Badge of Evil (26 page)

A. J. stopped at the guard shack on the Queens side of the bridge, got his visiting press pass, and proceeded onto the island. Supreme was being held in the James A. Thomas Center, a maximum-security jail. Though A. J. figured Supreme could buy whatever he needed while inside—everything was for sale, including drugs, sex, and protection from the other inmates—he knew he'd still be out of his mind about being locked up. Justifiably so. He should've gotten bail, but somebody with juice obviously wanted him inside. Ironically, through all his years in the drug business, Supreme had never done a single day of jail time.

It was a little past noon when A. J. parked. He'd come straight from his breakfast with Reverend Watters, and he was still full. As always, he'd eaten one too many waffles and he felt a little sluggish now. The bright blue sky coupled with the warmth of the sun made him think for an instant about getting back in the car and bolting. He could go home and play some tennis, take one of the bikes out for a ride, throw a softball around with his daughter.
Anything
except this. Rikers was just about the last place he wanted to be, especially on a Saturday.

Only moments later, however, having decided to do the responsible thing, A. J. heard the large steel door slam shut behind him. He was immediately overwhelmed by the smell of disinfectant, an unfortunate fact of institutional life. The noise level was unbearable, with the inmates yelling; the guards screaming; electronic jail doors relentlessly beeping, squealing, and clanging; planes roaring overhead; and music blaring.

It took A. J. about ten minutes to clear security, which included a full-body pat-down, a walk through the metal detector, and the surrender of various personal items like his cell phone and press ID. Then he was told to sit and wait. He tried reading the newspaper, but he was too distracted. He watched small groups of desultory inmates grudgingly being herded along the dreary hallways. The guards were constantly at them to stay within the lines painted on the floor. They all seemed to have bad skin, bad teeth, tattooed arms and necks, and a simmering disdain for everybody and everything.

Before A. J. even realized it, he'd been sitting for half an hour. He got up and asked the guard at the entry station what was happening. “I'm not really sure” was his response. “Can you please try to find out?” A. J. asked. He tried to be as polite as possible, knowing that any attitude would only slow things down even further. It was another twenty minutes before he heard anything. “Hey,” the guard called out to him, “I just got word that there's been some kind of emergency. That's the holdup. The inmate you're supposed to visit was taken to the emergency room.”

A. J. jumped up out of the hard plastic chair he was sitting on. “What?” he said. “What happened?”

“I don't have any other information. They said you should sit tight, and somebody'll be out here shortly.”

A. J. had already surrendered his phone, so he couldn't call anybody. He began to pace and run through various possibilities in his head, none of them good. What could've happened to Supreme that would require taking him to the emergency room? Maybe he got sick from the food. Maybe he . . . A. J. stopped himself. The speculation was useless. He continued pacing and getting more agitated by the minute. He was also starting to feel crummy. The stale air was making him nauseous.

Finally, after more than an hour and a half, Captain Reggie Stackhouse, a normally affable corrections officer A. J. had met several times before, came out with a dour look on his face. “Hey, A. J.,” Stackhouse said.

“What the hell's going on, Reggie?” A. J. asked.

“Supreme got shanked sometime during the night and they rushed him to the emergency room.”

“And . . . ?” A. J. said.

“He didn't make it. He died about half an hour ago.”

“Oh, fuck. Are you kidding me? Tell me you're joking, Reggie.”

“Nothin' funny about it. The details aren't real clear. The official line is it was some kind of rap war revenge thing.”

“That's complete bullshit,” A. J. said, running his right hand through his hair. “How could that happen? A high-profile inmate like that and nobody's watching? Where the hell were the guards?”

“Look, I came in this morning and got the news. That's all I know. I don't know what else to tell you.”

“This is just . . .
fuck
. I can't believe it. Did anybody see what happened? I'm sure the guards aren't talking, but what about the inmates? Who controls the cell block where he was taken out?”

“Supreme got knifed out in 6A. Guy from the Latin Kings they call Chooch runs that house.”

“Look, Reg, I've been sitting here for nearly two hours with my thumb up my ass. You gotta do something to help me out here. How 'bout letting me talk to Chooch? Can you take me to see him?”

