ROLL CALL ~ A Prison List (True Prison Story) (63 page)

“Who wrote that Greetings kite for all of the new arrivals that said, THOUGH WE ARE LOW IN NUMBER…WE ARE STRONG IN SPIRIT…” Smashmouth said, “Shotgun, from L.A.”

Ricky was walking back around the table to sit back on his spot on the curb. I was now realizing that table had some pretty serious looking occupants on it. I looked back to the 5 star general and saw L’il man waving his arm our way.

L’il man looked right at me and let me know he wanted to talk to me while walking towards us. We met halfway with Damon and Smashmouth stopping 10 feet away the same way the 5 star general and another enforcer did with L’il man.

L’il man looked happy to see me. His smile incorporated most of his face while he shook my hand. He said, “We know what’s up with you and your partner there… You made it all the way to CNN for the 3 strikes law… You did the whole team a service by separating us from the child molesters and the rapists. It’s about time the public sees how they’ve been getting manipulated by the governor and the out of control prison union.” L’il man paused for me to say something but I didn’t. I was trying to figure out how he knew what was up. He patted my shoulder and said, “You know you’re considered a revolutionary now.”

I’m pretty sure I was blushing under the favorable microscope. I asked what was on my mind, “How much time are you doing?” L’il man stopped smiling and got quiet enough for just me to hear him.

“I’m just doing a flat year violation… But San Bernardino county is about to file on me for a hot one…” I knew a hot one was a murder beef or 187.

He continued. “Do you remember Ernie, Ricky’s cousin?”

I nodded my head and said, “His loyal parrot.”

L’il man nodded his head, stepped closer to me, and got even quieter. “Ricky iced him behind Mr. G’s strip club and left some of my and my homeboy’s D.N.A. behind for the crime scene detectives to run with.”

I shook my head in amazement and said, “That sinister fuck.”

L’il man continued. “Ricky ran his mouth to his cellie about how he went to our neighborhood park and scooped up a blue bandana and some cigarette butts to drop after he smoked his own cousin… Now my home boy is in the county jail on murder charges for it and they are about to file on me and come get me for it…”

I stood there shaking my head. I didn’t want to ask any questions or seem like I wanted to know how they were going to problem solve that head ringer. I stared at L’il man for a couple of minutes while he waited for me to ask about it. He finally offered, “He’s going to go through a correction process and hopefully do the right thing on his own…”

I studied L’il man and tried to imagine what this correction incorporated and how it was going to help him and his homeboy. Were they going to make him tell on himself and testify, or were they going to bring his cellie, who he’d told the truth, to testify? L’il man pulled me even closer and told me to take a squat with him. I squatted down until I was balanced on the balls of my feet on my toes with my heels in the air. L’il man did the same thing and told me, “We’re going to handle some serious business this morning. Can you get a small group of your people to run a distraction?”

I nodded my head and said, “Probably… Let me hear the rundown before I guarantee anything, though.”

L’il man picked up a rock on the ground and used it to draw a basic outline of something. He said, “This semi circle right here represents the curb along the track. Ricky is sitting here and these are the tables over here. This is the building behind it… There’s a guard standing on the roof with a rifle… When he comes down and Ricky gets up from the curb and starts walking… That’s when we need the diversion. We’re going to have one of our own diversions going, also. Can you assist?”

I told L’il man to give me a minute. I walked to Rott and Smashmouth. A couple of minutes later we made a decision. I went back to L’il man and told him, “My partner and I will be your diversion.”

L’il man smiled his appreciation to our willingness and said, “Our diversion is going to be at our table. It’s going to erupt right there… So can you do yours far enough away that it also causes separate attention?”

The ringleader watched the Mexicans call B.J and Damon over and wondered what their plan was. Was Topo going to have his soldiers right next to him do it? Or was he going to have soldiers from the bleachers or the table go handle the ambush? The ring leader watched one of the Mexicans next to Topo get B.J. to squat and look at the ground and thought here it comes…

We incorporated Smashmouth into our diversion but headed to the white table to brief the rest, first. We left the table, walked into the yard, and passed through the area L’il man and I talked. We went about 40 feet further and posted up in a semi circle facing each other with enough space between us to work out at the same time and watch the yard and each other’s back. I was facing the direction we’d just come from and could see the ring leader on the roof and everything else I needed to see; the curb on both sides, the bleachers and the tables. Damon was slightly to my right and Smashmouth was slightly to my left.

I said, “Let’s do some Navy Seal burpies with three pumps. I’ll do mine and as I finish my rep you both do yours.” Damon and Smashmouth nodded their approval and I began.

My burpies had me going from a standing position to a jump down into a push-up position where I’d get one push-up in and then bring my right knee into my chest in a crunch and then my left knee likewise before repeating two more pumps for that rep. All three pumps and back to my feet took about five seconds. When I popped up to my feet after the rep I’d say, “UP!!” Damon and Smashmouth would then spring down to do their rep. This way one of our group was always on their feet. For the next half an hour we did our burpies and got 123 rep’s in. Nothing had happened on the yard, everyone was stationed as they were.

CHAPTER 186

The ring leader was losing his patience. Why weren’t they handling their business? It should be easy with those scalpels I left for them to use. Just do it!!

While the ring leader watched from the roof, wondering what they were waiting for, his cell phone rang. It was from central administration. He was told they had just got off the phone with the governor demanding the yard be put on lockdown. He was personally on his way in regards to an Internal Affairs investigation involving inmates B.J. and Damon!!

The ring leader asked, “How much time do I have? How long can you run interference?”

