Prisoners of the Williwaw (4 page)
Frank watched the committee leave the room.
All right, Rudy, what's going on?
My
idea, hammered out of history and sociology, is about to be melted down by charlatans
.
Frank wished he had his rough, straight, wooden prison chair.
This massive chair with its padded leather inlays was a mockery.
He was not a congressman, he was not an important business leader.
In fact, right now, with the hearing over, he felt like a loser.
This was a private meeting room, off the public room, a room for members of Congress to make deals. The upper part of the room, Frank thought, bespoke cleanliness and upright behavior,
with its light green walls and its framed pictures of Washington and the Constitution.
But at his level, at the table, the dark polished wood and the deep, dark chairs allowed all manner of deals to go forward.
The three inmates waited for their transportation back to prison.
Gilmore sat at one end of the table, using the phone, having persuaded his guard to dial collect for him.
Frank thought he fit in perfectly with the table and chairs.
Frank and Doc sat at the other end.
Two guards blocked the door, but one had the door open a crack to look for the transport officer.
Doc was spending his time giving a detailed commentary of what he could see through the cracked door.
"Never in all my years of medical practice have I seen hooters like those, Frank.
Oh -
there goes one with two cats
in her pants - look at that ass wiggle."
Since Rudy's death, Doc had become his best friend.
Doc was in his early sixties, a lean hard man.
He had one of the foulest mouths Frank had ever heard, but Frank knew he was all bluff.
Frank had watched him care for inmates the prison doctor ignored.
No complaint was too small for Doc to take seriously.
"Oh, my God.
The color.
The beauty.
The bodies.
Frank, I'm getting a hard-on just looking.
You should see this."
Doc nudged him and he looked through the crack.
Businessmen walking, going somewhere. Women in suits, walking with men, with other women, walking alone, but all walking, heading someplace.
That was the difference with prison. These people had goals.
Men in prison walked nowhere.
They walked to fill their twenty years.
"Jesus, Frank, how about a smile, a laugh?
You don't
fuckin
' see this every day.
Why so gloomy?
You just won."
Yes, he had, and that gave him satisfaction, but the changes the committee had made - they were disastrous.
"Lots of problems, Doc."
"Like?"
"First, that Adak Island is going to be impossible.
You heard them.
A former hard-duty Naval station.
Uninhabited.
Ask yourself why it's uninhabited.
Remember your geography.
The Aleutians are between the Bering Sea and the Pacific, weather system meeting weather system. And I think it's on the Ring of Fire."
"Which is?"
"Volcanoes and earthquakes around the Pacific."
"Fuck.
If the Navy made it there, we can make it."
"You heard them, Doc.
Adak is in the Aleutians. In World War II the weather killed more people than the Japanese did."
"So it rains and it's windy.
So?"
"Do you have any idea how much preparation we'll have to do?"
"What's to do?
A few months maybe.
You choose some of your friends,
they line up their women, you get Uncle Sugar to buy us some umbrellas.
No big deal."
Frank snorted in derision. "No.
The Bureau decides who goes. We don't."
"So? They were against the whole thing and we beat them.
Fuckin
' right."
"I'm not sure we beat them.
Now the Bureau can clean out all their weirdoes and dump them on Adak."
"Come on, Frank.
Take some of those assholes out of prison and they won't be so bad.
Assholes still, but you let them know right from day one that you're the meanest motherfucker on the block."
"That's not my way.
And this businessman friend of Murphy's who's going to set up a factory for us - how much is he going to pay us?
You heard the Congressman.
'It's work or starve.'
The guy can pay us slave wages and we have to take it."
Frank lowered his voice and nodded toward Gilmore.
"And what's the connection to Gilmore? Gilmore knows Murphy. What's going on there?"
Doc shrugged.
"I don't know.
Best thing is just kill Gilmore."
"The fox is being invited into the chicken coop," Frank muttered.
Frank shifted his whole body to look at Gilmore.
He didn't look so in control now as he struggled to keep the phone under his chin.
Even Gilmore couldn't get his hands unshackled.
In some ways he had to admire Gilmore.
The man was a smooth prison boss, and, although he dealt in drugs, he had brought a measure of peace to the prison. Gilmore, a black man, had ended long years of racial tension by setting up an organization that included whites as key players.
