rage. How could women do this to one another? She had thought that prison had hardened her, but when she awoke in the morning, her face was stained with dried tears.
She was determined not to show her feelings to Ernestine. Tracy asked casually, “What were the Rice Krispies for?”
“That’s our early warnin’ system. If the guards try sneakin’ up on us, we kin hear ‘em comin’.”
Tracy soon learned why inmates referred to a term in the penitentiary as “going to college.” Prison was an educational experience, but what the prisoners learned was unorthodox.
The prison was filled with experts in every conceivable type of crime. They exchanged methods of grifting, shoplifting, and rolling drunks. They brought one another up to date on badger games and exchanged information on snitches and undercover cops.
In the recreation yard one morning, Tracy listened to an older inmate give a seminar on pickpocketing to a fascinated young group.
“The real pros come from Colombia. They got a school in Bogotá, called the school of the ten bells, where you pay twenty-five hundred bucks to learn to be a pickpocket. They hang a dummy from the ceilin’, dressed in a suit with ten pockets, filled with money and jewelry.”
“What’s the gimmick?”
“The gimmick is that each pocket has a bell on it. You don’t graduate till you kin empty every damn pocket without ringin’ the bell.”
Lola sighed, “I used to go with a guy who walked through crowds dressed in an overcoat, with both his hands out in the open, while he picked everybody’s pockets like crazy.”
“How the hell could he do that?”
“The right hand was a dummy. He slipped his real hand through a slit in the coat and picked his way through pockets and wallets and purses.”
In the recreation room the education continued.
“I like the locker-key rip-off,” a veteran said. “You hang around a railroad station till you see a little old lady tryin’ to lift a suitcase or a big package into one a them lockers. You put it in for her and hand her the key. Only it’s the key to an empty locker. When she leaves, you empty her locker and split.”
In the yard another afternoon, two inmates convicted of prostitution and possession of cocaine were talking to a new arrival, a pretty young girl who looked no more than seventeen.
“No wonder you got busted, honey,” one of the older women scolded. “Before you talk price to a John, you gotta pat him down to make sure he ain’t carryin’ a gun, and never tell him what you’re gonna do for him. Make him tell you what he wants. Then if he turns out to be a cop, it’s entrapment, see?”
The other pro added, “Yeah. And always look at their hands. If a trick says he’s a workin’ man, see if his hands are rough. That’s the tip-off. A lot of plainclothes cops wear workin’ men’s outfits, but when it comes to their hands, they forget, so their hands are smooth.”
Time went neither slowly nor quickly. It was simply time. Tracy though of St. Augustine’s aphorism: “What is time? If no one asks me, I know. But if I have to explain it, I do not know.”
The routine of the prison never varied:
4:40 A.M.
Warning bell
4:45 A.M.
Rise and dress
5:00 A.M.
Breakfast
5:30 A.M.
Return to cell
5:55 A.M.
Warning bell
6:00 A.M.
Work detail lineup
10:00 A.M.
Exercise yard
10:30 A.M.
Lunch
11:00 A.M.
Work detail lineup
3:30 P.M.
Supper
4:00 P.M.
Return to cell
5:00 P.M.
Recreation room
6:00 P.M.
Return to cell
8:45 P.M.
Warning bell
9:00 P.M.
Lights out
The rules were inflexible. All inmates had to go to meals, and no talking was permitted in the lines. No more than five cosmetic items could be kept in the small cell lockers. Beds had to be made prior to breakfast and kept neat during the day.
The penitentiary had a music all its own: the clanging bells, shuffle of feet on cement, slamming iron doors, day whispers and night screams…the hoarse crackle of the guards’ walkie-talkies, the clash of trays
She was determined not to show her feelings to Ernestine. Tracy asked casually, “What were the Rice Krispies for?”
“That’s our early warnin’ system. If the guards try sneakin’ up on us, we kin hear ‘em comin’.”
Tracy soon learned why inmates referred to a term in the penitentiary as “going to college.” Prison was an educational experience, but what the prisoners learned was unorthodox.
The prison was filled with experts in every conceivable type of crime. They exchanged methods of grifting, shoplifting, and rolling drunks. They brought one another up to date on badger games and exchanged information on snitches and undercover cops.
In the recreation yard one morning, Tracy listened to an older inmate give a seminar on pickpocketing to a fascinated young group.
“The real pros come from Colombia. They got a school in Bogotá, called the school of the ten bells, where you pay twenty-five hundred bucks to learn to be a pickpocket. They hang a dummy from the ceilin’, dressed in a suit with ten pockets, filled with money and jewelry.”
“What’s the gimmick?”
“The gimmick is that each pocket has a bell on it. You don’t graduate till you kin empty every damn pocket without ringin’ the bell.”
Lola sighed, “I used to go with a guy who walked through crowds dressed in an overcoat, with both his hands out in the open, while he picked everybody’s pockets like crazy.”
“How the hell could he do that?”
“The right hand was a dummy. He slipped his real hand through a slit in the coat and picked his way through pockets and wallets and purses.”
In the recreation room the education continued.
“I like the locker-key rip-off,” a veteran said. “You hang around a railroad station till you see a little old lady tryin’ to lift a suitcase or a big package into one a them lockers. You put it in for her and hand her the key. Only it’s the key to an empty locker. When she leaves, you empty her locker and split.”
In the yard another afternoon, two inmates convicted of prostitution and possession of cocaine were talking to a new arrival, a pretty young girl who looked no more than seventeen.
“No wonder you got busted, honey,” one of the older women scolded. “Before you talk price to a John, you gotta pat him down to make sure he ain’t carryin’ a gun, and never tell him what you’re gonna do for him. Make him tell you what he wants. Then if he turns out to be a cop, it’s entrapment, see?”
The other pro added, “Yeah. And always look at their hands. If a trick says he’s a workin’ man, see if his hands are rough. That’s the tip-off. A lot of plainclothes cops wear workin’ men’s outfits, but when it comes to their hands, they forget, so their hands are smooth.”
Time went neither slowly nor quickly. It was simply time. Tracy though of St. Augustine’s aphorism: “What is time? If no one asks me, I know. But if I have to explain it, I do not know.”
The routine of the prison never varied:
4:40 A.M.
Warning bell
4:45 A.M.
Rise and dress
5:00 A.M.
Breakfast
5:30 A.M.
Return to cell
5:55 A.M.
Warning bell
6:00 A.M.
Work detail lineup
10:00 A.M.
Exercise yard
10:30 A.M.
Lunch
11:00 A.M.
Work detail lineup
3:30 P.M.
Supper
4:00 P.M.
Return to cell
5:00 P.M.
Recreation room
6:00 P.M.
Return to cell
8:45 P.M.
Warning bell
9:00 P.M.
Lights out
The rules were inflexible. All inmates had to go to meals, and no talking was permitted in the lines. No more than five cosmetic items could be kept in the small cell lockers. Beds had to be made prior to breakfast and kept neat during the day.
The penitentiary had a music all its own: the clanging bells, shuffle of feet on cement, slamming iron doors, day whispers and night screams…the hoarse crackle of the guards’ walkie-talkies, the clash of trays
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