“Do you wish now to make any statement concerning others’ involvement or provide the district attorney with the requested information? If so, I’ll continue this hearing.”
“May I have a moment with my client, Your Honor?” asked Hiram Goldberg.
“Of course,” said the judge. “We’ll take a five-minute recess.” He put his glasses on, got up from his cushioned seat, grabbed the two files, and left the courtroom.
Hiram leaned over and whispered in Rafael’s ear. “Okay, Rafael, this is it. Last chance to give up whoever it was that got you here. The judge wants to help you, but the D.A. wants information. It’s stupid to protect some gangsters. They wouldn’t do it for you.”
“No dice. My life wouldn’t be worth shit if I opened my mouth,” said Rafael. “These things happen. Let’s get on with the show.”
Hiram shrugged and motioned to the bailiff. In short order the judge was back on the bench.
“My client has nothing to add to what’s already on the record.”
The judge put his glasses to the side. “The probation department and the district attorney have asked that you be sentenced to four years in state prison. I feel that’s steep, since you have no previous record and in all other respects seem to be a good citizen. I therefore sentence you to three years in state prison. Since you did not appeal the judgment against you, you will be taken into custody forthwith, and I instruct the bailiff to do that right now.”
There were gasps from the part of the crowd that wanted a stiffer sentence and moans from his friends and family who hoped for a much lighter one.
“Your Honor,” chimed in the assistant district attorney, “we feel that the sentence is too light. This man has been convicted, and he’s shown absolutely no contrition.”
“I know what your position is, Counsel. The sentence will stand. Bailiff, take this man into custody.
“Next case!”
Rafael was carted off. Hiram walked slowly out of the courtroom surrounded by Rafael’s friends and relatives.
“That was a pretty stiff sentence,” said Melba, as she tried to comfort Sofia, who had her head down and was sobbing.
“Not as tough as it might have been,” said Hiram. “They had the goods on him, and he wouldn’t give anybody up.”
“Is there anything we can do?” asked Samuel, as he and Blanche stood together in the hallway looking downcast.
“Go and visit him once he gets to San Quentin and tell him to give information. That way the D.A. will agree to shorten his sentence,” said Hiram.
Samuel was glad Rafael would at least be close so he could see him, but he knew better than to suppose his friend would ever disclose what the D.A. and the court wanted from him. He tried to comfort Rafael’s mother, but there wasn’t much he could say. The breadwinner for the entire family, the person who’d kept them out of poverty, had been taken out of the equation for three years. How were they going to survive during that period?
“Why would Rafael stand by his word of honor when he knows what his absence means to all these people?” asked Samuel.
“For these cholos, it’s a question of honor,” sighed Hiram, and he walked away.
* * *
San Quentin was already falling apart in 1961. It was over a hundred years old and it looked it. It sat at the foot of the new Richmond San Rafael Bridge overlooking the San Francisco Bay, mostly to the south, where one could see the back side of the Tiburon Peninsula and Point Richmond looking east. On a clear day even Berkeley and Oakland were visible. What a view! The only problem was that it was from behind bars and barbed-wire fences.
Rafael sat with his hands and feet shackled in the San Francisco sheriff ’s bus as it wound its way on Highway 101 into Marin County, then turned east on Sir Francis Drake Boulevard. While the bus meandered along the narrow road after it left the highway, its motor chugging and the gears grinding, Rafael couldn’t help contrasting the abundantly green hills bursting with multicolored wildflowers and orange California poppies with the drab yellow stucco of the prison he saw in the distance. The bus crept to a halt as it approached the main gate, and he saw two boys sitting on the rocks, holding bamboo-fishing poles. He watched the calm bay waters splashing gently against the rocks as the boys threw their lines out and hauled in big striped bass. He thought that one day he would go there with his son to fish like those kids were doing.
The driver, a big burley sheriff ’s deputy, commented as he saw the pile of fish next to the pair. “Like shooting ducks in a pond.”
