“Violent people live a violent life,” I yelled back at him.
The deputy outside opened the door, shoved his way in. The door banged into the chair, which pushed into the back of Noble’s legs.
“All right,” the deputy said, “that’s it, this visit’s over.” He took hold of Noble’s arm and yanked on him as Noble’s words echoed around in my head.
Had classification in the prison PC’ed Noble because of me? Had they put him in protective custody because of the murderers and violent offenders I had chased, caught, and convicted? Had he lost that eye because of me?
I stood. “Wait, Deputy,” I said, “Can’t we please have another minute?”
He didn’t have time to answer. Noble struggled with the deputy, trying to stay in the room. The deputy put Noble in a head-lock and pulled him out the door. Noble grunted, his feet slid on the slick concrete floor. On the top of Noble’s shiny pate, a jagged scar stood out like a fat earthworm, a memento from the night I arrested him, pistol-whipped him when he came over the counter at me. He disappeared out into the hall as the door eased closed.
The room fell silent. My heart pounded in my chest. “I didn’t want that to happen.” My voice came out more of a croak.
“Yeah, well, it did, and right now, I’m not too happy with my new husband.” She came around and hugged me. I hugged her back and waited a few minutes to allow time for Noble to get clear of the hallway. If he saw me again, he might go off on the deputies worse than he already had.
Marie, her head on my shoulder, her arms wrapped around me, said, “Is there a lemon law for husbands as well?”
“Nope,” I said. “Double standard. You’re stuck with me, no money-back guarantee.”
“Not fair, I’m going to write my senator.”
“You do that, pretty girl.”
After a while, I said, “Come on, let’s get outta this hellhole.”
Inside that room I could fool myself that we were not trapped like animals in a cage and needed to escape. Back out in the hallway, with all the inmates moving to and from locations, all of them loose, some of whom, I’m sure, I’d put there and might recognize me, the reality was inescapable; likewise with the old salt deps who worked the jail. My skin itched to be back outside in the fresh air. I put my arm around Marie, lowered my head, and quietly talked with her as we moved to the sally port.
I looked up periodically when an inmate would move in and out of our personal zone. I needed to be ready if one suddenly turned aggressive.
Two deputies escorted a long line of fish, new inmates fresh from IRC, the Inmate Reception Center, or the transfers from other jails or prisons. The fish walked in a line with their shoulders against the wall. The deputies watched them closely, didn’t allow them to talk or come off the wall, a part of the indoctrination to make them understand who ran the zoo.
One of them looked up and we made eye contact. I recognized him, a Son of Satan, one of the many who’d been arrested three months ago when we tried to rob their clubhouse. I glared back at him the way animal predators did to each other. I didn’t want him to think me weak, especially not with Marie at my side. I needed to protect her.
One of the escorting deputies saw the violation and quick-stepped over to him and got right up in the guy’s face. “What’s your problem, asshole? Can’t you follow simple directions? Look straight ahead, or I’ll put you on the brick for three days. You understand me?”
The biker looked out of place without his denim cut, flying his colors, and his heavy black motorcycle boots. Back when I worked this same jail, we didn’t threaten with the brick, a burnt piece of compressed protein meted out as discipline for minor violations. We face-planted the inmates into the wall, a violent move that busted their lips, or noses, and sometimes broke teeth. Not done out of hate or vehemence but to control the six percent of our population who choose to walk on the wrong side. Twenty-two thousand inmates in custody at any one time, most of those in MCJ, supervised each shift by less than a hundred deputies. You couldn’t supervise with those percentages; you could only rule.
Times change, and the inmates had taken one giant step closer to running the zoo.
We made it to the sally port. The first gate opened and let us pass inside. The gate behind us closed and the one in front of us opened. We’d made it out.
CHAPTER SIXTEEN
WE STOPPED OUTSIDE and reveled for a minute in the unbridled freedom. The outgoing and incoming visitors with their children passed without taking notice, taking their own freedom for granted.
