White Death (12 page)

I ended up with a list of Basic Dos and Don’ts:

“Well,” said Jerry after three days with a cheerful smile on his face. “Are you ready to be a successful inmate?”

“I prefer to go home,” I replied dourly.

“Think of the time as shock treatment to prevent you from slipping into a life of dissipation and crime.”

I smiled at his calculated cynicism.

Central Florida, September 1969

I had several more discussions with Inspector Ray Schmidt and Captain Roy Wilson, who emphasized that I should say only “Roy” or “Ray” during phone calls because all prison phone conversations are monitored. Accordingly, I memorized a dedicated number in the Intelligence Division used only by two cleared secretaries to answer incoming calls. Also committed to memory were certain codes for the status of things, both inside and outside prison. The secretary who answers the phone says “Hello.” After chatting for a minute, she passes me to Roy or Ray for a coded conversation. The (false) names of the two secretaries were on my list of approved contacts as friends.

The insertion began after Karen and I bought tickets to Orlando, and drove an hour east to Cocoa Beach for a vacation. The beach and oceanfront room proved wonderful, but our conversation and behavior were strained at times. We tried to enjoy the moment, but both of us were watching the calendar. No amount of denial allowed us to remove the sword of Damocles.

For the most part, we managed pretty well until the blacked-out sedan rode into view. Karen stiffened at the sight of the car and the two men in dark suits and sunglasses who got out. She gave me a long hug and kiss, and urged me to be careful.

I was ambivalent about doing this to her, and for what? More drug kingpins will replace these, assuming the plan is successful. If I am destined to die young, her loss is my fault. I volunteered and turned away to face the agents. Although clueless about what a convict was doing at a beach resort, they were good at following orders. Turn James Sixkiller and his folder over to the
U.S. Marshals for a routine transfer from the Orlando Federal Court to Coleman Prison.

Karen returned to the room and made herself a cup of tea. Her trembling hands tried to put the cup back into the saucer. Jake was gone and so was the stiff upper lip, replaced by tears.

I had to be strong for Jake
, she thought.
He needs to face these unknown dangers without thinking I might not be able to handle the stress. Facing fear of the unknown is worse than fear of something tangible. I have no idea where he is going and what he will be doing. I hate to admit it, but I am also angry with Jake. He realized this was a major blow to us, and he did it anyway. I did not marry a soldier, and he presented me with a fait accompli. Maybe I’ll go to the library when I get home and review literature that addresses the lives of women married to cops and soldiers
.

The Hole

Receiving and Discharge was the first stop for photos, fingerprints, and a written psychological evaluation to look for security-related problems. Later, guards would handcuff, shackle, and take me to the hole. What nothing can prepare you for was
the sound
. No other sound exists like a heavy prison door, made of casehardened steel, gathering momentum on its rails, and slamming against the wall and latching. The impact is so intense that, for a second or two, you can hear the high frequency harmonics from the steel as it recovers from an impact that vibrates your bones. It also does what no speech can do. You are inside and powerless; freedom is on the other side of that sound. I pushed from my mind Dante’s
All hope abandon, ye who enter here!
Only the Warden knows…

The hole, eight-by-ten feet, had four stacked bunks and three other inmates, eliminating the prospect of sleeping on the floor. No mail, one shower each week, bad food, one phone call every week, beds made prior to 8:00 a.m., and six “official” counts per
day including one at 3:00 a.m. and one at 5:00 a.m. This was life for only a few days. My
cellys
seemed well-behaved, except for one Florida cracker named Bo. He didn’t like Indians and called me “nickel.” The other cellys were Reggie, a quiet, muscular young black man, and a Mexican farm laborer who spoke no English. I tried to follow the advice of Jerry. Exercise proved to be difficult, but possible. The sweltering heat and body odor made the sense of confinement overpowering. Sharing one toilet did not help. The noise in a prison during the day is nonstop and numbing: conversations; commentaries; insults; obscenities; and opinions are constantly ricocheting across and down corridors until quiet hours begin at 9:00 p.m.

