Death of a Pharaoh Read online

  The lead guard stopped in front of a cell then turned to face me.

  “Welcome to your new home, boy!” he announced with a sarcastic smile.

  The door opened and I stepped inside after a nudge from the second guard’s rifle butt in the small of my back. I would never forget the sound of the door closing and locking that first time. It had the same finality as the judge’s gavel after he passed sentence. It was gloomy inside; someone had hung a frayed pair of boxers over the light bulb to cut the glare. There was a pair of feet at the end of the lower bunk attached to two white muscular legs, but the top mattress hid the rest of the occupant. I stood for a moment while my eyes adjusted to the light, holding the cardboard box that contained all the personal belongings they allowed me to bring. It didn’t weigh much. I was at a loss for what to do next.

  “What’s your name, fish?” said a voice out of the darkness. It sounded young yet old at the same time. I wondered if prison did that to you.

  “My friends call me Ryan.”

  “There are no friends on the inside,” he assured me.

  “Ryan James Murphy.”

  “Must be Irish,” he assumed. “You sound smart.”

  “Private school,” I replied defensively but instantly regretted giving him the information.

  “Well, well, we’ve got ourselves an educated fish here!” he laughed. “Y’all sound whiter than me.”

  The bed creaked as the legs swung to the floor but I still couldn’t see my new cellmate.

  “What ya do, rape a classmate or something?”

  “No!”

  “Forget to file your tax return?”

  “Manslaughter, I killed a man with a taxi.”

  “Was it your taxi?”

  “No I stole it.”

  “Did you want to kill him?”

  “He was about to molest a young boy.”

  “You killed a chester and they still put your sorry ass in here?”

  “Too many priors.”

  “Priors for stealing taxis or for running over pedophiles?”

  I was trying to think of a good answer when my cellmate stood up. He was young, maybe a year older than I was. White with sandy colored short hair, blue eyes and that All American look that suggested playing high-school football formed part of his DNA. He reminded me of a young Matt Damon. We were about the same height but this guy had massive shoulders and arms. Still, I knew instantly that behind the swagger there was a scared teenager trying to be tough.

  “You’re black.” He sounded surprised. “You had me fooled.”

  I didn’t have a response for that one.

  “I’m Zach,” he introduced himself but didn’t offer his hand. He motioned for me to turn around. I obliged shuffling 360 degrees clockwise until I looked him in the eye again.

  He whistled. “You’ll drive those booty bandits crazy as soon as they lay eyes on your sweet money!”

  I didn’t understand but suspected it couldn’t be good.

  “You’ll be some nigger’s bitch before lights out tomorrow, if you ain’t smart about it,” he clarified.

  That I understood.

  “Can you fight, Oreo?”

  I ignored the implied insult, “Black belt in karate.” Just a small lie.

  “First lesson, never broadcast any personal information. No good putting your shit in the street, keep it to yourself.”

  ‘Yessir.”

  “What’s your bid?”

  I frowned, confused by the prison slang.

  “How many years are you in for?” Zach translated.

  “Five to ten,” I informed him. “What about you?”

  “Fifteen to twenty. Two counts of attempted murder. I stabbed my stepfather three times in the stomach but the son of a bitch wouldn’t die. That got me sent to juvie. I tried again two years later but he knocked me out with a baseball bat before I could finish the job.”

  “He probably deserved it!”

  “What the fuck do you know about anything, asshole!”

  I already knew that he tried to kill him to protect his mother from being beaten within an inch of her life. I also picked up that she refused to testify against her husband at the trial, condemning her eldest son to a long term in jail.

  “I’m sorry about your mother.”

  Zach stared at me as if he wondered how I knew. He relaxed his alpha-male posture just a bit.

  “Make yourself at home but don’t get too comfortable. I’d bet a crate of bones you’ll be in the hole or you’ll cut up before the week’s out. You’ll never last in here,” he affirmed.

  I vowed to prove him wrong.

  “These are the rules while you are my cellie. He started to count them off on his fingers. “Keep the place clean. Leaving a mess will get the cell turned out by the boss. No running off at the mouth. I ain’t interested in your life, how horny you are or how much you miss your mommy. You better not snore and if you jerk-off, make it quick and no groaning like a bitch. Got it!”

  “I’ll only moan when I’m thinking about you sucking my dick,” I shot back.

  Zach tensed and I thought he might hit me. I was ready. Instead he laughed.

  “You’re learning, never back down and give as good as you get. They respect that in here. Bitch-up and you are one dead nigger. Understand!”

  I nodded that I did.

  “You can put your things over there,” he pointed to a shelf on the wall. “Hurry up, its lights out soon and morning comes early for me.”

  I didn’t sleep well that first night. Half the dreams in the cellblock overflowed with violence. They depicted rapes in the shower, guys being stabbed and a few guards taking bribes for favors. If they didn’t dream of hurting someone else, they were having nightmares about being the victims in other peoples’ psychotic laced REM. I wondered how anyone stayed sane in there. Just below me, Zach focused his thoughts on his younger brother and prayed that he would forgive him for abandoning him to fend for himself. He was still awake.

