JETHRO JOHNNY: Yeah, like that. I used one bullet on Rush Limbaugh. Thinking, a bullet back of the head while he’s shoveling pancakes down his gullet at Denny’s, and it’s on like Donkey Kong. Some dittohead pops a cap in your boy Al Sharpton?
PRETTY RUDY: My boy? Fuck you! But that is some out-there criminal shit, tell you that.
JETHRO JOHNNY: See what I mean?
PRETTY RUDY: Like if Anonymous had a crew of rogue killers. That’s like the shit I could see them pulling off. Anonymous could go treacherous real quick and change up the crime game big-time.
JETHRO JOHNNY: Clever stuff, huh? Try to pull the covers off all that moral-superiority shit Americans talk about themselves.
PRETTY RUDY: Wonder if there’s money in smoking dudes like that.
JETHRO JOHNNY: Or broads.
PRETTY RUDY: Yeah, guess so, or broads. Ann Coulter like a motherfucker.
JETHRO JOHNNY: All those asshats on TV talking politics this and that, man, they were like pop stars to youngblood. Kept track of their influence and shit. Even called them high-value targets, like they were military strikes.
PRETTY RUDY: Was he an anarchist? Like does chaos give him wood? Or did he see some way to extort money out of it?
JETHRO JOHNNY: Who knows what the fuck motivates a tweaker trust-fund college dropout? But I played that game with him every day for like a week.
PRETTY RUDY: Ah shit, Whitey turned you, huh? Next thing you know you’re gonna tell me you’re all into Dungeons & Dragons and shit.
JETHRO JOHNNY: Huh, funny you say that. That kid was way into (unintelligible) game Risk, about world domination. Know it?
PRETTY RUDY: Never played it. But those white boys in prison obsessed over that game back in the day. Gavachos obsess over the freakiest shit.
JETHRO JOHNNY: That was youngblood. Would sit and explain his strategies like he was some bat-shit crazy monk in a cave sharing the secrets to illumination. Weird focus. And I swear, sometimes it was like he knew what I was up to.
PRETTY RUDY: What?
JETHRO JOHNNY: One morning we’re talking game strategy and he says that to gain advantage over an opponent, you should sacrifice one of your own then blame the enemy. You know, to rally the troops.
PRETTY RUDY: Scheming prick. I like his style, drives me wild . . . But nobody knew how things would change up. Not me. Not Gordo.
JETHRO JOHNNY: That’s what’s weird. Maybe he’s the one gave me the idea.
PRETTY RUDY: Either way, cops are dumb fucks, but they ain’t retards. If he was a snitch planted there to set you up, you ain’t giving up shit to a fish.
JETHRO JOHNNY: Got that right! Well, Gordo’s a cop and he ain’t no dumb fuck.
PRETTY RUDY: Who’da thought we’d have one of our own in the Oakland PD?
JETHRO JOHNNY: I see a lot, but I never saw that one coming. Gordo. Council member—also a righteous cop?
PRETTY RUDY: So who won the game?
JETHRO JOHNNY: Wasn’t that kind of party. It was more like war games, spin out every scenario . . . You saw how those DAs were killed in Texas last year?
PRETTY RUDY: Yeah, just like that prison warden in Colorado. Answers his front door and blam! Shot dead. Don’t fuck with the Aryan Brotherhood.
JETHRO JOHNNY: Payback’s a bitch. And that cycle just got kicked off. You know law enforcement and the AB ain’t done killing each other yet.
PRETTY RUDY: Preachin’ to the choir, homeboy, you ain’t got to tell me. Bullet retaliation is as American as a fried stick of butter at the Iowa State Fair.
JETHRO JOHNNY: That’s a real thing?
PRETTY RUDY: Fucking A.
JETHRO JOHNNY: That some fuckin’ gross shit. Why you got to malign all-American butter lovers?
PRETTY RUDY: You know that having your dick sucked is illegal in the Midwest, but it’s okay to make out and masturbate with margarine all day long?
JETHRO JOHNNY: Stop, stop! I always told you watching all that porn would fuck you up.
PRETTY RUDY: I think you can legally marry margarine in Kansas and Oklahoma.
JETHRO JOHNNY: Sick shit.
PRETTY RUDY: Twisted fuckin’ world.
JETHRO JOHNNY: Know what’s sick? Check out that nigger hooker right there. Broke from the neck down.
PRETTY RUDY: Looks like she had a rough paper route.
JETHRO JOHNNY: My homeboy Pie Face told me this joke: What has six tits and eight teeth?
PRETTY RUDY: I give up.
JETHRO JOHNNY: Night shift at the local Waffle House.
PRETTY RUDY: Ah, that’s fucked up. My road dog’s a racist, breaks my heart.
(MUSIC . . .)
