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  A tan, wiry man in well-worn khakis and a dirt-smeared shirt peered into the kitchen from the mudroom. “Miss Chetta? I have news about the workers.”

  Maria Chetta entered the room holding a spiky plant attached to a piece of driftwood. From the center of the gray-green spikes, a long red flower bloomed, the tip changed color from red to blue to yellow. She was like the flower, exotically sturdy, a bright spot appearing from nowhere. With her jingling jewelry and swishing skirt she looked like a Spanish gypsy, the kind who told your fortune in the caves of Old Madrid.

  She looked at the man wringing his ball cap in his hands.

  “News, Santiago? I hope it is good news.”

  “There is a possibility–”

  “Santiago,” said Maria as she set the plant on the counter, picked up a pair of garden shears, “there is always possibility. What I need to know is if they cannot complete the job, can you find me someone who will?”

  “Of course, Miss Chetta. That would be no problem.”

  Maria smiled. “I knew I could count on you, Santiago. Now how is the fountain cleaning coming?”

  Santiago spent the next few minutes telling Maria about the grounds of her estate, what had been done and what needed to be done. And when he returned to his work among the fountains, pools, gardens, sheds, garages and putting greens, Maria was left holding a Tillandsia Fuchsii, surrounded by silver appliances she knew nothing about.

  It was all Stephan’s fault. He’d been her chef for so long, and it was more his kitchen than hers. His job was supposed to have been a temporary one. He would cook when the housekeeper went on holiday. But one summer the housekeeper didn’t return, and Stephan moved into Maria’s kitchen.

  Maria worried about him. His relationships with the men in Provincetown, his trips to West Palm; he was anything but discreet.

  Somewhere in the large house, a phone rang, followed by a buzzing intercom. “Miss Chetta, you have a call. The gentleman wishes not to be announced, but asked me to say, ‘He is a friend from the old neighborhood.’ Shall I tell him you’re not available?”

  Old neighborhood? Maria cleared her throat to calm the quaver in her voice. “I’ll take the call, Sonja. Thank you.”

  “Very well. I’ll put him through.”

  Maria dried her hands and picked up the phone. “This is Maria Chetta. To whom am I speaking?”

  “So, it’s Chetta now? And ‘to whom?’ Well, well. Lou said you’d re-invented yourself.”

  “I’m sure I don’t know what you are talking about.”

  “Oh, Maria, sweetheart, this is not the time to play coy. But I’ll tell what it is time for. It’s time for that old saying to prove itself right. You know, the one: ‘Whatever goes around, comes around.’”

  Maria closed her eyes. Her past came rushing back at her: James King’s gold teeth, Mama in the apartment with the secret closet floor, the backseat of Deluca’s Cadillac, and the lie she’d told that convicted an innocent man.

  “What do you want, Fast Eddie? And why are you calling me here?”

  “Hey, if you don’t want to discuss this on the phone, I have no problem coming up there. Fact is, I’d love to get reacquainted. We still have unfinished business, you and I, don’t we?”

  “I’m sure that won’t be necessary. Whatever business you need to discuss with me can be handled from a distance.”

  “Yeah, maybe that would be best. I mean I wouldn’t want anything to mess up your perfect little life, now would I? I mean you have worked so hard for your fortune.”

  She ignored the dig, as Fast Eddie Deluca continued. “And we wouldn’t want to disappoint the Angelina partners by rocking the boat now, would we? So, this is what I need from you…”

  Maria closed her eyes and listened to the voice from her past as it threatened her future. How the hell was she going to get herself out of this—again?

  CHAPTER 3

  Wearing the Browns and Singing the Blues

  OM Shaantih, Shaantih, Shaanti-ih.”

  The hard gray walls of the cell had no hold on the deep rich tone of the chant. The man’s voice rose and fell, undulating and humming like the sound of someone talking into the whirring blades of a large fan. Seated cross-legged on his rag rug, Shazad’s body swayed, a peaceful smile on his glistening face.

  Ray watched from his metal slab bed. The ‘trays’ were bolted into the wall, one above the other. There was no room to sit up, and in a cell the size of a king-sized bed, no privacy, either. You hoped for the best when your cellmate was assigned. Lifers with enough cash or clout might buy themselves a single cell. Some even had cable TV and a chair. They were living luv-luv in the joint.

