Rikers High

I was awake when the Turtles started across the yard the next morning. I saw them through the windows of the emergency doors in the back of the house and I knew what to expect.

They brought crowbars, dogs, and an X-ray machine. There were at least twenty regular COs behind them. That whole outfit settled in front of Sprung #3 for a minute. Then the Turtles came inside first.

Most of the house was still asleep when the Turtles’ captain got on a bullhorn.

“Everybody up!” he ordered. “Stand beside your beds with your fingers locked behind your heads.”

“Do it now! Do it now!” hollered one Turtle after another, punching inmates in the kidneys if they didn’t move fast enough.

I’d got on a pair of pants and sneakers before they even came inside. But most dudes were caught sleeping and had to stand barefoot in their underwear.

The Turtles are always on point, acting like super-COs 24/7. And they’re looking for high drama from the word Go.

They get their name from the gear they wear. When there’s a riot in the jail, they get dressed in helmets and big chest protectors that cover them from front to back. That way no one can stab them with a banger. When they put everything on, they look just like turtles in their shells.

They wear a darker uniform than the regular COs—one that’s almost black, like Darth Vader’s. And even when they aren’t wearing those shells, kids still call them “Turtles.”

If your house is on the move and Turtles pass your way, inmates have to play the wall and let them go by first. They even make you put your head down, because you’re not allowed to look them in the face.

There’s always one Turtle that will make a show of it and start to scream at some kid who’s hanging on the wall.

“Are you looking at me, maggot? Put your eyes on me again!” he’ll warn.

Two or three Turtles will circle around the kid in case he talks back. But the kid just usually shits a brick in his pants. Then everybody goes back to their house talking about how crazy the Turtles are and how nobody in their right mind would ever want to fight them.

The Turtles stood watch inside the house while a search crew of COs went through everybody’s stuff.

COs patted down dudes and emptied their buckets onto the floor. Then they flipped the beds over and made everyone drag their mattresses to the X-ray machine. Most of the mattresses were stink-old. They were so ripped you couldn’t tell if a dude had buried a weapon in one or not. So they used the machine to make sure.

All the COs wore rubber gloves while they searched. It was like our shit would give them some sort of disease if it touched their skin. The only things I had in my bucket were a couple of shirts and an extra pair of pants. The COs went through them quick and then made me open my mouth and move my tongue around to see if I was hiding any razor blades.

The COs with the X-ray machine saw it clear as day on their monitor. They dug it out of the stuffing and were waving it around in the air like a prize.

The banger was made from a sharpened piece of metal, with tape wrapped around the bottom for a handle.

“This was ripped off the bottom of a chair,” said a CO. “Probably from the school trailer.”

“Hey, genius. I’m glad you picked something up in that school,” a CO taunted Luis.

The Turtles’ captain served Luis with a write-up on the spot and then packed his ass up.

It doesn’t matter if a weapon is yours or not. If they even find it near your shit, you get charged. Lots of times a dude will slide a banger across the floor, just to get rid of it when things get hot. If it winds up under your bed, you’re the one that gets screwed.

Dawson and Arrigo were watching from up front with Captain Montenez. They didn’t show much expression at all. The less the search team found, the better those three were going to look.

Brick was standing at his bed stone-faced. If the house got burned for the banger, it would be because of his doldier. I wondered if other dudes would get brave and give him lip for that. He was already weaker with Luis out the door.

The search team even tore through the GED books in the house. They were looking for razors hidden between the pages and in the bindings.

“Officer, I need that book,” pleaded a kid who was taking the test soon.

“Stop crying, little boy,” ripped a CO. “We do this so nothing happens to you. We don’t want anybody getting cut.”

I wanted to scream at the top of my lungs, “Assholes! If you’d checked the kid that cut me coming back from court, I wouldn’t look like this! I’d have one less thing to worry about all my life!”

And I would have been satisfied to say it, even while they were beating me senseless. But I knew better.

For all their tearing shit apart, there was still no sign of Murray’s chalk holder. It took them an hour and a half to leave the house a total mess. And it took almost two hours of work to put it all back together after they’d gone.

“That’s a pretty clean house in anybody’s book,” bragged Dawson.

Then they told us the captain burned the house from commissary that afternoon because of Luis’s banger. But after that, we were clear.

Now maybe Murray was the only one left who still believed we swiped his stupid chalk holder.