《钱在哪儿》(Where the Money Was)翻译第134-135页

在下一个周六，我在放风的时候开溜，插入我的钥匙(开门），几秒钟后，我从洞里钻出来。可以看到，那是个长长的隧道，隧道和地面的院子一样长。不管我看到哪里都是蒸汽管道，这些管道进进出出和普通管道并没有什么区别。主要的管道从动力房出来，大约250英尺远。离我站立不远的地方，有一个敞口的管道，没有连接到任何东西。只是平摆在地上。直径16至18英寸，焊接在一起，长度为20英尺。当我随着管道走过去，我就知道它通往哪里了。一个新的动力房正在建设当中，而作为防范措施，动力房建设在监狱以外，大约距离北墙100-150英尺远。

你不必是个工程师，就能意识到，如果有一根敞开的管道通往动力室，那么就会有相应的管道进入。他们迟早要打破墙来连接它们。

如果一个人知道什么时候要打破围墙，他就可以将他自己藏在管道里，并且进入到新的动力室。风险和机会总是在一起的。我要做的第一件事是要确认一个人穿过16英寸的管道是否可行。第一次尝试，最好找个比我小的人。嗯，在鞋店里我的一个朋友是希腊小孩，汤米，重量一定是95磅。他和他的伙伴从密歇根州的伊普西兰蒂来到纽约，因为抢劫Brass Rail餐厅而进入监狱并广为人知。汤米是个无忧无虑性格开朗的人。他在储藏室工作，他总是来来回回的摇晃，好像真的喜欢这个工作。

“你愿意帮我一个忙吗，汤米？”我问他。

“如果我到了那一头，我不需要杀害任何人的话，”在我向他描述了我要他做什么之后，他说，“你可以指望我。”

在下一个周六，我们下到隧道里，他除了一件护身三角绷带，脱光了衣物。我给他全身涂满了凡士林，在他脚踝上绑上一根绳子，然后他钻进去了。第一次他碰到了个焊接接头，他拽了下绳子，这个信号是告诉我他要出来。焊接的工作太过马虎，有些融化的金属滴落下来硬化后像匕首一样锋利。

可怜的汤米的肩膀都被割伤了。一半的凡士林都被擦掉了，身上到处都是铁锈。我用带来的毛巾给他尽可能的擦干净，星期六下午他度过了一个漫长的不舒服的防风时间。

剩下的唯一可以做的事情就是打听他们施工打破围墙的确切时间。在接下来的几周里，那里几乎没有什么活动。在那里工作的囚犯我一个也不认识。他们甚至不在主监狱区，他们被关在叫第5大楼的地方，一个完全隔离的工厂。当我四处打听的时候必须非常小心，不能碰到他们中的任何一个，因为他们很可能会把我交给狱警。出于某种原因，人们可能会认为监狱里的每个人都是讲义气的，其实远不是这样。你必须明确知道你在和谁打交道；在这里告密的人是很多的。

在这方面，就像大多数其他方面一样，组队是一个好坏掺半的事情。因为队伍中的某些人的特权，很容易就可以获得一些工具，比如我的手电筒，而且可以随意地到处闲逛。基于同样的原因，也更容易惹上麻烦，而且由于种种政治和猜忌，每平方英尺singsing监狱的告密者比我所在的任何其他监狱都多。

无论如何，在我一直等待，一直试图确定什么时候开始破墙施工的时候，施工就开始了。有4个家伙出去了。他们确切的知道什么时候开始施工，因为其中一个曾经是蒸汽装配工作人员。几个小时后，他们在不远的地方被抓到，他们尝试去偷一个小船，通过小船逃到河对岸。

既然发生了这样的事情，我不得不另外再找办法，越古老的监狱越狱越困难。原因很简单，像singsing这样老的监狱，已经有数百次试图越狱的尝试。每当一个囚犯制定了一个越狱计划，当局就会针对囚犯试图利用的弱点进行强化。

就像在食堂、小卖部和车间之间的卡车一样，大卡车整天都在来回穿梭。在建造新的监狱时，他们关上了旧门，在东墙上设置了两道门。当一辆卡车离开时，它必须在两个锁着的门之间的小坑处停下来，进行彻底的搜查。坑内有不同的检测装置。比如镜子可以确保没有人从卡车底盘出来。对卡车的搜索是如此的细致周密，他们甚至会打开引擎盖进行检查。

134-135页原文

Come Saturday, I slipped away during yardout, inserted my key, and a few seconds later I was lowering myself through the hole. It was a long tunnel, I could see, extending the full length of the grounds. Wherever I looked, there were steam pipes. Running in and out of everything the way steam pipes do.

