by Jack Lynch
“On the edge of my chair.”
“Well. If anyone ever said that to me, I’d tell him I thought he was cute as a bird dog, but that we’d better quit visiting together except in the company of other people. Because, I’d tell him, there was only one man on this earth I’d be the least bit interested in seeing again the way he suggested, and that only if something awful should happen to Beau, and after I got through grieving over all that. And that man is somebody I knew before I met Beau. He’s not anybody I know now.”
“Would you tell me his name?”
“No, but don’t worry about it. I haven’t seen him in years. I don’t even know where he is now. He’s not a part of my life.”
“How about the fellow you told that to? He around?”
“He’s around, but we see very little of each other these days, and then only in the company of other people. Or at least that’s what I would have said if there had been any truth to any of this.”
“There is that, of course. Dallas, I was inside San Quentin and met the men with your husband, the ones holding the hostages. It occurred to me a little while ago while I was driving back down here that Mitchell Tuck was a pretty handsome fellow. It seemed to me if he ever took a liking to a girl, he could make quite an impression on her.”
She snorted. “God, but you’re really groping, aren’t you?”
“I don’t know any of you people. Hadn’t even heard of you until yesterday. Mitchell Tuck hired a lawyer for Buddy. But somebody inside San Quentin wrote the lawyer a strange note. I snuck a look at it. I interpreted the note to mean the lawyer should stall some in trying to free the kid. Now, who better to write such a note than the man who hired the lawyer?”
She leaned forward again with her arms on her knees. “Okay, let me tell you this. Mitchell Tuck is like a cocker spaniel puppy, at least around me. He’s cute as the dickens and I treat him the way I’d treat a kid, if I had any. We simply don’t have an adult relationship, Mr. Bragg, in any of its many forms.”
I shrugged. “Had to try. Is Luther a frequent visitor?”
“He’s one of several of the Cherubs who drop by from time to time to be company and see if they can do anything for me. They are very loyal to Beau and protective of me. You’re wasting your time letting your dirty mind go down these streets, Mr. Bragg.”
“Yeah, well, maybe you’re right. Then I’ll try my only other idea, and you won’t want to talk about that anymore than you did this other. It is so trite as to be really outlandish.”
She grinned at me. “I can’t wait to hear it. You’re pretty good at making a fool out of yourself.”
“I’ve got a lady friend who says the same thing. Well, let me try to say it in a way that maybe won’t sound so foolish. If you can’t think of a reason why somebody would like Beau out of the way, and you say it can’t be because anybody would be willing to kill to get at you, then maybe there’s something else Beau has they’d like to get their hands on, and know it wouldn’t be safe going after unless Beau already was dead. Say a big cache of money hidden away somewhere until he gets out of prison. Say a half-million dollars or some such Beau made from some big drug deal this somebody else knows about and would like to get at…”
She made that snort again, then got to her feet with a little laugh, put out her hands and spun around in a circle before dropping back into the chair.
“Whoo! Hey, Bragg, I’m glad you stopped by here this afternoon. You are a really funny fellow. Thank you for the show.”
Luther the Mean had come back without my noticing to stand in the open doorway. Now he stepped outside. “What’s this all about?”
“Nothing, Luther,” the girl told him. “Bragg here’s just been entertaining me. He’s got some imagination.”
“Glad you enjoyed it,” I told her. “But before you slap your knee and break up in a fit of giggling, you might try to remember the reason I’m doing this is to try figuring out who would like your husband dead.”
It quieted the woman and got Luther’s attention.
“What’s that?” he asked quietly.
“I’m not going into all of it now,” I told him. “But from what I’ve seen and learned yesterday and today, the only reason I think of that somebody might have framed Buddy Bancetti for murder was to goad Beau into doing just what he did—try to break out of prison—and the only reason I can think of why they would do that would be they wanted Beau dead and figured the odds of that happening during the breakout attempt were high, which they indeed were. And if all that is so, my getting his brother Buddy off the hook doesn’t really solve Beau’s troubles, because somebody’s apt to try arranging it another way.”
Luther exchanged glances with Dallas, then turned back to me. “That sounds nuts.”
“I know, but I’ve been dealing with this sort of thing for several years now. Something inside lets me know when I’m on the right track. I have that feeling now. I’d like to ask you the same thing I asked Mrs. Bancetti. Can you think of anybody who might want Beau dead? Or a reason why somebody might?”
“No. He’s never killed a cop I know of, or anybody else for that matter. He raises hell, like we all do, but not enough to get anybody that mad at him. He’s honest in his dealings, legal or illegal. He is a very respected man.”
“I heard Beau and some of you others used to be Hell’s Angels. But that you had some sort of falling out. Any possibility there?”
“None. Beau still rides and drinks with them some. Or did, before he went to prison.”
“Have you ever been up to the Claireborn area, where Beau and his brother are from?”
“Nope.”
“Any other Cherubs you know of have friends or relatives up there?”
“Mitchell Tuck might. He and Beau grew up together.”
“I know. But Mrs. Bancetti…” I thought about things for a minute.
