Escape Artist

by William A. Noguera

“I just wanted to see if you were okay. How’s your sister?”

  “She doesn’t want to talk to you.”

  “Okay, I understand. Tell Carlos I’d like to talk to him for a moment.”

  Carlos came to the door and my father very calmly said, “You betrayed me. I thought you and I were friends. After all these years, this is how you repay my friendship? Fine, you don’t want me as a friend. Let’s see how you like me as an enemy.”

  He never raised his voice and it seemed to unsettle Carlos. My father was normally an in-your-face kind of guy. But that change made his words somehow more serious and a prelude to something much scarier.

  My father left, but his words hung in the air. Carlos went inside and sat down. The fear on his face made it obvious he regretted letting us stay at his house.

  It didn’t take long for my mother to get the order, and I’ll never forget the look on my father’s face when he left our home. It was painful for me to see him like that. My father looked defeated, somehow smaller. The burden seemed to weigh on him, slumping his shoulders as he walked away.

  I went back into my room and put all my things back where they belonged. My sister and mom were happy. My mother turned on the stereo as if she were celebrating, while I mourned the death of my family. My mother and sister were a team, but I didn’t belong. What had made our house a home was that our family lived there, but after my family split up it was just a place where I slept.

  It would be easy to view that moment as the start of my downward spiral, but it’s much more complicated than that. I was angry and I resented my parents for not finding a way to work things out. My mother was cold to me every time I asked when I could see my father. My father had guided and supported me my entire life. His presence gave me a sense of security. After he left I had none of that, and my mother made it difficult for my father and me to see each other. She made up stories to make visits difficult or stressful. If he came by for a scheduled visit and I was in the shower, she’d tell him I had gone to the beach. She seemed to enjoy the frustration she caused my father, but didn’t notice what it did to me and how withdrawn I became.

  Soon after that, I got a job at Skate Junction. I was the youngest member of the skating rink staff, but because of how I looked the manager put me in the adult rotation, so I worked all the adult sessions.

  Adult nights were no different than working at a popular night club. Within a month I became floor guard, which was basically a bouncer on skates. I was there to keep order and make sure everyone followed the rules. I spent more and more time at work, choosing to make money a higher priority than school, training, or anything else. I continued to attend Heights Lutheran, but at that point I was just going through the motions. I didn’t try, and my grades suffered because of it. My only goal was buying a car. I thought of it constantly. After working a couple of months, I did exactly that.

  A guy at school had a ’71 Chevy Nova I really liked, and when he put it up for sale I bought it. The car was exactly what I wanted—a machine to boost my already bad reputation. It was lowered in the front and had chrome wheels, a 427 big-block engine—chromed out, with duel Holley 750 carburetors. It had a turbo 400 transmission with shift kit and stall converter. The interior was all tuck-and-roll mohair. The car was an extension of me and projected the badass image I was going for.

  I also had a girlfriend. A pretty, petite blonde with hazel green eyes, who was two years older than me.

  I had everything a teenaged boy could wish for. The ugly duckling had turned into a swan. But it wasn’t enough.

  After a couple of months away from the studio and my training, I returned. My trainer made a deal with me that seemed fair. He would train me in exchange for me teaching the men’s advanced fighting class and fighting for his team. I accepted and went back to my training routine. I no longer relied on my parents. At the age of fifteen I was basically on my own and answered to no one.

  My mother left to spend a few months in Colombia with my sister. I stayed behind, unsupervised and without support of any kind, except for my father coming to my fighting competitions. He didn’t know my mother and sister were gone, and I didn’t mention it. My father’s main concern was that I continued to train and take my vitamins, which was how he referred to the steroid cycles. Every forty to forty-five days my father would give me a cycle to take, and many times the cycles were stacked without a rest in between.

  My headaches were worse than ever, and the steroids were a major factor in their intensity as well as my overall attitude and behavior.

  I had a particularly bad headache one day while my mother and sister were gone. Light only made it worse, and I thought my head would explode. Go-Go, a member of The Pack who was staying at my house for a few days while my mother was in Colombia, offered me some pot. I’d never smoked pot. I’d heard all the warnings about it, and had never really wanted to try it, but there was Go-Go, a good friend of mine, offering it, and I knew the rest of The Pack smoked it too. They all looked fine. They weren’t dope heads and didn’t act like their brains were fried.

  Go-Go had a good pitch about smoking pot and how it would help me.

  “Brah, this shit will stop your headaches. Seriously, take a few hits and it will mellow you out and the pain will go away. I take a few hits before I go to sleep and I’m out like a light.”

  I don’t know if I believed him, but what did I have to lose? My head hurt so bad I just wanted it to stop. I took the small pipe he offered and did a small hit.

  “Man, hit that shit,” he said.

  I inhaled deeply and coughed. My throat burned and I gave it back to him. He took a deep hit.

  “Man, this shit is the kind—see how it expands in your lungs? That means it’s working. This is Buddha Thai.”

  I took another hit, and pretty soon my headache was gone.

  “Man, my head stopped throbbing. The headache’s gone.”

  “I told you this shit works.”

