“A grand!”
“You heard right. One grand. Cash. In hundred-dollar bills. New money, so it’s easy to roll.”
“A grand! That’s robbery!”
“Well, that’s why I’m here. Take it or leave it.”
Silence again. Dwyer pulled a pouch and paper out of his shirt pocket and rolled himself a cigarette. Hanley watched the wrinkled, yellowed fingers work with a deftness that belied their age. Not a shred of tobacco was dropped, not a millimeter of paper was left unfilled. Except for its twisted end, the cigarette looked tailor-made. Probably been rolling them for fifty years, Max Hanley thought. There wouldn’t be any bargaining with this old thief.
“Okay,” Hanley said at last. “It’s a deal. Ten hundred-dollar bills. New money.” He fixed Dwyer in a cold stare. “But you’d better come through, old man.”
Dwyer grunted. “I been coming through since before you was born, boy.”
The next day Dwyer began setting up the operation.
As a lifer with years of good time behind him, Dwyer was employed in one of the least restrictive jobs in the prison — inmate clerk to the deputy warden in charge of administration. The DWA, as he was called, was second in charge of all aspects of running the prison with the exception of security, which was under the DWC — the Deputy Warden-Custody. Convicts like Dwyer, who worked for either deputy warden, were called “white caps” because, literally, they wore a white cap instead of a blue one. The white cap was a pass which allowed the wearer to go anywhere within the walls except the armory or armed-guard stations.
Dwyer himself was in charge of supplies. His primary job was to collect the monthly supply requisitions from all departments of the prison, check them against stock on hand in the storage warehouse, compile a list of items that were out of stock and needed to be ordered, type the list, and give it to the DWA for approval. Once approved, the list was forwarded to the procurement office where the supplies were ordered and shipped directly to the prison. As the items arrived, Dwyer would check them off his list and the warehouse clerk would either stock them or distribute them.
For Dwyer it was a perfect setup. He could come and go as he pleased, pass the time of day with friends and not be hassled for it, get into the dining hall ahead of the crowd, take a nap during the day when he was tired, steal extra codeine tablets from the dispensary when his arthritis got too painful in the winter, and in general make life as easy for himself as he could. He even had an arrangement with one of the hospital orderlies to supply him with a pint of medicinal brandy every thirty days so that he could mellow out on rainy nights when he started thinking about the lost years.
When he was beginning to set up the operation for Max Hanley’s crashout, the first thing Dwyer did was pull the most recent requisition from the dispensary and take it over to Edwards, the civilian male nurse who worked for the prison doctor.
“Excuse me, Mr. Edwards,” he said deferentially, “but on this here order you’ve got down a thousand cotton swabs. But the warehouse says you just got five thousand on an order last month. Warehouse wants to know if it’s a mistake.”
Edwards frowned. “Five thousand? Last month? Doesn’t sound right to me.” He swiveled around and took a folder from a filing cabinet. “Here’s last month’s order. No cotton swabs on it at all.” He handed the folder to Dwyer.
Dwyer shook his head. “That warehouse. Can’t get anything straight. I sure wish everybody would run their departments like you do, Mr. Edwards. Sure make my job a lot easier. I’m gonna make a note on this order that they’d better get those cotton swabs over here in a hurry. Have you got a red pencil I can use?”
Edwards opened a drawer. “Here you are.”
“Thanks.” He handed the folder back to Edwards. “You’ll want to put this back in your file.”
Edwards swiveled around again to return the folder to the filing cabinet. When he did, Dwyer reached into the still-open desk drawer and noiselessly tore the top sheet from a pad of blank passes pre-signed by the prison doctor. By the time Edwards was facing him again, Dwyer had the stolen pass in his pocket and was scribbling his note with Edwards’ red pencil.
When he left the dispensary, Dwyer crossed the upper yard to the education building where convicts went to school to earn elementary and high school diplomas. When he got inside, he looked at the hall clock and saw that it was ten past the hour. In another five minutes, classes would change. He sat on the stairs to wait. The roving guard on duty in the ed building noticed him and walked down to him. “ ’Lo, Frank,” the guard said.
“ ’Morning, Mr. Tracy,” said Dwyer.
“Resting up for lunch?”
“No, just waitin’ for classes to change, Mr. Tracy. I have to see somebody about the school’s order for blackboard chalk. I got an order here for twenty boxes, but the warehouse says the school just got fifty boxes last month. So I have to ask Charley Davis about it. But I thought I’d wait five minutes. That way I don’t interrupt the class.”
“Good idea,” said Tracy. “How’s your arthritis lately?”
“ ’Bout the same, Mr. Tracy. Doc says it probably won’t ever improve. Says it’s a result of all those years in the dampness that I done on Alcatraz. How about you — arches still bothering you?”
“Yeah,” Tracy said resignedly. “It’s these damn steel floors — no give to them. I put in for tower duty so I won’t have to do so much walking, but I haven’t heard anything yet. You and me just weren’t cut out for prison, Dwyer.”
“You got that right, Mr. Tracy,” the old convict said with a grin.
The bell rang and convicts began to stream out of the rooms. Tracy walked on down the corridor and Dwyer entered the civics classroom of a convict teacher named Charley Davis. “Hello, you two-bit old bank robber,” said Davis, looking up from his desk.
“Top of the morning, you third-rate forger,” Dwyer replied. “How’s everything in the world of lower education?”
“Terrible,” Davis said, pulling a sour face. “The only ones that come to school any more are the militants, and they just come to argue about the system and get out of work. I’m glad I only have three more years to do — I don’t think I could stand it longer than that.” He glanced at the door to make sure they were alone. “What’s on your mind?”
Dwyer slipped him the stolen pass, along with a pad of blanks he had taken from stationery supplies that morning. “I need the signature copied on three of these.”
“Usual scale?”
Dwyer nodded. “Five cartons per. Total of fifteen cartons.”
“Deal,” Charley Davis said.
Dwyer left the education building and walked over to the shoe shop. Gus Monetti, a former bigtime labor racketeer, now long forgotten in prison, was working the number one stitching machine just inside the door. Dwyer caught his attention and motioned for him to come outside. Monetti finished stitching the leather upper on the machine and turned off the power. He waved a pack of cigarettes at the civilian shop foreman, got a nod in return, and stepped outside.
“Hello, paisan,” he said to Dwyer.
“Hello, Augustus. How’s the cobbler business?”
“We’re keeping busy,” Monetti said, lighting a cigarette. “Just finishing an order of kid’s sizes for the state orphanage. Doing ’em real good, using the best leather we got in stock, flat-stitching everything, lining the insides. Hell, those orphans are gonna have better shoes than rich kids wear.” Monetti grinned. “Next week we start an order of boots for the national guard. We’ll do a good job on them, too. Loose stitches. Exposed nails. Unfinished linings down in the toes.”