by David Putnam
The speed of the train bled off as more of the long train hit the grade. In no time the train was down to a crawl. The wheels clanged over the tracks.
The boxcar I waited for came chugging along in the moonless twilight. I started to get up to make my move when a dark figure jumped off from in between two cars and landed on the ground without falling. He’d done this sort of thing before. Many times. It had been a dangerous place to ride unless he’d been on the roof of the car carrier and had climbed down. He was security, a train bull who knew the train’s cargo was the most vulnerable on the grade. He was there for no other reason than to check for the likes of me.
Chapter Eleven
He looked up and down the desert on my side. I ducked, face planted in the sand. No way was I going to get caught. Too bad, Jumbo. The money in my pocket had already turned warm and comfortable against my leg. If I didn’t earn it, I’d have to give it back.
I cautiously took a peek. The boxcar went by. The security man scrutinized the lock and seal with a bright light, then reached up and tugged on it. He walked alongside of the slow-moving train and checked the empty desert again one more time, a mother hen protecting its chick from all the evils of the outside world. When a break in the cars caught up to him, he climbed up in between. This was strictly against railroad policy. I knew this because I had researched everything about cargo trains before pulling the first job. The computer chip or insurance company was paying the security folks a lot of money for this sort of service, the reason Jumbo wanted me for the job.
The train was still climbing the grade. Three more boxcars and the one carrying the train bull would go past and then it would be too late.
I thought about the money in my pocket I would have to give back, and the other hundred and twenty-five grand, how useful it would be. I got up and ran in the sand alongside the train. Not in the cinders where it would make noise. I hoped the train bull didn’t stick his head out from between the cars to look.
I caught up with the boxcar as it started to gain speed. I entered onto the cinder and ran alongside juggling the bolt cutters, tripped, and almost went down. I regained my balance and got the bolt cutter teeth on the lock, but the speed of the train was almost too fast for me to keep up and manipulate the handles at the same time. This lock was the same sort I encountered before and not a beefed-up one. They didn’t want to point out the value of the cargo with fancy hardware. The lock snapped.
The train continued to gain speed, going faster and faster. I was out of shape and had already gone two or three hundred yards. I tossed the bolt cutters. I didn’t have much left. I grabbed the handle and pulled, my legs a blur, moving quicker than they were made for, the handle dragging me along. If I let go, it was going to be ugly. The door wouldn’t budge. The other times it had come right open. In the dark, I had forgotten the small lead seal. I pulled the pry bar and raked the lead seal off. My lungs burning, I was light-headed to the point of going down. One last effort was all I had left. I yanked the handle. The door squeaked and slid open. I hung on, stunned. The boxcar was loaded floor to ceiling with wooden crates. There wasn’t any room at all to climb in. I jumped up on the foothold and grabbed onto the crates. The timing was off. The crews wouldn’t be in place to recover the load so I couldn’t throw them off yet. And the train was still too slow. There stood too great of a chance of being seen. I hugged the wood crates in a precarious perch and tried to catch my breath.
The boxcar this full, Jumbo would make a fortune, two mil easy, closer to four or five. He’d make enough from this one haul to retire. No wonder he didn’t balk at the two hundred K.
Up ahead the front of the train hit the summit and started down. My half of the train was still going up but the weight on the other side of the mountain pulled the train along faster. The cool wind dried my sweat-soaked shirt. I shouldn’t have looked down at the passing cinders that now turned into a blur as I clung like an insect, my nails digging into the wood. If I fell, I’d break too many bones to walk out.
I reached as high as I could and pulled on a wood handle of a crate. There were too many crates stacked on top of it. I pulled myself up until my toes were on the boxcar floor’s edge. My forearms swelled as I held on with fingertips. With one hand I reached higher for a handle farther up, got it, and yanked. This time, one moved. I yanked again. It moved a little more.
