Dog Eat Dog (19 page)

La Mesa had once been outside Tijuana, but the city had spread until the prison was surrounded by poor neighborhoods. The streets were dirt or rutted macadam. The parking lot was unpaved. The few vehicles tended toward pickup trucks and old Fords and Chevys. A dozen boys were engaged in a game of soccer. The ball bounced to Troy. It was stamped Los Angeles County Recreation Dept. He started to throw it back. “Give it here,” Alex said. When Troy gave it to him, Alex beckoned to the biggest boy, who came up warily until he saw that Alex was holding an American greenback. Then he was very interested. “Watch the car,” Alex said in English and pantomime. The message was clear. Alex then tore the twenty-dollar bill in two and gave one half to the boy, who grinned and nodded and went back to his friends to explain.

While Alex was unlocking the trunk to pull out the toilet bowl, Troy turned to look at the prison. They were near a corner. A long wall made of cinder blocks extended for several hundred yards. As prison walls go, it was not very high—but every fifty yards it was topped with a gun tower. Closer to them was a big sally port. The double gate was made of storm fence topped with concertina, with a gun tower looking down on it. The construction was haphazard compared to the expensive perfection of American prisons. It was effective, but it had a tenuous aspect to it, as if it had been built for today rather than for the ages. The fronts of some American prisons looked as if they wanted to last like the Parthenon.

A line of visitors, perhaps three dozen, waited outside the sally port. Most were women, many were children. Many carried large bags of groceries. Troy thought they were getting into the line, but Alex kept going, the toilet bowl on his shoulder.

In the wall beyond the sally port was a solid steel door with a peephole. It had a doorbell. A loud one.

An eye appeared at the peephole. Alex said, “
Los camaradas del Chepe
.”

The eye disappeared. “He’s going to check,” Alex said. “If you got any one-dollar bills, get ’em together.”

“What?”

“For bribery. Never mind, I got it.”

A heavy key turned in the steel door and it came open. They were in a narrow hallway with a dangling bare light bulb. A guard was beckoning them to the open door of an office. Alex and the toilet bowlled them to the door and inside.

A lieutenant sat behind a desk with his elbows resting on it. Still with the toilet bowl shouldered, Alex matter-of-factly extended a couple of twenty-dollar bills. “Get somebody to take this,
por favor, jefe
?”

“Sure … sure.” Then he snapped fingers to the guard at the door. “
Venga aqui
.” The guard came, Greco gave him the toilet bowl, and the guard took charge of delivering it inside.

“Thank you,
pues
,” Alex said. “We’re in a little hurry.” He said that with another forty dollars extended.

The lieutenant came around the desk, took the money, and continued through the door, motioning them to follow. The next room had a trio of guards to process them in, to register them in the log and frisk them. Alex held out four one-dollar bills scissored between forefinger and index finger. They were snapped up, somebody wrote
A
,
B
, and
C
, in the log to keep the records straight, and the lieutenant banged on another steel door until it opened.

This was the last room, where the backs of their hands were stamped with something invisible to the naked eye. It wasn’t a magic stamp to get them out again, but it was something the guards would look at. Alex gave the guard a handful of quarters. He nodded his head in gratitude as he hurried ahead to unlock the last door.

As it swung open, Troy stared out at a teeming mass of Mexican convicts on the yard outside. They were behind a red line ten feet from the doorway, and most of them were looking at the sally port and what was going on outside. It was possible to come to the outside sally port and yell across the twenty feet to the inside sally port.

As they stepped out into the human maelstrom, Mad Dog leaned close to Troy’s ear. “I can’t believe this joint,” he said. “Two dollars and you could bring in a machine gun.”

A few feet ahead of them, at the edge of the crowd, Alex was talking to a young Mexican sporting a big Zapata mustache. He had the flat nose and scars around his eyes indicating a prizefighter. Behind him stood another Mexican convict with the toilet bowl balanced on his shoulder. These two were at least part of the crew sent to greet them. Alex glanced back over his shoulder and motioned for them to follow as he set off through the press of bodies. The man with the toilet bowl was the point. As Troy kept close behind Alex and Mustache Pete, he became aware that a third man, a youth, was moving along beside him.

The mass of inmates gave way, stepped aside, for the retinue. Even then hands were extended and voices called, “
Cambio
…
cambio
…” Change, change. It was especially moving because Troy had never had a Mexican beg him on the streets of Los Angeles. Now he ignored the extended hands and kept moving.

