by Eldon Asp
Needless to say, it wasn’t long before my prediction came true and these geniuses clogged up the sewer system until the cesspool backed up and spilled over the side. It stunk pretty bad then, that’s for sure. Until it flooded, the authorities had no idea what was going on, but as soon as that sewage stink started filling up the administration building, the comandante’s office especially, by God they were gonna get to the bottom of it. It didn’t take them long to come knocking at Johnny’s door and the door next to his, where the digging was going on, and that’s when the whole thing fell apart. All those guys got busted. Johnny got away with it because he had the deep pockets to get away with pretty much anything, but Alex and the others ended up in the tumbas. I hadn’t contributed anything but my big getaway idea, and the guys kept their mouths shut about that, so I skated free.
Sinfonola
Rock and Roll Will Set You Free
ONE OF THE MOST POPULAR places to eat in La Mesa was this little hamburger spot that was headed up by a guy I knew. He was a real nice guy, a great soccer and baseball player. He was in there for murder, but it was self-defense; he really was a good guy. Anyway, he and his buddy started this place and the reason everyone liked it is it felt like an actual little restaurant in there. It was a tiny spot, just a few tables, but the chairs matched, and they had it decorated real nice, like an old ‘50s diner. On one wall they had an old-style Wurlitzer jukebox with the colored lights and the bubbles going up the sides. The records in it were out of date, but that just added to the old-timey vibe of the place. It really felt like you were going back to a simpler time when you walked in there. You could almost tell yourself that you weren’t in prison anymore, at least for a little while. I forget what they called it, but it was a great place.
One day this American named Fred, who was in there for smuggling weed oil, went down to the hamburger place with a big pile of money and talked these guys into selling him their jukebox. He just kept upping his offer until they couldn’t say no; it was that much cash. They sold him the jukebox, but even as they were doing it they wondered why anyone would want to buy it. Why not just come down to the burger shop and visit it? Just put your nickel in it like everyone else, if you love it so much. It didn’t make any sense. But when Fred told them his idea for the jukebox, they got it. It was a brilliant plan.
What Fred had done was have his wife and another friend on the outside find a shop in Tijuana that specialized in repairing old jukeboxes, and they arranged for the guys from the shop to come and pick up the jukebox to haul it back to their place to be fixed. Now, the jukebox was already in perfect working order, but that was before Fred opened up the back of it and yanked all the guts out. He hollowed it out until it was basically an empty cabinet, except if you looked at it from the front, through the glass, it looked like a normal jukebox. Then Fred, who was not a small guy—he was actually a big weightlifter, musclebuilder-type of guy—squeezed himself into the back of the jukebox and they closed the door on him. When the repair guys came to pick up the jukebox, they wheeled it out on a big appliance dolly and hoisted it up onto their truck. The guards were watching them the whole time, but they wheeled Fred out right under their noses.
As soon as they got it back to their shop and opened it up, Fred jumped out and took off. The repair guys must have nearly died of shock! Craziest damn thing—I wish I’d thought of that.
Televisión
Steve the TV Star
I HAD SEEN HIM AROUND here and there, but the one and only time I ever had any personal dealings with the comandante happened one day when I was sitting on a bench with my shirt off smoking a joint with Johnny Bigotes. We were just chilling there, smoking some pot in the sunshine, when we looked up and saw the comandante heading right for us with Heladio Diaz and a TV news crew. So Johnny and I were like, “Holy shit,” okay? Obviously.
The regular guards, your run-of-the-mill guards, they didn’t give two shits if you smoked a joint; if anything, that made their job easier. But the comandante had to keep up appearances, especially with a camera in the mix. I recognized the reporter. It was a guy called Roberto Salinas who was a big-time TV news reporter at Channel 8 in San Diego. This was back when there were only three channels, so that was a pretty big deal. It was him, a cameraman and the comandante, and then trailing behind them was Heladio. Heladio had this look on his face like, “Ix-nay on the ope-day, assholes!” He was shaking his head at us. I forget which one of us was holding the joint at that exact moment, but we put it behind our backs and then there was this comical little moment where we were passing it back and forth to each other behind the bench, trying to make the other guy hold the damn thing. Finally we got it put out, sort of smushed it out on the back of the bench and then I think we dropped it there, trying to be all casual about it. So we got rid of the joint, but I was already high off my ass when they came walking over to talk to us.
