Louie and the Greek were cumbares, which to those who don’t know mafia talk means something like cousins. They both felt they had been put in the wrong prison. They weren’t the murderers or rapists or hopheads.
Greek was auto-theft. But not just any heap. He specialized in Cadillacs. The way it worked was you got the client say in New York and took his or her order; say for a spiffed ‘50 Cad. You get the specs, down to the color. Then you find the car in Miami. You collect it and make all the necessary adjustments down to the stamped registration on the motor. You then deliver the car to your customer, the new owner. It works both ways. New York cars for Miami, Miami cars for New York. You never made a switch in the same city. That was too sloppy. This is the kind of high-class crime Greek was into.
Louie was embezzlement. He doctored books clean and tidy. Nobody ever got hurt. Maybe a little dry and thirsty sometimes. But nobody got hurt. Greek and Louie had never had a gun in their hands. Not a knife or even a blackjack. And they counted on some time behind bars as part of the cost of business. They accepted that as their dues.
They were in a high-class prison, Danbury, where they expected to be, up in Connecticut. The Country Club of the Federal Prison System. It is a minimum-security prison—a prison you can be proud of. A prison you could boast about to your friends. A prison everybody would be jealous about. But Louie and Greek had gotten a little careless when they were on parole in New York City. And Danbury was crowded so they were sent upstate to a nowhere place called Napanoch, Eastern Correctional Institution. It was a maxi. Why put them in a maxi? Their crimes were nonviolent. Sure but they had long records. Greek since he was fifteen and Louie just about the same. And for that they had to go to a crummy State maxi? To a nowhere place in the mountains and forests with the crazy name of Napanoch? It wasn’t right.
At least they weren’t afraid of the hophead prisoners. Greek was big. Great upper body. V shaped. Strong like the ox, they all said. His skin was dark olive. He liked to go around bareback to show it off. His biceps like small bowling balls. His shoulders could smash down four inch-thick wooden doors. He was about five-feet-ten. And he was a ham. He would swing into a pose at any minute. And everybody feared and liked him all at the same time. And he wrote poetry all the time. His favorite poems came from the Reader’s Digest. But he knew his were better. His poems were the awfullest mush and they were long. He loved his own writing and he would corner anyone in sight, and his catch felt forced to painfully listen to Greek dramatically recite his poem. He would enjoy his poems so much and everybody enjoyed his enjoyment. Especially his crazy lines that he would take seriously. Lines like “the tickle of grass as it tickles your ass” and he would look up at you so dramatic-like that you didn’t know if he was serious or just giving you one.
He loved to corner a holy dude. Someone who made a big deal about going to church every Sunday and always receiving communion, like the holy chaplain clerks. (Louie was the head clerk of the office.) Greek would read his tickle-grass-poem and try to wheedle a smile out of the victim clerk’s holy face. And the victim knew it and tried to keep the smile back but sooner or later he broke down. And when he did Greek would shout, “You see, you smile. It’s true! It’s true! It does tickle your ass! It does! Hey everybody!” he says, calling everybody to tell them all about his amazing victory, “listen, the grass does tickle his holy ass. Look. Show them your ass. Show them your holy ass. Show them the tickle.” And he would walk away triumphantly.
Louie was different. He was a wop. He was small. Wiry. Strong. Smart. He was jovial, engaging, warmhearted, open, and trusting to his friends. He was a “good” Catholic. He was the one to round up all the “Eastside mobsters” he called them, for the choir on Sundays. Louie came from a tough section of Brooklyn: Williamsburg. He enjoyed telling everybody how he used to enjoy walking up the street to go to church and kick the little kids in the ass off of the sidewalk into the streets as he sauntered along, just to show them their place. He said nothing good ever came out of his neighborhood except for him. The rest were all thugs and mobsters. He used to tell about the graduating class of PS 54 where most of the kids played handball. So and so was knocked off. Shot with ten bullet holes in the streets. So and so is pulling fifty years in Leavenworth. So and so burned in the chair. So and so is pulling forty-five for kidnapping. So and so this and so and so that.
And Louie loved to argue. He loved to argue for the sport of it. He called himself the black Jesuit. He would argue about anything with anybody. And especially if he could get them mad. He liked to knock you down with his words. It was the volume and persistence that won out.
Louie was a bruglione. He loved to get people into an argument and mix them up so that they didn’t know what was up—a bruglione. Like take Slats. Slats was one of Louie’s pigeons. Slats was six-foot-three and stupid. So he was perfect for Louie. Louie would pick an argument with Slats about anything that happened to be floating around at the time. Then Louie would up the pace. He would look around and see if anybody else was listening and he would drag whoever was, by asking for their opinion. Then he would find the newcomer’s opinion worthless so he could set him straight. Now he had two people arguing with him. He would then turn and see if anybody else was there, listening. Most guys were wise to Louie and his ways and usually would flee for their lives when he got started.
