Death Row Breakout (17 page)

As if his laugh was a cue, a chorus of laughs issued along the tier. The murderers laughed. What the fuck was going on? Were they mocking him? Then he realized that they were all watching the same TV show and had laughed at what they’d seen.

A conversation from the cells near the front had been going on below the threshold of his attention, but suddenly he found himself plugging in.

“Nigger be akin’ ovah in South Africa. Wish I was there man? ’stead’a this motherfucker.”

“Yeah, man… If I was there, man, I be killin’ soft-ass white motherfuckers… call themselves Africaners… like they be some parta Africa. Bullshit!”

“Yeah, dig up them that’s dead and kill ’em again.”

“When I raise from this muffucker, I’m goin’ to Africa, man. No bullshit, man. I wanna get away from white people, man. I don’t like ’em, man. I don’t like their white skin, like dead white fish. Look at this beautiful brown skin…”

When I look at whitey, man, I think, how could sissy-ass muffucker like this conquer the muffuckin’ world, man. Y’know what I mean, nigger? Muffuckers can’ bust a muffuckin’ grape. They can’ fight a lick. When a niggah run down on ’em dey be so scared…”

“Yeah, I can dig on that, man. It be fuckin’ weird, man.”

Roger closed his eyes, thinking, Oh god, do I gotta listen to these idiots for a decade? Should I say something? He managed an inner smile; he was sure they’d never heard a white man murder mouth like he would if he got started.

But the gates were locked. This was Death Row. It would be like animals in separate cages in the zoo, screaming primordial rage. If he got into it, he would probably have a stroke. It was so stupid anyway. What had they done to be sentenced to die? They must have some notoriety somewhere.

What about Big Strunk and Jimmy Rube? It was hard to conceive their allowing such Mau Mau bullshit for very long. Strunk was on Death Row for killing a stoolpigeon on a Department of Corrections bus. Strunk wrapped his chains around the man’s neck. Guards on both ends went crazy. The driver swerved the bus back and forth. The gun guard couldn’t use the shotgun. Nobody was escaping. Strunk wasn’t known to take a lot of bullshit. Nor was Jimmy Rube. Roger had seen Rube stick a black convict prizefighter – tough with his fists – but he screamed like a woman when Jimmy Rube stuck that shiv under his ribcage. The shiv cut part of his heart. Miraculously (and because he was in such excellent condition) the sucker lived. He stopped snitching, too.

As if by telepathy, Roger heard Jimmy Rube’s voice, “Hey, Bro’, I’ll run it by you in the
mañana
when I exercise.”

“I got it, homes,” he called back, and was quiet. Again he heard the chorus of laughter at the TV. The murderers had found something funny. Roseanne? Naw. Too near reality to be funny to convicts. Too ugly, too. They wanted to watch someone young and foxy swish around the screen.

After the night on the highway and the day being processed into Death Row, Roger was tired. When he heard the sound of convicts moving across the Big Yard, their voices floating up through the night air, he could close his eyes and see them walking along the white lines, watched by riflemen on catwalks. Roger knew the scene because he’d attended night school to prepare for his GED. A lot of good it had done him. Sleep embraced him. If he dreamed, he had no memory of it.

In the morning, after breakfast and cleanup, Sergeant Blair could be heard coming down the tier and calling out to someone, “Shower and exercise,” and when he passed Roger without stopping, Roger called him back. “Sarge, what’s up? Am I on cell status?”

“You gotta be classified. I don’t know who to let you out with.”

“Let me out with anybody.”

“We don’t do it that way – too much trouble. You’ll probably be with Strunk and Rube and that kid.”

Roger heard Sergeant Blair turn the key on one cell gate. As soon as he left the tier, the security bar went up.

A cell gate opened and closed.

A moment later, Richard Romero slithered past, flicking his eyes into each cell. He had a peculiar stride, with his ass under slung and his slippered feet sliding along the floor, that reminded Roger of a snake. Roger refused to acknowledge the maniac’s existence. He had no fear of such monsters. Invariably they were cowards if the victim wasn’t helpless. Fear was deeply involved in their crimes. They swam in it and derived great pleasure from inflicting it. If I could lay my hands on this motherfucker, Roger thought, envisioning smashing his fists into Romero’s face – or taking a claw hammer to his head. To avoid looking at the monster and working himself up, Roger put on the earphones and closed his eyes, listening to the music on the prison radio.

