Read an Excerpt
Chapter 1
The eleventh day Meehan was in the MCC, the barbers came around
to 9 South; two barbers, a white one for the white inmates, a black
one for the rest. Each dragged a chair behind himself, with a guard
following, and they set up in opposite triangles of the communal
room, which was shaped like a six-pointed star, the cells outside
that, in two facing lines in sword hilts sunk into five of the
star's crotches: the exit to the concrete room where the elevators
came was at the sixth.
So that was another difference from state or county jugs; no
separate room for the barbers to ply their trade. After eleven days,
Meehan was thinking he might write a monograph on the subject, was
already writing it in his head. Never put anything on paper in stir:
that was one of the ten thousand rules.
Of course, the primary difference between the Manhattan
Correctional Center, which was where bail-less federal prisoners in
the borough of Manhattan, city and state of New York, waited before
and during their trials, was the attitude of the guards. The guards
thought the prisoners were animals, of course, as usual, and treated
them as such. But in this place the guards thought they themselves
were not animals; that was the difference.
You get into a state pen, any state pen in the country—well, any
state Meehan had been a guest in, and he felt he could
extrapolate—and there was a real sense of everybody being stinking
fetid swine shoveled into this shithole together, inmates and staff
alike. There was something, Meehan realized, now that he was missing
it, strangely comforting about that, about guards who, with every
breath they took, with every ooze from their pores, said, "You're a
piece of shit and so am I, so you got no reason to expect anything
but the worst from me if you irritate my ass." These guards here, in
the MCC, they buttoned all their shirt buttons. What were they,
fucking Mormons?
Meehan had never been held on a federal charge before, and he
didn't like it. He didn't like how inhuman the feds were, how
unemotional, how you could never get around the Book to the man.
Never get around the Book. They were like a place where the speed
limit's 55, and they enforce 55. Everybody knows you enforce
70.
Shit. From now on, Meehan promised himself, no more federal
crimes.
And this one was a wuss, this one was so lame. Him and three
guys, whose names he would no longer remember, had a little hijack
thing, off a truckstop, Interstate 84, upstate fifty miles north of
the city, there was no way to know that truck held registered
mail. Not a post office truck, a private carrier, no special notices
on it at all. The truck Meehan and his former allies wanted, from
the same carrier, was full of computer shit from Mexico. Meehan
wasn't looking forward to making that plea to some jury.
But in the meantime, for who knows how long, here he was in the
MCC, downtown Manhattan, convenient to the federal courts, thinking
about his monograph on the differences between federal and
non-federal pounds.
There were a number of ragheads on 9 South, Meehan presumed
either terrorists with bombs or assholes who strangled their sisters
for fucking around, and they all lined up to get their hair cut by
the white barber. Johnson, a white inmate who'd been friendly and
palsy with Meehan since he got here and who Meehan took it for
granted was a plant, came over to help him watch the barbering, the
two of them seated at one of the plastic tables in the middle of the
communal room. "Every time," Johnson said, "those guys are first in
line, get their hairs cut, never does any good."
Meehan, polite, said, "Oh?"
"Their hair grows too fast," Johnson told him. "It's something
about the sand or something, where there's no water, you look at
these guys, haircut haircut, end of the day they're back the way
they were, they still look like a Chia toy."
"Chia toys take water," Meehan said.
"And sparrows take shit," Johnson said.
What was that supposed to mean? Meehan watched the piles of curly
black oily hair mount up around the raghead in the chair, like they
were gonna finish with a Joan of Arc here, and it occurred to him to
wonder, as it had never occurred to him to wonder in a state pen,
how come barbers were such a total criminal class. Everywhere you
went, the barbers were inmates who happened on the outside to be
barbers, so this was how they made bad money and good time on the
inside, but the question was, how come so many barbers were felons?
And what kind of federal crime can a barber pull? Maybe what
happened, every jail around, whenever a barber was gonna finish his
time, the word went out to the police forces of the world, keep your
eyes on the barbers, we need one May 15. Could be.
A guard came into the block. His tan uniform was so neat, he
looked like he thought he was in the Pentagon. Maybe he really was
in the Pentagon; who knew?
The guard came over to Meehan: "Lawyer visit."
That was a bit of a surprise. There wasn't much Meehan and his
lawyer had to say to one another. But any distraction was welcome;
rising, Meehan said, "I'm with you."
Johnson, friendly and genial, said, "Expecting good news?"
"Maybe I'm being adopted," Meehan said.
Turned out, he was.
Copyright © 2002 by Donald E. Westlake
