The Man Who Came Uptown

“Sit on that chair,” said Ward. To Ornazian he said, “Cover him.”

  Theodore took a seat on the wooden chair. Ward placed the shotgun on the bed as Ornazian pointed the pistol at Theodore. Ward used the plastic cuffs to bind Theodore’s wrists in front of him and the longer ties to secure his ankles to the legs of the chair.

  Ward looked at Ornazian, whose eyes said, Go ahead. They had discussed the plan in the Crown Vic. Ward had interrogated prisoners in Nam, and he had questioned countless suspects in police stations all over the District with, one could assume, often unorthodox tactics. Ward had experience. Ornazian was happy to let him lead.

  “I see you got a lock on that nightstand,” said Ward. “Where the key at?”

  “In the drawer below it,” said Theodore.

  “Course it is,” said Ward. He knew that everyone, straights and criminals alike, kept their money and valuables in their bedrooms, close by, within reach.

  Ward opened the lower drawer, saw condoms, lubrication, loose change, and a key wrapped up in a piece of tissue paper. He used the key to unlock the upper drawer. Inside that drawer was a semiauto Beretta, an extra magazine, and rubber-banded stacks of cash. Ward pocketed the gun and the magazine, fanned through the cash, and tossed the stacks on the bed.

  “Where’s the rest of your money?” said Ward.

  “That’s all of it,” said Theodore, staring straight ahead.

  Ward went to the closet, pulled the shirts aside, and looked behind them. Then he got down to floor level and checked the shoeboxes. All matched up except for a fresh pair of Jordans sitting atop a box with the brand name Stacy Adams. Ward pulled this box out from under the sneakers and looked inside. More money. Stacks of it.

  “You tryin to bankrupt a man,” said Theodore.

  “Is that all of it?”

  “You cleaned me out.”

  “All the money you make, and this is it?”

  “I got overhead,” said Theodore.

  “The pimp’s lament,” said Ward.

  Ward took the money off the bed and put it together with the money in the Stacy Adams box. He went to the dresser, unplugged the iPhone from its charger, and dropped the phone in Theodore’s lap. It slipped off his thigh and fell to the floor.

  “After we leave,” said Ward, “you can figure out a way to pick up your phone and hit up one of your girls or whoever. You got a toolbox somewhere in this mess. Won’t be hard for someone to cut you free.”

  “I ain’t gonna forget this.”

  “Don’t speak. Let me tell you how it’s gonna be.” Ward handed the shoebox to Ornazian and picked up the shotgun. “You will forget it. What you need to do now is, you got to put a Band-Aid on your pride and move on. ’Cause if you try to find out who we are, if you ask your neighbors if they seen a car out front tonight, anything like that…if I go down in any way, if I get locked up, even if I die of natural causes? Someone gonna step out the shadows one night and murder your ass. Do you understand me, Theodore?”

  “I understand that you messed with the wrong man.”

  “Thought I told you: not another word.”

  “Fuck you, old man.”

  Ward reversed his grip on the shotgun and swung its stock. Ornazian looked away.

  THEY DROVE south on Route 1, stopped at an IHOP in College Park, and had breakfast among nightcrawlers and University of Maryland students eating off their highs and drunks. Back out in the car, Ornazian counted out the money below the sight line of the dash.

  “Eight thousand each, give or take,” said Ornazian, handing the shoebox to Ward. “After my expenses. I’m going to give a thousand dollars to Monique.”

  “What else you gonna give her?”

  “Say what?”

  “You tappin that ass?”

  Ornazian shook his head. “I’m spoken for.”

  “Mr. True Blue,” said Ward. “Call me if you got something else. That was easy money right there.”

  “It’s four mortgage payments,” said Ornazian. “That’s what this is about for me.”

  “That’s not all it is. You like it. You ’specially like when we out here saving someone. Like that woman and her kids got kidnapped by that crew on Kennedy Street? You were all fired up on that one.”

  “So were you.”

  “Least I admit it,” said Ward.

  “It was a job.”

