by Alec Peche
“Usually when you come here, you have some problem in the back of your mind that you’re trying to figure out. Once in a while it seems to me you’re here because you’re sick of your own company. Based on the way you’re watching the bar patrons, I would say it’s the former rather than the latter.”
“You’re very wise, Pete.”
“I have to be, I’m a bartender. I solve many people’s problems. So what’s yours today? Maybe I can offer the ‘Dummies guide to astrophysics’ solution to your problem.”
Damian laughed and said, “It’s not astrophysics and I don’t think you’d believe me if I told you.”
“Try me. I’ve heard some pretty wild yarns in my two decades as a bartender; some of them actually true.”
Damian laughed again and said, “The Aryan Brotherhood has invaded my island twice and are trying to kill me.”
“That might be as wild a yarn as I’ve heard and if it was anyone other than you, I’d cut off your alcohol and refer you to a good psychologist. What did you do to make them mad?”
“Hacked into their email system and shared it with the Black Guerillas.”
“Damian, you’re a man of intriguing qualities. I’m sure you had a reason to do that. Have the prisons had any riots yet?”
“Not that I can tell.”
“Hmm…. I know an ex-Brotherhood guy. He’s an irregular regular, just like you. How about if I speak with him on some options?”
“Hey Pete, thanks for your help in more ways than you know. I debated where to head tonight and found myself beating a path to your door. Thanks for believing my story.”
“I owe you a lot. Your software saves me money and allows me to keep good staff that can’t steal from me, why wouldn’t I want to repay you in a miniscule way? My only problem is the guy is like you; he comes in on a non-routine basis and I don’t have his phone number.”
“Except you have my phone number.”
“Yeah I do,” then Pete paused and watched the doorway. “Damian, after your horrible day, life is about to get better; he just walked in the door. Imagine that, two irregular regular guys visiting my bar on the same night. Let me wave him over here.”
Pete stood up and waved a guy over. Damian didn’t want to make the man uncomfortable so he didn’t turn around on his bar stool and look at the doorway, but man, he was flooded with curiosity as to what the guy looked like. He was impressed with Pete for getting to know the guy. Perhaps a minute later, he invited Damian and the man into a back room.
Damian had finished his cheeseburger and was working on his second beer, so he picked up the glass and followed Pete to his office. Damian had been there before when he installed his computer system.
He eyed the other man in front of him. He was Caucasian, since you had to be to belong the Aryan Brotherhood. Damian guessed him to be late forties early fifties, but then he’d likely lived a hard life first in prison and second by participating in the gang’s activities. He had various scars on his face and neck; some he guessed were from knife wounds, others perhaps tattoo removal. His arms were covered and he was of medium build, clean shaven, with a short brown non-descript haircut. He looked like your average longshoreman from the nearby Port of Oakland, the second busiest port on the west coast.
Pete performed introductions and they shook hands. He dropped random facts about each of them as part of the introduction. Damian was a genius who designed the computerized system for his bar saving his business. Angus Walsh worked nearby at the Port doing logistics. Then Pete got down to business after taking Angus’ order for dinner.
“Damian, here has your old gang trying to kill him. Got any suggestions on how to avoid death for him?”
Angus’s reply was quick and grim, “Good luck with that man; they’re a bad lot.”
“Aren’t you the master of an understatement.”
Pete left the two men to talk and to get Angus’ food order underway.
“Who’d you piss off? You don’t look like their normal target.”
“What do you mean?”
“You don’t look like an ex-con, and Pete says you’re a genius. Geniuses don’t hang out with the Brotherhood.”
“I don’t know about that, you strike me as very smart as you managed to leave the gang alive. How did you do it?”
“I was sentenced to Soledad in the late 1980s for a rape and murder that I didn’t commit. I was so mad and enraged with the world that I joined the gang. The Innocence Project took my case on about five years ago, and I was exonerated and released. Once it looked like my case would go somewhere, I started studying how to get out of the gang. After twenty years of violence, I was sick of them anyway.”
“So, how did you do it?” Damian asked. “My understanding is that you have a credo that the only way to leave the gang is to die.”
“That’s true. The leaders are usually serving either life sentences or thirty years or more. When you’re looking at thirty years, tacking on another ten just doesn’t impact you; so what if you kill another prisoner?”
“How did you avoid killing another prisoner? I thought that was your initiation into the gang.”
“I always made sure, I was the biggest screw-up in regards to attempted murder. Someday I believed I would be found innocent as I knew I hadn’t done the crime I was convicted of. I wasn’t going to give them a real crime that I did commit. I misunderstood instructions for nearly every crime and acted slowly so they thought it was my IQ. However, I have a photographic memory, so just about an hour before my release, I threatened the gang leaders at Soledad.”
