Locked Up In La Mesa Read online

  So this little guy grabbed all the shit and slid back down the pole where his buddies were waiting, and they mobbed him like he was a celebrity. They swarmed over him, and after they got done, he barely had anything left. He was huffing and puffing still from the effort of climbing that pole, and yet when he opened his fists he had maybe one or two papers of chiva and a couple of dollar bills. That’s it; they took everything else. That’s prison for you, right there in a nutshell. Poor kid.

  Radio

  The Great Radio Heist

  THIS IS CLASSIC: ONE GUY had his own trailer that he lived in. I forget his name; American guy. Rich kid. I think he was in there for coke, maybe pot. He wasn’t there for long. Anyway, he had this trailer, and he was the only guy in there who had one. It was a little silver teardrop-style trailer, like an Airstream or one of those, and he or his people had paid off the comandante and Heladio for them to look the other way so he could wheel it inside the prison and park it in the corner next to the soccer field. That was where he lived.

  What was so funny about this guy is he had this style, this way about him where it seemed like he didn’t even accept the fact that he was in prison. He acted like he was simply on vacation in Mexico; every day you’d see him laying out next to his little camper, just working on his suntan. That struck us as the craziest thing in the world, lying on the ground with your eyes closed when anything could happen, but it didn’t faze him. Every day, he’d be spread out there with his drink and his big sunglasses, just lying there on his towel in the dirt imagining he was at the beach. Now, the main thing he had was this really nice stereo with an eight-track and a radio. It was a really nice stereo.

  So one day he was laying out, he had his whole setup going, he was kicked back with his eyes shut behind these big old shades and his radio was on. He was listening to some FM rock station from San Diego. Johnny and I were sitting there not too far away and we were listening, too, and laughing about this guy, this beach bum on his great vacation. Meanwhile one of these junkies, these little vulture guys, came walking past, and he had a radio, too, only his was this dinky little handheld thing, one of the old pocket transistor deals with the antenna. Super shitty, like, two-dollar radio; you don’t even see them anymore. He was grooving along, listening to his Mexican banda station or whatever, with the horns and all that, and it just sounded awful on this sad little radio of his. So he went past, then we saw him stop and turn around, and you could just see the wheels turning in this guy’s head. He backed off a few yards and started messing with his radio. Turning the dial. I realized what he was up to and I kind of elbowed Johnny and said, “Check this out. Watch this guy here.”

  So we were looking and I was laughing and this little guy was so serious: he was turning and turning the dial, until at last he found the same station that the other guy was listening to. All of a sudden Johnny figured it out, too, and he just busted up laughing and I elbowed him again, harder this time, because I wanted to see what was gonna happen. Well, the little guy started tiptoeing over to where the other dude’s radio was, and the other guy never even opened his eyes. The kid carefully set his radio—he got the volume just right—and then he carefully set this crappy little two-dollar radio down next to the other guy’s fancy one, and he gently picked up the other radio and started easing the volume down on it as he was backing away. He did that for maybe four or five steps, until he was a few yards off, and then he turned and just started booking across the yard with the guy’s stereo.

  The beach-bum guy never moved, never even budged. I thought that was pretty clever of that little junky kid. You know he sold it for chiva the first chance he got. I love that one; I still laugh about that.

  Cabra

  Goat For Sale

  THE WAY IT WAS SET up, there was a gap between the outer wall and the fence. The wall was cinder block, and then inside of that there was a chain-link fence, and the gap between them was maybe about twelve feet wide. In the middle there was grass, and it used to get real long, so somebody got the idea one day to get a goat and put it between the wall and the fence—you know, to eat the grass.

  So they got this goat, and it was a regular-looking goat, a healthy goat, and it was doing its thing, eating the grass. It was happy there, just eating the grass. And after a while these two junkies came by, and they were looking at this goat and licking their lips; they couldn’t stand it. Here these guys are starving, and there’s this fat goat like two feet away from them behind this fence; it’s too much. So these guys started trying to lure this goat over to the fence, and it’s tough work because what did they have to offer a goat that was better than that tall grass he was chomping on? But they were determined, so even though it took a while they eventually got him over close enough so they could grab him. They grabbed hold of his leg and they started trying to drag him under the fence.

