by Sean Black
Behind Gross, his clients, the six members of the Aryan Brotherhood leadership, were being led in by their escort of US Marshals. They seemed to be in high spirits, laughing and joking among themselves. Most of them had been in prison for over thirty years, and it showed in the motel-tan pallor of their skin. Several wore reading glasses. All were dressed in a preppy smart-casual uniform of chinos and business shirts, buttoned to the neck — all the better to hide biceps that could crack a steel-reinforced walnut, not to mention the patchwork of shamrocks, swastikas and Nazi lightning bolts inked across their torsos and arms. The only tattoo none of them could conceal was the one that identified their membership of the AB — the shamrock inked on to the third knuckle of their right hand.
Their nicknames were jokey, bordering on cartoonish: Pinky, Sherlock, Duke, Shark, Gringo, The Monk. They looked like the senior members of a Deadwood appreciation society who’d taken the construction of their respective personas just a little too seriously.
Jalicia gave them and then Gross a confident smile. Every day since she had informed Gross about her star witness he’d tried to needle her about Reaper’s appearance.
‘My witnesses are all fine,’ she said.
‘Not what I hear,’ Gross said. ‘Seems there’s been a little incident up at Pelican Bay.’
Jalicia’s heart jumped into her throat. ‘I know,’ she lied.
The door behind Gross and his team opened and Coburn stalked in with a couple of men she recognized as members of the US Marshals team that had transported Lock and Ty up to Pelican Bay. Jalicia excused herself and made her way across to them.
‘Something’s happened?’ she asked.
Coburn spread his palms to the floor. ‘Take it easy. Reaper’s fine.’
She ushered Coburn and the two US Marshals out into the corridor, away from the prying eyes and ears of the Aryan Brotherhood leadership and their hotshot attorneys.
‘OK,’ she said. ‘Give it to me from the top.’
‘There was a riot on the yard,’ Coburn said.
‘They tried to get to Reaper?’
‘Reports are confused about precisely what happened. The California Department of Corrections just released some of the footage from their CCTV system.’
‘But Reaper’s OK?’
‘A little bruised,’ offered one of the Marshals.
‘What about Lock?’
‘He put a couple of other inmates in the medical wing,’ Coburn said. ‘They’ve stashed him in solitary confinement with Reaper for safe keeping.’
‘Reaper’s gonna love that,’ she said.
‘Better pissed off than dead,’ Coburn said.
The look on Coburn’s face suggested that there was something he wasn’t saying.
‘What is it?’ Jalicia asked.
‘It’s Lock’s partner. The guard didn’t know he was one of us.’
‘Which guard?’
The two Marshals looked away.
‘The one in the gun tower,’ said Coburn.
‘Ty’s been shot?’ Jalicia said.
‘He’s breathing. But we don’t know how bad he is.’
Jalicia massaged her temples. ‘Give me a minute, would you?’
She took a deep breath, then another, trying to push away her shock at what had happened to focus on the real dilemma: what to do with Reaper. There was nothing she could do about what had happened at the prison, but she could still deliver her star witness’s testimony.
‘OK, listen. I’m going to try and get the judge to halt proceedings temporarily. Give us some time to sort out this mess.’
‘You think he will?’
‘No, but it’s got to be worth-’
There was an ear-shredding boom, and the floor under Jalicia’s feet rippled with the shock waves of a massive explosion. She was lifted up by the blast, then deposited on to the ground with a thump as clouds of dust turned everything around her grey. Fire alarms wailed in protest. She swiped at her eyes, aware of gritty powder clogging her nose and throat.
Jalicia shook her head, trying to figure what the hell had just happened, then began to crawl forward on her hands and knees. Looking up, she saw flames curling round the door of a bathroom twenty feet ahead of her. She turned round, still on all fours, and headed back in the direction of the courtroom. The dust thrown up by the explosion mingled with an acrid black smoke from the nearby fire.
Stay calm, Jalicia.
