by Sean Black
Lock had a sudden flashback to the prison yard at Pelican Bay and Ty lying in the middle of it, face down, in the dirt.
‘And?’ he asked her.
‘It’s not quite as cut-and-dried as everyone would like to believe. Even within each gang there always seem to be two opposing forces pulling against each other.’
‘Which are?’
‘Well, on the one hand you have the criminal enterprise part. Stick together for protection, then extend that to other inmates, and start bringing trade into the equation — drugs, for instance. I’d call those guys the pragmatists.’
‘Pragmatists? Now there’s a five-dollar word.’
‘You know what I mean, Ryan. These are the guys who tattoo on a swastika when it might as well be a dollar bill.’
Lock nodded, remembering Phileas, whose predatory business instincts and nose for a deal would, under different circumstances, have made him a fortune on Wall Street.
‘But then there’s usually another side.’
‘You got a five-dollar word for them as well?’
‘More of a ten-dollar phrase. I’d call these guys the true believers.’
‘So where does that leave Reaper?’
‘I’d say he’s a believer, and part of that is a whole code-of-honor thing.’
Lock did a bad job of hiding his cynicism, the smirk crawling across his face.
Carrie held up her hand. ‘Hear me out.’
‘I’m a-hearing,’ said Lock in his worst pastiche of a Southern accent.
‘You said that guys like Reaper were into all those Louis L’Amour westerns.’
‘Ate ’em up.’
‘That’s where the Aryan Brotherhood take one of their other nicknames from, right? The Brand. They got that from a Louis L’Amour story.’
‘Far as I know.’
‘Well, the Brand, the original Brand, in those stories they lived by a code of honor which included no harming of women or children.’
Lock swiveled round so that he was facing Carrie. ‘Can I talk to reporter Carrie rather than love-of-my-life Carrie?’
Carrie eye-lifted her consent.
‘I know what you’re saying, but where does that leave Ken Prager and his family? The Aryan Brotherhood didn’t seem to have a code when it came to them.’
‘That’s what I’m saying. The Aryan Brotherhood breached the code.’
On cue, the door at the back opened and Reaper shuffled in, his appearance transformed by the suit and tie. He nodded a series of polite hellos, first to the judge, then to Jalicia and the prosecution, and finally to his former comrades, who glared at him from the dock.
‘So what is he then, Ryan?’ Carrie asked.
Lock studied Reaper as he settled himself into the dock, his eyes startlingly dark and unblinking, his head held high. ‘He’s a chess player,’ he said. ‘And as far as he’s concerned, you, me, Jalicia, Coburn, his former buddies sitting in that dock, we’re all just pieces on his board.’
33
By the time Reaper was finally sworn in, it was gone three in the afternoon. Jalicia’s heels left a puncture trail in the thick brown carpet as she walked towards him. Compared to the courtroom in San Francisco, the one in Medford, with its brown-on-brown colour scheme, felt claustrophobic and oppressive.
‘For the record,’ she began, ‘could you state your full name and place of residence?’
Reaper showed his teeth, like a talent contestant who’d spent too much time practicing in front of the mirror for his TV debut. ‘Frank Hays. But most folks call me Reaper. I live a little outside Crescent City, California.’ He turned to the jury and gave them the same smile. ‘More specifically, the Secure Housing Unit at Pelican Bay State Prison.’
‘Thank you, Mr Hays. Can you tell me, do you know any of the defendants? And, if so, how do you know them?’
Reaper glanced at the defendants, his former comrades, his expression not changing, although there seemed to be an extra twinkle in his eyes. ‘I know all of them from doing time alongside them in prison.’
‘Which prisons, Mr Hays?’
‘San Quentin back in the day, Corcoran, Chino, bunch of other places,’ Reaper replied, reeling off some of the grimmest prisons in California and beyond. He turned to the jury again. ‘If it’s got bars and a gun tower, I’ve probably seen it.’
Jalicia walked back to the prosecution table and shuffled through some papers, ready to signal a switch of gear — time to get down to business.