Later, he heard a guard yell, “Romero, lock up.” He heard the cell gate shut and the security bar go down, followed by the guard coming in, locking the cell gate and unlocking three others. The gates were still shut until the guard went out and lifted the bar. Then, gates came open and clanked shut. Roger “saw” it all in the sounds, which he understood from a lifetime of hearing similar noises.

Jimmy Rube and Strunk appeared outside the bars, both grinning. Strunk was shirtless and carried a towel and a soap dish. His skin was freckled, his chest immense, his arms gigantic. He had so many jailhouse tattoos that his body looked like a wall of graffiti. “Hey, my brother, I’m sorry to see your sorry old ass – but I can’t talk to you right now. I gotta go shower. I’ll be back. Talk to Rube. He’s got shit to tell you.”

“Okay, Muscles. See ya later. Rub oil on the fine body.”

“Man, fuck you,” Strunk said, turning away. Then stopped. “I’ve got some magazines down there. A stack of
New Yorkers
. You want ’em?”

“Yeah, sure, send ’em down.”

Strunk nodded without turning, and went on down the tier.

Rube stepped forward; his eyes had a brightness at odds with the situation. “Sorry you’re here, homeboy but… you wanna get out?”

Roger wondered if he’d heard right. “Come again?”

“Would you believe you got here in time to break out?”

Roger’s heartbeat skipped as hope ignited – but a moment later the cynicism of reality made him dubious. “How’s that gonna happen?”

Rube glanced over his shoulder to make sure the gun-walk guard was nowhere nearby. Rube lowered his voice. “We’ve cut the gun-walk bars and screen.”

Could that be true? Yet even if it was true, where would they go? They were still on Death Row. “So what then?”

“Oh man, don’t be so negative. It took us a motherfuckin’ year to do it. Now we’re about a week from cutting Strunk’s bars. We take it real slow – when the TVs are on and suckers are talking – muffle the sound in soap and rags.

“Anyway, when Strunk can get out of his cell, we wait till the first watch, after midnight, he goes out there and snatches the gun-bull. The gun-bull can go through a gate out front. He grabs the Sergeant and the other bull.

“Outside the tier, there’s that window on that side.” Rube gestured to indicate where he meant.

“We cut the bars on the window and we’re on the roof.”

Roger could see the scene. That high window was above an outdoor gun-rail, and 10 feet below the roof of a building that housed the bachelor officers’ quarters and radio room. On at least one occasion Roger knew of, a convict had climbed on the roof by the mess hall and then crawled right past this point. The roof here joined with the roof of the Custody Office and Inside Parole Office. At the corner, where the building ended, was a blind spot where the escaping convict got out unseen. But where then? They’d be captured trying to get across the Golden Gate Bridge. It was a long shot. But give a guy a long shot who was facing certain death – and he’d take it.

Rube was waiting, eyes aglow, grinning gleefully.

“It sounds like it’s worth a try,” Roger finally said.

Big Strunk reappeared, rubbing a towel through his wet hair with one hand and carrying a stack of
New Yorkers
with the other.

“Here you go, homeboy,” he said, putting them on the bars.

“My turn to shower,” Rube said.

“Yeah, go wash that funky body,” Strunk said.

When Rube was gone, Strunk asked, “He tell you about it?”

“Yeah.”

“What do you think?”

“It’s a shot… maybe a long shot… but better’n sittin’ around jackin’ off.”

A young man walked past behind Strunk. “Who’s that?” Roger asked.

“That’s Robillard.” Strunk turned. “Hey, Robillard, come here.”

The young man came back and Strunk introduced him. Roger thought he looked sixteen. Actually, he was nineteen. He’d been raised in a foster home. When he was eighteen, he graduated from foster care to the street on his own, poorly educated and untrained. Somebody offered him $500 to steal a car. He did so – and ten minutes later a Highway Patrolman turned the red light on him. It was Robillard’s first crime, and he was terrified. When the Highway Patrolman walked up to him, Robillard shot him dead and was sentenced to die under the felony murder rule. After Robillard walked away, Strunk said, “He’s scared. But what he’s most scared of is that he’ll piss his pants or break and have to be carried into the gas chamber.”

“Shit, I worry about that, too,” Roger said. “Don’t you?”

“Man, I don’t think about it. And when I do, I stop real quick and concentrate on this breakout working.”

From the front they heard one of the black voices from the night before. It was loud, “Hey, motherfucker, get over here.”

Strunk rolled his eyes to the skies and leaned back to look down the tier. “Those two fuckin’ niggers. Damn!”

“What’re they doin’?”

