The Complete Bragg Thriller Box Set

by Jack Lynch

  I asked him a few questions about the custodial chain of command. He answered forthrightly. He had admitted at our first meeting that there were a whole lot of people who worked for the California Department of Corrections. They were screened as best they could be, but still they were ordinary men, with all the quirks and shady corners common to ordinary men.

  Then in a moment I hoped he didn’t think was too theatrical, I asked not to tell anybody what I was about to do. But all he did was go retrieve his pencil, shoot me a look and nod his head. I at least had gotten his attention. Even he could see that if my suspicions were true and the wrong people learned how close I was getting, I could be at considerable risk myself.

  He left the office. I went out and visited with Aggie and Buddy to gauge the emotional temper of things. It wasn’t good. The boy had paled. He was very edgy.

  “They aren’t even in the general living quarters of the prison,” I told him in a calm voice. “It’s the activities building, where they hold classes and discussion groups. Where they print the prison newspaper. Things like that. It’s just a short walk across a landscaped area and down a hallway. There are probably two dozen armed guards in there, and a wooden barricade. From there you can call down the hallway to your brother, just so he could recognize your voice.”

  He shook his head. “I don’t know.”

  Aggie and I exchanged glances. She didn’t look too optimistic. The warden called me in a few moments later. A stack of folders was on his desk.

  “There they are,” he told me. “Sit in my chair, if you like. Try not to bleed on it.” He crossed the room and took off his sports coat, folded it neatly and laid it on a low table. Then he stretched out full length on his back on the scruffy sofa.

  I went through the files, first of Cooper and the other guard who’d been on duty with him, Reilly. Cooper’s file told me about what he’d told me about himself. There were two reprimands in his file. Over a three-year period he had reported to duty under the influence of alcohol on two occasions. The second occasion had been more than eighteen months earlier. I shook my head. I figured if I had his job and thought I could get away with it that was how I’d show up for work every day.

  Reilly was a retired twenty-year army sergeant. There was no blemish on his record. He’d been at San Quentin the entire nine years of his second career with the Department of Corrections. I took him to be a remarkably well-adjusted man, or one completely lacking in imagination. It was the work record more of a draft animal than a man. He originally was from a town in Florida and still had relatives there. Married. Three grown children. He lived in Petaluma, about twenty-five miles north of the prison. I put the folder aside. The warden still was flat on the couch, hands behind his head, staring at the ceiling.

  Cooper and Reilly were the only enlisted men on the staff I was interested in. The others were upper-echelon, lieutenants or above. The elusive man, or men, I sought had to have a little clout. They had to have access to certain areas of the prison, certain inmates and certain information.

  Going through the material in the jackets gave me a better appreciation of the state prison system. Prisons aren’t something people routinely sit around contemplating. We mostly think about them when we see or hear a news story to do with them, and that usually after there’s been trouble. The stories don’t usually make mention of the professional keepers who cope with the shortcomings of the system and manage to maintain a custodial operation in spite of the handicaps. I was learning about a few of them now, going through the files. Their families and backgrounds made them come alive. I had to wonder why they had chosen jobs in penology. I was thankful that they had.

  When I found what I was looking for I grunted. I should have thought of it sooner. I’d known from early in the going, but I guess killing and wounding screws up your memory banks some.

  Thompson sat up and swung around on the sofa. “Find something?”

  “Yes sir.” I closed the folder and slipped it back among the other so he wouldn’t know which one I’d been looking at.

  “Well, what is it?”

  “Not yet, Warden.”

  “Now, God damn it, Bragg,” he said, coming up off the sofa.

  I got out of his chair and grabbed my crutches. “Hold on, Warden, you wouldn’t hit a wounded man, would you?”

  “I might, this one time.”

  “Look. I’ve got the who of it, but not the why.” I swung around his desk and made a pleading gesture. “Warden, you’re not going to like it, whether I tell you now or a little while from now. It will be better for me to be able to give it to you whole. And when I do, you’re going to have to make some profoundly difficult decisions. Just let me finish getting the information you’ll need to make the best decision.”

