Eureka Man: A Novel (5 page)

“You can get out in fifteen. All you have to
do is stay out of trouble and do something with your time. Go to
school, learn a trade.”

Oliver sat up, excited. “I might take up
boxing.”

“What? A clean-cut kid like you? You don't
look like a boxer. Go to school and learn something.”

“Wait a minute. You said you can get out in
fifteen years. How long have you been in this place?”

Early hesitated. “Listen. There's three
things you don't ask another con. How long he's been down, what
he's in for, and how much time he's doing. I've been here seventeen
years if you really want to know. I'm still here because that
fifteen years I mentioned is the average a lifer does before he
gets a pardon. But averages don't apply to everyone. Now right now
I've got to go check on the patients in the next room. I'll stop in
and see you again tomorrow.”

As Early was turning to leave, Oliver said,
“Hey, what's the other thing you wanted to say?”

“What?”

“You said a little while ago there were two
things you wanted to tell me. What's the other thing?”

“You know that convict who wanted to be your
friend?”

“Yeah. What about him?”

“His name is Winfield Petaway. They call him
Fat Daddy. He's a notorious asshole bandit. He only messes with
pretty white boys like you and he usually gets the ones he goes
after. You should stay as far away from him as you can.”

“Hell, I'm not afraid!” Oliver said it as if
Early was the culprit. “I killed one guy for trying that shit! I
can do it again if I have to!” Oliver clutched the bed sheet in the
fist of his good hand and laid back trembling. The tendons in his
neck rippled.

Early waited patiently and then he said, “A
man's got to do what he's got to do. All I'm telling you is watch
your back. Now I'll see you later. I've got to go do my job.”

When Early was gone, Oliver laid his head
back on the pillow and sighed heavily under the weight of memory
and dread.

THE TWO CELL BLOCKS
at 100 Ohio River
Boulevard were light years away from being those bastions of
oppression they once were. Long gone from the hundred year old
cells were the once standard Gideon Bibles and natural light only.
Gone, too, was the mandatory dead silence. In the official records
these blocks were named North and South, but for the past forty
years the residents had called them by another name: Little St.
Regis and Big St. Regis, respectively, so named, according to local
folklore, after the sleazy but still popular St. Regis Hotel
located two blocks up the street from the prison in Pittsburgh's
Manchester section. Both of these cellblocks were five stories high
and a little longer than a football field. The cells in the big St.
Regis, however, were significantly larger than those in the little
St. Regis, hence the name big St. Regis.

For a long time counselors and other
administrators fought the movement to rename these cell blocks.
They simply refused to answer any correspondence that referred to
big or little St. Regis. Who did these convicts think they were,
trying to personalize the names of the buildings in which they were
assigned to live? But eventually, some warden or assistant warden
rightly decided that the euphemisms were harmless and the names big
and little St. Regis became a part of everyone's lexicon.

To keep track of the residents' whereabouts,
officials had long ago assigned letters to the tiers and numbers on
the doors. In the little St. Regis the five tiers that looked out
over the Ohio River were labeled A through E from bottom to top; on
the courtyard side, they were labeled F through J, top to bottom.
On the big St. Regis the tiers on the courtyard side were labeled K
through O, bottom to top, and on the riverside P through T, top to
bottom.

The cells in these blocks called by any other
name were still cells, so where was the harm in calling them a
“hut” or a “house” or a “room” and changing the dècor? A cardboard
box cut and assembled to specifications and painted candy-apple red
or two-tone blue became a nifty medicine cabinet for the wall over
the sink. Multicolored throw rugs sewn together made a cozy quilt;
a bed frame raised vertically and draped with cloth made a
convenient privacy panel; and a mattress rolled up in a ball and
covered with a homemade afghan became a perfect couch (or love
seat). Photos and calendars, posters and murals, on freshly painted
walls softened the look and feel even more. A clothesline here, a
makeshift hamper there. A plastic flowerpot or collection of rocks
on the shelf. Bright lights when you needed them, shades when you
didn't. Each morning you could smell the coffee brewing along the
tiers and the stench of vomit in the back of them. If you could
afford it, there were tailors for hire and cleaning service, too.
On the riverside of both blocks the view through the curtains of
glass was spectacular in the summer: speedboats and skiers bumping
up and down the strong currents all day long; red and rust-brown
coal barges moseying along five deep; scantily clad sunbathers
sprawled out on the banks and always willing to flash their goods.
At night the magnificent Gateway Clipper, lit up like a Christmas
tree, with a live band playing Three Dog Night songs on the upper
deck, floated down the river and back two or three times a
night.