JETHRO JOHNNY: You know my fucked-up parents had me read all those dead white men as chavalón.
PRETTY RUDY: Your parents were pieces of work.
JETHRO JOHNNY: It was one line from a dead white broad always stuck with me.
PRETTY RUDY: I know, I know, I got it: (clears throat, imitates Clark Gable) Frankly, my dear, I don’t give a damn.
JETHRO JOHNNY: That’s from the movie, not the book. But keep quoting Gone with the Wind, see how that works out for you.
PRETTY RUDY: Don’t dog the movie. Rhett Butler’s my idol.
JETHRO JOHNNY: That pussy-whipped motherfucker? Coughs up a nut sack at the end of the flick, finally kicks Scarlett to the curb, and we’re supposed to cheer?
PRETTY RUDY: Whoa! Hold on.
JETHRO JOHNNY: Fuck him. He was a punk. Rhett Butler’s on nigger pipe.
PRETTY RUDY: Man, you know nothin’ ’bout love.
JETHRO JOHNNY: Oh, and you do?
PRETTY RUDY: If you had a girl you’d know what I’m talkin’ ’bout. Now that I think about it, I ain’t seen you with a broad for a couple years.
JETHRO JOHNNY: I just told you I’ma knock the dust off with my broad in a minute.
PRETTY RUDY: Nah, that’s some suspect shit.
JETHRO JOHNNY: Whatever.
PRETTY RUDY: Being a stone-cold killer ruined romance for you, I see that now.
JETHRO JOHNNY: What do you know that I don’t?
PRETTY RUDY: Riddle me this, loverboy: if—and this is a big fuckin’ if—but if you ever REALLY get a girl, how would you know when she’s climaxing?
JETHRO JOHNNY: What?
PRETTY RUDY: You heard me: how could you tell when your girl is climaxing?
JETHRO JOHNNY: Climaxing, what the fuck? You know what? You got me. How?
PRETTY RUDY: You’d see my car parked in her driveway. (bursts out laughing)
JETHRO JOHNNY: That’s fucked up, homeboy. Serious egregious shit right there.
PRETTY RUDY: Don’t get all butt hurt. Anyway, we both know you got no real girl, so she’s fake-safe anyway.
JETHRO JOHNNY: That brings me all the way back to the point I was gonna make.
PRETTY RUDY: What’s that?
JETHRO JOHNNY: This broad wrote this story about these killers who snatch up a family with one talkative old bitch hostage.
PRETTY RUDY: Remind you of anyone?
JETHRO JOHNNY: Huh, never thought of that connection.
PRETTY RUDY: Right?
JETHRO JOHNNY: Anyway, one killer finally shoots that loudmouth bitch dead. Says the coolest line ever uttered by a killer in books: She would have been a good woman if there had been somebody there to shoot her every minute of her life.
PRETTY RUDY: That’s a good line. I know people that would apply to.
JETHRO JOHNNY: We all do, that’s the point. That’s why God invented bullets. To stop people from talking.
PRETTY RUDY: We talking Bandit now?
JETHRO JOHNNY: He didn’t go by no bullet, but yeah, his mouth turned him cold.
PRETTY RUDY: Why Bandit? I mean, your job was to smoke a nigger and fuck up the bullshit prison peace treaty. You didn’t worry there’d be consequences for going off script?
JETHRO JOHNNY: Long game, homey. Plus, Bandit was closer than any mayate shot-caller I could get to. County i
s mostly segregated now.
PRETTY RUDY: Makes sense. But what long game?
JETHRO JOHNNY: Bandit was that typical convict who thought he was tough cuz he had all that makeup on his muscle. The bald head with the old-school bandito mustache.
PRETTY RUDY: Yeah, but we need those idiots on our side. They’re our mascots, our logo, and our best recruiters.
JETHRO JOHNNY: (laughs, then imitates announcer voice) There’s strong, and there’s convict strong. Join our army.
PRETTY RUDY: That’s right. There’s a reason the peckerwoods in the AB all look alike, call themselves The Brand.
JETHRO JOHNNY: Thug marketing.
PRETTY RUDY: Why not? So . . . long game?
JETHRO JOHNNY: I used to lie in my bunk and think: If I had a time machine I wouldn’t go back and kill Hitler. I’d go all the way back to the road to Damascus and kill Saul of Tarsus before he became St. Paul, the greatest missionary in all of Christendom.
PRETTY RUDY: That’s it! I’m driving you to the crazy house right now. You just went all the way 5150.
JETHRO JOHNNY: No, really. Think about it. No Christians means no conquistadors fucking up the Aztecs—our peeps.
PRETTY RUDY: I’m thinking about it, and I don’t know what that crazy Star Trek time travel shit has to do with you killing Bandit, one of our own.
