Death Row Breakout Read online

“No,” said the other detective. “It’s the district attorney’s office.”

  “I don’t get it.”

  “You will.”

  “Take it easy, Phil,” said the other detective; then to Booker: “We’ll take you to Municipal Court this afternoon. The DA is going to charge you with joyriding. The judge is going to set bail; probably five hundred dollars. You have to put up fifty to the bail bondsman. Can you handle that?”

  Booker shook his head.

  “Don’t you have anybody who will?”

  “My mama… but she ain’ got nuthin’. I give her my check day ’fore yesterday.” She had paid the rent with most of it. She wasn’t going to understand even a little bit. Still, he had to tell her what was going on. She was probably worried sick.

  “Could I make a phone call?” he asked.

  “Why, didn’t you make one last night?”

  “They took my money. I didn’t have a nickel for the phone.”

  “Okay, we’ll let you make one on the way out.”

  But, on the way out, one prisoner was already using the phone and two more were waiting. The detective looked at his watch and said they didn’t have time. “They’ll let you make a call downtown. C’mon, we gotta roll.”

  Again Booker felt the steel bracelets. They walked him through the parking lot, his eyes blinking in the glare of LA’s noonday sun.

  The bullpen of the Municipal Court was like the hold of a fishing boat. Everything scooped from the streets of the city was dumped here to be sorted out. They handed his papers to a uniformed deputy sheriff and took off the handcuffs before locking him in the bullpen. “Take it easy, Booker. Good luck.”

  “What about the phone call?”

  “Tell the deputies. They’re running things now.”

  Booker looked around the bullpen. No windows, walls covered with graffiti. Why would anyone write his name on a jailhouse wall? Did they want friends who came in to see it?

  The gate opened again; three more prisoners were dumped in. The large room was already full. The bench that ran around the wall had no space, although a length of it was occupied by a stretched out man in a white shirt splattered with blood. An open newspaper, covering his face, moved perceptibly as he breathed.

  Looking around, Booker saw other men with bruised faces and black eyes. Most were scruffy and unshaven. They looked more like bums than his idea of criminals. One younger man was lying on the concrete, repeatedly kicking his legs, as if trying to loosen them, and simultaneously wiping his runny nose with toilet paper. Next to Booker was an older colored man in a stylish jacket. He noticed Booker watching the man on the floor. “He’s kicking a habit,” the older man said.

  “Kicking a habit?”

  “Morphine addict… maybe heroin.”

  “That’s why he’s kicking his legs?”

  “Right.”

  “It looks terrible.”

  “It is.”

  “They don’t do anything for him?”

  “They might laugh if he asked.”

  A deputy sheriff and a young man in a business suit stepped up to the gate. The deputy banged a key on the bars. “Listen up in there!” The noise went down, but not completely. “Hey,” the deputy yelled, “you turkeys better shut up or I’ve got something for you.”

  Silence ensued.

  The young man stepped up. He had a yellow legal pad attached to a clipboard. “All of you guys were brought in for arraignment and bail setting. If you have a misdemeanor, don’t pay any attention – but if you are being charged with a felony and don’t have a private lawyer, line up and give me your name.”

  Over half the prisoners lined up, Booker among them. Every man had something to say, some story to tell, some question to ask, until the young deputy public defender had to insist, “Just your name. No questions now. Court is going to start any minute.”

  Despite the admonition, when Booker stepped up, he had to say: “I never got to make a phone call.”

  “The… uhh… deputies will… uh… handle that. What’s your name?”

  “Booker Johnson.”

  The young man added it to the list on the yellow pad. A bailiff came up and whispered that court was about to start. “I’ll have to see the rest of you later,” he said to the several who still waited. Voices grumbled, but the young man departed anyway.

  A pair of deputies stepped up. “When we call your name, step out.” The gate was opened and a dozen names were called. The prisoners were lined up outside the bullpen and marched through a door at the end of the corridor.

