What Happened with My Lawyer When I Was in Prison

There are things you can’t tell anyone. This is one of them. It took me a long time to decide whether to write it, and I’m still not sure I did the right thing, but here it is.

It started on a winter dawn, a little after one, when I heard them at the door. I was living with Camila in a small house on the outskirts, a quiet area where nothing ever happened. Four sharp knocks against the wood, no warning, and then the sound of something giving way.

Camila woke with a jolt beside me.

—What was that? —she whispered.

—Stay in bed —I told her.

I didn’t get anywhere. The door blew in before I could get up. Four police officers came in wearing bulletproof vests and weapons pointed straight at the bed, shouting for me to drop what was in my hand, to put my hands where they could see them. I dropped the gun. They threw me to the floor anyway. I heard Camila scream somewhere in the hallway while more uniformed officers wrecked the place.

In the garage they found what they’d come for. A black backpack that an old acquaintance of mine, Rubén Torres, had asked me to hold for a few days, without telling me what was inside. Four kilos of cocaine.

They took me to the station before dawn. Officer Bustos, a fat guy with a mustache who sweated far too much for the temperature, explained very clearly in the interrogation room that what was waiting for me depended on how cooperative I decided to be. His partner, Officer Paredes, was even more direct: I was going to need a lawyer, and I was going to need one now.

I had no way to pay for one. I’d been out of work for months since the company shut down overnight, and the debts had been piling up without pause. That was exactly why I agreed to do Rubén the favor: easy money, no questions. I told myself whatever was in that backpack was none of my business. The kind of lie you tell yourself so you don’t have to think too much.

The state assigned me a public defender. When Valeria Montes appeared in the station’s waiting room, it took me a moment to understand that she was the one who had come to represent me. She must have been around forty, brown hair pulled back, and that way of moving people have when they know exactly where they’re going. She wore a white blouse with fine stripes and a dark skirt that ended quite a bit above the knee. She didn’t apologize for being dressed like that. There was no reason to.

—Martín Garcilazo —she said, reading the papers without looking at me—. Thirty-three years old, no record. What were you doing with four kilos of cocaine at your home?

—They weren’t mine.

—I already know that. Tell me the whole story.

I told her everything: losing my job, the debts, Rubén’s call, the arrangement. She listened without interrupting. When I finished, she set the pen down on the table and looked me straight in the eye for the first time.

—The police were following your friend, not you —she said—. You ended up in the middle at the wrong time. If we want to move on this, you need to cooperate: name, address, everything you know about Torres.

—And what do I get in return?

—A deal with the prosecutor that could end in house arrest. It’s not a guarantee, but it’s the best option there is.

I gave her everything I had. Three days later they transferred me to the penitentiary.

The prison was a gray three-story building on the outskirts, with hallways that smelled of damp and something I preferred not to identify. They assigned me to cell twelve, which I shared with the Russian and the Cuban. The Russian was tall, bald, with tattoos from his knuckles to his wrists, and he spoke little. The Cuban was shorter but twice as muscular, and he spent his hours reading comics with a concentration that seemed out of place in that setting.

They sized me up in silence the first few days. The Russian was the first to speak.

—Why are you here?

—A friend asked me to hold something for him and I didn’t ask what was inside.

—And the friend?

—Disappeared.

The Cuban let out a short laugh without lifting his eyes from the page.

—Classic —he said.

They were the ones who brought me up to speed on the warden, Hugo Sandoval. In his fifties, good physique for his age, and a reputation inside the prison that nobody discussed out loud but everybody knew. He ran the place with the logic of someone who knows the rules are his: everything had a price, everything was negotiable. Prisoners with attractive female visitors tended to receive certain inexplicable benefits. The visitors, in turn, tended to pass through the warden’s office before getting to where the inmates were.

When Camila tried to see me in the first few days, they told her there were no visits for new arrivals during the first week. A lie, as the Russian explained to me. It was the way the warden separated the pretty women so he could meet them first.

I didn’t sleep that night.

When Camila finally managed to visit me, the Cuban told me she had gone through Sandoval’s office first. I don’t know exactly what happened in there, and she never told me. I decided not to ask. Some questions destroy more than ignorance does.

***

They saw her arrive in the intimate visits room in a flowered dress that stood out against everything gray inside. When she came in, I felt something I hadn’t felt in weeks: that there was still a world on the other side of those walls.

We hugged without saying anything. I kept my face against her neck until the guard knocked on the wall to signal that we should sit down.

—Are you okay? —she asked.

—Better now —I answered.

We sat on the narrow bed in the room, holding hands. She told me Valeria had called her to explain the status of the case, that everything was moving in the right direction, that Rubén Torres had been seen near the northern border and it was only a matter of time. Then she asked how I really was, and the answer ended up being a kiss.