The comandante walked up and started talking to me in real broken English, saying this guy here wants to interview you. So Roberto Salinas stepped up and introduced himself and shook my hand. He seemed like the perfect newscaster, all smooth and put-together. I told him my first name only and asked him what he wanted with me. He said he was doing a series of reports about Americans locked up in Mexico; I believe that was the point of it. He said he wanted to ask me some questions about why I was there, how they were treating me, what the prison was like, that kind of stuff. I said, “No way.” I didn’t want to talk to this guy. What was I supposed to say? It’s prison; it sucks.
So I told him there were a lot of other Americans in there, that he should go and talk to one of them instead. I was nice about it, but I said no way. And as I was telling him that, I looked over his shoulder to where Heladio was standing and Heladio was giving me this look, like he was telling me he really wanted me to talk to this guy. That about clinched it—if Heladio told you to do something, you did it. So I said, “Okay, I’ll talk to you, but on one condition: the only thing I absolutely will not discuss is my case—what I’m in for, how it went down, how I plan to get out—none of that. And he said,
“No problem.”
Okay then. So he got himself all ready and they started filming. And the very first thing out of his mouth was, “Steve, when you were arrested, were you caught with marijuana?”
I was like, “Whoa! Whoa! Cut! Dude, what the hell?! I just got done telling you I ain’t gonna say nothin’ about my case! I haven’t even been to court yet!” (This was back when I still thought that formalities like that mattered to the Mexican legal system.) He apologized all up and down and said he wouldn’t ask me things like that any more, and we started over.
This time he didn’t try asking me about my personal situation, he just kept the focus on the prison in general and life inside the prison. Heladio and the comandante were standing right there, and even though the comandante didn’t understand most of what was being said, I knew how he’d want me to answer. He’d want me to say everything was great. Heladio, too: he had a good thing going, he didn’t want anybody rocking the boat. So I was smiling away, lying through my teeth about how they treated me well, how the food was delicious and all that, and Johnny couldn’t stop giggling about the shit I was saying, so Heladio kind of gave him the dickeye, just sort of glared at him and made him leave.
We finished with that and they stopped the camera, then Salinas told me he’d like me to take him on a little tour. He asked me where I slept, where my cell was, and I told him I lived in a little apartment called a carraca back there in the corral. He said he’d like to see it. Well, there was no way the comandante would ever go for that if he knew what we were talking about because the corral was way too dangerous. Besides, they had the shooting gallery in my tank and that would look just terrible, but Salinas was being quiet and kind of sneaky about it. Heladio and the comandante were huddled up together a little ways off, not hearing what was said. So I told Salinas, “Sure, I’ll show you around.”
I showed him the little squa
re, the stores and restaurants and stuff, and it was all nice and happy. Then he went back and retraced our steps, leading the camera past everything we’d just seen while he narrated the whole thing into his microphone. I forget exactly what he said, but while he was doing this I kind of dropped back next to the cameraman, and I sort of whispered to this guy on the sly. I told him, “Last week, right where we’re standing, a guy got murdered. Right here.”
And he was like, “No shit?”
Yup. And I went on with it, like, “Over there are the tumbas, you know, and they got a cannibal in there…” and the guy was trying to hold the camera steady on Roberto Salinas while meanwhile he’s leaning his head this way and that trying to get a peek at the stuff I’m telling him about. Up ahead the warden kept looking back, trying to make sure I was keeping it cool, and Heladio was doing the same thing. I tried to be sly about it, just trying to tell this guy the truth about the place, not that it could do any good, but it was fun and I was stoned so I didn’t really care that much.