They broke from the crowd onto a yard that reminded Troy of an immense parade ground—a vast rectangle, two hundred yards by three hundred yards—surrounded by two-story buildings pressed together like rowhouses. At the ends of the buildings were roads that led to other parts of the prison. Off to one side, he saw what seemed to be hot dog or taco stands with picnic tables for customers. He looked back. The area around the sally port was like Times Square on New Year’s Eve.

Alex motioned them forward and made the introductions. The Mustache was Oscar, Chepe’s
segundo
. He introduced Wevo, who carried the toilet. The other two were flunkies with names forgotten immediately.

“Look here,” Oscar said. “Chepe’s mother is visiting him. She’ll leave in ten or fifteen minutes. He wants you to wait until then.”

“Sure. We’re not in a hurry, are we?”

Mad Dog shrugged and shook his head.

“Want a tour?” Oscar asked.

“Sure,” Troy said.

“You know what I’d like,” Mad Dog said. “I’d like to score.”

“Whaddya want?”

“A speedball?”

Oscar turned to one of the flunkies and spoke in Spanish; then told Mad Dog, “Go with him.”

Mad Dog and the flunky took off, angling across the yard.

Oscar led Troy through a passageway between buildings. Behind the quadrangle was a two-tiered cellhouse, the doors solid steel with steel hasps for giant padlocks—but the doors were open. A woman was draping a throw rug over the railing; a man stood in the doorway holding a toddler. The family occupied the five-by-seven cell.

“Seven hundred for that,” Oscar said. “Cheapest cell in the joint.”

“What if you can’t buy a cell?”

“I’ll show you.”

Oscar turned a corner. For a hundred yards was a grille of rusting bars with open gates every twenty yards. The bars were the front of a cinder block building. It was an immense space covered with bunk beds five levels high. Instead of springs the bunks had sheets of steel. Some had mattresses, most did not. It was impossible to see the rear wall. It was a dark cave. Troy got close to the bars to look. He had to turn away; the stench of sour sweat and dry piss roiled his stomach. “Ohhh, shit!” he said.

Oscar and Alex laughed at him; then explained that those without a cell had to come here in late afternoon. Like all prisons, La Mesa had a count. When the count cleared, the gates of the Corral were opened. About one third of those who were counted there had a bunk; the others had to do the best they could. A friend could take them in for the night, or they could flop in a doorway, or anywhere else for that matter. “Looks like downtown L.A. at night around here,” Alex observed.

From the Corral, Oscar took them down another road. It teemed with bodies like a back street in Hong Kong. Oscar obviously had power here. Prisoners stepped aside for the visitors. Several times Oscar exchanged nods and words of respect. The swarm was mostly male and Mexican, but mixed in were a few Americans and some women.

Through open doors, Troy saw workrooms where prisoners were doing leather or woodwork. Many of the cheap souvenirs of Tijuana sold in town were made here. Oscar explained that the prison once had an auto body shop with the main business of changing the numbers and the look of cars stolen in the United States. They were then delivered throughout Latin America.

Troy sniffed the air. He could smell frying onions. A moment later, Oscar led them around a corner. They had come upon the taco stands from the rear. There was also a café with tables under an awning. “Whaddya think?” Alex asked.

“It’s damn sure not San Quentin.”

One of Chepe’s crew found them. Chepe was ready. They headed back across the yard. Below a ladder was a picnic table where a poker game was in progress. Troy was sure that at least some of the poker players were guarding the ladder.

Oscar went first, climbing the dozen feet to the roof. Troy was next. As he reached the top, he was surprised. It was a terrace with wrought-iron furniture, potted plants, including a couple of small trees, and a well-built young woman in skin-tight Levi’s. She was watering plants with a can. A muscular young man extended a hand. As he did so, his unbuttoned shirt fell open and exposed the butt of a .45 stuck in his waistband. Mexican prisons were sure different from the cold Calvinism found in the United States.

A bright red-and-green canvas awning extended out to shield the glass doors from direct sunlight. Chepe waited for them in the open doorway. A stocky man with almost cherubic face, his hair had grayed since Troy last saw him. He wore expensive slippers, cutoff jeans, and a T-shirt with
Harvard
across the chest. He extended a hand. “Hey, man, come on in. It’s hot out there.”

They entered the sitting room of a small suite. A giant TV screen dominated one wall. A small open kitchen was off to the side. “I thought there was another vato,” Chepe said to Alex.

“He’s here. He went on a tour.”

