ROLL CALL ~ A Prison List (True Prison Story)

by Glenn Langohr

  Jade pulled up in the Buick looking pissed. Her hair was in pony tails so tight it had to be on. Her white tank top looked like it had the baby’s throw up on it and it didn’t look comfortable. Damon sat down in the passenger seat and reached over into the backseat to give Ryan a hug and with his free hand held his daughter’s foot.

  Jade exploded, “What happened? I’ve been here with the kids all night waiting for you!! We’ve been here for over twelve hours!”

  A brief glance at Jade was all it took to realize looking directly at her wasn’t the answer. Damon opened his wallet to hand over the money, a desperate measure. The $300 that was in there was gone. Still looking at the empty wallet Damon answered, “I dealt with someone I shouldn’t have and got set up.”

  After explaining the details, as expected, Jade hammered home the one and done rule. “You know you promised to stop if you ever got busted… What are you going to do now?”

  Damon stared out the window while Jade left the jail. As soon as she got on the freeway she filled the silence.

  “Damon you need a job… My parents are going to be so pissed off about this! They’re going to tell me, ‘We told you Damon wasn’t any good for you! Why are you with him? All those questions are going to come up again…You better get a job right away! What kind of job are you going to get?”

  Damon shrank down in his seat and explained his new understanding, that even though the migrants obtained a lot of his landscaping clients, he should have bunkered down and held onto what he could…

  Jade interrupted, “That’s all well and good Damon, and I’m glad you had your epiphany… But that doesn’t just fix everything and provide you a job!”

  “I’ll start another business.”

  “Damon that costs a lot of money and it’s risky! More than half of the new businesses go out of business within the first year. Why don’t you get a minimum wage job anywhere to start? Or go to school and learn a trade so you can get some skills to make more money… Maybe you can do both at the same time.”

  “I’ve got $8,000 in the bank.”

  Jade looked at Damon. He had a confused look on his face. She softened. “Damon, you better put that money in my name just to be safe. What if the Sheriffs try to seize it. We need that money for an attorney for you.”

  “I don’t want to waste that money on an attorney. We need it for rent, food and the kids! Besides, they can’t seize that money. I saved that money from landscaping, and it’s been in my bank since high school. My pot money was what we were living on month to month.”

  CHAPTER 31

  This time, detective Pincher studied the perimeter of Damon’s apartment in Dana Point to hide their vehicle better. He drove the Taurus up Crystal Lantern and passed Damon’s apartment. Just passed it, he turned left on another street that allowed him to circle up above Damon’s on a perch where the street dead ended.

  Detective Marks got out of the passenger seat and noticed he could see Damon’s apartment through a gap in the row of houses. He watched his partner step out of the driver side and put on his bullet proof vest over the same Hawaiian print shirt he’d had on yesterday. It was going on twenty hours since that shift started.

  Detective Pincher looked through the gap at Damon’s apartment and said, “This is a good spot. No matter which way Damon pulls up to his residence he won’t be able to see us.”

  Detective Pincher waited for his partner to say something. He didn’t. He hadn’t said anything since the evidence locker room. “What kind of outfit did you change into on your break. Those pants look like chollo pants, what are they Dickies? That Volcom shirt you have on doesn’t go with the pants. What are you trying to look like, a gang banger who surfs? You should dress more like me so we can blend in better.”

  Detective Marks thought to himself, anyone other than the actors in the T.V. show Hawaii Five-0 would clash with you. I dress the way the rest of the scene does around here. “I’ll keep that in mind.”

  Detective Marks looked toward the ocean and marveled at the post card view. He looked down the hill to where Crystal Lantern connected with P.C.H., then at the row of shops, restaurants and exquisite landscaping, then at the ocean in the background with the sun above it in a pink cascade, an hour away from setting.

