Pain Killers: A Novel

Part I

1

Home Invasion

Sun Myung Moon looked great in a bikini.

The sight did not inspire me to schedule gender reassignment, but it was undeniably engaging. As my eyes strayed to the other eight-by-ten glossies on the bedroom dresser, I found myself wondering if the arrangement was random or if there was some coded message in the way things had been laid out.

The buxom Sun Myung, sandwiched between a muu-muu’d Pope Benedict and a severely hog-tied Clarence Thomas, floated directly over Jerry Falwell, who appeared to be reading the Bible while spanking a hefty, ball-gagged blonde with CHOOSE LIFE branded across her coccyx. Of the four, Falwell was the only one who looked like he was enjoying himself. Maybe that was the message the home invader meant to convey: Party like Falwell! Or maybe, in the manner of burglars who relieve themselves on the carpet after stealing your silverware, the message was the fact that they were able to leave anything at all. The message was: Hey, asshole, look what we can do!

There was, certainly, a lesson in Justice Thomas’s comportment. Despite the obvious pain and degradation, his expression was one of infinite patience. Gentle understanding. I had never been a fan, but his stoic bearing won me over. The man had nobility.

I basked in that thought for a moment, then reality clawed me again. My home invader might still be in my home. I cried out, feeling like an idiot, I’m a cop! That’s when I noticed a black and white photo, smaller than the others, wedged behind a dresser leg.

This one showed a smiling, gap-toothed fellow in a uniform. He might have been Jack Lemmon’s cousin, if Jack Lemmon’s cousin had a trim mustache and served in the SS. The twin lightning bolts on the lapels were a dead giveaway. The officer in the photo was in a laboratory, a forbidding nurse at his side. He clamped calipers in both hands, simultaneously measuring the budding breasts of naked, pubescent twin girls on his left and right. Stamped under the shot, in block letters, was BEIDHÄNDIG. Below that, in a looping scrawl, someone had penned the translation: ambidextrous.

The ex-cop in me knew I should stop staring and deal with the situation—however it is you deal with strangers planting celebrity perv pics in your bedroom. But the image of that smiling SS man and his calipers was so disturbing, my eyes retreated to the puckish Moon. Why shouldn’t the Korean messiah enjoy some dress-up? Think what early Christians would have done if Jesus had been resurrected with cleavage!

All speculation was shattered by a gravelly voice behind me. They’re not real! Before I could react, something cracked the back of my head. I don’t remember going down. I only remember coming to, blinking away twirling stars, in a forced crouch. Trapped in a tiny aluminum jail.

Christ! I cried.

"Him, I got no photos."

I blinked some more and realized I wasn’t in jail. I was cramped within the four legs of a walker. A heavily jowled old man waited for me to raise my eyes, then spat an inch from my knee.

Putz!

I considered punching the senior intruder in the testicles. They were, in my Guantánamo crouch, at eye level, drooping prominently behind the shiny weave of his poly-blend Sansabelt trousers.

What kind of schmohawk gets mugged by a seventy-two-year-old with a walker?

Happens all the time. I yanked myself up by a walker leg so that my new friend and I were jammed face-to-face, like two guys squeezed into a telephone booth. Just last week an old lady brained me with her orthopedic cane, and the day before that some prick with Alzheimer’s kicked me down a flight of stairs, then forgot he did it and kicked me down another flight.

Oh, a funny guy.

That’s me, I said. May I?

I lifted one of his hands off the grip and eased by him. The old man’s breath stank of sardines and horseradish. When he picked something fleshy off his tongue and flicked it at me, I slapped him.

That’s disgusting.

My attacker rubbed his face, his mouth forming a smile that looked like it was made of other people’s lips. How ’bout that, the kid’s not a complete pussy.

I kicked the walker away and caught him when he fell forward. I was that tough.

How about you shut the fuck up so I can decide whether to strangle you or not? It’d be legal—you broke in!