It wasn’t a kiss of recognition. It was the kind that builds up over weeks apart and, once it starts, has no pause. I took her face in my hands, she took my neck, and for a moment I completely forgot where we were.

What followed was fast and necessary at the same time. The flowered dress ended up on the chair. She unbuttoned my shirt with an urgency I hadn’t felt in weeks. I kissed her neck, her shoulders, the edge of her bra. She shoved me toward the bed.

—It’s been so long —she whispered against my ear.

She was right.

I slid the dress down over her hips, feeling the warm skin, the pulse beating in her neck. Her panties clung only lightly to her body from the heat and tension of the moment. I ran my fingers over her belly, lower, until I found her wet immediately, and the moan she let out was so deep it made me glance reflexively toward the door. No one was there. Only the hallway, the guard at the end, the tense silence of that place where everything seemed forbidden.

I had her lie back and I knelt between her legs. I parted her underwear slowly, watching as she opened for me. Her cunt was soaked, shining under the harsh light of the room, and the idea that I was there, inside that shitty prison, with my head between her thighs, sent an electric jolt through my body. I kissed her first on top, slowly, feeling her thighs tighten. Then I slid my tongue in and she arched her back sharply, grabbing the sheet with one hand and my hair with the other.

—Yes… like that —she murmured, breathless.

I didn’t hold back. I used a firm tongue, sucking her clit with precision, varying the pressure, the rhythm, sliding two fingers in when I felt her already fully open and slick. Her hips started moving on their own, searching for more. Little, muffled sounds slipped from her, and I had to grip her thighs harder to keep her still while she came apart over my mouth. When she climaxed, it hit her with a violent contraction that ran through her whole body; her eyes shut and she bit her lip to keep from crying out, but even so pleasure trembled in her throat and left the taste of her release on my tongue.

She kept breathing in broken gasps, still shaking when she lifted one leg to pull me back toward her.

—Now you —she said, her voice broken.

She sat up just enough to push me onto my back and yank my pants down in a hurry. She freed me in one motion, taking me in her hand and running from the base to the tip with a confidence that made me suck in air through my teeth. I watched her work with her mouth wet, her tongue just barely peeking out to lick my head before taking me all the way into her mouth. She didn’t do it timidly; she did it with that mix of hunger and skill that wrecks your head.

The bed creaked with every movement. The guard patrolled the hallway and from time to time footsteps could be heard, a clink of keys, a dry cough. She sucked me off calmly at first, with her mouth tight around me, alternating long sucks with tongue movements on the most sensitive part. I held her hair and tried not to come too soon. When she felt I was close, she released me just enough and looked up at me from below, her lips wet and her jaw shining.

—Don’t be an idiot —she said.

She climbed on top of me, straddling me, lined my cock up with her wet cunt, and sank down little by little, breathing deeply as she took me all the way in. The feeling of her heat closing around me made me clench my teeth. She started moving slowly at first, then more firmly, sliding up and down with her hands on my chest to steady herself. I saw her breasts moving beneath the raised dress, saw sweat starting to shine on her neck, and I dug my fingers into her waist to set the rhythm.

—More —she asked.

I gave it to her. I lifted her slightly from below and started fucking her harder, driving into her cunt with shorter, deeper thrusts. Each time I drove in to the hilt, she let out a different sound, half complaint, half pleasure, and answered by spreading her legs wider, digging her nails into my shoulders. We moved fast, with that animal desperation that appears when there’s no time and the body still demands everything.

I turned her face down. She braced her hands on the narrow bed, the dress wrinkled up her back, and I spread her legs from behind. Seeing her ass lifted, her sex reddened and opened by my saliva and her own wetness, made me lose patience. I went into her again in one stroke, deeper, and the sound she made when she took me was only a muffled gasp against the pillow. I grabbed her hips and started fucking her hard, without caring about the noise of the bed or the fact that the door could open at any moment.

—You’re going to make me come again —she said, almost laughing, almost crying.

—Then come.

I spread one hand across her back, moved the other down to her clit and touched her while I kept pounding her from behind. Her body tensed brutally; her thighs trembled, her ass pressed hard against my pelvis, and then she started coming in a long, messy rush that made her moan with no restraint at all. She kept clenching around me, wet, hot, gripping me inside like she never wanted to let go.

I came shortly after, with my forehead against her shoulder blades and my breathing in pieces. I stayed still for a moment, feeling my body empty itself inside her, while my hands shook.

Someone knocked on the door.

—Time —said the guard.

***

Ten days passed. The Russian and the Cuban kept me updated on the prison’s movements like it was the nine o’clock news. According to them, the case was advancing. Valeria had asked for authorization to see me directly in the cell.

When I saw her come in, escorted by two guards who withdrew as soon as she told them they could go, I understood that something important had happened. She wore a wine-colored dress that fell just above the knee and carried a folder under her arm. The Cuban, who was in the hallway, winked at me before they took him to the common room.