She kept moving, her hand eventually finding thin air where it should have found floor. She leaned forward, reaching down to see if the space led to the first tread of a staircase, or whether it was simply a hole. She lowered her hand into a void, and quickly withdrew it.
The dust was beginning to settle, but the smoke from the fire continued to billow around her. She backed up a little, keeping her face as low to the ground as she could. She could hear a man’s voice close by.
‘Jalicia?’
It was Coburn.
‘Over here,’ she said, realizing the absurdity of what she’d just said. Even she hadn’t a clue where ‘here’ was.
‘You OK?’
‘I think so.’
A beam of light punched through the colloidal mix of dust and smoke off to her left.
‘You see the light?’ Coburn said. ‘I want you to come towards it.’
Jalicia began to crawl towards the light. Her knees and elbows ached, and there was an insistent high-pitched whine drilling into her head, but she kept moving.
‘Keep coming. You’re almost there.’
The news spurred her on. A few moments later she felt a hand on her shoulder as Coburn pulled her back up on to her feet, then propelled her through a doorway and into a stairwell. Cops and US Marshals were moving up, towards the top floors, against a tide of bodies heading down.
Two flights down, she signaled to Coburn to stop. Hands on her knees, she stood for a moment and caught her breath. She glanced up at Coburn. ‘Thank you.’
‘No trial without our lead prosecutor,’ Coburn said, clamping a hand on to her shoulder. ‘You good to start moving again?’
Jalicia straightened up, studying the heavy bags under his eyes, his grey-flecked hair turned white by the dust. ‘Yeah.’
In the lobby, the blue-blazered security guards were busy trying to get as many people out of the building and away from the immediate area as possible. Coburn split from Jalicia to go and talk to a San Francisco Police Department sergeant. A few moments later he was back.
‘You want the good news or the bad news?’
Jalicia glanced around at the people still pouring from the stairwells, their faces blackened by the smoke on the higher floors. She was still shaken from the explosion and badly in need of a caffeine hit. ‘There’s good news here?’
‘All the defendants are accounted for. The Marshals are moving them to a secure facility until we can get the trial up and running again.’
‘So what’s the bad news?’
‘There’s been another bombing.’
Jalicia felt her stomach churn. ‘Where?’
‘The Federal Courthouse in Los Angeles.’
21
Blood vortexed across the room, splattering the far wall of the medical center’s triage area. Ty opened his mouth to scream. Despite the intense pain in his stomach, he thought quite calmly, abstractedly almost, That ain’t good.
He lay back as a woman’s face hovered above him. She was Asian. And really pretty. And somehow human in a way he’d forgotten, even in this short space of time, people could be. He tried to open his mouth again, this time to speak. Something bubbled at the corner. He reached his hand up and the tips of his fingers came away red.
‘Take it easy, Tyrone,’ the woman said. ‘I’m going to give you something for the pain.’
Ty felt a jab in his hand, like a cat scratching him, and a few moments later his arm went cold, and then there was a warm feeling, and he didn’t feel quite as bad.
He licked his lips, his tongue tasting ir
on behind the salt.
‘Am I gonna die?’ he asked, realizing the absurdity of the question. As if anyone was going to answer yes.
‘I don’t think so, but we have to get you stable.’
Ty grimaced with the pain. Damn. No one had told him that getting shot hurt this much. Another hot spike of agony stabbed through his shoulder. He could feel tears, hot and wet, forming in his eyes.
‘Jesus, make it go away,’ he groaned.
He tried to focus, to think of something. Anything.
He’d heard the first shot. But he’d been so lost in the violence that he hadn’t even considered stopping. Even though he realised now that the guard in the tower had no way of knowing who he really was, he somehow, stupidly, hadn’t believed that the first warning shot was just that, a warning.
Man, he’d been dumb. He’d gotten so far into playing the part he’d forgotten who he was, and now he was paying the price.
He felt himself grow weaker, a warmness spreading through his body. He tried to clasp his hands but felt his fingers fall away from his palms. His spine, arched with pain a second ago, gave way, folding into the mattress beneath him.
