by Jack Lynch
“Do you have mug shots I can look at before going in?”
He turned the buff-colored jackets and spread out identifying data, then got up and came around the desk to stand beside me.
“That’s Beau Bancetti, the one behind it all.”
He stabbed a finger at the photo of a man in his early thirties with a square, pugnacious-looking face and closely cropped blond hair.
“His buddy is Mitchell Tuck, the pretty boy. They were the top two honchos of the motorcycle gang before we got them.”
Tuck had a lazy smile on his face, as if he were posing in somebody’s backyard, instead of in front of a camera in the prison processing center. He was maybe a year or two younger than Bancetti, with dark good looks, a long, delicately chiseled face, a narrow nose and a wide, sensual mouth. He had wavy dark hair down over his collar. But in spite of his attractive looks, there was a gleam in his eye that made him look dangerous.
“Was he the one suspected of the garroting business?”
“No, that was August Finseth the Third, called Augie,” said the warden, pointing at another photo.
Finseth looked like he was about fifteen. He had the most innocent, dovelike expression you could imagine, on a fresh, round face. His hair was light blond and neatly trimmed. He looked like a little angel.
“Don’t be fooled about this one,” the warden said. “The garroting was the only homicide he was arrested for. He was implicated in three other homicides, variously gang-related—tough, punishing deaths. Motorcycle gang members don’t tell police about their problems. That’s why there never was enough evidence to arrest, let alone bring him to trial. But informants told police he was the one who did them.
“Still, the biggest bad-ass of the lot, for my money,” said Thompson, pointing at the remaining photo, “is Pork Peterson. Pork, as you might surmise, is a nickname. His given name is Shirley. I hear he’s never told anyone how he came by it, and you’d do well not to use it in front of him.”
I could see why. He didn’t look much like a Shirley. He looked like the man who would have done all the killing little Augie Finseth was suspected of. He had a mean face and a bullet-shaped head. He wore his hair in a crew cut. In the photo, his chin was jutting forward and his eyes had a distant stare, as if something was all bottled up inside, just waiting to get out.
“He likes to beat up on people. Specializes in law enforcement officers,” the warden said. “Luckily for us, he toes the line in here same as the other Cherubs. At least he did up to yesterday afternoon. The men in the guard cage who kept them from getting out of the building said Pork was carrying the pistol. He’s probably the one who gave a bad beating to Toman, the officer who was hurt.”
“Has anybody seen Toman?”
“No, but there’s a phone in the rooms they occupied. I insisted they let me talk to both women before I’d let Mr. Martin here go in to talk with them. One of them told me about Toman. Neither of the women had been molested. Up to then.”
I studied Pork Peterson’s face again. He might have been an older brother of the ringleader, Beau Bancetti. Their faces were formed similarly, but the sheets said Peterson was six feet two inches tall and weighed more than two hundred pounds. Beau Bancetti was just five feet nine inches. He weighed one hundred and eighty-five pounds and his nickname was Fireplug. I straightened up.
“Okay. Guess I might as well go see what they have to say.”
“Let me repeat our standard explanation to civilians who go behind the walls, Mr. Bragg,” the warden told me. “Our policy at San Quentin is that we don’t negotiate for hostages. Most times, when men are trying to escape, we just seal them off and wait for them to give up. If they kill a civilian or correctional officer before they quit, it’s too bad. But that’s the way it is. That’s the way it has to be with the sort of men we house.”
“You seem to be doing some negotiating right now.”
“That’s because of pressure being exerted on me by Sacramento to reach an accommodation, on account of the women. If it were just your life, or even Toman’s or the other officer with them, I wouldn’t even blink.”
I shrugged. “How do I get in?”
“Deputy Warden Shellbacher here will take you.”
Shellbacher was the older man in khaki. He was of medium height with a lean and hard-looking body. He had a narrow nose and dark, cold eyes. He looked as if he belonged behind bars himself.