Anyway, so we went through El Pueblito, past all the little businesses and stuff, and then I led them around the corner toward the corral; I was going to try to show them my carraca. But we got just inside the gate of the corral when the warden figured out what was going on and put a stop to it. He stepped in and said something about how you can’t go in the tanks because the men need their privacy or something like that. Total bullshit—he just didn’t want anyone seeing how bad the conditions were in there.
That was about it. Roberto Salinas went back to San Diego and I went about my day. I guess when his report aired I was sort of the main focus of the first part of the series. Afterwards, apparently, in the intro to all the other installments there was a shot of me looking out through the fence surrounded by a bunch of vultures. I never did get to see it, but a lot of people told me about it. For a while there it seemed like everybody I ever knew or even just kind of knew back home in San Diego was watching this thing. After I got out, even, people used to come up to me all the time, everyone wanting to know me or wanting to do these big deals with me like I was some kind of Jesse James. I was just trying to get my head on straight, trying to get my health right and still having nightmares every night about that damn place, and these people were trying to get me to do crimes with them. The last thing I wanted was to jump right back into prison.
Billetera
Money From Home
I HATE TO USE THE word “celebrity,” but that’s kind of what I was to the friends of mine back home in the San Diego/Oceanside area who knew I was locked up down there in Mexico, especially after my TV thing aired on Channel 8. Everybody, I think, kind of liked to brag that they knew this hardened criminal, like they were somehow more legitimate or had a more interesting life because of the shit I was going through. In that scene at that time, everybody wanted to be involved in the dope business in some way or another. It was the cool thing to do. And anyway, it was just across the border, which in those days was a lot easier to deal with, so in the beginning at least I had a fair number of visitors, acquaintances and sorta-friends who’d drop by to see me and see where I was living. Not all the time, but fairly frequently. They’d stop by and we’d shoot the shit for awhile and I’d tell them stories and then I’d try to talk them out of a few bucks or a hot dog or something like that. Once in a while someone would bring me a bag of groceries, but that was rare.
So one day this buddy of mine, a good buddy named Eddie, was down visiting me and I was bitching and moaning about how people hardly ever bring me money or food, and he felt terrible about it because he had shown up empty-handed himself. I wasn’t trying to make him feel bad, but he did. He said, “Shit, man, I didn’t know I was allowed to bring you stuff!” And then he said, “Tell you what: I don’t have nothing on me right now but I’ll come back next Wednesday and I’ll bring you some money so that you can buy yourself some food or dope or whatever you need. Okay?” And I said,
“Listen, Eddie, don’t jerk me around here, because if I get my hopes up and you don’t show, that’s gonna really be a blow; that’s gonna be hard to take. I mean, I would love it if you came down here and brought me something, that would really mean a lot to me, but if you say you’re gonna do it you gotta make sure you really do it.” He swore all up and down that he would be back the next Wednesday with some cash and a hamburger, so I said, “Great!”
Well, Wednesday rolled around and I waited and waited and of course there was no sign of Eddie; he stood me up. So I was bitter about it, of course, like “There’s another disappointment.” But what’s one more, you know? Whatever—I let it go. Then a couple of days later I was hanging around with Johnny Bigotes, just sort of strolling around the yard. We went upstairs to this balcony area in the front of the apartments next to the basketball court, which is one of the places we sometimes hung out, and we were up there relaxing and just sort of looking around at nothing in particular. And as we were gazing out over the prison we looked to the front, to the gate area where people were coming in and out for visiting day, and we saw this crowd of vultures all bunched up around one guy in the middle. All we could see of him was his black hair and a bit of his dark skin and we just assumed he was another prisoner, because no one really messed with the visitors too much because that would have screwed things up for everybody. We figured it had to be a new guy, a new inmate. What the vultures would do is they would study the new guys coming in, to see who looked scared or confused or whatever, who had their wallet in their back pocket, you know—rookie stuff. And those are the guys they would jump on as soon as they stepped inside the gates.
