ROLL CALL ~ A Prison List (True Prison Story) Read online

  I yelled back, “That might have worked on my Mom but it doesn’t on me! I’m not scared of you!”

  The argument continued for a while until my Dad grabbed some alcohol and went in his room to fume. My brother and I ran to the garage for our bikes to try and catch the U.P.S. truck. We pedaled as fast as our little legs could and posted up at one of the two entrances to our community. While we sat there waiting we realized he might be exiting out the other entrance. I volunteered to race to the other one about a mile away but my brother didn’t want me to leave him. After about twenty minutes we knew he’d left out the other entrance and my brother blamed me for arguing with our father. He said it delayed us from getting to our bikes. I realize all of these years later that he was right, I shouldn’t have argued. I also realize that my reactions to the injustice of our situation had me calling my own shots, self-destructive ones.

  Those phone calls we expected to come never came but we were listening to my Dad’s conversations. He had an old military buddy calling who was trying to help him through the divorce. We listened to him lash out about what a whore our Mom was for leaving him and her own kids. He’d yell, “She doesn’t even care about her own kids! What a piece of trash! I never expected this out of her… Piece of shit!” The rest of the conversation would be him justifying what a good husband and provider he’d been so it must be her fault. Then he’d turn the conversation toward how my brother and I didn’t stand a chance because of her. We weren’t going to amount to anything because of the whore. It seemed like it was going to be his mission to prove that fact and lay the blame on her to drive the point home.

  CHAPTER 3

  As the weeks went by and Christmas had come and gone my Dad drank more and more and the mood got a lot darker. Before my Mom split the discipline in our family was of the belt variety. Now we were graduating to the fist and brute force. I wasn’t the type of thirteen year old to sit there and take it though, I’m a runner. At least until enough anger builds up in me that I have to get my own vengeance. My Dad ran a territory for the newspaper in Santa Ana and would be gone from 1 a.m. until the morning. He’d often take my brother and me to work with him for free labor. I remember one time in the back of the Buick throwing papers he was talking bad about us and our Mom and I told him how I felt and hopped out the back and watched him drive away. Another time at home he caught me and hit me so hard in the back that my spleen busted and I was stuck in the fetal position for a couple of days. Another time he caught me and picked me up and carried me like a sack of potatoes and threw me into a tree in the backyard. I bounced up and did my fake left go right move to escape the rest of his wrath and took off running. Down the street wiping the blood off of my nose I wondered if I could call my grandfather up to have my Dad whacked. The next day I looked for his phone number.

  I didn’t find his number but I found his money. From that point on I stopped going to school and started hustling. I started avoiding him while he was home and when I had to sleep when he was there, I set up a spot in the rafters of the garage to tuck myself into. When he got home from work and I heard him snoring, I’d crawl in his room and grab the money clip out and crawl back out of his room to inspect it. There was usually about $300 in there and I was hit with the question, should I steal all of it? What would the future of that be? None, so I just peeled off about $30 and opened a bank account with aspirations of saving up enough money to buy my own place for my brother and I. Since a kid on the run can’t live on one pay number alone I spread my hustle. During school days I found cars that looked rich enough to spare some change. Every time I’d come up and hit the jackpot my need for another score pushed me further! I was on an adrenaline high, filled with aspirations to be a self-made millionaire and prove my Dad wrong and reunite us with our mother!

  My brother Bo took a different street. He started ditching school and living at the beach all day. Surfing became his escape and he was a natural. He found his adrenaline rush racing down the steep peeling lines at lower trestles. He had a road dog named Mark he surfed with whose parents took him in. This scared me because I didn’t have a road dog and it didn’t seem like my brother needed me anymore. Feeling lonely, I infiltrated my brother’s life and found a better pay number.

  Mark and my brother were smoking some pot and examining a bag of it. When I found out how much that small bag cost I was intrigued. If a small little bag like the one they were holding cost $100, imagine how much a trash bag full would cost! I investigated their scene and was amazed to find such a huge market place! It was like an underground Dow Jones stock market. Almost everyone who skated, surfed, snowboarded, punk rocked… and in general everyone else who was interesting partook. I got so excited with this new opportunity that I looked at it like a playground. Mark was a good person to learn the ropes from. He explained the prices and the level of hustlers. He pointed out that the closer you went to Mexico to find a dealer the larger a provider you’d be. If that was the case then I’d have to show some ambition.

  For the next couple of days I determined how I was going to get a connection in Mexico. From my spot in the rafters I heard my Dad pulling his car out at 1 am and briefly thought about taking his other car. That wouldn’t have worked. I couldn’t risk driving without a license to the border of Mexico, meet a cartel level pot dealer, and make it back in six to eight hours to beat my Dad home. My brother was at Mark’s house sleeping comfortably and I felt left out. I walked to the freeway to hitchhike there.

  At the freeway going south I got a ride immediately. My ride was going to Oceanside about a third of the way there. My driver was a thirty something year old dude and it turned out he smoked pot. I tried to incorporate him into the mission but he wasn’t into it. He told me I’d never meet a dealer off the street and that I was crazy. I looked at it like he was a scared little guppy and it took being bold to capitalize.

  He dropped me off in Oceanside and I got another ride almost immediately. This time it was a pretty woman that resembled my Mom a little. She asked me where I was headed. I told her I was going to the border of Mexico to meet someone. She said she was going to National City and would drive me the extra ten or so miles. When we got there I had no idea where I even wanted to get dropped off. The driver that looked kind of like my Mom was confused and had a worried look on her face. She drove me as close to the border as possible where you can park your car on the California side and walk across. She pointed to a Macdonald’s restaurant and told me that would be the safest place for me to wait for whoever it was I was meeting. I had to get out of the car because that pretty lady was looking at my scared face and having second thoughts about dropping me off. She asked me if I was a runaway and I got out of the car and told her she reminded me of my Mom before closing the door. I walked away and looked back and saw her praying.