“I’d better go with you,” said Casey, heaving himself out of the sofa. “Beau will want my assurance you’re the one I sent for, before they shoot you, or whatever.”
TWO
The three of us went out past the cluster of newsmen and into the chill, morning air.
“Were you here when all this happened?” I asked the deputy warden.
“Yes. I was on my way to the activities building myself. I got there just after the men retreated from the guard post.”
“The warden said the post isn’t usually manned. How come it was this time?”
“A random policy. We have checkpoints like that throughout the prison. Inmates never know when somebody will be at them. It gives them something to worry about if they’re planning to try a bustout. These four inmates gambled the post in the activities building would be empty. They lost.”
Shellbacher said all this without a glance at me or Casey, as if he were reciting from a manual. Like other men I’d met who worked inside prisons, he seemed to exist on a high plateau of tension.
The sally port in the main prison wall made me think of one of those barbaric old dungeons where the miscreants were chained to the wall and left to rot. It was a dank, forbidding area where you had to wait until the steel gate clanged shut behind you. It closed with a bang loud enough to make Casey wince, and he’d just been through there a couple of hours earlier. I nearly jumped out of my socks.
With the gate behind us closed, another one leading into the main prison compound was opened in front of us. We walked quickly across the dew-dappled, landscaped quadrangle. The adjustment center in the north cell block, housing the problem inmates, death row and the gas chamber was on our left. The prison chapel was on our right. We cast long, jerky shadows under the yard floodlights.
Down at the end of the alley between the chapel and activities building, where George Jackson had died, portable floodlights had been mounted, powered by a loud, gas-operated generator. The lights bathed the ground-floor windows at that end of the activities building. Half a dozen men clad in body armor and carrying rifles and shotguns hunkered behind some sort of barrier. Beyond them was the twenty-foot wall and a gun tower.
More men with flak jackets and shotguns were milling inside the activities building itself. Shellbacher spoke briefly with a lieutenant in charge, nodding toward me and Casey. A man in the doorway hawked and spat in the chill air. Empty paper coffee cups were crumpled and tossed into sand-canister ashtrays. Another steel gate somewhere inside the building clanged shut.
“Heartwarming place, isn’t it?” Casey said quietly.
I grunted. Shellbacher gestured us on. We followed him down the corridor, to where the hallway barricade had been wheeled into position. It looked as if it had been put together in one of the yard shops, probably by inmate labor, for just such an occasion. It was a seven-foot-high barrier of thick wooden planks that had narrow slots cut out to be used for observation or as gun ports. It could be moved on hard rubber wheels that retracted, like those on a portable typewriter stand, once the barrier was positioned. In the big circular ceiling mirror at the end of the corridor, about fifty feet beyond the barricade, I saw the reflection of sandbags propped nearly chest-high across the front of the barrier. Two men kept watch through the observation ports. Half a dozen others crouched or stood nearby. To one side, on the asphalt-tile floor, was a telephone.
Shellbacher spoke to one of the khaki-clad men at the barricade. He in turn dialed a four-digit number on the telephone. I could hear a phone ringing at the far end of the corridor, and a m
oment later somebody answered.
“Bancetti?” said the guard into the mouthpiece. “We have two civilians here. Mr. Martin, who was here before, and a Mr…” Shellbacher murmured my name. “And a Mr. Bragg.” He listened a moment. “Right, nice and slow.”
The guard hung up and gestured toward the barricade. Several officers manned the jack levers that hoisted the barrier above the wheels. They swung one end back slightly, making room for a man to squeeze through to the other side.
Shellbacher turned to us. “Bancetti gives the impression of being a very civilized man, Bragg, but watch your step. He’s vicious. I’m from his part of the country. I know.”
Casey went through first. I followed. The barrier was wheeled back and lowered. Casey led the way at a casual pace, but there was nothing casual about his posture. This was no-man’s-land. He’d come through the main gate and across the quadrangle with his head down and shoulders slumped. For the walk down the rest of the corridor, his body was erect and tense. So was mine, and my mouth was drying up on me. We paused about ten feet away from the slightly ajar door. Casey addressed himself to the ceiling mirror at the end of the corridor.
