ROLL CALL ~ A Prison List (True Prison Story)

by Glenn Langohr

  CHAPTER 182

  On the way out of the building Topo stepped away to get some space and said, “I don’t do interviews.”

  “Then you don’t want a heads-up that you guys are coming off lockdown tomorrow morning then huh?”

  Deputy Valdez opened the door to the program office, walked to his office and sat behind his desk.

  Topo remained standing.

  Deputy Valdez said, “This isn’t an interview. It’s a business proposition.”

  “I don’t do business with people I don’t know.”

  Deputy Valdez slid a piece of paper across the desk and said, “Money and drugs talk.”

  Topo looked at the piece of paper. A half a million-dollar figure. He whistled.

  Deputy Valdez slid two prison issue pictures across next. “If these two die in a knife fight you get the money; only if they both die, though!”

  “Where would you send this fettia?”

  Deputy Valdez smiled and thought, it’s always about the money and drugs for these thugs. The secret fund the prison union has given me access to with the million dollars will all be mine if I play this right. He turned another piece of paper over, slid it across the desk, and said, “I do my homework Mr. Topo.”

  Topo maintained a stoic mask while wondering, how did they get my A.K.A. after all of these years? He looked at the piece of paper and it was even worse. They knew his wife’s sister’s address they just established. There was a second address he didn’t care about on the piece of paper also. “How do I know this isn’t a set up?”

  “Mr. Topo…Look into my eyes and understand something significant. You’re the mafia for your people in prison…I’m the mafia for my people wearing a prison uniform. If those two,” He pointed to the pictures of B.J. and Damon, “Leave the yard in a body bag; I get the same amount I’m offering you. That’s good business right? If we do good business the first time what’s to stop us from doing more good business?”

  “The address that has apartment number 13.”

  Deputy Valdez imagined Topo’s half a million being driven over the border to his uncle El Diablo to help him buy the next president of Mexico…”So be it. Here is how this is going to work. The whites don’t even know they’re coming off lock down tomorrow morning so you have all day to let your people know some things. Tomorrow morning as we start releasing you to yard everyone coming out of their cell is going to get strip searched and metal detected. So don’t try to bring any weapons. I’ve got that taken care of for you.”

  Topo watched deputy Valdez pull a bag from under the table.

  “These are weapons we seized from C-yard a few weeks ago during a search of the yard.”

  Topo whistled as he saw a foot long ice pick shank. Topo imagined it was cut from a fence and straightened.

  Deputy Valdez pulled out another weapon. It was thick and crude. “I believe you call this one a bone crusher. I can’t see it killing these two white warriors though. You’re going to need something better then these to be sure.”

  Deputy Valdez put five more prison-made weapons on the desk and then pulled out a medical bag. “With these two weapons in this medical bag you’ll cut through their body builder bodies like butter and penetrate arteries and bring a satisfactory conclusion to our transaction.”

  Topo watched deputy Valdez carefully pull out the two scalpels and whistled.

  “I’m going to bury these on the yard where your people post up. If you do this right Topo, nobody will get busted and catch a case. I suggest you start a mini riot, or a full blown one as a distraction. It’s up to you.”

  CHAPTER 183

  Detective Maltobano woke up from a dream and tried to remember what it was about. Then he heard his phone ring and looked at the alarm clock. It was 4 a.m.

  “Is this B.J.’s father?”

  “Yes. I’m worried about my son. He sent what he said was evidence of corruption to me, and, detective Pincher seized it before I could see what was on it. I’ve been calling the governor’s office for a few days… I haven’t got a response. I’m calling because I just had a dream my son was killed in a prison riot! Something isn’t right!”

  “Do you know where he’s located?”

  “Jade and Sarah said they’re both at a level four prison on the border of Mexico.”

  “Both of them…That’s odd. I’m going to call the governor. Let me get back to you.”

