I don’t have a lighter, but I give him a few candles. Jeff hands me a Marlboro to thank me and staggers away, back to Tony’s bunker.
I go back to bed and put the baseball bat I found in Bob’s place under my pillow. If there is one guy I don’t trust, it is Tony’s crack-addicted hooker lover. In the middle of the night I wake up again. It is four-thirty. Someone is yelling through the intercom. It goes on for half an hour
“It was that idiot Manny,” Bernard tells me next morning. “Yelling in the middle of the night through the intercom. The guy really doesn’t know where to stop. Does he really think I’ll get out of my warm bed just for a few crumbs of lousy crack?”
I’m having breakfast with Bernard at the grill. This morning, oatmeal and chicken franks are on the menu. Bernard is up early, because at nine o’clock he expects a French film crew. He already showed them around yesterday, and brought them to Frankie and Ment’s. With Joe and Kathy, they had some problems.
“Kathy was whining that Joe deserves more money because he has been in the tunnel the longest. Always bullshit with the two of them,” Bernard grumbles. “Difficult people. They are not receptive to others.”
In the morning, the crew will shoot at the grill. In the afternoon, Bernard will bring the crew to see Marcus.
Tony enters. He rubs his sleepy eyes and bums a cigarette; we listen to the morning news. Riker’s Island is about to explode. Prisoners have started to mutiny in several sections. Tony shrugs it off. “Riker’s Island? Come on, that’s just like the YMCA. I tell you, when I was doing time, I saw the boys cry like little kids when they heard they would be transferred upstate to Sing Sing or Attica.”
Tony starts again about the notorious Attica prison revolt in 1971, where thirty-nine people died. “They sent in the guards. They were shooting at us like we were sitting ducks. I saved the life of two guards,” he brags. “One I hid under my bed. The other one I threw from the stairs.” I look at him puzzled. “You don’t get it, do you?” he says impatiently. “The second one got a broken arm and a concussion and lay unconscious under the stairs. Other prisoners thought he was dead. That saved his life.”
People scream through the intercom. “That must be the French crew, right on time,” Bernard says and leaves to pick them up at the Northern Gate.
Fifteen minutes later, the French crew arrives with all their equipment. Since Bernard doesn’t have electricity, they have to drag tons of batteries and lights. Bernard puts extra chairs around the fire and treats them to his tunnel hospitality. “Coffee? I can also make chamomile tea if you prefer.”
Sabine, the reporter, is a cute French girl in her late twenties. She has been living for a few years in New York, and soon all of us are having a lively conversation at the fireplace.
Her sound and camera men are older guys, and hardly speak English. They give a dirty look at the dishwater Bernard used to rinse the coffee cups. Bernard pours the coffee and apologizes that it is so strong. “This one here loves diesel,” he laughs, pointing at me. “Milk and sugar?”
Bernard is soaking beans in a big pot while Sabine watches his tunnel household, fascinated. He is exaggerating a bit, “I got here excellent Mexican beans, and delicious wild swamp rice. Tonight we make a stew. Duke, can you do the groceries?” I get my notebook and jot down the list. “Let me see,” Bernard thinks. “We need a big onion, a few carrots, celery, and maybe some garlic. And of course a pound of smoked turkey wings. You see, Sabine, I don’t eat pork. That clogs up your veins.”
Bernard is a ladies’ man with a weak spot for pretty reporters. Last week, there was a beautiful Japanese documentary maker in the tunnel with Chris Pape. Bernard blew all the dust from her chair and even brought her a pillow from out of his shack. Once Bernard told me he had had a short but steamy affair with a Dutch filmmaker.
“We are all prisoners of this existence,” Bernard opens eloquently. “Might as well finish our sentence down here.” With this catchy quote he immediately grabs Sabine’s attention. The other crewmembers are starting to set up lights. They stumble over pots and pans and curse that they will never have enough light for the dark space. Bernard interrupts his monologue to suggest that they put a mirror in front of the fireplace so the reflection will light him up.
“You see, Sabine,” Bernard continues, “Last time, I was in a CBS documentary and did a stand-up at the Northern Gate. I told them I was grateful to God for this experience, that I had become a stronger man, but that one thing made me really sad—in the tunnels I never encountered a real human that accepted his fate. Most people here allow their past to haunt them.” Sabine listens attentively.
“And CBS just cut out this piece. It was too threatening. Someone who has opted out of society, but still has all his mental capacities together.”
Bernard throws more wood on the fire. Big flames, reflected by the mirror, light up his face. The cameraman nods approvingly.
“But you see, Sabine, it is sad. I never saw here any spiritual growth. I saw people becoming rancorous against society, I saw them flee in alcohol and drugs and ultimately I saw them go down.”
The hooting of a train interrupts him. Fascinated, the crew watches it rush by. Between the pillars hangs a little plane, cut out of a Budweiser beer can, its propeller blowing in the squall caused by the train. “We need that shot of the plane,” Sabine tells the cameraman. “How often are trains coming by?” Bernard is still caught in his sophisticated philosophical vocabulary. “On the weekends, the schedules tend to encounter unpredictable fluctuations,” he says.
Bernard assists the cameraman with some test shots around the fire, and I talk to Sabine. She has already been dragging her crew into tunnels for a week. They shot extensive footage in the tunnel labyrinth under Grand Central. “Compared with there, this is the Fifth Avenue of the Tunnels,” she says. Her cameraman is getting tired, she confides to me. “Every evening he is looking forward to a good restaurant, but we have to work low budget. Most of our money I give to the tunnel people.”
The crew starts to work. “Dinner at seven,” Bernard says as I am about to leave with Tony. “Will that work? By the way, would it not be easier if I buy the groceries? Six, seven dollars should do.” I give Bernard some money. “Food is not the problem. It’s pride,” I hear Bernard start his tunnel talk again as I walk with Tony to the Northern Gate.
“What kind of work you actually do?” he asks. I have already explained to him four times that I am a reporter, and he saw me taking a lot of photos, but he seems to forget it every time. I repeat it again and tell him I want to do an interview with him. Tony thinks. “You just can’t do that for nothing. It’s gonna cost money. A lotta money…” He explains that it would take at least three weeks to write down his life story. “Then you will hear everything. Everything about the revolt in Attica. And I have seen things nobody else has seen…”
Actually, Tony is looking for a ghostwriter to write his life story. If I do a good job, I can easily make a million. That’s why an advance of a hundred thousand seems to Tony a reasonable amount. I will think about it, I say, when we split at the Northern Gate. Tony is going to watch TV at his sister’s. His voice turns secretive. “Remember, I know things…I helped a few guys escape from a maximum-security prison. But I am sorry, I can’t tell you. I would endanger my own life.”