Silent Joe (5 page)

I got through to Mom on my cell phone again. Reverend Daniel Alter had met her at the hospital and she was now in the Chapel of Light sanctuary. She had taken a mild sedative. Her voice sounded light and insubstantial. One of the assistant ministers was going to take her home because she felt too woozy to drive. I told her I'd drive her home myself, but she insisted that I work, stay focused, stay useful. I told her I'd be over as soon as my shift was over.

In the sheriff's gym I showered, shaved and put on my uniform, then walked across the compound to my job.

Orange County Jail. Sixth largest in the nation. Three thousand inmates, three thousand orange jumpsuits. Seventy percent of them are felons. And a hundred jailers like me, mostly young guys, armed only with pepper spray, trying to keep order. Hundreds of new inmates come through the Intake-Release Center every day, a total of seventy thousand every year. Hundreds are released back into society, every day. In and out. In and out. We call it The Loop. The jail is an enormous rotating swirl, a storm system of defeat, fury, violence and boredom. During the day, Men's Central is my world. It's a world of strict order and, usually, quiet compliance. Power and submission. Good guys green, bad guys orange. Hands in your pockets, eyes forward, shut-up. Pull your pockets, show your socks. Them and us. It's also a world of shanks whittled from bed frames, clubs made of knotted Tshirts filled with bars of soap, of rotgut liquor made from leftover bits of fruit and bread smuggled in from the mess hall, of drugs and black tattoos and kites—note smuggled down from the shot-callers in Tank 29 of Module F, or from protective custody in Module J, to the low-security guys who can pass them along to friends and allies on the outside. It's a world of silence, a world of dimly lit guard stations, so the inmates can't watch us watch them. A world of racial gangs, of respect and vengeance, of endless and infinite bullshit.

I like it. I like my friends and coworkers, and the delicate predatory balance between us and the inmates. I like some of the inmates at times. Their scams are clever and they manage to get away with things that surprise me. But what I like most is the orderliness of things: the buzzers and bells and schedules and rules, the heavy keys, the food we eat in the staff dining room. These are institutional things, and as an institutional boy I came to rely on them. My four years at Hillview Home for Child brought those things into my blood in a way I can't get rid of.

That morning I was scheduled to work in Module J, which is set up for protective custody of the particularly dangerous, the notorious, the well-known, for child molesters and sexual deviants who would upset the general population, sometimes even for law enforcement personnel doing time on the wrong side of the bars.

Mod J is set up in four sectors, with a total of one hundred seventy inmates. It's one big circle, with our guard station in the center. Between the cells and the guard station are the day rooms, which have picnic-style benches and tables, and a TV. From the dimly lit confines of the station, we can look through the glass and see into every cell. In-cell cameras
make
every inmate visible on the station video console, and each cell is wired for sound.

It's very quiet in Module J, and the inmates are slightly more respect of us than they are in the other mods. Maybe it's because of the seriousness of their crimes, or because many of them are on trial and facing very long or perhaps capital, sentences. Whatever the reasons, the men in Mod J are little less likely to amuse themselves with chatter about my face.

My first two years I rotated between the Men's Central modules and got my fill of "shitface," "acidhead," "Frankenstein," whatever. The names didn't get to me, though the repetition almost did. I never cracked, showed my anger or lost my manners. I just learned to withdraw into the quiet spot and view the inmates with the detached interest of a birdwatcher.

Happened to you?

Nothing, why?

'Cause you got shit all over your face, shitface!

You get the picture.

Of course, people behind bars are braver than most. You're protected from them, but they're protected from you, too. Even my most sincerely murderous stare often brings nothing but added volume:
OH, look at SHITface starin' at me NOW!
As a keeper, once you step through the heavy doors of the jail, you're not just working there, you're
in
it. Sometimes, you forget. Sometimes, it feels like you've been there forever and you're going to be there another forever. It's hard on a guy who tries to have good manners.

Then you take a deep breath and remember that you've got a shift and they've got a sentence. It's like coming out of a nightmare.

In the briefing room I signed in and sat down for roll call. After that, Sergeant Delano gave us the morning book:; yesterday ten blacks and ten Latinos got into it in the mess hall. It was over quickly, didn't escalate, no time for us to get out the bats and hats—our batons and riot helmets. A few bruises, a few cuts. No weapons. As a result, we were 9-13—cleared and ready—to conduct a Module F cell search at 1300. We call a surprise search a shake. Deputy Smith had discovered a shank hidden in the sole of a shower sandal—sharpened and slid directly through the rubber. There were rumors of trouble upstate. They say that inmate violence trickles down from the max pens to the jails, and at first I thought it was myth. But after three years here, I can tell you that it's true, so rumors of trouble at Pelican Bay or Folsom or Cochran or San Quentin are always taken seriously. We took up a collection for a barbecue to celebrate our captain getting a promotion, then broke.

I checked out my radio and keys, then walked the tunnel down to Mod J. When I got to the guard station I glanced at the video monitors to check my prisoners. Everybody looked fine. Gary Sargola, the Ice-Box K was asleep with one leg raised because he suffers phlebitis.

Dave Hauser, assistant district attorney turned drug dealer, was watching
Good Morning America.

Dr. Chapin Fortnell, child psychiatrist awaiting trial on thirty-counts of molestation of six boys over the last ten years, sat upright and alert on his cot, writing something in crayon, the sharpest instrument allow him since he tried to open a vein with a felt-tipped marker months ago.

Serial rapist Frankie Dilsey, convicted of three forcible and was sentencing for three more, was making faces in the steel mirror over basin, drumming his long fingers on the rim, swaying his hips to a song playing only in his head.