Rafael turned and looked at him through the ten-gage wire cage that separated them. All of a sudden, he felt a sob well up in his chest. He gritted his teeth.
The gate opened slowly. Rafael saw the guard in the watchtower above them pointing his weapon down and looking at them through binoculars. The bus stopped in front of the reception center. There were ten inmates shackled inside the vehicle plus three guards and the driver. On the outside were seven more guards, heavily armed, waiting patiently for the doors of the bus to open.
When they did, the prisoners waddled off as best they could with their legs bound together. Once on the ground, they were put in a single file and patted down then directed to file in the door of the reception center, one at a time.
Rafael was shuffled inside and found himself in a room with three oversized white guards. There were iron bars on all the windows and on the door that he had just walked through. His chains were removed, and he was strip-searched by two of his captors while the other kept a keen eye on the process and a finger on the trigger of his firearm. He was issued the blue denim garb of the San Quentin prisoner with his individual number stenciled on the back of the shirt. He was then photographed and fingerprinted.
“All right,” said the big sergeant behind the steel cage from where the uniform had come. “I don’t have to tell you where you are, you know that. We have rules here, and in order to get along, you’ll have to follow them. You understand that?”
“Yes, sir.”
“This here’s a pair of earphones, and a sheet, towel, and blanket. The cellblock lights go out at ten o’clock, but not the lights in your cell. That way we keep an eye on you,” he warned, as he pointed his finger at Rafael in an absentminded rote way he had done hundreds if not thousands of times before. “You can listen to the radio all night, if you’re one of those guys with a guilty conscious who don’t sleep. But tomorrow you’ll be interviewed for job placement. And when you get a job, you’re expected to show up on time every day and perform. So don’t stay up all night listening to bullshit. We collect the sheet and towel every two weeks to be washed. If you don’t turn ’em in, you’re up shits creek. Understand so far?”
“Yes, sir.”
“You’re expected to behave. If you do, you’ll get some privileges, like exercise in the yard. If you fuck up, not only will you lose your job, but we’ve got a special place for you, and it’s not nice down there. Understand that?”
“Yes, sir.”
“We’re going to put you with another Mexican boy from Southern California. That way there’s no excuse for the racial crap that you prisoners are always complaining about. So we don’t want any of those problems with you. Get it, Greaser?” he said, as he squinted hard at the prisoner, frowning.
“Yes, sir,” said Rafael, with a deadpan expression on his face, looking the big man right in the eye.
“I don’t like that kind of defiance. You’d better be careful. This Sergeant here is gonna take you to your cell. You understand you’ll be locked up when you’re not working for the People of the State of California or you’re not exercising the privileges you earned for being a good boy?”
“Yes, sir.”
“Follow him!”
The first guard unlocked a door and started down a corridor. Rafael followed. His nostrils began to fill with the acrid smell of the musty building and of men living together in a limited space. Behind him was another guard. Neither was armed. They walked through several b
uildings until they came to a giant cell door guarded by two armed men on a catwalk above it, completely separated from the ground below. They paced back and forth in what looked like a self-contained environment; no one could get to them, even if they wanted to. An electronic buzzer opened a large barred gate, and Rafael saw the cellblock where he would be living.
The two guards walked down the aisle with Rafael sandwiched in between them until they reached cell number 677. One of the armed guards on the catwalk pressed a button and another buzzer sounded. The one in front of Rafael then lifted a bar from in front of the cell door and unlocked it with a key.
“Here’s your home, Spic,” said the second guard. “You take the top bunk. Your amigo already laid claim to the bottom one. He’ll be back at four-thirty. He works in the laundry. You make sure you guys get along. Any questions, you save ’em up. But don’t make the list too long. The warden don’t have time for bullshit. Got it?”
“Yes, sir,” said Rafael. Turning, he put his sheet and blanket on the bunk, hung his towel by the small sink with a piece of metal above it that took the place of a proper mirror, and plugged the earphones into the radio jack by one of the two small tables in the cell.