  I felt a little funny and later learned that was the high from the pot which, as Go-Go said, would mellow me out. For the first time in years, I slept without waking up in pain.

  Chapter 25

  San Quentin Death Row, 1992–1993

  Robert Alton Harris was executed at San Quentin in April 1992. Before that, I understood my death sentence only on an intellectual level, but with the Harris execution it became all too real. Prior to that, California had not executed anyone since Aaron Mitchell, who was the 194th person to die in the gas chamber, in 1967.

  The thought of execution hardly crossed the minds of men here, even though we were all sentenced to death. The threat of being killed was far greater on the exercise yard than from any state-sanctioned procedure during those twenty-five years between the Mitchell and Harris executions. On any given day, an attempt on my life could be made. Extreme violence was common and expected. That threat seemed normal. Put four hundred convicted killers on an exercise yard and, of course, there will be violence.

  I’m not afraid to face a man coming at me with a knife and trying to kill me because I’m trained to deal with that. That’s a situation I’ve experienced and have total confidence I can win. In a fight, I determine the outcome, and, although I may be killed, I’m not afraid. Being strapped into a chair and executed by inhaling poisonous gas is a different story because I have no control. I can’t use my ability to survive based on my training. It’s being helpless that I hate. I have a deep-seated aversion to dying in a hopeless manner where I am nothing but a spectacle in a macabre theater. The most intimate moment, coming at the climax of one’s life, becomes a stage performance with a gawking audience and news reporters seated in rows on the other side of clear Plexiglas.

  That was what gripped me so tightly, not the fact that Robert Alton Harris was being executed. I never spoke to him. He was one of many men in prison for killing children, and I have nothing to say to his kind. Still, I imagined how it would be for me at the moment of execution.

  It was so real to
me on April 21, 1992 that fear overwhelmed me. I shook violently. The walls seemed to close in on me until the act of breathing became difficult. Since the moment they came for him, a week prior to his execution date, my emotional state was totally out of control.

  He lived directly above me, on the fourth tier in cell-77. I heard them tell him in hushed tones they were there to take him to North Segregation where he would remain in a cell just above the gas chamber while they waited for any last minute appeals or stays. They cuffed him and opened his door, and he compliantly walked with them on the last walk he would ever take.

  I went outside every day during the week prior to his execution. I worked out as if my life depended on it. The emotional turmoil I experienced happened internally and no one saw the changes going on inside me. Each day when I went back to my cell from the yard I imagined it was my death walk, heading for my own execution.

  Because Harris was the first execution in California since 1967, the media made it even more of a circus act. Every channel ran coverage of it, with the reporter speaking in front of the gates of San Quentin, and showing historical footage of his arrest. They called him the smiling killer. All of it drove me closer and closer to a breaking point, where my mind plunged into a state of hyper-reality. I relived the best and worst parts of my childhood, similar to the certainty with which a person who is drowning reviews in the span of a second all the insurmountable moments of his life. As midnight neared and his execution approached, I put on my headphones, hoping to block it out.

  Suddenly, at 12:15 a.m., East Block erupted in the sound of men cheering. I took off my headphones and tried to understand what they were reacting to. I turned my radio to KPFA, a station that covered social and political commentary, and learned Robert Alton Harris had received a temporary stay of execution.

  I didn’t share the relief the other men did. The pending execution triggered a thought process that made me realize my own mortality. The stay of execution didn’t change my state of mind.

  Fear had been part of my life for as long as I could remember, but the conscious realization of my mortality was an element I never considered.

  Sleep came to me late that night. But for the first time in my life, images saturated in color filled my subconscious. The colors were so intense I thought I would drown in them.

  I woke suddenly very early in the morning. I washed my face in cold water and went to the bars of my cell, stopping to listen. It was absolute silence. Dead calm. Even the birds seemed to know that silence was appropriate.

  I turned on my radio and heard that, during the night, Robert Alton Harris became the first person since 1967 to be executed in San Quentin’s gas chamber.

  He received a stay of execution at the last moment while sitting in the chamber, and was escorted back to his cell. A short time later a higher court revoked the stay, and he was escorted back to the chamber, strapped in, and executed.

  I didn’t know exactly how I felt about it, aside from tired and drained of emotion. I sat on my bucket and looked out the window in front of my cell. I wasn’t really thinking, just looking at the water of the bay and allowing its movement and color to touch me. I don’t know how long I sat there, but the breakfast trays being passed around brought me back to my surroundings. It was still very quiet, but I could hear men talking and the sound of toilets flushing.

  When the bull working my tier came by with the trays, I refused and sat back on my bucket. We were all on lockdown that day with no movements, no showers, and no yard.

  Around 10 a.m., a couple of shrinks came by asking questions to anyone who would speak with them.

  “How are you this morning?”

  “Do you feel like hurting yourself, or others? Are you hearing voices?”

  I refused to acknowledge them and they didn’t press me.

  I sat on my bucket the rest of the day, the execution fresh in my thoughts. I came to the conclusion that, more than ever, time was something I couldn’t waste. I didn’t have the luxury of an entire lifetime to ponder—not when someone would eventually decide my time had come. More than ever, I wanted to be heard, to be relevant, to make an impact. I didn’t want to be just another number on a long list of men who died in prison. I wanted my life to mean something.

