out he was telling the truth.
A few months later, I still didn’t have a crew, but there was some guys I was all right with. I hung with them when they lifted. We spotted for each other—and not just on the weights. I was on my way over to them one day, just passing by this little court, when I heard something in Spanish. I figured it was about me, but I didn’t want to challenge anyone without making sure I had to.
One of the guys I worked out with, his girlfriend was Latina. The first time he told me that, I thought that was her name, Latina. But I’m never dumb on the same thing twice.
Eddie was a real short guy, but he had huge arms and a big chest from pumping every day. Sitting down, he looked bigger than me. When I first came in, he could out-bench me, too. Not by the time I left, though.
Everybody liked Eddie, even the guards. He was always joking around, playing cards, goofing off. Had a smile for everyone. And he could tell some great stories—he only took vacations from jail to get some new material, is what he said.
One of the things that made his stories so good was how he could make his voice sound like other people’s. He used that trick even when he wasn’t telling stories, just to stop other guys from getting … depressed, or whatever you want to call it.
I remember when Reno came over to talk to us. Well, to me, really. Reno was deep into that White Power stuff, and Eddie had tipped me they’d be coming around. “You look like a recruiting poster for some Aryan army, kid. Blond/blue, big and buffed. All you need is some ink.”
I’d told Eddie that I didn’t want anything to do with that crew. All that political stuff sounded weird to me. “What does a thief need with politics?” I asked him.
“That’s a good one,” he said, like I just told a great joke.
I didn’t try and find out what I’d said that was so funny; I was just happy that a guy like Eddie thought I could tell a good joke.
Anyway, when Reno kind of strolls over one day, Eddie heads him off: “Sir, you do realize you are entering New York’s most exclusive men’s club? Membership is restricted to those bearing a personal invitation from the Governor.”
Reno gave him a look. Then he decided Eddie was joking around, so he laughed along with the rest of us.
Then him and Eddie took a little walk. Not far, but enough so I couldn’t hear what they were saying. The way they said goodbye, Eddie tapped his own chest, right over his heart, and Reno did the same.
“No ink, kid. Understand me? No ink, not ever. You don’t go along with that, you could get me killed.”
“I don’t have any—”
“Yeah,” he cut me off. “I know. That’s what I used to pull that fool’s chain.”
“But you’ve got … I mean …” I felt so bad. I knew Eddie was trying to look out for me, but I was too fucking stupid to even figure out how he was doing it. Eddie’s whole body was so covered with tattoos that it looked like he was wearing a shirt even when he wasn’t.
“Look close,” Eddie said. He touched his chest with one finger.
“I don’t see—”
“I said close, bro.”
It was like trying to read one of those walls when one gang overtags another, and then the first one comes back. After a while, it just looks like a mess. But I kept trying. And then I saw it. One of those Nazi crosses, only it was made out of lightning bolts and arrows. You couldn’t see all of it—a lot of it was buried under other tats. But it was there.
“Get it now?” Eddie asked me. “If they need to check, the AB can see they got my heart. You can see it yourself, right where it should be. Only, I had to get it covered up. Like camouflage, see?”
“So nobody could see—”
“So the fucking cops can’t see it. That’s what they do now: they read a man’s ink, and it goes in their book. But they look at me, they just see this big mess. I got every kind of ink you could think of, so I get put down as a tattoo-freak.”
“What’s so good—?”
“What’d I just tell you, kid? Okay, one more time, real slow. That fool who