My boxcar made the crest and started down. The black night whirled by. I yanked hard one more time. All of a sudden the crate came free and damn near jerked me off the boxcar with it. I swung back too fast and banged my face. I clung there for a long moment thinking that if I had fallen, what would Marie have thought? After all I had promised her. How would she feel when she was told I died committing a burglary?
My face flushed with anger. From the now open slot, I pulled off crates fast and furious until a spot opened up for me to climb up and rest. This train was picking up speed, faster than the others I had worked. Another facet of security. I had to get going.
I pulled crates and tossed them out, aiming past the cinder right-of-way, trying for the desert sand dunes. It felt as if hours had passed. I had not completed half the car yet. My shirt, soaked, stuck to my skin, my muscles screamed for let up. The sutures in my hands under the bandages ached. I took a breather, walked to the door, tried to get my bearings, and checked my watch. I’d been at it thirty-three minutes, so I figured we’d be just outside Barstow. I went back at the stack again, this time not worrying so much about where the crates were landing, shoveling them out like cordwood. There wasn’t time for finesse. With a load this large and the train’s speed, Jumbo was going to have some breakage; the cost of doing business.
At my next breather, it looked as if the train had made it through Victorville. An hour had passed. Only another twenty minutes remained before the train hit the Cajon Pass. I wasn’t going to make the entire load. If I didn’t shag ass, a full third would be left behind. I went at the stack again. I wanted the whole hundred and twenty-five thousand and didn’t want Jumbo to have any recourse to say otherwise.
I started checking the open door as the train approached the jumping off point. The backup thieves in their four-wheel drives were only going to drive so close to civilization before they pulled off. My back hurt, my hands ached, and I was out of breath the same as if I’d run a marathon. Ten more, then I’d go. Ten crates flashed out the door. Ten more after that went out.
And then ten more after that.
Only one row remained against the back wall. I was fast approaching where I needed to disembark. I went to the open door, climbed down on the foothold and hung on watching for my point to bail. I was about to jump when up ahead I caught a glimpse of something, a reflector to a taillight, right where’d I normally jump. I swung back and held on, the wind drying my hair. The train passed the reflector that belonged to a car. A ’63 lowrider with a lot of chrome. A car I recognized.
It belonged to Crazy Ned Bressler, Jumbo’s main man, his enforcer. He waited at the spot to reclaim Jumbo’s seventy-five thousand dollars. Not his primary goal. He would also silence the star crook who could put Jumbo away forever.
I waved as the train flashed by him.
Chapter Twelve
I grabbed a few minutes’ sleep behind a dumpster at an AM/PM market on Denker Avenue off of Santa Barbara and made it to court the next day, banged up and so fatigued I had to fight the urge to lay down on the wooden bench and nap. Court got underway, the cases called. To watch as a bystander and not as a cop gave me a new perspective on the judicial process. The court setting gave off an air of pretentious arrogance. When I’d been on the other side of the banister, in the “good guy chair,” I was a part of their little performance—the DA, Public Defender, the judge—as they bandied back-and-forth. All the while the poor slob whose life hung in the balance, stood by, hands crossed at the waist, watching his future wander around the room in the form of words he didn’t understand. Today, I again realized how intimidating it could be as a
bystander in the audience—until the bailiff brought out Johnny Wayne Bascombe. Then I just didn’t care about anything else.
Johnny Wayne Bascombe wore all orange, with “LA COUNTY” in large, white block letters across his back. His hands were shackled to his waist, and the leg irons forced him to shuffle. His arm was in a cast up to his shoulder, and his face was under reconstruction in various shades of swollen purple and reds in between railroad tracks of sutures. He stood there as a sawed-off version of Doctor Frankenstein’s monster.
They kept him in the partitioned-off section of the court, behind bulletproof glass. Not because he was so damn dangerous and a threat to public safety, but for his own protection from that same public, who if given the opportunity, would tear him apart. I forgot about my fatigue, sat up straight, and thought about the overwhelming satisfaction I would derive from five minutes alone with him. I’d do more than rearrange his face like the last lucky guy. I began to glare, trying to get him to look my way, to give him the stink-eye treatment, scare him, make him realize he had nowhere to hide, inside or out of his barred walls.