  Ray considered himself lucky. Although others on the block thought his cellie would be more at home in the ding-wing, Ray liked Shazad’s soft, clipped accent and odd turns of phrase. Shazad spun tales that allowed Ray to escape the walls. Ray never knew which stories to believe. The ones about the doe-eyed dancing girls who smelled like jasmine and served food from their fingertips. Or the three families who lived in a broken-down bus and took turns picking up cans for nickels. It didn’t matter. Stories didn’t have to be real. Because that was the point, wasn’t it?

  In return for the stories, Ray taught Shazad the basics: Don’t point; don’t ask why they’re here; never go in the yard alone. And after twelve years together, they were as close as family. But even family moves on. When Shazad’s parole came through, Ray was happy for his friend, and undeniably jealous. With a sentence of Life Without, numerous appeals shot down and parole denied, he wasn’t kidding himself: this life was all he had. But Shazad was going home; he’d been given a second chance.

  Ray stretched, then rolled over, retrieving a small notebook and pencil from under his pillow.

  Shazad spoke without raising his head. “Good morning, Ray. Did you sleep well?”

  “Like a baby.” It was the old prison joke—toss and turn all night and wake up crying.

  “There is no need to be missing Shazad. Shazad is with you always, like karma.”

  Ray’s pencil stopped on the page, on the word ‘miss.’ How does he do that? “Yeah,” snorted Ray. “Which karma would that be? The one that put me in here twenty-three years ago? Or the one that’s going to watch my back when you’re out in the world chasing the honeys?”

  Shazad smiled and opened his eyes. “Oh yes, the honeys. Shazad has not forgotten about the honeys. There will be much celebration, my friend. Do you want me to send you the pictures?”

  Ray whipped his pillow at Shazad’s neatly-shaved head. Shazad smiled and ducked.

  Ray said, “Pictures, my ass! You’d better send them in person.”

  “Oh yes, Ray,” said Shazad. “I know you will not mind getting the bend-over search from CO Munchy to sit across the table from my honeys.”

  “Shazad, my man, you send me a woman, and I’ll whistle Dixie while spreading my cheeks!”

  “I hope that you will be using your mouth for the whistling, my friend.”

  Ray smiled. “Maybe I oughta just sing it.”

  Now that would be something. Correctional Officer Munsing, with his wandering left eye and fireplug body, bent over with his face and flashlight up against Ray’s black ass, and Ray belting out, “Look away, look away…”

  The joking was a way to lighten reality. Ray knew that Shazad would no more have a bunch of honeys on the outside than Ray would have a million dollars under his mattress. He also knew that Shazad was never coming back. When they said goodbye, it was supposed to be forever.

  “You will keep up your yoga practice, Ray. And do not stop asking for help. It will come, Ray. Remember the dream.”

  “You and your dreams, man. What are you telling me?”

  “It is the Universe telling me to tell you.”

  “Yeah, yeah. Okay, Shazad. The Universe. Right.”

  “Do not let your paddle float downstream. You must grab the horny bull.”

  “It’s not horny bull, it’s… Forge
t it. Listen, Shazad, don’t worry about me. I’ll be fine. And I just wanted to say thanks. For, you know, everything.”

  Cons came into their own in many ways. Ray had had a rough start, then learned to do his time the easy way. Before Shazad, Ray managed to side with the black Muslims and use their pull to avoid most trouble. But it wasn’t easy, and they had him into shit that was strangely like the stuff he’d been avoiding on the outside. Then Shazad came. He helped Ray focus on himself, not some Malcolm X freak named Mohammed. Ray was a righteous con, respected, respectable. He looked great on paper. But he was still here.

  For the past decade he’d been staying out of trouble and expanding his mind with courses, books and tapes. He worked as a paralegal at the Law Clinic while plugging away at his case options, filing petitions, looking for opportunities. He kept on dreaming. About all there was to do behind the walls was dream, or work, or count down days, and dream some more.

  CO Lytle banged on the cell door. “Bentley, get your ass up! What do you think this is, the Hilton?’ He laughed too loud, like the asshole he was, then moved down the tier to harass someone else.

