Death Row Breakout (3 page)

When all of the dozen were done, the deputies had them file back through the door to the bullpen. As the gate was being locked, Booker pushed through to the bars. “Say, officer –”

“Yeah?”

“You heard the judge say I get a phone call.”

“I heard it. We don’t have a phone. You’ll get it when you get to the county jail.”

“When’s that gonna be?”

“When everybody gets done here.”

Before Booker could say anything more, the deputy had twisted the key and turned away.

The Hall of Justice at Temple and Broadway was brand new. The jail occupied the 10th to 14th floor. Above that was the roof. The bus disgorged its prisoners at the mouth of a tunnel that ran beneath the building. A big sign with a red arrow pointed to the Coroner’s Office, down the tunnel where they walked against the right-hand wall. Across from the morgue was the freight elevator. It carried them to the booking office on the 10th floor. As the booking sergeant counted them in, Booker stopped in front of him and asked for his phone call. “The judge said I could have one.”

“I don’t know anything about it,” the Sergeant said. “Get on in there.”

“The judge say…”

“Look, nigger, I’m the judge here. Get your black ass in there,” the deputy finished with a pugnacious jut of his chin. Zinc oxide ointment covered his nose, and his freckled face was sunburned and peeling. Booker wanted to crush his jaw with one punch, but managed to hold himself back. The satisfaction would not be worth the punishment that would follow. He was already in more trouble than he had ever imagined. He had been so stupid to borrow the car without permission. Why hadn’t he thought about it? He’d already been gone for two nights. Morning would be Monday. Maybe his mother knew where he was. That would be terrible, but less terrible than if she didn’t know. The jailer’s sneering insult rankled him. It wasn’t so much being called ‘nigger’; back home in Tennessee, white folks (especially the uneducated rednecks) used ‘nigger’ or ‘nigruh’ without a sense of insult. It was the jailer’s sneer; the contempt and disdain that dared him to react. When the gate opened, Booker glared at the deputy, who felt the stare and looked around. Their eyes locked for a few seconds, then Booker looked away. The deputy laughed to himself, not realizing how close Booker was to losing control. Only a lifetime of family discipline kept him from smashing his fist into the deputy’s face. That would wipe the smile away real fast.

It took hours to go through the booking process; the multiple fingerprint cards, the mug photos with the number and “LA County Sheriff’s Dept” underneath, the shower and change into jail clothes, the pickup of bedroll (it included cup and spoon), the trek to the hospital where a Medical Technician asked a few questions and had a squeeze down inspection for gonorrhea. After that they were dropped in the tanks. The process took so long because it was done by group. Nobody moved to the next step until the last man finished with the present one.

It was near morning when a jailer opened a lockbox panel and pulled a lever, taking the tank off ‘deadlock’, and then inserting a key in a narrow gate. “Go down to cell eleven,” the deputy said as he unlocked the gate and pulled it open.

Booker stepped through the gate and it slammed behind him. He was looking along the gates and bars of twenty-two cells on the right. Six feet away was a wall of bars running the length of the tank. Between them was a long runway. Booker started walking along the cells. Over each gate was a number – four, five, six. Black faces were visible through the bars. The tanks were segregated. Nine… ten… eleven. The gate was open. It had two bunks and both were occupied. Booker hesitated.

“Get in down there,” yelled the deputy.

“Get in here, ‘blood,” said the man on the bottom bunk, gesturing for emphasis.

Booker stepped in. The gate rattled. “Watch the gate… comin’ closed,” yelled the deputy at the front. It was a chant always yelled when a gate was closing. The gate was on rollers and slammed shut with a loud crash. Soon enough Booker would hear of the prisoner who killed himself by sticking his head in the gate. Right now he looked around and wondered what to do with the bedroll on his shoulder.

“Put it on the floor,” said the man in the bottom bunk. The man in the top bunk was dark-skinned and barely visible in the deep shadows. Light came from a walkway outside the second set of bars.

“Just roll it out,” the man continued. “Put your head toward the gate so it ain’ ‘side the shitter, y’know.”

Booker could see the point. If he slept with his head next to the toilet, he might be spattered in the night. He sat down on the mattress; his back against the steel wall. The windows on the outer walkway were open and he could hear the distant sound of cars and the dinging bells of the yellow streetcars passing below. He felt the heartache that precedes tears, but he hardened himself against them. He could not be sure that the other two men, who had now rolled over to face the other wall, had gone back to sleep. He sensed it would be wrong to announce his arrival with tears.