This seemed to make the jowly old man even happier. So what’s stopping you?

I’m curious. You make a habit of hobbling around, planting bad tabloid shots in people’s houses? There money in that?

The old guy spat out another fleck and I backhanded him.

I live here, Pops. Stop hocking on my carpet.

He spat again. This time when I tried to slap him, he caught my hand. His grip was a shock, but no more than his reflexes. He kept grinning until he let my hand drop. Bad habit, he said.

I winced, which I knew he’d enjoy. Then I righted the fallen walker and handed it back it to him. You still haven’t told me about the pictures.

I got a job for you.

So that’s why you Walker Texas Rangered me?

I wanted to get your attention. The pics are fakes. Photoshop.

Fuck the pictures. What are you doing here?

He shrugged. You break into a man’s home, you want to give him a show. Ha!

The old man feinted left with a jab and cackled when I ducked. Enough strange things had happened in my life that the bar for strange was fairly high. But this was getting up there.

Okay, I lied, the old man blurted. They’re not all fakes.

He tapped the gap-toothed SS man in my hand.

This one is real. He’s the only one I’m interested in.

The Nazi. Uh-huh. You know where he lives?

His meaty lips crumpled in a kind of private giggle. San Quentin. Ever been there?

No.

It’s prime real estate. Right near the ocean.

I’ve got a lot of questions, but I’m going to start with ‘Why me?’

Look at this place. Your life is for shit.

That makes me special?

It makes you a guy who might think San Quentin’s an improvement.

You trying to hire me or put me away?

Hire you.

To go to prison? Wasn’t that a bad Steven Seagal movie?

"As opposed to the many fine ones. You’re not listening. You won’t be in prison. You’ll be at prison."

"Right. So when I’m gang-raped in my cell, all that D-block dick will be at my ass, it won’t be in it."

For God’s sake! The old man slapped the photo of the SS man in my hand. All you have to do is check him out.

I studied the photograph. If he’s even alive, he’s gotta be a hundred-something.

Ninety-seven. Twenty-four years older than me.

It sounds like you know him.

We’ve met.

I waited for more. Nothing. Who is he?

A shadow passed over the old man’s face. His bluster was suddenly gone.

Josef Mengele.

Just saying the name somehow drained him. I had to help him into a chair. For the first time it occurred to me that maybe my uninvited guest had wandered out of a rest home. Maybe his worried loved ones were scouring the streets.

Mengele died in ’seventy-nine, I said as gently as possible. I saw it on the Biography Channel. Chances are he’s probably still dead.

The old man regarded me with clear eyes. He might be. Or he might be in San Quentin. All you have to do is talk to him. You’ll know.

Why me? There must be a dozen Simon Wiesenthal guys trying to find him.

Ten dozen. But nobody’s asking you to find him. He’s been found. All you need to do is identify him. See if it’s really him.

How do I do that?

By helping him.

Helping him? Now I wanted to sit down. What are you, a fucking Nazi?

Far from it. This is part of a plan. And it’s all set up. Do you have anything to drink?

I grabbed a bottle of water from beside the bed and gave it to him. He gulped heartily and handed the bottle back with a steady hand. His voice was strong again. You pose as a drug counselor. Teach a class. There’ll be a few of you in the group, and one of them will be Mengele—or won’t be. You’ll all be sharing your stories.

You think Mengele, you think sharing.

Go ahead and mock. Are you familiar with the term ‘recovery’?

I’ve read about it, I said.

Well, that’s what you’ll be doing. You’ll be teaching a drug awareness class.

And I live up there?

Just for a few days. You do the job, and maybe when you come back, you still have a home.

He reached in his jacket and pulled out one of the flyers the Realtor had stuffed into the buyer’s box she’d spiked into the lawn. NOTICE TO FORECLOSE. She kept sticking them in the box, I kept ripping the box out.

It makes you feel like an American, I said, when you have the same problems as other Americans…. But it’s hard to keep up.

