Cell 2455, Death Row

by Caryl Chessman

  Dave and I exchanged greetings. Four officers were waiting for us and escorted us along the mammoth jail’s labyrinthine corridors to the bathroom. Brought there before us were eight other men being readied for transfer to Quentin. These transfers, incidentally, are referred to as “loads” or “chains.” Dave and I were bathed separately and our property and persons were carefully searched. Then we were thrown our civilian clothing, and we dressed. Throughout this readying process there was an atmosphere of hustle and bustle, for it is one of tradition’s paramount demands that jailers shall always be in a hurry to check their charges in or out. And this is so notwithstanding the fact that during the period intervening between “in” and “out,” long, dead months often drag by while the sometimes creaky machinery of justice grinds and grinds and grinds.

  As soon as it was readied, the load was herded to an anteroom off the Attorney Room, and there held in guarded isolation for half an hour before the Attorney Room was cleared. Then, closely watched by lynx-eyed deputies, those of us on the scheduled transfer who had visitors were called out into the Attorney Room and seated across from those who had come to see us off. A solid wooden partition extended from the floor almost to shoulder height, separating visited and visitors.

  My father had been notified by telephone a very few minutes before and was there to see me, looking dazed and haggard.

  “Dad,” I said reassuringly, with a smile, “don’t worry. And don’t let Mom worry. Everything is going to work out all right for me. I guarantee you I’ll never die in the gas chamber. That’s just not going to happen. And I wouldn’t be surprised if I was back on the streets a lot sooner than anybody thought possible. I ...”

  My father broke in, his eyes pleading. “Son,” he said quietly, “your mother hasn’t much longer to live. So promise me one thing. Promise me you won’t try to get out by violence. If you did, the shock would kill her. We know how you feel and how bitter you must be. But get ting out that way wouldn’t solve anything for you. I’ve had several long talks with Al and he tells me you’ve got a darn good chance to win on the appeal, especially since the reporter died. So for your mother’s and my sake, son, go on up to San Quentin and give the Supreme Court a chance to see you get justice. We’ll both stand behind you all the way. And your friends still are behind you too. They all believe you got a raw deal this time. They refuse to believe you’re guilty. So give the courts a chance, won’t you?”

  I hesitated. “Dad,” I finally said, “the way you put it leaves me on something of a spot . . .”

  “You mean you won’t?” my father asked. He was a picture of defeat, and he seemed to lack the strength to withstand this final, crushing blow.

  “Let’s say, rather, that for reasons I can’t explain the choice is no longer mine.”

  My father’s tired, sad eyes focused intently upon my face for a long moment before he spoke. “Son, there is something I never intended to tell you but . . . now I must. You remember after you were arrested that I begged you to tell who this other man in the car was and you refused?”

  “I remember,” I replied.

  “You didn’t tell me why, son, but I think I know why you refused to identify him. You thought that man was your friend. You thought had he been in your situation he wouldn’t squeal on you. You thought it would be wrong if you told on him. I believe you still think that. For some reason I don’t understand, you’d risk going to the gas chamber for crimes you didn’t commit rather than tell the authorities anything. You believe that would make you a squealer or informer.

  “But here is something you didn’t know. A few days after you were arrested youi mother received a telephone call on the extension I have for her. It was from your friend. He told your mother to send you word to keep your mouth shut. He said if you didn’t, he’d blow your mother and me sky high some night, but if you kept quiet he would look out for you in his own way. He warned your mother not to say anything to anyone about his threat to blow us up.”

  I didn’t permit my face to betray the way I felt, but the hate raged within me.

  “Dad,” I said, speaking very quietly, “that call may have been made by some screwball trying to be funny. But if it was made by the ‘friend’ you’ve mentioned, don’t worry. I can take care of him my own way.”

  “Time’s up,” the guard at the end of the table called out.

  My father and the other visitors (some of the female ones sobbing) remained seated, as they had been instructed, while I and the others on the load stood up and said our last hurried goodbyes before marching from the room. I winked at my dad, again said, “Don’t worry. And give Mom my love.”

  Four or five minutes after the load was back in the anteroom, plainclothes officers with chains and handcuffs—the transportation squad—entered, and one of the officers whom I knew, chewing on a cigar butt, said, “Line up in pairs.”

  Desiring to be handcuffed together, Dave and I held back while the handcuffs were being snapped on the odier eight men. One man had a handcuff placed on his left wrist; the man on his left had his right wrist cuffed. A ihree-foot length of chain ran back to another set of cuffs and the two men directly behind the first pair were then cuffed. A second group of four was handcuffed similarly. The cigar-chewing cop then said, “All right, men, out this door here.” Dave asked, “Hey, how about us?”

  The cop grinned and replied, “I got orders to leave you and Chessman here. I think they took you off the load.” I grinned back. “Very funny.” “Yeah,” he said, “isn’t it?”

  Dave and I were left in the anteroom for an hour and a half. We smoked and paced the floor, waiting.