The St. Regises had their own parties, too,
year round. Shooting galleries and prayer meetings, card parlors
and crap houses. You could smell perfume at one door and Jade East
at the next one. If you were hungry you could find a sandwich shop
or a grocery store that gave credit. It was all there. And the
noise. The cacophony of sounds. Televisions blasting. Pimps and
tricks fighting over prices. Dope addicts nodding to the wailing
horn section of Tower of Power or the guitar riffs of Van Halen.
Men crying, others laughing. Some crying and laughing at the same
time. Razor blades were free, as were sheets to tie around your
neck and if you were in a hurry, a dive off the fifth tier was only
a few flights of stairs away. Like any sleazy hotel, the St.
Regises had their share of crime, too: robbery, rape, homicides and
insults. It was all there, beating like a pulse. If you paid
attention to the way it breathed it wouldn't hurt you, but you had
to remain circumspect and try to figure out everyone's angles long
before they did, because anywhere you went in the St. Regises you
could find trouble or be it. You could fight till you couldn't
fight anymore and you could laugh out loud when you dodged the
knife and die when you didn't.

FREE AT LAST from the redbrick Home Block, stronger
and smarter than he was a hundred and eighty days ago, still afraid
in a dangerous way, Oliver welcomed cell B-49, to get away from the
sewer rats that scurried brazenly in broad daylight, not to mention
the dark, then to get on with his life. When he walked into the
cell, the first thing he did was pull the piece of cracked
porcelain away from the base of the toilet and retrieve the
ten-penny nail he had found in an alley on his first day at
Riverview. Then he knocked on his neighbor's door and asked him if
by any chance he had seen the louse who had fished his rugs from
his cell. The neighbor, courteous and friendly, introduced himself
and told Oliver he hadn't seen anyone lurking in the area. Then he
offered Oliver two rugs of his own that were as good as new. The
neighbor succeeded in befriending him.

His name was Albert DiNapoli, and having
lived through twenty-two years of being called Parrot Nose, he had
learned to kill the momentum by introducing himself that way. The
self-deprecation worked every time. Apart from that one physical
flaw, Albert was a handsome young man. He enjoyed being around
Oliver and Oliver appreciated the older boy's friendship. Oliver
wanted to know about the stacks of books in Albert's room and where
he disappeared to every afternoon and evening. Albert wanted to
know what reform school had been like and how he had just managed
to spend six months in solitary confinement without losing his
mind. They exchanged information like pickpocketing partners. Once,
though, Albert asked Oliver why he had to kill that boy. Oliver
didn't flinch, but told him matter-of-factly that the boy had
crossed him something terrible, and left it at that. Albert said
the boy surely must have because Oliver was a real decent fellow.
Oliver nodded, pleased with the serious word Albert had used.

Having a pyramid of friends and connections,
Albert called up a pretty girl named Penelope to visit Oliver. He
showed Oliver how to smuggle contraband, and then had his
connections supply Penelope with the contraband to bring him.
Quaaludes and marijuana. Albert sold the pills and let Oliver keep
some of the reefer. Later he vouched for Oliver before the Holy
Name Society board that seldom admitted new members. Now Oliver and
Penelope had four conjugal visits a year on the bathroom floor of
the chapel. Oliver had been an altar boy in his youth so he agreed
to do his part and serve the four “family masses” the Society held
each year. After the priest gave his blessing and disappeared into
his office to watch Steelers' football, the prisoners and their
guests had the run of the chapel. Two bathrooms and a storage room
behind the altar were made sparkling clean on Saturday so they
could be used as conjugal visiting rooms on Sunday.

