Billy Hayes: It looks like a cheap hotel.
Jimmy: Only the room service is lousy. I'm Jimmy Booth. This is Erich - something Swedish, I don't know.
Erich: Just Erich.
Jimmy: He cleaned you up.
Billy Hayes: Thanks. I'm Billy Hayes. At least, I used to be.
Tex: How much did you pay this joker? This cab driver?
Billy Hayes: Two hundred dollars. It was my last two hundred.
Tex: How much did you figure to make?
Billy Hayes: I was only gonna sell some of it to my friends. I'm not a pusher. Honest.
Tex: It beats workin'. Do you get a family back home?
Billy Hayes: Yeah, a mother, father, brother, sister in Babylon, Long Island.
Tex: It'll be tough on 'em.
Jimmy: The second way out, I need you guy's help, and that's under.
Billy Hayes: You mean tunnel? Are you serious?
Max: This is Shagmahr prison, not Stalag 17.
Jimmy: Well that's where you're wrong fuckface, 'cause it's already built.
Billy Hayes: Dear Susan: Poor Jimmy was caught and beaten so badly he got a severe hernia, and lost a testicle. He's been in the sanitarium for months. In comparison, my problems seem very small.
Chosen answer: Billy's plan was to bribe a guard to help him escape, using the money his girlfriend had smuggled to him. That plan failed, and he was almost raped by a sadistic guard. When Billy accidentally killed him, he used that as an unexpected opportunity to disguise himself in a guard uniform and walked out the front door. If he had been caught, he did not have an alternate plan and would have been severely punished, probably even executed.
raywest ★