‘Many inmates who’ve been accused of being a member of the Aryan Brotherhood have claimed that there is no such organisation. In your experience, is that the case?’
‘Lady, it’s like that Brad Pitt movie: the first rule of the AB is you don’t talk about the AB. Least not with outsiders.’
‘So it does exist?’
Reaper looked over to where the six defendants were watching him intently. ‘Oh yeah, it exists.’
‘And you were a commissioner in the AB?’
Reaper’s head swiveled to the jury again. ‘You just promoted me. There’s only three commissioners, all sitting over there. I was what they call a shot caller.’
‘Thank you, Mr Hays, I stand corrected. But while incarcerated in Pelican Bay Supermax, you were the Aryan Brotherhood shot caller for that institution.’
‘Yeah, I called the shots.’
‘And what does that mean in reality?’
‘It’s like being one of the head honchos at one of those Fortune 500 companies. Any major decisions that had to be made went through me.’
Jalicia angled her body towards the jury. Predominantly white, with a sprinkling of blacks and Hispanics, they still looked drained by what had happened in San Francisco but now they were all leaning forward slightly, taking in everything Reaper was saying.
She turned back to him. ‘What kind of decisions? Could you give me a for instance?’
Reaper studied the ceiling as if he was dredging up an example. ‘Like, say, if someone wanted to attack one of the toads. By which I mean the blacks.’
There was an audible shuffle of discomfort in the courtroom. Reaper looked at Lock.
‘That would have to be sanctioned by you first?’ Jalicia asked.
Reaper smiled, still looking in Lock’s direction. ‘Exactly.’
‘And what about decisions made elsewhere in the organisation? Would you be apprised of those?’
‘The big ones, sure.’
‘Such as the decision to have someone killed?’
Reaper shrugged, super-nonchalant, like he and Jalicia were discussing what to pick up from the store for dinner. ‘I’d get to hear about it.’
Jalicia could feel the defense attorneys tense in anticipation of the next question. She took the decision to back off a little, go round the block one more time, make sure the jury were in no doubt about the nature of the Aryan Brotherhood.
‘What was the term used by this organisation for giving the go-ahead to have someone murdered?’
‘Someone was going to get killed, they had to be green-lit.’
‘Green-lit? Like the Hollywood term for deciding to put a movie into production.’
‘Except we usually tried not to make a big production out of it.’ Reaper smirked.
‘And these killings would take place inside prisons?’
‘Sure. And on the outside too.’
Jalicia allowed her face to register a degree of surprise, even though she knew where this was leading. ‘But how would that even be possible if the members of this gang, yourself included, were all incarcerated?’
‘You don’t have to actually pull the trigger yourself, you know. Ain’t that what this whole deal’s about?’
Jalicia took a breath, and stepped towards him. ‘If you could just answer the question.’
‘Let me see how to explain this to you.’ Reaper put the palms of his hands together, the tips of his fingers resting against his lips. ‘OK, so say we decide someone who’s on the outside needs some killi
ng. We look at who is about to be paroled, or who we already have on the outside. We get a message to them and that’s how it’s done.’
‘And this would be a member of the organisation or an associate?’
‘Usually an associate.’
‘And why would someone who had recently been released from prison commit murder in the first degree, risking further incarceration, possibly a capital or life sentence, merely on your say-so, or the say-so of the Aryan Brotherhood?’
Reaper clasped his hands together. ‘Real simple. The one thing we can be sure of is that this person is headed back into prison at some point. If they haven’t carried out their mission, then next time they step on the yard we kill ’em.’
Jalicia wanted to hammer this one home so that even the slowest member of the jury would be able to grasp it. ‘So, if they don’t commit the murder, as soon as they step back inside a jail or penitentiary, you’ll have them killed.’
Reaper looked over at the jury, and smiled. ‘Yeah, that’s about it.’
