Jailbird's Heaven 8/10
“Get him to stop,” Bushido said, sliding a folded, blank sheet across the table, a ruse to keep people from listening to closely to their conversation. It was lunch time. Sonnenschein had just gotten back from a visitation, the same beautiful, black-haired man that came to see him monthly. It only cemented Bushido’s belief in Sonnenschein’s lack of connection in the guards’ minds with the troublemakers. They would have cut his visitors short if they wanted to punish him. “That’s what the guards are afraid of.”
“What?” Sonnenschein asked, spearing a greasy vegetable shoot. It looked wholly unappetizing to Bushido but Sonnenschein ate it with apparent relish.
“You wanted me to find a way to keep your men here,” Bushido said. “I’m telling you, you have a problem and I’m giving you a way to fix it.
“Really.” Sonnenschein’s eyebrows rose, his expression unconcerned.
“Yes. Whoever this guy is, he’s causing problems for you. I can’t tell you what he’s doing but he’s skeeving the guards out. Tell the warden it’s him and they’ll leave Jo and Werner alone.”
Sonnenschein chewed, looking thoughtful before swallowing.
“Who?”
Bushido ground his teeth.
“I don’t know his name. I could point him out, though.”
“If you don’t know his name, then how do you know he’s causing problems?”
“He is,” Bushido insisted, anger rising. “It’s him, definitely. Get rid of him and the problem’s solved.” He described his friend from the yard in as much detail as he could remember. There wasn’t an ounce of recognition in Sonnenschein’s face as he continued to eat.
Then…
“No,” Sonnenschein said.
“What?” Bushido asked, caught completely off guard. What did he mean, “no”? “I just solved your problem and you’re going to tell me no?”
The men standing behind Timo bristled. Their leader raised a hand and they calmed barely, shooting dirty looks at Bushido, reminding him that he wasn’t one of them.
“No,” Timo repeated firmly. “He can’t be moved. His presence here is…required. You will just have to find another solution.”
“Another-!” Bushido bit out, leaning hard into the table, his hands clenching into fists as he snarled into Timo’s face. “There isn’t another solution, you pig-headed-”
In an instant, the guards were on Bushido, dragging him spitting from the table. He cursed at Sonnenschein until long after he was left in his cell, a single image remaining in his head of his “friend” at a table far across the room, smiling.
ØØØ
Bushido had no one to talk to who would understand his anger and frustration. He was this close to freedom and he had been thwarted by what? Some mysterious asshole who spent his time making his fellows lives miserable.
Sonnenschein was protecting him, that much was incontestable. Why was the question and whether that protection was more important to Sonnenschein than Werner and Jo’s security.
There was no knock, not a scrap of sound, and so it took Bushido awhile to realize anyone was there.
“Oh, goody,” he muttered. “Just the man I wanted to see.”
“Cut the crap,” the other man snapped.
“Aren’t you being pleasant today.” Bushido didn’t feel like doing anything Yard-man wanted. They weren’t friends in the least. They were on exactly opposite sides of this battlefield. “Here’s a question: what the fuck is your name?”
“Why? You going to tattle on me?” he asked, angling his head. “Big man you are, Aniseed.”
“Actually,” Bushido said, smiling coldly. “That’s exactly what I was going to do. There’s just one problem: no one wants to tell me who you are. I don’t understand. Maybe I’m too stupid or, you know what, maybe I’m too smart for all this. I don’t get why anyone would protect a pathetic, self-obsessed fucker like you.”
Yard-man sneered. It looked weirdly good on him, like his face had been made to broadcast scorn.
“Did anyone of them even do anything?” Bushido continued, taunting him. “Or was it just you all along, getting your jollies doing illicit stuff while your supposed friends suffered every time you got caught?”
“I never got caught!” Yard-man yelled back. “You don’t know what you’re talking about!”
“Then tell me this, man: what the hell are you doing? Why am I the one assigned watch duty for someone being punished for shit you did?”
Yard-man shook his head, holding his hands over his ears.
“That’s not it,” he said. “You don’t understand. It’s not like that.”
“Then what is it?” Bushido thundered, sitting up. His eyes flashed with anger. “What could possibly be going on in that head of yours to make you think this is right? Werner and Jo are going to be sent away because you won’t stop. Who next? When they’re gone and you’re still here, who’s going to suffer next? You’re not getting caught but the guards know you’re getting out at night. They know.”
“This is my life now. I stop doing this, everyone’s lives get worse!”
“You’re endangering your friends!” Bushido screamed. “Werner was in a cell surrounded by a bunch of horrible pricks for a week and where were you? You’re making things worse, not fucking better!”
“I’m making their lives more comfortable. Jan had cigarettes whenever he wants; Timo has notebooks and pens and a whole shitload of things you don’t even know about!”
“And in return they get days in solitary confinement. Sounds like a great deal to me,” Bushido said sarcastically.
Linke’s gaze flickered, something like uncertainty coming over him. It lasted for a moment and then it was gone.
“I need an escape, too.”
He sighed.
“You wanted my name. It’s Christian Linke. Most everyone calls me by my last name, even before I got in here.”
