Inmate 1577

54

November 21, 1960

Alcatraz

Walton MacNally shuffled into the dining hall in single file behind other cons who lived in C Block and the adjacent B Block. The rectangular room was large-but a fraction of the size of Leavenworth’s outsized eating facility.

Barred windows lined both long walls, through which MacNally caught a glimpse of San Francisco city lights across the Bay to his left. The mint and eggshell color scheme he found in his cell must have been a favorite of the Alcatraz interior decorators because this room featured the same design treatment.

Ahead, dominating the hall’s front area, was the kitchen, where two inmates, wearing white chef hats and aprons, appeared to be mixing large vats of soup in floor-standing stainless steel kettles. A guard stood watch inside a glass block structure, approximately twenty feet behind the cooks.

John Anglin was in line several men ahead of him, but watching how the other inmates conducted themselves-walking in an orderly fashion and talking in normal or low tones, MacNally resisted the urge to call after him. After seeing Anglin earlier, all he could think about was confronting him about Rucker.

The line worked its way toward a long, stainless steel buffet-style steam table. As MacNally neared, Anglin was at the far end, lifting a roll from a trough. Steam rose from the soup tureen, hot beef, and vegetable platters. MacNally lifted a ladle and began dishing out food.

An officer, arms folded in front of him and standing on the other side of the table, cleared his throat. “You’re new.”

MacNally looked up. The guard was nearly as young as he was. His tie was tightly knotted and drawn up flush against his buttoned collar. “Arrived on the boat about an hour ago.”

He nodded at the food in front of him. “Take all you want. But eat all you take. That’s the rule. No waste.”

MacNally glanced over at Anglin, who was moving toward a table. “I had a long trip from Kansas-no problem with my appetite today.” He smiled, trying to win some points. But the officer turned away to observe the oncoming inmates.

The dining hall was filled with long picnic-style varnished wood tables, accompanied by bench seats made with a thick, steel pipe frame. The furniture, which sat five men on each side, looked pocked and worn.

MacNally quickened his pace to where Anglin and two other men were settling themselves. They were already engaged in an animated discussion.

“J.W.,” MacNally said, setting down his tray and not waiting for an invitation.

“Who the fuck are you?” the shorter man to Anglin’s left said.

MacNally felt the muscles in his forearms tighten. He looked down. There were knives on the table within reach, but his adversary’s fingers were already wrapped around one. “We gonna have a problem?”

Anglin held out a steady hand to calm his acquaintance. “Walt MacNally, this’s Frankie. Frank Morris. Frankie,” Anglin said, casually motioning with his fork. “Mac and me did time together at Leavenworth. Helped me ’n Clarence with an escape.”

Morris, thin lips with dark, wavy hair, gaunt face and serious eyes, bunched his brow and relaxed-ever so slightly-his grip on the knife. “This the guy who started the fight?” he asked with a Louisiana twang. “The diversion?”

Anglin nodded. Morris set the utensil down.

MacNally turned to the man at Anglin’s right, who possessed a more youthful, relaxed face, perhaps late twenties. He was not as intense as Morris, but just as slightly built.

“Allen West,” the man said, not lifting his eyes from his tray.

“Carnes,” another said as he took the seat next to MacNally. “Clarence Carnes.” His skin was a shade darker than the others, and he had full lips and a broad nose. Moderately bald, his face had an exotic look to it.

MacNally nodded. “Good to meet you guys. Just got here this afternoon.”

The men looked down and went about eating their chow.

MacNally realized they had been engrossed in conversation when he walked over, yet in his presence they had fallen mute. “You don’t have to stop talking on my account. You want me to move,” MacNally shrugged, “I will.”

West leaned in to Anglin. Though he spoke in a low voice and near his ear, MacNally read his lips: “Can we trust him?”

Anglin, blowing on a spoonful of soup, nodded.

“You good at anything?” West asked. “Electrical, plumbing, that kinda shit?”

MacNally lifted a shoulder and pouted his lips. “Worked some construction. Good with my hands. I like to sculpt, build things. And yeah, I know electrical. And heating and ventilation. Some plumbing. I used to be a handyman, so I know a little about a lot.” He let his eyes move from man to man in front of him. They all stopped eating and were staring at MacNally.

West suddenly looked down at his plate, swirled his fork, playing with the food, and then glanced around. MacNally figured he was about to tell him something significant, and he was assessing where the nearest officer was. “I been planning a break ’bout a year now. Got lots of ideas. We could use somebody with the things you know. Interested?”