Bo began decompensating from the stress after two days. He wasn’t sleeping and complained that somebody was inside his head telling him strange things; worse, he became angry and aggressive. He repeatedly shoved Reggie and me, and said we were out to get him. On the third day, he pushed Reggie and added, “Nigger, get out of my way.” Reggie decked him with a professional-looking straight left and a right hook, knocking him out and breaking his jaw.

The guards came, including one Latino to interpret and obtain statements. We told the same story. Gleeful screams from all sides shouted, “Fight in the hole!” The guards took Bo, conscious but incoherent, to the infirmary. They gave Reggie a
shot
, or a write-up for fighting, which was resolved in an interview with the lieutenant without any sanctions.

Reggie and I talked a little the following day, while I kept to my script with few improvisations. He was doing twenty-to-life for kidnapping and raping a white woman, convicted by an all-white jury. He considered himself lucky. An old interracial union called the United Packinghouse Workers of America helped get him a good lawyer, based on his steady job in a packinghouse in Jacksonville and clean record. The woman had convictions for prostitution, and the alleged, so-called kidnapping consisted of
Reggie driving her from a strip bar to his apartment for consensual sex. His hobby was amateur boxing in a nearby gym. Surprisingly, he was not bitter. “I’ll get out someday,” he said quietly, “instead of being fried in the chair.”

Transfer

After six days the guards finally came for me. Sweating and stinking, I wished Reggie good luck. After a
pro forma
interview to review paperwork, I was scheduled for a Mandatory Release rather than to a halfway house. Having lost my good time in El Reno, because of alleged participation in a prison riot, I had to serve most of the full sentence, which expired in less than three weeks, plus two years on parole. A photo I.D. to be carried at all times, a nine-digit code to access the phones, locker number and, most importantly, the cell assignment followed the interview. Laundry was next, where I received green shirts, pants, shoes, work boots, towels, washcloths, a pillow and pillowcase, sheets, and basic toiletries: plastic razors, toothpaste, and two rolls of toilet paper. Then, I was escorted to my housing unit and shown the bulletin board where mandatory appointments, or call outs, are listed for each inmate there. Usually, call outs are to see a doctor, visit a counselor, and so on. The guard asked me if I could read. After nodding my head, he gave me a set of rules and told me to study them carefully. For example, non-institutional clothing may be worn after 4:00 p.m., on weekends, in the recreation yard, and at breakfast and evening meals. Also detailed was the disciplinary process.

Cell Mates

Finally, he took me to my cell, where I met Jesus Ramirez. The guard gave us a brief, if somewhat awkward, introduction and locked the door. I remembered Jerry’s advice to defer to any prior
cellmate, and he had probably enjoyed the short period with no celly.

His first question was blunt but not hostile, “Who’d you piss off to do so much time in El Reno?” I smiled while reminding myself he was enjoying the fact that he already knew I transferred from El Reno. Ramirez was in his early thirties, about five-foot-eight-inches, very muscular, a little darker than most Latinos,
un Moreno
, not unusual among Cubans. Lifting weights was almost an obsession with many inmates. It works off stress and makes them stronger both for self-protection and to cope with an environment that has stripped them of power.

“Let me think,” I said. “The Customs Service, Border Patrol, BNDD, FBI, and the FAA. I believe that’s all.”

It was his turn to smile faintly.

“We’ve got time,” always a bad prison joke. “Tell me what happened.”

“I’d been working with a Mexican drug and immigrant trafficker. All of the northern border states are lousy with airstrips a few miles inside Mexico. I got five-thousand dollars for each round trip.”

Ramirez shifted slightly on his bunk when I mentioned airstrips.

“Standard procedure was to climb to only three-hundred feet and cross the border in a remote area, steer for a nearby Texas airstrip, climb as if you were leaving the traffic pattern, and squawk 1200 for visual flight rules.” A frown told me he was not a pilot, and an indicator that I must explain further.

“Almost all aircraft have a transponder inside which lets air traffic controllers see you, but not talk to you. Codes other than 1200 are used for formal flight plans.”

“Why do you want them to see you at all?” A fair question.

