The Weight (4 page)

“Sometimes—” the guy started to say.

“Sometimes isn’t
this
time. That’s what I get paid for. On my jobs, every man carries the same. Show him, Sugar.”

I took out the one Solly had given me. Short-barreled, kind of ugly.

“Ruger in forty-five,” Solly said. “Whatever you hit with this, it’s not getting up. The only thing that ‘lady’ of yours would be good for is a firefight. You want one with a SWAT team?”

“I still don’t see why we all have to carry the same—”

“Because
one
guy also carries a little bag with him. That’s Sugar. Soon as you start work, Sugar puts the bag down, opens the zipper. There’s two hundred full magazines in there.

“You all carry the same, so you all got your ammo supply right there. Every round checked before it went into a clip—you’re not gonna have to worry about jams. Even better, nobody has to worry about what the other guy’s carrying. That’s because none of
mine
got a past. Pure virgins, every single piece.

“See, that’s no lady you’re carrying, my friend; that’s a whore. And you know whores: if she’ll sell her pussy, she’ll sell you. Get it
now
?”

I wasn’t going to tell the lawyer about that. But there was something he’d need to know. I figured I might as well get it over with. “Only thing is, the serial numbers were—”

“Not
good,” the lawyer said. “Even worse if they make a call to ATF.”

“You on the panel for the Federal Court, too?”

He gave me a look. I just looked back.

“I
am
on the CJA Panel,” he finally said. “But that’s not the point. Whatever you know about that gun, they know, too, by now.
No matter how you play it, being caught with it wasn’t a good thing for you. But it’s not good
enough
for them, either.”

“How come?”

“Carrying, that’s a felony hit all by itself, sure. But it’d be a
long
way to turn it into another violence beef. You didn’t
do
anything with that gun,” he said, making it a question.

“I never even pulled it,” I said. “But it was ready to go.”

“Maybe someone had been threatening you?”

“That’s it, all right.”

He was quiet for a minute, making a thing out of reading some papers he had with him. He looked up, said: “That gun, it was a regular carry piece?”

“You mean, did I walk around with it, or just happen to have it that particular day?”

“Okay,” he said. Meaning, he wanted to see if I could guess what the right answer should be. If I was going to tell a story, it’d have to be a good one.

“Ever since I started getting those threats, I never left home without it,” I said. “I’ve been shot before; it’ll be on my records.”

He flashed me just enough of his teeth for me to see he took real good care of them. Then he started looking through a bunch of papers he had with him, like he had all the time in the world.

I guess he did. They pay these 18-B guys by the hour. And it wasn’t like I had anything better to do.

Finally, he made a little motion for me to put my face close. He wrote something on his yellow pad. I looked:
NEVER VOUCHERED
is what it said, in tiny letters.

I moved my lips real slow, so I could say what I wanted without making a sound: “The piece?”

“It’s not anywhere in all this,” he said, running his pen over what he’d shown me. He really worked at it, crosshatching the words into a black blob, but he made it seem like he didn’t realize what he was doing. “Of course, it doesn’t
have
to be. Like I said, I haven’t filed any motions—they gave me all this without me even asking. And now I think I see why.”

“It’s a card they’re holding back?”

“No. Listen.” He leaned toward me again; I did the same toward him. He spoke so soft I could barely hear him: “The rape, it wasn’t gunpoint; the guy put a—”

“Shut. The. Fuck.
Up!”
I said. Just moving my lips like before, not making a sound. But he heard me. Heard me good.

“What’s your problem?” he said, backing off. “I’m just trying to—”

“Yeah, I know. But right now I could walk in and pass any polygraph they got. Sure, the operator’s going to tell me I failed, see if that gets me to confess. But
they’ll
see I’m not lying. That’s why I talked to the cops for so long after they picked me up. I figured, sooner or later, they’d ask me, since I was innocent and all, would I mind taking the test? I had the surprise all ready for them, but they never took the bait.”

“That wouldn’t be admissible—”

“I know. But it’s
something
, right? They started with the registered sex offenders. Stupid fucks: every joint’s got plenty of rape artists who pleaded to burglary, so there’s all kinds of sex fiends who wouldn’t even be on that list. I figure, if she stopped when they got to my picture, they probably didn’t show her any
more
pictures.”

He nodded.

“Then, when I went in the lineup, she was looking for the guy who matched the picture, see?”

“Right. And that’s exactly what we’ll be saying. But why don’t you—?”

“It’s not much, but it’s
something
. If you start telling me the details, that’ll mess up the test … if they ever decide to give me one. I don’t know how the girl was raped because I didn’t rape her.”

He leaned forward. “Straight up?”

“Hey, the cops already
know
I’m not the guy. At least the last two detectives I talked to, they know.”

“If they know …”

“They know because they know something else. I mean, I was
doing
something else when that girl got raped.”

