ROLL CALL ~ A Prison List (True Prison Story)

by Glenn Langohr

  Bob broke into my assessment of his place. “Are you checking the perimeter for routes in and out?”

  “Yep… Who was that gangster?”

  “He goes by L’il man.”

  “What did he want?”

  “He came to introduce himself. He ran down the new program to me. He said that nobody except him has the authority in this territory to supply the chemicals we use to make speed. He’s giving everyone a fair warning and giving them the chance to do business with him. He wants to give me the chemicals for free but it comes with a price. I’d have to give him half of the product.”

  “What did you tell him?”

  “I told him I couldn’t do anything until I talked to you and Ricky. He told me he already talked to Ricky and that Ricky understood the new program. He told me he wanted me to talk to you about it.”

  I nodded my head. “What’s up with the Hell’s Angels? Did you talk to them?”

  “Yeah. A couple of their heavy hitters came over here yesterday. The bottom line is that they have to bring it up at a chapter meeting and they predicted that their elders would veto it because you’re an unknown. They’re scared of the bad attention they could get from getting involved.”

  I looked at Bob and felt my temper losing it. I shook my head and decided I needed to check out his backyard from his fence. On my way I asked Bob, “Haven’t I done enough already to get recognized as someone who can be trusted?”

  In the backyard I thought about it. Why was I counting on the help Bob had almost promised with the Hell’s Angels? Was it because I already envisioned them pulling up to Maniac’s house with about 20 hogs to talk some sense into him? Probably. The stress of watching Dennis catch a life sentence made me feel powerless. It was right next to the feeling of powerlessness I had with my investment with Mr. Dudley. From Bob’s gate I looked for a dog in the backyard facing his. There wasn’t one. Upon further inspection I noticed that if I hopped Bob’s fence into the next backyard I’d be stuck. In that backyard there was a garage instead of a fence to hop over to get to the next street. I looked at the backyard next to theirs and saw that one allowed access to the street over their fence. So I’d have to hop two backyards to get to the street. It was good in that it made Bob’s backyard hard to ambush, and there was still a way to use it as an escape route. I looked back at Bob.

  “B.J. I’ve got a job for you. It will help me out, and get your foot in the door with the Hell’s Angels.”

  CHAPTER 89

  Ricky pushed the button on Argenta’a gate, and looked back at the hill above the freeway and wondered, does Argenta have his problem solver watching again? Not this time. The gate opened immediately. Ricky walked through and saw the front door open and Argenta cruising his wheel chair down the ramp and thought, now that L’il man is taking over the territory you’re in a hurry.

  “What are you going to do about L’il man Argenta?”

  “What are you going to do about him Ricky?”

  Ricky thought…Nothing. I can’t do anything. Too many gangs are involved, too many soldiers are available. I don’t want to become an example of what happens to those who get in the way.

  “Argenta, L’il man has these streets on lock. He’s in charge of them. There isn’t anything we can do but watch and wait for things to develop.”

  “I’m going to talk to El Diablo about that.”

  “Argenta, you have to understand something. El Diablo might wield the most power in Mexico but that’s where his power runs out. These streets belong to the gangs that run them. The shot callers are getting sick of all of the problems speed is bringing to the table. Now that the feds are putting a clamp on the chemicals, they’ve found a way to organize a more iron fisted program.”

  “We’ll see about that.”

  CHAPTER 90

  I followed Bob’s directions to Skip’s trailer park and listened to him tell me about Skip. The vital things I listened to besides what a scum bag he was had to do with his physical capabilities. He was about 40 years old, didn’t take care of himself by working out or eating right, was less than 6’ and less than 170lbs. Bob described him as non-athletic, nor did he seem to be much of a fighter. He told me that Skip never had anyone over because the trailer park was one of the nicer ones and was mostly a retirement community. It was all by itself at the top of a hill and there was only one road there.

  At the bottom of the hill there was a Home Depot and a few other businesses in a large parking lot. Driving by I commented to Bob that it would have been nice to have someone in the lot watching for police. A couple minute warning is usually enough. He directed me to Skip’s unit and I parked around the corner.