  “This is Agent Maltobano with Internal Affairs. I just got off the phone with the governor about your son. I have some bad news. The governor called the prison and demanded they shut down the yard B.J. is on and the prison stopped speaking English with him, then put him on hold for over a half hour, then hung up the phone. The governor told me he’s flying to San Diego to get to the prison.”

  “Jade, Sarah and I are driving there also.”

  CHAPTER 184

  I woke up from a vivid dream where I saw everything that was going to happen in a kaleidoscope of fast moving images, but they were too elusive to hold on to. I got up and walked to our cell door and looked at the clock. 4 a.m. I tried to put the pieces of my dream back together and all I could remember was that we were going to get yard this morning. I lay back on my bed and closed my eyes, willing the pieces of my dream to come back to me. Nothing came. I started praying and felt a powerful presence filling me up. It felt so peaceful I started crying and thanking God. I was no longer worried about figuring out my dream and felt drawn to the Bible. I held it in my hand and asked God to guide me to the page he wanted me to read and the Bible started to fall out of my hand. The pinkie finger of my right hand caught the edge of the Bible and held on. It was clamped to a page in Revelation. I started reading about Jesus defeating death and the keys to Heaven and Hell. I imagined a giant key with Hell to the left and Heaven to the right and realized we all have a choice in which way we turn the key. I pictured those of us in prison struggling through darkness turning the key toward heaven by helping others and saw those same people turning a hellish life into heaven. Then I imagined people caught up in the rat race of making money and laws in the free world making decisions that turned the key toward hell and turning a heavenly lifestyle into a hellish existence. I looked back at Damon on his bunk. He was awake and smiling at me.

  I said, “We’re going to get yard today.”

  “How do you know that homeboy?”

  “I had a dream about it.”

  “I should start calling you dreamer. What else did you see in your dream?”

  “I can’t remember the rest.”

  “I’ll stick to calling you B.J.”

  CHAPTER 185

  “We are getting yard homeboy. I’ll start calling you dreamer again.”

  I sat up on my bunk and looked at Damon staring out the cell door. “Give me the play by play.”

  “There’s about twenty guards entering the building and starting on the other side…They are stripping out the Mexicans coming out of their cell…The Mexicans are squatting and coughing and getting their assholes wanded with metal detectors…They’re putting on their clothes and walking out to yard. It doesn’t look like they let Big Vic or Thor out, though.”

  “Maybe they’re letting the Mexicans out first.”

  “Are you remembering your dream?”

  “Maybe.”

  Ten minutes later Damon said, “The gun tower is popping the sally port door… Here come a couple of guards our way and a couple went the other way for Vic and Thor. The two guards stopped right in front of our cell and, “Do you guys want yard?”

  Damon and I both responded at the same time, “Yes!”

  We followed the same protocol and dropped our boxers, squatted and coughed, got our assholes wanded by a metal detector, put on our clothes and boots and walked out to the yard in full jail issue.

  We both had on our beanies slung low and C.D.C. denim jackets going out into 110 degree heat.

  Walking out of our building onto the yard, the first thing we were looking for was wher
e the other whites were stationed. The kite Vic and Thor sent us said our table was right in front of our building. The sun was so bright, I had to squint my eyes against it. There were a couple of tables in front of our building and the one to the left sported a gathering of whites. The table was one of those concrete jobs bolted to the ground. There were six people sitting on top of it with their feet on the spot you’d normally sit on. From up there they had a more commanding view. Three faced the yard and three faced the building we were coming from. Smashmouth was sitting in the middle watching us walk towards him. The rest of the gathering that didn’t fit on the table stood close to it.

  Smashmouth came off the table and introduced us to everyone. By my count, with Rott and I, there were 14 of us. It was a solid 14 though. There was some serious experience, peppered in along with some body builder-sized dudes. Smashmouth told me, “L’il man wants to talk to you in a little bit.”