Like I say, don’t think San Quentin. Think Marin County. Prime real estate. You’ll be right on the water.

He could see the hesitation in my face. I’ve never been good at just saying no.

What happens if it is him? A bunch of Jews have him killed?

Which Jews?

What do you mean ‘Which Jews?’

The ones inside or out? Jews in the penitentiary are different than Jews on the outside.

I’m guessing, inside or out, there’s a bunch who’d like to skip a trial and go directly to revenge.

Some might want to take him out for revenge. Others to hide complicity. I’m talking about Jews, but not necessarily Jew-Jews.

What?

He stared at me with something like pity, then lifted his heavy old man’s body out of the wing chair.

Some might want to take him out for revenge. Others to hide complicity. I’m talking about Jews, but not necessarily Jewy Jews.

What?

As I was trying to tell you, there is a difference between Jews who are incarcerated and those who aren’t. See, inside, white trumps Semite. Plenty of Jews are ALS.

They have Lou Gehrig’s Disease?

Shmuck! Say that too loud, you’re going to break out in flesh wounds. ALS stands for Aryan Land Sharks. They’re about White Power. The baddest of the bad. They don’t take too kindly to being confused with a charity disease. He put his hand on my shoulder in an avuncular fashion and shrugged. It’s a different world. Name’s Harry Zell, by the way.

What could I say but Nice to meet you, Harry?

Zell looked at his watch. His shirtsleeves covered his wrists. I couldn’t see if there was a faded number. But there were many other things to mull over—beginning with the proverbial elephant in the room, swinging its trunk between the double bed and dented portable TV.

So, Josef Mengele is alive, huh?

Zell kept his response nonverbal: rubbing his fleshy nose and making an accch noise.

I mean, if it’s true, this is a pretty huge event.

This time Zell drummed his fingers on the walker.

Hey! It’s not like you can walk into a man’s place, smack him on the head and ask him to find somebody. Well, I corrected myself, "you can. I’m just saying…Mengele? I can’t believe he’s just sitting there. Waiting to be found. If he’s telling people who he is, what makes you think he’ll even be there when I show up? Or that I’ll be able to get past the CNN trucks?"

Zell repeated the accching and finger drumming, then pursed his meaty lips, sucked in his breath and blew it out in one long sardine-scented sigh, as if a lifetime of disappointment and resignation had prepared him for this one big one.

He is saying who he is, right?

Sure, said Zell. "There’s another old freak who says he’s Mickey Mantle, three more screaming they’re Jesus, and let’s not talk about Elvis. If you were an alta kocker in a jail cell, wouldn’t you want to be somebody else?"

Maybe. But not a genocidal maniac with a price on his head. Even if it’s him—he got away with it this long, why would he come out of hiding now?

Because he wants credit.

For what?

Exactly! All you know about him is the genocidal maniac stuff—what about the good things?

Are you insane?

"Me, no. But I’m depending on you to tell me if he is. His psych eval describes him as borderline schizophrenic. I checked. Who’s gonna believe a schizo in jail? But he doesn’t act out. They don’t have him on file as a gasser or anything."

So they don’t know what he did to his patients when he was done with them?

"Not that kind of gasser. Don’t you watch Lockdown? Gassing is when a prisoner throws urine or feces at a guard. Sometimes they make a soup. The thing I do know is he’s vain. So never take him seriously. As in, do not show him respect. Do not react. No matter what he says, no matter how horrible. If it’s him, that will drive him crazy. A vain man at the end of his life. That’s as close as we’re going to get to DNA. I’ll give you ten grand."

Ten grand’s not much, considering.

I’ll get your house back for you.

I did not want to argue. I’d been living on fumes for a while. Continuing to live that way seemed suddenly unbearable. But still…

It’s just too fucking unlikely, I said.

