Keeplock: A Novel of Crime by Stephen Solomita

loud with the wrong guy, you end up under the concrete. So I give up and go back and find this cabdriver walkin’ around the mixer like he fuckin’ owns it. He sees me and right away starts gibberin’.
    “‘You must to please move. I have passenger in cab. You cannot block street.’”
    “A fuckin’ foreign nigger, like from India or some shit. Mouthin’ off to me like he was an American.
    “‘Back the cab down the street,’ I tell him, which is the logical thing ta do, right? But not this asshole. He keeps on with his bullshit. ‘You must move truck. You must move truck.’ I mean why don’t they fuckin’ learn to speak English if they wanna come here? It gave me a headache just listenin’ to him.
    “Meanwhile I tried to do the right thing. I tried to walk away, but the asshole grabbed my arm and I had ta teach him a lesson about American manners. It wasn’t much of a beatin’, because he didn’t fight back and my heart wasn’t in it, but he got a pretty deep cut on top of his head when he fell back into the mixer.
    “Then the pigs come and like they take his side. I mean the whole thing woulda been nothin’ if the pigs was white, but, my luck, I get a nigger and a spic. Right away, they start writin’ shit down in their little notebooks and I know I’m in fuckin’ trouble. ‘But officer,’ I tell ’em, real polite, ‘it was self-defense. He attacked me and I had to do some-thin’, didn’t I?’ Which is true, because he put his hands on me. How could I let a fuckin’ nigger put his hands on me and not do somethin’ about it?
    “‘You are under arrest,’ the nigger pig says. ‘You have the right to remain silent …’
    “‘Are you fuckin’ crazy?’ I says.
    “‘Don’t give us no trouble. Just get in the car.’
    “I’m standin’ next to the mixer with the door open while this bullshit is happenin’. Like anybody who’s got any fuckin’ sense, I had a little somethin’ stashed under the seat for emergencies. In my case it was a sawed-off pool cue which I whipped out and landed on the pig’s head before he even thought about goin’ for his .38. Like one second the nigger’s standin’ there with the cuffs in his hand and the next second he’s lyin’ in the street with his head split open. I’m so mad that I’m ready to off the spic, too, but he gets his gun out before I can make a move on him, so we end up facin’ off. He ain’t gonna shoot me as long as I don’t jump and I’m not gonna jump while he’s got the fuckin’ piece in his hand. Then about a dozen cops pull up and somebody sprays some shit in my face. You wouldn’t believe the fuckin’ beatin’ they gave me when they got me back in the precinct.”
    Unfortunately for Tony, the sentencing judge was also black, and despite Tony’s clean record, gave him eighteen months to think about his attitude. Tony was slated to do his time in a minimum-security institution, but he had problems adjusting to the fact that whites are a minority in the prison system. At that time, all state prisoners were shipped up to H Block in Cortlandt where they were sorted out and sent to various institutions, depending on the length of their sentences and the nature of their crimes. Tony began his incarceration by shanking a black prisoner who tried to take his commissary and by assaulting the two C.O.’s who stepped in to pull him off his victim. The C.O.’s don’t really care about prisoners stabbing other prisoners unless the stabbing takes place right in front of them. They shipped Tony to the Albany County Jail to await trial for these new crimes. In the course of that incarceration, he descended into madness.
    Experienced cons like myself, who’ve spent most of their lives in institutions of one kind or another, know that hard time gets harder if you try to fight your way through it. You have to establish yourself, but once you’ve settled in, it’s best to keep as low a profile as possible. Tony had no experience