CHAPTER XXXV
14:00
The OIC of the Intake at the Beacon was a short, chubby Black woman called... Kyrzinski. She looked at Bolo's transfer details then scrutinized him. By her name, he already knew what kind of Black woman she was. Most of the time you came across a Black person with an obviously European name, they had married into a White family in order to try to get ahead in life. Her husband was probably some type of deputy superintendent of administration, security or any of the other half dozen deputy superintendent positions. He could also be a captain or other such highly placed individual. He was the classic marry-a-Black-girl-as-a-trophy-piece-just-so-I- can-say-I-have-a-Black-wife-while-still-being-racist-to-the-bone White supremacist. But now the Black girl was built like a buoy after maybe one or, at most, two kids. Ain't no Black person ever in the history of Black people (and that's since the beginning of time), ever wake up and say they would name themselves "Kyrzinski."
If this sanitation face having ass bitch wanted to be a Kyrzinski, more power to her, but Bolo knew exactly what kind of Oreo she was: the get to know you and betray you type, betraying her people at a whim as the token, "accepted," Black at their whitebread events. Shit, anybody could betray you, let alone a prison official. She said nothing to him as he disinterestedly stood in front of the Intake OIC with his arms crossed, half a dozen turtles in a semicircle around him. A few more minutes of waiting around and both of his former housing unit escorts beckoned him to follow them. A few of the "turtles" went with them; the escorts were themselves being escorted.
"Mr. Johnson," one of his escorts said as they walked out of the Intake area and past the clinic again. "You've made yourself quite the celebrity in a very short period of time." Bolo shrugged, unwilling to be drawn into a nugatory and fruitless conversation. They came to the T junction they had turned left at before, but this time they turned right. There was an OIC station similar to the one in Intake, an open rectangle but far less "lavish." "But I think you'll be fine," the escort continued.
They passed by the Law Library and Special Housing Unit (SHU), a sort of "timeout" for detainees who engaged in violent acts. The SHU was also known as the "box," named after its super draconian forerunner: concrete squares located outside detention or prison facilities into which detainees and/or prisoners were thrown for punitive purposes, even in one hundred degree weather. The concrete boxes were eventually deemed "cruel and unusual" and destroyed. But you had to build holding cells for those people in lockup who happened to be more violent than and posed a threat to other people in lockup. So the modern "Box" was created: simply a cell in a housing unit full of cells where dozens of violent (or perhaps, mentally unstable) prisoners or detainees were temporarily housed and fed, as punishment, twenty-three hours a day. Time in the box could range from five days and up.
Before being taken out into the corridor, the corridor was cleared of other detainees because, when the guards took you out of the box, you had to be handcuffed behind your back, with the guard holding onto your cuffs or onto your wrists. Guards used to take detainees in the Box out in somewhat crowded hallways, a recipe for disaster. An enemy of the person in the Box being escorted would just attack him, regardless of the consequences later, even if it meant ending up in the selfsame Box as the enemy you just tried to attack. So the rules changed quick, for the protection of the detainees being escorted to and from the Box. The Box was solitary confinement, and the mental and psychological trauma suffered by repeat offenders seemed to make one worse, especially in the long run.
Outside and to their right was the small, enclosed recreation square. Coming to another T junction and OIC, they turned left and proceeded a short distance, past 6 Block and 8 Block, until they came to a cul-de-sac, which presented a door to the left (with "10 Block" written over it) and a door to the right (with "8 Block" written over it). Both doors had thin vertical windows through which you could observe a somewhat large OIC booth. The escort knocked on the door at left and a heavy clack resounded as the door was opened electronically.
They stepped inside and realized that there was an open area between the entrance doors and a small space between them and the OIC. Dorms 13, 15, 17 and 19 were large, overspaced areas. These dorms, all other dorms, were known as "Blocks." Both types of dorms were double-tiered, but the housing Blocks outside of 13, 15, 17 and 19 were quite a bit smaller and also held fewer people. The OIC station for both 10 and 8 Blocks was a semicircular affair. The left of the semicircle faced towards 10 Block and inside the OIC booth were usually four corrections officer, two to attend to and for each Block to either side. The OIC was also raised up from the floor a few stairs, so everyone in the Blocks had to look up into the thick OIC glass while talking to the c.o. There was a metal meshlike circle the size of a fist towards the bottom of the glass so guard and detainee could hear each other well.