Gilmore liked to tell everyone that the warden and the guards used racial tension to keep the focus
off
themselves.
Frank suspected there was more to it.
It was business - why sell to just the blacks, when you can sell to the whites as well?
The door opened and a beautiful young woman from the Indian subcontinent
stood in the doorway.
She wore a pink and purple sari.
A light fragrance of lavender floated into the room.
Frank
reveled
in her beauty for a moment, then moved to push his glasses back on his nose, but his hands were shackled.
Fifteen years in prison had taught him to set up a wall against women. "If you can't play the game," he told himself, "don't stare at the other team."
The woman blushed when she saw the guards and the convicts.
"Excuse me," she said in a clipped accent as she left.
Doc nudged Frank.
"You're drooling."
Frank smiled.
"Women." Doc shook his head.
"Shit, man, beats prison.
I hope they fix me up with someone like that."
The committee had insisted that, despite the island's need for a doctor, Doc would have to be married.
The Bureau of Prisons hinted that they could find a female convict who might be willing to join him.
"I'm worried about my own situation," Frank said. "Damn them.
I put the family thing forward as an ideal;
they made it a requirement."
"Yeah?"
"My wife hasn't said yes."
Doc nodded.
"Problem."
Gilmore called the guard over so he could dial another number for him.
Doc pointed to Gilmore.
"There's your answer.
You learn to manipulate the system."
"That's not my way."
"Well, it better be.
We're
gonna
go on this trip, Frank.
You and me.
Me because they need me, you because it's your idea.
Prison isn't the real world.
It's play school and play school is almost over.
You're the leader, Frank."
"I'm not sure I want to be the leader when they dump a bunch of psychopaths on us."
Doc tried to move his manacled hands to touch Frank.
"Frank, listen to me, the worst day on this hellhole of an island will be better than the best day in prison.
We'll be free.
Now talk about something practical - your wife.
Has she given you any indication?
How many times have you written her?"
"Once."
"And?"
"No response."
"So write again.
Tell her you'll be the leader.
Tell her you'll get kickbacks and you'll live good."
"Fifteen years now - we've grown apart."
"So, mend your fences.
Listen, Frank, you're sounding like the usual, whiny, prison-wimp victim.
Snap out of it.
It's Adak or it's prison."
Frank bent way over and used the edge of the table to push his glasses back onto his nose.
"It's Adak."
"Goddamn right."
A year and five months later, in mid September,
Latisha Gilmore boarded the plane for Adak.
Finally
, she thought. Even as she walked across the tarmac in the Anchorage airport, the press hounded her. "Are you Boss Gilmore's wife?" "Is he trying to supplant Villa?"
A boss's wife
- that's the last thing she wanted to be known as, especially among women who were going to be her
neighbors
. She nodded to the pilot who stood by the door of the cockpit. He wore a cowboy hat and jeans, an indication that this was not a typical commercial flight. He had the look about him that said this plane was a wild bull that had to be wrestled to Adak.
She smiled and felt a slight tingle in her stomach. Scary, yes, but also exciting. Why, she wondered, was she so excited about going to this terrible place of wind and rain?
The plane was divided, as the waiting room had been, Villa's people up front, her husband's people - a noisier crowd - in the back.
She walked down the aisle, past the minister and his schoolteacher wife - the only staff for this venture - past the wives and children of some of the three hundred. With her tan suit, her guarded eyes and quiet manner, she hoped to appear as a black businesswoman. Anything but
a boss' woman
. At work she was often mistaken for a model. Her delicate features and glistening black hair led people to think she had just stepped out of the pages of Essence. "Girl," her mother used to tell her, "you've got the complexion us women of color envy, and a figure all women want."
She took a seat in the middle of the two groups, trying to identify with neither of them. Next to her sat a pudgy white woman.
The doors closed and the stairs were rolled away. Soon they were airborne. The smell of bodies filled the warm atmosphere of the plane, bodies that had left home a good twenty-four hours before this flight.
