I said, “Just what do you expect us to do with cops crawlin’ all over this thing?”
“If you don’t have the balls for this, then jus’ help get me out, help spring me, and I’ll take care of my own.”
“Like that’s gonna happen.”
“It’s easy. I’ve got a foolproof plan.”
“Foolproof plans are for fools. The jails are full of ’em.”
“Get out then. Go on back to South America or wherever it is you go where it’s nice and safe.” His voice rose higher into a yell.
The door burst open. “Okay,” Deputy B. Stanford said, “that’s it, game over, time to go back to your cage.”
“And it’s Central America, not South,” I said.
“Where can we find your son to talk to him?” Marie asked with the voice of reason.
Deputy B. Stanford took hold of Noble’s elbow and tugged him out the door. “He’s living in Dad’s old house on Nord.”
We followed him out into the hall. We stopped and they kept moving, the deputy tugging, trying to get Noble to move, no more than a few feet away.
“What’s your son’s name?” I asked.
Noble struggled to look back. “Bruno. I named him Bruno.”
CHAPTER TWENTY
I STOPPED DEAD. Bruno? He named his son after me?
Marie stood next to me, her hip touching my leg, her hands grasping my arm. She gripped tighter when Noble said the name. “Oh my God, Bruno.”
I couldn’t say anything. The words clogged and wouldn’t come. Noble continued to move a little at a time, not yet ten feet away. I raised my hand to him, a silly, insignificant gesture, but I had to do something in response. How come I hadn’t known? How come Dad had not told me? Had I been that much of a tyrant about right and wrong—that much of a vindictive fool who wouldn’t listen to reason and made them afraid to tell me?
All at once Noble’s expression shifted from a smile to one of abject fear, his eyes no longer on me. “Look out!” he yelled.
I spun, shoving Marie out of the way and toward the closest wall.
Three men descended upon me, all of them Sons of Satan. Large men with shaved heads and tattoos, black and ugly on their scalps, faces, and necks. The first two came in as blockers, the ones meant to restrain the victim while the one with the shiv came in and finished the job—the lamb offered up and ready. I instantly recognized their play. I sidestepped out of the grasp of the first one on the left and swung wide and hard at the jaw of the one who came in low on the right. My fist connected hard with bone and shot pain through my wrist, up my arm, and into my shoulder. I’d not hit him hard enough. He pivoted, his arm going around my waist and spinning me back around into the path of the guy with the shiv.
Marie screamed like a banshee and jumped on the guy that I had hit, who now had a good hold of my arm. Marie swung her arm around his neck to hold on, and with her other hand took hold of his ear and pulled with everything she had. The guy screamed like a pig but wouldn’t let go of me.
This all happened in nothing more than a blink.
I tried to shake both men off and couldn’t. They had me locked up tight. The shiv came in low and fast, headed right for my belly.
Noble had moved from the onset to intercede. His chains rattled as he came up from behind, passed by, and jumped in between.
He couldn’t swing his arms or kick his legs. All he had was his body. He yelled. I could only see his back. His body convulsed as it accepted the shiv. Skin and muscle and intestine parted to let it in. His body jerked and shuddered from the violent intrusion.
I yelled like a bull moose and head butted the man Marie had. His nose mashed flat, his eyes rolled. He let go of me. Marie rode him to the floor, kicking and scratching.
Deputy B. Stanford, late on the upswing, jumped in it now and punched the guy with the shiv. The shiv came back and went into Noble again. The deputy bore in with both fists, battering the assassin with unchecked brutality.
Red bells went off. The entire jail banged again and again as the place went into lockdown, the steel doors clanging closed. I spun on the last guy, who had me around the waist, and brought my knee up into his face. I did it again and again. His grip loosened. I peeled him off and raised his shoulders to get at his face. I punched him as hard as I could. Battered his face over and over, driving him back to the opposite wall.
The hallway thundered with boots. Two deputies tackled me. More took down the attacker I had pinned against the wall. The floor turned into a writhing pit of arms and legs and blood.
Blood.