We were alone.

—They caught Rubén Torres —she said, sitting on the edge of the bed—. This morning, trying to cross the northern border with fake papers. The prosecutor already has confirmation.

—And what does that mean for me?

—The judge is going to accept the deal. House arrest, probably in forty-eight hours. You won’t be fully free, but you’ll be out of here.

She took my hand while she said it. It was a lawyer’s gesture, the kind meant to soften bad news. But I kept looking at her hand on mine longer than necessary.

I don’t know who moved first. I think it was me. I kissed her slowly, without thinking too much, and she didn’t pull away. It was a short, exploratory kiss, the kind that doesn’t ask permission but doesn’t take it for granted either.

When we pulled apart, Valeria looked at me for a second without saying anything. Then she set the folder on the bed and didn’t look at it again.

—This shouldn’t be happening —she said.

—I know —I replied.

We fell silent. Outside, the hallway was still. The guards weren’t going to interrupt: the warden had given precise orders to leave us alone, which was ironic if you thought about everything I knew about how Sandoval ran the prison. But that afternoon I wasn’t interested in irony.

Valeria stood up. I thought she was going to pick up the folder and leave. Instead, she took a step toward me, grabbed my shirt with both hands, and kissed me with far more certainty than the first time.

I took her to the cell bars. It was the strangest possible setting, but they were the only thing to lean against. I kissed her neck, the lobe of her ear. I felt her breathing change rhythm.

I lifted the dress slowly. She braced her hands on the bars, fingers wrapped in the cold metal, and let me explore. She was hot when I touched her. She started moving her hips in a slow rhythm, eyes closed.

—God —she murmured.

I kept going. I wasn’t in a hurry. I’d spent weeks in there counting the hours, and suddenly the last thing I wanted was for anything to end quickly.

I knelt in front of her. I pulled down her underwear slowly and tasted her from below, with the bars framing the scene in the most implausible way imaginable. Her thighs tensed. One hand found my hair and gripped it.

When she reached the edge, she did it by clenching her teeth so she wouldn’t make a sound, with a restraint that seemed to me the most erotic thing I had ever seen in my life.

She bent down, pushed me back toward the bed, and knelt in front of me. She unfastened the buttons of my pants with precise movements, not clumsy at all. She took me with both hands and looked at me while she did it, with that lawyer’s gaze that calculates everything, that lets nothing slip.

—What a ridiculous situation —she said, and then took me into her mouth without breaking eye contact.

I did not agree that it was ridiculous.

She took her time. She alternated between the pressure of her lips and the long sweep of her tongue. When I felt myself getting close, I stopped her.

She stood up. She turned around and leaned on the bed with her hands, the dress lifted over her waist. She looked back at me over her shoulder.

—If you’re going to do something, do it.

I took a second to take in the scene: Valeria Montes, public defender with more than fifteen years of career behind her, braced on the bed in my cell, waiting. It wasn’t exactly what I had imagined when they assigned me a court-appointed lawyer.

I positioned myself behind her and entered slowly. She exhaled with a sound that wasn’t exactly a sigh. I started moving. Her fingers sank into the rough sheet.

I picked up speed. She lifted her hips to adjust, and that small movement changed the angle of everything and I heard her say something very softly that I couldn’t quite make out but that didn’t sound like a complaint. I took hold of her waist. The bed was narrow and sturdy, and the only sound we made was constant but contained, like everything in that place.

I kissed her back, between the shoulder blades. She rested her cheek on her forearm and stared at the gray concrete wall with her eyes open.

—Don’t stop —she said.

I didn’t stop. I focused on the heat, the pressure, the sound of her breathing growing shorter and shorter. When she reached the edge, her whole body tightened for a second and she let out a long breath she muffled against her arm.

Shortly after, I came too, with my forehead on her back and my eyes closed.

We stayed still for a moment. Then Valeria sat up, fixed her clothes, picked up the folder from the floor where it had fallen, and looked at me with an expression that was not regret but not simple either.

—Forty-eight hours —she said.

—Forty-eight hours —I repeated.

She called to the door. The guards came. I watched her as she walked away down the hallway. The prisoners on the other side of the bars watched her pass in silence.

***

The forty-eight hours passed exactly. I signed the provisional release papers on a Thursday afternoon, with Camila waiting for me at the prison entrance and Valeria on the phone coordinating the final details with the court from somewhere I couldn’t see. They put the ankle bracelet on my right ankle and told me I had to report in every two weeks.

Outside, the sun was so bright it hurt after so long in those hallways. Camila took me by the arm without saying anything, and I let her lead me away.

I never saw Valeria again in that context. I visited her in her office twice more for the paperwork to close the case, always with her assistant present, always professional. We exchanged the necessary words and said goodbye with a handshake. Neither of us mentioned what had happened in that cell.

Some things don’t need words to keep existing.