Read ROLL CALL ~ A Prison List (True Prison Story) Online
Authors: Glenn Langohr
ROLL CALL ~ A Prison List (True Prison Story) (62 page)
I looked over there and saw one of them watching at the cell door. I asked, “Who else is here for the Mexicans?”
“There’s a Pisa from Mexico named Felipe who has a lot of juice for the South of the border Mexicans.”
I watched Smashmouth meet up with his cellie Red who had been talking to the other White cell at the sally port to walk back out of the building. They waited for the ring leader to walk by them and then disappeared from view. I watched the ring leader walk to cell 125 and bang on the top of their door with his keys disrespectfully. I told Damon half jokingly, “The ring leader has entered the building to talk to the head burrito. The Mexican in the cell is stripping down… He’s squatting and coughing…He’s putting his clothes back on…He’s backing up to the cell and sticking his arms through the tray slot and getting handcuffed. The cell is getting popped open and…I remember that Chicano. He goes by Topo.”
I watched the ring leader walk Topo out of the building. He leaned closer to Topo like they were in on something together and I saw his lips moving. I told Damon, “I wish I was a lip reader.”
On the way out of the building Topo stepped away to get some space and said, “I don’t do interviews.”
“Then you don’t want a heads-up that you guys are coming off lockdown tomorrow morning then huh?”
Deputy Valdez opened the door to the program office, walked to his office and sat behind his desk.
Topo remained standing.
Deputy Valdez said, “This isn’t an interview. It’s a business proposition.”
“I don’t do business with people I don’t know.”
Deputy Valdez slid a piece of paper across the desk and said, “Money and drugs talk.”
Topo looked at the piece of paper. A half a million-dollar figure. He whistled.
Deputy Valdez slid two prison issue pictures across next. “If these two die in a knife fight you get the money; only if they both die, though!”
“Where would you send this fettia?”
Deputy Valdez smiled and thought, it’s always about the money and drugs for these thugs. The secret fund the prison union has given me access to with the million dollars will all be mine if I play this right. He turned another piece of paper over, slid it across the desk, and said, “I do my homework Mr. Topo.”
Topo maintained a stoic mask while wondering, how did they get my A.K.A. after all of these years? He looked at the piece of paper and it was even worse. They knew his wife’s sister’s address they just established. There was a second address he didn’t care about on the piece of paper also. “How do I know this isn’t a set up?”
“Mr. Topo…Look into my eyes and understand something significant. You’re the mafia for your people in prison…I’m the mafia for my people wearing a prison uniform. If those two,” He pointed to the pictures of B.J. and Damon, “Leave the yard in a body bag; I get the same amount I’m offering you. That’s good business right? If we do good business the first time what’s to stop us from doing more good business?”
“The address that has apartment number 13.”
Deputy Valdez imagined Topo’s half a million being driven over the border to his uncle El Diablo to help him buy the next president of Mexico…”So be it. Here is how this is going to work. The whites don’t even know they’re coming off lock down tomorrow morning so you have all day to let your people know some things. Tomorrow morning as we start releasing you to yard everyone coming out of their cell is going to get strip searched and metal detected. So don’t try to bring any weapons. I’ve got that taken care of for you.”
Topo watched deputy Valdez pull a bag from under the table.
“These are weapons we seized from C-yard a few weeks ago during a search of the yard.”
Topo whistled as he saw a foot long ice pick shank. Topo imagined it was cut from a fence and straightened.
Deputy Valdez pulled out another weapon. It was thick and crude. “I believe you call this one a bone crusher. I can’t see it killing these two white warriors though. You’re going to need something better then these to be sure.”
Deputy Valdez put five more prison-made weapons on the desk and then pulled out a medical bag. “With these two weapons in this medical bag you’ll cut through their body builder bodies like butter and penetrate arteries and bring a satisfactory conclusion to our transaction.”
Topo watched deputy Valdez carefully pull out the two scalpels and whistled.
“I’m going to bury these on the yard where your people post up. If you do this right Topo, nobody will get busted and catch a case. I suggest you start a mini riot, or a full blown one as a distraction. It’s up to you.”
Detective Maltobano woke up from a dream and tried to remember what it was about. Then he heard his phone ring and looked at the alarm clock. It was 4 a.m.
“Is this B.J.’s father?”
“Yes. I’m worried about my son. He sent what he said was evidence of corruption to me, and, detective Pincher seized it before I could see what was on it. I’ve been calling the governor’s office for a few days… I haven’t got a response. I’m calling because I just had a dream my son was killed in a prison riot! Something isn’t right!”
“Do you know where he’s located?”
“Jade and Sarah said they’re both at a level four prison on the border of Mexico.”
“Both of them…That’s odd. I’m going to call the governor. Let me get back to you.”
“This is Agent Maltobano with Internal Affairs. I just got off the phone with the governor about your son. I have some bad news. The governor called the prison and demanded they shut down the yard B.J. is on and the prison stopped speaking English with him, then put him on hold for over a half hour, then hung up the phone. The governor told me he’s flying to San Diego to get to the prison.”
“Jade, Sarah and I are driving there also.”