The lights were dimmed in the courtroom as Jalicia played the jury the DVD recording of Prager’s forced mutilation at the hands of his son. She kept a close eye on them as they watched it. At certain points a couple of the female jurors covered their eyes. In the dock, two of the AB members nudged each other and snickered. To Jalicia’s disappointment, the jury didn’t catch it.
When it had ended and the lights rose again, she got out of her chair and approached Reaper.
‘As far as you’re aware, Mr Hays, none of the men in the dock today were present during what we just saw?’
‘Them being in prison, I guess not.’
‘As we established before the recess, though, the Aryan Brotherhood have contracted out murders to people on the outside. That’s correct, isn’t it?’
‘We outsource stuff like that, yeah,’ Reaper replied.
‘And is it your belief that the murder of Agent Kenneth Prager and his family was a task outsourced by the men here today?’
A mis-step. Gross was on his feet before she hit the word ‘task’. ‘Objection. It’s not a matter of what the witness believes. We’re supposed to be dealing in facts here.’
Before the judge could overrule, Jalicia switched into damage limitation mode. ‘Mr Gross is quite correct. I withdraw the question.’
Gross looked deflated that she hadn’t put up more of a fight.
‘Thank you, Ms Jones,’ the judge said.
Jalicia stepped towards Reaper again, noticing how his dark grey eyes tracked her every move. ‘Mr Hays, until you decided to testify in this case, you were a member in good standing of the Aryan Brotherhood, is that fair to say?’
‘Yes, I was.’
‘But when you heard about the death of Agent Prager and his family you were sufficiently troubled by it to contact my office.’
‘That’s correct.’
‘And why was that?’
‘Listen, don’t get me wrong, Prager was a federal agent. And he was undercover, which makes it ten times worse. He was an enemy combatant — I believe that’s the phrase these days, ain’t it?’ Reaper looked at the jury. ‘But his wife, and their boy…’ He turned back so that he was facing the public gallery, Lock included. ‘No one in this court might understand this, ’cept maybe those six over there, but I joined the Aryan Brotherhood because we lived by a code. It wasn’t much, but it was something. You folks out there, living your little suburban lives, paying your taxes, saving up for that big-screen TV so you have even less excuse to talk to your wife or the miserable brats you’re raising to be good little consumers, none of you might understand this, but to join the Aryan Brotherhood meant something. The code of the Aryan Brotherhood meant something.’
Jalicia could sense that Reaper was rapidly losing the sympathy of the jury.
‘And that code included not harming women and children?’ she interrupted.
Reaper shifted on his seat. ‘Excuse me, but I was speaking. Isn’t that why I’m here?’
‘I’m sorry for interrupting you, Mr Hays, but if you could focus on the questions you’re being asked.’
Reaper shifted his attention to the window, where sunlight streamed in. ‘Pretty day. Don’t get to see much of the sun up in the Bay. Good place for a prison though. What’s that saying, “out of sight, out of mind”? You can’t get much more out of sight than Crescent City.’
Gross leaned over to one of his junior counsel and stage-whispered, loudly enough so that the jury would catch it, ‘Or out of mind, apparently.’
‘You said in your deposition that there was a letter you received a few days after the murders,’ Jalicia pressed on. ‘You said that in that letter-’
Gross was on his feet again. ‘Can someone remind Ms Jones that we are here to hear from her witness, not her?’
Before the judge could speak, Reaper interrupted, leaning as far forward in his chair as he could, lasering in on Jalicia. ‘You asked me what I believed before that scum-sucking commie over there’ — Reaper nodded at Gross — ‘broke in. Well, I’ll tell you what I believe. I believe, with all my heart, in the fourteen words. The words spoken by a true American patriot before the Zionist Occupation Government murdered him. The words abandoned and forgotten by so-called comrades-in-arms in that dock.’
Reaper was on his feet now, pointing at the six defendants. The two guards next to him struggled to get him to sit down, but it wasn’t a fair match. They were both big guys, but Reaper had ten years of six hours’ exercise a day on them.
