“Listen,” I said, “I don’t want you to think you had anything to do with this. It’s just the way things worked out. I sowed these seeds twenty-five years ago, and it’s now come time to harvest, that’s all. This is all on me.”
He patted my back. I pulled him into a hug. I didn’t have a lot of time left with him, and now I was about to embark on an escapade that might suck me in and keep me for the rest of my life. That was, if I slipped up and got caught and thrown in prison.
“While you’re there,” he said, “could you check in on Tommy Tomkins?”
“Sure.” I hugged him, his bones’ hard ridges poking through too-thin muscle.
“I know it’s asking a lot,” he said, “but could you take him a hot link sandwich from Stops? He loved those hot link sandwiches.”
It was real nice to be a friend of my dad’s.
“Will you take good care of our kids for us?”
He nodded and wiped tears from his eyes. “You know I will.”
* * *
The preacher was late. The plane would leave in one hour and fifty minutes, with a half hour drive to the airport, a half hour without traffic.
All the children, in their Sunday best, their hair coifed or slicked down, stood out in the patio, the sun shining bright and the tropical birds in the trees singing. Rain had passed through earlier, making everything fresh and more vibrant. Dripping.
Marie and I had both been married before, each to other spouses, long ago. Disasters, mostly due to immaturity displayed by everyone involved. This one meant so much to me. The meaning of “man and wife” carried with it a sacred trust, an obligation I now understood more clearly than ever before.
The doorbell rang.
“Everyone stay put,” I said. “I’ll get it.”
I hurried to answer it, to usher the preacher in. I swung the door open to find a Costa Rican woman in sandals and a loose dress, her gray hair hanging below her shoulders. She carried a Bible and nothing else. She offered her hand. “Sorry, I’m late,” she said with a thick Spanish accent.
I took her firm and weathered hand. “No problem at all. But we are kind of on a tight schedule. Everyone’s ready and out on the patio.” I held my arm up to let her lead the way. She nodded and we headed to the ceremony, my heart swelling.
CHAPTER ELEVEN
THE FLIGHT TOOK six hours and touched down at LAX at six thirty in the evening. Marie, emotionally exhausted, slept from the moment she sat down and clicked in her seatbelt. My body hummed with stress the entire flight. I didn’t know if American intelligence—CIA, NSA, FBI, INS—would somehow be sharp enough to pick up the fake ID and passport I used to travel under. Would they be waiting at the other end when I stepped off the plane, back on American soil?
We moved down the skyway with our carry-ons. We hadn’t checked any bags, as we didn’t intend on staying more than a couple of days. The skyway spilled the passengers out into the main terminal. No one made eye contact, no uniformed police waited. We’d made it.
Now fatigue hung on my shoulders like twenty-pound weights. Marie’s eyes continued to scan, her head moving from side to side, alert, ready for any threat. That’s the way I needed to be. Our roles had reversed. Marie made a great partner, and I trusted her implicitly. I let her guide us, first through customs and then to the shuttle that took us to the rental-car kiosk. The bus bounced and jostled us, and still I had difficulty keeping my eyes open. Marie leaned over, whispered, “You look like ten miles of bad road.”
“You always know just the right words to cheer me up.”
She held up her new ring. “Yep, that’s why wives were put here on this earth.”
“Really, you’ve started already? We’ve been married less than eight hours. You know there’s a twenty-four hour lemon law in Costa Rica so let’s not jump the gun here, okay? Lemon-law status means I can return you if you turn out to be a lemon. You’re on probation, if you wanna pass your prob—”
She socked me in the arm. The husband and wife sitting across from us, a rosy-faced couple from the Midwest, based solely on their ultra-white skin, whispered when they witnessed the spousal abuse.
I’d only catnapped in the bungalow on the beach the night this all started, with the storm, the wonderful lovemaking, and the argument. Then, of course, the next night, with all the plans to be made for the wedding and the impending trip, I hadn’t slept much, and now I was feeling every bit my age.