“Callin’ Robillard over. They want him to pass something,” Strunk raised a hand and waved, obviously getting Robillard’s attention, and then signaling him to go along with the demand.

“I heard those fools last night,” Roger said. “I was gonna say somethin’ until Rube signaled me off.”

“We can’t do anything up here – but even if we started yellin’, we could wind up getting a cell move over to the Adjustment Center, or around the other side. Wouldn’t that be a bitch? Be ready to break out and they move you out of your cell, maybe to another building. With my luck, they’d put the nigger in my cell and he’d be the motherfucker to get out.”

Robillard appeared behind Strunk. “What happened?” Strunk asked.

“He wanted me to carry something down the tier. I wasn’t going to do it until you signaled me. I feel kinda sorry for the way black people been fucked over, but that’s no reason to disrespect folks. Fuck him in his ass.”

“Yeah… yeah… yeah – but we can’t be that way right now.”

“Hey, home,” Strunk said to Roger, “I gotta get some exercise. I’m gonna walk some. You’ll be out with us next week. Classification is Friday.”

“They’re gonna classify me, huh?”

“Yeah, minimum custody.”

Strunk and Robillard passed back and forth a couple of times, eventually joined by Rube, who was fresh from the shower. He took a couple of turns, talking to them, and then came over to Roger’s bars. “What happened? Those young niggers making you warm?”

“Not really, but, man, that shit could get old real fast. All that paranoid self-pity – plus all that murder mouth, offin’ this motherfucker and that nigger, like it was a fuckin’ movie they were in. Bein’ baaad is cool.”

“I don’t know about that,” Rube said, “but I do know they snitched on each other ten minutes into the police station… tryin’ to get down first. There was a third guy, and he walked free because he didn’t say a word except that he wanted a lawyer.”

“What was the crime?”

“Brave deal. Out in Oakwood where the Mexicans were having a war with the Shoreline Crips, remember that?”

Roger nodded. It had been in the newspaper before he was paroled. In one square mile in a five-month period there had been forty shootings and a dozen deaths.

“They saw some young Mexican bopping along the street with his chick – so they drove by and opened up; spray and pray. They missed the guy, but they killed the girl and she was five months pregnant. They also got an old white woman in her house. She was the neighborhood nice lady. So they gave these two fools the death penalty under that new federal law.”

“Anyway,” Rube continued, “when they get on your nerves, before you open your mouth, remember that we might get outta here in a couple of weeks if you keep it shut.”

“Yeah, you’re right. If you can, I damn sure can.”

“What’re you sayin’?”

“Man, you know you’re five times the loudmouth I am.”

“Bullshit!”

The dinging bell announced the elevator’s approach.

“Who else is up here that I know?”

“On this side, just me and Strunk. No, there’s good snitching Rudy Wright.”

“You mean hot head Rudy.”

“That’s him.”

“How do you treat him?”

Rube put his finger to his lips and leaned forward. “The outside cut is right in front of his cell. His bars are cut, too.”

“How’d that happen?”

“He moved into the cell. That’s where Gilmore was. He just about had the bars cut when they took him downstairs.”

“LOCK UP! LOCK UP!” a guard yelled from the front, banging his key for punctuation and emphasis.

“Hey, boss,” Big Strunk yelled. “We only been out thirty-five minutes.”

“Yeah, yeah, I know. I’ll give you extra tomorrow.”

Rube said, “That’s old man Blair. He’s ok.”

“I don’t think he’s ever mistreated anybody in his life.”

“See you
mañana
, brother,” Jimmy Rube said, tapping the bars and heading toward his own cage.

Roger heard the gates slam and the bar drop. He thought of Rudy Wright. Rudy the heavyweight fighter – slow, clumsy and with a glass chin. Rudy the ignorant. Rudy the pervert who liked to suck dick and fuck young white boys. He muscled one kid, who stabbed him several times. Rudy was transferred to Folsom. He disliked Folsom. Its inhabitants tended toward grizzled old warriors who came out of their cells not caring if it rained dog shit or they died before lockup. Rudy wanted a transfer to a prison with younger convicts. To get a transfer, he testified for the prosecution in a prison murder. Despite Rudy’s testimony, the jury acquitted the defendant. Still, Rudy got his transfer. Alas, the youths were unimpressed by a big black rat. Rudy killed one of them. The jury found him guilty and ordered him put to death. Here he was, two or three cells on the right. With his bars cut? Jesus, what strange alliances are made by circumstance. Roger’s crime partner in the Death Row breakout was someone he found totally despicable.