Black Cat Weekly #90

Chapter 7-2

My jaw drops. I had no clue Crusher’s mental math was so agile.

I slap my knee and hold out my hand to seal the deal. “So, we plan the escape for early December! You’ll be out in time for Christmas!”

Crusher turns away, leaving me hanging. “That’s too long to wait,” she pronounces morosely. “I’ll just go cold turkey. Save the twenty-four I have now, and get a new bottle of a hundred and twenty in six days. That’s one-forty-four. You reckon that’s close enough?”

I furrow my brow, feigning deep contemplation. “I think so. If we’re careful, we can probably make do with just a hundred and forty-four.”

“How ’bout the thinner? How much of that you gonna need?”

“Enough to fill two of your prescription bottles,” I reply. “What’s that, about one cup?”

Crusher nods.

“But don’t worry about the thinner just yet,” I add. “I won’t need it until we collect all the capsules.”

I hug myself, suppressing a squeal of joy. Just one more week, and the long string of near-death experiences will be over. The thought gives me goose bumps.

I just finished my daily shift, six p.m. to ten thirty p.m., tutoring other inmates to help them get their GEDs. It’s a great gig because I don’t have to exert myself or work up a sweat. Best of all, it’s a different shift than Crusher’s, meaning I have our cell all to myself for most the day, then don’t have to see her between supper and lights out. Thank goodness for my university diplomas!

Correctional Officer Curtsy begins her graveyard shift just before my tutoring gig ends, so, as usual, she’s the one escorting me from the library back to my cell. She plods behind me as I stroll down the corridor, hands cuffed behind my back. We’ve traveled this path so many times, I’m surprised there’s not a groove in the floor.

Inmate areas are not air-conditioned, and despite the late hour, the stale air is still hot and humid from an unseasonably warm day. As we pass by the crowded dormitory unit, the acrid smell of freshly applied bleach mingles with musky body odor, and I markedly slow my pace just to annoy Curtsy. Predictably, the butt of her nightstick rams into my back. Hurts like crazy, but it’s worth it.

That said, I do wish there was another officer around to witness Curtsy’s a***e. Unfortunately, being small and skinny, I don’t draw a two-officer escort like the larger, stronger inmates do. And with the jail’s staffing shortage, sometimes even the most violent offenders are ushered by a single guard.

When we reach the common area in C Block, we’re the only ones out and about. All the other inmates have been locked in their cells since 8 p.m. And even though lights out was half an hour ago, C Block is still cacophonous. Televisions and radios blaring. Vacuum-powered toilets flushing. Women screaming, singing, laughing, and crying. Psychos rattling their tray slots or headbutting their windows. All of these sounds reverberate between smooth concrete and polished steel. The jail does nothing to dampen them; every surface is hard, inflexible, and unforgiving.

We stop in front of my cell and Curtsy raps her nightstick on the metal door, summoning Crusher to be cuffed. I can see her through the window, curled up in her bunk, wild-eyed and moaning. Her angina attacks are getting worse each day. She says it’s like an elephant is sitting on her chest. Like her heart’s about to implode.

And as much as I hate Crusher, I take no pleasure in watching her suffer.

Well, that’s not completely true, but I do admire her tenacity. As debilitating as the angina is, Crusher hasn’t taken a single nitro capsule. Despite the pain, she just grits her teeth and rides it out.

It makes me wonder why she changed her mind so suddenly. What happened that made Crusher so determined to escape from Heartbreak Holler so soon?

A cold virus has invaded the jail, and I ran out of tissues today. Needing to blow my dripping nose, I grab Crusher’s box. She’s still on laundry duty and won’t miss just a few sheets. I’ll buy a new box from the commissary tomorrow.

As I pull a tissue out, I spot some stationary inside, tucked against the side of the box. I slip it out and unfold it. It’s a handwritten letter, postmarked a week ago.

After a page or so of standard fare about the weather and college football and the color of the fall foliage, the letter concludes as follows:

My last course of chemo didn’t go so good. They have me in hospice now. Doc says I might make it to Thanksgiving, but probably not Christmas. I’m sorry I haven’t been able to visit lately, and wish I’d written more often. You’ll always have a special place in my heart. When you get out, make me proud.

My last course of chemo didn’t go so good. They have me in hospice now. Doc says I might make it to Thanksgiving, but probably not Christmas. I’m sorry I haven’t been able to visit lately, and wish I’d written more often. You’ll always have a special place in my heart. When you get out, make me proud.It was signed, “With love, Vincent Lee.”

I carefully tuck the letter back into Crusher’s tissue box and sit at our desk, pondering. Clearly, Vincent Lee is the reason Crusher’s in such a hurry to escape. But who is he? Crusher’s brother? Father? Grandfather? Boyfriend?

I frown. It’s impossible to say. Crusher has never mentioned him to me, or told me about anyone else for that matter. I suddenly realize just how little I know about the woman I’ve lived cheek to jowl with for over two months.