Oliver almost put himself in the soup at his
very first family mass when he and Penelope stayed in the room
longer than their allotted time. The next man in line was a fellow
who looked like James Dean but thought he was Sonny Corleone. He
had a hair trigger temper and was known to end fights quickly. He
got in Oliver's face and told him if he wasn't going to be a team
player maybe he should think about joining the Protestants. Oliver
apologized three times, and Albert intervened. After Albert offered
the man some of his own time everything between them was smooth
sailing.

To help him pass the time Albert gave Oliver
a stack of books to read and after reading them, Oliver talked
about Jay Gatsby as though he knew him personally. Then he went all
over the prison looking for someone who reminded him of a character
named Raskolnikov. Even more impressive to him was a book called
The Mind and Its Control; he fell in love with words like
serendipity, existentialism and osmosis.

One morning Albert brought him to the
education department and Oliver ended up showing the most dangerous
criminal in the state how to solve an algebraic equation. Before he
even got to the school, though, he was mesmerized by the street
that led them there. Turk's Street, named after the sergeant who
directed traffic there every weekday morning and afternoon, was a
planet away from being just a drive-thru on the prison's campus.
Two lanes wide and a city block long, it beat to life every day
from seven in the morning until eight forty-five at night. With
brick buildings two stories high on both sides of the street,
delivery vans and trucks coming and going all day long, along with
secretaries, teachers, college professors and their students; the
sweet smell of diesel fumes, fruit, potatoes and hind quarters of
beef; conversations, friendly and otherwise, between prisoners
making their way to the ice house, butcher shop, food storeroom,
dry cleaners, clothing exchange, arts and crafts shop, barber
school, license plate factory,
paint-electric-plumbing-and-carpenter shops and the education
building, there were no signs of restraint-no barbed wire, no gun
towers, and no thirty-foot wall-on this street.

When Oliver strolled down Turk's Street for
the first time, he knew his burden had just been lightened and
there was good reason for rising up in the morning. As he waited
for Albert to square it with the guard so he could enter the
building without a pass, he memorized the words on a wooden plaque
over the entrance to the stairway: Free Knowledge-Bring Your Own
Container. At the top of the stairs a lobby that opened up and shot
the length of the academic section was bustling with business. Some
prisoners were holding forms and standing in line, others stood
around talking with young ladies and men dressed in Ivy League
suits. Albert picked up a set of forms from a table and got in
line. While Oliver waited for him beside the bulletin board, a
round, rosy-cheeked man asked him if he was there to register for
college. The man wore a name-tag attached to the lapel of his tweed
jacket. Dr. Fiore Puglia, University of Pittsburgh. The doctor
smiled at Oliver when Oliver told him he was just waiting for a
friend. Oliver appreciated the man's kindness. As he continued
observing the friendly atmosphere in the place, he noticed the
mural of Rodin's The Thinker on one of the walls above his head.
Oliver was in awe of the pose.

As he stood there taking it all in, a second
man walked up to him and asked him if he was there to apply for the
janitor's job and just like that, Oliver said yes. The man told him
to wait in classroom number one and he would be with him shortly.
Oliver backtracked until he found the room. A black prisoner and a
white prisoner were working on a math problem when he entered and
took a seat in the back. The black prisoner wore a black satin
jacket with the words Pittsburgh Boxing Team inscribed in big gold
letters on the back. When he looked over his shoulder at Oliver, he
reminded Oliver of Joe Frazier. The other prisoner wrote a problem
on the board. 4x -3 =9. Joe Frazier said, “Go slow, man. I've got
to write this shit down.”

“All right, Champ. Let's add three to the
minus three and three to the nine, now we have 4x=12. Remember.
Adding the three to the minus three cancels it out, and adding
three to the nine gives us twelve. Now you just ask what number
times four gives you twelve.”

Champ sighed. “Come on, man. Three. What's so
hard about that?”