  Fifteen minutes later, the first batch returned and another dozen were called. Booker was among these. The deputy unlocked the door at the end of the corridor. “Okay, stay in line and go into the jury box on the right.” He opened the door and the motley dozen followed him through. Going from the packed bullpen with its defaced concrete walls and stench of sweat and urine and Lysol to the wide, wood-paneled courtroom with lawyers in trim business suits and hair sleeked back like Valentino and the smell of Bay rum about them was like going from the outhouse to the mansion.

  “Okay, move on in… move on in,” said the deputy as he guided the scruffy dozen men into the empty jury box. All were bedraggled from one or more nights in precinct cells. All needed shaves. Booker and two others were colored. A couple of the others were Mexican. Some of the prisoners had friends or family in the gallery outside the railing. They gestured and signaled and tried to communicate while keeping an eye on the bailiffs, who closed fast on any sign of noise. Booker craned his neck to scan the room, both hoping and afraid to see his mother. She wasn’t in the room.

  The judge came out from another door, a small man until he mounted the bench and sat beneath the Seal of California between the flags of the United States and California. Then he looked like Pharaoh on a throne.

  The arraignments began. The Court Clerk gave the bailiff a list, and the prisoners were brought out of the jury box one at a time in that order. Each one waited at the edge of the jury box while the man before him stood in front of the judge with the young public defender beside him. The deputy district attorney handed the defendant a copy of the complaint and stated for the record that he had been served. The public defender waived a reading of the complaint. The district attorney recommended the amount he thought the bail should be. Sometimes the public defender asked that it be lower, arguing that the defendant was a resident, had a job and family and was no risk for flight. Not once did he prevail. Once the bail was decided, a date was set for preliminary hearing and the prisoner was guided back to the jury box as the next prisoner stepped forward. One man tried to speak, but the judge admonished him to speak through his lawyer. “My lawyer… Who’s my lawyer?”

  “Standing there beside you.”

  “This guy! I thought he was a public defender.”

  “I assure you that he’s a lawyer.”

  “Hellfire, he don’t even shave yet.”

  “I’m not going to discuss it with you,” the judge finished with a flicking of his fingers and the bailiffs closed around the man. Instead of bringing him back to the jury box, they took him straight through the door back to the bullpen.

  Booker was next. He walked with the bailiff until signaled to stop beside the lawyer.

  “…violation of Section 502 and 503 of the California Vehicle Code, both felonies. Defendant is herewith served with a copy of the complaint.” The district attorney handed some papers to the Clerk, who handed them to Booker.

  “Waive reading of the complaint,” the public defender said.

  For bail, the People recommended $500. The judge was looking down at him; the judge’s eyes seemed immense behind thick glasses.

  “Sir,” Booker said, surprising himself. “Can I make a phone call?”

  “How long have you been in custody?”

  “Since last evening.”

  “And you haven’t made a phone call yet?”

  “No, sir.”

  “Why hasn’t this man
had a telephone call?” the judge asked, looking at the bailiff.

  “I don’t know, Your Honor. We assume they had a telephone call when they were arrested.”

  “Look into it… tell the escorting officers to see that he gets his call. He’s entitled to that.”

  “Yes, sir.”

  “Bail is set at five hundred dollars. How long will the preliminary take?”

  “Half a day at most,” said the deputy district attorney. “We have three witnesses – the car owner, the gas station owner and the arresting officer.”

  “We’ll set preliminary for ten a.m. on the fourteenth.”

  The public defender made a note of it. The deputy was already beside Booker, waiting to guide him back to the jury box, and then he took the next man to stand in front of the judge.

  When all of the dozen were done, the deputies had them file back through the door to the bullpen. As the gate was being locked, Booker pushed through to the bars. “Say, officer –”

  “Yeah?”

  “You heard the judge say I get a phone call.”

  “I heard it. We don’t have a phone. You’ll get it when you get to the county jail.”

  “When’s that gonna be?”

  “When everybody gets done here.”

  Before Booker could say anything more, the deputy had twisted the key and turned away.