  “Your brother understands,” I assured him.

  Zach didn’t respond and within a few moments, I finally drifted to sleep.

  Morning did come early. It was still dark when the lights blared on at six. I stood in front of the door as they briefed me at Downstate. I vaguely remembered hearing Zach leave an hour earlier to go to work in the kitchen.

  Just before the door opened, he’d whispered. “They’ll bait you today just to see what you’re made of. Fight back and don’t even think of running! I’ll watch your back.”

  He was right. It happened in the prison yard just after 4 pm. I stood alone, trying as best I could to remain inconspicuous when a brother the size of a Mack truck and wearing a white doorag over his hair pushed against me almost knocking me over.

  I spun around in a flash. Half the inmates and most of the guards watched to see what I would do. I took a small step forward to adjust my balance then clocked the guy with a hard karate kick to his jaw. I knew I broke it. My victim fell backwards and didn’t get up but three of his buddies, even bigger than he was, stepped forward shoulder to shoulder, so close they looked like a locomotive. I knew that even my martial arts training wouldn’t save me against such odds. Just then I felt someone on my left. I turned to see Zach.

  “Leave my cellie alone,” he demanded. ”Take care of your friend. He’ll be eating through a straw for a few weeks.”

  “Never took you for someone who liked dark meat, fish!” the biggest of the trio observed.

  “One look at him pissing last night and it was love at first sight,” Zach announced, “so back off, he’s my punk.”

  They stared at each other for a few seconds then two of them picked up their friend and they all retreated.

  None of the guards even tried to intervene. Everyone knew what had just happened and I had passed the first test. I even had some muscle in my corner.

  Safe in our cell, I thanked Zach for having my back.

  “I didn’t do it for you,” he sneered, �
�I don’t want no endless parade of fish coming through here,” he explained then added, “and don’t believe any of that about you being my bitch! If you so much as look at my ass sideways, I’ll rip your head off!”

  “Anyone ever tell you that you’re beautiful when you’re angry?”

  Zach scowled for two seconds then laughed. He was a different person when he smiled.

  “You did OK today. You earned respect. Might even make it more than a week.”

  Chapter Seven

  Before the end of my first month in jail, Zach and I were best friends. Some people thought he’d punked me but everyone in the cells around us knew that we were just two scared young guys looking out for each other. We even showered together so no one could ambush either of us. Lord knows they tried. After work in the laundry, I helped Zach study for his high school equivalency exam.

  One day as we slogged through Catcher in the Rye, Zach suddenly asked me a question. He blurted it out with all the urgency that suggested he’d been thinking about it for the last hour or so.

  “Can you read my mind?”

  I hesitated while I considered whether to tell the truth. I decided it was time.

  “I have a gift; ever since I was a young kid,” I told him. “I can see what people are thinking. Kinda like a movie; especially if they have real bad thoughts. If someone is close or if I touch ‘em, I can pick up on their internal conversation. That’s how I knew about your little brother.”

  Zach considered my answer for a moment, trying to wrap his head around the concept.

  “That’s how you were certain that chester was going to hurt the boy?”

  “Yeah, I went careening around a corner and bumped into him. I saw the boy’s face and recognized him from the news. I knew that instant the man was going to rape and kill him. I had to do something.”

  “So you stole a taxi and ran him over?”

  “No, I borrowed the taxi and rammed it into his garage door so the police would come and find the boy. I didn’t know that he had gone into the garage from inside. I never wanted to kill him.”

  “Do you know what I dream about at night?”

  “About me fucking your lily white ass!” I lied.

  “I do not,” Zach gasped in genuine horror, “tell me you’re joking!” he pleaded.

  I laughed. “I try to block it out to give you some privacy. This cell is small enough. What I can say is that I know you well. You’re an alright dude and you don’t deserve to be in here but to tell you the truth, I’m glad that you are.”

  I couldn’t see Zach in the bunk underneath but I knew that he had his face all screwed up like when he talked to his kid brother on the phone and tried not to cry. I smiled and fell asleep. Like every night, I dreamt that I was in the lake. The water was black and I was drowning. Her face came to me in the darkness. I struggled in vain to reach her. Just before I passed out, I woke up. The nightmares were getting more frequent and I wondered what that meant.

  My parents came to visit every Sunday. I was always happy to see them but what really cheered me up was the last weekend in May when my friends from school showed. They drove up together in Tony’s car. Alex even removed his nail polish for the occasion. Nobody had ever been in jail, except Tony and he asked the most pointed questions. We talked all about school and I told them that I was tutoring my cellmate. Alex wanted to know everything about Zach and he seemed real disappointed that we hadn’t started a torrid prison romance. I think he had fantasized about it for weeks. He referred to it as ‘situational sex’.