He sat for a while, and then stretched out on the thin mattress, using the County Jail blanket for a pillow. He closed his eyes, doubting he would be able to sleep, but soon enough he fell into it, as much to escape the misery in his heart as to rest.

Late in the afternoon the deputy outside the tank called out: ‘Johnson, cell eleven, property slip and jumper.” It was echoed louder inside the tank by the trusty in the first cell: “JOHNSON, CELL ELEVEN, PROPERTY SLIP AND JUMPER.” The Trusty came down the runway to make sure Booker had the news, and when Booker was at the gate, wearing the denim jumper and with the property envelope in hand, the Trusty called to the officer out front: “Johnson, on deck!”

“Comin’ open!” yelled the jailer.

The cell gate began to vibrate, and then kicked open.

“Step out, cell eleven.”

Booker stepped out; the cell gate shook and slammed behind him. He walked to the front. The deputy opened the tank gate, checked his property slip and said, “Attorney room.”

“How do I get there?”

“Follow the yellow line,” he pointed to several lines on the floor, red, blue, yellow, green. Each one led through the maze of jail to a different destination: visiting room, infirmary, bathroom, attorney room. All went down the same corridor; then one turned a corner and the others continued. Booker would never have found his way without the painted yellow line. As he passed walls of bars, behind which were other tanks, he saw that the jail was segregated three ways; white, black and Mexican, which was considered a separate race in the southwestern United States.

At the end of the yellow line was a grille gate and the sign: Attorney Room. Beyond the gate was a large room with long tables and benches on both sides and a partition down the length of the table that came chin high to the men seated on the benches. A deputy stood, arms-folded, at the end of each table, making sure nothing was passed across. The noise was the hum of insistent and desperate voices, for here were sweating men in wrinkled blue denim talking to lawyers, bondsmen and probation officers.

A deputy unlocked the gate from inside. “Name?”

“Johnson.”

The deputy looked through a batch of forms on his desk. He found the right one. “You want to see Reverend Wilson?”

Reverend Wilson! What was he doing here?

“Do you?”

“See him? Yes. Sure.”

“Sign this!” the deputy shoved the form across the desk and Booker signed. It took him a few seconds of scanning the room before he saw the Reverend’s black suit, white hair and chocolate face. “You sit directly across from him. No touching. No passing of anything. If he wants to give you a document, let the deputy examine it. Okay, go on.”

Walking down the row, Booker knew something was wrong with his mother. That was his only connection with Reverend Wilson. As he had the thought, he felt suddenly weak and had to hold onto the edge of the table as he sat down. He expected the worst, and when he heard the truth, terrible as it was, he felt relieved. She’d had a heart attack but would be okay.

As Reverend Wilson expanded on the details, Booker’s gratitude metamorphosed into fury. Ned from the Texaco Station had gone by Booker’s to tell his mother. She called about visiting hours and rode the streetcar downtown. When she got there, the deputies told her that she was too late. Visiting hours were until 3:00, but they stopped letting people in at 2:30. “She told me they were rude to her,” Reverend Wilson said. “When she was leaving, she had the chest pains.”

“But she gonna be all right, right?”

“The doctors say so. It’s in the Lord’s hands. You pray for forgiveness for causin’ this misery.”

Pray for forgiveness! Forgiveness for what? For borrowing the car? No way. He was so angry that Reverend Wilson’s words failed to register. He couldn’t remember saying goodbye – but when he walked back toward the gate, a different deputy was at the desk – the same one who had sneered at him over the phone call, called him a
nigger
and told him to get his
black ass
moving. Now he had to get up from the desk to unlock the gate so Booker could exit. They came face-to-face and the deputy apparently had no recollection of the earlier moment. That galled Booker even more. The deputy became the focus of all his frustration and pain.

“You wanna call me a nigger now?”

“Huh?”

“Last evenin’ in the bookin’ office –”

The deputy remembered. His chin rose to a haughty pose – and red flashed through Booker’s brain. He hadn’t thought beyond saying something, and now he thought not at all. His right fist lashed out. The splat of fist and the crack of broken jaw were loud enough to silence everyone in the Attorney Room and turn every eye in his direction.

They saw the deputy slide down the gate to the floor. Booker was surprised; he had not expected what he had done. There was one moment of satisfaction, followed by a wave of despair, for he knew that this was a terrible crime and he would pay an awful price.

