Prudence Couldn't Swim

by James Kilgore

  After the bail setback I was, as they say, “hard-timing”—worrying myself sick. I couldn’t take my mind off the horrendous possibilities that lie before me. Hours would pass and I’d do nothing but lie on my bunk and stare at the graffiti scratched into the cement ceiling. “Fatal, July 1998”; “Rabbit, June ‘87”; “Orange Julius, Xmas ‘83.” Everyone had a nickname they’d left to posterity. Would my only legacy be what I scrawled onto a prison ceiling?

  The following morning I dragged myself to the phone to call Tsiropoulos. We had an arrangement. If he had any news, he’d accept my call. If not, he’d refuse the chance to spend $3.89 to say “hello” and offer meaningful words of consolation. Not even the Hyatt Regency could top jailhouse rates for a local call.

  He had some news. He said he’d gotten the envelope and was going to take it to a meeting with Jeffcoat’s lawyer.

  “Can’t say more on the phone,” he said. “I’ll be by as soon as I find out something.”

  After the phone call I went back to hard-timing. I must have walked five miles just pacing up and down in my cell while L’Amour snored himself into oblivion. There was no way I was going to survive another fifteen years of this. No way at all. When you’ve been out for a while, you start to think that because you handled it once, you could handle it again. But if they got me this time, it would be for keeps. I’d be doing all day as they like to call a life sentence in these hellholes. And I didn’t have enough money to make bail and sneak off to Brazil.

  Just as I finally got to sleep the sirens started screeching. Something was jumping off somewhere. A cell fight, a suicide. Not much else can happen in the middle of the night. By morning, we were on lockdown and the rumors were flying around the pod about what had happened. I didn’t pay any attention. A few minutes after I finished gobbling up the hard-boiled egg and stone cold oatmeal breakfast, the guard came and told me I had an attorney visit. We were on lockdown, so he put me in waist chains and leg irons and I shuffled off to learn my fate.

  EPILOGUE

  Since it was lockdown we had to visit through glass. No Almond Joys this time around. They didn’t even take off the shackles. I was hoping for a big smile on Tsiropoulos’s face when he saw me. No such luck. He looked hung-over, more like he’d come to tell someone their mother died than celebrate the DA dropping all the charges.

  One of my Jap flaps came off as I scooted onto the round iron stool that passed for a chair. I kicked it out of the way.

  “Get those cuffs and leg irons off my client,” Tsiropoulos told the guard.

  “We’re on lockdown, counselor. That’s the rules.” The guard trundled away.

  Tsiropoulos put a pile of papers on the counter in front of him. “You want the good news or the bad news?” he asked.

  “Just shoot.”

  He went on one of those long, closing-argument kinds of speeches where he told me how once he showed Jeffcoat and his lawyer the list, that new versions of the truth started to emerge and Jeffcoat’s loyalty to his teammates started to fade fast.

  The reworked official story portrayed Carter as a “rogue cop” who got carried away when he realized a clever African girl had outsmarted him so that instead of making money off her seductive powers and getting free sex to boot, he might end up owing her for the rest of their life.

  “He was just supposed to scare her,” Tsiropoulos said, “but he got carried away.”

  Somewhere along the path, Washkowski had also joined in the fun, either driving the getaway car when Carter pushed Prudence into the pool or throwing the brick through my window. None of this was really a surprise for me. I told Tsiropoulos to cut to the chase.

  “You’re not walking on this one, Cal,” he said. “I think I can get you out of the murder rap. Hopefully, that’s going to be Carter’s beef. Jeffcoat has agreed to give a statement to the police and testify in exchange for immunity on all counts. If the DA will agree and we can get Washkowski to roll, it’s a done deal.”

  “So Jeffcoat will just walk away, apologize to the old lady and go back to the fourteenth floor?”

  Tsiropoulos nodded. Then he told me I was looking at two to five years for the obstructing. “I don’t think I can do better than two,” he said.

  I started thinking about the sound of that cell door sliding open every morning as I got ready for “another day in paradise.” I could make two years, seven hundred and thirty morning cell door openings. Five was a push. For the first time in my life I was counting on a millionaire and a snitch cop to save me.

  Three months later I was on the bus to Old Folsom, the place Johnny Cash made famous. Back in the day it used to be a killing field but it had mellowed out. The young bangers and haters who loved to rock and roll ended up at Pelican Bay, High Desert, or New Folsom. Old Folsom was a place where I could just do my time reading a few books, slapping down some dominoes and walking the track.

  A few weeks later, Carter’s trial hit the headlines with Jeffcoat as the star witness. Carter’s counterpoint, trying to cast Jeffcoat as the “quarterback” of the operation failed when Washkowski came forward and recalled the events that day when he drove the getaway car from my house. As they pulled away, Carter supposedly informed Washkowski that “African bitch” wouldn’t be bothering them anymore. Washkowski told the jury he was “shocked,” that he never expected Carter would seriously hurt Prudence, let alone kill her. The jury bought it. Cops are just like anybody else except an old school convict—they’ll do whatever they have to do to save their ass.

  Jeffcoat came on the news the night he testified with his solemn-faced wife at his side. He told a press conference how he’d made a mistake of marital infidelity for which he would be “eternally regretful” to his family but that he never agreed to violence. He didn’t take questions.