“I don't know, A. J. The official clampdown on this is really tight. The brass don't want nobody talking.”

“C'mon, Reggie, for me man, I'll owe you one.”

“You owe me more than one already, brother. Listen, I'll take you over, but it's between us, right? Nothin' in print, A. J. It could be my job.”

“No worries, man. I got you covered.”

•  •  •

“Where's Chooch at?
Heeeey
, listen up,” the captain yelled. “I'm lookin' for Chooch. Yo, brother,
bru-tha
. Yeah, you. Where he at, I said? In the back? Go tell 'im to get his bony ass out here. Tell 'im someone's here to make him famous.”

A. J. and Stackhouse were in cell block 6A. There were three tiers of cells stacked on top of one another with a narrow catwalk at each level. The place had been built in the late thirties and it looked like the big house from an old James Cagney movie. Few of the inmates bothered to even look up. Blank-faced, empty-eyed, they wandered aimlessly around the cramped space outside the cells, moving so slowly they looked like they were underwater.

“Hey, Captain, what's happening? You wanna see me?” A shirtless Hispanic inmate with a gold stud through his left nostril, a dark sculpted beard that traced the outline of his jaw, and
CHRISTINA IS MINE
tattooed on his left bicep ambled over.

“Chooch,” the captain said happily, flashing a luminous, toothy smile. “How you be living, dude?”

“You know, Captain, jail is jail.”

“C'mon, Chooch, tell my friend A. J. here how you really living.” The captain was in Chooch's face now, still smiling but leaning in to make his point.

“Hey, man, this is the danger zone, for real, know what I'm sayin'? We killin' each other up in here for the phone, the TV . . . anything. You feel me? You got to stay to yourself. You show you're scared, you got real problems. Only the strong survive, bro, only the strong.”

“Stop frontin', Chooch. You jailin' too long for that. I asked you how
you're
living, okay? There ain't gonna be no payback. Just keep it real, that's all. Maybe we should go in the back and take a look inside your cell. Take a look at that fuckin' WalMart you got runnin' back up in there. Right? You the Sam fuckin' Walton of Riker's Island, a budding entrepreneur.”

“C'mon, Captain. What you be talkin' all that shit for? I ain't got no—”

“Last time I'm gonna ask, Chooch. I told you, keep it real. Okay? Now, tell my friend A. J. here how you living.”

“Okay man, I hear you. Truth is, yo, I be livin' lovely. You feel me?”

Though Chooch was practically running a full-service convenience store out of his cell—inmates and guards could buy anything from junk food, cigarettes, and batteries to sex and drugs—his commitment to commerce didn't extend to Supreme's killing. He either had nothing to trade or he had no interest in giving anything up. After about fifteen minutes of conversation, all they got was that a Jamaican inmate had been grabbed for the murder.

“Let's put it this way,” Chooch said as they continued to prod him. “You might as well cut my fuckin' tongue out, 'cause I ain't sayin' shit about no stabbing.”

“What's it take to be in charge here?” A. J. asked.

“It doesn't matter
where
you come from,” Chooch replied. “It only matters
how
you come. Real niggas recognize real niggas. Simple as that.” Then he curled his right hand into a fist and pounded his chest. “You need it right here. You feel me? You need heart.”

“With all that heart, you're still afraid to tell me what happened last night,” A. J. said, challenging him.

“You chickenshit yuppie cocksucker,” Chooch snarled, rage washing over his angular face. “Don't come talk shit to me in my house unless you wanna bleed motherfucker. What happened last night had nothin' to do with anything in here, got it? Now get out my face, yo, before I lose it.”

On the way out, Stackhouse told A. J. he thought he'd taken a stupid risk talking to Chooch like that. “You know what Chooch meant by ‘heart'?” he asked A. J.

“When he says you got to have heart, he means you have to be able to stick a shank in somebody's eye and go on about your business. He means you got to be able to take a razor and slash somebody's face from his ear down to his mouth, giving him a scar he'll have for the rest of his life, a scar he'll see every fuckin' time he looks in the mirror . . . and never give it a minute's thought. When he says you need heart, that's what he means. Whatever it takes, whatever's necessary, no matter the consequences.”