In the bubble, there were numbered buttons and other switches below the level of the glass, the former which corresponded with the number of cells that were in the block. There were fifty cells in each block. The cells at bottom left on up a small way numbered from 1 to 10. There was a staircase towards the back of the housing unit block, under which were three cells: 11 to 13. From the back to the front on the bottom right were cells numbered 14 to 25. At the second and top tier were cells number 26 to 35 on the left, front to back, 36 to 38 in the middle at the top of the back wall, then the block was complete from the back to the front at top right with cells 40 to 50. Each of the doors were electronically controlled and, due to high incidents of violence, anytime detainees were out, their doors had to be closed, except for House Gang, a small group of detainees who were assigned specific tasks to keep the dorm clean and were paid seven to twelve dollars every week.
House Gang included one of the highest sought after positions: food server. As a food server, your was almost never locked, because of the work and work schedule. You came out earlier and stayed out later than other detainees to watch t.v., help pass contraband or other such things (like "pussy books" [pornographic magazines] or drugs or cigarettes. Food servers fed the detainees thrice a day and decided who got extra rations (besides themselves, naturally). But it wasnt all fun - as a food server you had to keep track of detainees with allergies to chicken or fish, those detainees who had signed up for "Special Diet" and were to receive halal or kosher or meat only or other such specialty meals, for certain detainees who just didnt eat anything. A list of what had come came with the food cart, mentioning who ate what in each housing unit. Every housing unit had an antechamber like space such as the one Bolo and his escorts waited in and it was there that trays and other food requirements were counted and accounted for. At the last T junction before arriving at 10 Block, right next to the OIC, there was a white door that led into a large food preparation area, known as the "Mess Hall," wherein all the facility's food was almost constantly being prepared, heated, reheated, packaged, unpackaged, refrigerated, defrosted, loaded and/or unloaded into large mobile food carts with wheels that doubled as food warmers. Mess Hall workers would wheel the food carts to different parts of the facility, delivering one such cart for every dorm and block. In the blocks, the food was delivered already in the trays and the food server had to make sure everyone received their portion.
The majority of detainees ate normal food in normal rations but the amount was still small. In the open dorms, they received their cooked food in large aluminum pans that were distributed on trays each detainee stood in line to receive. Each housing unit had small serving areas from which food was served. Detainees, like sentenced convicts (be they inmates of the local jail or State prisoners), were allowed to go to Commissary (the canteen, so to speak) approximately twice a month, sometimes thrice, depending on how one's name fell in the schedule or when ones housing unit was to go. Without Commissary, detainees and prisoners would likely not starve to death but would definitely be malnourished. With Commissary, however, the scanty and, quite frankly, tasteless, Mess Hall meals could be supplemented by personally bought foodstuffs, or the person also had the luxury of choosing to miss a meal for a fifteen minutes phone call. There were always people willing to sell phone calls for seven or fifteen minutes in order to eat.
Bolo most definitely could afford to miss meals and also needed to make phone calls but he had to get to Commissary quick, fast and in a hurry. Everyone had options of using a seven or fifteen minute phone call, the cost of which would be deducted from your Commissary account, after which you wouldn't be able to make a call again for several hours. If you didn't have any money in your account, you were afforded one free six minute call a day, or was it a week? Something of the sort. Bolo couldn't rightly remember but it was something of that nature. In any event, he wasn't worried about calls or food or clothes - he was worried about this damn case and what Nut had done.
Bolo's escort officers and one of the three turtles piled into the OIC, chattering about this and that, cracking jokes among themselves. The other two turtles just stood around, sort of hovering about Bolo.
The right side of the OIC semicircle mirrored the left - it was just facing another block, another collection of different, yet not so different, detainees. What had brought them to detention was the bravery to do something that society generally deemed "criminal," some that the law said "Thou shalt not do." Robbing a bank, beating someone up, robbing someone or a store, even murder was, of course, criminal, but it was better than being a child molester or a baby and woman killer or beater. Concerning the latter, other detainees just waited to put in that work; whether as an initiation or as a hit, or personal grudge, once someone was labeled "food" by particularly the United Blood Nation, at some point, someone wanting to be a Blood, or other such gang member (because being labeled food was not just the ability nor prerogative of the UBN), would play "razor tag" with the nigga face. Whether in Commissary, or at the Chapel, or coming off the visit, or at the Clinic, or on an outside trip, or at Court, or even on the visit - once your head was on a platter, it simply remained for it to be served.
They must have been talking about him because Bolo noticed a sudden drop in voices. Plus, they were all looking at him. He saw the escort who had tried talking to him trying to mimic some of the moves he had seen Bolo do in Dorm 13. After a few more minutes, the front door to 8 Block clacked open. A dark-skinned nigga with finely twisted dreadlocks stepped out looking behind him.
"Aye, drama!" the dread nigga exclaimed but without a West Indian accent. Bolo frowned. Something... There was something very familiar about this dread nigga. The dread nigga had been looking backwards when he walked out of 8 Block, likely called for the visit. When he looked directly at Bolo, both men froze.