  “Nah, Phil. I knew dudes like you in the Nam. Had that hero thing goin on. Couldn’t keep their heads down, even though they knew better. Had to run to the action. Not for nothing, some of those guys didn’t come back.”

  “That’s not me.”

  “No?”

  “I’m just trying to take care of my family.”

  “You didn’t enjoy it tonight?”

  “Not like you.”

  “You talking about Theodore? You think I liked that?”

  “A little,” said Ornazian.

  “It was about respect. I told him not to run his gums. Boy couldn’t help hisself.”

  Ward ignitioned the car. They drove back into Northeast, saying nothing further, the silence between them not uncomfortable in the least, as it is for certain kinds of men. Ornazian was thinking of his wife and children. Ward had planned a dinner with his daughter for later that day. He’d order food in. Maybe they would watch a game on TV.

  Five

  THE BOOK club was held in the jail’s chapel and available to the Gen Pop and Fifty and Older units. The first ten inmates to sign up for the club were admitted. The session ran for sixty to ninety minutes and was always full. Even if the attendees were not particularly book lovers, the session filled up quickly, as it was something to break the numbing routine of incarceration. Once a book was assigned, the inmates had three weeks to read it before the discussion. The meetings were led by Anna, the jailhouse librarian.

  Anna provided a reader’s guide to the attendees complete with questions, similar to the guides found in the back of some trade paperbacks. The guide was just an aid to help them think about what they were reading and how to discuss it. When she passed out the guides she stressed that answering the questions was optional. She meant for the club to be enjoyable. The last thing she wanted to do was give them homework.

  The chapel was not ornate but it was low lit and a quiet place to meditate, away from the cell blocks and common rooms. There was a lectern and chairs, and audiovisual equipment could be brought in if needed. A local nonprofit, the Free Minds Book Club, ran a reading and writing program in the chapel for incarcerated juveniles who had been charged as adults and were waiting to transition into the federal prison system. The juvenile inmates, who were housed in their own unit, read books, discussed them with visiting authors, and wrote essays and poems that were eventually published in a glossy magazine that was sold in coffee shops throughout the city. The group also produced a lively newsletter.

  Anna’s book club was less formal, did not involve writing, and was strictly a program to promote an appreciation of reading. She had no illusions that she was positively affecting the inmates’ lives as a group. But she wasn’t sure that she was failing to do that either. She hoped to reach someone. Maybe just one. Like many teachers and counselors, all she could do was try to pull someone through the keyhole in the end.

  She had chosen Of Mice and Men for this group of inmates, who were housed in the Gen Pop unit. It was a linear tale, cleanly told, and, with its overt symbolism, easily taught. She knew there would be much to discuss. The novel was too short to sustain a three-week read, and subsequently many of the men had read it twice.

  In picking the material, Anna had to remember that the inmates had varying degrees of education and intellect. A good many of them had not graduated high school. Most were inexperienced readers. Material that was difficult or dense could frustrate an inmate and permanently turn him off to reading. The Heart Is a Lonely Hunter had been notably unpopular. One inmate claimed that reading the McCullers novel had driven him to thoughts of suicide, and he was not entirely joking
.

  The men in orange jumpsuits sat in a circular arrangement of chairs, Anna a link in the circle. Among the group were Antonius Roberts, who had recently come out of the hole, Donnell, and Michael Hudson. The inmates held their paperback books in their hands or kept them on the floor beneath their chairs. Two armed guards were in the room in radio contact with additional security at all times, but the men in the book club were generally pleased to be there. Conflict was not on their minds.

  “WE SHOULD start,” said Anna.

  “Let’s have our minute,” said an inmate named Larry who was up on felony manslaughter charges and had recently given himself over to God.

  Most of them bowed their heads for a silent prayer. There were Muslims, a variety of Christians, some agnostics, and a few atheists in the room. Some closed their eyes, mouthed words, others just sat respectfully and waited out the silence. One of the guards said a personal prayer while the other kept watch.

  “Okay, then,” said Larry, and the session started.

  “Let’s begin with one of the questions on the reader’s guide,” said Anna. She had copied many of the questions from the Penguin edition in the back of the novel and added a few of her own. “Why does the book begin and end at the pond?”