  I nodded my head and looked around. My first instinct was to check out all of the gun towers to see how interested they seemed. I started with the one behind us in the building we’d just come from. The guard was standing at the window with his gun at the ready staring at us. Above him on the building’s roof the ring leader stood with a rifle in his hand, looking right at us also.

  I noticed Rott was studying the yard intently. I took in the terrain for a few minutes and then told him that our rear flank had rifles trained on us. In the cell, we had imagined the yard from our mind’s eye and what we’d likely be facing. If there had to be any combat we knew we’d be facing much heavier numbers, probably about four of theirs to every one of ours. Our strategy was going to be to stay in a tight unit away from the middle of the yard so we couldn’t get surrounded. If warfare started we were planning to fall back to a building’s wall to shelter our rear and keep everything in front of our tightly grouped unit. This strategy wasn’t looking so good anymore.

  Surrounding the whole yard was a ten foot concrete track in front of each building before you got to the tables and then the yard. I looked to the left and slightly behind our table to that part of the track and observed a group of Mexicans forty feet away, stationed sitting on the curb. They looked like they were ready and waiting for something. I counted eleven of them and assumed they were from the same neighborhood. About forty feet in front of them and into the yard there were two sets of bleachers bolted to a concrete slab with grass surrounding it. I estimated about thirty Mexicans that I realized were from Mexico, not neighborhoods. I looked at one particular Mexican standing next to the bleachers and I realized I knew him. It was Felipe. Clockwise from the bleachers and about forty feet in front of us a small group of Chicanos stood talking. Topo was in the middle. His posture was that of a five star general but in a quiet kind of way like he was constantly trying to fly under the radar and blend in. L’il man was standing next to him like he was the next-in-charge and was personally responsible for any of the orders spoken by the general. The rest of the hard-core group looked like active followers who were ready and willing.

  One of the followers was told to go get someone. I followed the direction he went. He headed where I hadn’t yet studied. In front of our table and to our right, about twenty feet away from our table sat one just like it. There were just as many neighborhood hommies on it and around it as we had on our table. Most of them seemed to be keeping curious eyes on our table. The follower walked past it to the curb a few feet behind, where a row of about 20 neighborhood hommies sat in about a 50 foot line that turned with the curve of the track. Ricky was in the middle of them getting summoned by the follower.

  I studied Ricky walking with the follower across the yard. He was stressed out. His jaw line was clamped shut like he was thinking as hard as he could; like he was angry or frustrated, but the rest of his body language was submissive and overwhelmed. His head and shoulders were slumped down and his eyes gave him away with that deer in the headlight look.

  He shook hands with the five star general and nodded his head and listened while L’il man ran something down to him. It looked pretty extensive so I scanned the perimeter back to the table to our right to really study the occupants. I asked Smashmouth something Rott and I were curious about.

  “Who wrote that Greetings kite for all of the new arrivals that said, THOUGH WE ARE LOW IN NUMBER…WE ARE STRONG IN SPIRIT…” Smashmouth said, “Shotgun, from L.A.”

  Ricky was walking back around the table to sit back on his spot on the curb. I was now realizing that table had some pretty serious looking occupants on it. I looked back to the 5 star general and saw L’il man waving his arm our way.

  L’il man looked right at me and let me know he wanted to talk to me while walking towards us. We met halfway with Damon and Smashmouth stopping 10 feet away the same way the 5 star general and another enforcer did with L’il man.

  L’il man looked happy to see me. His smile incorporated most of his face while he shook my hand. He said, “We know what’s up with you and your partner there… You made it all the way to CNN for the 3 strikes law… You did the whole team a service by separating us from the child molesters and the rapists. It’s about time the public sees how they’ve been getting manipulated by the governor and the out of control prison union.” L’il man paused for me to say something but I didn’t. I was trying to figure out how he knew what was up. He patted my shoulder and said, “You know you’re considered a revolutionary now.”

  I’m pretty sure I was blushing under the favorable microscope. I asked what was on my mind, “How much time are you doing?” L’il man stopped smiling and got quiet enough for just me to hear him.