The judge called the case, the DA announced she was ready.
A hand on my shoulder startled me. I jumped and turned. Robby Wicks stood in the aisle, suit coat rumpled, tired, a smile on his haggard face. “Hey, Bruno. What the hell you doing here?”
He must have followed me. He knew all about the caper in the desert, probably saw the whole thing from the air with infrared and was laughing at the irony of taking me down in a courtroom.
“I … I … wanted to talk to you about something,” I said, quickly, with nothing else ready to feed him.
His smile faded, making him look older. He didn’t buy my weak excuse, again patted my shoulder. “Ah—sure, sure. I was going to look you up anyway. Wait around, this won’t take long. Let me test-a-lie and we’ll grab a bite to eat.” Test-a-lie, one of the words used by the BMFs.
He’d caught me off guard. I hadn’t expected to see him in Compton court, especially on this sort of case. “You’re on this?” I said. “Really? Ah, yeah, I mean, lunch sounds good.” So he wasn’t on the prowl, ready to make an arrest after all.
He smiled, figuring this was a scam and I was in court for an entirely different reason, like a pending case under an aka—also known as. That’s what I would have thought.
He walked up, raised his right hand, and was sworn in.
The Deputy DA, a Ms. Hosseni, a Middle Eastern gal, dark complexion, with black hair pulled back from her face, held by two abalone barrettes, stood at the podium. “Lieutenant Wicks, by whom are you employed?”
“Los Angeles County Sheriff’s Department.”
“How long have you been a peace officer?”
“Twenty-eight and a half years.”
“What is your current assignment?”
“I’m temporarily assigned to a task force attached to Homicide.”
“Were you working as a peace officer on September fifteenth of this year, in the county of Los Angeles, state of California?”
“Yes.”
“Can you tell us what happened?”
This was a prelim with no jury, a prelim that had been put over again and again for one reason or another mostly because there was really no reason to rush it. And from the looks of him, until recently, the defendant hadn’t been up to it physically. The judge was going to determine if there was probable cause to bind the defendant, Johnny Wayne Bascombe, over for trial.
Wicks looked to the judge. “At the time I was working in my regular assignment out of narcotics assisting in a search warrant service on Nord Avenue in the county area of Los Angeles. As a supervisor, I was only there to observe. My guys deployed on a house while I watched from my unit in the street. That’s when a Rocky Mountain Spring water guy came up to me and said that he had just delivered some bottled water to a house five doors down and across the street. He said he went in the back door because there was a pit bull chained up out front. On a daybed at the back of the house he saw a child hog-tied. That’s the way he put it, ‘hog-tied’.”
Chapter Thirteen
The blood started to pound behind my eyes. I looked over at Johnny Wayne. His chin was up as if proud of all the attention he now received, as if he were some sort of Al Capone who derived respect from his criminality.
“His hands and feet were bound together behind his back. He was facedown on a dirty sheet that was bloody. The Rocky Mountain Water guy said it was real hot inside, and he didn’t know if the kid was even breathing.
“Because there was a dire threat to a human life, I immediately advised dispatch, asked for a patrol unit to assist code-three, and went to the house.”
“Lieutenant, did you go by yourself?”
“Yes.”
“Why didn’t you alert some of your men?”
I knew why. Robby also carried the BMF tattoo and he knew it was going to get ugly. He knew he wasn’t going to want witnesses.
“There wasn’t time to alert my men. From the description the bottle water guy gave me, the child was in imminent danger. Besides, my men were still securing the house for the high-risk dope search warrant. To pull even one of them away would have jeopardized the operation and their safety.”
“What did you do next?”
“I went to the location. And because there was a threat to the safety of a child, I didn’t knock. I drew my service weapon and went in the back door.”
“And what did you find?”
“A six-year-old boy hog-tied facedown in a stifling room. It was at least a hundred and twenty inside the house. He was bleeding profusely from his mouth and nose. It looked like his arm was broken, and he was in shock.”
