The Weight Read online

  I wasn’t going to tell the lawyer about that. But there was something he’d need to know. I figured I might as well get it over with. “Only thing is, the serial numbers were—”

  “Not good,” the lawyer said. “Even worse if they make a call to ATF.”

  “You on the panel for the Federal Court, too?”

  He gave me a look. I just looked back.

  “I am on the CJA Panel,” he finally said. “But that’s not the point. Whatever you know about that gun, they know, too, by now. No matter how you play it, being caught with it wasn’t a good thing for you. But it’s not good enough for them, either.”

  “How come?”

  “Carrying, that’s a felony hit all by itself, sure. But it’d be a long way to turn it into another violence beef. You didn’t do anything with that gun,” he said, making it a question.

  “I never even pulled it,” I said. “But it was ready to go.”

  “Maybe someone had been threatening you?”

  “That’s it, all right.”

  He was quiet for a minute, making a thing out of reading some papers he had with him. He looked up, said: “That gun, it was a regular carry piece?”

  “You mean, did I walk around with it, or just happen to have it that particular day?”

  “Okay,” he said. Meaning, he wanted to see if I could guess what the right answer should be. If I was going to tell a story, it’d have to be a good one.

  “Ever since I started getting those threats, I never left home without it,” I said. “I’ve been shot before; it’ll be on my records.”

  He flashed me just enough of his teeth for me to see he took real good care of them. Then he started looking through a bunch of papers he had with him, like he had all the time in the world.

  I guess he did. They pay these 18-B guys by the hour. And it wasn’t like I had anything better to do.

  Finally, he made a little motion for me to put my face close. He wrote something on his yellow pad. I looked: NEVER VOUCHERED is what it said, in tiny letters.

  I moved my lips real slow, so I could say what I wanted without making a sound: “The piece?”

  “It’s not anywhere in all this,” he said, running his pen over what he’d shown me. He really worked at it, crosshatching the words into a black blob, but he made it seem like he didn’t realize what he was doing. “Of course, it doesn’t have to be. Like I said, I haven’t filed any motions—they gave me all this without me even asking. And now I think I see why.”

  “It’s a card they’re holding back?”

  “No. Listen.” He leaned toward me again; I did the same toward him. He spoke so soft I could barely hear him: “The rape, it wasn’t gunpoint; the guy put a—”

  “Shut. The. Fuck. Up!” I said. Just moving my lips like before, not making a sound. But he heard me. Heard me good.

  “What’s your problem?” he said, backing off. “I’m just trying to—”

  “Yeah, I know. But right now I could walk in and pass any polygraph they got. Sure, the operator’s going to tell me I failed, see if that gets me to confess. But they’ll see I’m not lying. That’s why I talked to the cops for so long after they picked me up. I figured, sooner or later, they’d ask me, since I was innocent and all, would I mind taking the test? I had the surprise all ready for them, but they never took the bait.”

  “That wouldn’t be admissible—”

  “I know. But it’s something, right? They started with the registered sex offenders. Stupid fucks: every joint’s got plenty of rape artists who pleaded to burglary, so there’s all kinds of sex fiends who wouldn’t even be on that list. I figure, if she stopped when they got to my picture, they probably didn’t show her any more pictures.”

  He nodded.

  “Then, when I went in the lineup, she was looking for the guy who matched the picture, see?”

  “Right. And that’s exactly what we’ll be saying. But why don’t you—?”

  “It’s not much, but it’s something. If you start telling me the details, that’ll mess up the test … if they ever decide to give me one. I don’t know how the girl was raped because I didn’t rape her.”

  He leaned forward. “Straight up?”

  “Hey, the cops already know I’m not the guy. At least the last two detectives I talked to, they know.”

  “If they know …”

  “They know because they know something else. I mean, I was doing something else when that girl got raped.”

  “Ah.”

  “Yeah. My alibi buys me as much time as a rape would. In this state, probably more.”

