With any luck he sees it coming and gets himself put in segregation.”
She headed for the door, stepped outside without a backward glance, and left me alone in silence.
I locked the door behind her and stared at the old shoe box. I knew whatever it contained couldn’t be good. Images of white anthrax powder and homemade bombs filled my head. But there was that breathy phone call, and there was Bruce, and there was Danny, and there was that box. I had to know what was in that box.
So I withdrew a knife from the drawer, sliced the masking tape, and lifted the lid.
Inside the box lay some tissue paper. On that tissue paper sat a small plastic bag. There was a bloody finger in the bag.
4
BEYOND THE ADMINISTRATIVE wing, Basal looked fairly typical for any newly constructed prison, Danny thought. But as Bostich ran down a short summary of the layout and basic expectations, it was clear that there was far more to the facility’s inner workings than first met the eye.
The large cross-shaped structure was divided into four operational wings referred to by their compass location with a large, domed common area at its hub. The two-story north wing, where Danny was admitted, held all administrative functions, which centered on the warden. The south wing was used for services including the infirmary, food preparation and dining, laundry, maintenance, commissary, and programs. Members were housed in one of three wings. The longer west or “commons” wing consisted of ninety cells with a maximum capacity of 180 members. The shorter east or “privileged” wing consisted of fifty units called rooms rather than cells, many of which were single occupancy. And the basement or “meditation” floor was reserved for up to fifty less-responsive members.
There were two yards—one small patch off the hub, and a much larger park that surrounded the entire facility, a privileged area reserved only for the east wing members accessed through the back of their quarters.
Bostich led Danny through a secured door into the hub, where perhaps forty members loitered around fixed tables or on brown couches that faced a small television playing HGTV. The rest were either on the yard, in the rec room, or in their cells, Bostich said. Commoners weren’t permitted to work.
Most prisons had work programs ranging from common maintenance to skilled labor—employment that kept inmates occupied for six to eight hours a day, earning a maximum of ninety-five cents an hour, half of which went to pay fines. A man dressed in jeans and a blue button-front shirt paused his mopping of the gray floor and leaned on his mop to watch Danny. Jeans. An employee, yes, but an inmate? The privileged class.
Odd. Work, however menial the task, tended to keep prisoners occupied and out of trouble. Here, that privilege was reserved for those who’d graduated to the east wing. The employed would control the prison’s entire underground commerce, which in most prisons consisted of extorting, hustling, and trading of both legal goods, such as potato chips or coffee, or contraband, such as tobacco, prison brew, or drugs. Goods smuggled in or purchased by the wealthy at the commissary were the currency in most prisons, and those prisoners who had the most to trade typically had the most power, just like in all societies.
Giving those in the privileged wing that balance of power by offering them an easy way to make extra money would create class envy. Violence or threats of violence would be used to extort or rob the upper class in many prison systems.
Evidently, Basal wasn’t home to typical prisoners.
The walls and floor were concrete, painted a shiny gray. Guarded steel doors controlled passage into each of the four wings. Black-and-yellow-striped tape ran along the floor, marking walkways and restricted areas. No pictures or images on the walls, no plants or decorations of any kind.
The silence struck Danny as he followed Bostich across the hub toward a guarded door with a sign that said Commons above it. The hub was massive, hollowed like an echo chamber beneath a large glass dome, and yet an eerie quiet hovered about the several dozen members who quietly watched him. No one seemed to be speaking.
They were all dressed in the same blue slacks and tan short-sleeved shirts, staring with interest. A cross- section of ages was represented, but fewer younger prisoners than at Ironwood.
Respect was critical in prison, not of correctional officers as much as of other inmates. Cross into the personal space of a CO and you were likely to be ignored unless you were belligerent. But disrespecting another inmate with anything from a harsh look to an angry word could earn you unending trouble.
Take a man’s freedom and he will cling to those few needs that make him human: his need for respect and his need for dignity. Take those and he will become an animal.
Treat a man like you treat an animal, and to the extent he is able, he will treat you like one. Respect and dignity—these were the lifeblood of the convict code, a convention that had as much if not more bearing on how a prison ran than the official prison protocol.
What few on the outside seemed to realize was that humans were human, regardless of which society they lived in. Government, hierarchy of power, and expectation of social conformity were as real in the prison society as in any other. Rob the members of their dignity and they would only learn to rob others of theirs. Hence, the monster factory.
Bostich nodded at a brown-headed, lanky CO standing by the entrance to the commons wing. “Danny Hansen, 297, new arrival.”
The guard checked a box on his clipboard. “Seventy-one.”
“Let’s go.”
Bostich led him down a wide hall with two floors of barred cells on the left. Metal stairs rose to a second tiered row with a four-foot walkway for access to cells set back from the railing. Same gray floor, same painted cinderblock walls as in the hub. All of it scrubbed clean and shiny new. A guard station manned by a young officer who leaned back in his chair behind several monitors was centered on the opposite wall. Beyond him was a passage to what Danny guessed to be the showers. He’d seen no public phones yet.
The cell Bostich took him to was located on the second tier, three quarters of the way down the hall. The front wall of each cell consisted of vertical bars and a barred door, allowing unrestricted view of the interior.
“Here you go.” Bostich opened the unlocked door to a cell with the number 71 stenciled above it. “Everything you’ve been issued is on the top bunk, including a handbook with the rules. I suggest you familiarize yourself with it.”
“Thank you.” Danny stepped inside and scanned the cell.
Eight feet wide if you wore large shoes, maybe twelve deep. Two long strides by four shorter strides. A bunk bed on the right, opposite two standing lockers. Beyond the bunk, a single metal sink attached to a single metal toilet, no seat.
On the top bunk, his kit. Two additional pair of blue slacks, two more tan shirts, two white T-shirts, two pair of white boxer shorts, two pair of black socks, one yellow towel, one yellow washcloth, one set of white sheets, one gray blanket with blue stripes at the top, one bar of soap half the size of his fist, a tube of Crest toothpaste, one yellow toothbrush, one red disposable razor with a worthless blade, and two roles of single-ply toilet paper. These and the clothes he wore were now his only earthly possessions. They’d taken the rest when he’d entered the facility.
His cellie was an organized, educated man, judging by the clean sink, the folded clothes on the end of his bed, and the philosophy books stacked neatly on the top of the first locker. No TV, no music player, no electronics of any kind in sight.
The cell door clanked shut but remained unlocked. Lockdown would come at night with lights out.
When Danny turned around, Bostich was gone. There was no further explanation of the prison protocol, no introduction to the facilities, no assembly-line pickup of issued items.
But clearly, that was part of the program. He was being watched carefully. What he did now would determine what happened to him.
And he would do what he always did. Time.
He would go through the motions, naturally. He would eat what they gave him to eat, try to sleep when they told him to sleep, walk around the yard when they allowed him to do so, avoid the hustlers, read anything and
