graduate till you kin empty every damn pocket without ringin’ the bell.’
Lola sighed, ‘I used to go with a guy who walked through crowds dressed in an overcoat, with both his hands out in the open, while he picked everybody’s pockets like crazy.’
‘How the hell could he do that?’
‘The right hand was a dummy. He slipped his real hand through a slit in the coat and picked his way through pockets and wallets and purses.’
In the recreation room the education continued.
‘I like the locker-key rip-off,’ a veteran said. ‘You hang around a railway station till you see a little old lady tryin’ to lift a suitcase or a big package into one of them lockers. You put it in for her and hand her the key. Only it’s the key to an empty locker. When she leaves, you empty her locker and split.’
In the yard another afternoon, two inmates convicted of prostitution and possession of cocaine were talking to a new arrival, a pretty young girl who looked no more than seventeen.
‘No wonder you got busted, honey,’ one of the older women scolded. ‘Before you talk price to a John, you gotta pat him down to make sure he ain’t carryin’ a gun, and never tell him what you’re gonna do for him. Make him tell you what he wants. Then if he turns out to be a cop, it’s entrapment, see?’
The other pro added, ‘Yeah. And always look at their hands. If a trick says he’s a workin’ man, see if his hands are rough. That’s the tip-off. A lot of plainsclothes cops wear workin’ men’s outfits, but when it comes to their hands, they forget, so their hands are smooth.’
Time went neither slowly nor quickly. It was simply time. Tracy thought of St Augustine’s aphorism: ‘What is time? If no one asks me, I know. But if I have to explain it, I do not know.’
The routine of the prison never varied:
4:40 A.M. Warning bell
4:45 A.M. Rise and dress
5:00 A.M. Breakfast
5:30 A.M. Return to cell
5:55 A.M. Warning bell
6:00 A.M. Work detail lineup
10:00 A.M. Exercise yard
10:30 A.M. Lunch
11:00 A.M. Work detail lineup
3:30 P.M. Supper
4:00 P.M. Return to cell
5:00 P.M. Recreation room
6:00 P.M. Return to cell
8:45 P.M. Warning bell
9:00 P.M. Lights out
The rules were inflexible. All inmates had to go to meals, and no talking was permitted in the lines. No more than five cosmetic items could be kept in the small cell lockers. Beds had to be made prior to breakfast and kept neat during the day.
The penitentiary had a music all its own: the clanging bells, shuffle of feet on cement, slamming iron doors, day whispers and night screams … the hoarse crackle of the guards’ walkie-talkies, the clash of trays at mealtime. And always there was the barbed wire and the high walls and the loneliness and isolation and the pervading aura of hate.
Tracy became a model prisoner. Her body responded automatically to the sounds of prison routine: the bat sliding across her cell at count time and sliding back at wake-up time; the bell for reporting to work and the buzzer when work was finished.
Tracy’s body was a prisoner in this place, but her mind was free to plan her escape.
Prisoners could make no outside telephone calls, and they were permitted to receive two five-minute calls a month. Tracy received a call from Otto Schmidt.
‘I thought you’d want to know,’ he said awkwardly. ‘It was a real nice funeral. I took care of the bills, Tracy.’
‘Thank you, Otto. I – thank you.’ There was nothing more for either of them to say.
There were no more phone calls for her.
‘Girl, you best forget the outside world,’ Ernestine warned her. ‘There ain’t nobody out there for you.’
You’re wrong, Tracy thought grimly.
Joe Romano
Perry Pope
Judge Henry Lawrence
Anthony Orsatti
Charles Stanhope III
It was in the exercise yard that Tracy encountered Big Bertha again. The yard was a large outdoor rectangle bounded by the high outer prison wall on one side and the inner wall of the prison on the other. The inmates were allowed in the yard for thirty minutes each morning. It was one of the few places where talking was permitted, and clusters of prisoners gathered together exchanging the latest news and gossip before lunch. When Tracy walked into the yard for the first time, she felt a sudden sense of freedom, and she realized it was because she was in the open air. She could see the sun, high above, and cumulus clouds, and somewhere in the distant blue sky she heard the drone of a plane, soaring free.
‘You! I been lookin’ for you,’ a voice said.
Tracy turned to see the huge Swede who had brushed into her on Tracy’s first day in prison.
‘I hear you got yourself a nigger bull-dyke.’
Tracy started to brush past the woman. Big Bertha grabbed Tracy’s arm, with an iron grip. ‘Nobody walks away from me,’ she breathed. ‘Be nice, littbarn.’ She was backing Tracy towards the wall, pressing her huge body into Tracy’s.
‘Get away from me.’
‘What you need is a real good lickin’. You know what I mean? An’ I’m gonna give it to you. You’re gonna be all mine, alskade.’
A familiar voice behind Tracy rasped, ‘Get your fuckin’ hands off her, you asshole.’
Ernestine Littlechap stood there, big fists clenched, eyes blazing, the sun reflecting off her shiny shaved skull.
‘You ain’t man enough for her, Ernie.’
‘I’m man enough for you,’ the black woman exploded. ‘You bother her again, and I’ll have your ass for breakfast. Fried.’
The air was suddenly charged with electricity. The two amazons were eyeing each other with naked hatred. They’re ready to kill each other over me, Tracy thought. And then she realized it had very little to do with her. She remembered something Ernestine had told her: ‘In this place, you have to fight, fuck, or hit the fence. You gotta hold your mud, or you’re dead.’
It was Big Bertha who backed down. She gave Ernestine a contemptuous