  I got out of the Festiva and Bob asked, “Aren’t you going to pop the hood and grab your gun?”

  “Nope, what are we going to do, shoot him and catch a murder beef? Don’t worry about it. Just ask him what happened and we’ll wait for things to fall into place.”

  On the way to Skip’s door I thought of something. We should have grabbed some fast food to have in our hands. Seeing it, Skip would have dropped his guard a little. I felt my nervous energy turning into focused adrenaline.

  Skip made the mistake of opening the door. I looked right into his blue eyes and he looked like he was as wired as a person could get. He had blond hair and an unhealthy chiseled face. His cheeks sank in on his bone structure, giving him the appearance of a walking skeleton. He had a lanky long build for being right at 6 feet and somehow looked dangerous despite his lack of size and power. He took on an angry look and I could feel the evilness radiating from his insides.

  “Bob I told you to call before showing up at my place!”

  I closed the distance between Skip and myself by stepping to the side of Bob. Skip looked at me for a second and I watched him look back at Bob. I was close enough to engage but I didn’t want things to start on the porch so I looked past Skip into his residence. His kitchen was to the left as soon as you entered and it had a hardwood floor. The living room started behind him about four feet away and I could see a table on the carpet right where the hardwood tile stopped. It was one of those tables that have a glass surface over the four pieces of wooden legs. Underneath on the bottom glass piece there was a rag over the top of something. I was guessing it was a gun.

  I watched Bob figure out what to say. “Skip, I want my half of the shit.”

  It didn’t look like Skip was going to invite us in so I squeezed through his front door and bumped him out of the way. Bob followed me in. I walked right to his kitchen and kept my eyes on Skip and asked, “Where was the fire? I don’t see where the fire was.”

  Skip didn’t look like he knew what to do with Bob crowding him. I looked at Bob and he looked like he was ready, but waiting for me. I saw Skip look at that table I’d noticed and closed the distance to it and looked at it with him. He looked back at me and noticed where I was looking.

  I told him, “You want that gun down there don’t you.”

  I was so close to Skip that when I exploded a right handed bomb into his chin; the rest of the punch took him off his feet. He bounced into the wall where his head connected and crumbled to the hardwood floor. He was out cold. Bob and I dragged him into the living room and I thought about the loud thump thump noise that was just made from Skip hitting the wall and then the hardwood floor.

  “Bob hold on to Skip, I’m going to go smoke a cigarette out front to see if that noise got any of the neighbor’s attention.”

  Out on the porch I didn’t see any of the neighbors looking out their windows. I took a walk to check behind his unit and didn’t see anything either.

  Back inside I noticed Bob had found some rope and was tying Skip in an interesting knot. The couch had been moved and Bob told me while he worked, “He had another gun, this rope and some sick porn videos from the orient of kids getting tied up. I learned how to use rope in the Navy so Skip’s going into my favorite knot.”

  I watched Bob. He had Skip, who was still knocke
d out, on his stomach. He was tying the rope around his neck so the rope continued down to his legs, where he made another loop at his ankles. He tightened up the difference until Skip was arching up like a banana. It looked like if he fought against the rope it would add more pressure to his neck and strangle him. It didn’t look comfortable. I looked at the gun and the videos. There were two videos. On the cover of one of them both boys and girls who looked between 10–16 were in chains, handcuffs and rope similar to the one Bob was using with scared looks on their faces. I never knew that kind of thing existed. How could the world accept it? I looked back at Skip and saw he was waking up. My mind spun all kinds of possibilities. Didn’t this piece of trash deserve to die so he couldn’t ever hurt any kids? I thought about it and wished I had a vial full of a chemical that would wipe out his mind so it couldn’t process any more of his predatory evil thoughts. Instead, I soccer kicked him in the face and felt his nose breaking.

  Bob explored Skip’s room and came back with a box full of stuff and told me, “These are the chemicals I gave him. He didn’t even use them yet!”

  I watched Bob put Skip’s guns in the box and thought of something. Dennis is fighting a life sentence for taking stuff from Maniac. I looked at Skip and realized I didn’t want any part of his stuff.

