ROLL CALL ~ A Prison List (True Prison Story) (55 page)

The next two people who came for some product refused to take part in my background check. The first person whined, “I don’t want you knowing my information.”

I told him, “I’ll show you mine. What do you have to hide?”

I followed him out of the garage, “What’s the matter?”

The second one whined, “You’re doing the same thing Vince is doing! He’s studying everyone’s phone records and checking every number called! You can’t do that! You won’t last out here long and deserve to be back in prison!”

I went back to my condo, got my Town Car and parked it in the hotel’s underground parking lot on P.C.H.

CHAPTER 157

“Where’s Vince?”

I studied Troy, Chet and Silver and knew they knew where he was, but they were hesitant to tell me.

“Stop bull shitting around! I go way back with Vince, where is he?”

I watched Troy make a call and leave a message. “Vince, its Troy. An old friend of yours, B.J., wants to talk to you. Call him on my second phone number. I’m going to give him that phone to use. Take care of yourself brother.”

Troy hung up the phone and told me a few things. “Vince did some speed for the first time in seven years three weeks ago. He hasn’t slept since. It’s highly entertaining to see you instantly start investigating your way right to him. I can’t believe how fast you’re both connecting the dots and turning everything upside down. Are you sure you don’t want back into dealing? The whole territory can be yours!”

“I don’t want that kind of money. It’s the devil’s and nothing good can come from drug money. Where’s Vince?”

“Vince says the same thing about drug money. He says it’s all about favors now. He’s on the other side of south O.C. in a gated community working on multiple highly sensitive investigations.” Troy stopped himself from saying more.

I watched Chet. “Vince has been relentless. Every person he meets, he asks to see their cell phone. Then, right in front of the person, he goes through their call histories and stored phone numbers and copies all the numbers for research.”

Troy’s cell phone rang in his lap.

“Vince? Yeah your homeboy is right here. Call him on my second phone. 949-148-8123. Alright, I’ll put you on the monitor.”

Troy played around with some wires and Vince’s face popped up on the monitor.

I studied Vince while Troy set up a video feed so Vince could see us in the band room. It had been ten years since I saw him and Damon in the holding cell in jail. He still had his baby face and brown eyes with that Italian olive skin. I saw an extravagant rock and marble fireplace behind him with cut glass burning instead of a log in the pit like diamonds were on fire. The image of my friend in front of those diamonds on fire was so powerful that I saw my young misguided friend’s soul holding on to the character of a man evolved into a warrior. I watched him look at me. His face went through a series of changes that included love, pain, loneliness and confusion before becoming a granite mask again.

“B.J.! What are you doing in our fish tank? Are you still on parole?”

“Yep.”

“Then why are you fucking up? Why aren’t you building your limo business so you can get other paroling ex-cons jobs to stay out of prison?”

“Vince, I can see you’re distracted and might not have noticed the effect 9/11 had on the airlines and hotels that directly affect my Town Car service. In short, my Prestigious Transport is now Ghetto Transport. I’m processing the fact that I have to cut the umbilical cord to the business and start another one.”

“I’ll help you!”

“Forget about me, how can I help you?”

I watched Vince stare at me and could feel his hurting spirit through the stare. He barely held his emotions in.

He said, “That’s the first time anyone has asked if they could help me with authenticity since my prison cell brother a few years ago.”

“Where is Damon?”

I watched Vince barely hold on to his emotions again and then maintain the stoic mask of a warrior. “You mean Sir Rott. That’s what I named him. He named me Sir Vincent the Valiant. He’s at his wife, Jade’s sober living treatment center CROSSROADS. I can’t see him because I’m high and I have way too much love for him to be the snake that tempts him out of his program! I miss him though… B.J., I heard about your rules and regulations, stay down brother. Then I heard about you calling shots with similar rules and regulations in that level four prison up north. Pretty impressive for a first termer. I also heard you didn’t get a single tattoo. I remember you told me your body is your temple and that tattoos were I.D. tags.”

“That’s some impressive homework you’ve compiled on me but I can’t take credit for calling shots up north. I did like implementing rules and regulations to regulate child and women predators. I figure that if you have to show precise violence in there to earn respect, it might as well be violence for a good cause. The yard was really Bird and Pelican’s who’d just gotten out of the Pelican Bay S.H.U.. I learned a lot from them. They told me about your and Damon’s case for getting those child molesters. Stay down stud.”

I remembered Troy saying Vince hadn’t slept and was caught up in multiple highly sensitive investigations so I cut right to the heart of the matter. “Vince what are you the most focused on right now?”

“Intelligence gathering on corrupt officials involved in the Jane Doe gang rape case. Bob Prescott is working with detective Pincher still! He moved to Long Beach after he snitched you and Damon off for five years and then came back to Santa Margarita pretending to be a crip gang member. Imagine that, a white crip in our area. He gave Jane Doe the speed and served her to detective Pincher for both of her arrests just before the top law enforcement’s rapist son has his preliminary hearing to discredit her. I guess they’re trying to find a way to make a gang rape copasetic in court.”

“Vince, Call me on the cell phone.”

I took the call to the tree house in the backyard where I had the best vantage point.

“Vince why are you putting all of that business out there like that? You’re slipping.”

“I trust Troy, Chet and Silver. I use them as filters and conduits to keep an eye on things and help with my investigations.”

“Vince, how do you know about the Hadley rape case in such intimate detail?”

“My girlfriend copied some files from a law firm she works, or dances at; it’s up in the air. I used the confidential informants they used for information and penetrated them on the ground with speed. I’ve compiled what I refer to as my discovery evidence and have a district attorneys kid on video selling drugs and on audio tape setting up deals. I’ve got one of the chairman of that company Chipcom, Raymond Senior’s son, Raymond Junior, on video selling drugs and on audio tape setting up a deal. By the way, that is the chairman who put up all of that money to finance the anti three strike proposition.”

