ROLL CALL ~ A Prison List (True Prison Story)

by Glenn Langohr

  I saw another deep look into the social drug scene in apartments where people were struggling. I could feel their struggle and understood it. The difference between them and the rich kids on the hill was options. Caught up in the struggle, they had to hustle and rich blends with poor. I saw the rich getting caught by the law and getting a slap on the wrist, and I saw the poor getting a prison cell.

  I crossed P.C.H. and pedaled further from the beach where the hill to wealth started to climb and noticed a blatantly obvious drug den. The first thing that caught my eye was the half open garage door. I could see people posted up on chairs just far enough into the garage that they could see out but at the same time it looked like they were trying to hide. I pedaled by and noticed a portion of the garage had a band room constructed of wood that had graffiti painted on it. Passing by, and up the hill further I found the best vantage point to study the house. It was single story. Toward the back of the house there was a patio on the roof to lie out or sit on lawn chairs around a barbecue. Further back into the backyard there was an extravagant tree house built high up in a large tree. I laughed to myself; the place is an amusement park. I looked back to the half open garage and saw the wrought iron gate to the right. I looked to the left side of the garage and laughed at the tweaked out video security on the side of the house pointing up the hill toward me. I looked further toward that side of the house and saw a hillside of ice plant that led into the backyard and that tree house. The front gate and security camera didn’t cover the angles. I saw someone I recognized, Chet, walk up to the garage from the street below and look both ways in paranoia before ducking under the garage door. I had been so busy studying the house I didn’t see where Chet parked his car. I looked for a car along the curb and saw another obvious sign the house was a drug house. There weren’t any cars parked out front. Everyone was parking their car away from the house like that would protect them. I saw a skinny black guy come out of the garage by way of limbo arching under the half closed garage door. He was walking up the street toward me. He stopped at a white van that had a magnetic sign that said TROY’S FLOWER DELIVERY. He opened the van and grabbed a small box that didn’t have anything to do with flowers. I watched him walk back to the garage and look up and down the street like his head was on a swivel and duck back under the door. I felt my impulses fly through my body as I raced down the hill to some excitement.

  Right at the driveway, I skidded the mountain bike sideways and slid under the garage and landed on my feet just inside the lowered garage door. I looked at Troy’s shocked face and the other three occupants on lawn chairs shocked faces and blurted, “Troy you need to do a better job on your security. It’s too easy to penetrate.”

  I watched Troy gather himself and ask, “How do you know I’m Troy?”

  “I just watched you grab that box out of a van that has your name on it.”

  I couldn’t help but stare at the box in his hand. Troy saw where I was looking. He ran inside the band room and I heard the door lock. I started laughing. I looked at the makeshift band room he’d just locked himself in and saw another security video camera aimed at us in the garage. I sized up the three in chairs looking at me and decided they were a captivated audience rather than a threat to me. I continued to entertain and looked right into the security camera and said, “I see one of the problems Troy. You’re too busy in there smoking speed and watching the occupants inside the garage to pay attention to the street out front. By the way, your house is a straight bust.”

  I watched the band room door open and Chet pop his head out. “B.J.! I thought that was you!”

  CHAPTER 156

  “B.J. this is Troy. He’s good people.”

  I sat on a chair in the band room and couldn’t help but watch the monitor of the garage occupants, rather than the one of the street out front. I looked around the band room and thought, Troy’s a glorified Sanford and Son. It looked like a pawn shop with computers, lap tops, video cameras, cell phones, one huge speaker, other speakers, wires going everywhere, and then I heard the occupants in the garage talking through the big speaker. Troy had the garage wired for sound. I looked at Troy closer and realized he might be a lot more than a glorified Sanford and Son. He had a sophisticated ear piece that was barely visible, Secret Service like. I had to ask. “What is that in your ear?”

  Troy handed it to me and I listened. I could hear people talking and a T.V. and realized he had his house wired for sound. Troy was trying to control the chaos with one ear listening to the inside of his house, the other ear listening to the garage occupants and two different video monitors. I wondered how I could explain the road I’d traveled that proved how impossible it was. How could I get him to see it all was just a mirage and a slippery dark slope twisting down a lonely path headed nowhere? There was no way I could, it would just add to the challenge to prove me wrong. I looked at Chet and remembered how he used to move product for me. I knew he was reliable and loyal as long as there was something in it for him and decided he was Troy’s integral component with his knowledge of the area. I remembered the plates on the van out front.

  “I also noticed the plates on your flower van are from Louisiana. What brings you to our wonderful climate?”

  “I’m from New Orleans. I came out here last year… After I pulled myself together…Two years ago on Christmas, I lost my wife and our baby. She was giving birth and I was right there watching, and I saw her screaming and bleeding, screaming and bleeding, I didn’t know what was happening. Then the medical staff rushed her away and came back five minutes later and told me they both died.”

  The information was so intimate and abrupt. I didn’t know what to say, but I felt my heart hurting for this person I could see wore his heart on his sleeve. Looking at the pain in his eyes took me out of my own problems and I wanted to help, somehow.

  “After my babies died… I lost it, I lost everything I’d worked for and established since getting out of federal prison.”