“With what?”
“I wrote down every derogatory statement they ever made about their followers in Soledad and their leaders at other prisons. I showed them a copy of the document and a copy of the instructions to my attorney to release it if I should die of anything but natural causes.”
“The Art of War,” Damian suggested.
“Exactly. I read a copy of the book and knew that the only way to keep the gang from killing me was to credibly threaten the leadership with its own members.”
“Wish I’d thought of that. I tried using their enemies, the Black Guerillas, as my counter-threat.”
“Bet that didn’t work, mate,” replied Angus with a smirk.
“No, not by a long shot. I feel like the entire gang outside of prison is trying to siege my home and kill me.”
“How did you use the Black Guerillas against them?”
Damian weighed his answer and decided to ask a different question to see if he could get the measure of the man. He was halfway to trusting Angus, but he wasn’t willing to spill his guts. While Angus had given him his strategy, it wasn’t an illegal activity whereas it was a violation of federal law to hack into email.
“What have you done with your life since you left Soledad?”
“I should be on Broadway getting a Tony for my acting ability. I was always reading books in prison ‘trying to correct’ my low IQ. When other inmates were around, I’d hold the book upside down or never move a page to give the impression I couldn’t read. In reality I earned a couple of degrees while I was behind bars and a small company in Oakland took a risk and hired me to do their logistics.”
“Congrats, Angus, that’s a great story,” Damian said. Then thinking about it grimaced and said, “Sorry wrong response. Spending all those years in Soledad is a terrible story. I guess what I’m trying to say, is that it’s amazing that the prison never dragged you down.”
“Yeah, I’m a regular miracle man,” replied Angus grimly.
Damian wasn’t willing to reveal his secrets still, but he was inching closer to trusting the man.
“Hey, can I have your contact information? I’d like to get my ducks in order then talk gang strategy with you some more.”
“Want to do a Google search on me huh?”
Damian reddened but said, “A Soledad convict was accidentally released early and killed my wife and two little girls seven years ago, so yeah
that’s exactly what I’m going to do.”
“Sorry man, I remember the incident at the time. My fellow convicts cheered the mistake made that sprung the guy early and cared little that your family was killed. Here’s my contact information, feel free to contact me in the future.” Angus said writing his information on a cocktail napkin.
Pete opened the door and entered with Angus’ food, but was waved back into the bar.
“Thanks Pete, but we’re done talking here; I’ll eat my burger at the bar,” and Angus stood up to follow Pete out of the office.
Chapter Thirty-two
Damian was approaching his island having left Pete’s bar a short time ago. He’d checked his security system repeatedly through the evening and there had been no more breaches. He did a slow circle around the island with night vision goggles on and saw his cats, but no other movement in the darkness. He circled around to the watercraft garage, opened the door, and folded out the dock.
An hour later, he searched out everything he could find on Angus Walsh and it all seemed legit. He didn’t like the coincidence of the man walking into Pete’s bar just when he was looking for help, but he was everything he said he was.
Could he be living the non-gang life in disguise? Could Damian have gotten the same acting job that Angus mentioned in regards to the gang? Could Angus be the gang’s leader on the outside? Damian studied the guy’s finances and thought that if he was, he was sure hiding the money from criminal enterprise well. Of course that could be on an all cash basis and perhaps it was buried under another name. Maybe he’d hack into the prison system for his fingerprints then see if there was any match at any time with another crime. Then he’d follow the guy from home to work, and then anonymously call him at work to see if he could handle a logistics problem. He would also ask Natalie to do a little research on the guy; sometimes she had invaluable word of mouth resources.
It was late, but he was having a hard time relaxing; probably no surprise after his day. It wasn’t every day that an average Joe had an attempt on his life by a notorious prison gang, and lived to tell about it. The score was presently prison gang zero, Damian eight men defeated. He was very curious to know if the first three made it ashore alive. He sure hoped not. He dropped an email to Natalie summarizing his day and his question about Angus. To his great surprise, he heard his phone ring, and noted the caller ID said it was Natalie.
“You’re awake late!”
“Back at you! I saw your email arrive and decided to call you. If we’re both sleepless, we may as well get some work done. I haven’t heard anything about the idiots after you or me. It’s frustrating being on the outside of law enforcement now.”
“Gee whiz I thought you might at least have the inside scoop.”
“So you would hope. Tell me more about Angus Walsh.”
Damian explained how he met him and added, “Trevor can tell you about Pete and his bar. He did some small legal work for him and I designed his alcohol dispensing system. He had great wait staff but he was always having to fire them as they couldn’t seem to stop giving away free booze. Pete will do anything for Trevor or I as a result. So Pete is above suspicion for introducing me to Angus. I’m also not surprised that he made friends with Angus and knows his story as he did the same with me. I’m simply bothered by the timing of his walking in the bar.”