Unlikely? he repeated, brightening for the first time. Exactly! Looking at your life, I said to myself, ‘Here, Harry, is a man who has never had a problem with the unlikely.’ His voice began to rise, and I kept an eye on his walker in case he tried to swing it again. I said, ‘Here is a man whose own past history, if you had to stick it in a box and put a title on it, that box would say UN-FUCKING-LIKELY. Here is a man who married a woman he met when she murdered her husband with drain cleaner and broken lightbulbs in a bowl of Lucky Charms.’

No need to flatter, I said. Cops meet all kinds of interesting people. Sometimes they even marry them. I’m glad you did your homework—but what does my checkered past have to do with anything?

Isn’t it obvious? I need somebody I can trust. Who’s also desperate, he added, meeting my eyes. If you weren’t desperate, you wouldn’t take the job. But if I couldn’t trust you, I wouldn’t want to give it to you. It’s not an easy combination.

You still haven’t told me why you want Mengele.

The man has his reasons for saying who he is. I have my reasons for finding out the truth.

I started to say something else, and he held up his hand. Enough. The warden knows everything. You’ll meet him first.

I followed him out to the living room, where he stopped to take in the photo of my wife and daughter on the wall.

Your family?

His tone was somewhere between inquiry and concern. I gazed at the picture, surprised by the sudden flood of emotion at the sight of my sullen, long-lashed sixteen-year-old daughter and my beautiful, high-cheek-boned newly-ex wife.

My family, yes. Good to know they’re out there, I heard myself croak.

When I opened the front door, he stopped and delivered his final instructions.

Remember, with Mengele, you can be polite, but show no respect. Don’t take him seriously. For him, any disrespect is—

He didn’t finish. He just grabbed the walker and smashed it into a mirror.

Do you understand?

I get it, I said, picking glass out of my eyebrow.

Good. Then we understand each other. You’ll get an envelope with details and cash.

Zell kicked the walker out of his way and strode with crunching, great man strides out to a waiting limousine.

I shook a few more mirror shards out of my hair, then watched him open the limo door himself and get in. I wasn’t mad about the mirror—why would I want to look at me? Business being what it was, I was not even that upset at Zell’s perverted and violent mode of job recruitment.

No.

What bothered me, more than anything, was that I knew I was going to take the job.

2

The Job

Burbank to San Francisco was a one-hour flight. United only had two rows of first class. It was weirdly satisfying to be sitting in one of them, feeling the eyes of lesser-ticketed humans as they passed by after I’d been boarded and seated. The resentment in their glances was almost tangible: Why is that shabby bastard sitting in first?

The tickets had been hand-delivered in a gray envelope with the cash, along with a copy of the smiling SS Zell had left on my dresser and a time-projection etching of ninetysomething Mengele. It was odd to see the same technology used for missing-children flyers applied to a nonagenarian Nazi. Instead of baby Nancy at three and thirteen it was Dr. Mengele in his Jack Lemmon–circa–The Apartment prime and in his current dotage.

A smaller envelope within contained a passport, driver’s license and Social Security card. It would have been cool, in a Mission: Impossible way, if I’d been given a new identity. That scene in every movie where the spy is told, From now on, you will be Laszlo Toth. You were a furrier in Madrid. Sadly, this being real life, I was given my own identity. My own SS number, my face on my driver’s license. It was like finding out there’s reincarnation, then coming back as yourself. I had not realized my wallet had been emptied of ID until the walker bandit, Harry Zell, gave it back to me with the tickets. Mostly I used cash, when I had it, so I didn’t pull out my wallet a lot. The credit cards were pretty much there if I had to break into a locked door. Which A) I did not often have to do, and B) never really worked except on TV. In real life, if you don’t have a locksmith and burglar skills, you were pretty much fucked.

Ever thoughtful, Zell had included the San Quentin visitors’ dress code in the envelope. No blue denim! No orange jumpsuits! (Because, really, why wouldn’t you drop into a state prison dressed like a state prisoner?) But my favorite deal-breaker was No see-through tops! Who knew? Zell—or whoever packed his packages—had also thrown in a paperback of Chicken Soup for the Prisoner’s Soul. I left it in the sick-bag slot.