It’s almost midnight, and our cell is dark. Well, as dark as it ever gets. There’s a fair amount of light coming through the window in our door. That’s where Crusher is, crouched to the side, watching for the guard. Although her face is mostly in shadow, I can see that she’s grimacing, her cheeks moist with tears. She’s having another attack.

Sitting on the floor where the light’s the strongest, I use the bottom of Crusher’s glass nitro bottle to grind a pile of white powder against the bottom of my plastic cereal bowl.

Crusher got her November prescription today, and I spent two hours carefully pulling apart all 144 gel caps and tapping out their payloads of tiny white balls.

When I first started to grind them, the little rascals had a tendency to squirt out and skitter across the floor.

I think I managed to find them all.

Thankfully, the process is going easier now. All the spheroids have been fractured and smashed. Another hour or so and I’ll have a nice, consistent powder.

Uh oh. Here comes Crusher, crab-walking across the floor. Officer Curtsy’s right on schedule, making her last round.

We scramble into our bunks. I conceal the bowl and bottle under my blanket.

Poor Curtsy will be disappointed. There’ll be no show for her tonight.

“Don’t worry,” Crusher assures me. “I have it.”

She’s sitting at our desk, taking off her work boots. The expression on her face is the closest thing to a smile I’ve ever seen. Sort of a smug, malicious smirk.

“Well, where is it?” I ask, eager to begin.

“Bring me your tumbler.”

Reluctantly, I comply.

“Put it there,” Crusher commands, pointing at the floor between her feet.

Crusher peels a rough, black sock off her calloused foot. It’s wet and dripping. She wrings it out into my plastic cup.

“There’s your thinner, girl. Drink up!” She laughs, grumbly and gravelly.

I smile. “Sorry, Crusher, but my cup’s not going to work. We need something with a lid. You know, to mix it up in.”

We both look over at her water bottle with its pull-top cover.

“Oh, that ain’t cool,” Crusher growls.

Even though I’m fairly certain there’s no danger of an explosion, I must admit that shaking up a mixture of acetone and pulverized nitroglycerin meds makes me a little nervous.

Crusher, however, is absolutely terrified, and refuses to help.

So, apart from a few short breaks to rest my tired wrists, I’ve kept at it all day, shaking and swirling Crusher’s water bottle, promoting the dissolution of nitroglycerin into the acetone solvent.

By the time my dinner slides through the tray slot, I figure any further mixing is probably futile. I place Crusher’s water bottle on the desk and watch the powder slowly settle to the bottom. It’s a nice distraction from the boiled cabbage I’m sporking down my gullet.

Crusher is watching too, suspiciously.

“Somethin’ wrong with your voodoo potion?” she asks. “The powder ain’t dissolvin’.”

“The important part of it has,” I explain. “Nitroglycerin is soluble in the thinner, but the excipient isn’t.”

She clamps a steely paw on the back of my neck. “English, please.”

I shrug out of her grip. “The nitro has already dissolved. The powder you see is just the starch—probably cornstarch—that the manufacturer used to bind it into a capsule.”

Crusher’s eyes narrow. “How do you know so much about this?” She waved her hand toward the bottle. “Are you in here for cookin’ meth or somethin’?”

“Nothing so crude as meth,” I scoff, somewhat surprised she brought up the reason for my incarceration. We have never spoken about our crimes before, about how we each came to be in Heartbreak Holler.

meth“I made an analog of furanyl fentanyl,” I continue, naming the chemical with incisive enunciation. “It’s a synthetic opioid. You know, a designer d**g. It requires organic chemistry. Much more complex than the simple extraction I’m doing here.”

“Opioids.” Crusher swallows a glob of cabbage. “Are you talkin’ about China White?”

“Not exactly. That’s the imported stuff. My formulation was a little different. I marketed it as Dance Fever. My clients ordered it over the dark web, and I delivered it through the mail.”

“Dance Fever.” Crusher grunts and shakes her head. “Folks in West Virginia don’t take that stuff to go dancin’. Most of ’em got hooked from their pain pills. Coal miners. Truck drivers. I think it’s done killed a lot of them.”

dancin’“You’re probably right,” I retort, my hackles rising at her implication, “After all, killing is your line of expertise, isn’t it?”

I brace for an attack, but Crusher just looks away. She puts her tray on the desk and crawls into her bunk. If I thought it was possible, I’d bet her feelings were hurt.

I continue eating in silence, and by the time I force down the last boiled blob, all the excipient has settled out. For all my effort, I must admit it doesn’t look like much: a quarter inch of powder sitting in one inch of solution.

Slowly tipping the bottle, I decant the liquid into my hot pot, taking care to leave the soggy powder behind.

I plug the hot pot into the single outlet we share and turn the setting to low. A faint fruity aroma fills our cell as the acetone evaporates, leaving pure liquid nitroglycerin behind.

Crusher wrinkles her nose. “Better hope the guards don’t come sniffin’ around.”

“Let ’em come,” I say nonchalantly. “I’ll just say I’m brewing up some nice blackberry tea.”

The next morning, the smell of acetone is gone. The nitro is ready.