Chapter 8
FCI Cumberland wasn’t a maximum security prison.
Hannibal Lecter and Ted Bundy and Darth Vader were kept at tougher places than this.
Inmates could wander communal areas, considered low risk.
They were merely in need of rehabilitation.
The posters encouraging positive change told me so.
At the security window I surrendered everything in my pockets and signed my life away and was led through four locked doors to the general visitation room, like a cafeteria.
High security windows. Tiled floors, easier to sterilize.
Two other people talked quietly in the room, one in a prison jumpsuit, one wearing a white button-down and a tie.
They huddled at a circular table in the corner, the kind where the bench attached to the tabletop, no detachable chairs.
Names were periodically called on the loudspeakers.
A fat detention officer sat near the door reading, and he was bored.
His neck was tattooed but fat fleshed down from his face and partially covered them. His radio squawked.
Remi Boscolo shuffled in wearing leg restraints.
The bands around his ankles were visible beneath the bright orange jumpsuit, connected by a short metal chain long enough to allow a three-quarters stride.
Sometimes the leg irons connected to handcuffs but Remi didn’t wear those.
He was a short guy, still had most of his hair, a bright white.
Strong Roman nose. Rich olive skin, brown eyes, deep folds in his face instead of little wrinkles.
He wore the jumpsuit unzipped to his solar plexus, no hair on his cheeks or chest. I guessed he was seventy-five.
He gestured at me with his hands. “Are you him? What’s this?”
“Remi Boscolo?” I said. “Mackenzie August.”
“I don’t know no Mackenzie August. What do you want? You play chess? You get me out of bed, we play chess.” He spoke in an old man’s rasp, though he had a younger man’s energy. “I don’t give nothing away for free.”
“Bed? For Pete’s sake, Remi, you’re not ninety.”
“Afternoon nap. What do you know. You gotta pass the time. You take a morning nap, you take an afternoon nap, you go to bed early, you get up and do it again.” He waved a hand to a cubby with a few boards. “Chess is over there.”
“I only want a name,” I said.
“I only want Sophia Loren to visit for conjugal visits. You bring her? No? Then beat me in chess, I’ll think about it. I don’t know no Mackenzie August. Deal or no deal?”
Hard to argue with a man who had little to lose.
The chessboard was flimsy, unable to be used as a weapon. The pieces were plastic, the metal weights ripped out of the bottom. We sat at our own table and arranged our sides. The bench wouldn’t budge and my thighs barely fit.
“Big and ugly, huh? Who sent you?” he said and he pushed a pawn to e4.
“Duane Chambers is dead,” I told him. I moved my pawn to e5. “I’m after his wife’s maiden name.”
“Duane’s dead? How do you know Duane’s dead? That stronzo took off to Italy and never came back. He’s not even Italian. You know the Italian’s invented this opening? Giuoco piano. The quiet game.”
2. Nf3, Nc6.
3. Bc4, but then I went wild—Bb5.
He said, “Huh. So this is an unfriendly game. Not so quiet. How do you know Duane’s dead?”
“I was around. He died in Italy.”
“Good for him. He always wanted to be Italian. Stupid prick. How’d he die?”
“Violently. A fellow gangster,” I said.
“Lotta guys like to kill Duane. He missed out on all this fun.” He spread his arms out to the walls.
“Did you call him Chambers or Constanza?”
“Knew him before and after the name change. Constanza wasn’t his real name either. His parents made it up when he was a kid. I’ll tell you this, Mackenzie. I don’t miss that guy.”
“Emile’s dead too,” I said.
“Her, I’ll miss.”
“Tell me her maiden name and I’ll put sixty bucks in your prison money account,” I said.
He moved his other knight. “You think I’m broke? I got money in my account. I don’t hurt for money. Fed seized my assets but not all of them. I don’t need your money, you can keep your money. They’ll never let me out of here, but I got money. I won’t die a poor man.”
I countered with another pawn. “You knew Emile.”
“Knew her? I offered Duane ten grand for one night with Emile. Never had a French woman before. That stupid bastard pulled a gun on me. Told me he’d kill me if I asked again.
So I didn’t. What I did instead was, I told her about it, about the ten grand offer.
She said to give her the money, not him.