  The Hall of Justice at Temple and Broadway was brand new. The jail occupied the 10th to 14th floor. Above that was the roof. The bus disgorged its prisoners at the mouth of a tunnel that ran beneath the building. A big sign with a red arrow pointed to the Coroner’s Office, down the tunnel where they walked against the right-hand wall. Across from the morgue was the freight elevator. It carried them to the booking office on the 10th floor. As the booking sergeant counted them in, Booker stopped in front of him and asked for his phone call. “The judge said I could have one.”

  “I don’t know anything about it,” the Sergeant said. “Get on in there.”

  “The judge say…”

  “Look, nigger, I’m the judge here. Get your black ass in there,” the deputy finished with a pugnacious jut of his chin. Zinc oxide ointment covered his nose, and his freckled face was sunburned and peeling. Booker wanted to crush his jaw with one punch, but managed to hold himself back. The satisfaction would not be worth the punishment that would follow. He was already in more trouble than he had ever imagined. He had been so stupid to borrow the car without permission. Why hadn’t he thought about it? He’d already been gone for two nights. Morning would be Monday. Maybe his mother knew where he was. That would be terrible, but less terrible than if she didn’t know. The jailer’s sneering insult rankled him. It wasn’t so much being called ‘nigger’; back home in Tennessee, white folks (especially the uneducated rednecks) used ‘nigger’ or ‘nigruh’ without a sense of insult. It was the jailer’s sneer; the contempt and disdain that dared him to react. When the gate opened, Booker glared at the deputy, who felt the stare and looked around. Their eyes locked for a few seconds, then Booker looked away. The deputy laughed to himself, not realizing how close Booker was to losing control. Only a lifetime of family discipline kept him from smashing his fist into the deputy’s face. That would wipe the smile away real fast.

  It took hours to go through the booking process; the multiple fingerprint cards, the mug photos with the number and “LA County Sheriff’s Dept” underneath, the shower and change into jail clothes, the pickup of bedroll (it included cup and spoon), the trek to the hospital where a Medical Technician asked a few questions and had a squeeze down inspection for gonorrhea. After that they were dropped in the tanks. The process took so long because it was done by group. Nobody moved to the next step until the last man finished with the present one.

  It was near morning when a jailer opened a lockbox panel and pulled a lever, taking the tank off ‘deadlock’, and then inserting a key in a narrow gate. “Go down to cell eleven,” the deputy said as he unlocked the gate and pulled it open.

  Booker stepped through the gate and it slammed behind him. He was looking along the gates and bars of twenty-two cells on the right. Six feet away was a wall of bars running the length of the tank. Between them was a long runway. Booker started walking along the cells. Over each gate was a number – four, five, six. Black faces were visible through the bars. The tanks were segregated. Nine… ten… eleven. The gate was open. It had two bunks and both were occupied. Booker hesitated.

  “Get in down there,” yelled the deputy.

  “Get in here, ‘blood,” said the man on the bottom bunk, gesturing for emphasis.

  Booker stepped in. The gate rattled. “Watch the gate… comin’ closed,” yelled the deputy at the front. It was a chant always yelled when a gate was closing. The gate was on rollers and slammed shut with a loud crash. Soon enough Booker would hear of the prisoner who killed himself by sticking his head in the gate. Right now he looked around and wondered what to do with the bedroll on his shoulder.

  “Put it on the floor,” said the man in the bottom bunk. The man in the top bunk was dark-skinned and barely visible in the deep shadows. Light came from a walkway outside the second set of bars.

  “Just roll it out,” the man continued. “Put your head toward the gate so it ain’ ‘side the shitter, y’know.”

  Booker could see the point. If he slept with his head next to the toilet, he might be spattered in the night. He sat down on the mattress; his back against the steel wall. The windows on the outer walkway were open and he could hear the distant sound of cars and the dinging bells of the yellow streetcars passing below. He felt the heartache that precedes tears, but he hardened himself against them. He could not be sure that the other two men, who had now rolled over to face the other wall, had gone back to sleep. He sensed it would be wrong to announce his arrival with tears.