“What is it, Bragg?” the woman asked.
“I was toying with the idea earlier that old puppy dog Mitchell Tuck could have been wanting you, but there’s another possibility.” I stretched my leg and stared at Luther a moment. He stared back with a grim expression.
“I’m pretty certain there’s a Claireborn connection to all this. Somebody knows some people up there well enough to get them to do some killing for them. Is there any reason you can think of why Mitchell might want Beau out of the way? Jealousy? A power move in the club? Maybe wanting the Cherubs to do some things Beau won’t let them? Anything at all like that?”
“No,” he said flatly. “Mitch is loyal-loyal. He would, maybe not gladly, but he would die for Beau. I know that for a fact.”
I threw up my hands. “Okay, scratch that.” I thought a moment. Mrs. Bancetti made a contemplative hum to herself.
“You know,” she said, “up to now I’ve been thinking you’re on some kind of dope, with all these ideas. But I just thought about something Beau told me…” She cut herself off quickly, as if biting her tongue. “Oh, no, I remember now, that was about something else. Forget what I said.” She got to her feet. “Gentlemen, I’ve got things to do now, if you’ll both excuse me.”
I got to my feet and made another face doing it.
“Gonna make it all right, gimp?” Luther asked in a not-unfriendly way.
“Got to,” I told him, limping over toward the door.
“What happened?” he asked.
“Got shot this morning.”
“No shit?”
“No shit,” Dallas told him. “He dropped his pants to show me the bandage.”
Luther made a honking sort of laugh. “Poor bastard,” he told me.
Luther went ahead of me into the house. I turned back to Dallas. “When did you talk to Beau?”
“Friday night. By phone from the warden’s office. They thought I could change his mind about the hostages and all.” She gave me a little tap on the chest and lowered her voice. “Call me from somewhere in the next few minutes, huh?”
I winked and turned to follo
w Luther back through the house and out front. Dallas went out to say hello to Buddy. The Cherub wheeled his bike around and started the motor. I climbed into my car. After a moment’s greeting Dallas went back to her doorstep.
“Good luck,” Luther called across to me.
“Same to you,” I called back.
We all of us drove off. I went sedately. Luther went ahead of me with a roar and performed a couple of wheelies, to the delight of a group of kids hanging out down at the corner. I drove into a lot beside a small supermarket just back across the city limits into Richmond. I got out and phoned Dallas Bancetti again.
“I didn’t want Luther to hear this,” she told me. “But if you’re right, if somebody’s out to kill my old man, this might mean something. Beau and I talked some about what happened on Friday afternoon when they tried to escape.”
“Go on.”
“He said those two guards who were at the checkpoint there just inside the activities building apparently were put there just minutes before they tried to get out.”
“So?”
“He said something was wrong about that. When they man that guard station they do it all day long, he said, not just before the building is shut down for the day. He said one of the others checked it out not ten minutes before they were due to go. The post was empty.”
“I still don’t think I get it.”
“Somebody who must have known what they were going to try must have squealed to the guards. If it was a setup, like you say, the guards probably were the ones who were supposed to shoot Beau. What do you think of that?”
“I’m not sure. Why didn’t you want Luther to hear this?”
“Oh, don’t worry. I’m going to tell him sometime maybe after this is all over. But I thought you might want to try talking to those guards yourself, if you can find out who they are.”
“I still don’t get it about Luther.”
“Luther would kill them. Or some of the other Cherubs would, if they suspected the same thing you’ve got me suspecting.”
I thought about it a minute. “I guess you’re right. Either your husband or one of the other men with him probably could identify at least one of the guards. They’d get word to their friends outside, sooner or later.”
“Bragg, don’t be so slow. The Cherubs wouldn’t need Beau to tell them. There’s this—you know, sort of little network among the guards. At Quentin and probably any other prison. Certain of them have little favors done for them by Cherubs and Angels and others on the outside. In turn, little favors are done by them for the Cherubs and Angels and others on the inside.”
“Like get a gun inside the walls?”
“Maybe. At least, like get some drugs in.”
“You mean Luther could find out through this little network you’re talking about who the men on duty at the guard station were on Friday.”
“Boy, do you have a fast brain. Sure. Luther could make a phone call or two and know inside of ten minutes who those men were. They could maybe be dead before you got over to Marin County, even.”
EIGHTEEN
I wanted to go on vacation right then. I wanted to say to hell with it and leave the kids and drive up to Barracks Cove and carry Allison France away from whatever she was doing and go out and find a beach where we could just kick back and run our feet through the sand and listen to the surf. I wanted to bask in the company of one of the better examples of the human species. That’s my Allison. I needed her right then more than I could put into words.
But instead of doing that I phoned the warden’s office at San Quentin. When Thompson came on the line he sounded even more out-of-sorts than I was.
“How are things?” I asked him.
“Worse, if you can believe that.”
“What happened?”
“They’re shooting at my men now.”
I almost laughed. I must have snickered, at least.
“What’s that?” Thompson snapped.
“Sorry. That’s almost more than I can imagine. How are they shooting at your men?”