“Ah.”

“Yeah. My alibi buys me as much time as a rape would. In
this
state, probably more.”

He raised an eyebrow, asking me a question. This guy knew there’s things you don’t say out loud, even when you’re talking to a lawyer.

“Not that,” I said, drawing my finger across my throat, putting distance between myself and any homicides that might have gone down during what the cops call the “critical period” when they’re investigating a murder. Probably their idea of a joke.

“So …?”

“So this: if they show the girl more pictures, she might change her mind. Except for this”—I touched the scar that ran down from my forehead through my right eyebrow—“the only thing that stands out is that I’m a big white guy with two different-colored eyes. The guy who actually did the rape, he’s done a lot of them.”

“How could you know that?”

“How come she never saw his eyes? How come they don’t have a single damn drop or fiber or hair or—?”

“A pro, you’re saying?”

“There’s no such thing as a pro rapist. A pro works for money.”

“No offense,” he said, giving me a weird look. Like what did
I
have to be offended about? He was slick about the law maybe, and he could talk some of our talk, but now he was working without a map. He couldn’t know I
wanted
people to say, “Sugar’s a real pro.” Some people, I mean. But this guy wouldn’t understand that. He didn’t know the people I was talking about. He didn’t know our life.

“She saw what he
wanted
her to see,” I told him. “Probably one of those masks on his face. Maybe contact lenses. But how was she gonna miss a guy with two different-colored eyes, like me? So, if they were to tell her I passed a polygraph, it might be enough. Anyway, if I have to go on trial, better it’s for something I
didn’t
do.”

He leaned closer to me. “That scar, it’s not that visible, even up close. But, you’re right, there’s no way to miss your eyes.” He touched the right side of his pencil-line mustache. Manicured nails, no rings.

“I’ll get back to you,” he said.

Rikers never changes. Neither do the people who keep taking that bus ride. Some worked on not looking scared, others worked on looking tough. The only guys you have to watch are the ones who look bored.

The same Inside, too. They keep you separated while you get “processed,” but you could still hear voices calling out what they were going to do to you as soon as you got out of the fish tank. Some of the first-timers tried shouting back at them. Most of us knew better than to waste our breath on cell gangsters.

The first test was always Population. This time, it happened real quick. Some greasy little punk half my size says, “What they call you on the street,
esé?
In here, you got to pay to stay. Otherwise, what they be calling you is the other white meat,
comprende
?”

“Azúcar,” I said, smiling at him.

“What?”

“You asked me what people call me on the street, right? So I just told you … 
esé
.”

His boys were all watching, but they weren’t close enough to hear anything. Maybe he was a prospect they were testing. He pulled up his shirt to show me he was carrying, but I knew he wouldn’t go for it. He’d just tell the crew watching him that he’d warned me off and I’d gotten the message.

I left him a good out on purpose. Inside, if you take a man’s dignity in front of his own people, he
has
to go for you, right that second. He doesn’t do that, he’s got no backup, ever again.

But I also know what happens if you let anyone so much as
tap
your commissary, never mind turn it all over. So I tried to practice what Solly’s always telling me: the older you get, the weaker your body, so the only way to balance out is to grow a stronger mind.

Giving that punk an out, it was the same as me driving weight. Building myself bigger. Adding to the armor.

This was my third time on the Rock. First time, it was short-stay before I went Upstate. The second was that ninety-day joke. This time, it was going to be just like my first.

Except for the testing. When I was a kid, my size—and I was real big, even then—that didn’t mean anything. Plenty of big guys roll right over when they see steel.

But nobody ever really pushed that hard. I even knew a few guys I had been locked up with before. Maybe they spread the word a little, I don’t know.

So buying that shank this time, it was more about the message. The guy I bought from, he was AB, so I knew
they’d know
. I hadn’t dealt with coloreds; that was good. But I hadn’t asked to join up, and that could mean anything.

I knew flashing it would be all wrong. That’s a rookie move, not something a pro does. Besides, the guy I bought it from, he’d take care of letting the word get around.

My first time in happened because I made a
lot
of rookie mistakes. Me and a couple of older guys, we figured, how is a fence ever going to run to the cops? That was before I knew some of them stay in business by switch-hitting.

I was seventeen. I wanted to be a heist-man, not a mugger. The fence wasn’t any big-time guy. He ran a garage over by Shea Stadium, under the bridge. The way it worked, you drove your swag over to him; he’d close the doors, look over what you had, and tell you what he’d pay.

We had a little panel truck one of the other guys took right out of a parking lot. He picked us up and we threw in a bunch of empty cartons. Big ones, like the kind TVs come in. I sat next to the driver, and the third guy was in the back. While the fence was waiting for the guy in the back to open the boxes, I just stepped out and yoked him until he went limp.