by Paul Bishop
In the back of the limo, the two adversaries sat as far apart as possible. Wyatt was oily smooth in his role as host, handing Fey a glass of fresh-squeezed orange juice and producing a tray of recently prepared sushi for a lunchtime repast.
Fey picked a California roll off the sterling-silver serving platter and popped it in her mouth and chewed. “You do have style,” She told Wyatt begrudgingly. She sipped orange juice from a crystal goblet.
“Do you really despise me?” Wyatt asked. He settled into his corner of the limo, watching Fey as shadows of light played across her countenance through tinted windows.
“Yes,” Fey said. To say anything else would have been hypocritical. Fey wasn't concerned about hurting Wyatt's feelings. She knew he didn't have any.
“Why?” Wyatt asked.
“Other than your attempts to sabotage my career, or you making my private psychiatric sessions into tabloid fodder?”
Wyatt gave a shrug and a smirk. “You have broad emotional shoulders. Those things are nothing you can't handle.”
“Who died and made you God?”
“Let's not resort to clichéd name calling. I'm truly interested.”
Fey ate another California roll before replying. “Why do you care?”
“My limo, my food, my private jet, humor me.”
“You answered your own question.”
“You hate me because I'm rich?”
“No. I despise you for how you became rich.”
“But aren’t our incomes the same source — the misery of the human condition?”
Fey ignored the jibe. “I don't despise you because you represent scum. I despise you because you are without morals or scruples. You will lie, cheat, steal, manipulate, blackmail, and defraud to get your clients off, no matter what the cost.”
“You hate me because I'm good at my job?” Wyatt's false modesty was palpable.
“My point is, you aren't.” Fey sat up straighter, tweaked by her fervor. “Your job is to provide clients with the best defense possible within the law, not the best defense corruption can buy. All you care about is the temporal, personal power your corruption brings you, fancy limousines, private jets.” She waved her hand around. “Right and wrong doesn't occur to you.”
“And there’s exactly what I despise about you,” Wyatt said, fighting back.
“What do you mean?” Fey was sorry the second the question left her lips.
Wyatt's defense mechanisms were turning onto the attack. “You are so positive about what's right. You judge all cops by your own standards. You think every cop has your integrity, that police never do anything wrong. You walk through your cases wearing blinders, not seeing framing suspect is something cops do all the time. To you everything is black and white. You bend the rules to fit your own moral imperative because you're completely convinced you're right.”
“I am right.”
“You've never made a mistake?”
“Lots of them.”
“Then what makes you think you're God?”
Fey's feral smile was quick. “Because every time I talk to God, I find I'm talking to myself.”
***
Another the limousine met them at San Francisco International. As it streaked smoothly along the Golden Gate Bridge, Fey contented herself with the thought she had stumped Wyatt. Ever since their earlier exchange in the first limo, Wyatt had ignored Fey's presence. He worked from a briefcase on his lap, alternately scribbling notes on a yellow legal pad, reading correspondence, talking on a cell phone, and entering data into a laptop computer. If his activity was aimed to impress Fey, it was failing miserably. She ignored Wyatt in return and tried to order her own thoughts.
Despite her smug answer, Wyatt had hit a nerve with his criticism. In many ways, her time on the job had been sheltered — not from the vagaries and debaucheries of what humans do to each other, but sheltered from making difficult choices between right and wrong.
It had been easy for her to take down Deputy Chief Vaughn Harrison for his part in the death of an LAPD detective a year earlier. But it had been less easy to ignore the manipulations and corruptions of the then chief of police leading to Harrison's demise. Fey's choices boiled down to the traditional lesser of two evils.
She understood the dynamics leading up to the Rodney King incident. She understood what led the officers to strike King with such fury. Those were things you could never explain to somebody outside the job. If you were on the job, no explanation was necessary. But for Fey, the actions of those who struck King were not unfathomable; it was the actions of those officers who stood and watched.