The only fraudulent part of the paperwork was my state certificate, proof of my status as licensed drug and alcohol counselor. I had a diploma from somewhere called Steinhelm Life-Skills Institute. It looked as legitimate as I did.

From the road, San Quentin might have been a vast, oceanside nineteenth-century resort. The sprawl of brick and stone blended into the upward roll of land over the Pacific. Think Hilton Head, but institutional, with a death house.

I gave my name at a gate that looked like an overgrown toll booth. A steely blond woman took my driver’s license and picked a green receiver from a wall phone. While I waited I took in a ruined gazebo halfway up a curving driveway to the right: a tiny haven, ringed by stone nymphs, where a robber baron might have thrown a birthday party for his daughter in 1911. W. C. Fields might have lumbered out of it with a croquet mallet and a flask.

Officer Rincin will be down to meet you in a few minutes.

There was nowhere to wait. The sun was merciless. I watched an older prisoner in denim and a blue shirt push a wheelbarrow over to a bed of flaming red flowers by the entry road. He kneeled down and touched the first one, gave it a moment, tamped the ground around it a little, then moved on to the next flower and did the same thing. On one level, this scenario stood out as a profound statement about man’s ability to transcend his surroundings and experience beauty even in the direst circumstance. On another, it was a guy kneeling in dirt, blowing his bad breath on a flower, a guy who’d grow old and die sleeping four feet from a toilet.

A screen door slammed. I saw a pair of middle-aged ladies in straw hats and vacation wear step from a small building I hadn’t noticed. The San Quentin gift shop. I checked the pathway down from the brick administration building, saw no one hurrying my way, and headed over for some souvenirs. Sometimes you just have to pamper yourself.

Inside, the ladies giggled over a wooden paddle with a droopy convict in stripes painted on it, over the caption BETTER BE GOOD.

Is this not the cutest?

Ed can put this up right over the bar!

Lucky Ed. They were still tittering when I stepped inside. The shop occupied a small white room with four glass cases and walls hung with prisoner art and handiwork. A handwritten sign over the old-fashioned cash register said GO AHEAD, SHOPLIFT! Behind the register was a closed door.

I wandered to the first counter. Leather goods. Wallets, belts with eagle-clutching-the-flag buckles the size of hubcaps, and some snazzy handcuff holders. Next to that, management had arranged a paddle display—from spatula-sized on up to small snow shovel. Each smacker was decorated with the same droopy, hand-painted convict as the one the ladies were holding. Beetle Bailey in stripes.

What really impressed were the paintings. An array of pastel-tinged sunsets, azure waves over rocky shores—nature scenes—filled every inch of wall space behind the counters. Whoever painted them had spent a lot more time in motel rooms, staring at the pictures over the chained-down TV, than in actual nature. No doubt, after enough seventy-nine-hour blinds-closed binges, smoking meth under the bed, those pink skies and shiny seascapes were nature.

See something you like?

A small, perfectly proportioned blond man in a blue prison shirt eyed me nervously from behind the counter. I hadn’t seen him come through the door, and he made sure to keep that burp gun–era register between us. His face was an unlined fifty. A faded patchwork of tattoos blued his chest where his collar opened.

All the paintings you see here are done by inmates, he recited. You’ll notice there are no signatures, only their prisoner number.

The counter in front of him contained a dozen key chains: dominoes on one side, a drawing of the prison and gun tower and SQ on the other. He backed up a little when I approached. Startled. I found myself speaking slowly.

How much are the key chains?

Four fifty.

I pulled out a twenty. I’ll take four.

As he reached in the case to grab them, I saw that he was missing his middle fingers. Before I could decide whether to ask about them, he whispered, Got a lighter?

Don’t smoke anymore.