“Mr. Bancetti?”
“Yeah. That the man you sent for?” The voice didn’t betray any lack of sleep the man might have felt. It was deep-set and firm.
“That’s right,” said Casey. “His name is Peter Bragg. He’s good at his work. I think if anybody can help you, he can. He’s willing to try.”
I couldn’t let that one float past. I had to clear my throat to get my voice working. “That’s not quite correct,” I said toward the mirror, feeling just a little foolish. Nothing could be seen through the door opening in the reflection of the mirror. “I don’t even know yet what the problem is. Casey wanted me to hear it from you. I am willing to hear what you have to say. Then I’ll tell you what I think my chances are and we can go from there.”
After a pause the voice replied. “All right. Mr. Martin, you go back behind the barricade. And, Mr. Martin, thanks for doing what you said you’d do.”
Casey nodded and retreated back down the corridor.
“You, Bragg. Squat down by the wall to your left, then we can talk.”
“No,” I told him, in a voice steady enough to please myself. “No sitting out in a drafty corridor. No speaking at ceiling mirrors like I’m talking to the Holy Ghost. If we talk, we talk in there, sitting down in chairs like a couple of grown men.”
Another pause, then the voice. “Okay, but first I gotta know what you’re carrying in with you. Toss your jacket in front of the door.”
I took off the sports jacket, wadded it up and moved close enough to the door to toss it in front of the opening. A hand came out and scooped it inside. A moment later he spoke again.
“So far, so good, Mr. Bragg. Now I want you to put your hands behind your head and back into the doorway here so we can search you.”
I did what the man said. As I stepped around to the doorway, hands held me in place and did a quick pat down from behind me.
“Okay, come on in.”
I turned and squinted around the darkened room. They had hung blankets over the room’s two windows so the outside portable floodlights wouldn’t blind them. Somebody handed back my jacket, but it was another moment before my eyes adjusted to the gloom.
The man I recognized from the mug shots up on the warden’s desk as Beau Bancetti stood to one side of the sparsely furnished room, lighting a cigarette. Leaning against a meeting table in the middle of the room was the man identified as Pork Peterson. He seemed to fill the room. What he didn’t fill was taken up by what looked like a 9mm automatic pistol he held level in his hand, aimed at my stomach.
The pretty boy, Mitchell Tuck, was asleep in an overstuffed chair in one corner. From a bloody bandage wrapped around one forearm, he appeared to be the one who’d been winged by the guards at the building entrance.
Bancetti then made what I considered a gracious gesture, for a man in his position. He offered me a cigarette.
“Not right now, thanks. I gave them up a number of years ago. But I might ask for one later. Where’s Mr. Finseth?”
Bancetti motioned with his head to a closed door behind him. “In with the prisoners.”
“You mean hostages.”
“No, Mr. Bragg. Didn’t the warden give you The Speech? He doesn’t recognize hostages. No such thing exists. So they’re prisoners.”
He smiled weakly. They all had stubble on their faces. Their clothes were rumpled and I could smell the sweat on the blue denim outfits, despite the coolness of the room. I’d put my jacket back on but I still was cold.
“What did the warden do, turn off the heat to try freezing you out?”
“No, it’s always like this,” Bancetti told me, “except for a few warm weeks in the fall. This is a very old plant. Needs new boilers. The warden even admitted it, in an interview I read once. But over in the valley, in Sacramento, it’s a lot warmer than here, so far away from the water and all. In Sacramento, where the Legislature is, they don’t think boilers. They think air conditioning.”
I nodded, moved slowly over to a metal folding chair across from Bancetti and sat down. Peterson went around the table and sat in another folding chair. He put the pistol on the table in front of him. From where he sat he could see the ceiling mirror in the outside corridor.