  It was horrible. The poor goat was literally screaming the whole time while these two idiots were yanking on it, pulling and pulling and trying to haul it through this little gap where the fence was stretched out at the bottom, probably from an old escape attempt or whatever. Finally they did it, they dragged him under the fence, and he was kicking… he was kicking and screaming and they got a rope on his leg and they hung him up on the fence. Keep in mind it’s not like these two guys knew what the hell they were doing—they were just a couple of amateur dumbasses trying to beat up on this poor goat. After they dragged him under and tied him up there, he was still kicking, and they started sawing at his neck with this dull little knife that one of them had. They were sawing away, back and forth, back and forth, and the poor goat was still screaming, and they were getting nowhere, until finally they were like, “Fuck it,” and they started stabbing this goat in its neck.

  A lot of people were watching by this point because this was just riveting. You know what I mean? I’m sorry, this was fascinating. It was like a nature show; you couldn’t look away. So anyway, they were stabbing this poor goat, and the goat was screaming, and finally—finally!—they stuck it, the knife stuck in its neck. I guess they hit the artery or whatever, because blood just started spraying out of his neck. It was spraying all over the place and they were trying to catch the blood in these coffee cans. And still the goat was screaming, and now he was, like, gurgling too. I don’t remember if they were going to drink the blood, or they were gonna cook with it or what, but they were definitely saving it for something. So the blood drained out of this goat and finally the goat relaxed. It just hung there, dead. They cut him down and ran off with him back to the tanks, wherever they were staying.

  When they came out a little while later, they had this great big platter all piled high with goat meat. You could see they had it all laid out like they were trying to make it look nice, like in a butcher shop. They went around from place to place selling the goat meat. I remember it went pretty quickly. I never bought any directly because I didn’t really cook, but I did get a couple of tacos from a guy who bought some; they were good.

  It was sad what happened to that goat, sad how he died, but there was no sense wasting the meat. It was too late at that point, I believe; wasting the meat would have been even worse.

  Cubeta

  American Shit Bath

  THERE WAS VERY LITTLE FIGHTING, I mean actual fist-fighting, in La Mesa. If someone was out of line, there were basically three main things you could do to punish them or get rid of them or humiliate them. If someone had disrespected a capo or beat him for a few dollars or something like that, that person could be greenlit for any of the three penalties. One was you could stab him, and that was intended either to kill him or just to hurt him. Another was to shoot him; that was if you wanted to kill him. And the third thing was you could give him a shit bath.

  There were open sewers running through the prison like ditches, and those led out to a big cesspool, and from there they’d either pump the sewage out or treat it or something, I don’t know. The way a shit bath worked was, if there was someone who needed to be t
aught a lesson, you’d wait until he was dressed up real nice and then you’d pay one of the little junky kids, the vultures, to take a gallon can, like a paint can, and fill it up with sewage from the ditches. They’d take this gallon can of shit and in front of everybody, they’d throw it right on the guy, and everyone would laugh, and he would be humiliated. That was how they’d keep him in check. There were always two or three shit baths on visiting days, because that’s when guys would be wearing their nicest clothes.

  So, to back up a little bit: I had this friend, Davy. He was from Kenosha, Wisconsin, and he was in there for smuggling pot, same as me. He lived in the carraca next door to mine in Tank C. He was a real good kid, and one thing about Davy is he was probably the prettiest male I had ever seen. I used to tell him all the time that if he would just dress up like a girl he could easily walk right out with the rest of them at the end of visiting day. He wouldn’t do it, though, because he was just terrified that someone might think he was queer. How crazy is that?

  Davy had a little eight-track tape player, and at night he would always play “Dark Side of the Moon” by Pink Floyd—the whole album, start to finish. He would be in his room and I’d be next door in mine and we would listen to that album until we fell asleep. We literally listened to Dark Side of the Moon almost every single night the whole time I was in there.