"Cormega?" Bolo asked in disbelief. "Omega Red?" It took a few more seconds before Cormega recognized him.
"You'll live a long life, homie. I was just thinking about you and your uncle a li'l while ago." Bolo's uncle, more popularly known as Phoenix Shine, aka P-Shine, had done time with Cormega and went to see him after being released, taking Bolo along for the ride several times, just because. And that "just because" was now standing him in great stead. Cormega was UBN royalty, known everywhere and by everyone who counted. He was an old O.G. of the Gangster Killer Bloods (GKB, also known as "G-Shine" or the "Shines"). The Shines had been created strictly as a bounty hunter set, and everyone in that set had, at one time or another, been a monster, including P-Shine, his dad's younger brother, who always wound up getting into some shit. The G-Shines was a subfamily comparable to one of the original street gangs in L.A. called the Bounty Hunters.
In the first six months of its creation, Gangster Killer Bloods became the main reason the Latin Kings sued for peace. Given the green light to start the east coast version of the Bounty Hunter set by O.G. Mac (along with O.G. Deadeye, both of whom had been among the originals who formed the UBN and its first set, NineTrey Gangsters [NTG]), a Blood called Hitman and another called Corey King (both widely known as "Julius and Sonny, ain't a damn thing funny") took the creation of G-Shine to another level. The first few sets created on the east coast on Rikers Island were: NTG, GKB, Blood Stone Villains (BSV), Sex Money Murder (SMM), One Eight Trey Gangsters (183), and Valentines Bloods (Valentines). Sex Money Murder was the brainchild of the infamous and incredible Pistol Pete, a man who, if he had beef with you, he would literally hold court at high noon and in broad daylight in order to smoke you. Which is exactly what he was doing life in prison for.
Bolo and Cormega dapped and hugged a long time. The tension the guards and turtles felt there quickly dissipated. Cormega was one of the realest niggas and Bolo and his uncle would periodically send him money orders when Cormega was locked up up north. He held Bolo at arm's length with the ill cheesy smile, nodding.
"But, why are you here, big homie?" Cormega waved it off, looking away and looking angry. "Some silly ass parole violation, Blood. This parole officer heffa tryna send me back up to do the rest of my time on parole there."
"Chill, big bro, you got this. They gotta hold the parole hearing, provide evidence and all that other bullshit, right?" He was nodding. "You just make sure your evidence is more convincing, is all." Cormega dapped Bolo again.
"Oh, fo sho! I did all that already. Had my family come and testify on my behalf, bring check stubs, all that good shit. Even brought the pastor." They both laughed. "You know how that go!" Bolo nodded, thinking how smart this nigga Mega was, and how one's environment can play a major role in setting you up for the win or the fall.
"Lemme get to the v.i., bro. We gon' bick it later. All I'm waiting on now is Parole's decision." Cormega was about giving Bolo a normal dap but turned it to the Blood salute, high and proud.
"Mega Man, you know I'm retired, Blood-"
"Yeah, yeah, yeah and a bottle o' rum. But that was for me and old times sake. When I get back, I'ma holla at the homies and tell 'em you retired, but you more than bulletproof, dog. You real family." Bolo hugged Cormega and the OIC of 8 Block gave him a Visit Pass, which (as with several other different kinds of passes for different destinations outside of the housing area) allowed a detainee to move out of his housing unit by himself to the Visit, which every OIC must check for the Movement Passes of every detainee in the corridor by himself. Cormega left for the Visit and now, a crowd of detainees from both blocks swarmed around the entry of the block to see who the new nigga was that the Big Shine homeboy knew. They put Bolo in cell 35, the last cell upstairs on the left, a larger than average cell for it being in the corner. The OIC directed him to his cell. He told the A Officer who, for the morning shift, was permanent officer for 10 Block, that he needed an Emergency Commissary Buy. The officer, a short Black woman with an ass like a dump truck was a big, round and juicy middle aged thang by the name of Ms. Jackson. She wore specs and was pretty as fuck, too. She came up to his solar plexus.
"Oh, okay. We just went to the store a few days ago. Maybe I can get you there Monday."
"That would be dope, Ms. Johnson. Hey, you know you wearing my name, right?"
"Nah, junior, you wearng my name."
"Well it's okay. We can wear each other." Ms. Johnson cocked an eyebrow attitudidinously at him.
"You so fresh," she said.
"You don't even know the half." She smiled pensively and walked with him to the front of 10 Block.
"Open me up, McKinney," Ms. Jackson called out to her thin, completely ironing board-flat coworker in the bubble, who moved to buzz open the front door, where a small group of detainees had gathered.
"Open me up, huh? I see me and you are gonna get along great." Ms. Johnson laughed and playfully swatted him on the shoulder as they both walked into the block.