As soon as the seat belt sign went off, somebody started hammering the back of her seat. She turned around to see a young boy slamming his food tray up and down. She looked at the lady next to him, a short woman with a very disgusted look on her face. "Don't look at me, lady," she said. "He's not mine." She pointed across the aisle to a woman sleeping, oblivious to the rowdiness of her four children.
The pudgy woman next to her turned and showed her an inexpensive wedding ring. "I'm
gonna
be with my husband, Joe. We just got married. Adak's
gonna
be our home."
Latisha smiled. "Home?" What a wonderful word. That's what she was looking for, wasn't it?
"Oh, yes, my Joe says we're
gonna
work in the factory and build a little cabin by a lake. I even brought some curtains. My name's Maggie - " she giggled slightly " - Britt. I'm not used to my new name yet. What's your name?"
Here was one woman, at least, who didn't know she was Boss Gilmore's wife.
The plane hit some turbulence and bounced.
A child threw up.
A beer bottle sailed up the middle aisle and bounced off the cabin door.
"When you
gonna
learn how to fly, you asshole?" a woman called out.
"Oh my," Maggie said.
Latisha ignored the incident and introduced herself
"My name's Latisha Gilmore."
It felt good to say who she was without saying the word, boss.
"What does your husband do?
I - I mean what's his job?"
What could she answer?
Professional criminal?
"He's in - entertainment."
"That's nice," Maggie said.
"People need to laugh.
I'm just so excited."
"Where are you from?" Latisha asked.
"Chicago.
That's where I met Joe.
We worked in a factory together before he - " her voice dropped " - went to jail.
Where are you from?"
I'm from everywhere, Latisha thought.
Everywhere the tornado of James T. Gilmore touches down.
Detroit, New York.
What did it matter?
Home was an apartment with a bed, a refrigerator and a bathroom, a place to laugh and love and eat breakfast, a place for him to run his rackets, a place for her to be alone when he was arrested.
"Detroit," Latisha said.
"Joe and I will be on Adak for twelve years.
It's going to be home."
Maggie spoke as if that was wonderful news, like twelve years on a tropical island.
Latisha smiled.
"Fifteen for Gil and me."
Fifteen years.
It was difficult to imagine him sitting still in one place for fifteen years, but on Adak he had no choice.
Even though there'd be no bars or prison guards on Adak, the Coast Guard would be patrolling the waters around the island to prevent escape.
It was time for home and a family.
That's what he'd promised, "a new beginning on Adak, a family."
He would go to work and she would raise the children, and on weekends they would have the
neighbors
in.
Suddenly, she doubted the whole thing. "
Ohhhhh
," she said out loud,
"What's the matter?"
"It's just - I don't have your faith in the future."
Maggie touched Latisha's hand.
"Everything's going to be okay."
Maybe, but Maggie didn't understand that it wasn't only Gil she doubted.
She doubted herself.
Who was she?
And what did she want?
A family?
Yes.
But more, much more.
She longed for Maggie's simple faith.
Latisha sat back.
She'd gone over the whole thing rationally. She was thirty-five and if she were ever to have a family, it had to be soon.
A family with Gil?
Yes, that's what she wanted.
She loved him, but love had limits.
Six months, that was it.
She'd stay six months.
If things didn't work out, she'd leave and he could serve out his fifteen years with his cronies and his organization.
Her boss at Sears had told her she'd always have a job.
She was a buyer for them, an expert in home medical supplies.
It was a good job - but only a job. She'd been searching, searching the world and searching her soul for what she really wanted.
Maybe the reason she sat on this plane was that Gil was all she had now.
Three years previously her father, a physician, had died.
Then, last year, her mother.
There was no one else for her now.
No brothers, no sisters, no children.
No one.
The girl in the aisle seat across from her leaned toward her.
"You're Boss Gilmore's wife,
ain't
you?"
Latisha had noticed the girl earlier.
She was a beautiful young girl, twelve, maybe thirteen years old, half-white and half-oriental, her beauty surpassing anything either race had to offer.
"I'm Latisha Gilmore.
My husband is James Gilmore."
That was quite enough of the Boss Gilmore business.
"And what's your name?"
"My name's Jeannie Dickinson."
"My mama said she's
gonna
work for your husband."
"Work for my husband?"
"Yeah.
You know, on the side."
Damn him!