The deputy watching the nearest table came running. Booker threw a straight right hand and the deputy impaled himself on it. His head stopped cold and his feet kept coming. He went down flat on his back, emitting a loud grunt as the floor knocked the air from his lungs. He lay gasping and rolling. The first deputy, groggy and in pain, tried to grab the bars and pull himself to his feet. Booker kicked him in his exposed ribs. He fell back down.

Another deputy approaching him stopped ten feet away. Booker looked him in the eye and saw fear. Booker took a step toward him and the deputy backed up. Booker nearly laughed.

His hilarity was momentary. Two more deputies arrived within seconds. One had corporal’s stripes. He motioned the other two to spread out; they would rush him from three sides and gang-tackle him.

Booker didn’t wait. He charged first, right at the corporal in the center. He drove head and shoulders into the man’s chest and kept going. The corporal was carried backward onto one of the tables. A leg gave way; the table went down, so did the corporal. Bells rang, attorneys and bail bondsmen scattered – and deputies came running from everywhere.

Booker fell on top of the corporal. He pushed up to get leverage and smashed his fist into the corporal’s nose. Blood spurted.

A deputy ran up and kicked Booker. He whirled like a cat and grabbed the foot, twisting it so the man fell onto the desk.

Then they were on him, so many that some were unable to reach him in the press of bodies. But lights began flashing in his brain, accompanied by bolts of pain, as the fists and boots and slaps began to land, driven by pack frenzy. Booker lunged backward, carrying one on his back and dragging others. When he slammed into the wall, the deputy on his back grunted and fell off. Someone smashed his eye and sent coruscating lights through his brain. Another rammed a club into his ribs and snatched his wind.

They punched and stomped and dragged him through the jail; on a steel stairway, his head bouncing on each step. Their frenzy was such that they tripped and the whole mass fell tumbling down, one screaming as his ankle snapped. Booker came down on top of the pile. It was outside a tank of white prisoners. They were at the bars, yelling and banging cups and spitting through the bars as Booker was dragged past. By then he was oblivious except for momentary flashes of pain.

Through gates and along corridors, they dragged him to the hole on the 14th floor. They tore off his clothes while still punching, kicking and cursing him. They threw him naked onto the concrete floor and closed the solid steel door. The key turned and he was locked in Stygian blackness. His entire body was a mass of throbbing pain. Each breath sent a bolt of fire through him. A rib was broken. His right ankle was swollen so that both hands wouldn’t go around it. The worst pain was in his left eye. It was searing with pain and, when he felt it, the flesh was swollen like half an orange resting on his cheek. When he breathed through his nose, red bolts of hot torment cut through his eye. When he breathed through his mouth, the air over the exposed nerve of broken teeth sent different pain to his brain. Still, the mouth was better when he kept his tongue over the teeth.

Hours passed before he began to focus on where he was and what had happened. He was hurt bad, but even worse was the knowledge that the beating and the hole were simply the down payment. In California he might be safe from lynching, but in 1927 a colored man who broke any white man’s jaw, much less a deputy sheriff, was in a serious mess. He remembered being eleven and asking his mother why white men were so cruel to colored people, especially to colored men. The reply surprised him: “They’re afraid of colored men. Lord God I wish they weren’t… ‘cause when somebody be ‘fraid, that’s when they hate and be vicious… out of fear. Don’t be scarin’ people, boy, an’ ‘specially don’ be scarin’ white men.” She’d told him that in Tennessee, and several times since he’d seen her words confirmed. He’d seen the white man’s fear, and the aftermath of that fear, the burned and blistered body tied to the tree. Booker knew the body was Big Luke’s, but not because the carcass was recognizable. The white men had feared Big Luke, all 6'4" and 240 pounds of him, and he showed his contempt of them. Even before he had left school, Luke stared at white women, and later began making lewd sounds. As Luke got bigger, he grew bolder – and scared them more. Until they were too scared and came for him at night in white robes. Mama told Booker: “Nigga’ was sayin’ ‘kill me, kill me’ his whole life, not in words, maybe, but in how he be actin’. You best take the lesson, boy.” Booker later wondered if that was really what she thought, or if the words were meant more to protect her only son from the danger of the rural South in the ‘20s. Luke’s lynching was one reason they moved to Los Angeles, a city without lynchings and with less prejudice, the term used for racism at the time.