  One day Davy asked me if he could leave his eight-track in my carraca for a little while because mine had a lock on the door and his didn’t. (It wasn’t much of a lock; you could pick it real easy, but it was better than nothing.) So we put it in my room and went out to the yard. Before we left I told one of the talacha boys—it was actually the same kid who’d climbed the greased pole and who later on got burned real bad when he fell in the hot tar—I asked him to kind of keep an eye on my room, and I gave him a few pesos. He sat down the way a little bit watching TV and keeping one eye on my carraca. We came back a little while later and the eight-track was gone; it wasn’t in my room. I asked the talacha boy who it was who’d been in my place, and he said, “It was Leon. I saw him go in your room.” (The guy’s name wasn’t really Leon. It was something like that but I don’t remember his real name, so whatever—he’ll be Leon.)

  Leon was an American, and he was only in there a short while, but he was a real lowlife, just a disgusting individual. He was in there for maiming horses. What he’d do is, he’d go down to the Agua Caliente Racetrack in Tijuana and he’d shoot a horse full of speed, to try and make it run faster than the other ones, or else he’d cut its tendon or poke it with an ice pick, you know, to slow it down. He used to sneak in there and do this kind of shit, and one day he got caught.

  The kid seemed sure it was him, so I went to Leon’s carraca and I said, “Man, what’d you do with the eight-track?”

  He said, “What’re you talking about?”

  “Dude,” I said, “don’t fuck with me. What’d you do with the eight-track?”

  “I didn’t do anything with it. I didn’t touch it.”

  “Look, I paid one of these guys to watch my door, and he saw you go in there and take the eight-track. I know you took it, now what’d you do with it?”

  And he kept on denying it. So finally I said, “All right, last time I’m gonna ask you, and then there’s gonna be some retribution.”

  And he said, “I didn’t take it.”

  I said, “Okay,” and I walked out.

  Something else to know about Leon is he had this woman, this great big old huge fat woman with short hair, that would come in and visit him and give him money for heroin and whatever. She was so homely it was ridiculous; he was just using her to bring him money. His routine was, whenever she’d come he’d get all cleaned up and spiffy and try to look the pimp, and she thought he was the most wonderful thing in the world because he was nice to her. She’d give him whatever he asked for.

  Well, I’d warned him there would be some retribution, so I let about two weeks go by and then I paid one of the runners a nickel or whatever to run up to this guy’s room and tell him he had a visitor. Leon thought it was this woman, so he got himself all slicked up because he thought he was gonna get some money. About the only expensive thing he had was a real nice leather jacket, so he put that on along with a clean shirt and clean pants, then he combed his hair just so. (You know where this is going.)

  Meanwhile, I paid another guy to get a bucket of shit. But I didn’t pay him to get a one-gallon bucket of shit, I paid him to get a five-gallon bucket of shit. This was my friend Ron—super nice guy. We didn’t want Leon recognizing who it was dumping the shit on him because, like I said, he was a pretty bad dude. He was older than us and much harder than we were, and for all we knew he could have been a murderer or anything. But Ron was getting out soon and he hated Leon too and I was paying him, so he was happy to do it. Anyway, we didn’t want Leon to recognize Ron, so we put him in a disguise. We put him in a big trench coat, and he had real long hair, so we tied that up and put it up under a hat and we gave him these big old sunglasses. He looked like a spy.

  So here comes Leon all slicked up in his nice jacket and his hair, and over here was Ron the spy with this five-gallon bucket of shit, and it was real heavy so he was trying not to splash it on his trench coat. I came out of the crowd behind the victim, Leon. The plan was I would distract him just long enough for Ron to get the shit on him. So I kind of disguised my voice and yelled to him. I was like, “Oh, Leon!” in this high-pitched voice. Well, he stopped and looked around, and I mean just for a few seconds, but it was perfect timing for Ron to come sneaking up behind him with the shit. I gotta hand it to Ron, he hoisted that bucket and BOOM!—he just set it perfectly right down on top of the guy’s head.

