Pain Killers (5 page)

“Really? ’Cause I’ll miss this place.” I ran a hand over the mildewed counter. “Kidding! That sounds good.”

“I don’t know about good, but it’s better than this pud hut. Meanwhile the warden wants to see you.”

“Right now?” I don’t know why I was panicked.

“Not till after I bleed my lizard,” he said, squeezing past me again. “Scuse me, the little boys’ is this a-way.”

I didn’t want to stand there, so I stepped outside. His stream was so high-impact the snailback’s two good wheels vibrated. Then I looked up and realized it was a helicopter coming in for a landing. Rincin saw me watching the chopper when he stepped out behind me, plopping his hat back on. “Don’t worry, Dr. Drew, it’s probably a medevac. They’re not coming for you.”

“Funny. But I’m not really Dr. Drew.”

“I know that. But you do what he does, right?”

“Oh, sure. Except I’m not a doctor. I don’t have my own TV and radio show. And he probably has a lot more money.”

My chaperone got back in the car. “Well you don’t have to brag about it,” he called back. “Time to say hello to the big dog.”

The warden, a ramrod-spined ex–navy boxer, was working a Bernie Kerik: shaved head and brush-cut law enforcement mustache. He was five foot four but blessed with a square and enormous jaw. That jaw looked like it could handle itself. I could imagine it pushing ahead of him, clearing a path through a world of massive bad guys twice his size. He eyed me across the desk, tenting his fingers between the little U.S. flag and the flag of California. I stared back, a little over his head, at a framed photo of him gazing up at Arnold Schwarzenegger. I wondered if the warden had to resist the urge to brag—he may have been a foot shorter, but his chin looked like it could bench-press ten times more than the governor’s.

“So,” he began, “as part of your undercover work, you’ll be running a drug rehabilitation workshop.”

“That’s the idea.”

“You’ve had some experience with drugs?”

“I’ve done some research, sir. I just didn’t know it was research at the time.”

“That a joke?”

“More or less,” I said, instantly regretting it. The man stared down serial killers every day. He didn’t need me to amuse him.

“Cute,” he said, then picked up a document and studied it. I read “Department of Corrections” on top, upside-down. The warden skimmed a few more papers attached by paper clip, then raised his eyes. “I’m surprised you never visited us before.”

“Is that a joke?”

“Prison humor,” he continued when it was clear I wasn’t going to laugh. “You’ll get used to it. There’s some funny stuff that goes on. But,” he said flatly, “we do have Nazis.”

My own voice came out tinny. “Right, of course. I knew that….”

“Mr. Rupert?”

“Yes!”

“You’ll be dealing with six addicts.”

My ears were ringing.

“Sex addicts?” I shifted in my chair. “They didn’t mention…I mean, not to judge, I’m just saying…who hasn’t—I mean, I’m not sure in terms of sobriety, if, you know, sobriety is even the right word—”

“Mr. Rupert?”

“Yes, sir?”

The warden tapped his pencil on the desk and stared at me. He’d put on reading glasses, the kind with round little lenses that made whoever wore them look somehow critical, disapproving. His magnified eyeballs seemed appalled. And I didn’t blame them.

“Not sex addicts,” he said, after I’d repolished the chair by squirming in it for a minute. “Six addicts.”

“Six addicts?”

“That’s what I said.”

“There have to be more than six addicts in San Quentin,” I said.

He took off his glasses and picked up a miniature ball-and-chain made from papier-mâche. The one-ball made me think of Hitler. They sold them in the gift shop.

“There are six addicts,” he continued, “who I think can really benefit from your kind of program.”

“And what kind of program would that be?”

“The kind that can really benefit them.”

“Well,” I said—where were we going with this?—“it would be great if I could help out in that way.”

“Don’t worry,” he replied drily, “I know the reason you’re here. I also know your history. A cop and a drug addict. Interesting combo.”

“Ex,” I said, trying not to sound too touchy on the subject.

There was an awkward silence. Suddenly I saw myself as he saw me. Battered black leather and soul patch. Your basic faux badass. A tattooed, middle-aged white law enforcement loser who thought shooting dope for a decade gave him some kind of street cred. In other words, from where he was standing, the worst kind of civilian—the kind who thought he knew what time it was.