The smooth, polished concrete floor went slick with blood.
Noble.
My God, Noble.
One of the deputies wrenched my arm behind my back, and then the other, and put the handcuffs on.
“Marie? Marie, are you okay?”
“Let go of me, you pervert.”
I struggled up to see. She stood by the far wall, shrugging off the deputy trying to restrain her. “Let me go. I’m a doctor,” she said. “I need to tend to that man.”
The throng of deputies still kicked and punched the Sons on the floor, trying to get them handcuffed, trying to knock the bejesus outta them for daring to disrupt their jail. Marie pulled away and went to Noble, who was lying on the concrete with a puddle of blood expanding around him, his hands chained to his waist, unable to put his own hands to the wound to stem the flow. Marie got right down next to him, put pressure on his stomach with both her hands. Her hands instantly turned red. She yelled to the deputy who’d had his hands on her a moment before. “You, gimme your shirt. Do it now.”
“Who the fuck do you think you are?”
She didn’t answer and gave him a glare that should’ve burnt a hole right through him. She pulled her top off over her head, leaving only her red lace bra, exposing smooth tan skin and cleavage. She bundled up her shirt and firmly pressed it against Noble’s wounds.
From far off down the hall, the watch sergeant, an old salt with gray hair and a belly, walked, unhurried. An old salt who knew it didn’t matter that much when he arrived; his young deputies knew how to handle the situation.
Deputy B. Stanford grinned and said in a voice altered to mimic a PA, “Cleanup on aisle seven. We have a spill on aisle seven.” Jailhouse humor. Another deputy chimed in, “More like a hazardous-waste spill.”
The deputies pulled me to my feet, my hands cuffed behind. “It’s okay,” I said, “I was just here visiting my brother. My brother’s right there, the one that’s hurt real bad. Can you take off these cuffs, please? I’m a visitor.” I checked around on the floor for my plastic visitor’s badge, which had been yanked off in the melee. I tried to speak as an affronted victim. Suddenly, I realized I’d made a fatal mistake. In all the excitement, I’d forgotten where I was and let down my guard.
The sergeant got up to us, looked around. “Are we secure? Can we secure from red bells?”
The deputies had the Sons cuffed and pressed hard into the concrete floor, their knees shoved in the bikers’ backs. The Sons’ faces were battered and torn. Two deputies answered at the same time, “Yes, sir, Sergeant, code four.”
The sergeant took a radio off his belt. “Three Sam, code four, secure from red bells.”
“Sergeant,” I said, “I was just here visiting my friend. He’s over there on the floor, hurt. Can you get him medical aid please?”
Another deputy said to the sergeant, “We have the nurse coming and paramedics are en route.”
The sergeant pointed at the tall deputy who had just spoken and then at Marie. “Son, take your shirt off and give it to that woman.”
The deputy didn’t hesitate. He yanked his shirttails from his pants, unbuttoned it, and handed it to Marie. She put it on. The uniform shirt went down to just above her knees.
“Sergeant,” I said again, “I’m a visitor, can you take these cuffs off, please?”
He turned to give me his attention. “What happened here?”
�
�I don’t know. We came to visit my friend and then this fight somehow broke out. I don’t know why. My wife and I were minding our own business when these three guys over here—”
The sergeant cut me off and turned to Deputy B. Stanford, who now looked a little sheepish as the sergeant pointed his radio at Noble on the floor. “What in the hell is that K-nine doing visiting in a room next door to 1700 and 1750?”
Nobody answered.
The sergeant shook his head and took his cell phone out. Only supervisors were allowed to carry them. A couple of the deputies figured out what was about to happen and started to edge away. The sergeant held up his phone and said, “Nobody move.” He snapped some pics to memorialize who had participated in the incident and to preserve the crime scene.
“I want a memo from everyone here, on my desk in one hour.” He looked at the deputy closest to him and pointed his radio at me, then at Marie. “I want both of them locked down until we figure out what the hell happened here.”