  You know how you see football players try to get the coach with the Gatorade at the end, and half the time they fuck it up and the guy barely gets wet, or he sees it coming? Well, Ron just set this bucket right down over this guy’s head and I swear the entire yard just froze. You imagine: these guys are used to seeing these little gallon cans of shit thrown at a dude. This is a full five-gallon bucket. Of shit. This is basically poison.

  So Leon was standing there, and of course he knew what had happened to him, but he just stood there for a second—he was probably in shock at this point—he stood there for a second, and then he just kind of tipped his head a little bit, real slow, and the bucket fell off: CLUNK.

  Now he was standing there with everything running down him and the whole yard just exploded in laughter, and my friend Ron immediately started running back to the tanks to get out of his disguise.

  I had told Ron, I said, “I won’t let him catch you. If he catches you, I’ll put a foot in his head or whatever I gotta do. I’m not gonna let him get you. Whatever happens, you’re gonna be okay.” So Ron took off while the whole yard was laughing at Leon, and I was bent over laughing, too. Then Leon broke and ran after Ron, and it turned out he was really fast. I mean, Ron was going top speed and he had a head start on this guy, but the guy was catching up to him. So now I took off, running after them as fast as I could, and the whole time I was thinking, “Oh no, I’m gonna have to save Ron’s life.” Like, “I’m gonna have to fight this crazy guy, who’s covered in shit.”

  Ron made it through a gate, and fortunately he was smart enough to have told somebody beforehand to shut the gate as soon as he came through it. So what happened was, he just barely got through and somebody slammed the gate and then WHAM!—Leon hit the gate. I was running up right behind him at this point, so I came screeching to a halt, and he turned around so I had to try to look all casual like I’d been standing there the whole time.

  He looked right at me. I looked back and said, “Wow, man, I don’t know who you fucked over, but you must have really blown it this time.”

  He kept right on staring at me. “I know who it was,” he said, “and I’m gonna get him.”

  I just walked away laughing. I was pretty well protected by that point, much more than he was, so I wasn’t too worr
ied about it. It was totally worth it.

  The worst part of it was, he tried to clean himself up in the shower, but the shower was just this little trickle of water; it barely made it out of the wall. So it’s not like you could stand under it and take a real shower. It was more like you could scoop it with your hand and keep throwing water on yourself, just tiny handfuls of water. It was hopeless.

  So the word was out: no more one-gallon shit baths. From that day on, if you were gonna give somebody a shit bath, you gave them an American shit bath.

  Tren

  The Babysitter

  LA MESA WAS SUPPOSED TO be a family-friendly kind of prison. There weren’t a million kids, but they were around, and they lived in the tanks and the other apartments right alongside the rest of us. They were a fact of life, part of what made the place what it was, and they had to be taken care of, just like kids anywhere. At the same time, of course, you had prisoners and prison people doing what they had to do, their drugs and their conjugal visits and what have you. Sometimes the parents would need to put the kids with someone for a little while so they could deal with their business. They needed a babysitter. And just like with every other thing in La Mesa, where there was a need, someone set up a little operation, a little business, to meet it. That’s how The Professor started his babysitting service.

  I don’t know if this guy was a real professor or not. That’s what someone said he was and that’s what we called him. I guess he must have had some kind of university job on the outside or something, some kind of academic position. He was a smart guy, obviously, and he kind of had that bearing, you could say. He was also crazy, like a bad schizophrenic, and he struggled with that. The story I heard was that he had a good job and a family on the outside, a good life, but for some reason he just lost his mind one day. Out of nowhere he snapped and murdered his whole family. Whether that’s true or not I have no idea. For all I know the guy was in there for selling dope or evading his taxes. I tend to believe it, though, because he definitely seemed like a smart, educated guy who also happened to have the potential to go nuts and slaughter his family.