Pelican Bay Riot (13 page)

Four northern Mexicans rushed out of their cells dressed in gang land tattoos from the neck down in boxers and shoes and each one cupped a razor sticking out of an emptied bic pen. Pericho didn't back down. 10 years of serving his gang was on the line and he met the rushing attackers punching as straight and fast as he could. He was used to fighting more than one person where the only rules were to draw blood, win and kill if you have to. His barrage of flinging arms delayed the inevitable because he didn't back pedal and zig-zag as the outside attackers fanned out and surrounded him. From behind, one of the northern Mexicans slashed a razor across his jugular and Pericho felt a burning wetness leaking from his neck right before the explosion.

Then nothing…

Pericho's body crumpled to the ground with a portion of his head missing. His brain matter stained the interior of the building in a splatter that looked like melted cauliflower for 20 feet. The bewildered northern Mexicans stepped away from the body and recognition dawned on one face after another that this deadly action was going to cost them a murder case. They looked up at the tower guard in shock and saw smoke billowing off the tip of Hernandez's rifle, then him walking and calmly hitting the alarm. Three northern Mexicans ran to a cell with two northern counterparts in it and one after the other slid the makeshift knives under the cell door, the other northern Mexican standing next to Pericho placed his carving tool in his dead curled hand.

Chapter 3

I shook the visual stain my mind had conjured from the information inmate Rodriguez brought from the Corcoran prison to this one and again decided gun tower guard Hernandez deserved the Mexican Mafia hit that placed his name in their notorious hat.

I walked to the cell door. It was a painted green piece of steel with ventilation holes from top to bottom like honey comb that sealed us in with an inch of space at the bottom. When the cell doors opened and closed they made a clanking grinding sound more irritating than fingernails scratching down a chalkboard. To look through the cell door I had to pick a hole for each eye to lock in on. I stared at the gun tower to the right.

It was 15 feet above the building floor with tinted charcoal bullet proof plastic that had 3 foot wide gaps to fire block guns and 50 millimeter rifles at us. 30 feet wide and 60 feet deep, the alcove of gun tower space had at times every kind of prison staff in it for us to study. The Warden and a myriad of other counselors decided on where inmates would be housed, when a cell block or the entire yard went on lockdown, or came off. If an inmate and his race was privy to when and what was happening, or influential in those decisions the benefit was life preservation. Other guards like Inmate Gang Investigators we called gooners paraded inside the tower just before taking inmates to the hole. Security Escort guards started in the tower before walking down a fortified staircase that opened into the building to escort inmates to medical and other needs and the regular building guards did the same just before and after their shift.

Gun Tower guard Hernandez sat back in a chair at a command center that popped open cells with a microphone in front of him. He looked like a bored porcupine with that uni-brow and long forehead. Nobody else was in the tower with him. Underneath the tower, the vestibule door was the access corridor to the yard and was a painted green steel barrier that made an even more obscene shrieking noise when it opened and closed with a resounding thud. This was the last piece of real estate visible from our cell on this side.

The building guards were showing up with more frequency and that meant one thing. We were nearing the time to come off lockdown. For the last 3 weeks they only entered the building during showers or for inmates going to medical. I couldn't see their office to the right of our cell down the same line but heard the guards conversing and occasionally laughing. Without being able to see them, I looked at the last cell across from us next to the shower.

Inmate Rodriguez stood at his cell door and it looked like he was studying the building guards tucked into their office directly across from him. I could see the outline of his body, at 6'1 and lean, not muscular; his bald head was covered with his gang allegiance surrounded by an Aztec collage of prison ink. A few tattoos peppered different places of his stomach, chest and arms. He wasn't moving. It looked like watching was his job.

The cell next to his had a couple of Black inmates and they had a bed spread covering their cell door inmates draped for privacy, usually for in cell showers. The bottom of the cell had some water spilling out.

The next two cells had Mexicans working out together with one cell calling out the cadence. Two men did pushups like pistons and a silhouette of both their bodies rose and fell behind the honey comb, then, "NEXT GROUP!” the cell mates switched and two more bodies replaced them.

The next cell was directly across from us and held our most esteemed loved one. Popeye was a 45 year old White man built like lumberjack. At 6'4 and 260 lbs of hulk, his silhouette behind the honey comb came into view every few seconds as he paced the cell back and forth. An enormous bald head on not much neck sat over a wide V shaped upper body with powerful legs and hips that turned sharply and paced and turned and paced and turned.

Damon came to the cell door and said, "Look at the locomotive go."

I crouched down a little to give him room to view and said, "I wouldn't want to get in his way. He's a ball of energy that doesn't register physical pain."

The rest of the cells down that line were all Mexican and Black inmates with one Asian cell.

I looked up at the cells above on the top tier all the way to the right where they began next to the upstairs showers. The first two cells were empty. One of those two cells was probably where the White crip was going to be housed. Damon must have been reading my mind.

"That notorious White crip from LA will get housed in one of those empties huh?"

I nodded my head, "Yep."