JETHRO JOHNNY: I took out the guy who was gonna be the biggest preacher of that fucked-up prison peace treaty gospel.
PRETTY RUDY: You telling me he was pushing that hard inside?
JETHRO JOHNNY: Converts make the greatest zealots.
PRETTY RUDY: Bandit never needed a reason to be a loudmouth. And he did have the full backing of the Council in Pelican Bay.
JETHRO JOHNNY: Exactly. I figured we either tangle with him now or tangle with him later, when he transfers from county to Corcoran and is too big to get at.
PRETTY RUDY: You think he suspected someone was gonna try and fuck up the treaty?
JETHRO JOHNNY: Never saw nothin’ coming. He trusted the wrong muscle. He would’ve been better served lifting a coupla books about Julius Caesar than lifting all them weights.
PRETTY RUDY: We beat ’em with history every time.
JETHRO JOHNNY: Deserved what he got.
PRETTY RUDY: Some people don’t get enough of what they deserve.
JETHRO JOHNNY: I set up that terrón for the hit and waited till a Mexican guard spread the rumor Bandit was killed by a nigger—you saw the news, it lit that jail up.
PRETTY RUDY: The little homies were on that bait faster than a hobo on a ham sandwich.
JETHRO JOHNNY: Got that right.
PRETTY RUDY: Anyway, you made it work better than me and Gordo expected.
JETHRO JOHNNY: Cue the clusterfuck, qué no?
PRETTY RUDY: The boys at Pelican Bay are already going crazy trying to figure out who betrayed who.
JETHRO JOHNNY: Punks. Broke weak with that peace treaty shit.
PRETTY RUDY: By the time the smoke clears there’ll be bodies for days. Gordo will have consolidated his shit. Then we’re golden.
JETHRO JOHNNY: As my six-year-old niece says, easy peezy lemon squeezy.
(MUSIC PLAYS . . .)
JETHRO JOHNNY: Hey, check out Francesco’s. Looks the same as twenty years ago.
PRETTY RUDY: That should be their motto: Francesco’s, since 1962. Ain’t nothin’ changed but the weather . . . Hey, so I’m gonna park here and go check in across the street.
JETHRO JOHNNY: Local 6, there?
PRETTY RUDY: Yeah. Gordo’s in there. Got the longshoremen on a lockdown vote.
JETHRO JOHNNY: I’ma stay in the car and call my jefita while you check shit out.
PRETTY RUDY: Yeah, awright. Tell her I said hey.
JETHRO JOHNNY: Órale. You gonna be all right getting outta the car with your bum getaway stick?
PRETTY RUDY: Don’t worry ’bout me, pendejo . . . But all kidding aside, you put in good work, homeboy. Te aventaste.
JETHRO JOHNNY: Does that mean the massage and dancing are off the table now?
PRETTY RUDY: Call Ma Duke. I gotta check this out.
JETHRO JOHNNY: Gracias. And leave the car running. I wanna hear the music.
(PRETTY RUDY EXITS CAR. DOOR SLAMS. CELL PHONE BEEPS.)
JETHRO JOHNNY: You see us drive up? . . . Cool. So when he gets back in the car, walk over slow, hands at your side. You’re only wearing a T-shirt, right? . . . Tuck that shit in. I don’t want him thinking you’re packing. Okay? Go.
(MUSIC VOLUME RISES, DOOR OPENS)
JETHRO JOHNNY: Hey, so you hurt your leg how again?
PRETTY RUDY: Don’t go there, man.
JETHRO JOHNNY: No, en serio. You said something about slipping but I didn’t get what the fuck that means.
PRETTY RUDY: Slipped on ice.
JETHRO JOHNNY: Ice? What the fuck . . . Hey, there’s my homeboy Silly Chino.
PRETTY RUDY: What’s he doing here?
JETHRO JOHNNY: Bringing me a boatload of cash in that backpack.
PRETTY RUDY: How’d he know we were gonna be here?
JETHRO JOHNNY: Don’t get all panicky, homeboy. That’s my little homie. I called when you were buying tampons. Look at his goofy-ass T-shirt, all tucked in and shit . . . How do I roll this window down?
PRETTY RUDY: I control it—here, I got it.
(SOUND OF WINDOW OPENING.)
SILLY CHINO: Hey, Jethro Johnny, good to see you out. (unintelligible) Here’s your backpack.
JETHRO JOHNNY: Thanks . . . Silly Chino, this is my road dog, Pretty Rudy.
SILLY CHINO: Mucho gusto.
PRETTY RUDY: Yeah, me too.
JETHRO JOHNNY: Hey, so untuck that shirt, you look lame. But thanks for this. I’ll call in a few hours. Catch up on accounting. Awright?
SILLY CHINO: Awright. I’ll be at the pad. Good to finally meet you, Pretty Rudy.