  Men with the strongest wills rebel when oppressed. I’m no different from the many men throughout history who’ve suffered the chains of oppression and struggled against them in order to change their circumstances and better themselves. However, rebellion without true cause, goal, or structure, is nothing more than chaos. True rebellion begins within. It may begin in the form of anger, but until it is purified in the fires of intellect, it is short-sighted.

  Rebellion starts with rehabilitation. I don’t mean rehabilitation in the sense that prison administrators have in mind. Rehabilitation, in its purest and truest form, is to return to our true former self—before the influences surrounding us affected our behavior. To do this, we must become conscious that each of us holds the key to our own freedom. Not through religion, or by following prison rules, or through fear of torture. My rebellion is to survive these brutal circumstances and prove my worth. In doing so, I understand who I am, but more importantly, why. I know what I must do to grow and mature, channeling the explosive forces inside me where I alone control them, and I alone hold the key to my freedom.

  Tamed? Nothing could be further from the truth, and those who say it see me, the world, and themselves through eyes permanently impaired by prejudice and intellectual impotence. My weapon of choice is my mind. And its product is to actualize itself in the form of expression—art, where I retreat from the world that surrounds me and escape its suffocating embrace.

  Chapter 26

  Orange County Jail, 1986

  I went out to the roof every day it was offered, where I ran and practiced martial arts. After that I did an intense workout of pushups, pull-ups, dips, and squats.

  I lived in a constant state of vigilance, always checking my surroundings to ensure I left no openings for someone to harm me. Being constantly on-guard exhausted me, but I knew that one mistake on my part could land me at the wrong end of a bone-crusher. Though I’m confident in my skill as a first-rate fighter, I’m also aware that on any given day even the best can fall.

  Friendship is a difficult thing to find and maintain in jail. I lived in the high-power unit with men who gave up on friendship—if they ever even knew its power. The only times I experienced a sense of kindness in jail were the moments I spent reading letters I received from Maxine, then pouring my heart out in pages I sent back. With her, I could express my frustrations, fears, and doubts. I told her how I felt and exposed the fact that behind the mask I was afraid, that I’d been afraid since I was a little boy, and all I truly wanted was to turn back the clock and undo what was done. She gave me what no one ever had—friendship. She listened to me when I had no one to turn to.

  In the four years I spent in the jail before my trial, I saw my lead attorney, Martín Gonzalez, only once. I called him over five hundred times pleading for him to come see me, but he never did. He always sent someone I didn’t know or trust. When I saw him during a hearing, he always said everything looked good to shut me up. He was not my lawyer—he was my mother’s lawyer and he was there to protect her interests and her version of reality.

  I’d attempt to tell him what happened that night, how I simply lost my temper during an argument and I didn’t remember anything after my vision turned red. I told him I needed to be examined by a psychologist and we should talk to the DA and tell him what really happened, and more importantly, why. He told me I was in Orange County and they wouldn’t listen, and we would only be giving them evidence to use against me. The only defense he would present was complete innocence. All or nothing. It was what my mother wanted.

  He knew all of the things I had experienced as a child. He was my mother’s divorce lawyer and knew about the things that went on in my home—the abuse, the violence, everything. But he
refused to show any of it. Instead, he hid it all to protect my mother and her secrets while sacrificing me.

  What could I do? I knew nothing about the law. I’d known Martín Gonzalez since I was a small child and it was hard for me to stand up to him. Sure, I was great at dealing with things in a physical manner, but in matters of law I was out of my element. Around him I felt like a child among adults. Gonzalez and my mother made all the decisions about my defense. I had no power.

  It frustrated me, and all I could do was watch as my life was thrown to the wolves. I’d pour out all of those things to Maxine and she’d listen. But what could she do? She was younger than me, and when she decided to take action and contact Gonzalez to change his approach, she was simply patronized or ignored.

  So while it was the State of California that imprisoned me, it was my own lawyer and mother who had placed a gag in my mouth to make things easier for them. I had no voice. I was treated like a child, and when I did finally testify, I did so under the worst type of distress and coercion.

  My anchor through all of this was Maxine’s friendship, letters, visits, and phone calls. I think a part of me clung on from absolute desperation, like a drowning man clings to a life jacket. She was the only friend in my life. I was surrounded by the worst of the worst, yet her friendship provided hope if only for a moment.

  I spent over a year in high-power, and each day I lived in that four-by-eight-foot cell a piece of me died. The darkness closed in on me every time I saw the brutality that surrounded me.

  After the confrontation with Trigger, I was left alone. Although I was aware Boxer resented me and he made a number of comments to others about wanting to kill me, it never materialized. Trigger, Shotgun, and Boxer soon took deals that sent them to prison for years, and once they left I was relieved. Their presence always worried me. I don’t know if I can describe how it feels to know that every time they saw me, heard me, or thought of me, they wanted one thing: to murder me. If asked, I would say that I didn’t care what they thought, but in truth it bothered and worried me to my core. Those were men not to be taken lightly.