“Way to go,” Dwyer said, sharing his smile. Then he got serious. “Say, Gus, you got anything coming in through your shop? Any kind of pipeline at all?”
“Not that I know of. Why?”
“I think you might have. Pretty soon. A small package that’ll have to be moved over to the machine-shop area. You be interested in doing it?”
“For what?” Monetti asked.
Dwyer shrugged. “What do you want?”
“What I’d really like to get is a cell change. But I don’t want to seem pushy. I don’t know if moving a package for you is important enough for a favor like that.”
“It’s important enough. What’s the problem with your cell?”
“I’m on three tier in south block. They been moving a lot of young cons in there lately. They cut up and horseplay around, do a lot of yelling between cells — it’s too hectic for me any more. After the noise of this shoe shop all day, I need some peace and quiet at night, know what I mean?”
“Got you. How about if I find you a place in north block, where I live? They’re mostly old codgers over there, like you and me.”
“That’d be terrif, paisan.”
“I’ll try to get you down on the flats so you won’t have all them stairs to climb.” Dwyer patted the ex-racketeer on the shoulder. “I’ll let you know about the package.”
Dwyer went back to his desk in the cubbyhole across the hall from the DWA’s office. He hung his white cap on a hook on the wall and did a couple of hours’ work on the supply lists he had received so far that month. After he was sure he had been seen hard at work by the DWA and the DWA’s civilian assistant, he put his cap back on, picked up a clipboard with some forms on it, and walked over to the opposite side of the administration building where the deputy warden-custody had his office.
The DWC had an inmate clerk named Will Redmon. He was a whip-thin black man from the south side of Chicago. Twenty years earlier he had been a collector for a numbers operation in the Troop Street projects. There was a rumor that the operation was being cased for a takeover by some outsiders who had been snooping around. Redmon and another collector were assigned to do a number on one of them as an example. They caught one in a project building basement and beat him senseless. He died from a brain hemorrhage.
Then they found out he was not a rival at all; he was a member of an anti-organized-crime squad working undercover. Redmon’s partner was shot and killed in the ensuing manhunt. Redmon’s own people turned him in. He was tried, and because at that time there was no death penalty, he was sentenced to life.
“ ’Morning, Mr. Redmon,” said Dwyer, entering a cubbyhole much like his own.
“ ’Morning, Mr. Dwyer,” said Redmon. “Take a chair.”
“Thank you.”
Dwyer and Redmon were not friends, but they were not enemies either. The precisely structured social strata of the prison prevented the former, and their own intelligence kept them from the latter. Redmon did not affiliate himself with the Black Muslims, the Black Guerrilla Family, the Crips, or any of the other organized black groups within the walls, and Dwyer had always avoided association with the Aryan Brotherhood, the Bikers, the Revolutionary Union, and other white cliques; but even though they remained individually neutral, both knew they still had to respect the lines drawn by those groups, and by the Mexican Mafia, the Nuestra Familia, Satan’s Few, the Midnight Specials, and the rest of the prison gangs. So Dwyer and Redmon conducted business when it was beneficial for both of them to do so, but they kept it quasi-formal at all times.
“What can I do for you today, Mr. Dwyer?” asked Redmon.
“I’m interested in a cell change for a friend of mine,” Dwyer said.
A slight smile crossed Redmon’s lips. “Playing cupid, Mr. Dwyer?”
“No, nothing like that,” Dwyer replied with a chuckle. He explained why Gus Monetti wanted out of south block.
“Well, that’s understandable,” Redmon said. “Most of those young cons coming in now don’t know how to conduct themselves at all. Let’s see what Monetti’s sheet looks like.” He opened a file drawer and glanced briefly at the top page of Gus Monetti’s custody record. “Yeah, he’s okay. No disciplines, no restrictions. Where would you like to put him?”
Dwyer and Redmon worked out the location. Monetti would be transferred to his new cell on Sunday. Dwyer would slip Redmon a fifty-dollar bill on Monday.
“Thanks for your help, Mr. Redmon,” said Dwyer.
“Not at all, Mr. Dwyer, not at all. Call again.”
After dropping off the clipboard at his cubbyhole, Dwyer walked across the big yard to the dining room. He was too early for the main line but that did not bother him, not as long as he was wearing his white cap. Taking a tray, he went behind the steam table and served himself. He took an extra ladle of creamed chipped beef and extra butter beans, but he skipped the canned pears and carrot jello. Picking up a biscuit and coffee from the end of the counter, he crossed the near-empty hall to a corner table where Leo Ripley, the inmate laundry foreman, was eating alone.
Ripley was a wife-murderer who would have been out years earlier if he had not also killed a fellow prisoner in an argument over a book in the prison library.
Now he would probably never get out. He had a pass to eat early because he tended to become aggressive in crowd situations.
“Mind if I sit with you, Leo?” Dwyer asked. “It’s business.”
Ripley squinted at him for a moment. He liked eating alone, he had become accustomed to it; everybody knew that and usually gave him a wide berth; but if it was business, an exception could be made. Ripley nodded and Dwyer sat down.
“I need three sets of bakery whites,” Dwyer said. “Pants and shirts, no caps. One set medium, two sets large.”
“What for?” Ripley asked.
“I can’t tell you, Leo. I’m only the middle man.”
Ripley locked eyes with him. “A break. It’s got to be a break. Nobody’s gonna wear clothes they ain’t supposed to wear unless they’re pulling a break. I want in.”
Dwyer shook his head. “It’s not my show, Leo. I’ve got no say about anything. Like I told you, I’m an employee, working for a fee.”
“Then take a message to whoever you’re working for. Either I get included or no whites.”
“I don’t carry those kind of messages, Leo. All I do is what I get paid to do. I’ll get the whites somewhere else.” Dwyer picked up his tray to leave.
“Wait a minute,” Ripley said. “Let me think about it for a minute.” He shoveled a few spoonsful of carrot jello into his mouth while Dwyer waited. Finally he shrugged. “A break that starts in the bakery don’t have no chance anyway. Can you get me some good booze? Not pruno or any of that bootleg hootch they make in the kitchen. I mean good stuff.”
“I can get bonded brandy.”
“I want a quart for each set of whites.”
Dwyer thought about it. That was his entire supply for the next six months. A long time to go dry. Of course, he could always go back to pruno himself; it was better than nothing. Lord knows he had drunk enough of it over the years, at Alcatraz, Folsom, Joliet, Angola—
“It’s a deal if you’ll take a pint for each set — a pint a month. That’s the best I can do.”
“I’ll take it.”
Dwyer nodded. “Keep the whites handy. I’ll let you know when and where to deliver.” He picked up his tray again. “I know you like to eat alone, Leo,” he said, and walked away.
That night in his cell, Dwyer reflected on Leo Ripley’s instant prognosis of the break: A break that starts in the bakery don’t have no chance anyway. Yet he knew that Max Hanley was no fool. Hanley had engineered some very big bank robberies; he had to know the value of careful planning, and he must have weighed the odds against every conceivable thing that could go wrong. Maybe, Dwyer thought, he and the other two on the break, whoever they were, intended to take hostages — the warden and some visitors inspecting the bakery, perhaps.