CHAPTER TWENTY-ONE
MARIE SAT ON my lap, still clad in the deputy’s uniform shirt, which smelled of cologne mixed with body odor, a strong manly stink incongruent with her soft vulnerability. They’d put us back in the same room we’d sat in minutes before with Noble. She nuzzled my neck, her tears cool and wet.
Outside the door, in the hall, paramedics continued to work on Noble, my brother. “How bad is he?” I whispered in her ear.
“He could be okay, really. I’ve seen them like that before where the wounds only need to be sutured, where the knife missed everything vital. There is a chance the knife missed everything.”
“And you’ve also seen them where the knife didn’t.”
She nodded. “What are we going to do? What if they fingerprint you?” She wanted to change the subject.
She already knew the answer to that one. If fingerprinted, I’d be arrested for kidnapping, a crime I had technically committed, legally wrong, but morally correct, a private morality and a costly luxury.
“Their case is circumstantial at best. I can beat it, no problem.”
“Don’t you blow smoke up my dress, Mr. Bruno Johnson,” she whispered. “You don’t even know what kind of case they have against you.”
“Well, let’s just hope they don’t fingerprint me, then. How’s that? And you’re not wearing a dress, you’re wearing slacks.”
She pushed on me with the flat of her hand. “You know what I meant.”
We waited.
“You know,” she said, “on our tenth anniversary we’ll be sitting together on our veranda in our swing chair and laugh about all of this.”
“Hey, what happened to the other nine years in between? What, we won’t think it’s funny until it ages for ten years? Or that’s when you think I’ll get out?”
The door opened, a female deputy outside. “Ma’am,” the deputy said, “please come with me.”
Marie kissed my forehead and gave me a hug. “See you in a little while, babe.”
“I love you,” I said. I couldn’t bring myself to lie, to say I’d see her in a little while, because I didn’t know for sure if I would.
But I did know. I’d worked the jail, and investigations, long enough to know. They would find me out, no question. I’d slipped up and made a mistake, a fatal one. Nobody’s fault but my own. I only hoped the mistake didn’t pull my beautiful wife into it.
I’d walked into the lion’s den, fat, dumb, and happy, the way Robby used to say, and now had to sit still while the lions ate me.
Thirty minutes later, time enough to do a background check on the phony name I’d given them, time enough to let me fester and wind up my paranoia—the door opened again and in walked a lone detective in denim pants, a blue chambray shirt, and a blue blazer. When he sat in the chair Noble had occupied, his blazer opened. He wore an empty pancake holster on his right hip. No guns of any kind came into the jail.
He offered his hand. “How you doin’? I’m Deputy John Harris.”
I shook his hand and said, “Jason Minor,” the name on my forged driver’s license, the name I’d used to enter the country, the one the detective now had clipped to his Posse Box in the form of my driver’s license.
“How’s my friend? Is he going to be okay? How bad is he hurt?”
He leaned back in the chair and looked at me for a long couple of minutes, trying to make me squirm. I knew the routine, had used it myself in the past. I didn’t want it to work on my paranoia, but it did. His gaze burrowed right down into the bottom of my spine and made me want to shudder.
“We know—” he pointed to me, then to himself “—you and me, we know that this façade you’re trying to feed us is a bunch of bullshit, right?”
I gave him my best confused expression. “No, I don’t know what you’re talking about. How come you’re holding us? I don’t think this is right. You don’t have the right to hold us, do you? I mean, we didn’t do anything wrong. I want to see my wife.” I tried to say all the things a victim would say, an act more difficult than I thought after living a predator’s life for the last twenty-seven years.
“You’re going to play dumb, is that it? I don’t think that game would be in your best interest, not when we have your wife on ice, ready to book for any number of offenses.”
“What’re you talking about? We haven’t done anything wrong.”
“Come on, man, cut the crap. I’m not some rookie detective you can run a game on. You slipped up out there. I interviewed everyone involved before I got to you.”
Smart. Always have as much intel as possible before you interrogate. This guy knew his way around the games criminals played. He was right; I wouldn’t be able to bluff this guy.