Marie rented the car, a silver Ford Focus, and drove us to our hotel, the New Otani. We’d decided not to stay at a cost-effective fleabag motel, which tended to draw life’s more undesirables and, in so doing, the cops. We went the other way, a midrange hotel where we could more easily blend in and fly under the radar.
In the room, I let the roller bag handles fall to the floor and dropped onto the hotel bed.
I woke to darkness. And no Marie.
I didn’t recognize my surroundings, and it took a moment to remember we’d flown to LA.
The door opened. Marie came in carrying a bag. “Come on, get all that up, we have to eat and get over to the jail.”
I swung my legs over the edge of the bed. “What? What’s going on?”
She reached in the bag and tossed me a package containing a disposable cell phone, the kind you use by purchasing blocks of minutes.
“The jail? No, no we need to go to Chino, the state prison, not the jail.”
She sat next to me on the bed, reached in the bag again, and came out with a pack of Sno Balls, half-round chocolate confection cakes covered in pink coconut, my favorite, and a carton of chocolate milk. “Enjoy it,” she said. “When we get back, you’re back on the low-carb, low-cholesterol diet.”
My stomach growled. I tore open the pack, took a big bite, and savored the taste. They didn’t have them in Costa Rica. “Are you going to answer any of my questions?”
“Not really, because you’re just going to get mad.”
I stopped chewing. “What’d you do?”
“Hell of a honeymoon, you taking me to Los Angeles to visit your brother in jail.”
“Marie?”
“All right, Noble Johnson is housed at MCJ, Men’s Central Jail. He’s here from prison on a subpoena to testify in a Black Guerilla Family murder trial. He’s testifying as a character witness for the accused, a member of the BGF who offed an Aryan Brother in the yard up at Soledad.”
I leaned back to get a better look at her. “And just where did you get all of this information?” She didn’t normally use so much police jargon. She’d talked to someone and given it back to me verbatim. I started to wake up; the sugar gave me a jolt and kick started my brain. I mentally searched through all the possibilities and landed on the only possible answer.
“Ah, Marie, I told you not to call him.”
“Stop it right now, Mr. Bruno Johnson. He’s your friend, and it’s ridiculous that you’re afraid to see him, let alone talk to the poor man. You owe him a lot, more than you can ever repay him. Not after what he’s done for us.”
“I know, don’t you think I know? I’m ashamed of what happened and—”
“Ashamed? There’s no reason at all for being ashamed. He’s an adult and he knew the risks.”
“I know it doesn’t make sense. Maybe it isn’t shame and it’s guilt. I really screwed up his life and … and look at us, how happy we are. All that mess happened and I fled back to Costa Rica like some sort of Butch Cassidy running for the Hole in the Wall. I feel like I abandoned him when he needed me most.”
“If you stayed, you would have been in prison. He knows that. He knew the rules of the game before he asked to play.”
I nodded.
John Mack had been a deputy with the Los Angeles County Violent Crimes Team, the same team I belonged to before I crossed the line and took out Derek Sams, my son-in-law. Three months ago, Mack was with me when we hit the clubhouse of the Sons of Satan. They caught us inside and beat us, kicked the livin’ hell out of us. Mack took more of it
than I did and almost died from internal injuries. The Sheriff’s Department fired him for committing the failed robbery that the District Attorney declined to prosecute on. He lost the job that he lived and breathed for. I knew how he felt, I’d been there; I’d had the same job and loved it dearly. He did it all for me. I needed to see him and tell him in person how sorry I was.
“How did he get the information?” I asked.
“He fought his termination order and won. They put him back working the jail.”
“What? You’re kiddin’ me.”
“Nope.”
“Well, hell, let’s get going then. What time are we set up in visiting to see Noble?”
She checked her watch. “Forty-five minutes.”
I stood and went over to her. “Ten minutes’ drive time, five-minute shower, I guess we have time.” I pulled her into me and kissed her.
She half-pushed me away. “Bruno.”
“Babe, you’re the one who called this our honeymoon.”
She checked her watch one more time and quickly started to unbutton her blouse. “Okay, but we have to hurry.”