We walked slowly to the car and didn’t look back at the windowless concrete monolith, not wanting to imagine what it would be like to be trapped in there, or to relive the memories of when I had been. Once in the car and underway, Marie spoke for the first time. “We have to go back, you know.”
I nodded and took the curve of Bauchet Street that ended at the Double Yolk and made a right, headed to the heart of downtown LA. I played back the entire scene in my head, the way Noble’s anger had turned so suddenly.
Noble wrote in his letter that he’d earned a degree in theology. His behavior didn’t match that of an ordained minister. Had all of that, the degree, being a minister, been a sham to trick the parole board?
If he truly wanted help with his family, why didn’t he keep his temper and his festering hate for me under control? Only one reason: that deep-seated hatred was far worse than I imagined. Grandkids, though, what a mess.
Marie put her hand on my arm as we turned onto Los Angeles Street, a block away from 2nd in Little Tokyo, and a block from our hotel, The New Otani. “Didn’t your father say he wanted us to visit Mr. Tomkins?”
“Yes, he did. Thank you for reminding me.” I made a quick turn and headed toward Alameda, not the quickest way down to South Central Los Angeles, but I needed time to think. Marie sensed that need, slid over, cuddled in close, and didn’t say a word for several miles, until her curiosity got the better of her. “Kids, Bruno? He’s really got grandkids and he’s been in prison the whole time?”
“Looks that way.”
“How?”
“You really don’t know how this works?”
“Would I be asking?”
“Okay, okay, here it is. In the glorious State of California, you can get conjugal visits with your wife if you’re going to be in for an extended period of time.”
“You’re kidding, right?”
“Nope.”
She thought about that for a minute. “And if you don’t have a wife? Noble didn’t have a wife when he went in twenty-five years ago, did he?”
“That’s right. You can marry while in prison, have conjugal visits, and your wife can have the kids.”
“Wait, wait, wait, I can’t believe this. That is wrong on so many levels, not to mention the worst one, how it affects the kids having a father in prison for life, never getting out. Who pays for the kids?”
“We do, well, I mean the taxpayers do. The state pays the mother for each child all the way up until the child turns eighteen, then the child is eligible to get welfare. That is, if the child, who is now an adult, is not a contributing member of society. And the statistics show that most of them are not. Once hooked onto the entitlement system, that’s where they stay.”
“Didn’t you tell me once that one crook costs about a hundred and twenty thousand dollars per year?”
“That’s an old number, I’m sure it’s higher now.”
“And then on top of that we’re paying for a wife and kids?”
“That’s right.”
“What’s that, about two hundred to two hundred and fifty thousand a year for every jerk who can’t live in society and goes to prison?”
“That’s probably a good number for those with only one child, sure. You add in medical and more kids, it goes a lot higher.”
“How many people are in prison in California?”
“About two hundred thousand, but not all of those are in for life. And about another s
eventy thousand are out on parole, rotating back in and out of the system.”
Marie shook her head in wonder.
I turned from Alameda onto Imperial Highway, westbound. In five more minutes we came to Nickerson Gardens, the low-income housing on the right. I pulled into Stops parking lot, now infested with weeds coming up in the cracked asphalt. The roadside restaurant that had been open for five or six decades, a historical landmark, now sat abandoned and all boarded up. The last time I’d been there was with Robby Wicks when he was chasing me, trying to find the children Marie and I had stashed away in a house with Dad. Not much more than a year ago.
On special occasions, Dad used to take Noble and me to Stops for chili fries and hot links. I didn’t dwell on the loss. I pulled around, drove out onto the street, and headed to the Corner Pocket.
No hot link sandwich for Tommy Tomkins.
* * *
Tom Tomkins lived just south of the Corner Pocket in the area called Fruit Town, all the streets named after fruit trees. He lived on Cherry. I parked in front of the house, which was no longer immaculately maintained. Every day after work, Tom had gone out into his yard and trimmed and pruned and mowed. His yard had stood out from all the rest on the street. Now the paint peeled on the house. The weeds had long ago won the battle and then the war. Branches from the fruitless mulberry hung down, obscuring the front windows.