  “What did you go to prison for Troy?”

  “I was selling cocaine for the Colombians and moving enough weight through four states that I got ten years. I did eight and a half years through the 80’s and 90’s and got out focused on my music career and a legal business. You saw my van out front; I delivered flowers for weddings, funerals, holidays, hotels and other occasions to start with. I got my family back together, my beautiful wife, two daughters and a boy. My wife Gloria was pregnant with another daughter when she… I don’t know why God would take them from me?”

  I watched Troy barely hold on to his emotions. Tears still flowed out of his eyes while he gritted his teeth to keep the rest in. I watched him look up to the ceiling. Then he put a C.D. in the stereo next to him.

  “Music is my passion and what I hold on to. I grew up singing in choirs at church and fell in love with jazz and blues. While I was running my flower delivery business I played at all the clubs on Bourbon street and made a couple C.D.’s., I even coached a little league baseball team before my wife and our baby…”

  I listened to a bluesy rendition with a saxophone pulling on my spirit and then Troy’s voice. It matched the saxophone and blended with it and I heard the title of the song, Spiritual Warrior. I saw tears coming out of Troy’s eyes and watched him open the box he’d carried out of his van and ran into the band room with. There were three different bags of speed and two bags of hydroponic pot. I watched him chop up some lines and I snorted two of them immediately.

  I felt the fire burning through my nasal membranes, into my brain, and into my soul. The doors opened all of the restless energy with a magnified force that had my central nervous system quivering in anticipation of something dramatic to come. The jolt of chemicals tore through the dark depression of sleeping in a coffin-like garage and I found myself getting sucked into the challenge of keeping an eye on both of Troy’s monitors and figuring out Troy’s world. Then I saw another person I knew from the past enter the garage, Silver. I heard him clearly out of the speaker a
sk the garage occupants, “Who’s in the band room?”

  I watched one of the occupants respond, “Troy, Chet and some guy named B.J. that just scared the shit out of all of us. We thought he was an undercover cop!”

  Silver said, “I know B.J.! He used to sell the best speed on the planet and he always had the chronic pot on hand. Is he getting back in the business?”

  Hearing my name thrown around like that brought back my knowledge on how impossible it is to deal with the chaos of speed and I knew I didn’t want back in, as a dealer. I thought, I’ll just avoid my condo for a while and figure out a good strategy.

  Silver entered the band room and I listened to he and Chet brief Troy about me.

  “B.J. put it down for this area in the early 90’s. He put in rules and regulations that brought some honor and integrity to the business that lasted for a while even after he went to prison. Then things started to slip into the evil chaotic mess we’re in now with everyone snitching, even ex-convicts and part time gang members becoming part time informants to avoid life sentences.”

  I listened to some more of my past and wanted out of the band room. I had ants in my pants. I asked Troy if I could borrow his lap top and use it in the tree house and he let me.

  The tree house was an open fort twenty feet in the air and a good vantage point to study other vantage points to watch Troy’s house and the entrances and exits. My mind was operating optimally and I knew from past experience that it wouldn’t stay this way. I knew I’d feel the leash around my neck and the enslavement would start so I mandated some rules and regulations for myself to live by immediately. I told myself, I’m not going to get into selling drugs for profit; my mind is smarter than that! I’m just going to eat up some of this six weeks of garage living and find some solutions to my struggling limo business and life in general. I told myself, I’m not going to get caught up in the drama and chaos, not this time.

  From the tree house I again saw how to break Troy’s poor video security. There were too many ways to enter his house from where I was in the back. I looked down and saw a trail from his back yard to the left that cut through two other back yards discreetly and took you to the first street that bisected with the one out front. I could see myself parking my Town Car on that street and entering Troy’s house through this back exit. Then I looked straight down at the backyard beneath the tree house. Their back yard was huge and started with a steep slope with thick vines going down it until it leveled off and the rest of the backyard started. I could see that you could run through the back yard and hop the fence to get to P.C.H. I remembered that there was a hotel with an underground parking lot where I could also park my Town Car to hide it completely, and thought, that’s where I’ll put it and I won’t get caught up in any drama! Then I opened the lap top to investigate Troy.

  My instincts were telling me that Troy was true, he wore his heart on his sleeve, but all those listening devices had me tripping a little. I thought, a good way to start is to see if he’s telling the truth about the ten year federal sentence. That will tell me a lot, like what level he was at and if he does his own time for his own crime. I searched the most thorough background website and punched in Troy’s name and ran into a problem. I didn’t have his birth date and other vitals.

  “Troy, I’m running a check on you. I need your birth date and maybe some other vitals.”

  I watched Troy smile and knew he didn’t have anything to hide.

  Silver said, “I told you B.J.’s direct!”

  Chet said, “B.J.’s back!”

  Hearing Chet say I was back forced me to face the fact I was already lying to myself. I was already caught up.

  We went over Troy’s history and saw the ten year sentence and even newspaper articles about his arrest. He’d held his mud under heavy pressure. Then I pulled Chet’s history, then Silver’s and then mine. For the next 48 hours I researched every visitor who came to Troy’s amusement park and had 23 names and backgrounds in my new file.