CHAPTER TWELVE
SINCE I KNEW the way, I drove. I wanted to see Noble alone, at least for the first time. Marie didn’t even ask and only nodded when I suggested I drop her somewhere. I let her off at a diner three blocks from the jail. The place used to be a Denny’s. Now it looked a little more rundown and shabby, and went by the name the Double Yolk.
I’d worked the old MCJ as a deputy before the Twin Towers, the new jail annex, had been built, and stuck my face into the windshield to look up at the towers as I drove by. I parked the rental in the large parking area and made my way toward the main entrance to the old jail across from the towers and mingled among the stream of other visitors.
Law enforcement only deals with six percent of the population—a whole lot of tax dollars and effort for only six percent. The visitors walking in made up part of that six percent, at the moment anyway; right then, it just wasn’t their turn on the merry-go-round.
Women of every ethnic background herded their children along, most of whom were unwashed and in raggedy clothes, their mothers speed freaks or wedded to the rock pipe. Mothers should not bring their children to a jail to visit the fathers. It presents the image that jail might just be a part of a normal life, something to adjust to and live with. The sight of the kids made me glad I’d dropped off Marie. She wouldn’t have been able to hold her tongue. She would’ve confronted the mothers, given them the what-for in how not to raise their children. As it stood I, too, had difficulty not saying something. What chance did those children have? None, not one chance in hell.
The lines just to get to the desk inside to check in snaked out the door and down the side of the building. This would take a while. I dialed Marie and she picked up on the first ring. “You done already?” she asked. “That was fast.”
“No, I’ve been in line for twenty minutes and it’s barely moved. This is gonna take hours.”
“Do you want me to come over there? I can walk. I need the exercise.” Eagerness in her voice said she really wanted to be present when this dysfunctional reunion occurred.
I already missed her. I just didn’t know what would happen once Noble and I met for the first time after being apart so long. No, not just being apart, but what would happen when all those festering emotions collided, guilt on my part and the anger on his for me having been the one to put him there.
“Sure, come on. I miss you.”
“Be right there.”
MCJ sat in a large commercial area that didn’t have a lot of sidewalks and did have lots of high chain-link fences topped with concertina wire. I watched for Marie and, after only a few minutes, regretted having her walk. The jail acted as an epicenter for criminals, a vortex they all swirled around and around in a revolving door, coming in or getting released. With their sentences served, the crooks were let out the front door and left on their own to find their way home. Most get rides, but many, having alienated family and friends, have no one and nowhere else to go and have to hoof it.
Marie appeared, walking up the long driveway that was really a dedicated street. I breathed easier. The line moved into the inside. I moved in before Marie caught up. Three deputies in Class B uniforms stood among the crowd, monitoring and keeping the peace. I didn’t look at them directly. I didn’t need the heart-ache. Predators recognized other predators, and I tried to make myself small, unassuming, and watched my feet. The beige linoleum floor wore through to the smooth concrete underneath in the path to the visitor check-in, a testament to the hundreds of thousands of people who’d come to visit, a sad commentary on humanity.
Marie came up and gave me a hug.
I whispered into her neck, “Sorry, I shouldn’t have dropped you off. I don’t know what I was thinking.” Before I let her go, someone tapped me on the shoulder. I froze. The visiting deputy wanted to see my ID. Just be cool, turn around, and smile.
I did and found Deputy John Mack standing there in the Sheriff’s Class B uniform, smiling, his eyes alive with adventure. He still wore his hair buzzed close. He’d changed a lot in three months. Weight had melted off him. He used to be a bull of a man with huge shoulders and biceps. Getting the hell kicked out of you by five biker assholes and then three surgeries could do that to a person. I stuck out my hand to shake his and swallowed the lump that rose in my throat. He knocked my hand away and hugged me. I hugged him back as hard as I could. When I let go, Marie swiped at the tears in her eyes.
“Bruno, damn good to see you, man.”
“Yeah, good to see you too.” The line moved, we moved with it.
I forced myself to hold his gaze. “Hey, you know that I—”
He smiled and gave me a little shove in the chest. “Stop it. Really, I mean it.”