He's at it again! Setting up a prostitution ring.
Maggie stretched her arm past Latisha to touch the girl's hand.
"I'm Maggie Britt.
I'm pleased to meet you, Jeannie."
"Hi," Jeannie said.
"This is my first airplane ride.
No, like I mean it's my second.
We came from Seattle this morning.
That's where we're from.
See," she said and she turned sideways so Latisha could see the back of her maroon jacket.
"Salvatore's Bar," it said.
"Seattle."
"This is so exciting," Jeannie continued.
"I never saw so many reporters.
That's what I want to be, a reporter."
Latisha nodded.
She'd noticed Jeannie in the Anchorage airport following Sarah Chu from NBC News.
Jeannie was enthralled with the newswoman.
For her part, Latisha spent a lot of time in the ladies' room ducking Sarah Chu and other reporters.
A teenage boy walked down the aisle.
As he passed between Latisha and Jeannie, he stared at the exposed thighs and the garters on Jeannie's mother's leg.
The woman was in a drunken sleep.
The boy walked back a few seats and turned around to pass by for another look.
When he was gone Latisha adjusted her own skirt and pointed toward Jeannie's
mother.
Jeannie straightened the skirt and turned back to Latisha.
"That boy didn't even notice me.
Mama's wearing all those things for Sam Wong.
I argued with her about them.
Like I said they were old fashioned, but she said Sam likes them.
Sam's my daddy.
He and Mama got married last week in prison."
"Oh," Latisha said.
Latisha felt something inside herself - a real physical craving - that wanted to mother this little girl, any little girl, her little girl, or - her little boy.
Jeannie sat back in her seat and Latisha did too.
"By the way," Maggie asked, "is your husband going to work in the factory?"
Latisha couldn't help smiling.
"Gil?
In a factory?
No, he's going to open a nightclub."
"A nightclub?"
Maggie said nothing for a while.
Latisha guessed her thoughts.
Maggie, too, had received all the literature from Frank Villa, telling everyone how tough it was going to be on Adak.
"It rains or snows eighty-five percent of the time," Villa had said.
"It's the only place on earth where you can have high winds and fog at the same time.
The wind has been clocked at 140 miles an hour, there are only about ten clear days in an entire year,
earthquakes often damage homes and buildings,
and in a few months our federal money runs out.
We work or we starve."
There was no mention of a nightclub.
Maggie changed the subject.
"I brought along a new set of dishes and some slip cover material.
They say home is going to be some old barracks."
"That's what I heard."
"My mother gave me the curtains her mother brought from Germany.
It's going to be so much fun to make a home for my Joe."
Maggie's enthusiasm was catching.
Maybe Gil would change.
She did love him.
Latisha yawned. "I'm sorry," she said.
"It's all this traveling."
She pushed her seat back and closed her eyes.
Maggie stayed in her mind.
The woman was as warm and friendly as homemade bread - and - she believed in her future with her Joe.
What was her Joe like?
What crime had he committed?
Did she believe in her life with Gil in the same way?
More importantly, did he?
She shifted in her seat, opened her eyes, and looked at her watch.
Another few hours and she'd be with him.
Gil.
She closed her eyes again and drifted into a light sleep all the time laughing with him, enjoying his little-boy enthusiasm, playing endlessly with him in bed.
He made life crackle with excitement.
Why did he have to be in the rackets? She'd seen his mind at work.
Once the organization asked him to plan an attack on a bill in Congress.
A congressman from Illinois had a plan to put the screws to the underground economy.
His bill tightened the existing laws about dummy corporations and even arranged a reporting mechanism with the Swiss banks. She'd watched Gil develop a counter strategy that appealed to investors.
"Congress is attacking your freedom to invest where you want," his flyer said.
The bill was defeated.
A good mind, an eagerness to learn, the ability to get things done - what if he were to do something else?
Latisha wondered.
She drifted closer to sleep.
Gil.
Gil.
The man was so creative.
She remembered how in bed he teased her by doing simple math problems on her body.
He would add up a column of numbers down her front, going back several times to erase the amount on her breasts.
On her stomach he would figure out a sub-total, then multiply by two, and put his hand between her legs to come up with a bottom line - and all the time his hand drove her wild.