Sammy Nguyen, a young Vietnamese gangster charged with killing police officer during a traffic stop, lay on his bunk staring at a picture his girlfriend that we had allowed him to tape to the ceiling. He glanced toward the video camera like he knew I was watching, smiled, turned back to his picture of Bernadette. He's a bright guy, Sammy. Quiet for the most part, fairly polite, has his code of honor and sticks with it. He's high up the Vietnamese gang structure, probably has fifty guys under him.

Will and Sammy had a history. They'd only met once, about two months before, in the Bamboo 33 nightclub. Will had gone there to help some of his Vietnamese friends. It was the club's grand opening, and owners wanted Will there to certify their importance, maybe get their pictures in the papers. Will had taken Mary Ann, driven them himself, that's why I wasn't there.

The grand opening went fine, Will said, but this handsome hood named Sammy Nguyen and his girlfriend, Bernadette, kept approaching him with some chatter about opening a savings and loan in Little Saigon. Will said he'd get back to them and tried to steer away, but Sammy and Bernadette kept hanging around until Will took Mary Ann to another table.

Next thing he knew, this Sammy cat was staring blankly at him. The gangsters call it a mad-dog, and you're supposed to show respect by looking away.

Will knew the score. He was a deputy for twenty-plus years. So he mad-dogged Sammy back, digging down deep for the thoughts that let you keep a stare. He told me he thought about 'Nam and some friends of his who died there so jerks like Sammy could live here. But a lot of good people came here, too, and he wondered what that whole war was worth. Will said he kind of got lost in the thought and time passed. And the next he knew, Sammy had looked away. That meant Sammy still hadn't gotten his respect, and according to the rules of gangland, he was entitled to murder Will Trona in order to finally get some.

Punk shit, was what Will had called it. He forgot about him until the next day, when Sammy Nguyen was arrested for allegedly gunning down a Westminster cop named Dennis Franklin. The shooting had taken place just a couple of hours after Will and Sammy talked at Bamboo 33.

Will took it hard. He didn't know Franklin but he wondered if he'd talked to Sammy better that night, heard him out about the savings and loan idea, didn't mad-dog him, maybe the hood would have left Bamboo 33 in a hopeful mood rather than a murderous one.

All Franklin had done to Sammy was pull him over for speeding on Bolsa Avenue. Will and Mary Ann contributed fifty thousand dollars to a trust for Franklin's widow and their two-year-old. The papers loved that, and wanted to know why the Tronas had singled out Dennis Franklin's family. Will said because he was a good cop, didn't mention what had happened between him and Sammy Nguyen.

I left the guard station and walked to Sammy's cell. Dim lights, near silence, the hushed setting of a dream. The he-she's—men in various stages of gender reassignment—stared at me. Clarkson, a mass murderer of children, ignored me. I walked up behind the runner—a trusty—as he pushed Sammy's breakfast tray through the slot.

"Hello, Deputy Joe. Sorry about your father."

Jailhouse gossip travels at the speed of light.

"Thank you."

Sammy sat down with the tray across his knees, but he didn't look at the food. "I met him once, you know."

I looked at him but said nothing. He'd shared this information before. "And he was insulting to me and Bernadette. I could have had killed for his behavior that night and been within my rights."

"Yes, you told me that before. It's baby-like, Sammy, that kill thinking."

Sammy thought about this for a moment. He took off his glasses set them on his pillow.

"But I didn't. I had nothing to do with this."

I believed him, because we'd been opening Sammy's incoming outgoing mail since his arrest. I knew he was directing gang business through Bernadette. She was his lieutenant as well as his woman, and told her everything in those letters. Sammy was inside on a murder rap, all right, but he was up to his elbows in gun trafficking, fraud, home invasion; and stolen goods. He'd never once mentioned Will, or the insult, in any his letters. If he let a contract on Will, he'd have done it through the mail with his woman.

It amazes me that a guy as bright and suspicious as Sammy wouldn’t think that his mail was being read.

"Did you see it happen?"

"Yes. Five men."

"That's a contract, Joe."

"That's what it looked like."

"Were you close?"

"The fog was bad. They all wore long coats, collars up. The leader tall."

Suspicion spread across Sammy's wide, guileful face. I routinely lie to Sammy and the other inmates—some lies too big to be believed, other small to even sound untrue. If the inmates get only the truth, they'll strip it off you like piranha. You need some bluff to keep them back. You need a rap. That's what they use on us and that's what they get from us.

So even when you tell them the truth, like I was doing, they assume you're lying. In jail, not even the truth sounds true.

"The Cobra Kings," said Sammy. "They wear long coats, dress good. Not predictable, Joe, because their blood is mixed. Vietnamese and American. Vietnamese and black American. Vietnamese and Mexican American GI's fucky-fucky and out comes—what do the newspapers call them, 'children of the war'? Mutts. Everybody hates them. They grow up, they find each other, make a gang in Saigon. Everybody still hates them. So they come here, land of the free. All that."

"Friends of yours?"

He shook his head no.

"The shooter knew Will by name," I said. "But I don't think Will knew him."

He smiled a flash of straight white teeth.

"Your father, maybe he had some friends that aren't so good for him. That happens in politics. People help you, but they're not good for you."

"That's not exactly news."

The smile again, wrinkles at the corners of his eyes. "You see the shooter's face, Joe?"

"Hard to see."

At this, Sammy's face was all cynicism and doubt. "You heard him say your father's name, but you didn't see his face?"

"Fog," I said.

He studied me, guessing my levels of treachery. I was happy to let him do that. Something like victory crossed his face and I wanted him to have it.

"I heard three guys got stepped on. One still alive. You do that?"

I nodded. "Two."

"How did it feel?"

"Not bad. Compared to watching my father die."

"You ever kill before?"

"No."

"This is sad, Joe. A very sad development. Who shot the other two?"

"The Tall One tried to thin the witness list."