I bit my lip to keep from defending myself. I wanted to share my theory: all of us, at some point in life, choose our cliché. But I held my mud. Or tried to.

I had, I should explain, a bad habit of thinking I knew what people were thinking while I was talking to them. Sometimes I actually replied. Which was never good. Even if you were right about what was going on in another man’s head, there was no upside to responding if he hadn’t actually said anything.

“Some powerful people,” the warden went on, “obviously think you’re the right man for the job. Of course, it’s a little unorthodox.”

“Of course.”

“Well, I’m a little unorthodox, too. Right, Colfax?”

“So I’ve read, sir.”

I’d felt someone looming, and when Colfax spoke I felt free to turn around. Colfax was six-six, no wider than a Volvo, three hundred pounds of order-maintaining muscle, packed in a snug deputy’s uniform and topped with a shaved head, acne-pocked skin and the requisite handlebar mustache. He must have come in after we’d sat down.
Even big men learn to walk like cats in the big house,
I thought. (And wondered why I was suddenly channeling promo lines from the Turner Classic Movies channel.)

“Look at me!” The warden snapped his fingers and I jerked my head in his direction. Everything in prison is a test, but it hadn’t occurred to me the warden would be testing, too. It should have. But just when I thought he was going to go all “this is my house” territorial, he went somewhere else.

“Let me put this on the table,” he said. “Just because you’re here undercover, that doesn’t mean you can’t do some kind of good with these fellows. Drug addiction is a scourge. I realize you’re not actually here for that purpose, but there’s no reason, as a kind of side benefit, you can’t show these fellows something. We’ve had UC inside before, for all kinds of things. We had a fed undercover in D Block for six months, trying to flush out a baby raper named Mooney.”

“Flush out?”

“We had him on a parole violation. But we knew he’d had relations with his girlfriend’s daughter. Problem was, girlfriend clammed up after she reported it. That happens when your boyfriend sticks your face in a pot of grits. Of course, missy wouldn’t report that either. So that’s where the UC came in. To get Mooney to say what we already knew.”

“Of course,” I echoed, as if I myself had been around the track with facial grits situations. “So, how’d that work out?”

The warden leaned sideways, talking past me. “Colfax, how’d that work out?”

“Not well, sir.”

Just then a trustee who might have doubled for Uncle Ben—before he was updated—limped in with a tray. The warden rubbed his hands. “Ah, chamomile. Like some?”

“I’m good,” I said.

“Suit yourself.”

The tea man poured and backed away. The warden took the cup and blew delicately. He sipped, somehow making even that look macho.

“Not well,” he repeated with a satisfied sigh. “That pretty much sums it up. To get close to Mooney the UC had the idea that he should act like a kiddie diddler. So Mooney would trust him. Trouble is, he was a little too convincing. They became best friends.”

“What happened? He get into a fight?”

“Not exactly a fight. A young Zulu out to make his bones heard Mooney and the UC swapping cookie recipes, or whatever the hell pedophiles talk about, and stuck a spork in his aorta. Our man just kind of bled out. Convicts hate pee-pee bandits. They’re fair game.”

“How do they feel about drug counselors?”

“Fine, as long as you don’t get any of their customers clean. That’s messing with their money.” His Gibraltar jaw lent gravitas to every pronouncement. “Long as you don’t take money out of their pocket, you can all hold hands at meetings.”

“So then—there’s nobody from gangs in the class?”

“Oh no. Everybody’s in a gang in a prison. If you have a race, you have a gang. Fact of life.”

“So then everybody in the class is already clean?”

“Bingo. All clean.” The warden took another sip of chamomile and smacked his lips. “Unless they’re not. We do random UAs.”

“Piss tests?”

“Piss tests. Right.”

I felt a tingle of panic. A tiny quarter smile rode over the warden’s cowcatcher jaw. “That’s not going to be a problem, is it, Mr. Rupert?”

“What, the piss test? No. God no. Of course not. No problem at all.”

I let my voice trail off. Or maybe it just wandered off on its own, wanting to get as far away from me as possible. The warden let me sputter out.

“Just so we’re both clear,” I started up again, “I’m here because they want me to find out about the old man, the German. Everything else—helping guys get clean, teaching them life skills—that’s great. It’s fantastic. But, at the end of the day, it’s gravy.”