  He fumed. I held up a placating hand. “I’m not a genius, Warden. I was just lucky this time to have been at the right places at the right times to work it all out. It won’t take much longer to finish. But I need a couple more answers. We both do.”

  He took a deep breath to get control of himself. “What do you plan to do next?”

  “I want to make a private phone call up to Sergeant Findley, in Claireborn. Then I want—no, I don’t really want to, but I have to go back inside and somehow make Beau Bancetti talk to me again, back there where all the gang is at the end of the corridor in the activities building. I’ll go in with his brother, if the boy will go. By myself if he won’t.”

  The tension between us was gone.

  “I guess if you’re crazy enough to take that chance again, you must be onto something at the nitty-gritty, we used to say.”

  “I am. How about showing me a phone I can use?”

  He nodded and led me to an unoccupied office down the hall. He talked to somebody on the switchboard and got me an outside line before handing the receiver to me and going back to the doorway. There, he paused.

  “Bragg?”

  “Yeah?”

  “What if something happens? What if you don’t come back out?”

  He was right, of course. I took a deep breath. “I’ll write a name down and give it to the girl with Buddy, Aggie. If something happens to me, phone Sergeant Findley and ask him what he can tell you about that name, then get Cooper back in here and sweat him dry until he tells you all he can about the same person.”

  The warden nodded. “Thanks.”

  I made my call.

  TWENTY

  I went swinging back out to the reception area. I touched the wounded leg down some, testing it. It was numb and I would have preferred tossing away the crutches, but I didn’t know the leg wouldn’t just collapse under me at some point.

  Aggie’s a smart girl. She could tell from the way I looked and the way I moved that this was the moment, if there was to be a moment. She got up, her lips in a thin, tight line, as if she would be the one going inside instead of Buddy. I gave her arm a little squeeze. Buddy stood awkwardly. The room was empty for the moment except for the duty officer at the reception desk. I took the two of them to a corner and spoke quietly.

  “I think I finally figured out a lot of what’s behind all this, Buddy. I know why you were framed and who was responsible for it. Somebody wanted your brother to try to escape. You were the bait. Jailbait, in a way. And your brother was supposed to have been killed during the escape attempt.”

  The boy squinted at me. He didn’t get it.

  “Good Lord,” said Aggie. “Why would somebody want that?”

  “That is the one thing left I have to find out,” I told them. “And I have to go back inside and talk to Beau in order to do it. I’m going in there now.”

  Warden Thompson had come into the reception area and was speaking quietly to the duty officer.

  “Would you try phoning them one more time?” I asked him.

  “Just did,” Thompson told me with a shake of his head.

  “Okay,” I said, turning back to Buddy. “That means I’ll have to go in and try to establish contact with your br
other again. I could use your help, if you’re willing to give it a try.”

  A variety of expressions crossed his face. He was opening and closing his hands.

  “We can try it in stages,” I told him. “Just stroll over to the main sally port entrance. Once we’re through there you can just stand inside the walls for a moment, getting used to things. Like I said, there’s a little landscaped area there. Looks almost like a park, surrounding the flag poles. Then it’s just a short walk over to the activities building.”

  The boy didn’t say anything.

  “I don’t know what your fears are, Buddy. If I did, maybe I could work on them some.”

  He raised his head and gave me a direct look. “That’s the problem, Mr. Bragg. I don’t know what they are, either. But they sure are there.” And then he looked at Aggie and stiffened up straight with a little nod. “But okay, let’s give it a try. Sooner the better.”

  The warden assigned a Lieutenant Daniels as our escort this time. He was a husky, blond fellow in his early thirties. I gave Aggie a page from my notepad with a name scribbled on it and told her to give it to the warden if I didn’t come back out in a conscious state.