“Not like Quentin, is it?” Chepe said.

Troy looked around the room. “Not hardly. How do you get this? I know it costs money, but how does it work?”

“I bought it. This one cost eighty grand. There’s four or five like this. Some vato just came in and he paid a hundred and ten.”

“You don’t pay rent?”

“No, no, I own it. I can sell it, too—as long as the
Commandante
gets his cut. They got others that cost anywhere from ten grand up. We own a few, don’t we, Oscar?”

“Yeah, what the fuck, we’re real estate investors in the penitentiary.”

“Come on down here,” Chepe said, leading the way down a short hall. A bedroom had been converted into a combination library and office. A built-in bookcase covered one wall from floor to ceiling. The titles revealed an eclectic taste—Dos Passos and Dostoevsky, Conrad and Kafka, Steinbeck and Styron, plus a dose of history and biography. Troy had never seen evidence in San Quentin that Chepe had a bookish streak. Then, too, it was a trait scarcely valued among robbers, killers, and drug dealers.

Mad Dog came back and joined them, upon which Chepe called, “Stella!” The pretty girl in tight jeans stuck her head in the door and Chepe told her to make coffee.

“You didn’t have her last time I was here,” Alex said.

“I saved her from the Corral.”

“Oh, man, she wasn’t going to the Corral, was she?”

“Hell, no,” Oscar said. “If the boss here hadn’t rescued her, there’s other dudes got money around here. A pretty ain’ gotta worry … but an ugly fat bitch is in trouble. Ha, ha, ha, ha …”

And the men all grinned with understanding.

While they waited for the coffee, Chepe asked for news of mutual friends in California prisons and elsewhere in the California underworld. Everybody asked about Big Joe first; then Harry Buckley, Bulldog, Paul Allen, Joe Cocko, Huero Flores, Shotgun, Charlie Jackass, and Preacher.

“You could get outta here if you wanted, couldn’t you?” asked Mad Dog.

“Oh yeah,” Chepe answered. “The warden would hold the ladder for me. I pay him ten grand a month to feed his kids. That’s about fifteen times his salary.”

The girl brought them mugs of coffee on a tray. When she was gone, they got down to business. “You know Mike Brennan?” Chepe asked.

“I know who he is,” Troy said. “I never met him.”

“Who is he?” Mad Dog asked.

Alex answered: “He’s a bigshot smuggler. He had an Irish daddy and a Mexican mama.”

“He owes me a lot of money,” Chepe said, “and he thinks he doesn’t have to pay because I’m in here.”

“We’ll kill him,” Mad Dog said from his drugged stupidity. “You want him killed?”

“No, he doesn’t want him killed,” Troy said. “If he wanted him killed, he has plenty of
pistoleros
for that.”

“Smart,
ese
, smart,” said Chepe, nodding approvingly. “If he’s dead, he can’t pay me. Besides that, he’s a pretty good dude. I just want my money.”

“Do you mind if I ask how much?” Troy said.

Chepe held up four fingers. “Million,” he said.

“Four mil isn’t what it used to be,” Troy said, “but it’s still a lot of money. Has he got it?”

“Oh yeah, he could pay if he wanted to. He thinks I can’t touch him. I wanna teach him a lesson.”

“What’ve you got in mind?”

“He’s got a one-year-old kid in L.A. I want you to snatch him.”

“Kidnapping?”

Chepe nodded. Troy’s stomach sank. He disliked the idea—and he remembered reading that no major kidnapping for ransom had gone unsolved in the U.S. since the thirties. Of course, this would be a little different. Nobody would report this one. “You say the kid’s in L.A.?”

Chepe nodded. “With his mother. They aren’t married.”

Troy thought about it, looked to Mad Dog, who shrugged and put the decision back on Troy.

“I’ll guarantee you half a million, plus half of whatever he pays. If he pays it all …”

“Two million dollars,” Mad Dog said; then whistled in soft appreciation. “It ain’t chicken feed. It’s up to you,” he said to Troy.

Troy’s furrowed brow and narrowed eyes reflected the debate in his mind. Kidnapping a child, even without hurting it, was a terrible thing. But this would give him the money to go away, and he knew that if he didn’t go away, he would be lost. If he stayed, it was a matter of time before they got him. He was already a fugitive parole violator. That would keep him from making bail, plus he had two strikes under the new law (even if one was as a juvenile), so any bust would be life. Why not throw the dice, all he wanted in life if he threw a seven, the end of his life if he threw craps …