  “It’s a nice place,” said Donnell. “Like, a perfect place. The way the writer describes it. Lennie like to go there because it’s a peaceful place. He can dream in that environment and shit.”

  “It’s like Eden,” said Larry. “In Genesis.”

  “It ain’t all perfect like it is in the Garden of Eden,” said Antonius. “Bad stuff happens there. In the end part, that little snake gets snatched out the water by that bird. Remember?”

  “That’s just nature,” said a heavy-lidded man who spoke very softly. “The strong survive. Just like on the streets.”

  “The very first line of the book,” said Anna, “places the setting a few miles south of Soledad. I think that the author locates it there intentionally. Soledad is the Spanish word for ‘solitude.’ Does anyone have any thoughts on what this means with regard to the novel?”

  “Like, solitary?” said Antonius. “I can speak on that. I just got out.”

  Some of the men chuckled.

  “Okay, Antonius,” said Anna. “Tell us how it was. If you don’t mind.”

  “I don’t mind.” Antonius, his arms folded, shrugged. “For me, solitary was fine. Peaceful. But yeah, some dudes can’t deal with it. It’s punishment, man. Supposed to be.”

  “In the book,” said Anna, “solitude is presented as a negative thing. Many of the characters, like Candy, Crooks, and Curley’s wife, talk about their profound sense of loneliness.”

  “Curley’s wife was a straight ho,” said Donnell.

  “She’s not getting any attention from her husband,” said Anna. “She talks about her dreams of being a movie star. In fact, most of the people in the book have dreams, like George and Lennie’s dream of a farm. And the dreams are unattainable.”

  “She still a trick,” said Donnell. “I knew when she said to Lennie ‘Stroke my hair,’ he was gonna break that bitch’s neck. ’Scuse me, Anna.”

  “No, you’re onto something. How’d you know?”

  “’Cause in the very beginning of the book, Lennie killed that mouse the same way, by pettin it too hard. Same with the puppy.”

  “Exactly right,” said Anna. “John Steinbeck was telling you ahead of time what was going to happen by using a literary device called foreshadowing.”

  The group grew quiet. She had gotten too professorial. The men didn’t want to be schooled or talked down to. They wanted to discuss the characters and the story.

  “That’s the same way with Curley’s dog,” said Antonius, breaking the silence.

  “Foreshadowing,” said Michael, looking at Anna with a smile in his eyes.

  “Right,” said Antonius. “They took that dog out and shot him. But really, they did that dog a favor, since the rest of his life was gonna be misery. The same way George had to shoot Lennie in the end of the book.”

  “Lennie was a re-tard,” said the man with the heavy-lidded eyes. “George couldn’t carry him no more.”

  “Nah,” said Antonius. “George did that thing for Lennie because Lennie was his boy. ’Cause Curley was gonna string Lennie up and lynch his ass. Or, if Lennie did go to prison for killin that trick, he wouldn’t make it in San Quentin or wherever they’d put him out there in California, back in the old days.”

  “Lennie couldn’t jail,” said Larry.

  “Exactly,” said Antonius.

  “You’re saying,” said Anna, “that George killed Lennie out of friendship.”

  “Yeah.”

  “That’s what this book is about,” said Michael. “Friendship and brotherhood. Companionship. The author means to say that people together are better than they are alone.”

  “Does anyone say that outright in the novel?” said Anna.

  “Sure.” Michael opened his book to where he had dog-eared a page. “I marked a spot. It’s in that chapter when Crooks is talking to Lennie in Crooks’s room. Can I read it?”

  “Go ahead.”

  Michael squinted as he read. “‘“A guy needs somebody—to be near him. A guy goes nuts if he ain’t got nobody. Don’t make no difference who the guy is, long’s he’s with you. I tell ya,” he cried, “I tell ya a guy gets too lonely an’ he gets sick.”’”

  “For a friend, though,” said Antonius, “Lennie be buggin the shit out of George.”

  “‘Tell me about the rabbits, George,’” said Donnell, in his idea of Lennie’s voice.