  He raised an eyebrow, asking me a question. This guy knew there’s things you don’t say out loud, even when you’re talking to a lawyer.

  “Not that,” I said, drawing my finger across my throat, putting distance between myself and any homicides that might have gone down during what the cops call the “critical period” when they’re investigating a murder. Probably their idea of a joke.

  “So …?”

  “So this: if they show the girl more pictures, she might change her mind. Except for this”—I touched the scar that ran down from my forehead through my right eyebrow—“the only thing that stands out is that I’m a big white guy with two different-colored eyes. The guy who actually did the rape, he’s done a lot of them.”

  “How could you know that?”

  “How come she never saw his eyes? How come they don’t have a single damn drop or fiber or hair or—?”

  “A pro, you’re saying?”

  “There’s no such thing as a pro rapist. A pro works for money.”

  “No offense,” he said, giving me a weird look. Like what did I have to be offended about? He was slick about the law maybe, and he could talk some of our talk, but now he was working without a map. He couldn’t know I wanted people to say, “Sugar’s a real pro.” Some people, I mean. But this guy wouldn’t understand that. He didn’t know the people I was talking about. He didn’t know our life.

  “She saw what he wanted her to see,” I told him. “Probably one of those masks on his face. Maybe contact lenses. But how was she gonna miss a guy with two different-colored eyes, like me? So, if they were to tell her I passed a polygraph, it might be enough. Anyway, if I have to go on trial, better it’s for something I didn’t do.”

  He leaned closer to me. “That scar, it’s not that visible, even up close. But, you’re right, there’s no way to miss your eyes.” He touched the right side of his pencil-line mustache. Manicured nails, no rings.

  “I’ll get back to you,” he said.

  Rikers never changes. Neither do the people who keep taking that bus ride. Some worked on not looking scared, others worked on looking tough. The only guys you have to watch are the ones who look bored.

  The same Inside, too. They keep you separated while you get “processed,” but you could still hear voices calling out what they were going to do to you as soon as you got out of the fish tank. Some of the first-timers tried shouting back at them. Most of us knew better than to waste our breath on cell gangsters.

  The first test was always Population. This time, it happened real quick. Some greasy little punk half my size says, “What they call you on the street, esé? In here, you got to pay to stay. Otherwise, what they be calling you is the other white meat, comprende?”

  “Azúcar,” I said, smiling at him.

  “What?”

  “You asked me what people call me on the street, right? So I just told you … esé.”

  His boys were all watching, but they weren’t close enough to hear anything. Maybe he was a prospect they were testing. He pulled up his shirt to show me he was carrying, but I knew he wouldn’t go for it. He’d just tell the crew watching him that he’d warned me off and I’d gotten the message.

  I left him a good out on purpose. Inside, if you take a man’s dignity in front of his own people, he has to go for you, right that second. He doesn’t do that, he’s got no backup, ever again.

 
But I also know what happens if you let anyone so much as tap your commissary, never mind turn it all over. So I tried to practice what Solly’s always telling me: the older you get, the weaker your body, so the only way to balance out is to grow a stronger mind.

  Giving that punk an out, it was the same as me driving weight. Building myself bigger. Adding to the armor.

  This was my third time on the Rock. First time, it was short-stay before I went Upstate. The second was that ninety-day joke. This time, it was going to be just like my first.

  Except for the testing. When I was a kid, my size—and I was real big, even then—that didn’t mean anything. Plenty of big guys roll right over when they see steel.

  But nobody ever really pushed that hard. I even knew a few guys I had been locked up with before. Maybe they spread the word a little, I don’t know.

  So buying that shank this time, it was more about the message. The guy I bought from, he was AB, so I knew they’d know. I hadn’t dealt with coloreds; that was good. But I hadn’t asked to join up, and that could mean anything.

  I knew flashing it would be all wrong. That’s a rookie move, not something a pro does. Besides, the guy I bought it from, he’d take care of letting the word get around.