But most of the guys fell into Louie’s traps because of pulling time. Everybody just everybody in prison no matter what the crime, no matter if they were set up as they usually claimed—everybody had the impossible job of pulling time. Of making time go by. Of making the years shrink into months. The months into days. Because most of the inmates in a maxi had long pulls—twenty or twenty-five or thirty-five years to life. And these years were long. And one of the most valuable things Louie’s crazy embroiled arguments did was kill time. And everybody knew it. And Louie knew it. Louie thought in a way he doing the other prisoners a service. And everybody happily bit the bullet. And Louie had them. And when they were all frothing he would quietly step back and admire his creation as an artist would. And he would end it all with a, “You bunch of shitheads arguing about nothing!” and happily walk away.
So everybody at Eastern liked Louie and Greek and everybody at Eastern feared Louie and Greek because they palled together. When the inmates saw Louie and Greek together they thought mafia. They looked mafia. Greek looked like Louie’s enforcer and so the inmates feared and respected Louie and Greek.
Louie and Greek basically despised the inmates at Eastern. They treated them as inferiors and the inmates acted as if they were when they were around Louie and Greek. All of this told them that Eastern was not the place for them. They should’ve been sent to Danbury. They applied for one transfer after another but were told that transfers across systems were not allowed. Once in the State Prison System there you stayed. You can’t move from State to Federal or Federal to State. But we were in Federal they argued. It’s only because there wasn’t space at Danbury that the Judge put us here. Our crimes are Federal. No matter. You're in the State system and that’s where you stay.
So the idea was born in the minds of Louie and Greek that they had to escape. After studying the place Louie thought that it was easy. So Louie began to make all the preparations for their escape.
The plan Louie came up with was simple. Every two months, like clockwork, the Ellenville Elks Club sent a group to the prison. About thirty people, all men of course. They came to visit to give gifts to provide a meal to go to church to show a movie to picnic. It was the Elk’s good deed and display of civic spirit. Louie said that it would be a simple thing just to waylay two of the Elks who were more or less their size. Take their clothes, take their place, and just walk out with the rest of them. What was in their favor was that the day officer who was in charge of security at the admission desk was Officer Robert Pistol. And Officer Pistol was not a pistol. He was a Councilman for the City of Ellenville. But being a Councilman didn’t pay anything so he also had a job working in the prison, like a third of the men and women of Napanoch. Ellenville, Warwarsing, and Kerhonkson, the four towns that surrounded the prison. Pistol loved being a politician, a Democrat no less, in a Republican town. He loved playing politician. Loved talking to everybody about the major achievement of his last year of service as councilman that was to put in a traffic light at a busy intersection. He managed to get the bill to the Council and the council agreed and there was the Pistol traffic light. The good thing for Louie was that Pistol was lame brained and easily distracted. True he had all incoming people to the prison go through the metal detector portals and he checked their IDs. And he stamped their wrists with invisible ink. But everything was done with sort of an air of distraction. When you looked at him while your were talking to him his eyes told you he was someplace else. And Louie liked that and thought Pistol was just perfect. Pistol was gold.
Louie managed to get to the front area quite a bit because he was the chief clerk of the Catholic Chaplain who had the best office after the Muslim Chaplain. So he had to come up front to deliver messages, to go to the zerox machine, to make copies of whatever was needed for church services, to go to the business office to order supplies for the Chaplain’s office.
Just as Louie expected, the Elks came. When the Elks tour took them to the church, Louie and Greek selected their prospects. Louie approached the two Elks and sheepishly told them the Catholic Chaplain asked if they would please join him in his office for some special gifts. The Elks gladly came. Once inside the office Louie and Greek subdued them, exchanged clothes, went through their pockets, found the keys to the locker units in the front where they had placed their valuables, and most importantly for Louie and Greek, their wallets, for they needed cash. They tied the two Elks up, stuffed handkerchiefs in their mouths, and sealed them with duct tape. It was now two thirty pm. The next count would take place at 4 pm. The Elks had to leave the prison by 3 pm. Louie then picked up the chaplain’s phone, dialed 009 and then the Chaplain’s special code number, to get an outside line and phoned Dick’s Taxi. He informed Dick’s that he was one of two Elks visiting the prison but they had another appointment and couldn’t get back on the bus so could a taxi please meet them in front of the visiting room of the prison at exactly 3 pm? Yessirree. And then seeing that the rest of the Elks had left the church, Louie and Greek carried the two Elks to an old fashioned confessional where the priest would be in the middle with a confessor on each side. The Elks were placed on each side.