In fact, I did have a lighter. You never know when you’ll need to fake some charm or camaraderie by lighting somebody’s Camel. But I didn’t tell him.

We’re not supposed to either. He kept his voice low, eyes aimed at the counter. That’s why a pack goes for thirty dollars.

Thirty, huh? Next time I’ll bring a carton.

His eight fingers fluttered with excitement. But they stopped when I didn’t say anything else. What I wanted to ask was how much he got for snitching out visitors. You didn’t get to be gift shop trustee by slipping the hacks free cup holders. He started to make change from the cash drawer, then stopped. He stared at the money in his hand as though he had no idea how it got there.

Keep the change, I said.

Tension came off him like steam. There’s change?

When he handed me the bag, he looked me in the eye for the first time.

Enjoy your life, he said. I can’t.

"There you are!"

My contact, Officer Rincin, sauntered toward me from the ID window. He was a stocky, red-faced grinner of sixty or so. One of those skinny guys with a belly—what beer drunks call a party ball—pushing apart the buttons of his tan correction officer’s shirt as though it were still inflating. Gray hair wisped out of his brown baseball cap. He might have been top floor man in the Sears appliance section, except for the mild menace of his wire-rim reflector shades and the cuffs on his belt.

What’dja get? he inquired, indicating the paper bag in my hand.

Key chains.

I opened the bag so he could see in. To show him I wasn’t smuggling anything.

Great stocking stuffers, he said. I understand you’re law enforcement yourself.

Was. Young man’s game.

I said it like I’d simply aged out of the profession, as opposed to crawling out with a bag of dirty money and a wife with perp after her name. Memories!

Didn’t want to end up dead or behind a desk, I blathered on. Not that there’s a hell of a lot of difference.

I hear ya, my new friend sighed, still grinning. The grin was disconcerting, until I realized it never stopped. Which was more disconcerting. It was like rictus, with jowls and cop ’stache. You didn’t give Twitchy a lighter, did you?

No, why would I?

Because he asked.

Well, they always want to get over one way or the other, don’t they? My experience, dogs bark, cows moo and convicts con. It’s their nature.

You’re all right, he said. Course, if you’d have given him that lighter, we’d be marchin’ you to intake for a bun-spread yourself. They take the contraband thing here real serious.

But you didn’t really have to sweat me, you have it on video, right?

Aren’t you a sharpie! Rincin grinned some more, then pointed to my gym bag. Travel light, huh?

Yeah, I left the cologne and tuxedo at home.

Aces. We’ll just sign your butt in, get you a badge. They can use the photo off your DL. They’re puttin’ you in the Can Patch. Little trailer park on the ass end of the property. Lot of guards live there when they’re startin’ out.

Great, I said.

Rincin just grinned. Of course. We walked toward the gray and stately administration building, where I was surprised to see more inmates in denim walking by, single or paired up.

A lot of your lifers are pretty mellow, he said when they ambled by. It’s the transitionals are the knuckleheads, punks just comin’ in who got something to prove. They’re the ones in orange jumpsuits.

We stepped inside, into the smell of furniture polish and dust. A bored middle-aged woman, chewing gum behind a grille on the left, buzzed us through, toward another pair of Goliath-sized glass and wood doors.

Hey, Lil, Rincin said to the buzzer woman. He pointed at me. Temp staff, here’s his DL. She snatched my license while we waited in between the doors that locked behind us and the ones still locked in front of us. A pair of mustached young men with gym memberships and dark suits were buzzed out. They eyed me as they passed. My own outfit—black T-shirt, gray Dickies pants, scuffed boots and black leather jacket that made as much sense as ear muffs in the heat—earned a professional size-up from the exiting suits. The taller one waved to Lil and she winked back as she slid a form through the slot. Office romance.

Have him fill this out, she said to Rincin, who replied, Will do, pretty lady, and handed it to me like I was invisible to everybody but him.