  The next two people who came for some product refused to take part in my background check. The first person whined, “I don’t want you knowing my information.”

  I told him, “I’ll show you mine. What do you have to hide?”

  I followed him out of the garage, “What’s the matter?”

  The second one whined, “You’re doing the same thing Vince is doing! He’s studying everyone’s phone records and checking every number called! You can’t do that! You won’t last out here long and deserve to be back in prison!”

  I went back to my condo, got my Town Car and parked it in the hotel’s underground parking lot on P.C.H.

  CHAPTER 157

  “Where’s Vince?”

  I studied Troy, Chet and Silver and knew they knew where he was, but they were hesitant to tell me.

  “Stop bull shitting around! I go way back with Vince, where is he?”

  I watched Troy make a call and leave a message. “Vince, its Troy. An old friend of yours, B.J., wants to talk to you. Call him on my second phone number. I’m going to give him that phone to use. Take care of yourself brother.”

  Troy hung up the phone and told me a few things. “Vince did some speed for the first time in seven years three weeks ago. He hasn’t slept since. It’s highly entertaining to see you instantly start investigating your way right to him. I can’t believe how fast you’re both connecting the dots and turning everything upside down. Are you sure you don’t want back into dealing? The whole territory can be yours!”

  “I don’t want that kind of money. It’s the devil’s and nothing good can come from drug money. Where’s Vince?”

  “Vince says the same thing about drug money. He says it’s all about favors now. He’s on the other side of south O.C. in a gated community working on multiple highly sensitive investigations.” Troy stopped himself from saying more.

  I watched Chet. “Vince has been relentless. Every person he meets, he asks to see their cell phone. Then, right in front of the person, he goes through their call histories and stored phone numbers and copies all the numbers for research.”

  Troy’s cell phone rang in his lap.

  “Vince? Yeah your homeboy is right here. Call him on my second phone. 949-148-8123. Alright, I’ll put you on the monitor.”

  Troy played around with some wires and Vince’s face popped up on the monitor.

  I studied Vince while Troy set up a video feed so Vince could see us in the band room. It had been ten years since I saw him and Damon in the holding cell in jail. He still had his baby face and brown eyes with that Italian olive skin. I saw an extravagant rock and marble fireplace behind him with cut glass burning instead of a log in the pit like diamonds were on fire. The image of my friend in front of those diamonds on fire was so powerful that I saw my young misguided friend’s soul holding on to the character of a man evolved into a warrior. I watched him look at me. His face went through a series of changes that included love, pain, loneliness and confusion before becoming a granite mask again.

  “B.J.! What are you doing in our fish tank? Are you still on parole?”

  “Yep.”

  “Then why are you fucking up? Why aren’t you building your limo business so you can get other paroling ex-cons jobs to stay out of prison?”

  “Vince, I can see you’re distracted and might not have noticed the effect 9/11 had on the airlines and hotels that directly affect my Town Car service. In short, my Prestigious Transport is now Ghetto Transport. I’m processing the fact that I have to cut the umbilical cord to the business and start another one.”

  “I’ll help you!”

  “Forget about me, how can I help you?”

  I watched Vince stare at me and could feel his hurting spirit through the stare. He barely held his emotions in.

  He said, “That’s the first time anyone has asked if they could help me with authenticity since my prison cell brother a few years ago.”

  “Where is Damon?”

  I watched Vince barely
hold on to his emotions again and then maintain the stoic mask of a warrior. “You mean Sir Rott. That’s what I named him. He named me Sir Vincent the Valiant. He’s at his wife, Jade’s sober living treatment center CROSSROADS. I can’t see him because I’m high and I have way too much love for him to be the snake that tempts him out of his program! I miss him though… B.J., I heard about your rules and regulations, stay down brother. Then I heard about you calling shots with similar rules and regulations in that level four prison up north. Pretty impressive for a first termer. I also heard you didn’t get a single tattoo. I remember you told me your body is your temple and that tattoos were I.D. tags.”

  “That’s some impressive homework you’ve compiled on me but I can’t take credit for calling shots up north. I did like implementing rules and regulations to regulate child and women predators. I figure that if you have to show precise violence in there to earn respect, it might as well be violence for a good cause. The yard was really Bird and Pelican’s who’d just gotten out of the Pelican Bay S.H.U.. I learned a lot from them. They told me about your and Damon’s case for getting those child molesters. Stay down stud.”

  I remembered Troy saying Vince hadn’t slept and was caught up in multiple highly sensitive investigations so I cut right to the heart of the matter. “Vince what are you the most focused on right now?”

  “Intelligence gathering on corrupt officials involved in the Jane Doe gang rape case. Bob Prescott is working with detective Pincher still! He moved to Long Beach after he snitched you and Damon off for five years and then came back to Santa Margarita pretending to be a crip gang member. Imagine that, a white crip in our area. He gave Jane Doe the speed and served her to detective Pincher for both of her arrests just before the top law enforcement’s rapist son has his preliminary hearing to discredit her. I guess they’re trying to find a way to make a gang rape copasetic in court.”