At around 2:50 pm Louie and Greek joined the group in the front. They went to the lockers and opened their lockers and bless those Elks they left their wallets. Louie and Greek being high class crooks only took the cash the wallets had and left the rest of the contents: photos, and such.
Officer Pistol, standing on tiptoe, counted the Elks who were noisily swarming all over the front area and said, “OK guys see you in two months and don’t forget to vote Pistol.” And out they went including Louie and Greek. The taxi was there. They got in and Louie told the taxi to take them to the Kerhonkson Post Office. It was now 3:10 pm.
The next part of the plan was to get a car. Again Louie’s plan was simple. They had to get to the Kerhonkson Post Office. The Napanoch Post Office was closer, in fact it was just across the road from the prison, but it was in a shopping center complex and too dangerous for them. The Kerhonkson Post Office was perfect. It was on a cul-de-sac. And the cul-de-sac part was wooded with a trail that led into the woods. Louie figured that the best way to steal a car and the best place to steal a car was in front of a post office because a lot of daffy people would leave their car running, dash into the post office, pick up their mail from their PO box, or do their business, dash back to the car, and off they would go again. The idea was pure poetry. And Kerhonkson was a sleepy town and everybody felt safe. And that’s what Louie counted on. They waited and watched and bingo. The car offered to them was a Honda Pilot station wagon. Louie and Greek agreed this car would be perfect. They could drive all the way down to New Jersey in no time at all. They could even go as far down as Miami and disappear.
The woman who left the Pilot shut the door leaving the motor running. As soon as she entered the door of the post office Louie and Greek, who were talking together, as normal people do when they meet at the Post Office, got into the car and drove off. It was now 3:45 pm. Count would take place in fifteen minutes.
The entrance to the freeway highway 87 was close and easy. They got on it and headed south. Greek was ecstatic. He kept pumping his arm. You did it Louie! You did it Louie! You're a fuckin genius Louie! You're a fuckin genius Louie! And they laughed and laughed. Louie looked at the clock on the dash: 4 pm. Count time. Then they heard a wail.
“What’s that,” Louie asked? Greek turned around and looked in the back seat and saw a baby strapped in a seat-harness wailing away.
“Shit!” he said. “It’s a fuckin baby!”
“What” said Louie?
“A fuckin baby! A fuckin baby’s what I said. It’s a fuckin baby! Now what the hell do we do?”
To emphasize his point the baby obliged by raising the decibel level of wail to ear piercing levels.
“Jesus Christ!” said Louie, “What kind of a mother would leave her baby alone in a running car?”
“How do you know it was the mother?” said Greek.
“Of course it was the mother. No broad would do that to a baby that wasn’t hers.”
“So now we’re in for kidnapping,” said Greek.
“We’re no fucking kidnappers,” said Louie and he drove the Pilot off the next ramp off of the freeway. He parked. Greek found the registration in the glove compartment and with the maps there as well they found out where the owner of the car lived and how to get there.
The count, of course, was off. The prison was shut down and an intense search was made. The two bound Elks were found and Louie and Greek now were subject to a mandatory six-year stay in the hole or in a super-max once they were captured.
The alarm was sounded, search officers were sent into the woods with bloodhounds. But Louie and Greek were not to be found.
The house they were looking for was in Poughkeepsie on a street called Academy Street. They drove there. It was an old neighborhood that had received extensive urban renewal. The homes were old Victorian mansions. The gardens were all well kept up. They found the address, parked the car in front of the house and took the baby with them and rang the bell. No answer. So Greek, who was the expert here, picked the lock and they entered. First thing they did was find a bathroom and relieve themselves. Then they made a search for a baby room and found it. It even had a sink and a baby table with all the necessary tools hanging on side pockets of the table: powder, diapers, Vaseline, baby bottles, towels, and changes of baby clothes.
Louie got right down to business and unpacked the smelly baby. It was necessary. He dumped the dirty diaper into a hamper at the foot of the table and expertly washed the baby’s ass not forgetting all the necessary amenities like powder and Vaseline and such. He then took a bottle went to the enormous kitchen with an equally enormous frig took out a bottle of milk and filled the baby bottle. He then put some water into a small pot that was hanging over the stove on hooks, lit the burner under that pot, and placed the baby bottle in it to warm up the milk a little. He then removed the bottle, tested the warmth of the milk on his wrist, went over to the baby, picked her (for she was a she), handed her over to Greek with the bottle and said, “Here, feed her.”
Greek took the baby in his arms, took the bottle, sat down in a comfortable large sofa and began feeding the baby. And he loved it. He ooed and cooed while Louie looked at him in disgust and told him to shut the fuck up and just feed the baby and don’t drool on it.