  Looking the other way at Damon’s apartment through the gap in houses at the only other direction Damon could arrive from, detective Pincher thought out loud. “You know about the code of silence we share in as a brotherhood fighting bad guys, right? It’s us against them, and we watch each other’s back instead of pulling each other down. Remember how we are trained to write reports a certain way to ensure the conviction. Sometimes we have to tweak things a little to make sure the bad guy doesn’t slip off our hook and continue being a bad guy. If we look at the big picture, and do our jobs thoroughly… That shouldn’t happen.”

  Detective Marks didn’t respond or even turn from his view of P.C.H. and Crystal Lantern. The silence got awkward and he wondered what he should say, if anything.

  Detective Pincher filled the silence. “Some of these criminals are smart enough to manipulate the law and it’s our job to be just as cunning to prevent that from happening. We just have to be willing. Willing enough to hop in the dirt they roll around in and find the gray area they’re using to manipulate the law and tweak it right back at them.”

  Still looking toward the beach detective Marks said, “I understand.”

  Through the gap in the houses detective Pincher saw a female pull up in a Buick and park in the driveway. She and Damon got out, then a little boy with blond hair got out of the backseat and hugged Damon and held his hand. The female reached into the backseat and pulled out a baby.

  Detective Pincher said, “Put your vest on, they just pulled up.”

  Detective Marks retrieved his vest and police issue two way radio from the Taurus. He put the vest on and asked, “Are you going to call in our position and report the… conditions?”

  Detective Pincher watched Damon as he walked with the little boy holding his hand, and the female carrying the baby, open the front door to go inside. He looked back at the Buick and noticed the back door on the driver’s side was still open. They must be coming back for something.

  “Let’s go. I’ll call it in when Damon is in handcuffs.”

  CHAPTER 32

  Ryan came running out of the apartment just as the detectives reached the Buick in the driveway. Ryan looked up and stopped in his tracks seeing the strangers, and then their guns.

  “Daddy!! People are here with guns!!”

  Detective Pincher trained his gun on Damon’s chest as he came running out.

  Damon stopped on the edge of the porch and asked, “What do you want now?”

  Detective Pincher took a shuffle step toward Damon and commanded, “Get down on the ground and assume the prone position Damon!”

  Detective Marks followed suit. “Down on your stomach Damon! Comply with what we tell you, hands behind your back. Now!”

  Damon started to comply. He got on his knees and had his hands in the air and looked at his son. Ryan had a scared, confused look in his eyes and was frozen in place behind the detectives.

  As calmly as he could he said, “Ryan, it’s okay bud. Go find your Mommy and have her put you in your room.”

  Detective Pincher shuffled closer to Damon and said, “Is that where you have the rest of your pot hidden, in your kid’s room?”

  Damon responded immediately. “I’ve never brought pot to my house!!”

  Pincher responded, “It’s only an apartment Damon. You have to get shit right with me or I won’t have a future for you. Now get face down so my partner can put the cuffs on you. We’re going to search your apartment for more contraband.”

  Ryan saw his Mommy arrive at the door and ran around the detectives and his Daddy. As soon as he got to his Mommy he hugged her legs and looked back at his Daddy.

  Laying on the ground with his hands behind his back getting cuffed, Damon
said, “Jade put the kids in their room.”

  Jade took her son by the hand and went inside leaving the front door open.

  Detective Pincher took the opportunity to follow her inside. As Jade put the kids in their room, detective Pincher went straight to the master bedroom.

  Detective Marks lifted Damon to his feet and said, “Words of advice for you… You don’t want to get on my partner’s bad side. Now let’s go inside.”

  Jade came out of the kid’s bedroom with a phone in her hand. She walked up to detective Marks escorting Damon to take a seat on the couch.

  “Where is your search warrant? You’re not supposed to be in our house. I’m calling internal affairs and reporting your names and badge numbers for this.”

  Detective Marks stared at Jade’s determined face not knowing what to do. While he thought about what she had said he realized she was right. We don’t have a search warrant.

  Damon watched detective Marks reaction. Then he saw detective Pincher come out of his room with what looked like bags of pot in one hand and a digital scale in the other.

