cloths about the size of dishtowels. They were heavily padded, with a smooth side and
a rough side–the smooth side like fine-grained sandpaper, the rough side almost as
abrasive as industrial steel wool (Andy also kept a box of that in his cell, although he didn’t get it from me–I imagine he kited it from the prison laundry).
I told him I thought we could do business on those, and I ended up getting
them from the very same rock-and-gem shop where I’d arranged to get the rock-
hammer. This time I charged Andy my usual ten per cent and not a penny more. I
didn’t see anything lethal or even dangerous in a dozen 7″ x 7″ squares of padded cloth. Rock-blankets, indeed.
It was about five months later that Andy asked if I could get him Rita
Hayworth. That conversation took place in the auditorium, during a movie-show.
Nowadays we get the movie-shows once or twice a week, but back then the shows
were a monthly event. Usually the movies we got had a morally uplifting message to
them, and this one, The Lost Weekend, was no different. The moral was that it’s
dangerous to drink. It was a moral we could take some comfort in.
Andy manoeuvred to get next to me, and about halfway through the show he
leaned a little closer and asked if I could get him Rita Hayworth. I’ll tell you the truth, it kind of tickled me. He was usually cool, calm, and collected, but that night he was jumpy as hell, almost embarrassed, as if he was asking me to get him a load of
Trojans or one of those sheepskin-lined gadgets that are supposed to ‘enhance your
solitary pleasure,’ as the magazines put it. He seemed overcharged, a man on the verge of blowing his radiator.
‘I can get her,’ I said. ‘No sweat, calm down. You want the big one or the little
one?’ At that time Rita was my best girl (a few years before it had been Betty Grable) and she came in two sizes. For a buck you could get the little Rita. For two-fifty you could have the big Rita, four feet high and all woman.
‘The big one,’ he said, not looking at me. I tell you, he was a hot sketch that
night He was blushing just like a kid trying to get into a kootch show with his big
brother’s draft-card.
‘Can you do it?’
‘Take it easy, sure I can. Does a bear shit in the woods?’ The audience was applauding and catcalling as the bugs came out of the walls to get Ray Milland, who
was having a bad case of the DT’s.
‘How soon?’
‘A week. Maybe less.’
‘Okay.’ But he sounded disappointed, as if he had been hoping I had one
stuffed down my pants right then. ‘How much?”
I quoted him the wholesale price. I could afford to give him this one at cost;
he’d been a good customer, what with his rock-hammer and his rock-blankets.
Furthermore, he’d been a good boy–on more than one night when he was having his
problems with Bogs, Rooster, and the rest, I wondered how long it would be before he
used the rock-hammer to crack someone’s head open.
Posters are a big part of my business, just behind the booze and cigarettes,
usually half a step ahead of the reefer. In the 60s the business exploded in every
direction, with a lot of people wanting funky hang-ups like Jimi Hendrix, Bob Dylan,
that Easy Rider poster. But mostly it’s girls; one pinup queen after another.
A few days after I spoke to Ernie, a laundry driver I did business with back
then brought in better than sixty posters, most of them Rita Hayworths. You may even
remember the picture; I sure do. Rita is dressed–sort of- in a bathing suit, one hand behind her head, her eyes half closed, those full, sulky red lips parted. They called it Rita Hayworth, but they might as well have called it Woman in Heat.
The prison administration knows about the black market, in case you were
wondering. Sure they do. They probably know as much about my business as I do