  “‘Which way did they go, George, which way did they go?’” said the heavy-lidded one, and then, when no one laughed, embarrassed, he said, “Ain’t none a’ y’all seen that old cartoon?”

  “They gonna get a farm,” said Antonius, picking up on the vibe. “‘An’ live off the fatta the lan’!’”

  Now many of the inmates laughed.

  “All right.” Anna picked up an article that she had printed out down in the workroom. “Let me read something to you that John Steinbeck wrote himself. It might have been from his acceptance speech when he won the Pulitzer Prize, or it might be from his journals. I don’t remember which. I got it off of Wikipedia, to be honest with you. But for me it sort of speaks to this book and his worldview in general.”

  “Read it,” said Michael, leaning forward.

  “Okay,” said Anna, and she began. “‘In every bit of honest writing in the world there is a base theme. Try to understand men, if you understand each other you will be kind to each other. Knowing a man well never leads to hate and almost always leads to love. There are shorter means, many of them. There is writing promoting social change, writing punishing injustice, writing in celebration of heroism, but always that base theme. Try to understand each other.’”

  “What if someone step to you and try to take you for bad?” said Donnell. “What you supposed to do then? Understand their ass?”

  “Turn the other cheek,” said Larry. “It’s right there in the Bible.”

  “An eye for an eye is in there too,” said Donnell.

  “The man is saying, try to do what’s right,” said Michael. “Reach out to other people. Try.”

  The conversation drifted to money and fame, as it tended to do.

  “Was Steinbeck rich?” said Antonius.

  “I’m sure he was,” said Anna. “His books were huge bestsellers. Many of them were made into movies and plays.”

  “I bet he got mad respect too,” said Donnell.

  “Not from everyone,” said Anna. “Many academics don’t really care for his work. They think it’s too simplistic and obvious.”

  “You mean people could relate to it too easy.”

  “Well, yes. He was what’s called a populist author. He wrote books that could be read and appreciated by the people he was writing about.”

  “This book was deep,” said the soft-spoken man.

&nbs
p; “Seriously, that was, like, the best chapter-book you ever gave us,” said Donnell.

  “Thank you, Miss Anna.”

  “You’re very welcome,” she said.

  As they filed out of the chapel, Antonius tugged on Michael Hudson’s jumpsuit.

  “Yo, Hudson.”

  “What you want?”

  “Got a message from our boy Phil Ornazian.”

  “Yeah?”

  “He said to tell you everything’s gonna be cool.”

  “That’s it?”

  “Short and to the point,” said Antonius. “Looks like you about to go uptown.”

  Michael said nothing further to Antonius. He went on his way.

  IN HIS cell that night, lying in the upper bunk, which he had taken for its better light, Michael Hudson read a Western novel that Anna had chosen for him. It was one of two full-length novels that were bound in the same book, part of a series called Elmore Leonard’s Western Roundup. This was volume 3. He had been reading with urgency, as it was almost time for lights-out. He had just finished the novel, and its last line had given him the chills. It had jacked him up to the degree that he had gone back to the first page with the intention of reading the book again.

  The name of the novel was Valdez Is Coming. Michael reread its first two paragraphs:

  Picture the ground rising on the east side of the pasture with scrub trees thick on the slope and pines higher up. This is where everybody was. Not all in one place but scattered in small groups, about a dozen men in the scrub, the front line, the shooters who couldn’t just stand around. They’d fire at the shack when they felt like it, or when Mr. Tanner passed the word, they would all fire at once.

  Others were up in the pines and on the road that ran along the crest of the hill, some three hundred yards from the shack across the pasture. Those watching made bets whether the man in the shack would give himself up or get shot first.

  Michael liked how the author set everything up real fast, from jump. Like, without telling you too many details, you knew right away what was happening. It gave you a feeling and made you choose a side. There is a man in a shack, and he is outnumbered and outgunned, and there are many men on the high ground, shooting down on the man who is alone, and there’s a man in charge named Tanner who is giving the orders. Straight on, because most folks side with the underdog, you are hoping that someone helps the man in the shack and stops this man Tanner.