“Because they
can
see what’s called a skin paint without the transponder; the flight may have come from the airport near the Texas border or, without a transponder, may have originated in
Mexico. The idea is to obey the rules as much as possible in order not to attract attention. My destination was Lawton, Oklahoma, carrying three-hundred-fifty pounds of marijuana and two illegals. I made the required calls for an approaching aircraft and landed without incident. The general aviation section of smaller airports normally has some remote areas where you can offload, refuel, and file a false flight plan to return to a border airport. As I taxied around the corner, the whole world was waiting for me with guns and flashing lights.”

“How did they know?” asked Ramirez.

“A Border Patrol agent with field glasses wrote down my tail number as I crossed the border at three hundred feet – bad luck. Then he got a supervisor to call the FAA and put an electronic ‘V,’ for violator, tag on the plane. So, when I popped up near the Texas airport to look legit, the FAA tagged me. They can follow a ‘V’ across the country, and the pilot never knows it’s there.

“For that reason, some smugglers hop across the border and land on a dirt strip owned by a trafficker or cooperator. They may scare a few cows and piss off ranchers, but they’ll offload and be back in Mexico in three hours. Ranchers, however, have shot down a couple of these planes. Other ranchers will report a suspicious pattern to Border Patrol, who keeps the area under surveillance. At a real airport, for example, a truck driving away on a paved road looks normal, in contrast to a fast-moving dust cloud in south Texas.”

“Well,” he said. “You succeeded in pissing off just about everybody, but I don’t understand why the FBI had a dog in this fight.”

“The plane was stolen.”

This time Ramirez laughed aloud.

“Why aren’t you doing two-hundred years?”

“I had a good lawyer. He got a lot of the bullshit charges dismissed, even the airplane, in return for a plea to ‘smuggling with the intent to distribute.’ I would have been out by now
except for the riot in El Reno. I was in the wrong place with a bad crowd, and they stripped me of all my good time. Quite a few of us were involved, and the warden and assistant regional director made the punishment decisions. If we were there, then we did something wrong. But I’m out of here in nineteen days.”

Even if it is ten years away, any inmate can tell you the exact time of his mandatory release and next parole-hearing date. Chalk marks on the wall.

“What’s your story?” I asked.

“Not as interesting as yours. I’m merely a drug smuggler who got busted in Miami with two keys of heroin.”

“I didn’t realize much heroin comes into Miami,” I said.

“It doesn’t. I was doing a favor for a friend of a friend. The dealer in Washington had excess and called my associate in Miami, who specializes in weed. ‘Can you find a buyer for these keys?’ he asked. While we’re not heroin dealers, we know who they are. Unfortunately, the one we approached had already been caught and flipped. After we consummated the deal, six or seven feds plus Miami narcs were all over us.”

“How much more time you got?”

“I look good for parole in eleven months. Been keeping my nose clean and head down. Problem is Parole Board decisions are hard to predict. They may give weight to my prison record and say, ‘He’s been a good boy here, time for release‘; or they may focus on my criminal history and say, ‘He’s a typical recidivist who should stay locked up.’”

Both of use remained quiet for a while, listening to the incessant sounds of a prison.

Ramirez broke the silence. “It’s almost time for the 4:00 p.m. stand-up count. After the count clears, we have twenty-two minutes for dinner followed by open movement and recreation until dark. I’m going to the Commissary, if you’re interested and have money. Remember not to talk when they come by.”

Prison is about structure and repetition, which makes it clear
who is in charge of your life. We listened to the sound of two guards making their way down the corridor. As they passed by our cell, we stood by the bunks. Both looked inside, and moved on to the next cell. This process repeated itself until the count cleared and the cell doors opened simultaneously.

“After being in the hole for six days, I’m going out into the yard and get some exercise, maybe see if they have a sweat lodge.”

“I need my smokes,” responded Ramirez. “Do you want anything?”

“No thanks.”

Doing Time

I knew they had no sweat lodge. The Indians here had insisted on igneous rocks instead of river stones; many tribes insist on the spiritual tradition after dark, but the yard closes each day at dusk. Also, the tribal members couldn’t agree among themselves about its construction because of the different traditional cultures. In some prisons, the Indians had banded together to surmount these problems, but not in Coleman.

I needed to make my first phone call to the Intelligence Division. The prison allows fifteen minutes. Both prepaid and collect calls were permitted. For my short time, we agreed on collect.