MacNally slid his buttocks forward on the bench. “Hell yeah.” He lifted a roll from his plate, then looked up and waited for West to bring his gaze back toward him. “What-when?”

“We’re takin’ our time,” Morris said, his eyes moving from left to right across the room. “Goin’ slow. Want to do it right. We’ve got a lot of shit to plan.”

MacNally nodded. “Going slow’s a good thing. I made a break myself, after the one we tried with J.W. and Clarence. His brother.”

“Don’t look like that worked out too good,” Morris said.

Rather than responding to Morris’s remark, MacNally turned to Anglin, hoping to tactfully broach the subject he had wanted to bring up since the moment he had seen Anglin. “I would’ve made it if Rucker hadn’t fucked me over. He went over the wall, then cut my rope.” He realized his fingers had squeezed through the roll, which he had crushed in two. The pieces fell to the plate. “If I ever find that guy, J.W., I’m gonna kill him.” He began bouncing his knee, watching Anglin’s reaction. He had none; his face was impassive, as if that kind of shit was expected to happen in a penitentiary filled with liars, cheats, thieves, and murderers.

And maybe that was the correct read of the situation. No doubt such a thing was commonplace. But it did not matter. MacNally would exact his revenge…Somehow, somewhere, sometime.

“Did you know he was buddies with Gormack?”

Anglin leaned back. “Fuck no. That the reason-”

“Yeah. He sent me a note.”

“Who’s Gormack-and Rucker?” Morris asked.

“Nobody important,” MacNally said, his eyes riveted to Anglin’s.

“You mentioned you did some work with ventilation,” West said. “Carnes and I got an idea.”

“Oh, yeah?” MacNally said, pulling his gaze over to West. “You three know anything about escaping?”

Carnes and Morris laughed.

“Carnes was involved in the Battle of Alcatraz in ’46.”

MacNally tilted his head. “Never heard of it.”

West grinned. “Legendary shit, m’man.”

Carnes waved a hand. “I was nineteen. Sometimes shit happens you can’t anticipate, no matter how smart your escape plan is-and this one was well thought out. A key that was supposed to be in the gun gallery wasn’t there, and we couldn’t get out of the cellhouse. Six of us were involved, but Bernie Coy and Joe Cretzer led the thing. They offed two hacks, shot a bunch of others. Marines came, shelled the place, dropped demolition grenades into C-block.” He looked down, stabbed a green bean with his fork, keeping his gaze on the plate. “Coy, Cretzer, and another guy, Hubbard, were killed. Two others were gassed at San Quentin for killing those hacks. I got a second life sentence and six years in Seg.” Carnes looked up at MacNally, who was riveted by the story. “But Frankie here’s a legend, too.”

Morris stuck a small piece of meat in his mouth. “I’ve escaped from every prison I’ve ever been at,” Morris said, his chewing and molasses-thick drawl making it a bit difficult for MacNally to follow. “You know what the warden’s record on me says?” He laughed. “Under ‘Occupation,’ it says, ‘escape artist.’ He nodded. “I fuck you not.”

“Since you’re on The Rock, doesn’t look like your record as an escape artist ‘worked out too good,’” MacNally said, mimicking Morris’s earlier dig, then flashing a smile to defuse the mocking sarcasm behind the comment.

“I’m better at escaping than I am at robbing banks.”

MacNally nodded slowly. At least the man could admit his faults. “What’d you want to know about ventilation?”

“There used to be eight air exhaust blowers,” Carnes said, “on top of the cell blocks, above the third tier. They were attached to ducts that vented to the building’s roof. We looked at goin’ out of ‘em during the ’46 shootout, but we couldn’t get the scaffolding over there. After the hacks retook the cellhouse, most of the blowers were removed and they sealed off the vent openings with bars and concrete.”

Carnes seemed to be articulate and thoughtful. MacNally found himself listening carefully to the man’s soft-spoken delivery.

“But,” West said, “I heard one of ’em’s still there.”

“Frankie and I work in the library,” Carnes said. “I bring books around on a cart to all the guys here. It gives me a chance to look around, observe. And looks to me like that one vent is the one that’s over the back side of B block.”

“I just moved cells,” Morris said. “To B-356. Right under the vent.”

“This vent,” West said. “It’s round and pretty damn wide. There’s a blower attached to it, with ductwork. If we can get that ductwork off, I bet it’d lead us right up to the roof. And once we get on the roof, it’s a matter of getting off the island. The water presents other problems, but we’re working on that.”