She sometimes wondered if she would have had the integrity to have made a stand. Would she have stopped the incident before it got so out of hand? Or would she have stood around doing nothing, not wanting to break ranks? Not knowing the answer bothered her.
Wyatt was wrong. She didn't think she was God. She didn't know who or what she thought she was. She tried not to think about those types of questions. It only made her paranoid.
“Do you know who St. Quentin was?” Wyatt's question broke Fey's reverie.
“Some Catholic somebody, I suppose.” Fey said.
Wyatt had put away his work. He was again sitting with his back to the far corner of the limo sipping from a glass, this one filled with champagne.
“He was a third-century Roman beheaded by pagan Gauls after they ran heated iron spits through his body from head to foot.”
“Ouch.”
Wyatt smiled. “Legend has it when Quentin's head was mercifully struck off, a white dove issued forth from his severed throat and flew to heaven.”
“I'm sure he makes a splendid example for San Quentin's inmates.”
“I'm sure he would,” Wyatt said. “But unfortunately, he had nothing to do with the name of the prison.”
Fey rolled her eyes. “Then I don't know my San Quentin from my St. Quentin. Happy?”
“Partially.”
They were quiet as the limo drove past the live oaks of Marin County, and through hills of blue granite.
Fey said eventually. “Who was San Quentin?”
Wyatt's smile was broad. A small victory.
“He wasn't actually a saint. He was an Indian warrior, a subordinate to the great Chief Marin. In 1824, he led the Licatuit Indians in their last stand against Mexican troops.”
“Was he killed?”
“He surrendered before being driven into the sea at the end of this peninsula, which is named after him. He was then taken to San Francisco where the priests at Mission Delores put him to work as skipper. He did the same job later for General Vallejo.”
“How did he get to be sainted?”
“He wasn't. The Anglo-Saxons arrived in California under the impression all the inhabitants were zealous Catholics. Hoping to gain support, they added San to the names of all the villages they visited. So Punta de Quentin became San Quentin.”
Wyatt finished his travelogue as the limo approached the imposing gates of the prison. An exterior chain link and barbed wire enclosure stopped their progress. Wyatt began dealing with the bureaucracy to gain entry and visit Eldon Dodge.
Wyatt had refused to be drawn on Dodge's reasons for wanting to talk with Fey. He told her it was up to Dodge to explain. Fey sensed an unease in Wyatt, as if he didn't know what Dodge wanted.
“Who's paying you?” Fey asked while waiting at the entry gate. “After all this time on Death Row, Dodge can't have any funds left.”
“Icons such as Dodge can always find people foolish enough to support their cause.”
“And you're more than willing to take your share?”
Wyatt put on an expression of mock shock. “But, of course.”
When the limo was allowed through the first barrier, another guard directed the stoic driver to a parking location.
Fey got out, stretching her back and legs. The weather was cool, but the temperature did not cause the sudden chill Fey felt starting deep inside of her. The b
ack of her neck tingled, and she smoothed a hand over her hair.
It was her biggest phobia.
More than spiders and snakes. More than being suffocated in a small place unable to move. More than being raped. More than anything, Fey was afraid of going to prison.
***
Fey And Wyatt quickly found themselves hustled through Reception and Release, where Death Row inmates were photographed, fingerprinted, and issued their blankets and prison blues. A guard came forward to escort Fey and Wyatt from R&R to A/C, the Adjustment Center. This was where all Death Row inmates were held until the Classification Committee determined where on Death Row they would be placed.
During all of this shuffling and waiting, Fey fought to keep her breathing normal. Her mind betrayed her, however, picking up vibrations of hatred, fear, anger, and evil, all directed specifically at her. She knew this was ridiculous, but she was unable to stop her internal trembling. She didn't know how much she could take.
She was fine in the small holding jails at the various police stations, or while visiting court lockups. Even the twin towers at L.A. County Jail didn't faze her. But being inside a prison freaked her out.
