Gravel crunches under my boots as I head into the abandoned heating plant. This six-story brick structure is one of those piles of slag that give Sing Sing its particular feel. Massive, tan, and almost windowless, it looks like a hangar for a short, fat rocket. The whole thing is sealed off, except for a repair garage around the corner and a part of the first floor containing men's and women's locker rooms and rest rooms. The rest have locks on them, some very ancient indeed, belonging to officers who quit or transferred or died or who knows what.
Nobody keeps track.
An old wall phone hangs upside down by its wires on the left as you enter, the receiver dangling by its curly cord, a symbol of Sing Sing's chronically broken phone system. Cobwebs, in here, find a way onto your boots. For a few weeks following my arrival, on Aragon's advice I checked the room for lockers that might have opened up. None ever did. All those unused lockers needlessly tied up.