  Detective Pincher set the bags of pot and Tanita digital scale on the kitchen counter and responded to what he’d overheard Jade say. “Listen young lady. Your front door was open and you didn’t say I couldn’t come in. Even if you had, I have the right to check on the welfare of your children and anyone else that might be in the house to make sure everyone is okay. Both of those reasons give me a legitimate reason to be in your residence. Then while searching your residence for the welfare of your kids, I’m also legally allowed to observe any contraband in plain view.”

  Detective Pincher pointed to the pot and scale on the table. “This is what I found in the master bedroom. It was right there in plain view on the dresser. I also saw pictures of both of you from your wedding and property that I’m assuming is both of yours. All of this makes the warrantless search, and these narcotics, another legit arrest. I’m also betting it’s the same kind of pot we busted you with in your truck last night. Am I right?”

  Damon hunched on the couch and moved his arms in the bitingly tight handcuffs. He said the first thing that came to his mind. “You must have pinched some out of what you got last night!”

  Jade looked at the phone she had in her hand and thought about her bluff with calling internal affairs. I might not have their phone number, but I know that pot and scale wasn’t in my room, I’m just going to dial 911. “I’m calling to report that you just planted that stuff in our room! We’ve never had any pot in our house!”

  Detective Pincher walked right to Jade and tried to take the phone out of her hand. It wasn’t easy and a minor grapple ensued.

  Jade struggled for the phone that was now firmly in the detective’s hand and got pushed away with his other hand.

  With his other hand free, the detective held her off and yelled, “Stop resisting and interfering with our investigation young lady! I’ll write you up on charges of resisting arrest and battery on a police officer.”

  He set the still ringing phone down with a still battling Jade on his arm. He got control of the situation and placed her in cuffs and put her next to Damon on the couch. He looked at Damon, still struggling with how tight the cuffs were.

  “Damon… It’s time to deal. You have two choices here so listen carefully. Choice A, is I can make what happened last night, and now today, go away. You’ll still probably plea out to informal probation but that should be it. I can make that happen if you choose to cooperate. You have to set up three dealers that are larger than you in volume. Don’t play any games with me on that score because I’ve spent over a hundred hours watching you. So I know how big you are around here.”

  Damon looked at detective Pincher standing there in his Hawaiian print shirt and thought, there isn’t any way I wouldn’t have noticed you watching me. More likely, you found out about me from Bob Prescott.

  Detective Pincher continued. “Choice B is I call child protective services and have your kids become wards of the state, I charge you and your wife here for what I found in your room and I’ll do everything in my power to send you to prison for the maximum term allowed under the law.”

  Hearing the threat of having her kids taken was too much and tears spilled from Jade’s eyes. She looked at her husband in shock.

  Damon looked into her eyes and tried to make sense of what was happening. All he could do was think out loud. “Honey, you know he had to plant that pot in our room. You know that stuff wasn’t on top of our dresser…”

  The tears continued to flow down her face. “He’s going to take our kids from us!”

  Hearing his Mommy crying, Ryan opened the bedroom door crying also and yelled, “I’m not leaving my Mommy!”

  Damon felt all of the pressure of the situation and hated how powerless he felt! Then a thought registered. “I want those bags of pot and that scale finger printed! I guarantee you won’t find mine or my wife’s prints on there, but I bet yours are!”

  Detective Pincher decided he’d heard enough, Damon wasn’t going to cooperate and play ball.

  “Alright Damon, I guess it’s choice B. for you then.

  Let’s get you and your wife in the back of my car so I can call this in. Oh, by the way, the $300 in cash we found in your wallet, along with the $8,000 we saw on your bank statement are both being seized by the government under asset forfeiture laws that I especially like to utilize… Detective Marks, go get the car so we can put these two drug dealers in the back of it.”

