?” I bow my head and walk toward the others.
“Hey! I just asked you a question. You think you can ignore an officer?”
I stop. He catches up and puts his face a few inches from mine—classic CO intimidation. “Sorry, Officer. I thought your question was rhetorical. But no, I’m not looking for a ticket.”
“You thought my question was what ?”
“Rhetorical. It just means—”
“I don’t give a flying fuck what it means. You think your college-boy vocabulary makes you superior around here?”
Oh boy, here we go. “No, sir.”
“Hey, by the way, how’s your wife doing, Ledbetter? How’s Emily?” My brain tells me to keep my mouth shut, but his saying her first name has just made it personal. “Tell her for me that the next time she comes here, she should remember to take the candy out of her pockets first.”
I feel my heart pound and my adrenaline spike from an impulse to wipe that smirk off his fucking face. I’m not sure what’s going to happen, but I know my body’s in danger of overruling my brain.
“Yeah, she mentioned that you were hassling her,” I tell him. “Making her go through the metal detector over and over and suggesting it might not go off if she removed her bra. I guess you’d call that sexual harassment. Right?”
He snickers, but at the same time wraps his hand around his stick in case he needs to start swinging it.
I guess I’d be paranoid, too, if I knew a bunch of convicted felons would love to take a pop at me.
“Let me assure you, Inmate Ledbetter, that when your wife kept triggering the detector, my actions were one hundred percent professional. If she told you otherwise, all I can say is I’m not responsible for whatever she was imagining.
But I do feel sorry for the women whose men are here.
They have needs, too, so if Emily enjoyed her little fantasy, then no harm, no foul. ”
I’m out on a limb, but I’m in it now, so I might as well finish. “I’m warning you, Piccardy. If you ever—”
He grabs me by my shoulders and backs me against the wall.
“Better stop right there, Ledbetter.” His face comes so close to mine, I can see his stubble and a small scar on his chin.
“Because if what’s about to come out of your mouth is a threat, me and some of my fellow officers can make your life here a whole lot harder than it is now.
” He lets me go and backs up a couple of steps.
It’s all I can do to hold back from going at him, but I saw what happened to that con who threw his urine at a guard.
They clubbed him so bad, his face was unrecognizable.
“All I’m saying is—and this is a statement of fact, not a threat—all I’m saying is, if you hassle her again, I’ll write you up.
” It sounds pathetic, even to me. Bother my wife and I’ll squeal on you.
“Okay, you do that, big man. Make sure you spell my name right. There’s two c ’s in Piccardy. And my badge number is 1537. Think you can remember that or should I write it down for you?”
Up ahead, Anselmo’s walking backward and watching us. “Everything okay back there, Officer?” he calls.
“Yeah, there’s an annoying little gnat flying around me, but it’s nothing I can’t handle.
” Turning back to me, he says, “Now if I were you, Ledbetter, I’d catch up to your girlfriends before I send you back to your cell with one of those leftover court lunches that have been hanging around the office for a few days. ”
I catch up with Manny just before we reach the chow hall.
“What was that about?” he asks. I tell him I’m not in the mood to play Twenty Questions so he can blab it all over the place.
He puts on his hurt face. “Did it occur to you that I might have asked because I was worried about you?” he says.
I don’t answer him. I’m not pissed at Manny.
I’m pissed at myself for not just letting it go.
In trying to defend Emily, I handed Piccardy an opportunity to mock her and me.
By challenging that idiot’s authority, I might have just stepped in it.
Inside the chow hall, I go through the line. Get a sad little chicken leg that’s more bone than meat, plus rice, canned peas, white bread, and cake. I sit between Angel and Lobo. Slouch over the table and shovel it in without really tasting it.
“What did Piccardy want back there?” Angel asks.
“He wanted to suck your dick.”
“No, seriously, brah. Him and his sidekick keep talking to each other over there and looking at you.”
“Not your problem,” I tell him.
“Hope it’s not yours either, but if I was you, I’d stay out of their way.”
“Hey, Ledbetter?” Lobo says. “You gonna eat your cake?”
Back in B Block, I’m walking past the control desk when Lieutenant Cavagnero calls my name. “I want to talk to you about something, but I’ve got to finish this paperwork first. I’ll call you up in a few.”
“Got it,” I tell him. Is this going to be about my exchange with Piccardy?
The squawk box clicks on maybe fifteen minutes later.
“Come on up, Ledbetter,” Cavagnero says.
He pops the door and I walk up the corridor.
Oh shit. Piccardy’s standing at the desk, too.
What is this about to be? A trial? A slap on the wrist?
But I’m wrong; it’s just Piccardy showing Cavagnero what an asshole he is.
“Average body fat for a guy my age is fourteen to sixteen percent, okay? And you know what mine is? Six percent. That’s elite-athlete range. The calipers don’t lie. You don’t get a number like that from eating pizza.”
“Well, good for you, Piccardy,” the lieutenant says, like he doesn’t care one way or the other. He takes another bite of the pepperoni slice he’s been working on and nods to me. “Okay, Piccardy, I’ve got to talk to Ledbetter here. Why don’t you take your dinner break?”
Realizing that I’ve been standing behind him, Piccardy sneers and tells Cavagnero that he’s had to put me on notice. “The trouble with Ledbetter here is that he thinks it’s an equal playing field between custody officers and convicted felons.” And with that, he walks away.
“What’s that about?” Cavagnero asks me. “No, on second thought, don’t tell me.
I’m off shift in another twenty minutes and I want to coast out of here without any complications, so change of subject.
You know I supervise the grounds crew, right?
” I nod. “Haven’t you been looking for a job?
” I tell him I’m on the waiting list for a library job but there haven’t been any openings.
“Well, with Boudreaux leaving, I’ll have an open slot.
We’ve got the big fall cleanup coming up and I don’t want to be short-staffed.
The others on the crew are good guys. I can see you fitting in. You interested?”
I think of Dr. Patel’s advice: move your body. “Yeah, definitely. Thanks.”
“You bet. We’ll start you on Monday then. After breakfast, meet us at the barn behind the medical unit. I’ll get you put on the list so they don’t give you a hard time at the walk gate.”
“Cool. I’ll be there. Thanks again.”
“Oh, and one more thing. Have you run into that young kid who’s here? Solomon Clapp?” I roll my eyes and tell him I have. “He’s been taking a lot of bullying down on tier two, so they’re moving him.”
“To this tier?”
“Yeah. Boudreaux’s getting released tomorrow, so I thought maybe we could give Clapp his bed.”
“Bunk in with Daugherty then?”
“Uh-huh. Do you think that would work?”
“I don’t know Daugherty that well. He’s a little shifty, but I don’t think he’s the bullying type. So yeah, that would probably be okay.” Better the kid becomes Daugherty’s headache than mine, which is where I thought Cavagnero might be heading.
“Okay, we’ll give it a try then. Oh, and one more thing.”
Uh-oh, another one more thing. Brace yourself, Corby.