  He sat for a while, and then stretched out on the thin mattress, using the County Jail blanket for a pillow. He closed his eyes, doubting he would be able to sleep, but soon enough he fell into it, as much to escape the misery in his heart as to rest.

  Late in the afternoon the deputy outside the tank called out: ‘Johnson, cell eleven, property slip and jumper.” It was echoed louder inside the tank by the trusty in the first cell: “JOHNSON, CELL ELEVEN, PROPERTY SLIP AND JUMPER.” The Trusty came down the runway to make sure Booker had the news, and when Booker was at the gate, wearing the denim jumper and with the property envelope in hand, the Trusty called to the officer out front: “Johnson, on deck!”

  “Comin’ open!” yelled the jailer.

  The cell gate began to vibrate, and then kicked open.

  “Step out, cell eleven.”

  Booker stepped out; the cell gate shook and slammed behind him. He walked to the front. The deputy opened the tank gate, checked his property slip and said, “Attorney room.”

  “How do I get there?”

  “Follow the yellow line,” he pointed to several lines on the floor, red, blue, yellow, green. Each one led through the maze of jail to a different destination: visiting room, infirmary, bathroom, attorney room. All went down the same corridor; then one turned a corner and the others continued. Booker would never have found his way without the painted yellow line. As he passed walls of bars, behind which were other tanks, he saw that the jail was segregated three ways; white, black and Mexican, which was considered a separate race in the southwestern United States.

  At the end of the yellow line was a grille gate and the sign: Attorney Room. Beyond the gate was a large room with long tables and benches on both sides and a partition down the length of the table that came chin high to the men seated on the benches. A deputy stood, arms-folded, at the end of each table, making sure nothing was passed across. The noise was the hum of insistent and desperate voices, for here were sweating men in wrinkled blue denim talking to lawyers, bondsmen and probation officers.

  A deputy unlocked the gate from inside. “Name?”

  “Johnson.”

  The deputy lo
oked through a batch of forms on his desk. He found the right one. “You want to see Reverend Wilson?”

  Reverend Wilson! What was he doing here?

  “Do you?”

  “See him? Yes. Sure.”

  “Sign this!” the deputy shoved the form across the desk and Booker signed. It took him a few seconds of scanning the room before he saw the Reverend’s black suit, white hair and chocolate face. “You sit directly across from him. No touching. No passing of anything. If he wants to give you a document, let the deputy examine it. Okay, go on.”

  Walking down the row, Booker knew something was wrong with his mother. That was his only connection with Reverend Wilson. As he had the thought, he felt suddenly weak and had to hold onto the edge of the table as he sat down. He expected the worst, and when he heard the truth, terrible as it was, he felt relieved. She’d had a heart attack but would be okay.

  As Reverend Wilson expanded on the details, Booker’s gratitude metamorphosed into fury. Ned from the Texaco Station had gone by Booker’s to tell his mother. She called about visiting hours and rode the streetcar downtown. When she got there, the deputies told her that she was too late. Visiting hours were until 3:00, but they stopped letting people in at 2:30. “She told me they were rude to her,” Reverend Wilson said. “When she was leaving, she had the chest pains.”

  “But she gonna be all right, right?”

  “The doctors say so. It’s in the Lord’s hands. You pray for forgiveness for causin’ this misery.”

  Pray for forgiveness! Forgiveness for what? For borrowing the car? No way. He was so angry that Reverend Wilson’s words failed to register. He couldn’t remember saying goodbye – but when he walked back toward the gate, a different deputy was at the desk – the same one who had sneered at him over the phone call, called him a nigger and told him to get his black ass moving. Now he had to get up from the desk to unlock the gate so Booker could exit. They came face-to-face and the deputy apparently had no recollection of the earlier moment. That galled Booker even more. The deputy became the focus of all his frustration and pain.

  “You wanna call me a nigger now?”