The ring leader’s integral component at central administration responded. “You’ve got until this morning’s yard recall. After that, there’s nothing I can do to keep the word from getting through…”

The ring leader looked at his watch and acknowledged it was 11 A.M. Yard recall was in half an hour for the morning yard. There was no other choice than to coordinate an emergency meeting with Topo to see what the fuck he’s waiting for? He got on his phone and hit a button that went to the main tower guard. “Hey holmes… Announce for inmate Rodriguez to report to the program office. I need to talk to him A.S.A.P.!”

CHAPTER 187

We were still doing our extended routine and paying attention to the little things when the loud speaker announced “Inmate Rodriguez out of building 5… report to the program office!!”

My attention was focused on L’il man, his 5 star general and their henchman nearby. They reacted to the announcement just enough. Was one of them inmate Rodriguez? L’il man and the 5 star general discussed something and then L’il man got Ricky’s attention still sitting on the curb. From where L’il man was standing on the yard, his field of vision offered him the ability to finger sign something to Ricky. Ricky nodded his head that he got it and looked up to the roof and realized the ringleader was missing.

I realized the ringleader must have walked to a spot on the roof that let him climb down into the tower to get into the building. The building’s door slid open and the ringleader walked out by himself. He took an angle out of the building that was going to take him past the tables on the track the rest of the way to the program office. Ricky got up from the curb and I began to understand what L’il man meant about him getting corrected.

All of a sudden, the table with all of the Mexicans erupted into a full-blown war. Damon, Smashmouth and I responded the same way. We started throwing punches at each other and I was absorbing too many trying to see what was happening. Ricky sprinted to the ringleader and jumped him. He left his feet and took flight and took the ringleader to the ground and I couldn’t see him anymore.

Shots of live rounds echoed from rifles and the piercing sound of the alarm filled the air. There were constant shouts from the speakers yelling “GET DOWN!! GET DOWN!!” Then the louder booming of block guns filled the air and deputies from all of the buildings and other yards filled our space. Canisters of tear gas started being lobbed on us and our vision was eye burning and hazy.

Now that I wasn’t distracted by what was happening. Damon, Smashmouth and I were fighting harder. Smashmouth got hit with a block gun and went down hard from the close up impact. Damon and I took billy clubs and went down. We all got stepped on and pinned to the ground so it was harder to see all of the guards in riot gear wearing face masks and shields with some holding block guns, some rifles and others Billy clubs.

Every one of the inmates went through the process of getting zip tied by guards trying to retake control of the yard. My arms were being yanked at an unnatural angle rudely far behind my back. I wondered if Ricky was able to get away with it by rolling into the fray at the tables. Maybe he could make it without being identified, I hoped so.

For the next five minutes, the tear gas dissipated while the medics rushed the ringleader onto a gurney sled. They lifted the gurney sled and clamped it to a motorized cart that sped to D yard’s gate headed to the main infirmary. We could hear a helicopter coming for the ring leader to fly him out of the prison.

About half an hour later, Damon and I got yanked up to get escorted to our building. On the way we walked to the track, passed the tables, and saw Ricky lying on the concrete in a pool of blood with half his head shot off. There were about 60 inmates lying on the ground in zip ties staring at Ricky’s dead body. The pool of his and the ringleader’s blood was draining towards them. A couple of inmates were directly in its path and tried to stomach crawl away only to get stepped on by a guard. The weirdest thought popped into my head. I imagined this whole scene being the backdrop for an alcohol commercial with the caption, “KNOW WHEN TO SAY WHEN…”

EPILOG

Raymond Senior didn’t want to do any interviews at first. Oprah was calling, as was Glenn Beck and even Larry King, but he couldn’t see himself talking to them about what was on his mind. The only T.V. personality he could imagine talking to was Lou Dobbs and he wasn’t calling… Raymond Senior took the initiative and made the call.

Lou Dobbs sat across from Raymond Senior studying him with those sagacious eyes of his looking like an Eagle hungry for the truth. He asked, “What would our founding fathers think of the leadership of this country right now? What would make them roll over in their grave with frustration?”

Raymond Senior looked just as sharp as Lou Dobbs. They were both wearing a pin striped suit with suspenders. Raymond Senior pulled out his checkbook and wrote $100,000 across it for Lou Dobbs and the whole world to see and said, “Our founding fathers would want heads to roll for the way our federal government spends Americans’ tax dollars.” Raymond Senior ripped a small piece of the check off and said, “This represents the hundreds of millions our country throws to other countries every year to fight the drug war.” Raymond Senior crumpled up the small piece of the check and tossed it.

“When you add up those hundreds of millions year after year, and then, you read in the news that those countries end up allowing the drug cartels to control the money, it makes you sick. In Colombia, it’s been reported that the same helicopters we bought for them to fight the drug war are being used by their cartels to monitor and even fly their drugs around. In Mexico there have been accounts of their military actually escorting drug cartels with thousands of kilos of drugs across the border!”

“Then, consider the hundreds of billions of dollars this war in Iraq is going to end up costing us… That war was sold to the American public over ties Iraq had with Osama Bin Laden’s Taliban and Al Qaeda. Those ties were never bona-fied. It was hype. So was the intelligence concerning weapons of mass destruction in Iraq. Bogus wires fed to the American public. Look at the cost.”

“The real war on terror was fought in Afghanistan. Shortly after 9-11 we went over there and identified the Northern Alliance was the Taliban’s chief competitors in the heroin poppy trade. They have something like 80% of the worlds opium there and it’s sold to the U.S. and Europe for the most part. We went over there and sided with the opium smuggling, drug dealing Northern Alliance in hopes we could attain some good intelligence on the Taliban and Al Qaeda. We actually had to pay them for their time since it would have been better spent selling drugs to American and European kids. We not only paid them, we helped chase their competition out of the area. We caught a few Taliban stragglers but for the most part our generals were scratching their heads over the bad intelligence the drug dealers were providing. Imagine that! The moral of this story is how hypocritical our government can be at times.”