got the joke. See, when Eddie told Reno about me working undercover, he was telling him something else at the same time.
Some guys had a whole library of paperback books. They put them all on the juggle, rent them out. It doesn’t matter what you lend—in prison, you borrow two, you pay back three.
The tattoo artists always have plenty of business. Even guys who come in covered in ink, they always want more. Like Eddie told me, the cops keep a record of all your tats. You can change your hair, grow a beard, stuff like that. But ink, especially just past the knuckles—like LOVE on one hand and HATE on the other—that’s forever. You can walk around in a long-sleeved shirt even in the summer, but you can’t wear a pair of gloves.
A good thief would be hard to pick out of a lineup; the best thief would be invisible. I already had my size going against me, never mind the scar and the different-colored eyes. I sure didn’t need more.
Doing time, there’s really a lot of choices. And even when all you can do is try and stay alive, that’s still something to do. As long as you don’t spend too much time thinking about it.
But once you get out, there’s no rules—only laws. So you have to find something with rules. Like a job, maybe. It doesn’t matter if it’s working an assembly line or collecting debts, every job has its own rules. Always things you’re supposed to do and things you’re not.
If your whole life is outside the law, the rules are much tighter. Say you’re a thief—you never want to take a muscle job. A loan shark pays you to break a guy’s arm; you do it even once, it’s like diving off a cliff. Once you break enough bones, they expect you to step up to doing hits. Or maybe one of the guys that owes, you end up totaling him, even when you didn’t mean to. I remember something Ken once said: I’m not a hired hand, pal. I’m what you call self-employed, get it?
In prison, that’s the way you want it. It’s okay to be friendly to different guys, but you don’t ever want to be with them.
See, if you’re with a prison crew, that’s got rules, too. You follow them too close, you’re never getting out.
That’s why I always do the same things. I live good. Not for show, for real. I eat good, have decent clothes, a good car, that kind of thing. I keep case money, so I always have enough to get by even if there’s no good job coming for a while. That lets me pass up the shaky-looking stuff. A true pro, he never lets himself get desperate.
So I still had about eighty grand stashed from before I went in, but I’d picked the wrong spot for it. I’d been staying with this girl for a while. You move in with a girl, you never know when you’ll be leaving, and you can’t be sure you’ll ever be back. So I never bring anything with me that I can’t walk away from, and I always keep a place I can walk back to.
You have to expect a girl to go through your stuff. Every girl I ever moved in with did that.
I hate handcuffs. Always dangling open, ready to snap closed. I’m not putting myself where I’d always be one dime-drop away from going back to prison.
So, when I move in with a girl, I always bring enough stuff over so she thinks she’s got a hold on me. Stuff too big to just carry out, like a TV. Or even a lot of clothes I don’t care about. They’re always sure you’ll have to come back, even if it’s only to pick up your stuff.
I heard stories about girls pouring bleach on a guy’s clothes when they got mad. That’s why I’d never let a girl buy me anything I’m not ready to throw away. Or lend me money. Or put me on her cell-phone plan.
This last girl, she told me she was a student. I told her I hung drywall—what other kind of job could an ex-con expect to get if he was trying to go straight? Interior work; I was on the night shift. She lived on Central Park West, in the nineties. Three bedrooms. A huge place for just one person. It used to be her mother’s.