Since it was lockdown we had to visit through glass. No Almond Joys this time around. They didn’t even take off the shackles. I was hoping for a big smile on Tsiropoulos’s face when he saw me. No such luck. He looked hung-over, more like he’d come to tell someone their mother died than celebrate the DA dropping all the charges.
One of my Jap flaps came off as I scooted onto the round iron stool that passed for a chair. I kicked it out of the way.
“Get those cuffs and leg irons off my client,” Tsiropoulos told the guard.
“We’re on lockdown, counselor. That’s the rules.” The guard trundled away.
Tsiropoulos put a pile of papers on the counter in front of him. “You want the good news or the bad news?” he asked.
“Just shoot.”
He went on one of those long, closing-argument kinds of speeches where he told me how once he showed Jeffcoat and his lawyer the list, that new versions of the truth started to emerge and Jeffcoat’s loyalty to his teammates started to fade fast.
The reworked official story portrayed Carter as a “rogue cop” who got carried away when he realized a clever African girl had outsmarted him so that instead of making money off her seductive powers and getting free sex to boot, he might end up owing her for the rest of their life.
“He was just supposed to scare her,” Tsiropoulos said, “but he got carried away.”
Somewhere along the path, Washkowski had also joined in the fun, either driving the getaway car when Carter pushed Prudence into the pool or throwing the brick through my window. None of this was really a surprise for me. I told Tsiropoulos to cut to the chase.
“You’re not walking on this one, Cal,” he said. “I think I can get you out of the murder rap. Hopefully, that’s going to be Carter’s beef. Jeffcoat has agreed to give a statement to the police and testify in exchange for immunity on all counts. If the DA will agree and we can get Washkowski to roll, it’s a done deal.”
“So Jeffcoat will just walk away, apologize to the old lady and go back to the fourteenth floor?”
Tsiropoulos nodded. Then he told me I was looking at two to five years for the obstructing. “I don’t think I can do better than two,” he said.
I started thinking about the sound of that cell door sliding open every morning as I got ready for “another day in paradise.” I could make two years, seven hundred and thirty morning cell door openings. Five was a push. For the first time in my life I was counting on a millionaire and a snitch cop to save me.
Three months later I was on the bus to Old Folsom, the place Johnny Cash made famous. Back in the day it used to be a killing field but it had mellowed out. The young bangers and haters who loved to rock and roll ended up at Pelican Bay, High Desert, or New Folsom. Old Folsom was a place where I could just do my time reading a few books, slapping down some dominoes and walking the track.
A few weeks later, Carter’s trial hit the headlines with Jeffcoat as the star witness. Carter’s counterpoint, trying to cast Jeffcoat as the “quarterback” of the operation failed when Washkowski came forward and recalled the events that day when he drove the getaway car from my house. As they pulled away, Carter supposedly informed Washkowski that “African bitch” wouldn’t be bothering them anymore. Washkowski told the jury he was “shocked,” that he never expected Carter would seriously hurt Prudence, let alone kill her. The jury bought it. Cops are just like anybody else except an old school convict—they’ll do whatever they have to do to save their ass.
Jeffcoat came on the news the night he testified with his solemn-faced wife at his side. He told a press conference how he’d made a mistake of marital infidelity for which he would be “eternally regretful” to his family but that he never agreed to violence. He didn’t take questions.
The jury found Carter guilty of second-degree murder and he got fifteen to life. With some luck he’d be eligible for parole after thirteen years. Luck wasn’t likely to be on his side. Cops don’t survive that long in prison. Convicts have long memories when it comes to remembering who kicked their ass, stole property from their home, bullied them in front of their families and friends. Carter had plenty of those skeletons in his closet. Besides with politics being what they are in California prisons, his little sojourn with an African woman would gain him the title of “race traitor” among the white gangs and quite a few of the guards. For once it seemed the impossible had happened: Karma had visited the justice system.
In the end I decided two years in the state pen was a small price to get justice for Prudence. To pay Tsiropoulos and erase bad memories, not long after Carter’s trial I sold my house. When I got out, I’d buy an apartment in a neighborhood where I’d fit in a little better. I wasn’t quite sure where that would be. Maybe Red Eye would get us a place once he finished doing a year in some state ranch for violating his parole.
Selling the house also gave me a little extra money to fund a trip for Mandisa to Zimbabwe. I gave her $15,000 to hand over to the Mukombachoto family and told her to give them all the spectacular details about Prudence’s meteoric career in the world of California architecture before she died in that tragic collision in her new BMW. Some myths deserve to be perpetuated, like the myth of my wife, Tarisai Prudence Mukombachoto, the African Princess.