He closed his eyes, consciousness drifting from him. As his eyes closed, he prayed that he’d be able to open them again at some point.
The riot squad had moved the main culprits into different parts of the prison’s Secure Housing Unit. Lock had found himself in a cell next to Reaper. The cells could hold two inmates but such was the nature of the population in this part of the prison that almost all of the cells were single-occupancy. These men tended to express their distaste at having to share by killing their cellie.
Lock stared out through the perforated Arizona doors of his cell at a blank wall. Having Reaper back in the SHU had been part of his plan. Ty getting shot hadn’t. There was no word yet as to whether his friend was dead or alive, and no way of knowing either. The idea of Ty being dead made his stomach churn to the point where he thought he might throw up.
Reaper’s voice came from the next cell: ‘Hey, Lock.’ His tone was super-upbeat, like he and Lock were wealthy neighbors who by some stroke of fate had ended up in adjoining suites at the Four Seasons in Maui.
‘What is it?’
‘Wanna know something? You did real good out on that yard. Man, you would have made a great member of the Aryan Brotherhood. Shame about your toad buddy, though!’
‘His name’s Tyrone,’ Lock said through gritted teeth.
‘Bet he’s up there sitting on a cloud right now eating watermelon and chitlins.’
Despite his best professional instincts, Lock felt a surge of rage. If there wasn’t a wall between them he’d have ripped Reaper’s throat out. But there was a wall, and he wasn’t about to give Reaper the satisfaction of knowing that his taunts were having an effect.
‘Ty’s tough. He’ll come through.’
‘Hmm,’ Reaper said. ‘That’s too bad. Man, some of those tower cops can’t shoot for shit.’
‘Tell you what, I’ll paint a target on your back and you can go running round outside and give ’em some practice.’
‘Ooh, do I detect a hint of hostility from my so-called bodyguard?’
Lock moved from the door back to the bunk and climbed up. He ached all over. Even his bruises had bruises.
He himself had been shot before. Once. A single shotgun round in the chest, courtesy of a two-man assassination team he’d been chasing down who’d rigged a door. It had hurt like hell, even though he’d been wearing an anti-ballistic vest.
Reaper lowered his voice to barely a whisper. ‘Hey, I never asked for your help. But seeing as we’re both here, let’s not forget what’s at stake. If I don’t make that trial, no one’s going to be held to account for snuffing your buddy Prager, and this whole exercise will have been one big waste of everyone’s time.’
22
Water slicked the floor of the blackened shell of what had formerly been a restroom in San Francisco’s main courthouse. Jalicia stepped through what remained of the door, followed by Coburn. Shards of ceramic toilet and basin lay scattered in every direction. There was a handbag in the far corner of the room.
Jalicia picked her way through the debris towards the stall where the device had detonated. There was still a smear of blood against the wall. Both stall panels had been blown away, and the toilet itself had been reduced to a porcelain stump. Water gurgled from the bottom of it.
‘How the hell did someone get past security with a bomb?’ Jalicia asked.
‘The guards here usually look for weapons,’ Coburn replied, ‘not high-grade plastic explosives. Plus, whoever placed the device planted it on a floor the public have access to rather than next to one of the courtrooms or a secure area.’
‘How did they detonate it?’
‘We’ll only know that when forensics can tell us if it was on a timer or if it was set off by remote.’
Jalicia squared her shoulders. ‘If they think they can intimidate us into dropping the case, they can forget it.’
She watched as Coburn kicked out at a piece of ceramic tile, peeled from the wall by the wave of the blast. The smell of raw sewage seeping up from exposed outlet pipes was starting to get to her. She took a step towards the mirror. It used to run the length of the wash basins; now only a few fractured pieces remained on the wall, throwing back a circus-freak reflection of her sharp features.
‘We push them, the Aryan Brotherhood push back. That how we play this?’ Coburn asked.