We were bored as usual, so we were watching it like it was a TV show. We were like, “Oh shit, look at this, they got somebody!” We didn’t really care because that’s just what they did. That’s what they did every day: rob someone for their stuff. To us it was something to look at, at least. So we were watching and laughing while these little vultures pushed this poor guy around, moving him along away from the front area and over toward the corral so they could rob him or beat him up or whatever they were gonna do. Then all of sudden the guy kind of turned his head as they were pushing him along, and I saw that it was Eddie. (Eddie had been born in Mexico but adopted by a white family in California, so even though he looked like he belonged there, he really didn’t. He didn’t know a word of Spanish, and he was sacred shitless in this situation.)
I yelled out to Johnny, I said, “Holy shit, man, that’s Eddie! They got Eddie! Come on! He’s got my money!” We jumped up and ran over there. I knew we didn’t have much time because if they got him into the corral there was very little we’d be able to do for him. At that point we’d all be fighting for our lives; keeping hold of Eddie’s wallet would be the least of our worries. So we went sprinting down there and pushed our way into the crowd. We didn’t yell or punch anybody or anything like that, and we didn’t even want Eddie to know we were coming for him yet because then the crowd would turn on us, too. We just waded in there like we were two more junkies out for a piece of the score.
Finally we wormed our way into the middle of the circle. I came up right behind Eddie and I could tell now that I was close to him that he was seriously freaking out. He was scared to death. His eyes were darting from side to side and he was breathing so fast I thought he was going to pass out. I got up close behind him where I could whisper in his ear and I said, “Eddie, it’s me. It’s Steve.” I told him don’t turn around, don’t let on that you’re hearing me. Just listen. And I told him no matter what, he had to stay with me. I said if you stay right with me I’ll get you out of here. I looked down and sure enough he had his wallet in his back pocket like a dumbass, so I told him to get his hand on that wallet and keep it there, and all the while I was thinking it was a damn miracle that nobody had snagged it already because I sure would have if I were them. One of the vultures tried to make a grab for it and I slapped his hand away. He cursed me out in Spanish, but I think he knew by that point that he was in the
wrong; if Eddie had been a prisoner there wasn’t anything I could have done for him but because he was a visitor I was technically within my rights. The rule was: hands off the visitors.
I told Eddie we would start veering left, that we were gonna try to work our way out of that circle. And thank God, we did. With me sort of wrestling him past these vultures and Johnny coming up beside us dragging guys out of our way, we finally wriggled out until there was a little bit of daylight and then we made a break for it. We ran out of the crowd and the vultures were either too weak or too tired to run after us. They just kind of yelled at us, flipped us off a little bit, but we made it. When we got a little breathing room Eddie pulled out his wallet and forked over the fifty bucks he had for me. I thanked him for it, and then because I felt bad I bought him a hot dog with some of his own money. We hung out for a minute and then I walked him back to the gate and he left. I’ve seen him only once in my life after that. It was probably about fifteen years later, and he was still getting over the fear of that experience; he was only just starting to be able to see the humor in it.
¡Revolución!
Rise of the Vultures
I MENTIONED BEFORE HOW THE youngster Estrella had put himself on the map when he came through in the clutch, when even Heladio couldn’t break the dry spell and somehow Estrella did it. Well, things went back to normal when Heladio’s supplies picked up, I think because he had the more established organization. The bigger team, basically. Estrella couldn’t take him in a head-to-head confrontation.
But the kid didn’t go away entirely; he just faded into the shadows a little bit. The vultures didn’t forget him, either, because Estrella was one of them. I don’t know if he put the bug in their ear that Heladio was screwing them over somehow, like he was light on the weight or steep on the price or whatever, but you started to hear rumblings that the junkies were unhappy. They thought they could get a better deal if one of their own was in charge. I’m sure it got back to Heladio, and I’m sure he blew it off. Junkies are crazy; they’re paranoid. The chiva was flowing, so as far as Heladio was concerned, everything was fine.