Bronx Noir

It’s late in the morning when I’m violently awoken by a cacophony of sound: deep guttural voices, the distinct clinking of metal cuffs, and an orchestra of bleeps, blips, and chirps from a police radio.

“Wake up, ya piece a shit, and let me see your hands,” orders a red-haired freckle-faced detective with an uncanny resemblance to Richie Cunningham from Happy Days.

I get up slowly in a half-asleep, half-dazed stupor, wearing only jeans and a T-shirt. I’m still having trouble making sense of this scene when from the corner of my eye I see Billy being dragged out of the apartment by two uniformed officers. Here I am, smack in the middle of a raid. The bench warrant I have is hanging over my head like some dark and dreary cloud ready to release torrents of rain.

“Get on some shoes, pal. Had a nice run, but it’s over now,” another cop says. He reminds me of this thugged-out Puerto Rican brother I knew the last time I was on Rikers, covered with jailhouse tats. I have an eerie premonition of where I’m going and the company I will soon keep. I feel a dampness permeating my palms and can hear my heart palpitating loud enough, I think, for everyone else to hear too. Anxiety is rearing its ugly head. Rikers Island will be my new home.

Central Booking is the first stop. “Inside” again. I’m thrust into the wheels of justice and the long, drawn-out grind of due process. All of it leads up to the Day of Judgment when I will hear the inevitable: One year on Rikers.

Though I’ve taken this trip several times before, I’d usually be out within a week. But a year? A year without ice? A year without women, decent food, privacy, freedom? Despair overwhelms me. Something about this bus ride out to the Island seems different, darker. The level of hopelessness I have reached, somewhere between wanting an eternal slumber and desperately needing to see the faces of my family, is at a depth I never knew existed. An image of my mother bidding me farewell leaves a smoky crater in my mind.

I glance across the aisle and notice a heavyset Latino brother with a tear drop appropriately tattooed on his face. With a look of utter anguish, he gazes out the caged bus window.

From the shores of Queens, a mile-long bridge rises over the East River toward an island officially located in the Bronx. This sprawling city of jails waits with open arms to welcome the pariahs of the five boroughs.

As we approach C-73, the reception jail, the mood is a blend of somberness and tension so thick you could cut it with some crudely fashioned prison dagger. It takes four hours to get through the intake process; forms to fill in: name, age, height, eye color, identifying scars, religion. By the time it’s over, the Department of Corrections knows more about me than my mother does.

I strip down to my boxers. Each item of clothing examined, then packed away in a yellow canvas bag. I’m assured everything will be returned upon release. Yeah, right, I think. I’m handed a “full set-up”—towel, soap, bedding, and the green jumpsuit that will mark me a bona fide criminal for the next twelve months. Finally, I’m escorted to a housing area. Through several sets of doors, each one unlocked, opened, closed, and locked again, before going on to the next, down dimly lit, cold hallways rich with that institutional stench.

The weight of a six-day speed binge, a day in court, and another day of “bullpen therapy,” as cons call the endless hours in holding cells, have taken a toll. All I want is to pass out. Through my exhaustion I gladly accept the metal cot, thin and tattered mattress, and the wool blanket that looks and smells like it hasn’t been washed in months.

I’m assigned to housing area: 9 Main. It’s a barrack dorm with beds lined up next to each other, separated by three-foot lockers. This is how I will spend the next 365 days—stripped of everything but a locker and a cot.

It’s close to 12 a.m. when I enter the dorm. Most of the residents are wide awake, even with the facility lights out. This is the typical after-hours scene in most housing units on Rikers. It’s called “breakin’ night,” staying up after the lights are out to hustle tobacco, do push-ups, or simply pass the time by reminiscing about the street life. It’s a picture alarmingly similar to the scene on the blocks so many come from. These ghetto celebrities and ’hood movie stars are energized by the cover of darkness.

Despite the ruckus, I settle into my space and drift into a catatonic state. For a moment, I linger in that zombie-like state between wakefulness and deep sleep and think the last forty-eight hours were a surreal dream. That first morning in Main is the darkest dawn I’ve ever known.

The entire dorm is roused for chow at 4:45 a.m. It feels like the coldest winter ever as I lurch toward the mess hall. The echoes of large steel prison doors slamming wake up each and every prisoner confined within this penal colony’s unforgiving walls.