PRETTY RUDY: Stay up, youngster.
JETHRO JOHNNY: So later, right?
SILLY CHINO: Yeah. Te watcho.
(SOUND OF WINDOW ROLLING UP.)
JETHRO JOHNNY: See, that wasn’t bad.
PRETTY RUDY: Respectful youngster.
JETHRO JOHNNY: Kid’s sharp. Couldn’t tell right there but he’s got mack for days. He could talk a cat off a fish truck. Gots long heart too. He’ll be us one day.
PRETTY RUDY: So that’s all cash in the bag?
JETHRO JOHNNY: Look for yourself.
(SOUND OF ZIPPER.)
PRETTY RUDY: That’s a lot of feria, homie. Ah fuck, smell that? Zip that shit up.
JETHRO JOHNNY: Money fuckin’ stinks like a camel’s crack.
PRETTY RUDY: I don’t even wanna know how you know what a camel’s crack smells like.
JETHRO JOHNNY: Fuck-an-Animal Digest, the scratch-and-sniff page. I used your copy at the crib, so don’t look at me like that.
(BOTH LAUGH.)
PRETTY RUDY: Sick puppy, homes . . . That stench reminds me of the time I robbed a vault and dumped the loot on my bed. Laid in it like a fuckin’ little kid.
JETHRO JOHNNY: What, you thought you were in the movies?
PRETTY RUDY: Over a hundred grand on that bed. All of a sudden I smelled something so bad I swear I thought I’d stepped in shit. So I jump up, check my shoes, but nothin’.
JETHRO JOHNNY: Leftover camel sweat on your covers.
PRETTY RUDY: Sniff sheets, pillow, shirt—nothin’. Finally, going crazy looking for what’s causing the smell—I figure out it’s the cash.
JETHRO JOHNNY: Man, you gotta roll the windows down!
(BOTH LAUGH.)
PRETTY RUDY: Filthy fuckin’ people. Wipe their ass cracks, don’t wash their hands, then put their funky fingers all over the bills to buy a Big Mac.
JETHRO JOHNNY: Fuck. Smells worse than a Tijuana whorehouse on dime night.
(BOTH LAUGH HARDER.)
JETHRO JOHNNY: So your knee? Mexicans ain’t supposed to be on ice, especially ones with obvious gland problems. You know that.
PRETTY RUDY: Look, your homeboy’s coming back.
JETHRO JOHNNY: Yeah, about that (rustling sound) snitch motherfucker—
PRETTY RUDY: So you’re gonna shoot me? That’s what’s happening?
JETHRO JOHNNY: Gordo says your weak-ass rat game earned you these bullets.
PRETTY RUDY: Frankly, my dear, I don’t give a damn.
(MULTIPLE GUNSHOTS, THEN DOOR OPENS.)
SILLY CHINO: Fuckin’ gun jammed. C’mon. Before the cops get here.
(SOUND OF SOMEONE SPITTING.)
PRETTY RUDY: Look at you. Thought you were slick. Now you’re just another fool, learned the hard way. Ain’t no fun when the rabbit’s got the gun.
(FOOTSTEPS RUNNING. CAR DOOR SLAMS. SQUEAL OF TIRES.)
STATE OF CALIFORNIA, )
COUNTY OF LOS ANGELES. )
I, POMPTON X. GALA, a Certified Shorthand Reporter in and for the County of Los Angeles, State of California, do hereby certify:
That on February 11, 2016, thereof, I transcribed the text/electronic/audiotaped recording of the proceedings; that the foregoing transcript constitutes a full, true, and correct transcription of all proceedings had and given.
IN WITNESS HEREOF, I have hereunto set my hand and affixed my Official Seal on February 11, 2016.
________________________________________
POMPTON X. GALA, CSR #(d)-10-5942
Certified Shorthand Reporter
SUPERIOR COURT OF CALIFORNIA, COUNTY OF LOS ANGELES
—o0o—
THE PEOPLE OF THE STATE OF )
CALIFORNIA, )
)
Plaintiff(s), ) Case No. 01x45728b
vs. )
RUDOLFO GOMEZ aka PRETTY RUDY )
Defendants(s) )
_______________________________________)
AUDIOTAPE
GOMEZ RESIDENCE CONVERSATION BETWEEN
RUDOLFO GOMEZ, aka “PRETTY RUDY,"
and HARRY GONG-LERMA, aka “SILLY CHINO,"
4:00 PM, January 5, 2016
Transcribed by:
POMPTON X. GALA REPORTING SERVICES
9694 San Fernando Road, Suite C
Los Angeles, California 90057
Telephone: (323) 555-1287
SILLY CHINO: What’s up with you, tío? Look like you just saw your new girlfriend blowing Brad Pitt near the toaster.
Oakland Noir Page 20