  “Do you think they really left us off the list, Chess?” Dave asked me.

  “Hell, no,” I said. “They’re just playing games.” “What do you mean?”

  “I mean they’re not taking any chances. They know we know the routine. They know I got friends.” (I almost spit out that last word —friends!) “They know we know the weak link in their chain is at the train depot. They know we know they take the load down there on a regular schedule and feed them, always at the same time, always at the same table in the same restaurant. They know we know that restaurant’s always crowded and that either in there or while taking us to the train there’s a golden opportunity for some enterprising party to shove a shotgun in their fat bellies and say, ‘Give!’ And they know I’m not exactly rendered ecstatic with these death sentences.”

  “Oh,” Dave said. He thought over what I’d told him for a couple of minutes while we continued to pace back and forth and smoke. Then he grinned. “I’m surp sed at them,” he said, “thinking things like that.”

  “Yeah,” I agreed, “they must have been reading too many detective stories lately.”

  “Or seeing too many gangster pictures,” Dave added.

  We laughed. But neither one of us was amused.

  John Law had outfoxed me and I didn’t like it. Here all along I’d been so certain that the only way I could get out of the frying pan was to jump into the fire. I’d been convinced that the only conclusive way I could prove that I wasn’t the red light bandit was to produce him —or, put more accurately, his mortal remains. And the danger there centered around the perfectly obvious fact that, finally analyzed, whether one is executed for kidnaping or for murder, one remains just as thoroughly dead. And who would believe me when I said I had killed in self-defense? So I had desperately needed my freedom that I might get the proof I had to have before it could be destroyed.

  Four tough, burly members of the robbery-gangster squad, sometimes called the major crime detail, came for us. Dave and I were handcuffed together, whisked nonstop to the basement of the Hall of Justice and bundled into a waiting squad car. Two of the detectives piled into the front seat of the car. A third got into the back seat with us. The fourth went back to a second squad car parked behind us and occupied by additional members of the robbery-gangster squad.

  Followed closely by the second carload of armed d
etectives, we were sped to the Glendale station, which was the first stop the train made after leaving Los Angeles on its run north. We arrived just ahead of the train; when it pulled into the depot passengers and the crowd were held back by a cordon of police while Dave and I were hustled aboard and seated inside the specially and functionally designed prison car, apart from the other eight prisoners. As soon as we were seated we were chained securely, to put it mildly, and two hefty members of the transportation squad were posted directly behind us.

  Chains were placed tightly around both of my ankles, my waist, up around my neck and under one armpit and then run over to Dave, who was secured in an identical fashion. Next we were leg-cuffed together.

  The cop who did all this surveyed his handiwork with a critical eye. “There,” he said approvingly, “that ought to do it.”

  “It should,” I conceded. . . .

  The trip to Richmond takes twelve hours on the milk run, with the train clanking and rattling to a stop at every station. Through the garnering dusk, the long sleepless night, the early morning hours, I sat and smoked and watched and thought bitter thoughts. My eyes were glued to the lost world just outside the sealed window at my left shoulder.

  Cities, hamlets, rural areas. Highways stretching out like ribbons. Cars whizzing by. Depots. People. Life, and the evidences of it: a little girl on a scooter, a blind man in a frayed coat selling newspapers, a young couple strolling hand in hand, eternity stretching out invitingly before them. The lustrous night sky. The grayness of dawn. The lonely deserted stretches.

  I knew how probable it was that my eyes were seeing all this tor the last time, and rebellion flared witfiin me. I fiercely wanted to curse, to fight, to lash out at my captors. I wanted to be free that instant. The need for freedom was irrational, overwhelming. It consumed reason, and I struggled to stand, straining at my chains.

  “Something on your mind, Chessman?” one of the oversized members of the transportation squad posted behind me inquired.

  The question mocked me, reminded me that those whom the gods wish to destroy they first make mad. So I grinned and said easily, “Yeah, how about going to the can?”

  An hour later the train pulled into the Richmond station—our destination. Local police in patrol cars, alerted for our arrival, ringed the area. There was a casual, admirable precision in the way we were taken from the train, marched to waiting taxis, bundled inside (two prisoners and two guards to a taxi), and, with escort from the local cops, driven to the Richmond Ferry.

  Three miles across the waters of the San Pablo Bay, the grim, uninviting outline of San Quentin was starkly visible. On the way across we were fed in the ferry boat’s dining room. I shut off thought and turned my attention wholly to what promised to be my last meal in the free world—a double order of ham and eggs, toast and coffee. Then, the meal over, we were taken on deck, still chained together. The briny smell of the bay was clean and good. As the ferry docked, I busied myself with absorbing last impressions of the world I was leaving behind, perhaps forever. The piling of the landing creaked as the ferry edged against it. The morning sun was warm. The distant Berkeley Hills were visible. And the battlements of San Quentin loomed large up ahead. Our journey—my journey—was almost over.

