DETECTIVE HARRIS LAUGHED.
I can’t say that I wouldn’t have done the same thing in his place had I caught a heavyweight fugitive as simply as he had caught me. In fact, my capture was one for the books. I’d come into the jail, of all places, and all but begged to be found out. Back in the day, when I’d been younger and less enlightened in the ways of the criminal mind, and I’d caught one running a game on me, I’d say, “Peek-a-boo, asshole.” Detective Harris at least spared me that indignity and embarrassment.
Harris left.
A short time later, two deputies, B. Stanford and W. Smithson, came in. While they chained me, they talked between themselves about the next transfer list due out at the end of the month and wondered if they’d be on it. B. Stanford had in for The Devil’s Triangle: Lynwood, Firestone, and Carson, now known as Century Station. W. Smithson had in for Norwalk, Alta Dena, and Industry Stations. They talked as if I didn’t matter as they put on the waist chains and leg irons. Cool metal on my wrists and ankles, metal that snatched at the air I breathed and made the walls close in around me.
I wouldn’t be a K-nine like Noble. Once processed through classification, they’d make me a red suit, an escape risk. Then I’d be housed in High Power, 1700 and 1750, a jail within a jail with no chance at all to escape.
I didn’t see any way out, none. “Hey, can you guys at least answer me one question, please?”
“You’re an asshole, comin’ in here like this,” B. Stanford said “You put your buddy’s ass in a sling. They just suspended him. And I liked the dude too. So no, you get nothin’ from us.”
“They suspended John Mack?”
W. Smithson shoved me in the back. “What’d ya think was gonna happen, comin’ in our house and starting that kinda bull-shit? We gotta write paper out the ass on that little dust-up. And now I heard there’s gonna be an internal affairs investigation on it. No. No, you definitely got nothin’ comin’. Get movin’.”
They walked me in short half steps, steps restricted by the leg irons. Walked me through the old jail all the way over to IRC, where they took off the cuffs. They left the waist chain hooked around my waist and the leg irons on my ankles. In the walk from the jail, the leg irons had enough time to chafe the skin, and it burned whenever I moved.
They left me in a long line of fish waiting to have their fingerprints put into the LiveScan system, thirty to thirty-five people in front of me, the line moving slow, but still too fast for me. Once my prints entered the system, the Alert would pop and confirm what Detective Harris already thought he knew. They should not have left me unescorted, not as a high-power inmate. But I had not officially been classified, so they could get away with the error in judgment if anything happened.
IRC had one large room in the center, like a hub with four slightly smaller adjoining rooms; the whole place opened like some kind of church. The room off to the right contained a hundred or so naked men who stood with their hands covering their eyes while a uniformed deputy hosed them down with a delousing chemical. The chemical reeked bad enough to overpower every other odor in the IRC. The reek overpowered body odor, the acidic and sour scent of barf, and the worst odor of all, that always present smell of despair.
The line behind filled up with fifteen or twenty more men waiting to be fingerprinted. No one spoke; the order of silence had been given by the deputy who patrolled the line.
Everyone wore different types of mostly raggedy street clothes. Some wore no shirt, their chests burnt brown from the sun, dirty, and up close, too close, they smelled of body odor. Hispanic and black gangsters all eyed each other. Bikers, with their heavy street boots, and a few guys new to this world, Joe-citizen types who’d made a big mistake like not paying a drunk-driver penalty and now would have to wait to get processed before afforded the opportunity to bail, their eyes wide in fear and wonderment at this horrible little glimpse of someone else’s reality.
IRC, with the new fish, had always been the most volatile place in the jail; the crooks fresh off the street, wild and anxious, sometimes went off if not properly supervised. Proper supervision meant keeping a thumb on them, constantly getting in their face, keeping their minds busy, keeping them worried that they were, at any moment, about to get their ass beat. That’s how so few deputies controlled the vast number of loose and unclassified inmates, all that fresh meat off the street.
The line edged up some more.
Over by the main entrance, a line of inmates came in escorted by trans deputies, called bus drivers by fellow jail deputies. The line comprised a mixture of gang members coming back from court, or in from other booking stations, all chained together. The trans deputies, one at each end of the long line, unhooked the inmates, eager to hand them off to the IRC deputies.
A large black gangster, a Crip by his tattoos, caught my eye. He stared at a short white dude with Aryan Brotherhood tattoos who stood at the back of our line, waiting for the LiveScan. I looked around to see if the deputies saw the same thing I saw. They didn’t.
“Deputy,” I said to the passing IRC deputy walking line security, “You’re about to have a problem.”
He didn’t know me, and rushed right up into my face. “What’s your problem, asshole? What were you told about talking in line?”
I lowered my voice and took a big chance admitting my past affiliation to his brotherhood. “I used to be a cop, and you’re about to have a problem over there. Look.”
The trans deputy had already taken off the black gangster’s leg irons and one wrist cuff on the waist chain. He’d started on the second one when the deputy I’d warned tumbled to my admonishment. “Hey!” he yelled, and moved quick, but not quick enough. The second cuff came off.
The black gangster shoved the bus driver out of the way and went after the Aryan in my line.
The deputy I’d warned yelled again and moved to block the black gangster’s path. The man, who was far larger than the deputy, bowled him over. The deputy caught the gangster’s leg and held on.
With the sudden call to action, everyone in our line moved away, scattered everywhere. Some went for a wall, trapped, unable to go any further. They tried to get next to it, tried to get small. Other deputies reacted but were too far away. The black gangster pulled back with his free leg and kicked the hell out of the deputy holding his leg. When he pulled back to kick the deputy again, I slugged him in the head. Gave him a long, sweeping roundhouse that connected solid to his jaw.
Unfazed, the gangster pivoted and came at me, dragging the deputy, who was still hanging on. The man dwarfed me. I couldn’t run, not with leg irons.
I didn’t want to. I needed someplace to vent my frustration. I went at him with both fists, hit him twice, quick, with a right-left combination. He moved slowly, his big size a hindrance. He only hit me once, with a fist that came in right out of the sky and landed on my cheek. The blow shook my world, made the walls and the lights quake and waver.
I stumbled backward, legs tangled in the leg irons, and fell on my ass. The deputies swarmed the big man, took him to the ground. More deputies came into the huge room, some jumping on. Others yelled at the inmates, “Get on a wall. Get on the wall, and stay there!”
Two deputies had seen my involvement and came at me to “council and advise,” regarding fighting in the jail. That’s how their reports would read tomorrow, a veiled attempt to cover what really happened, a beatdown. Mine.
A second before they reached me, a second before they started to put the boots to me, the deputy who’d been on the ground holding the gangster’s leg saw what was about to happen to me and yelled over the din, “No, no, he’s cool. Leave him be.”
The two stopped and redirected their attention to controlling the other fish who had just entered IRC. A dozen deputies, the total number in all of IRC, against three hundred unclassified crooks and court returns. Not good odds. Not even close.
The near riot started and ended in eighty or ninety seconds, averted by quick-to-action deputies.
I shook off the punch, my face swelling, my vision still a little wobbly. Someone said, “Hey.” I turned around.
My friend John Mack stood close, wearing his Class B uniform, minus his usual smile.