“Want to tell me your story?” I asked Bancetti.
He nodded. “Sure.” He settled into the room’s other comfortable chair. It was a little ratty-looking, but it still had stuffing and give to it.
“I have a younger brother,” Bancetti told me. “Buddy, his name is. He lives in a little town up in the Sierra foothills northeast of Sacramento—Claireborn. Ever been there?”
“Only to drive past.”
He nodded. “It’s nice country. I grew up there. Pretty rural still, even with the freeway going by. Good hunting and fishing. Things pick up during the summer because of the lake. Lake Appleton. Lot of summer homes around it. That’s the sort of life my brother’s used to. He’s lived there all his life. Never been much anywhere else. Our folks are dead. An aunt on our mother’s side lived with Buddy until a year, maybe eighteen months ago. But she had to move down to Southern California to look after another aunt we have who isn’t getting on so well. So Buddy’s been living by himself up there in Claireborn. It’s okay, he can handle it, but he’s not really all that sophisticated, if you know what I mean.”
“How old is Buddy?”
“Eighteen now. But he’s not eighteen the way a lot of kids are. You can go off to war and kill people when you’re eighteen, most kids. But not Buddy. Buddy could never kill anybody. Not under the most extreme provocation do I think Buddy could kill anybody. Not yet, anyhow. But that’s what they say he did, Mr. Bragg. They say he killed a man who embarrassed him one time. Somebody who lived on Lake Appleton.” Bancetti shifted in his chair some.
“That’s the first part of the problem. The other’s related, but worse. Even if they sent Buddy to a joint like this for a murder he didn’t commit, it would be just a very tough break. One I could live with, if Buddy was like most kids when they’re eighteen. But he isn’t. Buddy…”
His voice broke a little and he took a furtive look around him, the way Buddy might, if he were there.
“I don’t think Buddy would last a month in a joint like this. Not a month.”
It was hard for him to talk about it. His voice was tight and he was making an effort to keep control of himself. But then, I doubted if he’d had much sleep during the night. His nerves wouldn’t be up to snuff.
“And that’s why you tried to break out of here?”
“Yep. And I think we had a pretty good chance too. I called in a lot of chits to get the gun in here, and the hook made for the walls. A whole lot of chits. If only the guards hadn’t been in the front slot. It’s been months since they’d done that.”
I shook my head, partly in token sympathy, partly in won
der that they had really expected to make it over the walls alive.
“What did you plan to do if you made it?”
“Go up to Claireborn. Talk to some people. Maybe find out who killed the man Buddy is accused of killing. At least get proof that Buddy didn’t do it.” He looked at me quietly. “I know it must sound a little weird, Mr. Bragg. But I could have done it. I know people in Claireborn. I could have gotten them to tell me things, and very quickly. I know how to hurt people. I would have found out, and before they could have caught me and sent me back here. Or shot and killed me.”
I glanced at the other two men. “And your cohorts would have gone with you?”
“They would have done whatever was necessary to help. They’re loyal. That’s what the Cherubs are all about.”
I took a deep breath and let it out slowly. “What is it about Buddy exactly that would make San Quentin or any other prison tougher for him than any other eighteen-year-old? Is he effeminate? A little slow? What?”
“He’s not effeminate, but then you don’t have to be if you’re in here at age eighteen, fuzzy-cheeked and all, and some chunk like Porky here takes a liking to you. Being shut away from women for long periods does that to some people. And Buddy’s not really slow, either, though he can give that impression. What he is, is excruciatingly shy, a little tongue-tied and not all that comfortable around other people. Maybe there’s a name some shrink would have to describe him. He panics very easily.”
“And what does he do when he panics?”
“Nothing. He just crawls up inside himself. I keep hoping he’ll grow out of it.” He shook his head. “All I know is, if Buddy had to come into a place like this, he’d either be dead or lose his mind, totally, inside a month.”
Bancetti stared at me quietly. “I’m his big brother. I have to see that doesn’t happen to him.”