There were three locations inside San Quentin housing Death Row's condemned. The first was the A/C where Fey and Wyatt were being searched and processed through metal detectors. The A/C housed inmates classed as Grade B Condemned. These were mostly prison gang members with a history of stabbings on the row. Life was monastic and restrictive, an eight minute shower per day was the only time spent outside a cell.
A/C consisted of three floors with thirty to thirty-five cells per floor. The cells were stylishly furnished with a stainless steel sink, a toilet, a bare light bulb in the ceiling, and a sheet metal shelf covered with an inch thick pad for a bed. One inmate per cell. Cobweb time.
Most inmates managed to get themselves moved to Grade A Condemned in order to be transferred to the vast cavern of East Block. This structure was reminiscent of a huge blimp hangar with a metal catwalk, along which guards patrolled with machine guns and revolvers. Chinks in the concrete of the block floor and walls were a testament to bad marksmanship.
There were approximately two-hundred-and-fifty condemned inmates housed in Condemned Row II, on East Block's bay side. The yard side opposite was home to cons who had problems in the mainstream population, or serious mental challenges requiring constant monitoring.
Eldon Dodge was housed in North Seg, the original Death Row, otherwise known as The Shelf. The celebrity status of the thirty-five cells on The Shelf was sacrosanct. North Seg housed the gas chamber, which gave an aura of awe to the location. The gas chamber’s exhaust stack shot up next to The Shelf's exercise yard on the roof. A constant, daily reality check.
Fey and Wyatt patiently followed directions as they were escorted to a North Seg visiting room. Fey felt her blood was turning into adrenaline.
They waited in the mausoleum-like, metal-walled room for fifteen minutes. There was a small window above head height on the back wall. A metal table was bolted to the concrete floor. There were four chairs bolted down around the table too far away to be practical. The only sound was Fey's pulse pounding in her ears.
There was a noise as the door swung open. Fey flashed back to the House of Horror films she had been addicted to as a child. She felt a familiar terror as a tall, muscular man wearing only grey briefs, rubber thongs, and iron shackles filled the entrance space.
He smiled slowly, displaying a mouth full of misshapen teeth.
His voice when he spoke was full and deep. “I'm Reverend Eldon Dodge. Welcome to Hell.”
TWENTY FOUR
Somewhere Ferris Jackson had learned about dry cleaning. Not the no ticky, no washy kind of dry cleaning, but dry cleaning procedures used by heroes in bad spy novels to make sure they weren't being tailed.
In keeping with basic dry cleaning techniques, Ferris drove in circles, ran lights, pulled off to the side of the freeway, and on several occasions drove down one onramp and up the next. All of this might have helped, except she skipped the chapter where the spy hero thinks about checking for an electronic tracer on the car bumper.
Without the signals from the magnetic bug, Hammer and Nails would have needed to keep Ferris in sight, a guaranteed way to get burned during a surveillance when somebody is checking for a tail. To successfully sight-follow a subject, it took a team of at least six vehicles, all playing leapfrog, or weaving in and out of traffic on parallel routes. Even then, a savvy dry cleaner could possibly pick up the tail.
With the electronic impulses from the tracer on Ferris' bumper bleeping, the duo was able to stay back and take evasive action whenever Ferris started dry cleaning.
The drawback came when Ferris parked at her destination. Hammer couldn't be sure this wasn't simply another dry cleaning maneuver and almost missed seeing Ferris slip into the colorful shopping arcades of Olvera Street.
“Go! Go!” Hammer said to Rhonda. She already had the van door open and was hopping to the ground. Slamming the door, she disappeared into the crowd of tourists and local shoppers.
Stretching across the shadows of the imposing art-deco train platforms of Union Station, Olvera Street is the oldest thoroughfare in Los Angeles. The area teems with tourists who have come to sample the colorful wares of the Hispanic culture dominating the area.
Dressed in traditional costumes, performers showed off their skills at the Mexican hat dance or the calypso to encourage the flow of tourist dollars. Mariachis stroll among the crowds, sharing songs from past generations, while street vendors run temporary food stands that would send any Health Department inspector into instant shock.