  Detective Marks came back with the Taurus and detective Pincher decided a little mercy was in order. He took the handcuffs off Jade and let her hold her baby girl and her son in the back of the Taurus with Damon still in cuffs. As Damon got in he asked, “Can you loosen these cuffs a little, my hands are going numb!”

  Detective Pincher laughed, shook his head no and shut the door. With that done he walked toward the residence and told detective Marks, “Let’s go back inside and call this in.”

  Back inside standing at the counter looking at the bags of pot and the scale, detective Marks asked, “What are we going to do about the fingerprints?”

  CHAPTER 33

  Detective Maltobano studied the Strand’s parking lot to the beach for Sarah’s Lexus. It still wasn’t there and hadn’t been for all this time. Maltobano thought about how much he wanted to find Sarah and help her. I can almost feel her life sliding into darkness. She’s running from the pain and shock of being raped and is using drugs and hanging out with the wrong people to mask it. He thought about the conversations he’d had with her friend Nicole over the last year. The last one was a couple months ago. Nicole had called to report that she had finally seen Sarah at a gas station for the first time in six months. She said Sarah looked terrible. “She looked impossibly skinny and couldn’t have weighed more than 95 lbs., and she had a lost and spun out look on her face. The once naturally gorgeous blond, now looked like a tweaked out Barbie doll trying to carry all of her accessories in both hands.” Maltobano thought about the rest of Nicole’s words. Sarah was dressed like a stripper, she was living in Newport Beach now, but supposedly she still came to Salt Creek and Strands beaches to lay out occasionally. Nicole said she’d asked all of her friends who were locals at the two beaches if they ever saw her down there. Nobody had. Nicole figured her friend Sarah was so spun out she was delusional and wished she had her old life at the local beaches back, but was lost and couldn’t find her way back to face everything. All of these images filtered through the detective’s mind when the emergency call from dispatch came in.

  The emergency broadcast gave the Crystal Lantern address without any information. Detective Maltobano realized he was less than a mile from the address and called in his position and that he’d arrive in less than two minutes as the first responder. Accelerating down P.C.H. the detective manipulated his way through the light traffic. He pulled the Crown Victoria to a stop at the traffic light to Crystal Lantern and looked up the hill toward the addres
s given. He saw narcotic detectives Pincher and Marks walking casually to the front door where they entered the residence. Maltobano looked from the now empty front door to the driveway where the Buick was parked. It rang a bell in the detective’s memory. From there he saw detective Pincher’s brown Ford Taurus parked along the curb.

  The light turned green and he accelerated up Crystal Lantern, flipped a U-turn and parked behind the Taurus. He walked up to the Buick driver’s rear door. Maltobano looked through the tinted window half way down and the memory of the Buick flashed through his mind. Damon stared right back. Maltobano looked at the little boy, the baby girl on her mother’s lap and then he realized he knew the mother.

  “Jade. What’s going on?”

  Jade immediately recognized the man underneath the shoulder holster and white suspenders holding up an otherwise blue outfit. “John Maltobano? You’re a detective now?”

  Maltobano nodded his head.

  Jade continued in a desperate rush of words. “John those detectives planted pot in my room! I know for a fact it wasn’t there! Now they’re trying to take my kids from me! Please help me!”

  Damon added to it. “I know you probably hear: ‘It’s not mine, it’s a set up’ tune all of the time, so it sounds hollow even telling you that, but I know a way to prove our innocence. Run a finger print test to show our prints aren’t on it!”

  Detective Maltobano tried to make sense of the situation and couldn’t. “Sit tight. I’ll go check on what’s going on.”

  Maltobano stopped at the open front door and overheard detective Pincher explaining something to his partner.

  “We don’t have to worry about finger prints. I’ve done a lot of studying on the matter. Through case law examples I’ve learned that finger prints are rarely used as primary evidence in drug cases. Sometimes they are lifted off of scales, jars and other devices that hold finger prints well but hardly ever off of plastic baggies because the plastic doesn’t give a sturdy enough platform to hold a large enough print to identify.”