“No, let me say it. I have to say it. I owe you more than I can ever repay you, and I’m sorry I haven’t called or come to see you before now.”
“Yeah, right, a federal fugitive, how could you do that? I understand. I’m just damn glad to see you.”
I cringed. I could only hope the other deputies hadn’t heard the fugitive part.
He gave Marie a big hug, lifting her off her feet. He set her down. “Come on,” he said, “I fixed it up. I got you put in a segregated interview room and not out here in the zoo.”
We followed him, weaving in and out of the crowd to the front desk. The deputy behind the desk handed over two mauve visitor badges that Marie and I clipped to our shirt pockets. Marie looked at me. “You sure you want me there the first time?”
“Absolutely.”
Mack guided us into one door, down a long hall, and through another door. The odor changed as we passed through that second door. It shifted to a reek that spoke of body odor, urine, and a sour hint of vomit. I’d been in many county jails when chasing and booking violent criminals—the ones we weren’t forced to shoot, or run over—and the odor remained the same no matter what county. I always related the stink to despair.
Mack stopped at a barred sally port and waved to the invisible person in the booth, who opened the first gate to let us pass and closed it behind us. I watched the gate roll closed, and, with each inch it moved, I found it more difficult to breathe.
Once it was closed, the booth bitch, the name of the invisible operator that had nothing to do with gender, opened the next gate in front of us. Mack took us down a hallway rife with inmates dressed in blue. The common misconception of the other 94 percent of society was that everyone in jail was locked in a cell. Not true. On the other side of the sally port, the jail turned into a self-contained city, with chow halls, a hospital, clinics, a church, law library, visiting areas, and lots of crime. The inmates were locked down during the night, but otherwise they could move about with hall passes. Passes that allowed them to go to personal visits: doctor visits, church, chow, things of that sort. Being criminals, naturally some didn’t go where they were directed and snuck off to other m
odules to caper: sell dope, rape, rob, blackmail, and even murder. Deputies in the jail learned how to take first reports and to do follow-up.
I couldn’t help feeling vulnerable. The inmates gawked at Marie.
Mack took us to a room with a white resin table and four chairs. He stuck out his hand again. I shook it. “I have to go,” he said. “I’m working High Power, 1700-1750, and it’s feeding time. You know the way out; just go back the way you came. Good seeing you again. Call me tonight. Marie has my number. You better call me, Bruno, or I’ll come looking for you.” He smiled.
He went out and closed the door. Now the waiting began. The memories flooded back. Who knew how long it would take? Visiting carried a lower priority, and if something else occurred, visiting got pushed back. I hoped while we waited that an event didn’t occur that caused the jail to go to red bells and lockdown. We’d be stuck. When the guards came off of red bells, they might look closer at who we were. We should never have walked into the lion’s den.
Marie, aware of my anxiety, said, “Why don’t you tell me about your brother?”
I’d not talked about him before. She knew nothing about him. “He’s not really my brother.”
“What? What are you talking about?”
“It’s a long story.”
“Well, you better start talking, mister. I didn’t come all this way to help some criminal not related to the family.”
I nodded and began at the beginning.
CHAPTER THIRTEEN
WILLOWBROOK, 1971
ON THE CHRISTMAS of my eighth year, Mrs. Gloria Bingham, the grocer’s wife, became the first white woman I’d ever seen bare-assed naked.
My best friend and neighbor, Johnny Noble, had come over on Christmas Eve to escape his always-menacing younger brother and sister, little Jakey and Kari. That’s what Johnny said, anyway; that’s what he used as an excuse.
The dusk settled cold and crisp over our little two-bedroom home on Nord Avenue in South Central Los Angeles, an area nicknamed “The Corner Pocket.” A dark, moonless night came in close on its heels. Outside smelled of burnt wood from all the homes in the area using fireplaces. We could afford the gas heat and a small canned ham for dinner. Dad rated the cold nights one through four. Tonight we had four burners on the stovetop going full blast. Our living room shared a space with the kitchen, and the walls let in some of the cold from outside.
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