Everything’s going according to plan. Mamma confirmed my partner’s already got the money and passport and my lawyer told me the hearing in the Court of Surveillance will be held the day after tomorrow. He gave me all kinds of advice. “Don’t say anything, answer only when questioned, think before opening your mouth, don’t look at the judges, always keep your eyes lowered, you have to give the impression you’re gravely ill.” Then I looked at him like he was an idiot and pointed out that I am gravely ill. His answer was I should make it plain to the judges. The judges. There’s only one judge in that court plus the public prosecutor. The other people are shrinks and social workers. They look you up and down like you were some sideshow freak so they can justify their salaries. I know all about them. I’m fucking sick and tired of having conversations with experts. Everybody wants to reform you but finally they do what the judge says. I hate them more than the screws. They show up here with their heads full of the shit they learned from books and the sincere desire to rehabilitate you and help you reintegrate yourself in society. But when they see jail is one big lie and every inmate—with no exception—has to lie to survive, the experts change their tune. First the believers who turned out to be wrong are disappointed and don’t give a fuck anymore. The women get pregnant so they’ll have the least possible contact with scum like us jailbirds and the men ask to be transferred so they’ll be closer to their towns. They’ve got “Who gives a fuck?” written all over their faces. The distinguished experts of the Most Honorable Court of Surveillance really just pretend to be experts. They pose as big deal professors but they don’t know shit from shinola. It’s so easy to do a court job. Most of them never set foot in a cell block. Motherfucker, whenever I think about these things, I see blood. They make you live in a shit hole while the people who should be running the show are robbing the place blind. An accountant who killed his mother-in-law used to help out in the administration and once he let me see some papers. It came out that at least one TV was broken every day, along with tons of light bulbs and other shit like that. All that stuff wound up in the screws’ homes. Not to mention the meat. We never saw the best cuts. All the same, the circulars from the ministry clearly state the meat’s got to be choice grade. It’s a conspiracy hidden behind a badge or ministry ID. And then the people in the Court of Surveillance examine you like you came out of a model prison. They know how things are but they just don’t give a fuck. As long as their salaries are secure. The more inmates there are, the more hearings they have to do. They’ve got overtime pay coming out the wazoo. I’ve already been there twice to talk about an early release. If you act right, they cut two months’ jail time off every year. Even with us lifers. It only pays off if they put you on work furlough after thirty years—but that’s definitely a payoff. They’ve never given it to me ’cause it was “premature,” but I remember the experts staring at me like it was yesterday. I could’ve kicked them in the teeth till they cried for mercy. The day after tomorrow I’ll be an altar boy and won’t tell them to go fuck themselves. The important thing is they grant me the suspension and then off to Brazil to die the way I fucking want to die, far from these shits. I’ve already seen guys die in prison. A Venetian doing a twenty-year stretch for dealing coke had a heart attack. He told them he felt sick but by the time that cocksucking nurse got there and that other cocksucker, the doctor, ordered the transfer to the hospital, the Venetian was as good as dead. The screws fucking joked about it and you could hear them laughing all over the prison. But we didn’t say a word. You couldn’t hear a fly in the cells. Dying in jail is the worst thing that can happen to you ’cause they even abuse your corpse. There’s no pity. Better to pop off between a whore’s thighs or OD on heroin or coke. Motherfucking bastards. Hey, kid, chill out. Don’t get worked up. In a few days those prison doors are going to swing wide open for you. Yeah, ’cause even if everything turns out dandy the Most Honorable Court of Surveillance won’t issue the order immediately. No, signor. It always takes a few days because they’re swamped with work.
I don’t know what’s bugging me today. I’ve got this beef. Yeah, it’s true I’ll get out in a few days but it’s been hard to put up with all this corruption and I’m in no mood to take any shit from these motherfuckers. A sentence on top of the sentence. Jail isn’t just time. It’s everything else you got to take and it ain’t written down in the sentence. I shouldn’t have let myself get arrested that day. Before getting plugged with a nine caliber I might’ve killed one or two of them and I’d be remembered in the underworld as a guy that had balls. Instead I killed a woman and a kid and everybody sees me as a fucking moron that went off his rocker. Something I got to do is make sure I’m not identified after I die, got to set something up with a cremation outfit. I want to be gone forever. No trace of Raffaello Beggiato must remain. I’m making coffee jailhouse style. You whip up the first drops with sugar till it forms a thick cream. Then the rest of the coffee streams down real slow so it doesn’t go flat and looks just like an espresso from a bar. Then when you drink it you realize it’s fake. Like everything else inside here.