He looked off dreamily out Bushido’s slit of a window, remembering. Bushido resigned himself to another lengthy life story.
“I should have been brought in with them,” Linke began. “I helped them kill that woman but I ran off after we’d done it. None of us were supposed to get caught. It was so easy for the police to track the murder back to Timo. He’d covered his trail but once they found out what she’d been killed for, it was clear who had done it.”
“Your sister?” Bushido asked, feeling dread in his stomach.
“No,” Linke said. “She was too old and,” he twisted his lips, “smart to get hurt. Frederika Schmidt was a perverted freak. She needed to die. No one suspected her. She’d had a run in with the cops a year before, when a little girl disappeared but they never brought her in for it. I don’t know if she was involved with it but the police didn’t believe for a second it might be her. She’d been touching children for a long time. She volunteered at a school, always showed up for church, that sort of thing. You couldn’t look at her and tell she was a pedophile. I don’t think she would have ever been caught. Young, pretty, she just hadn’t found the “right man”.
“No one even suspected she wasn’t into men, that’s how good she was at hiding herself. She had boyfriends occasionally but never moved in with one. The only weird thing about her was that she owned her own home. She was such a nice lady.”
Linke shook his head sadly.
“You get the picture?” he asked, staring baldly into Bushido’s face. “She was never going to be caught and we weren’t the fucking Goonies.”
“The who?” Bushido asked, confused. Linke just waved him off.
“Doesn’t matter. She was a bad one and she was going to keep doing what she was doing until she died. We cut her reign short. I’m sure you’ve heard how.”
Bushido gulped.
“Yeah. It wasn’t pretty,” Linke said, kneeling. He rested his elbows on his thighs, steepling his hands together against his chin. “Blood spattered fucking everywhere. It was all over their clothes. Timo’s face…it was in his hair. The floor was slick with it.
“He wouldn’t betray us. Not a word. His reasons for the “grisly murder of a local sweetheart” were solid. They rocked the press when the investigation finally got underway. It was all him, Timo said, all him. Jan fought to be imprisoned.” Linke bit his lip and let out a gust of breath that stirred his long hair. “He knew he was guilty and he wanted to be punished. You wouldn’t understand that. I didn’t understand it at first.
Linke tapped his steepled fingers against his lips, then lowered them. “I tried to be on the outside. I visited them… It didn’t feel right. I didn’t feel guilty about Frederika, not at all. I wanted to help Timo and Jan. I didn’t want to leave them here when what we’d done had felt so right. No one else would have done it. She would have gone on forever if we didn’t stop her. Pedophiles are like that. They never change.
“Talking to them through glass or across a table wasn’t enough. I wanted to be here,” Linke pointed at the ground, emphasizing the word. “With them. I knew I could get them things. I could make their stays easier. But only if I was here, too.
“So I went to the nearest post office and shot a round into the ceiling. It was dramatic, bloodless, and it got me arrested immediately. I spouted out some shit about hating the system and needing to express myself, hinting heavily that next time would be much worse. The cops bought it and the court-appointed lawyer did nothing to stop them bringing me here.
“I did what I planned to do. I smuggled goods in for them and anyone who’d pay. Turned a nice profit from it. The thing they don’t tell you about prison, though, is how fucking boring it is. Your life has no purpose if your sentence is life.
“I became bored. Even reading started to become intolerable. When all you have to do is escape, you lose the desire to. I didn’t want to read about fantasy worlds anymore. I became restless and obsessive. My biggest desire was to see the whole jail. All of it: every hallway, every holding room, every chain-link fence and corner. After that it was learning every guard’s name. There was a time when I’d ask people their stories. When I’d heard every one, I found something else to learn. Now it’s just getting out, going back over places I know, trying to find something I haven’t seen before. I know this place backwards and forwards. You couldn’t understand; what was a game is now a necessity. If I don’t get out-“ Linke’s throat seized up. “…I don’t know what I’ll do.”
“What you’re doing isn’t helping them,” Bushido countered, gentler than before. “Jesus, man, you’re thinking about this all wrong. They didn’t want you in jail with them. You’re standing at the sidelines, watching while they suffer day in and day out, giving them what? Presents? That’s not what they want.
“They want you, Linke, not gifts. Spend time with them, do something other than this because I promise you, if you keep this up, you’ll cause them these problems all over again. I did my part. You won’t be blamed this time. But heed my warning: this will happen again and again if you don’t stop.”
“What do you want me to do? Timo doesn’t care about me; you’re his new pet.”
Bushido raised an eyebrow. That didn’t sound like whining, he thought sarcastically. Not at all. Could he just shove Linke into Timo’s cell next Sunday and tell them, have at it? Tempting but unlikely.
“If you’re gay for him, I have to tell you, I don’t have a claim. Kind of the opposite.”
“I am not “gay for him”,” Linke said, mimicking Bushido in a disparaging imitation of his voice. “I simply have no desire to be around him when you are there.”
“Great,” Bushido said. “Fantastic. Just don’t blame me for Sonnenschein not leaving me alone. It’s not exactly a lovey-dovey situation.”
“He likes you,” Linke offered, his mood brightening.
Bushido shuddered.
“Don’t remind me.”