  An old yellow bus with a driver from the prison was waiting for us. We were seated in it, near the back, with our guards up front. This vintage, jaundiced carrier ground through the gears, rumbled along the pier and then bounced along the half mile of winding road to the prison’s front gate. There the transportation-squad members checked their guns before we completed the last two hundred yards of our ride. We jolted to a stop in the shadow of a huge arsenal tower.

  After alighting, we were passed through a gate in single file and then we entered the walls. In a receiving room just within, we had our handcuffs and chains removed and were seated on wooden benches.

  A transportation-squad member, before leaving, asked me, “Well, what do you think about it now?”

  Probably he should have added “sucker.”

  “Nothing to it,” I told him, showing him teeth, and he walked away shaking his head.

  My reply set a pattern. He and his kind were on one side of the fence. I was on the other side. He made it simple for me, and I chose to leave it that way. For a while. He saw it as an uncomplicated case of social black and white. I did nothing to disturb his simplification, for it made my problem of survival easier. I was a villain. I was sentenced to death. That was my role, and I accepted it casually. When and if it came, I would accept death equally casually, but without any display of false bravado, without, as they say, looking back. It was best if they said, “That Chessman is a bad one,” and let it go at that, leaving me “free” to do the expected—to fight for my life, subtly, savagely, defiantly.

  The business of checking new arrivals in is old hat for San Quen-tin’s custodial staff. Each year hundreds enter the prison; as many hundreds are paroled or discharged. Many of the latter return. I was one who had. While the others on this Los Angeles chain were bathed (in a shower stall), searched, their personal property checked and outfitted temporarily in overalls, I talked with a correctional sergeant. We skipped anything controversial.

  Dave and the others were taken away. Just before he left Dave said, “Drive slow, Chess. I’ll see you later.” I was tempted to ask him whether he meant in this world or the next. But I only grinned and replied, “Yeah, Dave. Sure. We’ll be back in Hollywood practically before we know we’ve been gone.”

  “That’s right,” Dave said, tongue in cheek, “they can’t do this to us.”

  I was showered, searched. Two officers took me to the Identification Department. There I was fingerprinted and mugged. Then I was taken to the Distribution Department and outfitted in soft slippers— the distinguishing mark of the condemned man—and jeans, denim work shirt and light jacket, all new.

  Next stop was the Row. We crossed the Big Yard. Men I knew called out to me. It was old home week. The prodigal had returned— to be fattened up, then gassed into the Great Beyond. A real success story: Horatio Alger had nothing on me. We entered the North block rotunda. Up we went in the elevator. The double doors were unlocked and opened for us. We stepped through, were met by the two floor officers. The armed guard stood in his cage, watching, appraising the new arrival.

  I glanced down the long, fifteen-foot-wide corridor fronting the condemned cells. I heard the muted voices of the doomed. And I wasn’t enthralled by my arrival at this gloomy unit. It looked so sterile, so senselessly sterile, and its sounds were not like any you would hear elsewhere in the world of the living.

  “Stand over there by that pile of blankets and other supplies,” the officer in charge instructed me. “And take off all your clothes.”

  I did, was again searched, then told to dress. As soon as I had my dodies on, the second Row officer, a tall, heavy-set person just turning to paunch, with pale blue eyes, addressed me in a quiet, impersonal voice.

  “All those blankets and other supplies you carry to your cell,” he told me, indicating the items piled near me. Then he said, “Chessman, I’m told you’ve done time at the prison before. Now, we have certain rules up here which have to be observed. You must understand that. I’ll explain those rules to you when we put you into your cell. If you cooperate, you will make it easy on yourself. If you don’t cooperate, you will just be making it tough for yourself. My advice is try to get along.”

  • 31 •

  Something New in the Way of Villains

  I merely nodded, acknowledging I had heard the officer’s “advice.” Then I reached down and picked up the blankets and cell supplies. The officer in charge unlocked and opened the first door of the double-doored, bird-cage-like enclosure which leads into the Row corridor. Two other guards and I stepped within; the door was locked behind us. Then the second door, double-locked and bolted, was opened and I followed the two guards along the corridor to Cell 2455. When the cell door was swung open for me, I step
ped inside and set my load down on the mattress of the cot. I heard the safety bar drop, the click of the door lock. I knew what those sounds meant—Chessman was as far in prison as it is possible to get.

  The paunchy officer with the pale blue eyes and the quiet, impersonal voice said, “The rules.”

  The inevitable rules. The we-have-everything-figured-out-for-you, don’t-think-for-yourself rules. Here they were.

  I would be fed twice a day, shortly after eight in the morning and in the mid-afternoon, on a cafeteria-style tray and from a food cart pushed along from cell to cell by an inmate waiter (not a condemned man) who would serve me what I wanted. The knife, fork and spoon issued me at mealtime would be picked up when I finished eating.

  Every morning the officer would come by with razors. If I wanted to shave, I would tell the officer and he would issue me a razor and blade. (The razor is a locking, institutional type.) An inmate porter would accompany him with hot water. (Only cold water is piped into the cells.) I would shave promptly, then return the razor.