Where the Money Was by Willie Sutton

Author:Willie Sutton
Language: eng
Format: epub
Tags: Fiction
ISBN: 9780767918138
Publisher: Crown/Archetype
Published: 2008-11-27T16:00:00+00:00

• A Tunnel to Holmesburg •

A couple of months after I was out of isolation, a runner came up to me on the little ball field to notify me that the prison psychiatrist, Dr. Philip Q. Roche, wanted me in his office. The first thing that comes to the mind of an inmate on a thing like that—especially if he's just been in trouble—is that they're going to try to “bug” him. Many a troublesome inmate had gone that route at Dannemora, it was a going business. All the warden had to do was call in three outside doctors who received five hundred dollars, went through the motions of questioning the poor guy, and off he went to the Bughouse. Maybe the warden didn't tell them what he wanted their finding to be, but how smart did a psychiatrist have to be to know that if he decided the guy was well enough to stay outside, the warden was going to decide not to call him in the next time he was handing around the five-hundred-dollar fees.

Dr. Roche's pleasant smile put me even more on guard. He was a handsome man, a couple of years younger than me, tall, slender, and immaculately dressed. His complexion was so smooth and clear that you were immediately put in mind of expensive creams used over a long period of time. To put me even further on guard, there was something almost feminine in the way he held his cigarette holder and pursed his lips. Never was a first impression wronger.

“You've been in a lot of trouble here in the prison, haven't you?” he said.

I told him that it came with the bit. “I don't think in terms of being in trouble,” I said. “But it seems to be a way of life with me.”

It turned out that his personal secretary had left to get married, and with the country at war, an adequate replacement had been impossible to come by at the salary that was being offered. The job was to type up the records of his interviews with prisoners and, since Dr. Roche was only there for two or three hours a day, take care of the office while he was away.

“Why me?” I asked.

Because, he said, there was one other requirement which was more important than a mere ability to type. Absolute confidentiality. From a study of my record he had concluded that I was a man who knew how to keep his mouth shut.

Dr. Roche was one of the leading psychiatrists in Philadelphia. He had an extensive private practice, was on a number of hospital staffs, and he also taught at the University of Pennsylvania. A wealthy man in his own right, he had married a woman from an even wealthier Main Line family. But where others in his field talked about rehabilitation and then turned up their noses at the relatively low pay scale offered by the prison system, Dr. Roche put himself right on the line. In New

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