“I don’t blame you, Damian, as it was highly convenient, but you’ve done your research on him and he’s everything he said he was. Give me a few hours to check with my sources, you do the fingerprint search, and then let’s sit down and chat with the man.”
“Exactly what I was thinking. Perhaps there are another couple of email accounts that the leadership uses that I could access. Then we try his tactic of exposing their thoughts and behavior to the gang.”
“Sounds like a plan. Have you found anything else on my unsolved cases?”
“I thought I provided you with some really good leads.”
“You’ve provided me with nearly all the information on the case. I’m stuck on the DNA analysis delay. Do you have any ideas on how to get around that?”
“When we first started the cold cases, I looked at the process and decided there wasn’t much I could do to speed things up. By design, testing is supposed to take about between fifty and sixty hours and there were good reasons for those times. However, I didn’t realize there was such a shortage of human beings for the human side of the processing. So I was thinking about designing equipment that can automate that, but that is at least two years off from getting FDA or FBI approval to process specimens if I had a nearly finished product today. I’m back to the private lab suggestion. It’s about eight thousand dollars per trace specimen. How many specimens did they get out of the car?”
“I’ll ask in the morning but I would think there would be a lot. Hairs alone in a thirty year car have to be forty to fifty and with a pet add another fifty.”
“What if we prioritize the hair to Debbie’s color and require a hair follicle to be attached to the strand and asked the crime lab to prioritize that first. Would that reduce the turnaround time for results?”
“It would and it might reduce the numbers sufficiently enough that the department might be willing to send it to a private lab. I’ll contact the crime scene folks in the morning and see if I can find an inventory of all the specimens.”
“If you get me all of the fingerprints collected, I can at least run those for you,” Damian offered.
“Sounds like a plan. Let’s both hope we can get some sleep now.”
After they disconnected the call, Damian went back to look at Barbara Watson. The Medical Examiner could not confirm that the knife with Mr. Watson’s fingerprints was the one that killed her. Where was it postulated that she was killed? Her home, somewhere else? Stabbing someone was not a quiet affair unless you drugged them first. He pulled up the file on Mrs. Watson to see what was said regarding the details of her death. The police report stated she wasn’t murdered at the scene where her body was located. Inside the file was a list of alternatives. Damian read it and thought it felt like a brain-storming session to him rather than actual suspicion of possible murder sites. He yawned and realized his adrenaline rush had finally ended. He crawled into bed soon after much to the dismay of his two cats that had staked their own territory out on his bed.
Chapter Thirty-Three
He awoke late the next morning to the delightful news that the Warriors had pulled out a final two minute surge and victory in their play-off series. Now for the final game, they were returning home to determine who would advance to the NBA finals. Damian visited a few different news sites to read up on the game. He visited the Warriors site contemplating buying tickets for the final game. At least if he was inside Oracle Arena, the Brotherhood would be unable to kill him. Then he looked up Hermione’s swim schedule and realized there was a swim meet that night. He’d take a pass on the tickets and content himself with checking the score of the game on his phone.
The phone rang and he saw that it was Ariana.
“Happy Sunday morning,” she said. “Would you like to join me in giving Hermione her first scuba diving lesson?”
“Given your penchant for forgetting your air tank pressure, count me in if only to save you two. What time?”
“Why don’t you come over for lunch and we’ll start after that. I downloaded the guide from the PADI website used by dive instructors to teach novices. It’s for ten years old and up, so I thought we’d start there, then go out to my pool to practice with the tank and regulator, and then if she’s doing good, we’ll go out in the bay. If she likes scuba diving, then I’ll enroll her after school ends with an official PADI instructor so she can get certified.”
“Sounds like an excellent plan. I’ll bring over my equipment. Do you have lots of air in your tanks or do you need me to bring over extra gas?”
There was a pause and then Damian could hear the chagrin in her voice, “I actually haven’t looked at the gas lev
el of my tanks since my adventure going to your island. I can run out here and get the tanks refilled.”
Damian had been checking the internet as they talked and said, “The dive shop closest to you is closed today. I’ll bring over my own gas.”
“Will the gas cylinder fit in your boat?”
“Yes and when it’s full it weighs about sixty pounds. I just have to make sure I don’t bounce on the water and break off the regulator. If that happens it will turn into a torpedo and go through my boat into the bay and I’ll be swimming ashore.”
“I’d worry about you doing that, but I’m sure if that happened you’d find a way to repair the boat and resume your journey here.”
“Thanks for the faith in my engineering abilities,” Damian said with a laugh not at all sure he could repair that large a hole while the boat was upside down and he was treading water in the bay.