“Ya wanna shave every day?” asked the first guard.
“Yes, sir.”
“You’ll get a razor early each morning. Don’t expect no hot water. This ain’t no hotel, so you’ll have to shave with cold. The razor will be collected just as soon as you’re done, so don’t get no ideas, you can’t use the blade for anything ’cept shaving. Trying to fuck around with it will mean losing privileges, understand?” said the bigger of the two men, chewing a wad of tobacco. His pot hung over his belt and he had some trouble moving.
“Yes, sir,” said Rafael.
* * *
The cell door slammed. He saw the steel bar come down and heard it clang. Then they were gone. He grabbed hold of the bars and looked out until his knuckles were white, but he couldn’t see much. He could hear the sound of other cell doors opening or shutting; he wasn’t sure which, as his ear was not yet finely tuned. There were sounds of footsteps on the metal catwalk above, which could only be the guards, and he assumed he’d get used to hearing them night and day. He could also hear the muffled sounds of people talking, but he couldn’t make out a word of what was said.
He went back to his bunk, made it, laid down, and watched the ceiling for a long time. He thought of Sofia and the baby. Tears of anger and despair flowed down the sides of his face into his sideburns, then down his earlobes onto his pillow. Fifteen minutes later, he got up, wiped his face, and blew his nose with a piece of toilet paper. The commode was in one corner, in full view of the front of the cell—a porcelain bowl, a chrome handle, and no seat. He flushed the tissue down the toilet and went back and laid down on his bunk again, staring at the ceiling. He swore that he would never shed another tear for the rest of his life.
At four thirty-five, footsteps approached the cell. The buzzer sounded; there was the sound of the bar opening and a key being inserted in the lock, and a short Mexican man with close-cropped black hair and the evasive eyes of a rabbit was ushered in by a guard. He was dark-skinned and wore a mustache. The sleeves of his prison-issue shirt were rolled up above his elbows and his forearms were covered with scars and tattoos.
“Órale pues, carnal, me llamo Pancho Alarcón. Soy de Canta Ranas. They tol me about you, the vato from San Francisco, right?”
“Yeah. My name is Rafael,” he said, as he extended his hand. “Where’s Canta Ranas?”
“You’re kidding. You northern vatos don’t know nothing. Canta Ranas is right next to Los Nietos, just outside of Los Angeles.
“They say you got nailed with an X-ray machine. Que cabrón. What the fuck were you doing driving around with a pinche máquina as big as an elephant in broad daylight?”
“Where did you get all this shit on me?” asked Rafael, noting a large blue dot tattooed on Pancho’s cheekbone next to his right eye.
“Oh, alalva, carnal, there ain’t no secrets in here, ’cept for the child molesters, and we fix them. Everybody knows you’re a good vato. You took the rap for the other cabrones, and you never squealed. That gets you points, mano.”
“It also keeps me alive,” said Rafael, laughing.
He talked a long time to Pancho that afternoon and evening, and got the lowdown on how to survive in the hostile environment in which he found himself. He mused: it wasn’t so different from the outside except, if he fucked up, they always knew where to find him. Pancho was an old hand and knew his way around. He was worth listening to.
The next day Rafael was sent to the prison employment committee. He was told he qualified for three different positions. The first was the machine shop, where the license plates for the state were made. The second was working for the prison library, but the third interested him the most: it involved working in the doctor’s office.
He accepted the medical job. He liked the idea of dealing with the men who needed help with their physical ailments. He would, in effect, become the doctor’s Man Friday. He was to be in charge of appointments and would administer rudimentary first aid. He also had access to the medical library. Even though the treatises were, for the most part, outdated, he could read them in his spare time. And, by the end of his sentence, he envisioned having enough of a background that he could apply to train for a degree as a registered nurse. But he shouldn’t make long-range plans, he decided.