She turned to face him. ‘No. The AB push us, we knock them the hell down. That’s how we play it.’
‘They might come after you as well.’
‘I ever tell you about my great-grandmother, Coburn?’
‘I’m guessing you’re about to. Mind if I make myself comfortable?’
‘She grew up in the Deep South during the civil rights struggle. When the high school in her home town was forced to integrate by the federal government, she was one of the first black students to attend. She told me about walking in that first morning. The local police just stood by while a bunch of locals abused her and the other black students. Spat on them until they were drenched in it. Kicked at them. Called them every name under the sun. It was so bad they had to turn back and go home. But she told me that the worst part was the next day when she had to force herself to go through it all over again. But she did it anyway.’
‘This is a little bit more than a bunch of rednecks,’ Coburn said.
‘These guys are better armed, that’s all,’ said Jalicia, walking back out of the bombed-out restroom, the click of her heels echoing down the halls of justice.
Bobby Gross was out on the sidewalk, covered from head to foot in a thin layer of grey dust. Jalicia approached him as he fumbled a cigarette into his mouth with a trembling hand.
‘I have a message for your clients,’ she said.
He cupped a hand round the tip of his cigarette while he lit it. ‘That so?’
Jalicia reached up and plucked the cigarette from his mouth, tossing it on to the ground and grinding it to dust under her heel. ‘Tell them they’re not going to stop this trial.’
She walked back to where Coburn was nose to nose with a US Marshal. Behind her, Gross had recovered his composure sufficiently to start haranguing her from a safe distance. ‘My clients could have died in there, Jones,’ he bellowed.
Jalicia tuned Gross out, instead focusing on Coburn and the US Marshals clustered round him. ‘I want this trial up and running again as soon as possible,’ she announced. She glanced back at the building, where smoke was billowing through the windows of the upper floors. ‘We’re going to need a change of venue so let’s get a list of possible federal courts that might be able to accommodate us as soon as possible. We can meet later this afternoon to go over them.’
23
Lock rubbed at his wrists, and settled down in a chair next to Ty’s bedside. Ty’s face was covered by an oxygen mask and he had a line running into his w
rist that was connected to two separate IV drips, while a monitor sketched his pulse and blood pressure in luminous green against a black grid. The prison warden, Louis Marquez, stood with Lock and watched the rise and fall of Ty’s chest.
Minutes passed. Lock watched the ventilator as it moved up and down, the monitor’s steady rhythm. Ty’s usual scowl was gone, replaced by an expression devoid of tension. He looked like kids did when they slept. Untroubled.
‘If I’d had my way, Reaper would never have left solitary confinement,’ Marquez said. ‘But the US Attorney’s Office wanted his testimony.’
Lock’s jaw tightened. ‘And they’re still going to get it. I’m going to see to that personally.’
One of Pelican Bay’s numerous medical staff, a petite Asian-American woman whose name badge read Dr Lau, walked into the bay. She checked Ty’s chart without acknowledging either Lock or the warden.
‘How bad is it?’ Lock asked her.
‘There’s some tissue and nerve damage, and we’ve had to pull the slug out of his shoulder, but he’s stable.’
Lock looked over at Marquez. ‘Shouldn’t you be getting him to a civilian facility?’
‘We’re pretty experienced in dealing with violent trauma injuries here,’ Dr Lau said. ‘Get plenty of practice.’
Lock turned to her. ‘He’ll be OK though, right?’
‘There are no guarantees, but, for someone who’s been shot, I’d say his prognosis is good. As long as he doesn’t pick up a secondary infection he should be fine.’
‘What you plan on doing with Reaper?’ Lock asked Marquez.
‘Well, I’ll tell you something, son. I never thought the day would come when I’d say this about an inmate, but I want him out of my goddamn prison. So I plan on shipping him down to San Francisco as soon as I can. Let the goddamn US Attorney’s Office deal with him. If they can.’
‘Maybe now they’ll take our original advice,’ Lock said, ‘and stash him in a safe house.’