  “I’m just doing a flat year violation… But San Bernardino county is about to file on me for a hot one…” I knew a hot one was a murder beef or 187.

  He continued. “Do you remember Ernie, Ricky’s cousin?”

  I nodded my head and said, “His loyal parrot.”

  L’il man nodded his head, stepped closer to me, and got even quieter. “Ricky iced him behind Mr. G’s strip club and left some of my and my homeboy’s D.N.A. behind for the crime scene detectives to run with.”

  I shook my head in amazement and said, “That sinister fuck.”

  L’il man continued. “Ricky ran his mouth to his cellie about how he went to our neighborhood park and scooped up a blue bandana and some cigarette butts to drop after he smoked his own cousin… Now my home boy is in the county jail on murder charges for it and they are about to file on me and come get me for it…”

  I stood there shaking my head. I didn’t want to ask any questions or seem like I wanted to know how they were going to problem solve that head ringer. I stared at L’il man for a couple of minutes while he waited for me to ask about it. He finally offered, “He’s going to go through a correction process and hopefully do the right thing on his own…”

  I studied L’il man and tried to imagine what this correction incorporated and how it was going to help him and his homeboy. Were they going to make him tell on himself and testify, or were they going to bring his cellie, who he’d told the truth, to testify? L’il man pulled me even closer and told me to take a squat with him. I squatted down until I was balanced on the balls of my feet on my toes with my heels in the air. L’il man did the same thing and told me, “We’re going to handle some serious business this morning. Can you get a small group of your people to run a distraction?”

  I nodded my head and said, “Probably… Let me hear the rundown before I guarantee anything, though.”

  L’il man picked up a rock on the ground and used it to draw a basic outline of something. He said, “This semi circle right here represents the curb along the track. Ricky is sitting here and these are the tables over here. This is the building behind it… There’s a guard standing on the roof with a rifle… When he comes down and Ricky gets up from the curb and starts walking… That’s when we need the diversion. We’re going to have one of our own diversions going, also. Can you assist?”

  I told L’il man t
o give me a minute. I walked to Rott and Smashmouth. A couple of minutes later we made a decision. I went back to L’il man and told him, “My partner and I will be your diversion.”

  L’il man smiled his appreciation to our willingness and said, “Our diversion is going to be at our table. It’s going to erupt right there… So can you do yours far enough away that it also causes separate attention?”

  The ringleader watched the Mexicans call B.J and Damon over and wondered what their plan was. Was Topo going to have his soldiers right next to him do it? Or was he going to have soldiers from the bleachers or the table go handle the ambush? The ring leader watched one of the Mexicans next to Topo get B.J. to squat and look at the ground and thought here it comes…

  We incorporated Smashmouth into our diversion but headed to the white table to brief the rest, first. We left the table, walked into the yard, and passed through the area L’il man and I talked. We went about 40 feet further and posted up in a semi circle facing each other with enough space between us to work out at the same time and watch the yard and each other’s back. I was facing the direction we’d just come from and could see the ring leader on the roof and everything else I needed to see; the curb on both sides, the bleachers and the tables. Damon was slightly to my right and Smashmouth was slightly to my left.

  I said, “Let’s do some Navy Seal burpies with three pumps. I’ll do mine and as I finish my rep you both do yours.” Damon and Smashmouth nodded their approval and I began.

  My burpies had me going from a standing position to a jump down into a push-up position where I’d get one push-up in and then bring my right knee into my chest in a crunch and then my left knee likewise before repeating two more pumps for that rep. All three pumps and back to my feet took about five seconds. When I popped up to my feet after the rep I’d say, “UP!!” Damon and Smashmouth would then spring down to do their rep. This way one of our group was always on their feet. For the next half an hour we did our burpies and got 123 rep’s in. Nothing had happened on the yard, everyone was stationed as they were.