  Ray stashed his journal then rolled off the tray and made his bed. He used the toilet, pulled on his brown jumpsuit and slipped into shoes. It took him three minutes.

  Shazad rose from his seat on the plastic bin. “Are you ready, my friend?”

  “Gonna be a long one today,” Ray said, putting his hands on the bars.

  Shazad nodded seriously. “Yes. Today is the first day of the week before my freedom.”

  Ray rubbed a hand over his face. It was too early. “Shazad, don’t talk to me anymore, okay? Not until I’ve had my coffee.”

  CO Lytle returned to stand outside their cell. He spoke into a microphone mounted on his shoulder, and the on-duty guy in the glass bubble pushed some buttons. The door slid open and Ray and Shazad stepped onto the tier. Their neighbors downstairs, Swastika-tattooed Skinheads, were in a fighting mood this morning.

  “You‘re going down, Shazam!” Ace yelled. “Traffic done give you the green light, you short-ass, Gandhi-loving-freak!”

  “Traffic” was also known as Gerald Lane, a skinny, whiskey-haired guy and Ace’s right hand. Four months ago, the Feds came looking for information on the growing meth trade. The bait they dangled was sweet, and for some the chance of getting out was almost worth the price. After the Feds’ visit with Traffic sent them away smiling, rumors started. Ace had to put him to the test. Now, Traffic had scars to prove his allegiance. The cops didn’t stop coming, but Ace stopped wondering about his boy. He knew where he was at all times on the inside, and now he knew where his family was on the outside.

  Born in a crack house, raised on the streets, Ace was bred for prison. At fifteen, he’d been in and out of ‘juvie’ six times, and learned something new each stay. By the time he was convicted as an adult, he understood one thing: in order to survive you had to surround yourself with people smarter than yourself. Fortunately for Ace, it wasn’t a hard thing to do. Among the sorely outnumbered White Supremecists in Graterford, Ace was King. He had a steady stream of ladies delivering cash from a booming meth business on the outside and could buy everything except his freedom.

  The men in his car were loyal. If not, they were dead. Like Shorty: his death had been ruled a suicide, and now that the barbed wire was up, it would be tough for somebody else to take the same dive from the top tier. No one crossed Ace.

  Everybody had heard the story of Ace’s arrest. The newspapers said neighbors heard loud music and shouting coming from the family residence. It soon escalated into property damage when a turntable, speakers and three Nat King Cole albums crashed through the front bay window and landed in the holly bushes. The cops were called first, then the fire department. When the officers arrived, Ace was standing over the charred and smoldering body of his father. The cop said, “What happened here, son?”

  “He wouldn’t turn off the music.” Ace had leaned down and lit his cigarette off his dead father’s burning shirtsleeve. “I told him to turn that black shit off.”

  But that was years ago. Now, Ace was on a federally subsidized path of rehabilitation that included Narcotics Anonymous meetings, anger management classes and creative outlets such as woodworking and needlepoint. Ace had his own creative outlets. Lacking kerosene, his cruelty had become Tyson-like. He bit the nose off his last enemy and shoved it up the guy’s ass. Ace was definitely someone to avoid.

  Ray and Shazad followed the cons down the stairs. Ray glanced over at Ace and his crew. “Don’t say a word,” he mumbled to Shazad. “Don’t even look over there. I mean it.” Shazad fell in line, head down, his feet moving forward. He was a short-timer. Six days and a wake-up.

  Not many could say that. Prisons across the country were bursting at the seams. Too many coming in and not enough toeing the line to get out. Parole hearings were increasingly difficult to earn. It used to be that if a con could keep his nose clean, he’d get ten days off for every thirty served, and he had a good chance at his hearing. But thanks to more than a few parolees who went ape-shit out in the world, it was now more difficult.

  For some, there was hope in the form of new testimony, information from a rolled-over snitch or exonerating evidence as a result of improved DNA testing. Others pinned their hopes on a slick attorney, one who was in it for the glory of the front page, or the movie rights.