I got out and opened the door for Marie. She looked at the house, and I read her mind; no way did she want to go in. The disrepair of the house stood as a clue to what we’d find inside.
“You want to wait outside?” I asked. “It’s okay with me.”
“Don’t pull none of your crap with me, Mr. Bruno Johnson. I’m official now, and you can’t shield me from the world anymore. Not like I let you do when I was just your girlfriend, so don’t even try.”
“Not like you let me do?”
“That’s right.”
“Can I get a copy of this new rule book?” I asked, “’Cause I’m tellin’ you I’m starting to get a little confused.”
She patted my arm. “You’re a husband now. You’re supposed to be confused.”
I took her hand and we walked past the broken-down fence. “Is that what I’ve been doing, shielding you, before I said those two horrible little words?”
She stopped and yanked on my arm. “What two horrible little words? You better not start with that already.” She tried not to smile. “Tell me what two words?”
I’d been about to say I do but decided not to. Not if I didn’t want one of her socks to the arm. “Why, I love you, of course, the two most important words in the world, and they’re not horrible. I misspoke. They’re wonderful words.”
“You’re a rotten liar, Bruno Johnson.”
I put my hand to my chest. “I’m hurt. You hurt me to the bone.”
She laughed. “You’re a liar who can’t do math; you can’t even count to three. Which, after I think about it, maybe you’re not a liar, ’cause you don’t know any better.”
I laughed with her.
We stepped up onto the porch and knocked.
After a couple of minutes, the door opened. A short Filipino woman dressed in a floral nurse’s outfit looked at us.
“We’re here to visit Tom Tomkins,” I said.
She didn’t answer and probably couldn’t speak a lot of English.
She turned and escorted us through the small house, which was tidy but in need of dusting and a good scrub. The air hung thick with antiseptic mixed with a sour odor. From deeper in the house, the wheeze of a respirator grew louder as we moved toward it.
The nurse stopped at the small bedroom. I stuck my head in, knowing what I’d see.
Tommy Tomkins had not been of this world for a long time. Not really, not conscious as a functioning human. The medical profession had only kept his body alive, his mind spoiled long ago. He’d shriveled to nothing more than a raisin with tubes and wires running out of him. The poor man. For a brief moment I thought about having Marie distract the nurse while I did the moral thing and unplugged him. He’d been Dad’s best friend for many years and didn’t deserve this. Then the terrible image of Dad going out in this manner hit me. No, I wouldn’t let that happen, not to Dad, not if I had a say in it. I shook off those thoughts and forced my mind back to the purpose of our visit. Poor old Tom had been incapacitated for a while now.
The big question was, who had Dad been corresponding with? Who had been taking the letters from the mailbox from Dad or Noble, repackaging them with the next address, and passing them on?
CHAPTER SEVENTEEN
MARIE AND I rode the elevator down from our room on the tenth floor, relaxed and semisated. I’d called John Mack, and he agreed to meet us downstairs in the hotel bar. Marie held my arm, and I loved the feeling of being married, the feeling of finally being whole. She had dolled up, took her almost two hours, but she looked absolutely stunning. She’d taken a dress out of her carry-on, a wadded-up little thing that looked more like a red silk handbag. She shook it out and disappeared into the bathroom. I changed into the best clothes I had brought, black slacks and a wrinkled white-on-white long-sleeve dress shirt. After a long time, she reappeared looking like the Puerto Rican version of Julia Roberts in Pretty Woman. Stunning. The silky red dress, smooth now, hugged all those glorious curves. I looked down at myself and then back at her. “Babe,” I said, “I really don’t know what you see in me.”
She smiled. “I’m not sure I do either.”
I shook my head. “I guess the honeymoon’s over.”
She came over and kissed me, “Don’t kid yourself, cowboy. It hasn’t even started.” She pushed me backward until I fell on the bed.