  The jury found Carter guilty of second-degree murder and he got fifteen to life. With some luck he’d be eligible for parole after thirteen years. Luck wasn’t likely to be on his side. Cops don’t survive that long in prison. Convicts have long memories when it comes to remembering who kicked their ass, stole property from their home, bullied them in front of their families and friends. Carter had plenty of those skeletons in his closet. Besides with politics being what they are in California prisons, his little sojourn with an African woman would gain him the title of “race traitor” among the white gangs and quite a few of the guards. For once it seemed the impossible had happened: Karma had visited the justice system.

  In the end I decided two years in the state pen was a small price to get justice for Prudence. To pay Tsiropoulos and erase bad memories, not long after Carter’s trial I sold my house. When I got out, I’d buy an apartment in a neighborhood where I’d fit in a little better. I wasn’t quite sure where that would be. Maybe Red Eye would get us a place once he finished doing a year in some state ranch for violating his parole.

  Selling the house also gave me a little extra money to fund a trip for Mandisa to Zimbabwe. I gave her $15,000 to hand over to the Mukombachoto family and told her to give them all the spectacular details about Prudence’s meteoric career in the world of California architecture before she died in that tragic collision in her new BMW. Some myths deserve to be perpetuated, like the myth of my wife, Tarisai Prudence Mukombachoto, the African Princess.

  ABOUT THE AUTHOR

  James Kilgore was a 1960s political activist in California, who ultimately became involved with the Symbionese Liberation Army. In 1975, he fled a Federal explosives charge and remained a fugitive for twenty-seven years. During that time, he rejected the politics of small-group violence and built a life as an educator, researcher, activist, parent, and husband in Southern Africa. Using the pseudonym of John Pape, he earned a PhD, authored a number of academic articles and educational materials, and coedited the acclaimed 2002 anthology Crisis of Service Delivery in South Africa (Cape Town: HSRC; London: Zed Books). Authorities arrested Kilgore in November 2002 and extradited him to California where he served six and a half years in stat
e and Federal prison. While incarcerated, he worked as a teacher’s assistant and also completed drafts of several novels and a screenplay. Umuzi Publishers (Cape Town) released his first work, We Are All Zimbabweans Now, in June 2009. It was republished by Ohio University Press in 2011. He is also the author of the 2011 novel Freedom Never Rests: A Novel of Democracy in South Africa (Johannesburg: Jacana Media).

  He currently lives with his family in Illinois where he is a Research Scholar at the Center for African Studies at the University of Illinois.

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  Send My Love and a Molotov

  Cocktail: Stories of Crime, Love

  and Rebellion

  Edited by Gary Phillips

  and Andrea Gibbons

  ISBN: 978-1-60486-096-2

  368 pages

  An incendiary mixture of genres and voices, this collection of short stories compiles a unique set of work that revolves around riots, revolts, and revolution. From the turbulent days of unionism in the streets of New York City during the Great Depression to a group of old women who meet at their local café to plan a radical act that will change the world forever, these original and once out-of-print stories capture the various ways people rise up to challenge the status quo and change up the relationships of power. Ideal for any fan of noir, science fiction, and revolution and mayhem, this collection includes works from Sara Paretsky, Paco Ignacio Taibo II, Cory Doctorow, Kim Stanley Robinson, and Summer Brenner.

  Full list of contributors:

  Summer Brenner

  Rick Dakan

  Barry Graham

  Penny Mickelbury

  Gary Phillips

  Luis Rodriguez

  Benjamin Whitmer

  Michael Moorcock

  Larry Fondation

  Cory Doctorow

  Andrea Gibbons

  John A. Imani

  Sarah Paretsky

  Kim Stanley Robinson

  Paco Ignacio Taibo II

  Ken Wishnia

  Michael Skeet

  Tim Wohlforth

  The Jook

  Gary Phillips

  ISBN: 978-1-60486-040-5

  256 pages

  Zelmont Raines has slid a long way since his ability to jook, to out maneuver his opponents on the field, made him a Super Bowl winning wide receiver, earning him lucrative endorsement deals and more than his share of female attention. But Zee hasn’t always been good at saying no, so a series of missteps involving drugs, a paternity suit or two, legal entanglements, shaky investments and recurring injuries have virtually sidelined his career.

  That is until Los Angeles gets a new pro franchise, the Barons, and Zelmont has one last chance at the big time he dearly misses. Just as it seems he might be getting back in the flow, he’s enraptured by Wilma Wells, the leggy and brainy lawyer for the team—who has a ruthless game plan all her own. And it’s Zelmont who might get jooked.

  “Phillips, author of the acclaimed Ivan Monk series, takes elements of Jim Thompson (the ending), black-exploitation flicks (the profanity-fueled dialogue), and Penthouse magazine (the sex is anatomically correct) to create an over-the-top violent caper in which there is no honor, no respect, no love, and plenty of money. Anyone who liked George Pelecanos’ King Suckerman is going to love this even-grittier take on many of the same themes.”

  — Wes Lukowsky, Booklist

  “Enough gritty gossip, blistering action and trash talk to make real life L.A. seem comparatively wholesome.”

  — Kirkus Reviews

  “Gary Phillips writes tough and gritty parables about life and death on the mean streets—a place where sometimes just surviving is a noble enough cause. His is a voice that should be heard and celebrated. It rings true once again in The Jook, a story where all of Phillips’ talents are on display.”

  — Michael Connelly, author of the Harry Bosch books