  Ray and Shazad scuffed their way to the chow hall. It always reminded Ray of high school. It wasn’t where you sat, it was whom you sat with—white Peckerwoods, Italian Mobsters, assorted Black gangs and biker Nazis. The worst were the Mexican Mafia. A bunch of dark-haired kids wearing bandanas, so hardened and world-weary they approached life inside with nothing to lose. Even the Italian Nostra kept their distance from them.

  Two guards stood in the wide doorway, one with a clipboard, one with an attitude.

  “Good morning, men,” Charlie Scruggs smirked. “Welcome to Hell. The Hell of Scruggs.”

  The smaller guard laughed, checking off names and numbers on his clipboard, then shook his head and repeated, “The Hell of Scruggs. I like that, Charlie. Where’d you get that from?”

  Scruggs said, “Shut the fuck up, Munsing,” before something caught his eye.

  Ray watched the CO approach Table Eight, hand on his stick. Most inmates would admit that the correctional officers were the worst part of lock up. A man can get used to a cell and the routine. He might even make a few friends. Some cons owed their sobriety and their life to these walls. Some of them ate and slept better in prison than in the free world. But dealing with the COs everyday—that could be worse than dealing with the cons. The officers had their own set of rules, plus bureaucratic protection. It was difficult to tell the bad guys from the hired help at most prisons. Graterford State Correctional Institute was no exception.

  Built on empty farmlands in 1929, the prison was far enough away from Philadelphia to remain forgotten and unchanged for sixty years. Lazy cattle wandered the green hills surrounding the prison and slept in a spacious red barn at night. Fat free-range chickens scratched over dusty roads and fed in buggy cornfields. It would have been a normal Pennsylvania sight, except for the farm workers in drab brown jumpsuits and the armed guards on horseback.

  In 1989, the maximum security facility was upgraded. Eighty million dollars went into improvements and expansion—a modern infirmary, a plush administrative building and additional cells. The prison was self-sufficient, operating its own steam, sewer and power plants. With its abundance of cheap labor, Graterford had at once become a money making machine, manufacturing garments, shoes, hosiery and providing weaving services. Most convicts earned their keep working directly for the prison, in the kitchen, the fields or the hot, noisy laundry facility. There was no unemployment behind these walls.

  Ray and Shazad carried their trays to the recently vacated end of a long stained table and sat on the attached bench.

  “Going to work outside today,” Shazad sa
id. “It is a beautiful day for picking up the garbage of mankind.”

  Shazad had pulled road duty. The six-man crews picked up litter along the public road and at the prison entrance. The opportunities were boundless for a caged man. Sun, fresh air, grass underfoot, and the off chance of a beautiful woman driving by. Not to mention the road kill cigarette butts tossed from windows of passing cars. They’d take these back to the cells, combine and re-roll them. They could be smoked, traded or sold.

  Ray looked up from the book he’d pulled from his pocket. “Better watch your back, Shazad. That early morning surprise might be around.”

  Shazad’s permanent bliss faded momentarily, replaced with confusion. “I cannot watch my own back, but I can watch the rest of my body.”

  “You do that.” Ray checked the clock. “Shit. Catch you later, man.” Ray touched knuckles with Shazad and started to leave, then leaned over the table. “Keep your eyes out for the booty. I got to know, man. On the one.”

  “Yes, Ray.” Shazad thumped his fist against his chest. “On the one.”

  The term had begun as a way for a con to swear they were telling the truth, like George Washington. In a society of thieves, money was all they knew. But Shazad and Ray swore on their life. The only one they had to give.

  Ray leaned out the cafeteria door, looked both ways, and then headed down the long corridor to the law clinic.

  Originally designed to calm and nurture, the soft green walls were smudged and scraped. The once garden-like hue was now a non-crayola shade of pea soup. The multi-colored floor tiles were chipped and stained. On the watermarked ceiling, large round intercoms hissing static broke up the pattern of the rectangular tiles. Mounted high on the walls, pivoting black security cameras monitored every move.

  Ray stopped at a barred window. Sometimes, he’d stand here late in the day, watching and listening. He hardly remembered the city noises that had so thrilled him in his youth. Now, he strained to hear the moo of a cow or the chattering of birds. He lived to see a swooping hawk or a colorful butterfly. He wouldn’t leave the window until he saw or heard a free creature. Ray saw Preacher Man approach, made room for him at the window.