The street is brightly colored, with piñatas, huge papier-mâché flowers, and lanterns hung from crisscrossed wires above head level. Adding to the festival atmosphere are hideous masks of the dead, ornate and gaudy religious paraphernalia, carved effigies of strange animals painted with iridescent, and the beautiful weaves of Mexican blankets.
Behind the desperately bright colors, however, there lurks the squalor and resignation of a community hanging on to its existence by the sharp edge of a knife. This wasn't Tijuana or Ensenada, but it wasn't much different for those who live in the broken down apartments behind the facade. Life was hand to mouth, the American dream more a nightmare than a reality.
None of this made any impact on Ferris Jackson. Abandoning any pretense of dry cleaning, she cut through the vendors' stalls and walked quickly to the stone steps of a church. A small sign proclaimed it the Sanctuary of the Black Madonna.
The instant before she pulled open the carved doors of the church, Ferris looked behind her and scanned the crowd. Anticipating the action, Rhonda had concealed herself behind an array of Mexican shirts and blouses hung from the top rail of a stall. She watched Ferris furtively enter the church, and then used her rover to contact Hammer and hustle him to her location.
“What do you think?” she asked when he arrived.
“How long has she been in there?”
“Five minutes tops.” Rhonda gave her watch a quick check.
“I don't think we have anything to lose,” Hammer said. “Let’s see who's inside, and what the big rush to get here was about.”
The detective duo walked away from the stall, took the short flight of steps to the church entrance two at a time, and entered through the heavy doors.
Inside, it took a moment for their eyes to adjust to the dim light. A huge, winged, black Madonna floated above the flickering candles in front of the alter. The effigy appeared to be reaching out to embrace them in an eerie, contradictory effect, unsettling yet comforting.
Several parishioners were sitting among the pews. Their clothing was made from peasant materials, and their prayers were in the language of their native countries far away. The Madonna above the alter appeared to rivet their attention as rosaries slipped through worn fingers. None of them turned to acknowledge Hammer and Nails' entrance. Ignorance was the blessed path to salvation.
“Anything?” Hammer asked quietly.
“Nada,” Nails said.
Together they walked down the center aisle, approaching the rack of candles set before the alter. As they got closer, they could see the craftsmanship of the carved Madonna who lent her name to the church. The wood appeared as hard and shiny as opal, the difference betrayed by the deep grain adding character to the face and lines of the figure. The two black, iron rods suspending the figure from the ceiling were almost impossible to see.
“It's beautiful,” Rhonda said, staring upward. She suddenly genuflected. She then took a small taper, touching it to the flame of an already burning candle, and transferring the fire to the new wick of another.
Hammer watched as Rhonda closed her eyes for a brief moment, her lips moving silently.
“Catholic upbringings never die,” he said when she was done. He wasn't mocking, simply stating.
“Never,” Rhonda confirmed.
On the right side of the chapel were two wooden confessional boxes. Neither appeared in use.
“If Ferris didn't slide out by another entrance, she must be back there somewhere.” Hammer pointed at an unobtrusive door to the side of the alter.
Taking the initiative, Rhonda moved forward. Opening the door, she listened before stepping through. There were voices talking in raised whispers.
“Calm down, Ferris.” The first voice was male, attempting to soothe.
“But they searched the house. They probably killed Bianca, too. If we don't do something, we will lose everything.” Ferris Jackson was highly agitated.
“Listen to yourself, Ferris. You are not being rational. The police didn't murder Bianca. What would be the point? And there is no need to worry about them searching the house. Bianca would never leave anything lying around to possibly lead anyone to us. She was much too careful.”
“She wasn't so careful she didn't get dead,” Ferris said. “Who knows what she said before she died.”
Rhonda stepped through the door. “If she said anything,” she said in a unruffled voice. “You've got far more problems to worry about than the police. We certainly didn't torture her for information.”