I wrote down the address of my storage space, where most of my possessions used to live. For an extra five a month, the owner accepted mail. The one thing you couldn’t do, Omar the U-Stor-It man informed me when I signed on, was party in the storage space. Gypsies, he’d explained, without elaborating. They ruin the fun for everybody.

At the line requesting Social Security, I didn’t hesitate. Anyone stealing my identity would be blessed with much more debt than credit. I was happy to share.

Done, I said, as if I’d passed some mighty test. Rincin snatched my paperwork and slid it back to Lil. She buzzed us through the second set of doors, past the warden’s office. The whole place was high-ceilinged and airy. The floor shined like it got polished hourly. Nobody seemed concerned about their proximity to killers, thugs and sex maniacs. The air had a testosterone and Endust tang.

I followed Rincin to a courtyard facing another beautiful stone building, 1852 on a keystone over its entrance. A half-dozen contractors banged away just under the roof. Or maybe they weren’t contractors. They all had muscles and back ink. Swinging sledgehammers on a scaffold two flights up struck me as misguided, but maybe OSHA regulations didn’t apply to prison labor.

That there’s the original prison site, Rincin tour-guided. "They’re finally tearing her down. Lots of folks wanted to come in and photograph the dungeon, but the warden isn’t having it. What’s the upside of letting the Chronicle come in and take pictures of the rack, or all the chains still hanging from the wall rings?"

Well, it’s history, I offered.

That’s my point, he said.

Rincin yanked off his hat, gave his bald spot a scratch, and slapped it back on without explaining himself further. He pointed to another edifice, from which a large Latino guard escorted a moon-faced white inmate in hand and ankle cuffs. The hefty guard waved across the courtyard to my host.

Rincin waved back. "Hola, Pedro!" It was one big happy campus.

This here’s the AC, the Adjustment Center, Rincin said. For guys too violent for gen pop. You work in there, you pretty much have to eat and shit in riot gear. They keep ’em down twenty-three hours. Roll ’em out for an hour exercise in a cage. Then back in the hole.

It was another second before I realized he was leading me over there. I swallowed and tried to smother my fear in the crib.

So, uh, Officer Rincin, you’re not putting me in…?

I pointed at the adjustment center in what I hoped was a casual fashion. Rincin’s grin got a little bigger.

What? No! Should I? Then he got sly. Had you worried, huh?

Little bit.

The environment takes some getting used to. But like I say, you’ll be stayin’ in a trailer. It’s comin’ up. Just around the other end of the lower yard. We’ll pop in my car.

We rounded a corner and that’s when I saw it: the yard. As featured in every prison entertainment from Twenty-Thousand Years in Sing-Sing to Oz. The inmates really did walk the track in slow circles, clusters of like-skinned fellows strolling together discussing the fine points of the Council of Nicaea, the falling dollar or other subjects of interest. Blacks owned the hoops. Cannonball-bicepped white guys spotted each other on weight benches. A row of ripped skinheads curled plastic gallon jugs of water. Despite the blast furnace heat, nobody seemed to be slathering on sunblock. Maybe that was the real reason they tattooed their arms to sleeves. It wasn’t that they wanted to blanket their epidermis in flaming tits and swastikas, they just wanted to block out the killer UV rays.

I know what you’re thinking.

Rincin nudged me as we headed past a fat hack checking names on a clipboard marked YARD LOG, out onto the track.

"You’re thinking, What do the Mexican guys do for exercise?"

How did you know?

Folks always do. See, for one thing this isn’t the only yard. For another—and this’ll surprise you—your Mexicans hold down the tennis courts.

Mexican prison tennis, I repeated dumbly. I didn’t know if he was fucking with me, but since he didn’t march out Samoan badminton I let it go.

There’s a lot of things that would surprise you, he said cryptically.

No doubt.

Nobody in the yard showed overt interest, but I felt the eyes. Once or twice I thought I heard somebody whistle. Not the kind of thing you want to turn around and check. I didn’t tell Rincin what really surprised me—beyond the fact that someone was possibly hard-up enough to find forty-year-old white meat worth whistling at. What spooked me even more was how normal the residents looked.