On the way down in the elevator twenty minutes later, we both looked a little more rumpled. The doors opened and we hurried to the bar, Marie’s high heels clacking on the marble floor.
The bar opened off the lobby. Barbara Wicks and John Mack sat at a high-top table deep in the mostly empty bar. He smiled hugely when he saw us walking up.
John had said he was bringing his girlfriend, Barbara Wicks, the chief of police for Montclair, a little city in San Bernardino County at the far eastern edge of Los Angeles County. Barbara used to be the wife of Robby Wicks, the lieutenant and leader of the Violent Crimes Team. I’d been a member of that team before I switched teams and became what I had chased.
John Mack had also been a member of the Violent Crimes Team. The relationship between Barbara and John shouldn’t have worked out at all. A year and a half prior, John Mack had shot and killed Robby, Barbara’s husband, when Robby had shot me and was about to shoot my dad.
Then, three months ago, I’d convinced John Mack to go into the Sons of Satan clubhouse on a wild-goose chase to recover money from a twenty-five-year-old armored-car heist, money we needed to trade for three kidnapped children, Eddie Crane, Sandy Williams, and Elena Cortez—children now safe in Costa Rica due largely to the actions of these two people.
We’d gotten in the clubhouse just fine; getting out had been the problem. We were caught, and the Sons literally beat John to within an inch of his life. Barbara still blamed me for Mack almost losing his life, as she should.
We entered the bar. They stood. We took turns and hugged and then sat down with them. Two near-empty martini glasses and an empty basket of bread crowded the little table. “Sorry,” Mack said, “I was hungry.”
Barbara looked at me. “And you’re a little late.”
Marie smiled. “That wasn’t his fault.” On purpose, she casually brought her left hand up to brush her hair back. The facets in her diamond caught the light, giving her the desired effect.
Barbara’s mouth dropped open, her eyes going wide. “Oh, my God, you two got married, didn’t you?”
Marie nodded, overwhelmed with emotion, her expression crumpling as she fought tears. I loved her for it, but wasn’t sure why it hit her right at that moment. I mean, we’d already been married going on thirty or forty hours.
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Barbara got up and came over to Marie. “You know you’re crazy for marrying the likes of him.”
Marie dabbed at her eyes with a cocktail napkin and nodded. “I know.”
“Hey,” I said, “I’m sittin’ right here.”
Barbara said, “He’s right. Come on, girl, let’s go powder our noses.”
We watched them disappear into the ladies’ room.
Mack turned to me and held up his cocktail glass. “Thanks, buddy, now I’m really gonna get the pressure laid on nice and thick.”
“Hey, not my fault, not really, not the way it happened. I was having a glass of wine after dinner with Marie, minding my own business, the next thing I remember I wake up—” I held up the ring on my finger “—and I find this.” He held onto my hand to see the gold band on my finger. I said, “Then she tells me I’m married. She must’ve slipped me a mickey.”
Mack laughed. “Yeah, and I’m going to believe that one.”
It was good to see him laugh.
“Hey,” I said, “I’m sorry about you getting bounced from the Violent Crimes Team.”
“I was getting tired of all those extra hours anyway. And I told you, I made my own choices.”
The moment hung long and heavy between us. “When are you and Barbara going to get engaged?”
He looked over at the closed ladies’ room and reached into his pocket. He pulled out a ring, a gold setting with a round-cut diamond surrounded by little sapphires. “I’ve been carrying this around since I got out of the hospital and haven’t had the balls to ask. I’m scared to death she’s going to panic. That she doesn’t feel the same way, and thinks I’m some sort of lovesick puppy and breaks it off.” He quickly stashed the ring.
I remembered how Barbara acted with Mack in surgery. I put my hand on his shoulder. “Do you trust me?” I asked.
He nodded. “You know I do.”
“Then listen to what I’m tellin’ you. She feels the same about you and, the longer you wait, the madder she’s going to be at your dumb ass for waiting so long.”
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