  We stepped outside and made our way through the group of newspaper and television people. The dog in the car came alive and woof-woofed at us as we passed. Buddy didn’t look at him. Aggie paused long enough to reach in a hand and ruffle his head, then ran to catch up with us.

  “I’ll be waiting just outside for you,” she told Buddy. Then she moved over beside me. “I could go along, you know. I’m tougher than most all the boys I know.”

  “No,” I said.

  “Indeed not,” said Lieutenant Daniels.

  There was an unfortunate delay at the gate in the walls. Some other sort of business from inside was being conducted. The outer gate couldn’t be opened until that was taken care of and the inner gate was closed. The sun had long since dipped behind the high ridges sloping down from the double peaks of Mt. Tamalpais to the west of us. Dusk was fast approaching and the prison floodlights had been turned on. They put a hard glare on the wall looming over us. Curious guards stared at us from nearby gun towers. You could see the boy’s resolve drain out of him by the second.

  When the gate rolled open in front of us with a rasp, he blanched. I patted him on the shoulder. Aggie gave him a little shove. We walked into the grim sally port. Lieutenant Daniels walked over to speak with a pair of gate guards.

  I still hadn’t gotten used to the loud clang the outer gate made when it banged shut behind us. I nearly dropped my crutches. Buddy made a big twitch and closed his eyes. I don’t know why everything had to take so long. I tried giving Buddy another reassuring pat on the arm, but he opened his eyes and gave me a look that told me to keep my hands to myself. Then the inner gate opened with another bang. Daniels and I started out but Buddy didn’t move. Daniels already was in the inner court. I paused. Buddy had backed up until he almost was cringing at the far gate. I knew then it wouldn’t work.

  “I’m sorry,” he told me shaking his head. “But I can’t. I just can’t.”

  I motioned Daniels back into the sally port.

  “It isn’t going to work this time,” I told him. “Let’s go back outside for a moment.”

  The lieutenant was decent enough to keep his face a mask and his thoughts to himself. He signaled the gate guards. They clanged shut the inner gate and a moment later rolled open the outer. Buddy trotted out and a little ways off to one side and lowered his head. He gagged and lost some of his recent snack. Aggie watched from a distance. I couldn’t tell what she felt right then—compassion, disappointment, whatever. For myself, I just felt a growing urgency to get the job done.

  “Are you going to try again?” the lieutenant asked.

  “Not with the boy,” I told him. And then, with the perimeter floodlights half blinding me and the tower guards staring curiously and Lieutenant Daniels looking as if he was about to scuff his feet impatiently, I had one of my brighter ideas. I called to Aggie and told her what I wanted, and as she led Buddy Bancetti off, Lieutenant Daniels and I leaned against a portion of the prison wall as if it were the front of a drug store and we were watching the girls go by.

  Ten minutes later I was back inside the main prison compound. When I entered the activities building my nose burned and my eyes watered from the residue of chemical gas that had been set off down the corridor several hours before. Ventilation wasn’t any more efficient than the boiler plant or any other of the major systems in San Quentin. The men sitting in the outer lobby had more or less grown used to it, but their eyes were red and there was a lot of nose-blowing into handkerchiefs. Gas masks were lying around, but after a long-enough period, they become more irritating to the face and uncomfortable than the residue of the chemical agent.

  When I had gotten accustomed to it, I crutched my way on down the corridor to the barricade. Deputy Warden Shellbacher was in charge there at the moment.

  “Have you heard anything from those people recently?” I asked him.

  “Not a word since they threatened earlier in the day to kill a lot of people if anyone tried going down this corridor any farther,” he told me coldly. “They amuse themselves from time to time by shooting their weapon up this way. Some of the slugs have ricocheted off corners of the ceiling and spun down behind us. It’s made for a long and exciting day.”

  I nodded. “Well, be a little patient with me and maybe I can end it for you.”

  “That would be nice of you,” he said tartly.

  I stood near the edge of the barricade and hailed the men in the rooms at the end of the hallway.