  “Bob. I’m not driving that stuff out of here.”

  “B.J. These are my chemicals! I’ll split it with you. There’s $6,000 worth of product here, plus the guns.”

  “I don’t want it.”

  I couldn’t believe what I was saying. It was coming from somewhere else. Somewhere that was sick of the sick shit and repulsed by it. I looked at Bob’s confused face and felt the good in me start to erode again. Those impulsive urges screamed, take it! It’s money! You take all of these risks for it, now take it!

  Bob looked at me like he understood. “What do you want to do?”

  “Call up the Hell’s Angels and tell them to come get it.”

  CHAPTER 91

  Back at Bob’s house I fell asleep on his couch while Bob called the Hell’s Angels.

  My dreams were dark and foreboding. Instead of seeing my restless spirit full of energy, running away from everything in a frenetic circle of motion, I was stuck in slow motion. I felt myself running in the dark but it felt like I was stuck and couldn’t get any traction, like I was running in mud. The harder I tried to get away from the darkness and the evil feeling that enveloped me, the deeper my legs went. I was sinking and fighting against it, up to my waist now. I tried as hard as I could to see myself from above and it didn’t work. Instead, I felt my body sinking further down. My arms struggled through the mud reaching out for something, anything. I had to find something to pull on to get out of the sludge… I heard Bob telling someone what just happened at Skip’s on the phone. Then later I heard someone come over.

  “Bob, why in the fuck would you call the Hell’s Angels to come get those chemicals and guns; those were my chemicals to begin with!”

  “No they weren’t Ricky… Those were my chemicals. I had to pay myself something for making all of that product for Tiny. You weren’t paying me! I still don’t have any money!”

  “I don’t want to argue with you, Bob. We’ve got to take a break and get away from all of this shit. It feels like the walls are closing in on us. Let’s go to the time share in Oceanside I bought us. I’ve got the keys. Let’s take B.J. and get everything ironed out between all of us and come up with an understanding…”

  “When?’

  “Right now. Let’s wake B.J. up and go.”

  I got up from the couch. “You don’t have to wake me up. I was listening.”

  I walked to the bathroom feeling vulnerable. Like I didn’t have enough control over anything. I looked at my watch and realized I was only on the couch for four hours. Not much of that was real sleep and I didn’t feel rested. I felt groggy. I pulled out my speed and looked in the mirror and thought, this weaning myself off speed isn’t working. I feel like I’m being guided by an unseen force without enough control of the situation. Like I’m on auto pilot…

  I snorted line after line until I felt that same old relentless energy returning that let me know I was ready to compete. I was wired for sound again.

  Back in the living room Ricky and Bob just got finished snorting some lines and Bob finished telling Ricky about Skip’s house.

  “I heard you knocked Skip out with one explosive right hand…”

  I liked the respect Ricky was showing me and deflected it toward Bob. “Yeah, it crumbled him. But you should have seen Bob here. He tied him in a knot that had him in a circle with the back of his heels almost touching his head. We could have taken him outside and rolled him down the hill to Home Depot.”

  We laughed and cut it up some more and I saw myself as if from a distance laughing and cutting it up with Ricky, who always ripped Bob off, and I knew would turn on me at the drop of a dime…

  CHAPTER 92

  I followed Ricky’s Corvette in the Festiva with Bob in the passenger seat. We drove into Oceanside and followed some streets to the coast to some beach parking. Ricky pulled over and parked 50 yards from the timeshare and I tucked the Festiva behind his Corvette. The street we were on was about 100 feet above the beach below. We were in the middle of two piers and there was a boardwalk of pavement beach goers used to walk, skate, roller blade and ride bikes on.

  We got out of the vehicles and Ricky said, “There’s Argenta and El Diablo.”

  I studied the timeshare’s parking lot. There were valet parkers and bell hops dressed in tuxedos at the ready to guide clients from their vehicles into the lobby. There was a Hummer limo with blacked out tinted windows next to a white van with blacked out tinted windows. Both were blocking other vehicles from entering. Upon further inspection, some of the other vehicles seemed to be part of the same caravan. A Mexican in a black pin stripe suit that looked straight out of a scarface movie stood next to someone in a wheel chair.