“I read about that in the paper. What’s up with Bob Prescott and the rape victim?”

“I got that information out of the same files. I penetrated another snitch Bob Prescott does business with and found out Prescott worked for detective Pincher to set up the rape victim two times in a row.”

“Vince, how are you going to trust Bob Prescott’s rat friend not to turn on you? Does he know where you’re staying or your phone number? You know the heat can zero in on you with just your number and satellites.”

I listened to Vince think about if for too long. He was slipping.

“Yeah, he knows where I’m at, and he hasn’t called me back since yesterday. I fucked up and pushed too hard. It’s just the whole gang rape deal and the way the victim is getting so screwed has me losing my prospective. I’ve got all the evidence I mentioned in a P.O. Box in Trabuco Canyon. I’m going to move to a lawyer’s house in the most exclusive gated community in Dana Point next to get clear of this one.”

I heard a loud knocking and what sounded like the police yelling in the background at the house Vince was at. I heard Vince running and a sliding glass window opening and then Vince running again. A half a minute later I heard Vince breathing hard, almost say something, and then run again.

“Hey homeboy, the cops are closing in on me. I’m not going to get away…I dropped the P.O. Box key in the seventh hole and am running away from it… They’re going to fuck me up…”

I heard the detectives yelling, “Freeze! Down on the ground!”

Then Vince, “I am down on the ground!”

Then all I heard was the sound of someone getting thumped. I squeezed the phone and imagined Vince getting hammered with billy clubs and kicks. About twenty seconds into the pummeling I heard one of the detectives yell, “Stop resisting! Stop resisting!”

I imagined in my mind’s eye Vince lying on the ground unconscious. Then I heard the sound of a multitude of cars pulling in front of Troy’s in an intent manner. I looked down from the tree house at the foot plus drop and wondered if I had time to climb down and run. There wasn’t time. I jumped. I landed in the thick vines. They cushioned my fall slightly and slowed my decent down the slope, but not enough. I felt the vines latching around my legs and some of the roots giving way and tried to gain control by planting my feet against the ground and got flung face first. I threw my hands in front of me and felt my elbows hitting the ground as I grinded to a stop at the bottom of the slope. The vines were wrapped around my legs and arms and I panicked and thrashed myself loose and ran to the corner of the fence and scaled it. I landed on the other side behind a business on the coast highway. I skirted my way next door and into the underground parking lot to my Town Car.

I sat in the Town Car and was just about to start it and forced myself to think. The detectives must have been monitoring Vince’s cell phone and triangulated their way right to who he was on the phone with. Did they know it was me? I turned the cell phone off and took my PRESTO 1 license plates off and pulled out. I decided to go for it and drive right past Troy’s street. The freeway on-ramp was right next to it. Passing by I looked up his street and saw detective Pincher’s Crown Victoria, the white van and a bunch of squad cars and made it to the freeway on my way to Santa Margarita.

CHAPTER 158

At a gas station across the street from the gated community I put my license plates back on. At the gate the guard saw I was in the limo business and opened the gate. As I entered, I pulled over around the first corner and hid my Town Car in between two other parked cars and got on foot.

Two streets down I saw a Mercedes full of kids pointing toward an area on the golf course like that was where the action had been. I found the sign that read it was the seventh hole. I walked to the hole. The key was in it. The kids in the Mercedes were watching me so I walked to them.

“Did you see what happened here?”

“A bunch of detectives just dragged some poor guy who looked like he was barely conscious into the back of one of their cars. They just left.”

I got on the freeway and realized I didn’t know where I was going. My condo, my garage, Troy’s amusement park, none of them was a good idea. I picked up the cell phone Troy gave me, turned it on and started to dial Troy, then stopped myself from sending the call. I thought, this cell phone is already compromised. I turned it back off and pulled over to a pay phone.

“Troy I need a place to hide out!”

“Don’t come here! The lead detective was asking about you and arrested two people for drug offenses. I’m sure they told him you were here!”

“Where is CROSSROADS RECOVERY?”

CHAPTER 159

I parked around the corner from the recovery center, took my plates off, and walked. At the front door there was a sign that said they weren’t open until six a.m. It was 5:30 a.m. I walked back to the garage I’d walked past and listened. I heard people talking and kept looking and found a peephole drilled through the garage door. I looked through it and could discern a few bodies sitting on chairs. I knocked and whispered, “Damon! Sir Rott!”

I heard the talking inside cease, and then Damon telling someone to look through the peephole. “Who is it?”

“Sir B.J..”

I heard Damon get up and the door open from the garage to the backyard. I walked over to the side where the gate opened and saw Damon standing above the fence line at 6’3. He studied me with highly skeptical eyes with his head cocked back like he rarely believed anything before it was ultimately proven. He opened the gate and stepped through in a tank top that showed his sculpted frame that looked like chiseled armor from hundreds of thousands of pushups, handstand pushups, pull-ups and callisthenic exercises that shredded the core muscles to the bones. I watched his granite stoic face change and bless me with a knowing smile from all those years ago. I stepped into the garage.

“This is Dan and Eric. I want you two to go inside and tell Jade B.J. is here.”

I shook hands with Dan and Eric before they went inside.

“Jade runs the house and helps out a lot of people in need. I got out of prison after all those years and found out my wife turned into a Saint! She’s keeping my ass in check. All she asks out of people is that they tell the TRUTH and keep the dope fiend games and drama out of the house where people are trying to get into a sober life where they can get their SOUL, kids and families back.”