Death Row Breakout (20 page)

He made his way to the front. Jellico was working on the window bars. Rube and Strunk awaited him.

“We gotta decide how we’re gonna do this.”

“Whaddya mean?” Strunk asked.

“We can’t all go out that window together,” Roger said. “It’d be like a herd of buffalo goin’ across the roof.”

“We’ll go two at a time,” said Rube. “Me and Strunk; then you and Robillard.”

“That sounds great… but what’re these fools gonna do when we’re gone?”

As if intended as an example of what to expect, Salas came out of the auxiliary room. His face was twisted in torment. “I’m gonna go puke and lie down.” He staggered past them and disappeared onto the tier.

“See what I mean?” Roger said.

“What happened to him?”

“He got in that medicine locker.”

“Awww, shit! They’re so dumb you wonder how they found the place to commit the crime.”

“Personally,” said Strunk, “I don’t give a rat’s ass what they do when I’m gone.”

“As long as they wait until we’re over the wall,” Rube added.

Roger worried what Rudy Wright, or even some of those in the cells, might do to Sergeant Blair, but voicing such concerns would be viewed askance, if not derided. Instead he asked, “Which way you goin’ when you get outta the wall?”

“Probably up the road toward the old rock quarry,” Rube answered. “Circle around that hill and across those flats toward Corte Madera. We’ll wait fifteen minutes at the quarry.”

Roger was certain they would want the pistol, but apparently they’d forgotten all about it, for they said nothing and he followed suit.

“Let’s go see how he’s doin’,” Rube said, indicating Jellico at the window.

“It’s about time for another check call,” Strunk said.

“Right.”

When they approached the table, they saw the hacksaw sever the window bar. “Lemme up there,” Strunk said. “See if I can bend that motherfucker.”

Jellico stepped down and Strunk stepped up. He grabbed the bar and stepped onto the window ledge, bending at the waist and coiling his body so he had all his massive strength, including his legs, focused. He strained, his muscles stood out. “Nothing,” he said. “Gimme the hacksaw.”

Jellico handed it over and jumped off the table. Roger gave his arm a comradely shake. “Good work,” he said. Jellico nodded without looking at him. Big Strunk started the second cut in the window bar. Without the storm to hide the sound, the hacksaw would have been heard throughout the San Quentin night.

“C’mon, let’s tell ’em the rules,” Rube said, heading toward the office. “Here’s how we’re doin’ it,” he said to Rudy and Robillard. As Rube told them the plan, Roger thought of something else. Alarms would sound the moment the check call was overdue. To have any chance at getting away – barefoot in the rain – required half a mile headstart. Even then, it would be a long shot. Anything less and they might as well surrender. The last people to leave had to go immediately after a check call to have any kind of headstart – and they had to make sure Sergeant Blair and Deputy Dog didn’t sound the alarm. Locking them in a cell was the best way. Romero’s was empty. Then Roger realized they could also kill the old man and Deputy Dog. They could do whatever they wanted to Deputy Dog, but Sergeant Blair had never knowingly harmed anyone in the decade Roger had known him, and probably not before that. He was determined that nothing was going to happen to Sergeant Blair. I should be able to cover that bet, he thought, but he felt the added stress of that decision. It changed how he would play things, although the specifics were still vague.

Roger wondered how Salas was doing and started down the tier. Again the face; the voices, “Hey, man! Hey, Roger…”

“Take it easy,” he said. “It’s gonna be all right. If we get somethin’ down, all you crazy motherfuckers can run wild across the Bay Area.” What a dirty lie he was telling them. What else could he do? The truth would drive them crazy. It would be a cold day in Palm Springs before he sprung this crew of madmen. Most of them he would execute himself. Then he saw McGurk’s face. Poor McGurk. Busted for drunk driving in Fresno, they put him in a cell with a rapist who’d nailed a chick he knew. McGurk socked the pervert, the guy’s head hit the edge of the bed. He came from a rich white family, and McGurk wound up being sentenced to die for what should have been manslaughter. There was a time when McGurk would have gotten an appeals court reversal. Now it was shaky.

Roger looked into Salas’ cell. The Mexican was on his side, out like a light, curled up with his hands between his knees. It was somehow obscene that he would leave himself so vulnerable on Death Row, with wall-to-wall killers running wild.