MacNally said, “Ductwork’s fastened with sheet metal screws. A wrench or screwdriver would do the trick. But-and this might seem like an obvious question, but how do we get out of our cells?” MacNally suddenly felt the presence of someone over his left shoulder. He shifted the topic. “What do you guys like to do out in the rec yard?”

“Baseball,” Morris said. “Sometimes I just like to enjoy the sun, when it’s out. And smell the sea breeze.” He kept his head straight, on MacNally, but his eyes followed the officer as the man continued past them and then hung a left, toward the other side of the room.

“Those cross-hatched grilles under the sink?” Anglin asked. “You seen ’em?”

MacNally nodded. He had seen them-recessed, rectangular, eight-by-ten-inch grates that allowed air to passively flow from an area behind the cells into the cell block.

“We startin’ to poke around at that there cement,” Anglin said. “Frankie thinks we can dig ’em out, then crawl through.”

“Through? Into what?” MacNally asked.

“Take a look when you’re walking back to your cell,” West said. “Between the cell blocks, between, say, B and C, there’s a metal door. Behind it, a utility corridor. Water and waste pipes run through there. If you look up, it’s a clear shot to the top tier of the cell block.”

“A ventilation duct has to vent to the roof,” MacNally said.

“Right,” West said. “So if we dig out those grilles in our cells, we just crawl through the opening into the utility corridor, then use the piping as a ladder to climb up to the roof.”

“How are we gonna dig out the cement around those grilles?”

“Inmate plumbers,” Morris said. “Con I know, Billy Boggs, helps out fixing busted pipes. The plumbing was put in by the army back in 1900 or some shit like that. The sea water that goes through ’em rots ’em out. And when they burst, they flood that utility area and eat away the concrete walls. Billy says the walls look pretty bad.”

“And those walls,” West said, “are the walls of our cells.”

MacNally absorbed what he was being told. Before he committed to the plan, he wanted to be sure he had a decent chance of making it out. The water-those sharks-was another problem.

But there were more immediate logistical concerns. “How can you dig out the cement without the guards knowing about it? They’re pretty strict where you can put shit in your cells. You can’t block that grille. They’ll get suspicious.”

“One of the oldest inmate tricks in the book,” West said. “Wet some toilet paper, mix it with soap flakes, then force it into the holes you’re making.”

“Get a job,” Morris said to MacNally. “J.W. works in clothing. I’m in the brush shop in Industries. Do what you’re told and don’t cause any trouble, they’ll give you work. Take it. Best way to get the tools and supplies we need. They got everything in there: wire, electrical tape, varnishes, nuts, bolts, machines… Some of us are already gettin’ stuff together.”

MacNally nodded.

“Like I said,” West added, looking across the room at an officer, who was approaching. “I been workin’ on this a long, long time.”

“What about the water?” MacNally asked. “The sharks?”

Carnes chuckled. “No sharks in the water, MacNally. They tell you that to keep your ass on the island.”

“I just got the new Popular Mechanics,” West said, then waited for the guard to pass. Teaches you how to make blow-up rubber geese. Works for life preservers and rafts, too.”

MacNally shook his head. “You read something about making rubber duckies and you think you can build a raft out of that? One that’ll hold up in that choppy ocean?”

“Trust me on that,” Anglin said. “Clarence and me, we grew up swimming and rafting in Lake Michigan. The stuff they say in that mag, it’ll work.”

“We need raincoats,” Morris said. “We can get ’em from Clothing, where J.W. works. But we need a lot of ’em. Maybe four dozen, way I figure. Maybe more. They’re Navy jobs made of rubber backed canvas. We can cut ’em up and glue the pieces together with rubber cement, then sew the seams on the machines we use to make gloves in Industries.” He winked. “Paddles we can make in the furniture shop. Smaller pieces, attached with nuts and bolts. Most everything we need’s there in the shops. Biggest problem’s smuggling the stuff out of Industries.”

“A little bit at a time, under your shirts and jackets,” MacNally said.

“As long as there’s no metal,” Anglin said. “Snitch box’ll get us. Metal detector. You’ll see. Gotta pass through it on the way out of Industries.”

“We’ll have to figure that out,” West said. “Big thing is getting up to that vent blower.”

The whistle blew: dinner over. MacNally had hardly eaten. He shoved some meat and vegetables into his mouth, then did his best to clean his plate. If there was one thing he took from this discussion, it was that he had to keep his nose clean and avoid segregation.

And he needed a job. But unlike his problems obtaining and holding one in the outside world, finding a position here at Alcatraz presented a much easier challenge.