C. a prison cell

Tracy soon learned why inmates referred to a term in the penitentiary as ‘going to college’. Prison was an educational experience, but what the prisoners learned was unorthodox.

The prison was filled with experts of every conceivable type of crime. They exchanged methods of grafting, shoplifting, and rolling drunks. They brought one another up to date on games and exchanged information on snitches and undercover cops.

In the recreation yard one morning, Tract listened to an older inmate give a seminar on pick pocketing to a fascinated young group.

‘The real pros come from Columbia. They got a school in Bogota, called the school of the ten bells, where you pay twenty-five hundred bucks to learn to be a pickpocket. They hang a dummy from the ceiling, dressed in a suit with ten pockets, filled with money and jewelry’.

‘What’s the gimmick?’

‘The gimmick is that each pocket has a bell on it. You don’t graduate till you kin empty every damn pocket without ringing the bell’.

Lola sighed, ‘I used to go with a guy who walked through crowds dressed in an overcoat, with both his hands out in the open, while he picked everybody’s pockets like crazy’.

‘How the hell could he do that?’

‘The right hand was a dummy. He slipped his real hand through a slit in the coat and picked his through pockets and wallets and purses.’

In the recreation room the education continued.

‘I like the locker-key rip-off.’ a veteran said. ‘You hang around a railway station till you see a little old lady trying to lift a suitcase or a big package into one of them lockers. You put it in for her and hand her the key. Only it’s the key to an empty locker. When she leaves, you empty her locker and split.’

In the yard another afternoon, two inmates convicted of prostitution and possession of cocaine were talking to a new arrival, a pretty young girl who looked no more than seventeen.

‘No wonder you got busted, honey,’ one of the older women scolded. ‘Before you talk price to a John, you have got to pat him down to make sure he isn’t carrying a gun, and never tell him what you are going to do for him. Make him tell you what he wants. Then if he turns out to be a cop, it’s entrapment, see?’

The other pro added, ‘Yeah. And always look at their hands. If a trick says he is a working man, see if his hands are rough. That’s the tip-off. A lot of plainclothes cops wear working men’s outfits, but when it comes to their hands, they forget, so their hands are smooth.’

Time went neither slowly nor quickly. It was simply time. Tracy thought of St Augustin’s aphorism: ‘What is time? If no one asks me, I know. But if I have to explain it, I do not know.’

The routine of the prison never varied:

4.40 a.m. Warning bell

4.45 a.m. Rise and dress

5.00 a.m. Breakfast

5.30 a.m. Return to cell

5.55 a.m. Warning bell

lineup

10.00 a.m. Exercise yard

10.30 a.m. Lunch

11.00 a.m. Work detail lineup

3.30 p.m. Supper

4.00 p.m. Return to cell

5.00 p.m. Recreation room

6.00 p.m. Return to cell

8.45 p.m. Warning bell

9.00 p.m. Lights out

The rules were inflexible. All inmates had to go to meals, and no talking was permitted in the lines. No more than five cosmetic items could be kept in the small cell lockers. Beds had to be made prior to breakfast and kept neat during the day.

3. Answer the questions using the information from the text:

1. Who was the prison filled with?

2. What education did the inmate get in prison?

3. What kind of information did they exchange?

4. Which seminar did an older inmate give in the yard?

5. How much did people pay to learn to become a pickpocket?

6. What was the school of the ten bells like? Why was it called in such a way?

7. What was the trick with a locker?

8. What was ‘time’ for Tracy?

9. What was the timetable in prison?

4. Describe the situation in which these words were used:

1) methods of shoplifting; 2) seminar on pick pocketing; 3) ten bells; 4) jewellery; 5) overcoat; 6) suitcase; 7) key to an empty locker; 8) aphorism; 9) routine.

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