The Weight Read Online Free PDF Page A

understand that. He didn’t know the people I was talking about. He didn’t know our life.
    “She saw what he
wanted
her to see,” I told him. “Probably one of those masks on his face. Maybe contact lenses. But how was she gonna miss a guy with two different-colored eyes, like me? So, if they were to tell her I passed a polygraph, it might be enough. Anyway, if I have to go on trial, better it’s for something I
didn’t
do.”
    He leaned closer to me. “That scar, it’s not that visible, even up close. But, you’re right, there’s no way to miss your eyes.” He touched the right side of his pencil-line mustache. Manicured nails, no rings.
    “I’ll get back to you,” he said.

    Rikers never changes. Neither do the people who keep taking that bus ride. Some worked on not looking scared, others worked on looking tough. The only guys you have to watch are the ones who look bored.
    The same Inside, too. They keep you separated while you get “processed,” but you could still hear voices calling out what they were going to do to you as soon as you got out of the fish tank. Some of the first-timers tried shouting back at them. Most of us knew better than to waste our breath on cell gangsters.
    The first test was always Population. This time, it happened real quick. Some greasy little punk half my size says, “What they call you on the street,
esé?
In here, you got to pay to stay. Otherwise, what they be calling you is the other white meat,
comprende
?”
    “Azúcar,” I said, smiling at him.
    “What?”
    “You asked me what people call me on the street, right? So I just told you … 
esé
.”
    His boys were all watching, but they weren’t close enough to hear anything. Maybe he was a prospect they were testing. He pulled up his shirt to show me he was carrying, but I knew he wouldn’t go for it. He’d just tell the crew watching him that he’d warned me off and I’d gotten the message.
    I left him a good out on purpose. Inside, if you take a man’s dignity in front of his own people, he
has
to go for you, right that second. He doesn’t do that, he’s got no backup, ever again.
    But I also know what happens if you let anyone so much as
tap
your commissary, never mind turn it all over. So I tried to practice what Solly’s always telling me: the older you get, the weaker your body, so the only way to balance out is to grow a stronger mind.
    Giving that punk an out, it was the same as me driving weight. Building myself bigger. Adding to the armor.

    This was my third time on the Rock. First time, it was short-stay before I went Upstate. The second was that ninety-day joke. This time, it was going to be just like my first.
    Except for the testing. When I was a kid, my size—and I was real big, even then—that didn’t mean anything. Plenty of big guys roll right over when they see steel.
    But nobody ever really pushed that hard. I even knew a few guys I had been locked up with before. Maybe they spread the word a little, I don’t know.
    So buying that shank this time, it was more about the message. The guy I bought from, he was AB, so I knew
they’d know
. I hadn’t dealt with coloreds; that was good. But I hadn’t asked to join up, and that could mean anything.
    I knew flashing it would be all wrong. That’s a rookie move, not something a pro does. Besides, the guy I bought it from, he’d take care of letting the word get around.

    My first time in happened because I made a
lot
of rookie mistakes. Me and a couple of older guys, we figured, how is a fence ever going to run to the cops? That was before I knew some of them stay in business by switch-hitting.
    I was seventeen. I wanted to be a heist-man, not a mugger. The fence wasn’t any big-time guy. He ran a garage over by Shea Stadium, under the bridge. The way it worked, you drove your swag over to him; he’d close the doors, look over what you had, and tell you what he’d pay.
    We had a little panel truck one of the other guys took right