A. J. desperately wanted to talk to the Jamaican before leaving. When they reached the main area by the entrance to the building, the security station where A. J. had to leave his cell phone, his car keys, and his ID, he looked at Stackhouse. Before he said anything, Stackhouse knew what he wanted. “You gonna get me a nice cushy job at your magazine so I can still support my family when I get fired from corrections? You know, you used to be my favorite reporter. Actually, you're the only reporter I know.”

“You just made my day. I was feeling awful about having to spend time here in Dante's seventh circle of hell, Reg, but you've made it all worthwhile. So how 'bout it? Can I talk to the Jamaican?”

“
Shee-it
, man. All right, let me get a name, and then I'll give you five minutes. No more. We gotta go in and out fast.”

“You're the best, Reggie.”

•  •  •

The Jamaican was being held in another part of the building, an area called the Central Punitive Segregation Unit, or, as it was known in the jails, the Bing. On an island filled with thousands of murderers, rapists, child molesters, armed robbers, drug dealers, muggers, and arsonists, the city's toughest, meanest, least reconstructible miscreants are held in several maximum-maximum-security cell blocks. This was supposed to be real hard time—prisoners here were locked in for more than twenty-three hours a day and were not allowed to smoke, watch TV, have radios, or put pictures on the walls of their cells. And though it was designed as a thirty-to-ninety-day punishment unit, the reality was there were guys who racked up more than a thousand days of this kind of confinement. This was where the Jamaican prisoner, Worrell Brown, was being held.

When A. J. and Captain Stackhouse got to the Bing, there was, as usual, some kind of incident in progress. Anguished cries echoed off the mustard-colored tile walls, and they were, at first, bone-chilling. “
There are dead bodies in the yard . . . there are dead bodies in the yard
,” a hollow-sounding voice screamed over and over. No one paid any attention because four cells over, guards were just finishing putting out a fire. An inmate had taken some toilet paper and held it to the naked lightbulb in his cell until it caught. Then he burned his mattress, the sheets, and the pillowcases.

“Hey, Captain, welcome to paradise,” one of the guards said to Stackhouse.

“What's up with the fire?”

“The guy's pissed 'cause he's got a court date tomorrow and he says he didn't get a haircut. Fuck his ass, man. Like a new do's gonna change his miserable life. What brings you up in here?”

“You got the Jamaican brought in last night for shanking another inmate?”

“The guy who cut the big celebrity, right? He's in number fourteen, but he hasn't said a word since he got here. Strong, silent type.”

“Thanks.”

“There are dead bodies in the yard. There are dead bodies in the yard.”

A. J. watched as an officer finally made his way down the cell block toward the crazy screamer. As he passed one cell, a food tray came flying out through the slot in the door. It didn't miss him by much, and when it crashed against the wall, milk and juice and unidentifiable globs of food splattered everywhere. “Go ahead and write the ticket, man,” the disoriented-looking inmate screamed when a guard tried talking to him. “I don't give a fuck about no infraction. You disrespected me.”

While he continued to rant, another inmate was yelling, “Yo, I say yo, can I get some attention in here?” A third inmate, who had his arms hanging out his cell door so he could follow A. J. and Stackhouse in the reflection on the glass face of his watch, was screaming, “I wanna see that reporter. Make sure you bring that reporter down here, know what I'm sayin'? I got some stories to tell his ass, yo. Bring that motherfucker here
now.
”

A. J. gave the captain a disgusted look. “Guess he's spotted your notebook. Hey, we came up here for you, remember?” Stackhouse said. “So don't gimme any grief. Let's just see your guy and get the fuck out of here.”

“Good idea,” A. J. said.

The Jamaican kid was a skinny twenty-three-year-old with a big sixties-style Afro and a scar that started at the corner of his mouth and ran halfway across his face. He'd already done over a hundred days of Bing time and had just been put back in the general population when the incident with Supreme took place. “Hey, Worrell,” Stackhouse said to the Jamaican, who was lying down. “Get your ass up and come over here, someone wants to talk to you.”