“What happened next?”
“The defendant,” Robby pointed to Johnny Wayne, “without provocation charged me. I was forced to defend myself.”
“He’s a liar!” Two pews back a sketchy speed-freak woman in a dingy-white tank top and greasy jeans, stood up. I knew her as Dora Bascombe. “He’s a liar. He attacked my Johnny and beat the livin’ shit out of him. Pistol-whipped his ass until he was a bloody pulp. Look at his face, Judge. Christ, look at his face.”
The judge banged his gavel. The bailiff moved into the audience, took the screaming woman by the arm, and tugged and pulled her out of the courtroom.
I looked back at Johnny Wayne. He smiled, happy that his woman had stood up for him. Her misplaced loyalty meant a lot in his world. Johnny didn’t have any front teeth, courtesy of Robby Wicks, which gave his smile a sunken look, as if the vacant space where his brain should have been sucked and puckered his lips and skin into an empty vortex.
When the courtroom was again under control, the deputy DA turned back to Robby, “Please, Lieutenant, continue.”
“Like I said, before I could render aid to the child, the defendant attacked me. I had no alternative but to use the force necessary to subdue and take the suspect into custody.”
“Thank you, Lieutenant. Now, I would like to show you some photos of—”
“Your Honor,” the public defender stood and spoke for the first time, a diminutive man dressed in a worn JCPenney’s suit. “For the purposes of this hearing we will stipulate to the injuries of the child.” He sat back down.
The judge looked at the Deputy DA. “Do you have anything further?”
“Prosecution rests.”
“Mr. Howard.”
The public defender again stood and moved to the podium. “Your Honor, the State has not proved that my client was the one who committed these crimes. The mere fact that he was present does not prove he was involved.”
The public defender knew the whole story. The woman hauled out of the room had broken the little guy’s arm, but Johnny Wayne was just as culpable. He was the one who’d tied the child up, slugged him in the mouth, gave him fifteen sutures in his lips, and had broken his nose. My Marie had gotten the whole story out of the child when they brought him into Killer King to be treated.
; “Further, the felonious assault on a peace officer charge should be dropped because the officer did—”
The judge interrupted him. “Counselor, are you going to cross examine the witness or go right into your closing argument?”
Howard paused, turned back to Robby, “Officer, did you have a warrant to enter the residence?”
“No.”
“Did you … no, strike that. What were you wearing?”
“A suit and tie.”
“At any time did you announce that you were a police officer?”
“Yes, as Mr. Bascombe was charging me I yelled, ‘Stop, police.’”
I looked over at Johnny who knew enough from past court encounters where cops were involved to keep his mouth shut concerning this lie and only shook his head no.
“Officer, was there anyone else in the house that witnessed this, that heard you identify yourself?”
Robby lost his professional demeanor. “Yes, there was, the poor little defenseless kid who was damn near beat to death.”
The judge looked at him as if about to issue an admonishment and changed his mind. “Anything else, Counselor?”
Howard shook his head and sat down.
“Ms. Hosseni?”
She stood. “Yes, Your Honor, we believe there is sufficient evidence to hold the defendant, on the charges PC 273d, 236, PC69, and PC 243b.”
“Mr. Howard?”
“Your Honor, the officer entered without cause and—”
“Mr. Howard, that belongs in a 1538.5 motion. Anything else?”
“The officer did not identify himself, and the defendant believed his residence was being burglarized and defended himself.”
The judge waited for more, and when Howard didn’t continue, the judge looked down at his papers, “The court finds there is sufficient evidence that a crime of 273d, 236, and PC69 did occur, and that there is probable cause to believe the defendant, if tried, would be found guilty. As for the charge of 243b, the State did not prove to this court that the officer sustained any injuries during the assault.” He rapped his gavel. “Let’s set this for December fifteenth. Are there any problems with that date?” Both attorneys were busy logging the information in their files.