I did. Great decision. Me and her, we had a fun couple hours, Duane was out of town.
Couple great hours. I wish I’d gotten to tell him that. To his face, about Emile.”
“Good looking,” I said.
“You knew her?”
“I did.”
“What do you want with her?”
Behind us somebody yelled down a corridor. Nothing alarming, just standard prison calls. The bored guard didn’t even look up from his book. The inmate behind us was refusing something his lawyer explained, and the lawyer was likely wishing he’d been a doctor.
“I want Emile’s maiden name,” I said.
“Do I care?” Remi leaned to his right and called to the guard. “Hey Fat Mark, get us some coffee, huh?”
“No Remi.”
“Why not?”
“It’s almost dinner. We don’t have coffee made, Remi,” he said and he turned a page.
“Ah you fat pig.” Our chess game was ten moves deep. His moves were stronger than mine. He patiently developed his board while I charged too aggressively and ran out of good moves.
“You didn’t love Duane,” I said.
“Me and Duane were in business. Needed each other. The guy was Eurotrash but he got shit done. I needed his muscle, he needed my connections, but soon it was him making the connections farther south, and our business turned ugly. Why do you care about Emile?”
“A client wants to track down her next of kin.”
“Because of an inheritance?” he asked. “Money and wills and that junk?”
“No. Personal reasons. Closure, that kind of thing.”
“That’s boring, Mackenzie. What do I care. You don’t beat me in this game, you get nothing. We don’t got time to play again, and I’ll be honest, Mackenzie, you’re playing like trash. You’re not gonna win.”
A couple more inmates lumbered in, slow moving slabs of beef with heavy feet, and they took the far table. Big guys with thick faces. They weren’t wearing ankle chains and they weren’t looking at us.
“Why’re you in leg irons, Remi? You a flight risk?”
“I took Gastro’s knife away and stabbed him with it.
” He shrugged. “Fucking Romanian. You ever been to Romania? Albania? Shit-holes. Doing the world a favor, stabbing Gastro. I asked them, I said, how’re leg irons supposed to stop me from stabbing Romanians?
The guards laughed. Gastro’s only alive because he’s fat and his homemade shiv was trash.
Otherwise, fsshhhht, straight to his spleen. ”
“Emile’s maiden name?”
“You’re losing, Mackenzie. What, you came all this way to lose to an old man? You don’t beat me means you can go fuck yourself. Who’s your client?” he asked.
“Someone from Virginia you’ve never met.”
“So it’s a woman,” he said.
“It’s a woman.”
“You’re doing all this for a woman. It’s always the same. A bellezza smiles at you, you fall over, now here you are in a prison, playing chess with old Remi. Women, they are not worth it. But, Mackenzie, I hope she’s at least got a good ass.”
She did. But that wasn’t Remi’s business.
Four more inmates strode in. With bad prison food, these guys shouldn’t be that big.
They didn’t look like Remi, these guys were pale and grew facial hair.
The two from the table stood to greet them, making six total, and they moved like an amoeba of orange to our chess game.
Two of them wore leg irons, and one of those guys also wore clinking handcuffs.
If stabbing someone got you ankle chains, what did you have to do to get handcuffs? Stab someone’s mother?
Remi looked up at the sudden looming wall of men. Five of them had moved behind me, between the prison guard and our table, blocking the guard’s view. The sixth, the guy wearing handcuffs, moved to stand behind Remi. Big ugly guy with splotchy skin.
“Speaking of Eurotrash,” said Remi. He smiled. “We got Germans, we got Albanians, we even got a dirty Jew.”
“Chess fans,” I said.
“Gastro, I told you about Gastro,” said Remi and he pushed a rook forward. “That’s his cousin behind me. The whole family stinks. Take a deep breath through the nose, that’s their heritage, a reek.”
The guard called, “Move on, guys. You can’t loiter here. Almost chow time.”
A guy behind me said, “We’re moving, Warden. Just watching the game. Ol’ Remi’s losing.” I couldn’t see the guy talking.
“Supposed to scare me,” Remi explained. “Pay back for Gastro. You came here to get me, everyone heard it, now these testa di cazzos, these stupid pricks, they’re here too. Only one guard. You see? Stupid pricks.”