I said nothing.
He leaned in close. “You referred to our illustrious, rat-bastard inmate, who calls himself Noble Johnson, as your brother. Noble Johnson only has one brother, and you and I both know his name, don’t we?”
Now he’d gone and played it too smug. I needed to shake him up a little if I wanted to have any chance at all. “What …” I stammered. “What’re you talking about? Oh … oh you mean out there in the hall. You’re right, I did. I did call him my brother. But we’re all brothers in the eyes of our Lord.”
He sat back. His mouth dropped open for just a second before he caught himself and regained his composure. I had him. I needed to press the advantage. “Sure, sure, I’m sure you’ve heard us black folk, heard us call each other bro, or brother, or brother-man. That’s all I meant. Is that what all this confusion’s about? I’m sorry, really I am. It’s all a mistake.”
His eyes narrowed and a smile slowly spread across his arrogant mug. “All right, Mr. Jason Minor, then I guess I’ll just have to let you go.”
I didn’t fall for it. His smugness served only to make me shrink deeper in my chair. He had me before he said another word, and knew I couldn’t do anything about it.
“I give you my word,” he said, “as a deputy sheriff, that I’ll let you go if you do one thing for me? Just one. And if you do, I promise you that you can walk right out that door.”
I said nothing and didn’t move.
“Show me your right bicep.”
Ah, shit.
He had me cold.
Way back when, I’d been a young and dumb fool. While on the Violent Crimes Team, I fell for the camaraderie, the competitive spirit, and once I’d made my bones on the team, I, too, like all the other members, tattooed BMF—Brutal Mother Fucker—on my body. Just like the ignorant, misguided gangsters that I chased down, bludgeoned, ran over, or shot if they didn’t want to give up.
He stood and, making a show of it, came around the table, his eyes boring into mine. His hands, in my peripheral vision, moved to my shirt.
He pulled the sleeve up.
CHAPTER TWENTY-TWO
DETECTIVE HARRIS LAUGHED.
I can’t say that I wouldn’t have done the same thing in his place had I caught a heavyweight fugitive as simply as he had caught me
. In fact, my capture was one for the books. I’d come into the jail, of all places, and all but begged to be found out. Back in the day, when I’d been younger and less enlightened in the ways of the criminal mind, and I’d caught one running a game on me, I’d say, “Peek-a-boo, asshole.” Detective Harris at least spared me that indignity and embarrassment.
Harris left.
A short time later, two deputies, B. Stanford and W. Smithson, came in. While they chained me, they talked between themselves about the next transfer list due out at the end of the month and wondered if they’d be on it. B. Stanford had in for The Devil’s Triangle: Lynwood, Firestone, and Carson, now known as Century Station. W. Smithson had in for Norwalk, Alta Dena, and Industry Stations. They talked as if I didn’t matter as they put on the waist chains and leg irons. Cool metal on my wrists and ankles, metal that snatched at the air I breathed and made the walls close in around me.
I wouldn’t be a K-nine like Noble. Once processed through classification, they’d make me a red suit, an escape risk. Then I’d be housed in High Power, 1700 and 1750, a jail within a jail with no chance at all to escape.
I didn’t see any way out, none. “Hey, can you guys at least answer me one question, please?”
“You’re an asshole, comin’ in here like this,” B. Stanford said “You put your buddy’s ass in a sling. They just suspended him. And I liked the dude too. So no, you get nothin’ from us.”
“They suspended John Mack?”
W. Smithson shoved me in the back. “What’d ya think was gonna happen, comin’ in our house and starting that kinda bull-shit? We gotta write paper out the ass on that little dust-up. And now I heard there’s gonna be an internal affairs investigation on it. No. No, you definitely got nothin’ comin’. Get movin’.”
They walked me in short half steps, steps restricted by the leg irons. Walked me through the old jail all the way over to IRC, where they took off the cuffs. They left the waist chain hooked around my waist and the leg irons on my ankles. In the walk from the jail, the leg irons had enough time to chafe the skin, and it burned whenever I moved.
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