Watch enough of the nonstop Lockdown and Lockup on basic cable, and you’d think the guys inside were all malevolent freaks. Much more chilling, it was just the opposite: the majority wandered the track staring blankly, pasty faces stamped with nothing more menacing than resignation and fatigue. More than half had committed their crimes while intoxicated. Half of these sobered up in the delousing shower. Or just came out of their blackouts in state clothes.

Rincin nudged me. Check out Hiawatha.

I looked where I thought he was looking. On our right, in the patchy grass, sat a trio of broad-shouldered, ponytailed young men styling plucked eyebrows and shaved stomachs, one with pubescent starter breasts showing through his shirt.

Regulations let ’em unbutton to the solar plexus, Rincin said to fill me in. What they do is roll and knot the tails right here, for maximum midriff. He tapped the top of his hard, round stomach, just under his man cleavage. Turns a prison shirt into a bikini top.

He watched me watching. As you can see, they like to show off their titty beans. Rincin banged me hard on the arm. Now check this out.

In a fenced-off square of earth just off the yard, a shirtless, overweight man with white hair down his back ducked into the mouth of a low hut and disappeared. Warden lets ’em have their own sweat lodge.

A young Native American, hair in braided pigtails down his back, squatted on a wooden bench, hands on his knees, staring back at me with no expression.

Say one thing for the red man, said Rincin, there ain’t a lot of white boys I’d want to strip down to my skivvies and sit in the dark with.

You ever go in there, look for contraband?

I imagined the pigtailed man had somehow read my lips and felt his accusing eyes on me. Was there such a thing as too paranoid in prison?

Rincin shook his head. You’ve seen too many of them jailhouse shows. ’Round here we call ’em ‘prison porn.’

What does that make you guys? Fluffers?

For a second Rincin didn’t reply. Even though his grin remained intact, I could see him thinking: If an inmate doesn’t do it, I’m going to shank this asshole myself.

Then, even before the buzzer, everybody in the yard dropped to the ground. I started to hit the dirt and Rincin grabbed me. Yanked me back up by the shoulder. He wasn’t gentle. Dumbest fucking thing you can do is get on the ground. You stay on your feet, standing up, the tower shooter knows you’re one of us.

Eager to move on, I pointed across the field, in front of the bleachers, where a team of paramedics was trying to pluck a thrashing orange jumpsuit off the ground onto a gurney. What happened to him?

Rincin grabbed my hand and pulled it down. Don’t ever point in prison.

Sorry, I said.

No biggie. Rincin looked back at the paramedics, now carrying the stricken inmate off on a stretcher. Guy’s probably a flopper. In this sun, some boys just keel over and have seizures. He turned back to me, gripped my shoulder and wagged a finger at me. Crank and sun don’t mix! Tell your kids!

Words to live by, I said.

Better believe it…. The car’s right over here.

I followed Rincin down a steep row of wooden stairs to a dusty parking lot. He held out his key and beeped it at a black Impala. Sorry if I was a little rough back there.

"No, I’m sorry. I’m the green one."

That would be true, he said.

3

Quentin Adjacent

Rincin drove with his elbow out the window, expounding on the sights. What you’re looking at is a small city. Four hundred and seventy-three acres. We are now going by North Block. The death house, built in nineteen twenty-four, he announced, with the canned enthusiasm of a tour bus operator touting Grauman’s Chinese Theatre. Somebody here may tell you that Scott Peterson can see the spot where they fished his pregnant wife out of the water by the bridge. They may be telling the truth.

Wow.

I felt him staring at me.

No, I mean that. Wow!

Right. Over there you got your infirmary. Behind that, your South Block. Behind that, your dining hall and water cannons. With this he reached into the backseat into a cooler. Pulled out two cans of Coke. He popped both pop-tops at once and