By Joshua Ryan

One of the officers carried my briefcase, and the other one led me by the arm. When we got to the top of the hill there was a woman jogging through the park. She had a cell phone on her someplace and she was talking into the air, the way they do, like they’re crazy people, and when she saw us she jumped back and put her hand on her chest like she was having a seizure. She looked at me like I was raping her at that very moment. Then she ran off, fast. No one had ever reacted to me like that before.

There was a black police car parked at the curb. One of the officers put his hand on my head and guided me into the back seat. His hand was gentle, in the way that hands are when they don’t want to touch something that they have to touch. The car door slammed. In 20 minutes, they were leading me into the Justice Center downtown.

I was surprised that they never read me my rights, but then I remembered — they didn’t have to do that anymore, now that the courts had approved all the new anticrime laws. There had been a conversation about that. I recalled it. A conversation in a bar. It was the night I first met Joey Madison. He was coming on pretty strong, so I told him, “You’d better back off. Otherwise, a cop is gonna show up and read you your rights.” “They don’t do that anymore,” he said, putting his arm around my shoulder. “They just drag you off to jail.” We both laughed.

The cops took me into the building and put me in a room. It wasn’t special. There weren’t any bars. There weren’t any windows, either. There was just a wooden table and a bunch of wooden chairs. Then they took the cuffs off. That felt good. By that time they had looked through my wallet, so they were calling me Mr. Rossetti. “Mr. Rossetti,” the officer said, “you are being charged with one count of willful and felonious trespass in a prison zone, one count of aggravated felonious sexual activity (prison zone), one count of enticing a convict to escape imprisonment, and one count of felonious impersonation of a convict. If you do not have a lawyer, a lawyer will be provided to assist you. You are also permitted one telephone call.”

He handed me his cell phone, and I dialed my number at home. Joey didn’t answer, so I left a message. About an hour later, the lawyer showed up. He was a short guy with a bald head. He shook my hand and sat down. “Gimme a minute,” he said. “They just handed me this.”   He started reading from a printout he was carrying. Then he looked up and told me that under the Omnibus Crime and Justice Reform Act, backed by the Mandatory Sentence Standards Revision Act, and the Laws for the Protection of Penal Institutions, which were part of the Universal Penal Reform Act, I was eligible for one count of a Class C Felony, five years in prison, one count of a Class B Felony, ten years in prison, one count of a Class A Felony, fifteen years in prison, and one other count of a Class A Felony — the “enticing” charge — twenty years in prison, the sentences to be served consecutively. “That means one after another,” he explained. “You’re facing fifty years in prison.”

There was no question of my guilt — they had a video. The tape made it perfectly clear. I had been “conducting a romance with Convict Cleveland,” and I had “formed a scheme to procure his escape.” Convict Cleveland would dress in my clothes, and he would walk away; then I would dress in Convict Cleveland’s clothes, long enough to allow him to escape without any guards noticing the absence of a convict working along the fence. The guards had searched the surroundings and discovered a new set of jogging clothes hidden in a gulley. The clothes were exactly my size.

“But those aren’t my clothes!” I said. “Somebody must have . . .”

The lawyer gave me a strange look, and continued. “And you might have gotten away with it, if they hadn’t already been watching you. There’s only one reason why a free man would want to consort with a convict, and I guess you showed what it is. It’s obvious that you’d want to help your boyfriend escape.”

“But I . . . I mean, we . . . I mean, I wasn’t there to help him escape. I was just there to . . . talk to him . . .”

“Watch the tape, Jason. Then you tell me how you think a jury would react to that story.” He went to the door and made a gesture, and an officer came in with a TV cart. He plugged in the equipment and inserted a tape. “Just the last few minutes,” the lawyer said, and the officer fast-forwarded. The picture was jerky while that was going on, but I could see what was happening. A man was walking down a trail, carrying a briefcase. His head moved back and forth, like he was looking for something. Then another man came to meet him. They hugged. Their heads went back and forth for a while; then the first one went over the fence and they started taking off their clothes. “OK, slow it down, please.” The tape slowed, just in time for a closeup of Jake putting on my tie. The camera must have been hidden someplace way up the hill, but the telephoto lens worked perfectly. You could see every movement when I got down on my knees and sucked Jake off. The whole thing probably took 5 minutes.

“All right, officer,” the lawyer said. “I think he’s seen enough.” Without even glancing at me, the officer pushed his cartful of evidence out of the room. For a while, I was too embarrassed to talk. It was hard to believe that that person on the screen was me. When I first met Joey, I used to be ashamed of the way he would camp and carry on in public. I was still ashamed of him. But there I was on the screen, sucking Jake’s dick.

“What can I do?” I said.

“Plead guilty,” the lawyer said, “and I can get you twenty years to life.”

“Twenty years to life!”

“With good behavior, you might get out sooner than twenty years. . .. You haven’t got any priors, have you? So you’d certainly be eligible. Of course, we don’t see many early releases these days. And because you’d fall into the lifer category, you’d always be considered a Maximum Security, Special Treatment convict. If you ever messed up, ever went crazy and hit a prison guard or something, it would automatically turn into life without possibility of parole. But I don’t think that you’re that kind of guy, are you, Jason? No, I didn’t think so. So, if you just keep your nose clean, there will still be hope. That’s the best I can do for you, Jason.”