The main pipe came out of the powerhouse, which was approximately 250 feet away. Not far from where I was standing, there was an open pipe, not connected to anything. Just lying on the ground. Sixteen to eighteen inches in diameter and welded together in twenty-foot lengths. I knew where it was going as soon as I began to follow it. A new powerhouse was under construction and, as another security precaution, it was being built outside the prison, approximately 100–150 feet beyond the north wall.

You didn’t have to be an engineer to realize that if there was an open pipe running out toward the new powerhouse, there would have to be a corresponding pipe coming in. And that sooner or later they were going to have to break through the wall to connect them.

If a man knew when the breakthrough was going to take place, he could secrete himself into the pipe and make his way through to the new powerhouse. The dangers were many but so were the possibilities. The first thing I had to find out was whether it was possible for a man to make his way through a sixteen-inch pipe. Preferably, for the first trial run, somebody smaller than me. Well, one of my friends in the shoe shop was a Greek kid, Tommy, who must have weighed all of ninety-five pounds. He and his buddy had come to New York from Ypsilanti, Michigan, and celebrated their arrival by robbing the Brass Rail restaurant. Instead of seeing the big city, they were seeing Sing Sing. He was a happy-go-lucky kid with a sunny personality. He worked in the storeroom, and he was always whipping back and forth as if he actually enjoyed his job.

“Will you do a favor for me, Tommy?” I asked him.

“If I don’t have to murder anybody when I get to the other side,” he said, after I had described what I wanted him to do. “You can count on me.” After we had dropped down into the tunnel the following Saturday, he stripped down naked except for a jockstrap. I put Vaseline all over his body, tied his ankle with a rope, and in he went. The first time he hit one of the welded joints, there was a tugging on the rope which signaled that he wanted to be pulled out. The welding job had been so sloppy that some of the molten metal had dripped through and hardened to a dagger sharpness. Poor Tommy was cut all around the shoulders. Half of the Vaseline had been rubbed off, and there was rust all over his body. I rubbed him as clean as possible with the towels I had brought with me, and he spent a long uncomfortable Saturday afternoon in yardout.

The only thing left was to try to learn the exact moment when they were going to break through the wall. There was very little activity down there during the next couple of weeks. I knew none of the inmates on the work crew. They didn’t even lock in the main cellblocks, they locked in what was called the 5 Building, a separate facility. When I did nose around, I had to be very careful not to run into any of them because they could very well have turned me in to the dep. For some reason, people are under a misapprehension that everybody in prison is a stand-up guy. Far from it. You have to know exactly who you’re dealing with; the rat quotient is very high.

In this regard, as in most other regards, the league was a very mixed blessing. Because the league delegates had so much authority, it was very easy to pick up equipment, such as my flashlight, and it was also a little easier to wander around. By the same token, it became that much easier to get into trouble, and with all the politicking and jealousies, there were more rats at Sing Sing per square foot than at any other prison I was ever in.

At any rate, while I was waiting around trying to find out when the great breakthrough was going to take place, it took place. Four guys did get out.

They knew exactly when the ball was going to break through because one of them had been on the steam-fitting crew. Within a couple of hours they were caught a short distance away, trying to steal a rowboat to take them over to the other side.

So there went that. I was going to have to find another way, and the older a prison is the more difficult it is to escape from. For a very good reason. In a prison as old as Sing Sing, there had been hundreds of attempts to break out.

Every time a prisoner had concocted a plan, the authorities had been able to strengthen the weakness he had tried to exploit.

Like trucks. Between the mess hall, the commissary system, and the workshops, there were big trucks going back and forth all day long. In building the new prison, they had closed off the old gate and put in a double gate at the eastern wall. As a truck was leaving, it had to pull up on a pit between the two locked gates and undergo a thorough search. In the pits were different detecting devices. Like mirrors to make sure that nobody was getting out on the undercarriage. The search of the truck itself was so meticulous that they even opened the hood.