  My first time in happened because I made a lot of rookie mistakes. Me and a couple of older guys, we figured, how is a fence ever going to run to the cops? That was before I knew some of them stay in business by switch-hitting.

  I was seventeen. I wanted to be a heist-man, not a mugger. The fence wasn’t any big-time guy. He ran a garage over by Shea Stadium, under the bridge. The way it worked, you drove your swag over to him; he’d close the doors, look over what you had, and tell you what he’d pay.

  We had a little panel truck one of the other guys took right out of a parking lot. He picked us up and we threw in a bunch of empty cartons. Big ones, like the kind TVs come in. I sat next to the driver, and the third guy was in the back. While the fence was waiting for the guy in the back to open the boxes, I just stepped out and yoked him until he went limp.

  When he came to, he reached for the phone.

  My Legal Aid said I was being charged with strong-arm robbery. All that means is nobody showed a weapon.

  He kept talking about a YO—that’s Youthful Offender—like it was the greatest thing in the world. The way he ran it down, if the judge would give me a YO, my record would be sealed. That way, it couldn’t be used against me if I ever got in trouble again.

  He said “again” like it was a sure thing.

  I already knew that sixteen was the cutoff. No more Family Court for me. No more rehabilitation bullshit, no more counseling, no more GED classes. Prison.

  I knew I’d have to go sooner or later if I wanted the right people to see me, so I was just as glad to get it over with.

  Back then, on the Rock, they’d separate the young guys from the older ones. That was supposed to keep us safe from “predators.” I wondered if anyone actually believed that stuff.

  But it wasn’t bad at all. Nobody was going to be there long enough to worry about pulling me into their crew. And I had enough juvie time to send out the right signal: I’m not going to gorilla anybody into anything, and I don’t have anything you want, either. But if you come at me, it’s going to cost you something.

  I was there a few weeks. It wasn’t until I got Upstate that I found out how that Legal Aid had screwed me over.

  “What was the big deal about getting a YO?” the writ-writer asked me. I knew I couldn’t appeal behind my guilty plea, but I really wanted that YO, and I heard I could appeal not getting that part.

  I was surprised when he said that. Everyone said he was smarter than any lawyer. He was in for double-life, but he’d gotten all kinds of other guys out, ’cause he knew the law so good. Spent every day in the law library they had up there, like it was his office. Had guys bringing him coffee, sandwiches, whatever he wanted.

  He read the look on my face. “Don’t you get it, son? Far as the judge was concerned, you were a first offender, right?”

  “I … guess so.”

  “What I’m saying, you had a long juvenile record, but this was your first adult bust, right?”

  “Right.”

  “And every time you copped to one of those kiddie crimes, didn’t your lawyer say a juvenile record doesn’t mean anything, because it all gets sealed?”

  “Yeah.”

  “Yeah? Do the math. The judge on your case, he knew all about your priors. As a juvie, I’m saying.”

  “But if they—”

  “It’s pure bullshit,” the writ-writer told me. “ ‘Sealed,’ all that means is they can’t put it in the newspapers. They even changed that law back in ’78, but that’s only for homicides. And you didn’t have …?”

  “No.”

  “Yeah. So, like I said, the public can’t see your record. But the cops can. And they can pass that along to the ADA. And the ADA can pass that along to the judge. Just psst-psst, see? Nothing on paper. That YO you want me to appeal for? Even if you won, it wouldn’t be worth the paper it was typed on.”

  “It’s three crates, right?”

  “I just told you—”

  “Three crates to talk to you, that’s what they said.”

  “Yeah. That’s my consultation fee.”

  “I’ll have it for you as soon as—”

  “Forget it,” the old con said.

  “I don’t take favors,” I told him.

  He looked up at me. “You’re just dumb about some things, huh?”

  I didn’t know what to say to that. But I paid him, just like I said I would.