No use waking him up. They’ll probably bust him right where he is. He didn’t want to escape. He just wanted to get high.

As Roger walked out, the hacksaw’s rasp stopped. Was something wrong?

When he stepped off the dark tier into the lighted front section, Rube, Jackson and Jellico were watching Big Strunk, who had the bar in both hands, both feet planted on the wall, so he was bent in half and jutting out. His muscles suddenly stood out as he put all his strength into it. He’d cut partway through. Was it enough to make it move? If so, they could worry it back and forth and it would snap – just like a big paper clip.

“Yeah!” Big Strunk said in a guttural gasp, stepping down and looking around. “It moved. The motherfucker moved…!”

“Move over,” said Rube. “Lemme help.”

Together they grabbed the bar and tried to work it back and forth. “Cut some more,” Rube said. “Just a little bit.”

Strunk went to work with a frenzy. A few more minutes and they would be on the roof in the rain.

Roger went to the office. Sergeant Blair was making the check call to the prison switchboard, “Death Row check call… Blair and Powell.”

“What’s goin’ on out there?” Rudy Wright asked.

“Any minute now.”

Rudy had his bare foot on Deputy Dog’s back. He raised his heel and brought it down hard. “You hear that, boy?”

Officer Powell gasped in pain. His face was turned toward Roger and his terror was evident. Roger felt no compassion for him. The nickname Deputy Dog came from how he treated convicts, and he was especially contemptuous if they were black.

The snap of the window bar was a small explosion. Roger turned to the door. Rube appeared. He grinned and circled thumb and forefinger in the sign of OK, and turned away.

Roger went to the office door and looked. Big Strunk was already squeezing through headfirst. He disappeared into the wet night, and Rube was right behind him.

“Yeah, pig,” Rudy Wright said. “They’re gone and pretty soon it’s gonna be you and me.”

“How you doin’, Sarge?” Roger asked.

Sergeant Blair shook his head.

Jellico appeared. “Hey, that guy’s goin’ out the window.”

“What?”

“Jackson’s goin’ now.”

Roger rushed out. Jackson was sliding out the window feet first. Roger saw his head and shoulders disappear. Jackson waved and grinned like the Cheshire Cat.

A cry of pain turned Roger back into the office. Rudy Wright was bending over Deputy Dog. His thick dark fingers were entwined in the guard’s hair; he was pulling up the head and ramming it back into the floor. “How’s that, punk ass pig?”

“Jesus Christ,” cried Sergeant Blair. “Make him stop.”

Roger was already keyed up from watching Jackson’s premature escape. He needed the Sergeant. “Freeze on that shit,” he said to Rudy Wright.

The black man uncoiled, holding Deputy Dog’s hair in one hand and the long toilet rod with ice-pick point in the other. “What say, white boy? Who the fuck you think you are?”

“Nigger, I’m the peckerwood that’ll blow your head off,” he raised his arm, simultaneously thumbing back the hammer on the .38 Smith and Wesson service revolver. “Get outta here. Go on!” His face left no doubt of his determination.

Rudy Wright hesitated. He was one stride and a dive away. He was big, fast and strong. The turning gears of his brain were evident.

“Go on… make history,” Roger said. “I wanna kill ya.”

The amber eyes in the dark face were an inferno of scorn and hatred – but he turned away. “White trash motherfucker,” he said as he went out the door.

Roger started to laugh at the words. At some point, insults are meaningless.

“Oh man,” said Robillard. “I thought it was gonna go down. I’ll close the door.”

“No. I gotta watch the window. I don’t want another one climbing out ahead of time.”

“It’s time for you and me.”

Roger looked at Sergeant Blair – and the old man looked terrible. “You go first,” he said.

“Somebody’s gotta watch these two,” Robillard said.

“You wanna go or not?”

“Hell, yes. I wanna die fightin’, or runnin’… or somethin’.”

“I’ll watch them from the door. I’ll be right behind you.”

A scream of pain and terror filled Death Row.

Roger ran to the office door. The screams continued. They were down a tier.

“Watch ’em,” Roger said, then started toward the cries. What the hell was going on?

When he reached the front end of the tier, he saw a cluster of figures stepping back from a falling body. It took a moment to realize what had happened: Rudy Wright had taken the key and opened cells. In the dim light only the figures were visible. They started toward the front.

“Hold it right there!” Roger yelled, raising the pistol.

