“Vacaville? Fucking warden.”
“The warden!” Ristelli scoffed at the notion. “He and the guards are there to handle emergencies. To maintain order. They’re like the government. Except they have much less control than the President and the Congress. No taxes, no regulations. None that matter, anyway. They don’t care what you do, so long as you keep it quiet. Day to day it’s cons who run the prisons. There are those who think a man’s freer inside than out in the world.”
“You sound like an old lifer.”
Bemused, Ristelli hung the cigarette from his lower lip, lit up and let smoke flow out from his mouth and nostrils.
“Fuck you know about it, anyway?” I said. “You’re a free man.”
“You haven’t been listening.”
“I know I should be hanging on your every goddamn word. Just sometimes it gets a little deep, y’know.” I pinched the coal off the tip of the Camel and pocketed the butt. “What about the death penalty, man? If we’re running things, how come we let ’em do that shit?”
“Murderers and the innocent,” Ristelli said. “The system tolerates neither.”
It seemed I understood these words, but I could not abide the thought that Ristelli’s bullshit was getting to me, and instead of pursuing the matter, I told him I had things to do and returned to my cell.
I had been working on a series of portraits in charcoal and pastel that depicted my fellow students in contemplative poses, their brutish faces transfigured by the consideration of some painterly problem, and the next week after class, when Ristelli reviewed my progress, he made mention of the fact that I had neglected to include their tattoos. Arms and necks inscribed with barbed wire bracelets, lightning bolts, swastikas, dragons, madonnas, skulls; faces etched with Old English script and dripping with black tears—in my drawings they were unadorned, the muscles cleanly rendered so as not to detract from the fraudulent saintliness I was attempting to convey. Ristelli asked what I was trying for, and I said, “It’s a joke, man. I’m turning these mutts into philosopher-kings.”
“Royalty have been known to wear tattoos. The kings of Samoa, for instance.”
“Whatever.”
“You don’t like tattoos?”
“I’d sooner put a bone through my nose.”
Ristelli began unbuttoning his shirt. “See what you think of this one.”
“That’s okay,” I said, suspecting now Ristelli’s interest in my talent had been prelude to a homosexual seduction; but he was already laying bare his bony chest. Just above his right nipple, a bit off-center, was a glowing valentine heart, pale rose, with a gold banner entangling its pointy base, and on the banner were words etched in dark blue: The Heart Of The Law. The colors were so soft and pure, the design so simple, it seemed—despite its contrast to Ristelli’s pallid skin—a natural thing, as if chance had arranged certain inborn discolorations into a comprehensible pattern; but at the moment, I was less aware of its artistic virtues than of the message it bore, words that brought to mind what Ristelli had told me a few days before.
“The heart of the law,” I said. “This mean you done crime? You’re a criminal?”
“You might say I do nothing else.”
“Oh, yeah! You’re one of the evil masters. Where’d you get the tattoo?”
“A place called Diamond Bar.”
The only Diamond Bar I’d heard of was a section of LA populated mainly by Asians, but Ristelli told me it was also the name of a prison in northern California where he had spent a number of years. He claimed to be among the few ever to leave the place.
“It’s unlikely you’ve met anyone who’s done time there,” he said. “Until now, that is. Not many are aware of its existence.”
“So it’s a supermax? Like Pelican Bay? The hell you do to get put someplace like that?”
“I was a fool. Like you, stupidity was my crime. But I was no longer a fool when I left Diamond Bar.”
There was in his voice an evangelical tremor, as if he were hearkening back to the memory of god and not a prison cell. I’d come to realize he was a strange sort, and I wondered if the reason he had been released might be due to some instability developed during his sentence. He started to button his shirt, and I studied the tattoo again.
“Doesn’t look like a jailhouse tat… ’least none I ever saw,” I said. “Doesn’t even look like ink, the colors are so clean.”
“The colors come from within,” Ristelli said with the pious aplomb of a preacher quoting a soothing text. “There are no jails.”
That conversation stayed with me. If Ristelli was not certifiably a whacko, I assumed he was well along the road; yet while he had given me no concrete information about Diamond Bar, the commingling of passion and firmness in his voice when he spoke of the place seemed evidence not of an unbalanced mind but of profound calm, as if it arose from a pivotal certainty bred in a quieter emotional climate than were most prison-bred fanaticisms. I believed everything he said was intended to produce an effect, but his motives did not concern me. The idea that he was trying to manipulate me for whatever purpose implied that he needed something from me, and this being the case, I thought it might be an opportune time to make my needs known to him.
I assumed that Pork understood how the relationship between Ristelli and me was developing. To discourage him from lashing out at me, I hired a large and scarily violent felon by the name of Rudy Wismer to watch my back in the yard, at meals, and on the block, paying for his services with a supply of the X-rated Japanese comics that were his sexual candy. I felt confident that Wismer’s reputation would give Pork pause—my bodyguard’s most recent victim, a bouncer in a Sacramento night club, had testified at trial wearing a mask that disguised the ongoing reconstruction of his facial features; but on the Wednesday following our discussion of tattoos, Ristelli took sick midway through class and was forced to seek medical attention, leaving Pork and me alone in the art room, the one place where Wismer could not accompany me. We went about our cleaning chores in different quarters of the room; we did not speak, but I was aware of his growing anger, and when finally, without overt warning, he assaulted me, I eluded his initial rush and made for the door, only to find it locked and two guards grinning at me through the safety glass.
Pork caught hold of my collar, but I twisted away, and for a minute or so I darted and ducked and feinted as he lumbered after me, splintering easels, scattering palettes and brushes, tromping tubes of paint, overturning file cabinets. Before long, every obstacle in the room had been flattened and, winded, I allowed myself to be cornered against the sink. Pork advanced on me, his arms outspread, swollen cheeks reddened by exertion, huffing like a hog in heat. I prepared for a last and likely ineffective resistance, certain that I was about to take a significant beating. Then, as Pork lunged, his front foot skidded in the paint oozing from a crushed tube of cadmium orange, sending him pitching forward, coming in too low; at the same time, I brought my knee up, intending to strike his groin but landing squarely on his face. I felt his teeth go and heard the cartilage in his nose snap. Moaning, he rolled onto his back. Blood bubbled from his nostrils and mouth, matted his beard. I ignored the guards, who now were shouting and fumbling for their keys, and, acting out of a cold, pragmatic fury, I stood over Pork and smashed his kneecaps with my heel, ensuring that for the remainder of his prison life he would occupy a substantially diminished rank in the food chain. When the guards burst into the room, feeling charmed, blessed by chance, immune to fate, I said, “You assholes betting on this? Did I cost you money? I fucking hope so!” Then I dropped to the floor and curled into a ball and waited for their sticks to come singing through the air.