We found out the White crip was on his way from word in the rest of the prison. The scrappy little fighter from Watts, LA was suffering from identity crises and had been on each of the other 9 yards, never backing down, always causing a riot. The problem was that in California, state prison inmates were segregated by race and it naturally caused races to impose domination and control over things like showers, tables, and other territory, both in the buildings and yards. This caused an evolution that formed more gangs. Then, alliances were formed between the southern Mexican and White inmates to share territory between those two races, the Blacks and Asians formed an alliance for the other half of the space. From that point on, half the inside of the buildings and yards became a White and southern Mexican territory and the other half belonged to the Blacks and Asians. Things got even more complicated because northern Mexicans ran with the Black inmates on the streets so they were housed together in northern California county jails and intake prisons which made them enemies of southern Mexicans. The White crip caused the same problem for the White inmates. There had to be racial loyalty in a place that demanded it.

The cell next to the empty ones had the shot caller for the crips, who went by Devil. He was from Watts also. His silhouette showed an average sized build standing at the cell door with his cell mate crouched under him like we were. I said, "We have to communicate with him soon."

Damon nodded his bullet head and said, "The old blue eyed Devil."

He was the blue eyed Devil because he was a light colored Black man with blue eyes. He wasn't an imposing figure, but had somehow commanded the rest of the Black race and they had some monsters. So far Popeye and I were determined to try to deal with the soon arriving White crip in a diplomatic way with Devil.

The cell next to Devil had Mexicans in it and one of the cell mates was squatting in front of the honey comb over a chess board made out of cardboard.

He called out his move, “C-13 check.”

The next two cells were the last two White cells. Blitz was pacing his cell at 6'5 and 240 lbs of large framed youngster. Unlike Popeye, his build still had some baby fat on him but he was all heart. He was a skin head from Venice Beach, California and Popeye’s protégé. Blitz’s cell mate answered to the name Damaged from West Hollywood. Both had albino chalk white skin and shaved heads and they had both recently shaved their eyebrows. This meant they were prepared for a coming war. The cell next to them had two more skin heads, Screwball from Ventura, LA, a prison veteran warrior who kept it low key and his youngster homeboy from the same area, David.

The cell directly across from us upstairs and all the rest down that line were all Mexican and Black inmates. While looking that way, Damon walked away from the cell door right when we heard an odd noise.

"Tink, tink, tink."

I couldn't tell where the noise came from. It was an echo chamber in the building.

"Tink, tink, tink."

Damon came back to the cell door and said, "Someone’s making a knife."

I found where the noise might be coming from. Rodriguez had his blanket covering the bottom third of his cell. He appeared to be crouched down where the cell door closed doing something. I said, “Not a knife, it’s something else…

Chapter 4

"Are the guards trippin homeboy?"

Sano, Rodriguez's cell mate looked out the cell. "You're good. Hernandez is sleeping in the tower and the building guards are in the office on the computer."

Rodriguez manipulated a 9 inch long very thin piece of steel in the corner of his cell door where it closed. He tapped it 3 more times. "Tink, tink, tink."

Sano said, "You wouldn't be able to try this Houdini act at the Federal Prison in Colorado I was at. Not only were we housed 7 floors underground, our cell door opened up to another cell for double the iron clad security.

"Tink, tink, tink."

Rodriguez stopped and looked at the tip of steel. It was bent like a hook, but not enough. He showed Sano and said, "Set up the burner so I can melt the tip again."

While Sano worked Rodriguez said, “I need this side to pull teeth.”

Sano nodded his head. Then he manipulated a roll of toilet paper into a funnel and started a contained fire at the bottom.

Rodriguez flipped the 9 inch steel in the air like a baton and caught it so the other end, a straight sharpened point was sticking out of his cupped hand. He flashed it through the air like he was stabbing someone and said, "This side is for ventilating putos."

Rodriguez bent over the makeshift Bunsen burner and dipped the bent tip into it for 30 seconds. Then, holding a wet towel bent the tip against the toilet. He repeated the process 3 more times.

Sano at the cell door keeping watch said, "Thrusha! Flush the flame! We have activity in the gun tower!"

Rodriguez chucked the burner into the toilet and flushed it. A scattering of burnt embers floated in the air and Sano got busy cleaning the residue with a towel. Done with that, he stepped to the back of the cell and waved the towel in a circle like a helicopter blade to flush the polluted air into the vent.

Rodriguez draped the bedspread higher up the honey comb cell and left just enough room to look up at the gun tower. He voiced what he was seeing to Sano. "The Inmate Gang Investigator goon squad is here. Maybe the White crip has arrived."

Sano ran to look and counted 8 gooners, 2 at the window overlooking the yard to watch the escort to the building.

Rodriguez said, "There are too many gooners up there for just 1 inmate."

Below, the vestibule clanked and shrieked while it opened. Every inmate in the building reacted. Sano listened as inmates hopped off top bunks and feet scattered to get to the cell door to stare at the vestibule for the new proposition.

Every inmate heard Popeye's voice, "Hey Devil this is probably the White crip!"

From above Popeye's cell and down some, Devil responded, "Right when we're coming off lockdown! The Devil likes chaotic details!"

Chapter 5

Rodriguez stared at the vestibule and the first 2 bodies to enter were Security Escort guards. They were followed by 2 Mexican inmates. They weren't from southern California, they weren't dressed like chollos. These gang members were from northern California. The signs were the way they wore their blue outfit the state dressed inmates in. Their blue denim jeans were sagging to just below their white boxers and their blue shirts were buttoned at the color only, which sent the rest of the shirt open in an upside down V exposing their stomachs. Both inmates carried a stamp of prison ink just above the belly button that said NORTENO.

Rodriguez watched the 2 inmates swagger into the building with exaggerated limps.

Sano, watching also, said, "They walk like they're black folk."