  Bob said, “That’s Argenta in the wheel chair.”

  We watched El Diablo wave the valet parkers away from them while he talked to Argenta like he owned the timeshare. He wasn’t in a hurry.

  Ricky said, “What a bust. It looks like a scene out of a mob movie.”

  A couple of Mexican hoods got out of the cars behind the Hummer and got in the Hummer and Argenta’s white van. El Diablo instructed them where to park and pointed our way. We watched the Hummer creep down the street toward us. The driver passed us and parked about 50 yards away where another street intersected the street we were on. The driver didn’t get out. I assumed he was staying put to keep watch. The driver of the white van flipped a U-turn and parked in the same fashion the other way. We watched El Diablo instruct the rest of the procession, one by one, where to go. Then we watched him and Argenta walk into the lobby.

  CHAPTER 93

  “Argenta. What are you so worried about? This little man isn’t going to last on the streets long. I’ve tried to find out his real name and couldn’t, but trust me; I’ve seen his kind over and over. All you have to do is think about what they call themselves. Some of them call themselves Puppet. So you figure out how to be their puppet master. Pull their strings. This little man sounds like he grew up too young. Like he started using drugs and gang banging for his streets before he ever matured. Those kind of people die young or end up doing life in prison by the time they’re 25 years old. You just have to be patient. Bide your time and look for opportunities to steer your enemies into trouble from a distance. You’ll last, they won’t.”

  “But El Diablo, what if little man dies, or goes to prison, and the streets just replace him with someone else?”

  Argenta watched El Diablo slam his fist against the table in anger. “They will try to replace him! But you’re not seeing the big picture. They are fighting a losing battle. California is locking them all up. That’s why there are 36 prisons with over a quarter million in population. You have to think like I think. Satan is using th
em to hold down a street. Satan is using us to strangle the world! As long as drugs are illegal and we control the demand for them, and, we stay alive and free, we win. Right now I have a relative who I sent to California to work as a prison guard a few years ago. He’s creating a prison mafia of prison guards as we speak. Whose winning, me or little man? Argenta! Are you forgetting what we did in Tennessee? Do the same thing in your area. Remember the diabolical plan I mentioned to you last time? I brought you an arsenal of weapons from Mexico that have hundreds of murders on their firing pins and barrels. Get those weapons in the hands of your enemies. Let them take the fall for those murders…The other part of my diabolical plan is shrouded in legitimacy. If you pass it on to drug dealers, you can attach your tentacles to their networks. It’s a multi level marketing plan that is in combination with a telephone service provider by the name MLM. You sell it as a legal business that you can retire on because the income is residual. Drug dealers have networks they sell their drugs to so it will attract them because they already know enough people to earn what looks like easy money. They will get all of their clients to switch services and take on a level of the marketing where they repeat the same process again and again. You and I keep all of the money from it and we see a clear picture of their drug networks. Argenta, you have to think like an insidious spirit to serve Satan at the level I do. I’ve also brought you the best speed on the planet to manipulate with. You saw how it worked in Tennessee. Go with Satan.”

  I brought my carry bag with my clothes in it and put it in the suite Bob and I were to go in. Bob looked pissed off at Ricky and told me he needed to talk to him. I gave them some space and walked down to the beach. I found a mountain bike rental shop and rented a bike. It felt good to pedal away some of my excess energy and discontent. I rode the boardwalk on the beach and found a route to circle past the timeshare and look for El Diablo’s caravan. I found Argenta’s van. Somebody was in it watching. I rode past the timeshare to where the Hummer was parked and saw a Mexican attentively watching the perimeter from the driver’s seat. I pedaled away and explored further inland and found another one of El Diablo’s henchman posted in another car watching. A half a mile away at another intersection another henchman watching. I pedaled further away and found two more of El Diablo’s vehicles at locations to watch from. I wondered, did he use a map to find all the best vantage points? On my way back, the vehicles were gone. I made it back in time to see the Hummer picking up El Diablo in front of the timeshare with his caravan of vehicles behind him.