‘The fourteen words are: “We must secure the existence of our people and a future for white children”,’ he bellowed, shoulders back, his torso military-straight.
He sat back down so hard that Jalicia could feel the floor beneath her feet vibrate. Then he started to cough violently. His shoulders hunched, he waved for his glass of water. One of the guards handed it to him.
As he raised the glass to his lips, it spilled from his grasp, bouncing off the edge of the dock and shattering on the floor. By now Reaper was doubled over, his right hand reaching up to massage his left shoulder, then moving across to his chest. Finally, he keeled over, taking one of the guards down with him, still struggling for breath.
Disbelieving silence gave way to whispers of confusion. As the noise level in the courtroom rose in volume, the judge banged his gavel. ‘Session adjourned. Clear the court.’
The six members of the Aryan Brotherhood in the dock craned forward expectantly. Across the room, Carrie held on to Lock’s arm.
‘What’s wrong with him?’ she whispered.
Lock shrugged. When it came to Reaper, it was anyone’s guess.
34
Streetlights flickered into life as Lock emerged from the front of the Medford courthouse. Looking up, he could see a police sniper on a nearby rooftop, framed by the fading sunset. Lock crossed to where Carrie was standing with her cameraman, a bearded woodsman type sporting a flannel shirt and dungarees who’d been drafted in from a local affiliate station. Lock pulled her a safe distance from him and the other assembled members of America’s media who clogged the sidewalk.
‘He’s fine,’ he told her.
‘What was it? He looked like he was having a heart attack in there.’
Lock shook his head. ‘They ran an ECT. It wasn’t a heart attack.’
‘So what was it?’
‘Some kind of anxiety thing.’
‘A panic attack?’ Carrie asked, disbelieving.
Lock shrugged. ‘The excitement must have been too much for him. First time outside prison in ten years, half a dozen men across the court wishing him into the ground — who knows?’
‘You think he faked it?’ Carrie asked.
It was the first thing that had crossed Lock’s mind, and he’d said as much to the paramedic who wanted to transfer Reaper to the nearest hospital for further tests. With Jalicia’s help, Lock had won the day, and they’d stabilized Reaper inside the court. But if Reaper had been faking, it was an Os
car-worthy performance.
‘I don’t know,’ he said.
‘So what happens now?’
‘There’s nothing physically wrong with him so nine o’clock tomorrow morning he’s back on the stand.’
‘Where they gonna keep him?’
Lock lowered his voice a notch. He’d been asked by Jalicia to advise on security until the Marshals Service could put in place proper replacements for their fallen comrades. ‘A holding cell inside. It’s best not to move him, although that’s not what your buddies are going to be told.’ He nodded in the direction of the press pack. ‘We’re going to move a decoy out. Muddy the trail a little.’
‘What about the six defendants?’
‘They’re staying in a different part of the same building.’
‘Isn’t that risky?’
Lock took a step back, another sniper coming into focus on a different rooftop. A police helicopter buzzed low, chasing off a couple of television news helicopters that were hovering above the courthouse snatching some overhead footage before nightfall completely engulfed the scene. ‘Right now, everything’s risky.’
Carrie sighed. ‘At least Jalicia got through most of what she wanted.’
‘Oh yeah,’ said Lock. ‘Tomorrow’s about tying up some loose ends and then the defense having their opportunity to pick it all apart, but as far as the jury’s concerned the damage is pretty much done.’ He looked at Carrie. ‘Which is just as well for you.’
She glanced up at him, puzzled. ‘What do you mean?’
‘Well, it took one hell of a lot of persuasion, and I had to throw in my best friend almost being killed, but I got you the interview you wanted with Reaper.’
Carrie’s mouth fell open. ‘No way. Jalicia agreed?’
‘Reluctantly, but yes. Coburn, Ken’s boss from the ATF, showed up when I was talking to her about it. He thought that Reaper on the tube might get the bigwigs in Washington to start paying some more attention to the threat white supremacists pose to domestic security, which would mean more money for his budget.’