  Susan’s father agreed to let her go to Europe over the summer holidays so she could visit museums and see more mummies. She’d scored a position as a volunteer at an archeological dig in Pompeii. It wasn’t Egypt but she still might find a dead body under all the volcanic ash. Alex had a gig to do makeup at a trendy summer theatre in Westport, Connecticut. Tony planned to drive to Texas to visit family. Only I knew that he actually wanted to spend the summer with Manuel who was doing great in school. I was happy for all of them. They were getting on with their lives and I only regretted that I couldn’t be there to share it with them. They promised to come back in time for my seventeenth birthday in September.

  As the weeks dragged on, life in prison took on a mind-numbing routine. The brothers made a few attempts to get me to join a gang and Zach bruised some ribs in a fight in the prison yard but mostly we managed to keep each other safe in the insanity that is adult prison for two teenagers. We depended on each other for survival; we didn’t exactly have many options.

  Even the guards were a rosary of human wretchedness; many of them frustrated cop wannabes with little education and even fewer scruples. The inmates quickly learned who could be bought, who would kite a letter in exchange for sex and who helped smuggle in drugs and contraband. One correctional officer broke the mold. His badge read, Ethan Walters. He looked about twenty-eight, a real money dude for a white guy. He started at Sullivan about a week after I arrived. Zach noticed that he seemed to watch me a lot and joked that he must have the hots for me. I started to keep an eye on him and it did seem that he paid me lots of attention, especially in the prison yard or the common area. For that reason, I was a bit wary when he walked up to me one day.

  “My name is Ethan.”

  “Mine’s Ryan,” I told him, “but I ain’t no penny licker,” I added just in case he came looking for a good time. After a few months, I had lost most of my private school diction and now sounded more like someone raised in the Bronx.

  “Whoa, don’t get me wrong. Just being friendly,” he assured me. “My brother-in-law knows your father and he asked me to keep an eye on you,” he explained. “But from what I see you don’t need my help.”

  “I can take care of myself,” I shot back even though it felt good to know that my Dad was looking out for me.

  “He asked me to give you something. I left it in your crib under the pillow. It’s a cellphone with a prepaid card. There is coverage in your cell. I already checked. Your parents will keep adding credit as needed. Keep it hidden and don’t let anyone see you using it,” he warned me. “It might come in handy in an emergency.”

  “Thanks!” I responded, feeling bad I had doubted him.

  “If you need anything else, let me know.”

  He patted me on the back then walked away.

  I knew he was a good person as soon as he touched me but it took some time to convince Zach who was always wary of the boss. He was a bit happier after I let him use my new phone to call his little brother.

  After that encounter, I started to watch Ethan in action. It was hard to believe that he was a rookie CO. I’d be walking around during recreation and he’d have me controlled from the other side of the yard. Whenever things started to look ugly, he would suddenly appear at my side like magic. He had a sixth sense or something and I wondered if it came from military training. To be honest, it felt like I had a bodyguard. The only thing missing was Whitney Houston tickling her tonsils on the loudspeakers.

  Despite his interest, he kept his distance from me probably to keep the chatter down from the rest of the inmates or the other guards. That made it difficult for me to read his thoughts. Once I managed to sneak up behind him unawares and I was able to get inside his head for a moment. He was thinking about how proud his father would have been had he lived long enough to know that he was now the fifth generation of the men in his family to serve. I wondered if his father and grandfather had been CO’s? It didn’t seem likely; CO’s were not like firefighters and policemen, it wasn’t a profession that tended to run in the family. Maybe they’d all been in the military. I barely knew the man standing six feet in front of me but I was positive he would take a bullet for me and it was strangely comforting.

  Ethan suddenly sensed that someone was behind him and quickly turned around. When he saw me, an unspoken phrase formed in his head as if he had lost control for a second.

  “My Lord!” he exclaimed in silence just before the door slam
med shut again. It sounded old-fashioned like in that butler series on TV. I wondered what it meant.

  A week later, Ethan arranged a transfer for Zach to the prison laundry where I worked. Until then he’d slaved in the kitchen but that meant he had to get up much earlier than me. It was hot and monotonous but the labor earned each of us $20 dollars a month in our inmate account. My parents always made sure that I had enough funds for all the necessities. The state of New York didn’t supply things like toothpaste, deodorant or candy bars. The commissary, with thousands of items, represented an important privilege for the inmates. Zach only ever received a weekly letter from his little brother but never any money from his Mom. No one had even visited him since I arrived. He protested whenever I used my credit to buy him something but deep down he was grateful.

  Diego was one of the longest serving inmates at Sullivan. He came from Peru and claimed he was descended from Incan royalty. He spoke Quechua, a language from the Andes region. Everyone thought he had a special way about him. He was in for life without the possibility of parole.

  Twenty years ago, he came to the United States on a visit, scored some fake ID and eventually got a job as a gardener with a wealthy Peruvian family. One Sunday, he brought two automatic pistols to the mansion, walked up to the family during breakfast then calmly shot each of them saving the father for the last. Both parents and three children murdered in cold blood. He called 911 and waited for the police to arrive.

  Luckily, New York didn’t have the death penalty or he would have fried years ago. The strangest thing is that no one believed that a kind gentle man like him could have committed such a gruesome crime.