  I didn’t just learn things that first time in; I earned some things, too. That’s when people started calling me Sugar.

  Inside, color counts, but it’s not like one race against another. I mean, it is, but there’s lots of splitting even inside the colors. Like Puerto Ricans and Cubans, they’re both Spanish, right? But they didn’t mix. The PRs were mostly born here, but all the Cubans I ever saw, they got shipped in. Marielitos, the PRs called them. I didn’t know what that meant, but I knew it wasn’t no compliment.

  The yard was divided up into what they called “courts.” You couldn’t step onto any crew’s court without their permission, and the strongest crews claimed the best spots.

  I was raised in a city where just being caught in the wrong neighborhood could get you seriously fucked up, so it kind of made sense to me. Besides, there was what they called the DMZ, places where anyone could go.

  But even there you had to be on the watch. Like the weights. They’d have them out in the yard for anyone to use, and no crew ever tried to claim them. But they claimed the time to use them. So it wasn’t just the yard that was divided up, it was everything in the yard, too.

  That was the part I didn’t know. And that was how I got my name. I was doing one-handed curls when the Muslims sent some guys over to talk to me. I saw them coming, so I was already slugging by the time they landed.

  Lucky for me, they weren’t carrying. I think seeing me with the weights was such a surprise that they didn’t plan anything, just rushed me.

  Everybody saw it, but nobody did anything. They just watched. Even the guards.

  When they finally broke it up, they could see nobody was cut, so everyone got tickets for fighting. I got thirty days; I don’t know what the Muslims got.

  I know they got visits, though. Even in the bing, if you had religion, you could always get to see someone. Like me, I was down as Catholic, so the guards asked me if I wanted to see a priest. The Muslims, they were a religion, so there was this—I don’t know what to call him—he came around every day.

  One day, he stopped by my cell. He was wearing one of those little round hats. I went over to the bars, carrying a towel wrapped around my hand in case he was there to stick me. I had to come to the bars, or they’d think I was weak.

  He had a strong, calm voice. Kind of talked all around what he had to say, but what it c
ame down to was that the Muslims had no beef with me. They got it that I didn’t know the rules about what times you could use the weights. And they also knew I’d told the DC—the Disciplinary Committee—that I couldn’t tell them who else was in the fight. It all happened so sudden, I didn’t even remember what color the other guys were.

  It’s kind of complicated, but it wasn’t like the Muslims were giving me a pass if I ever did it again, just saying I didn’t need to look over my shoulder when I unlocked.

  I didn’t believe him, but it turned out he was telling the truth.

  A few months later, I still didn’t have a crew, but there was some guys I was all right with. I hung with them when they lifted. We spotted for each other—and not just on the weights. I was on my way over to them one day, just passing by this little court, when I heard something in Spanish. I figured it was about me, but I didn’t want to challenge anyone without making sure I had to.

  One of the guys I worked out with, his girlfriend was Latina. The first time he told me that, I thought that was her name, Latina. But I’m never dumb on the same thing twice.

  Eddie was a real short guy, but he had huge arms and a big chest from pumping every day. Sitting down, he looked bigger than me. When I first came in, he could out-bench me, too. Not by the time I left, though.

  Everybody liked Eddie, even the guards. He was always joking around, playing cards, goofing off. Had a smile for everyone. And he could tell some great stories—he only took vacations from jail to get some new material, is what he said.

  One of the things that made his stories so good was how he could make his voice sound like other people’s. He used that trick even when he wasn’t telling stories, just to stop other guys from getting … depressed, or whatever you want to call it.

  I remember when Reno came over to talk to us. Well, to me, really. Reno was deep into that White Power stuff, and Eddie had tipped me they’d be coming around. “You look like a recruiting poster for some Aryan army, kid. Blond/blue, big and buffed. All you need is some ink.”

  I’d told Eddie that I didn’t want anything to do with that crew. All that political stuff sounded weird to me. “What does a thief need with politics?” I asked him.