Down These Mean Streets

Piri wakes up in the hospital with a police officer guarding him. He tells Piri that the cop he had shot is dying and that if he dies, Piri will “get the chair” (242). Since Piri is badly injured, he is sent to Bellevue Hospital’s prison ward, where he meets a man named Jimmy, who is acting insane in order to try and avoid being tried for murder. After Piri heals more, he is sent to “the Tombs, the House of Do-Right” (243). This is the city jail, in which he is to await his trial. After a few months in the Tombs, Piri is put on trial and the judge sentences him to five to fifteen years hard labor at Sing Sing Prison. Since the cop he shot does not die, Piri avoids a longer sentence. His accomplices get similar sentences, except Louie, who gets a reduced sentence for testifying against Piri.

In Sing Sing, Piri forces his mind to do menial things, like counting the teeth in his mouth, in order to keep his mind “from being eaten up by pressure” (250). He has to stay tough so that he is not taken advantage of by the other inmates: “Motherfuckers, I thought, I got one thing left, and that’s my rep, and nobody’s gonna take that” (251).