The day before the Desmonds were to receive that hard visit from detectives, their son Cleamon got an intriguing visit from a stranger. To visit an inmate in California prison, the inmate must send you a visiting form, which is completed and returned to the California Department of Corrections, the CDC, in Sacramento.
But, there is a way around the visiting form. If the prison is more than two hundred miles away from the address on the potential visitor’s California driver’s license, they can visit an inmate unannounced as long as the inmate approves the last-minute in-house request. Abnormal is the case when an inmate, lonely for contact with the outside world, will deny a visit even if he has no idea who the person is.
Eddie Sims presented the top-of-the-line fake ID he had purchased near McArthur Park a week ago for eighty-five dollars. He used the name Barry Sanders, the great Detroit Lions running back, another favorite of his son, Payton.
Cleamon “Big Evil” Desmond was brought into the visiting area by four guards, one of whom held a shotgun. Desmond was denied his “super trustee” privileges after he knocked out a guard during a basketball game. Now he was cuffed, his hands locked to a chain around his waist, his feet shackled. Six foot three, about two-thirty. Graceful in chains. No unneeded fat. Fast as a jaguar. His muscles bulging, but not muscle-bound, his skin shiny, his eyes bright.
A guard released his right hand so he could use the phone to talk through the thick wire-meshed glass. Cleamon was curious who was here to visit. Sure wasn’t the real Barry Sanders. A minute later, Sims came in, sat down, and picked up the phone. It took thirty seconds to come on.
“Who are you?” Evil asked as the phone went on.
“A friend of Bobby’s.”
“Bullshit, motherfucker. If you a friend of my brother’s you wouldn’t be calling him Bobby.”
“A friend of Terminal. I didn’t want to be rude.”
“Rude? To me? That’s impossible.”
“I doubt that. I mean, don’t you think if someone did something wrong to you, or bumped into you without saying excuse me, wouldn’t that be rude?”
“That would be stupid. There’s a difference. Now, who the fuck are you?”
“I’m a friend of your family,” said Sims, starting to feel the security of the thick glass between him and the man who had killed his son. “In fact, I met your mother the other day. Nice lady. Lovely lady. Nice-looking older woman.”
“Now you starting to get stupid.”
“No, I meant that as a compliment. I’m sorry, I meant no disrespect. But, Bobby, I mean Terminal, your mother kept calling him Bobby, I guess that’s why I keep calling him that. Anyway, I used to work on Terminal’s car. He was a good rapper. Could get down. He used to freestyle at the shop where I worked.”
“Where was that?”
“Frank’s over on Central and Ninety-Second.”
“Yeah, know that place. So why you here?”
“Well, I was in the area, visiting a cousin in Eureka and figured I would come by and pass on my respects and condolences to you about Terminal. Like I said, he was a friend. He even showed me the video of you kicking Funeral’s ass.”
“Shit, I forgot about that. I wonder how he got it.”
“I don’t know. But, anyway, I been locked up myself and I know it’s nice to get any visit, even from a stranger. Break up the day, you know?”
“It must’ve been hard to hear the news about Terminal while you up in here. Were you two close?”
Big Evil thought back to another lifetime when he and his little brother used to play on the streets and sidewalks of 89th Street and 88th Place. That’s as far as they were allowed to roam. Their parents made life for the brothers in their volatile neighborhood as good as they could. Cleamon and Bobby rode new Schwinns when the other kids on the block had rusted hand-me-down Huffys. The Desmond parents opened a new world for their sons with trips to Yosemite and Mount Shasta and Pismo Beach while the other kids on the block never ventured west of the Harbor Freeway, the Westside. Cleamon smiled when he thought about those trips. He laughed when he thought about how he taught his little brother how to fight, especially the time he broke Bobby’s nose and told the crying eight-year-old that one day he would thank him for that punch.
When he’d heard the news of Terminal’s violent death, he’d felt only rage. But now, thinking back on those days, he got a rare visit from sadness, felt the unfamiliarity of moisture in his eyes.
“Man, whoever you are, he was my little brother. Things didn’t work out how my parents planned it. But, he was my little brother. I loved him like only a brother can. I wish I could have been with him that night. I wish.”
“That’s sad, man,” Eddie said, as serious as can be. Then he went for the kill shot. “You know, Big Evil, I had a wish just this morning, too.”
“Oh, yeah? What that be?”
“I just wish you could’ve been there and seen little Bobby’s face when I shot him and drove my car over and over his punk ass.”
Evil boiled, his rage about to explode. Sims didn’t let up. “Gonna be casket closed for Bobby. Face looked like a watermelon dropped from the Empire State Building.”
With peerless fury, Big Evil slammed his forehead into the wire-stuffed glass separating him from Sims. An unholy wail, like that of a Cape buffalo-gored lion, erupted from Evil’s crazed mouth. The guards rushed to him, yelling for backup. With his one free hand he struck the glass three furious times before the guards tried to tackle him. One guard went for the shackled, but bucking legs. Not a smart move. The other went Barry Bonds on Evil’s shoulders with his nightstick. Two more guards entered the room. One with a taser that had little effect. Five men were on the shackled Evil while he screamed, “That guy killed my brother! He killed my brother! Get him! Get him!”
The guards were too busy to pay attention to the words. They were struggling to get the upper hand. They didn’t have it. Two more guards showed up, both with shotguns that were useless in the cramped quarters.
By the time they finally got control, Eddie Sims was halfway to Eureka. At first, he considered just dumping the Cutlass at the airport and getting a flight to Los Angeles, if they had those flights, or to Sacramento. He didn’t want to chance driving seven hundred miles. They probably got some video in the lot, in the prison itself. It would be sad to leave the Cutlass. He knew he would never see it again.
But, then he gambled. Who is going to believe Big Evil? And after the fight he most likely put up—Sims had seen the opening salvos—he must certainly be in the hole by now with no communication with the outside or inside world.
So he drove home. However, just to play it cautious, he took the long way, heading down from Eureka, then heading east at Fortuna along meandering Highway 36, past sycamores and pines, past fields of wild fennel, to the two-horse towns of Platina and Red Bluff. There, he checked into a sixty-one dollar room at the Red Bluff Travelodge on Antelope Boulevard.
He put on the local news channel based in Sacramento and saw nothing about himself or Big Evil or Pelican Bay. Checked the papers in the morning. Nothing. Why worry? No one would believe a killer like Evil.
He filled the gas tank and zipped down Highway 5. Just past bankrupt Stockton, he chicaned over to Highway 99, which went through the heart of the San Joaquin Valley, past Modesto, Merced, Fresno, Visalia, Corcoran, and Bakersfield before it met up again with Interstate 5.
Seeing Big Evil try to attack him, even through bulletproof glass, was terrifying. He loved it. If he died right now, it would be worth it for that moment. But he moved on to more pleasant thoughts—his next victim.