The Hot House: Life Inside Leavenworth Prison Read Free Page A

and had paid another $500 to the woman’s boyfriend, Bill Hutchinson, an inmate who claimed that he could get the drug smuggled safely inside. Hutchinson had seemed so confident that his girlfriend would agree to be a “mule” that Scott had arranged for the drug to be mailed directly to herfrom California, assuring his financial backers in prison that the heroin was on its way.
    But Hutchinson’s girlfriend balked. She was refusing to bring in the heroin, and Scott was indeed upset. Earlier that morning, he had confronted Hutchinson, and it had been Hutchinson’s idea to use the telephone located inside the cellhouse to call his girlfriend and then put Scott on the line to intimidate her. Inmates at Leavenworth are allowed to use cellhouse telephones whenever they wish without first asking for permission from a guard. But they can only dial collect calls, and a prison computer automatically logs the number and records the entire conversation. Hutchinson had told his girlfriend that he was in trouble and then handed Scott the telephone receiver.
    “Pressure is being put on Bill, you see,” Scott said carefully. “You got him, ah, well … he’s in a spot, because you said yes from jump street and that triggered a lot of things. That leaves him holding the bag … and now you got cold feet.”
    Scott had sounded threatening at first. Now, his voice became sympathetic. “Look, I can understand why you are scared and I appreciate that, but we got to get this thing resolved.… If you just do what Bill asks you, it’s not going to be near as bad as you think.… In your mind, you got pictures of being beaten with rubber hoses and being dragged off. That’s not gonna happen.…”
    Hutchinson had explained the procedure to her. The heroin was delivered inside a balloon, no different from those used at children’s birthday parties. She was supposed to hide it in her vagina, like a tampon. Once inside the prison visiting room, she would step into the women’s bathroom, remove the balloon, and conceal it in her mouth. Visitors were allowed to kiss an inmate once when a visit began and once when it ended. The balloon would be exchanged during the first kiss. Hutchinson would swallow it and either regurgitate it laterwhen he was alone in his cell or reclaim it after it passed through his system.
    “It’s just a simple matter of boom, boom, and that’s it,” Scott continued. “Believe me, this thing happens a thousand times a year. Don’t make monsters in your mind.”
    Scott decided he had said enough, but before he handed the phone back to Hutchinson, Scott decided to remind the woman that her boyfriend was in trouble.
    “Now, I’m sure you understand what goes on in here,” Scott said firmly. “You know, this place, well, it’s dangerous.…”
    Had Scott been talking to the girlfriend in person, there wouldn’t have been any need for him to make thinly disguised verbal threats. Scott was intimidating even when he didn’t intend to be. A bank teller had once described him during a trial as being “really mean-looking,” and it fit. Scott had been in prison off and on for twenty-four years, and his body language sent out a signal as clear as a diamondback’s rattle. He was built like a pit bull. Short, with massive shoulders made hard by weight lifting, Scott wore his ink-black hair combed back in the greasy pompadour style popular among bikers in the 1950s when Scott was a teenager. A nearly fatal heroin habit acquired in prison and an incurable liver disease brought on by hepatitis had left his skin jaundiced, his face gaunt. There were dark circles under his eyes, and when he became angry, his black eyes shone with rage.
    Ironically, among his convict pals Scott was considered easygoing, funny, street-smart, and, as much as an inmate could be, devoted to his wife, son, and daughter. But even his closest friends knew better than to double-cross Scott. There was no question in anyone’s mind that he