“Now watta we do?” Asked Greek.
“Watta we do?” responded Louie, “We wait for the mother to get home. We give her hell, we give her the baby, we get something to eat, and we get outta here.”
“Wattaya mean we wait? What if she calls the cops?”
“She doesn’t cause we’ve got the baby.”
“What if the cops come with her after she reports the stolen car.”
“No cops in the world are that quick. The best she could do is call a friend or her husband to pick her up come straight home and then call the cops. But we’ll be waiting.”
Not for long. They heard the door open. Two women entered, just as Louie said.
They went into the living room and saw Louie standing looking at them and Greek with the baby holding a baby bottle of milk in its mouth.
“Nellie!” screamed one of the women.
“Who are you, the mother?” said Louie.
“Yes,” she said, “Nellie, Nellie. Is she all right?”
“What the fuck do you mean leaving that kid alone with the car running? Do you know I could make a citizen’s arrest on you for endangering the life of a baby not to mention criminal neglect? Do you realize what the fuck you did? Not only do you leave the car for anyone to steal you leave your fuckin baby in it so it can be kidnapped. Are you out of your fuckin mind?”
The mother was stunned. She looked at Louie and asked, “Who are you?”
“I’m the guy that stole your fuckin car and I didn’t appreciate finding a baby in it.”
“You stole the car and the baby and you're here with the car and the baby?”
“Yeah,” said Louie “but not for long. We’re hungry so whip up a couple sandwiches and coffee for us.”
“Yes sir,” said the other woman who went to the frig.
Louie and Greek, and the mother, who now held her baby, all sat at the kitchen table. Still in astonishment she said, “You stole the car and the baby and you’re here with the car and the baby? You brought back my baby! My little baby! And you took care of the baby? She has a fresh diaper on. Who changed the baby?”
“I did,” said Louie.
“You did?” said the mother. “You changed my baby?”
“Sandy,” said the other woman, “where are the cold cuts?”
“There’s a meat drawer on the top left of the frig, Roz.”
“And do you have any cheese, lettuce, tomato? I found the bread.”
“Lettuce, tomato in the drawer on the bottom left. Cheese on the top left in the meat drawer.”
“Got it,” said Roz.
Turning again to Louie and Greek, Sandy asked, “Who are you?”
“I’m Louie and this is Greek. We escaped from the prison at Napanoch and if we don’t get outta here soon we’ve got a six year date in the hole for the escape.”
“You mean they put you in solitary confinement for six years just for escaping?”
“That’s how they do it in New York. Have you called the cops yet?”
“No, I just called my husband, but he’s in court, he’s a lawyer, and couldn’t come so I called Roz and she came and he told me to call the police but I was so worried and so upset I just had to get back home first and we come and find the Pilot parked out in front, and you Greek and Nellie and—“clutching her breasts with the terrifying thought, “what are you going to do to us?”
“Shit!” said Louie, “Do we look like sex fiends?”
“Well you are criminals aren’t you? You just told us you escaped from Eastern. That’s a maximum security prison where they put all the hardened dangerous criminals.”
“Nawww,” said Louie. And Roz brought the sandwiches and coffee to the table and sat down joining the others. And Louie and Greek went on to explain how they were sent to Eastern because of overcrowding at Danbury where they should have gone and that they had to get out of Eastern because it would spoil their reputation and that they couldn’t get transferred because of the red tape and that they had to get outta here soon because there wasn’t much time.
“But you have time,” said Sandy. “Who knows you're here?”
“Naww, it’s too risky,” said Louie. “You phoned your husband. He’s a lawyer. That’s trouble. We’ve gotta go.”
So Greek and Louie finished their sandwiches, rose, said good buy to the ladies, went over to Nellie said good by to her, and Louie turned to Sandy and told her she’d better take good care of Nellie otherwise he’d be back, and they left.
Sandy and Roz went to the door saw Louie and Greek get into the car and waved as they drove off. Roz rushed back into the house and went to the phone. Sandy, after her shouted, “What are you doing”
“Doing,” said Roz, “I’m calling the police so they can stop them.”
“No,” said Sandy. “Put down that phone”
“Whattaya mean put down the phone? Watta you crazy or something?”
“No,” repeated Sandy. “Put down that phone. Don’t call the police.”
“Whattya mean? Why not call the police?”
“My baby,” said Sandy. “They brought me my baby, they took care of my baby.”
*
A few days later, Sandy got a letter. It was a plain envelope with no return address. It contained a ticket stub from Amos’s Parking Lot in Newark, New Jersey.
February 27, 2009
No comments:
Post a Comment