I woke up from a vivid dream where I saw everything that was going to happen in a kaleidoscope of fast moving images, but they were too elusive to hold on to. I got up and walked to our cell door and looked at the clock. 4 a.m. I tried to put the pieces of my dream back together and all I could remember was that we were going to get yard this morning. I lay back on my bed and closed my eyes, willing the pieces of my dream to come back to me. Nothing came. I started praying and felt a powerful presence filling me up. It felt so peaceful I started crying and thanking God. I was no longer worried about figuring out my dream and felt drawn to the Bible. I held it in my hand and asked God to guide me to the page he wanted me to read and the Bible started to fall out of my hand. The pinkie finger of my right hand caught the edge of the Bible and held on. It was clamped to a page in Revelation. I started reading about Jesus defeating death and the keys to Heaven and Hell. I imagined a giant key with Hell to the left and Heaven to the right and realized we all have a choice in which way we turn the key. I pictured those of us in prison struggling through darkness turning the key toward heaven by helping others and saw those same people turning a hellish life into heaven. Then I imagined people caught up in the rat race of making money and laws in the free world making decisions that turned the key toward hell and turning a heavenly lifestyle into a hellish existence. I looked back at Damon on his bunk. He was awake and smiling at me.
I said, “We’re going to get yard today.”
“How do you know that homeboy?”
“I had a dream about it.”
“I should start calling you dreamer. What else did you see in your dream?”
“I can’t remember the rest.”
“I’ll stick to calling you B.J.”
“We are getting yard homeboy. I’ll start calling you dreamer again.”
I sat up on my bunk and looked at Damon staring out the cell door. “Give me the play by play.”
“There’s about twenty guards entering the building and starting on the other side…They are stripping out the Mexicans coming out of their cell…The Mexicans are squatting and coughing and getting their assholes wanded with metal detectors…They’re putting on their clothes and walking out to yard. It doesn’t look like they let Big Vic or Thor out, though.”
“Maybe they’re letting the Mexicans out first.”
“Are you remembering your dream?”
“Maybe.”
Ten minutes later Damon said, “The gun tower is popping the sally port door… Here come a couple of guards our way and a couple went the other way for Vic and Thor. The two guards stopped right in front of our cell and, “Do you guys want yard?”
Damon and I both responded at the same time, “Yes!”
We followed the same protocol and dropped our boxers, squatted and coughed, got our assholes wanded by a metal detector, put on our clothes and boots and walked out to the yard in full jail issue.
We both had on our beanies slung low and C.D.C. denim jackets going out into 110 degree heat.
Walking out of our building onto the yard, the first thing we were looking for was where the other whites were stationed. The kite Vic and Thor sent us said our table was right in front of our building. The sun was so bright, I had to squint my eyes against it. There were a couple of tables in front of our building and the one to the left sported a gathering of whites. The table was one of those concrete jobs bolted to the ground. There were six people sitting on top of it with their feet on the spot you’d normally sit on. From up there they had a more commanding view. Three faced the yard and three faced the building we were coming from. Smashmouth was sitting in the middle watching us walk towards him. The rest of the gathering that didn’t fit on the table stood close to it.
Smashmouth came off the table and introduced us to everyone. By my count, with Rott and I, there were 14 of us. It was a solid 14 though. There was some serious experience, peppered in along with some body builder-sized dudes. Smashmouth told me, “L’il man wants to talk to you in a little bit.”
I nodded my head and looked around. My first instinct was to check out all of the gun towers to see how interested they seemed. I started with the one behind us in the building we’d just come from. The guard was standing at the window with his gun at the ready staring at us. Above him on the building’s roof the ring leader stood with a rifle in his hand, looking right at us also.
I noticed Rott was studying the yard intently. I took in the terrain for a few minutes and then told him that our rear flank had rifles trained on us. In the cell, we had imagined the yard from our mind’s eye and what we’d likely be facing. If there had to be any combat we knew we’d be facing much heavier numbers, probably about four of theirs to every one of ours. Our strategy was going to be to stay in a tight unit away from the middle of the yard so we couldn’t get surrounded. If warfare started we were planning to fall back to a building’s wall to shelter our rear and keep everything in front of our tightly grouped unit. This strategy wasn’t looking so good anymore.
Surrounding the whole yard was a ten foot concrete track in front of each building before you got to the tables and then the yard. I looked to the left and slightly behind our table to that part of the track and observed a group of Mexicans forty feet away, stationed sitting on the curb. They looked like they were ready and waiting for something. I counted eleven of them and assumed they were from the same neighborhood. About forty feet in front of them and into the yard there were two sets of bleachers bolted to a concrete slab with grass surrounding it. I estimated about thirty Mexicans that I realized were from Mexico, not neighborhoods. I looked at one particular Mexican standing next to the bleachers and I realized I knew him. It was Felipe. Clockwise from the bleachers and about forty feet in front of us a small group of Chicanos stood talking. Topo was in the middle. His posture was that of a five star general but in a quiet kind of way like he was constantly trying to fly under the radar and blend in. L’il man was standing next to him like he was the next-in-charge and was personally responsible for any of the orders spoken by the general. The rest of the hard-core group looked like active followers who were ready and willing.
One of the followers was told to go get someone. I followed the direction he went. He headed where I hadn’t yet studied. In front of our table and to our right, about twenty feet away from our table sat one just like it. There were just as many neighborhood hommies on it and around it as we had on our table. Most of them seemed to be keeping curious eyes on our table. The follower walked past it to the curb a few feet behind, where a row of about 20 neighborhood hommies sat in about a 50 foot line that turned with the curve of the track. Ricky was in the middle of them getting summoned by the follower.
I studied Ricky walking with the follower across the yard. He was stressed out. His jaw line was clamped shut like he was thinking as hard as he could; like he was angry or frustrated, but the rest of his body language was submissive and overwhelmed. His head and shoulders were slumped down and his eyes gave him away with that deer in the headlight look.
He shook hands with the five star general and nodded his head and listened while L’il man ran something down to him. It looked pretty extensive so I scanned the perimeter back to the table to our right to really study the occupants. I asked Smashmouth something Rott and I were curious about.