  “This is Peter Bragg,” I yelled. “I’m the man who agreed to…”

  The next moment I was slumped halfway to the floor as four or five rounds were fired from the partially opened door at the end of the corridor. When the sound subsided I pulled myself back up to my feet. The guards around me wore tight expressions and worked the bolts on their weapons. I edged back to the side of the barricade and called out again.

  “All right, you fucking hero, I would like the man who shot at me to identify himself. I am not a prison guard. I am an unarmed man who told Beau Bancetti I would try to get his brother out of jail. And I’ve done that.”

  I managed to get it all out without somebody starting to shoot at me again. I decided to keep talking. Sometimes it’s the best thing I do. Besides, maybe I wasn’t as angry as I was letting on, but I was angry enough.

  “I have done what I agreed to do,” I shouted. “And in the doing of it, this morning I was shot and wounded in the leg. I’m on crutches and I don’t move too good, but I’d still like to know the identity of the man who felt he had to shoot at me just now. I would be more than happy to face off with him in a one-on-one situation right now, if he has the guts to try it. Who was it?”

  Nobody replied. That was good. I’d shamed him, whoever he was. You could hear muttered conversation in the rooms where they were holed up.

  “Okay, hero,” I yelled again. “I want to speak with Beau Bancetti. He’s the one I agreed to work for. He’s the one I want to report in to.”

  There was a moment’s quiet, then Beau Bancetti called back to me in a voice that was hoarse and tense.

  “Sorry, Bragg. But you’re too late. Too little and too late.”

  “Bancetti, let me come down there and talk to you. Same as before. I’ll strip naked if you want.”

  “The next person who tries to come down that corridor is a dead man,” Bancetti yelled back. “They broke their promise. Early this morning.”

  “I heard about that. It was none of my doing. Bancetti, listen, it is imperative that I talk to you. This is even more important than your brother.”

  “Nothing is more important than my brother.”

  “Hear me out. Just let me come down there and talk with you.”

  “No way, Mr. Detective.”

  “But I did what you wanted. I got Buddy out of jail.”


  “Then why isn’t he here?”

  “He is here. If you’d plug your phone in, you could talk to him. He’s back in the warden’s office.”

  “They got phones all over the country. If he’s really here, why isn’t he with you, at the barricade?”

  “You know how he is, Beau. We tried to get him in here not twenty minutes ago. I got him as far as the sally port, but he couldn’t bring himself to come on in the rest of the way. He went back outside and puked his guts out. Aggie Reynolds is with him.”

  He didn’t have an immediate reply to that. I’d at least proven to him that I’d been up to Claireborn. He knew Aggie. And he knew it would be very natural for her to have come down here with his brother, and I figured now was the time to play the last frumpy card I had. The frumpy card had been doing an arthritis-hampered but vigorous jiggling dance at my feet ever since he’d heard and recognized Beau’s voice. He was burping and pumping foul air out of his mouth and making little whimpers of remembered joy and companionship, and I signaled for a couple of the guards to crack back the edge of the barricade, and when they did, I patted Mr. Wumps on the ass and he wiggled his way through the opening and began a belching, hesitant trot down to where he’d heard his master’s voice. Then I yelled again down to Beau.

  “But even if I couldn’t get Buddy to come in here with me,” I told him, “I found somebody else you know who seemed pretty unbothered by it all. He’s been doing a little dance since he heard your voice. He’s on his way down to see you now.”

  The dog yelped a time or two and paused just outside the open door, his tail wagging a mile a minute.

  “Oh, Jesus,” I heard Bancetti say. “Oh, Jesus Christ, you dumb fucker, what are you doing here?”

  And then the door opened a bit more and Mr. Wumps wobbled inside, yelping with idiotic joy. I glanced around. Shellbacher still was staring down the corridor with a grim expression, but you could see the tension draining from the faces of the other guards.

  One of them put a pump shotgun aside and rubbed his face vigorously.