The doctor liked him immediately. Rafael made an excellent impression, and being Mexican was an advantage. He would get along well with the ever-increasing Hispanic population of the prison, many of whom didn’t speak English. He would work alongside a Negro nurse who came from the outside and together they would ethnically represent a majority of their patients.
Rafael also met with the priest, who already knew of Rafael’s good relationship with the church because he had received a letter of praise from his parish at Mission Dolores. Rafael volunteered to help the Father with Mass and teaching catechism, or in any other way he could be of assistance. Since the priest was not at San Quentin on a daily basis and he had confidence in Rafael, he trained him to handle the spiritual crises of the inmates in his absence.
* * *
After several weeks, Rafael fell into the routine of working at the doctor’s office and helping the priest tend to the flock. He made no real friends other than Pancho, preferring instead to study the old medical texts and read books borrowed from the library or a romance novel if he could get one.
His cellmate was not particularly smart, but Rafael liked him, since he thought him loyal and he’d given him invaluable information on how the institution worked. There was always another twist, something new to learn.
One evening after dinner, the two were in their cell talking when there was a clanging of the bars from next door and a voice yelled out.
“Hey, Pancho, Cerdo’s calling you.”
“Thanks, carnal,” said Pancho. He got up from his bunk, walked over to the cell door and took a small mirror out of his pocket.
“What are you doing?” asked Rafael.
“Communicating with the brothers, carnal.”
“With that mirror?”
“Yeah. Just watch.”
Pancho stuck the mirror out of the cell door, into the aisle and put two fingers in front of it facing in a vertical position. Then he turned them sideways so they were parallel to the ground. He watched the mirror intently until he got the answer to his signal that he was looking for from a cell down the row. He then withdrew the mirror and put it back in his pocket.
“I thought mirrors were illegal,” said Rafael.
“So, who gives a fuck, carnal. It’s a free country, isn’t it?”
“Yeah, I guess so.”
“You want some yesca?”
“No. No thanks, don’t use it,” said Rafael.
“You don’t mind if this vato has a few tokes, right, ese?”
“Be my gue
st, carnal, you live here, too.”
Pancho took his shoe off and hit the wall behind the toilet three times with the heel. Then he lifted his mattress and grabbed a wire coat hanger, straightened it out and created a hook at the end of it.
Rafael started to say something, but Pancho interrupted, “Shh, it’s about to happen.” He rushed to the commode and stuck the hanger in as far as it would go, hook end first. He put his finger up to his lips asking for continued silence. They both heard a toilet flush above them, and within two seconds Pancho’s experienced hand was pulling a small waterproof pouch out of the toilet. It was attached to a long string. He squeezed as much water out of the string as he could, then wrapped it in his towel and wrung it out. Afterwards, he hung the string at the back of the bunk to dry, so it wasn’t visible from outside the cell.
He opened the pouch and felt the marijuana with his fingers. He raised it to his nose and smelled it.
“This is some good shit, carnal. Sure you don’t want to smoke some with your compadre?”
“No, thanks, mano, it’s not my thing,” said Rafael.
Pancho took a package of Zig Zags off his small table, rolled a joint and lit up. He reclined on his bunk enjoying every minute of it as the smoke wafted up toward Rafael’s bed and the ceiling beyond it. “Life is good, carnal,” he said, after three tokes.
12
Something’s Cooking
XSING CHING was lounging on Virginia Dimitri’s comfortable couch long after they had made love. His shirt was unbuttoned at the top, exposing part of his hairless chest. He looked totally relaxed, unusual for such a guarded person. Virginia entered the room dressed in a pair of navy-blue bell-bottom slacks. She had on a soft white shirt, the tails tied in a knot in front, exposing just enough of her midsection to tease any onlooker.
“Can I freshen your drink, Xsing?” she asked
“No, thank you. I’m comfortable just the way I am.”
“Mathew will be here any minute. He’s always late.” She sat down beside him and patted him on the knee.
“How’s Ren?”
The Chinese Jars Page 12