“Gravy. Uh-huh.” The warden sat back and tented his fingers again. “You, sir, are an interesting fella.”

The way he said it—like he had footage of me touching myself at bus stops—made me cringe all the way to my toenails.

The warden stood and extended a dainty hand. For a dizzy second, I didn’t know whether to shake it or kiss it. “Well,” he continued, “I guess you’ll just have to decide your own level of commitment. Colfax?”

The big CO stepped forward with a cup sealed in a plastic bag. He produced it from behind his back, like a dog treat. The warden smiled again. This was fun.

“You know the drill, right? Print your name right on the cup and seal ’er up tight.”

Now it was my chance to smile. “You need this now?”

The warden clapped me on the back. “Of course not. Bring it tomorrow. Now how about we get to your group? Like I say, I’ve selected some fellas I think can benefit from a week of recovery know-how. Here’s the team,” he said, and slid a stack of folders in my direction.

I stared at them, certain I should say something—but what? “You know, I’m not really here to—”

“Oh, come on,” he interrupted, mistaking my reticence as some kind of prissiness in the face of raw crime. “You being ex-police and all, you’re not going to be shocked at what some of these fellows have done.”

“I’ll read it sitting down,” I said, “just in case.”

“Read it sitting down. That’s a good’n. Hear that, Colfax?”

“Long as he pees standing up,” said the corn-fed guard. More prison yuks.

There was a long, odd silence, then the warden snapped his fingers again.

“Rupert!”

The warden crooked his finger, then leaned forward himself, thrusting his Greyhound bus of a jaw over the table in my direction. What would life be like with a cudgel like that under your lower lip?

“You know, Rupert, there’s one thing you learn in my line of work.”

The warden clicked his tongue and grinned, plainly on fire to tell me what it was. I didn’t bite. (Life, for a neurotic, so often boiled down to a battle of wills in which only one side realized there was a battle going on.) The warden brushed imaginary dandruff off his lapels and re-tented his hands, steepled forefingers meeting at the tips and pointing my way. The gesture could not have been more menacing if he’d been aiming a Luger.

“You get pretty good at reading a man.”

“Really?” This time I decided to go along. Why antagonize? “How do you do that, Warden?”

“You’re asking me
how
?”

“Unless it’s a trade secret. Something you take a blood oath to keep under your hat at warden school.”

The warden recoiled visibly.

This always happened. Ninety-nine percent of the time, I was cool. But in the presence of those whose favor and approval I most needed, I regressed. Succumbed to some residual antiauthority reflex, as unseemly in a man my age as a Rolling Stones lapping-tongue tattoo on your grandmother’s breast. Substance-abuse professionals said you stopped maturing at the age you started getting loaded. Forever fifteen. The warden leaned toward me. “You want to know how I read guys? It’s simple. I don’t listen.”

“You don’t listen?”

“Nope.” His voice dropped an octave by way of transmitting some bit of arcane and dangerous wisdom. “I watch the hands.”

“The hands?”

I raised my own palms in front of my eyes and stared at them. Who were these dangerous strangers? Then we both leaned forward again. Had either of us gone further we’d have bumped foreheads.

“So,” I said, “say somebody’s across the table pointing their fingers at your solar plexus like a .357; how would you read it?”

“That’s easy. My read would be they’re letting me know they’re armed. In every sense of the word. I’d say they were saying, ‘Don’t try anything, fella, ’cause I’ve got your number before you even start counting.’”

I put my hands up and sat back in my chair. “Point taken. Don’t shoot.”

The warden checked his watch, snapped his fingers and pointed to the door. Which was apparently Officer Colfax’s signal to step behind me again. Colfax took a car-crusher grip on my shoulder, holding me down. Was the warden afraid I was going to attack him? Or did his bodyguard just like me? In prison, everything was something else. Which was true on the outside, too. Just not as vividly.

The warden moved smoothly to the door, where he stopped and faced me. “Might want to study those files. See who you’re dealing with. They’re all very excited.”

“And the German?”

“You’ll meet him. Then you can tell me. He’s supposed to be
who-sis
again?”

“A doctor,” I said.

Zell had implied the warden was in on it. But here he was playing ignorant. Which meant either Zell was lying or the warden was testing me again. Retesting. To see if I’d be on the level with him.