“Simple. Hand comes around the corner of the doorway with the pistol in it and fires randomly down the corridor.”
“Something must have provoked them.”
“Of course something provoked them. An attempt by me to reestablish communications provoked them.”
“They’re answering the phone again?”
“No. We put in fans to suck out the chemical gas from the corridor. A little later they opened their door again. When I heard that I sent an officer to the barricade to call down to them. I had him apologize in my name for the earlier attempt to storm their quarters. The officer did that. That was the first time somebody put his arm out into the corridor and fired in the direction of the barricade. Then one of them shouted out that if another attempt was made to overpower them, many people would die. The man said the first three dead people would be the two women and the guard they are holding. Do you have the Bancetti boy with you?”
“Yes.”
“When will you get here?”
“Soon. But I need some information from you first.”
“What sort of information?”
“This might be confidential. Are you alone in your office?”
“One moment.”
He put down the receiver. I heard him talking to somebody. Two other voices responded in the background. A moment later he came back on the line.
“All right, I’m alone now. What is this about?”
“Warden, I know you’ve had a certain distrust, or misgiving, about my part in all this. I can understand that. But you’ve got to admit I’ve come through for you in the job I was given to do. Buddy Bancetti is sitting in a car with a friend not twenty feet from me. We’re just across the bay, in Richmond.”
“I acknowledge what you’ve done, Bragg. Since last talking to you I phoned Claireborn and spoke with that sheriff’s sergeant, Findley. He confirmed what you’d told me and filled me in a little more about the girl’s shooting and your role in running down the suspect. It was a fine job you did, is what the sergeant said. I’m sorry you were wounded during it.”
“That’s nice to hear, Warden. Because I’m going to have to strain your patience a bit more, before I bring in young Bancetti.”
He didn’t answer right away. Then I heard him laugh softly. Maybe we all were at the point of going around the bend.
“Jesus,” he said finally. “What now?”
“I want to talk to the two guards who were posted at the entrance to the activities building when Bancetti tried to break out. The two men who stopped him.”
“Why?”
“I can’t say for sure, until after I talk with them. From everything I’ve learned since yesterday, I think there are a lot of ramifications involved here. I think the earlier killing in Claireborn, the one the younger Bancetti boy was arrested for, was a part of something bigger that’s going on inside your prison. What, I don’t know. But I don’t think it would be wise for me or the Bancetti boy to come in until I’ve tried to learn more about it.”
“And you think the two men on duty Friday are a part of it?”
“Unknowingly, perhaps. I’d like a chance to talk to them and see what I can find out. Only I don’t want them to know what my real role is in all this. I’d like you to tell them I have your authorization to talk with them. Just tell them I’m a reporter from out of town. Tell them I’m with the Los Angeles Times. I want to do a story on the prison side of things, about how you people handled the breakout attempt.”
The warden mulled it over for a bit. “You’re right, Bragg. You are straining my patience. I don’t much care about any ramifications. I just want those two women safely out of here.”
“But what I’m saying, Warden, is the whole thing could blow up in our faces at the last minute, if we don’t know what’s really behind it. It shouldn’t take but an hour more. I think the both of us owe at least an hour of our lives to the young girl I saw shot to death this morning
.”
It wasn’t fair, really, throwing that in the face of a man who’d been under the strain Barry Thompson had been under. But then, there was truth in it. And it worked.
“The two men have been put on administrative leave for the time being. We wanted them away from here. Let me make a couple of phone calls and get back to you. What is the number you’re phoning from?”
I told him the number, then played tie-up-the-telephone, standing there with one hand holding the receiver to the ear and the other casually depressing the disconnect bar. Occasional movement of mouth also is called for if other would-be dialers are in the area. It is a technique developed by newspaper reporters and others who need to stall and maintain control of the only telephone that might be available within half a mile of a breaking news event. There is no point in gathering information if it can’t be transmitted back to the city room. If a team of reporters is on the scene, one can gather information while the other stands guard over the lone telephone. It is a job that takes fortitude. It takes a certain nerve, for instance, at the scene of a major gas explosion, to fend off tattered survivors anxious to phone home and let relatives know they weren’t blown to kingdom come. As I’d told people during my years with The Chronicle, newspapering isn’t all wisecracking and belly laughs. The warden called back five minutes later.
“All right, Bragg. One of the men is out of the area, up at Clear Lake. The other is at home. He lives on a houseboat on Corte Madera Creek, about a mile from the prison. I told him to expect you, and I gave him the story you wanted me to.”
He said the guard’s name was Cooper and he gave me the address.
I told the kids to follow me and led them down Cutting Boulevard and across the Richmond-San Rafael Bridge. San Quentin prison is set on the point where the western end of the bridge is anchored. We took a road that looped around the north side of the prison itself and continued over to Highway 101. I led them into the parking lot of a restaurant next to a motel, gave them some money and suggested they get a bite to eat while I ran another errand. I told them we’d be going back to the prison as soon as I returned. Buddy Bancetti swallowed a time or two but didn’t say anything.