The group fragmented into figures. Some ducked next to the cells, behind the protruding cell walls. Others pressed against the bars. They kept coming.

“Outta the way,” someone yelled.

“You better stop,” he called. The figures next to the cells were jumping forward one cell wall at a time. Those against the outer bars were hard to see. Were they inching forward?

“Shoot, sucker. We’re dyin’ anyway.” Other voices: “Rush the motherfucker.” “Fuck that honky.” Another said, “Give it up, man.”

The racial cry reminded Roger that two were called the Zebra Killers. For months they had cruised the Bay Area, killing whites simply because they were white. If not for this fact his natural alliance with the outlaw would have dominated.

A figure came from a jutting cell wall.

Roger fired. The pistol jumped, the sound awesome as it bounced from the concrete cell-house walls. The figure’s leg went out from under him.

An instant of silence. Then they started working themselves up to charge. Roger went back to the office door. He could cover the gate onto the tier. A head peeked out, then pulled back.

The telephone rang – and kept ringing.

Suddenly the night outside was turned to day as gigantic floodlights were turned on. The cell-block windows brightened.

‘It’s all over, isn’t it?” Robillard said.

Roger nodded without taking his eyes from the gate.

“I’m going to tell them you saved our lives,” Sergeant Blair said.

Roger managed a half smile. “That might not be a favor, Sarge.”

“Should I answer the phone?”

“Yeah. Go ahead. Tell ’em to get up here quick.”

Sergeant Blair picked up the phone.

From the distance came the sound of gunfire. Roger closed his eyes. He’d hoped that his friends had gotten away. That seemed unlikely now.

Roger kept his eye on the tier gate. When he heard the ding ding of the elevator’s arrival, and the sound of the key on the outer door, he knew it was the end. He put the revolver to his temple and squeezed the trigger.

The Life Ahead

It was early Friday afternoon and, as usual, the poker game had been going on since the gates opened following the morning cleanup. On Monday the men with money in their accounts could draw out $20. For a day or two there were more gamblers than there were seats. By now, however, the game was down to the usual four, plus one newcomer. Max Black was one of the four. Just nineteen, he was a good poker player. He’d been playing with grown men since he was fifteen. He’d lied about his age so he would be put in an adult tank. Juveniles stayed locked in their cells twenty-four hours a day. This was better. Indeed, he managed to support himself in the jailhouse economy by playing poker. He’d been in this tank for eleven months awaiting trial and disposition, and he played poker every day, all day and evening, too, except when he went to court. He had honed his skill against tough poker players.

Today, however, he was losing. He’d lost in court, too, but was expecting that. He was getting mediocre hands, not really bad hands, which wouldn’t have been a disaster, for he would have simply thrown bad hands away. He was getting second best hands and was playing them poorly, pushing too hard when caution was the right move. He was also distracted. Half his hearing and his eyes were tuned for the call to “Roll ’em Up.” The northbound prison bus departed sometime between 5:00 and 7:00 this afternoon. Every time he heard keys jangle nearby, he anticipated being called to roll up.

Indeed, just as Six Way Jack made a big bet, he imagined hearing the call in another tank. “Fire away,” he muttered and reached for his chips and started counting them into the pot. Even before he finished, he knew he had a loser. Six Way Jack never bluffed, and Max’s own hand was okay, a small straight, but not with Jack and Jack’s bet.

“All blue,” Jack said. He had a flush, all spades, from the Ace, Queen.

Max threw his cards in the air. “Shit…”

“Hey… hey,” said Tex Silcox. “Easy on the cards, man.”

Max nodded. “Okay… Anyway, I quit.”

As he was cashing in his chips, from the front of the tank, eight cells away, came the sound of a heavy steel key banging the gate. “Black! Cell six… Roll ’em up for the gray goose.” That was the name given to the corrections bus.

Max had already bundled his gear and left it on the foot of his bunk. He went to his cell and took his bankroll of six $20 bills from his pocket. They were rolled tight and wrapped in polyurethane. He had forty dollars in $1 and $5 bills that he had been using in the poker game. His cell partner, Bill Savage, was on the top bunk. He had put down a paperback book when Max appeared. “You’re outta here, huh?” he asked.

“Yeah, I’m gone,” Max said. “Here. Take this.” He handed Savage the poker game money.