Seemed like the big guys didn’t scare Remi.
But they worried Mackenzie August. A bead of sweat raced down my back.
I said, “Any of them know Emile?”
“Losers like this? Losers like this aren’t even allowed to look at her.”
“I want a name, not be party to a prison riot,” I said.
“A riot? The only thing these guys riot is each other’s panties. You got nothing to worry about, Mackenzie, other than your rook.”
The guy behind Remi, the only guy I could see without turning my head, the guy wearing handcuffs, said, “You stabbed my brother, old man.” He had an accent.
“I see him, I’ll stab him again. Aim for his tiny dick this time.” Remi moved a piece and it was a mistake. Even alarmed, I saw the blunder and I captured his bishop.
“I’m ahead.”
“Cavolo,” sighed Remi.
“Tell me her maiden name in case they kill you.”
“They can’t kill me. I was in San Vittore, in Milan, where they beat you with sticks and don’t give you medical care. I didn’t eat for a week and came out stronger. These limp—”
The guy behind Remi looped his wrists over Remi’s head and pulled back, garroting him with the chain.
“For my cousin,” grunted the guy, both him and Remi going red in the face. Remi’s knees crashed up into the table, jostling our pieces. He was being executed.
The scrum behind me cheered like they’d seen a good chess move to drown out the noise. Some of the plastic pieces tumbled to the floor.
“Hey,” I said. “I was winning.”
And I needed Emile’s maiden name.
I stood but big hands dropped on my shoulders and pushed me down. I sat hard. Five guys behind me, seemed like good odds. Here we go.
I grabbed the stranger’s fingers on my left shoulder and I shoved them backward hard at a terrible angle, and I felt the architecture in the man’s knuckles pop and break.
He howled. I released and snapped my right elbow in the other direction, aiming into a crotch, and somebody grunted and doubled over.
Hurting people I didn’t know. My legs were semi-trapped under the table and I tried to swing free but a meaty hand clapped me in the head, boxing my ear, and it hurt. So much. Like my ear exploded.
I spilled free onto the floor.
The guard was shouting into his radio now. The lawyer fled the room, tie flapping. Remi spit and frothed at the mouth, no oxygen, the guy’s handcuffs wrapped behind Remi’s head and pulling.
A heavy prison sneaker kicked me in the head.
Caught me above the eye. Another kick toward my gut but I caught it and rolled and the guy fell next to me.
I jumped to my feet. Orange jumpsuits everywhere.
Had to get to Remi. A slab of meat tried to punch Remi but he was squirming too much.
I grabbed the guy and threw a hard right that caught him in the teeth.
Someone behind me snagged my other arm and twisted but I turned with it and shook him loose and shoved him backward over the table, and he toppled, feet up to the ceiling.
A siren screamed. Shouting, men running. I was sweating.
I needed Remi to breathe. His fat attacker pivoted, tried to keep Remi between us, but I outmaneuvered him, close enough to start jabbing, pop pop pop, to the splotchy man’s nose.
On instinct he raised his hands to defend, the chain vanishing from Remi’s throat, and the old man dropped loose, gasping air.
The remaining guys fell on me and it was a wrestling match from hell that I would never win. I couldn’t inhale and they were battering my face with punches and kicks. Remi, coughing and spitting, shoved a chess pawn into a guy’s eye and called him a name I didn’t hear.
Guards flooded the room. Finally.
“Sorry, Warden! The big guy, he attacked us!”
It was madness. In the hot chaos, Remi attacked one of the guards. The guy in handcuffs, bleeding from the nose, fled the room. Some of the guys raised their hands, one kept hitting me in the head.
At the bottom of the dog pile, I thought, I should’ve charged Ronnie more.
A guard, strong looking Black guy, shouted at me not to move. On the floor, I complied. Blood leaked into my eye and down my nose. The inmates were being shackled and threatened with OC spray.
Remi was pressed to the ground, his hands restrained behind his back. He was still purplish and coughing.
Remi noticed me and smiled, his teeth red.
“Va a fanculo, Mackenzie,” he said, crimson spittle.
“I was winning.”
“Like hell you were. But—” Two guards hauled Remi up by his arms to drag him from the room. Before he vanished, he said, “Cardot. Emile Cardot.”