I didn’t say anything. 20 years. 50 years. Life. Special Treatment. Maximum Security. Me, hitting a prison guard. Why would I hit a prison guard? I didn’t even know any prison guards. I couldn’t shake the feeling that it was all a dream.

“Take it or leave it,” he said. “Look, Jason. The Assistant District Attorney wants to take care of this thing right away. This afternoon. If you don’t sign a guilty plea, if you make her wait and take it to trial, she’s gonna get you 50 years, flat. There’s no question, after the jury gets through looking at that tape — not to mention the newspapers! Oh man. Can you imagine what they’re gonna do with THIS case! And the cable TV stations! You’ll be known all over the country. Most ADA’s wouldn’t mind the notoriety. But this one’s a little more conservative. And between you and me, there is one good reason why she’s willing to go easy on you, and that’s the fact that this is a Class A Felony case, and if she gets it off her desk TODAY, which it looks like she can, considering the evidence, the outcome will go in THIS year’s statistics — and so far, believe me, her stats haven’t looked very good this year. Your case will give her that extra percentage point.”

Percentage point? What would she do with a percentage point? I thought about the report I’d laid on Mr. Dietrich’s desk last week. “Our favorability index climbed a full percentage point during the third quarter of this year.” Maybe things like that happened in the dream world, too.

“Where . . . where would I live?”

“Live? Oh, I see. You mean, where will you be housed, once you enter the correctional system. Good question, Jason. You know, it used to be, no one could tell where an offender was, from one day to the next. I mean, they were moving those guys all over the state. They couldn’t make up their minds whether they wanted all the young cons together, or all the Class A Felonies together, or all the guys in some rehab program together. It was very expensive. Also bad from a policy point of view. There’s no point in busing a convict around so he can get into this rehab program and that rehab program, if he’s probably never gonna get out of prison anyhow! A lot of it, of course, was the fault of the sentencing policies. If a guy commits a bunch of Class A’s and you keep sending him up for one year, two years, three years at a time, what are you doing except bouncing him from one institution to another? Eh? He might be a guy like you, 22, 23 years of age, and here he is, sharing a dorm with a lot of Class D kids, maybe, just because they’re all the same age. And statistics show that even before the new laws came along, a male who committed two Class A’s before the age of 25 had a 76% probability of spending at least 30 years in prison. So why not just bite the bullet and send him NOW where he’s gonna end up ANYWAY? That’s the way the experts saw it; that’s where the research pointed. And finally the lawmakers listened. Rare, eh? They almost never do. So what you have now . . . Oh, sorry, Jason. I guess I got carried away. What was your question?”

Yes. It was definitely a dream. I’d gone from one dream to another. It didn’t make any difference what I did. Somebody in the dream would decide it all.

“Where will I live?”

“Right. Let me find that chart . . . I know I should have it memorized, now that they’ve started sending me these Class A cases. . . .You don’t need to worry about these things when you’ve got a misdemeanor case . . .” He burrowed into his briefcase and took out a three-ring notebook. “Let’s see . . . Probation . . . Parole . . . Community service . . . Class D, Class C . . . Right! Here it is. Class A Felony Offenders . . . . Let’s see . . . Demographic Data, Sentencing Provisions, Commitment Procedures . . . Housing! So in your case, what we have is a Class A Offender . . . Lifer . . . Southern District . . . Any physical problems, Jason?”

“What?”

“You’re fit? You’re in good health?”

“Yes. I’m in good health.”

“You look like you work out some.”

“Some.”

“So, Class A, Lifer, Southern District, Labor Ready . . . You’re in luck, young man! Your permanent address will be: Southern Regional Longterm Correctional Facility, 12538 N. Meridian Road, Durant.”

“Durant!”

“That’s right. Much more convenient than some of those facilities up in the mountains or out in the valley or something. This way, if you have any visitors . . . Do you have any family, Jason?”

“Uh . . . no, not really.”   Durant!

“Too bad. Well, if you did have any, it would be a lot easier . . . ” He looked at his watch. “Well, Jason, what will it be? I’m sorry I couldn’t do anything better for you, but the worst part of cases like this, I find, is the delay. It’s always better to know for sure. And the way it is now — you can probably be on the bus to Durant this very afternoon. All you need to do is sign.”

I signed.

The first form was a Plea to Enter a Verdict of Guilty. The second form was a Permanent Waiver of All Rights of Appeal and Readjustment of Sentence. The third form was a Certificate of Satisfaction for Court-Appointed Attorney Services. I signed them all, and the lawyer put them in a brown paper envelope, and closed the flap.

“As I’m sure you know,” he said, “persons given life sentences are now required to transfer all property to some other party. The state doesn’t allow convicts to manage their holdings while they’re incarcerated, and it’s certainly not prepared to manage their holdings for them. So the holdings have to be surrendered. Are you listening, Jason?”

“Uh . . . Yes, I’m listening.”

“So, to whom do you wish to transfer your possessions? This is the Deed of Transfer form . . .”

I couldn’t think of anyone. I didn’t really have any family. I didn’t really have any friends. Then I remembered Joey. I didn’t know whether he’d gotten the message I’d left. Either he hadn’t gotten it or he’d decided not to come. No, he wouldn’t do that. He’d come, all right, if he got the message. Probably he was out buying stuff for our New Years Eve party. Whatever. He might as well get my things. It’s not like there was a lot to get. And I’d treated him pretty bad, there at the end.

“Make it out to Joey . . . Joseph Mansfield. M-A-N-S- . . .”

 

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