  Following the pretty lady’s advice I stood in front of the McDonalds. People were walking by too fast for me to ask them to be my big time Mexican pot dealer but I tried anyway. Mark had prepped me on some Mexican slang so I asked, “Molta?”, “Yesca?”, to try and get the ball rolling but that only sped people away from me. I looked around and decided I was a bust out in front of the parking lot under the lights so I went inside. I stood at the back of the line to order to think it out.

  All of the big time Italians that I’d seen all had a certain look, a big belly, nice shoes and that look in their eyes and body language that they were always aware of things. I decided Mexicans couldn’t be that much different. I found a table next to the bathroom to study the Mexicans. I decided to add the look of a fat wallet as another indicator and started following those that fit the criteria into the bathroom. The first guy I followed looked about forty, had that big belly, some expensive looking snake skin boots, a big ass belt, a fat wallet, those wary eyes and a fedora hat. I had him in the bathroom to myself and gave him all of my Mexican slang for pot and even put two fingers to my lips like I was smoking a joint.

  The big Mexican stared at me like he w
as deciding something and then said something in Spanish: “I’m the Mexican police!” but I couldn’t understand. Since I didn’t know what he’d said, I kept putting my two fingers together to my lips. I hit him up in English that I wanted to buy thousands of dollars worth of “Pot”, “Molta”, “Marijuana”, “Weed”, Another two fingers to my lips and the big Mexican walked out of the bathroom.

  I followed him out and watched him sit at a table so I sat back at mine. I tried to keep my eye on him and the rest of the place at the same time. He got on the phone and called someone. I imagined he was calling one of his employees to come check me out. I didn’t let this delusion of grandeur keep me from following a few more that fit the criteria into the bathroom. The next one ran out of the bathroom as if he was being set up. I stood there in shock and then realized he had to be a big time Mexican drug dealer if he was that paranoid. When I opened the door to look for him, he was gone. I looked over to the big Mexican sitting down and he was laughing. The next guy I followed in looked like he knew the big Mexican sitting down. They had looked at each other and you could tell they knew each other. Was that the phone call he’d made? I followed the newest Mexican into the bathroom and ran down my “getting more desperate” spiel. He asked me a few things I couldn’t understand so I pulled out a wad of cash to show him I meant business. I flashed a thick stack of one-dollar bills with a hundred on the top while my real stash was in my shorts underneath my jeans. The Mexican shook his head and I understood, “How old are you?”

  I wasn’t prepared for the question and lied. “I’m seventeen… I can make you guys a lot of money! Hook me up!”

  The Mexican smiled like this life always kept him laughing. He raised his left hand for me to stop talking and said something fast in Spanish I couldn’t understand. “Wait at your table. We’ve got someone coming to hook you up!”

  I sat back at my table wondering what that Mexican just said in the bathroom. I got the feeling I was making progress. I looked over at that big time Mexican doing his homework on me and saw him open his wallet and flash a badge of some kind. I felt my adrenaline spike so hard I almost took off running out of the McDonalds. The only thing that held me in my seat was the reality that there wasn’t anywhere to run. Outside the McDonalds, there were only those parking lots, then about a half a mile to the freeway. I looked away from the big Mexican cop and decided that he must not have any jurisdiction on this side of the border. I stayed cool and it got worse. A Mexican Federale in uniform walked in and sat at the table with the big Mexican cop. They practically huddled together to discuss something that was obviously important. The Federale in uniform got up and got in line to order something. Then a white man that looked about fifty walked in and shook hands with the big Mexican cop who pointed him my way.

  The white man came to my table and introduced himself as Bill. He asked me if I was hungry and I wasn’t. My stomach was fluttering and I was nervous but I said I was hungry anyway. Bill bought me a hamburger meal along with a shake and he sat back down with me. I found myself telling him everything about my life leading up to hitch hiking to Mexico. Bill was a good listener and he encouraged me by telling me he’d had a similar childhood. Just having another adult listen to me as if he cared, felt good.

  Bill studied me and I told him my name. It looked like he could see how focused I was but I added to it with my furrowed brow and my posture. He told me how he had run away from home in similar circumstances, also from Orange County, and how he got blessed to meet a good person he was still doing business with in the harbor to this day. He looked thoughtful and said, “If I don’t hook you up you’re just going to keep looking for a dealer until you find one, aren’t you?”

  I nodded my head like there was no stopping my quest.

  CHAPTER 4

  On the ride home to Orange County in Bill’s B.M.W., I asked, “Who was that big Mexican who called you to come and get me?”

  Bill said, “Sometimes not knowing everything is better.”

  I needed to know. “I saw that he had a badge that I’m assuming was from Mexico. I just want to know who I’m doing business with. Does that guy look out for you?”

  Bill answered, “That guy is the chief of police in Mexico City. He plays both sides of the fence. The mafia family that runs the Tijuana border taxes everything that crosses with drugs involved. That police chief not only doesn’t get taxed, he gets paid as a spy from a drug kingpin in Mexico City and even gets paid from the mafia family along the border for tips to warn them of what’s happening on the law enforcement side of things. He also steals drugs that have been seized in raids by law enforcement. He’s got a good system going.”

  I mulled that over and didn’t know what to say. That was a lot of information. Was I in the car with the mafia? I thought about what Bill said. Sometimes not knowing everything is better.

  I stayed quiet and waited Bill out. We hadn’t even discussed any business and I didn’t know how to broach the subject. I was trying to figure out what would be a good deal for the $4,000 I had on me. How much should I expect for that?

  For the rest of the ride Bill schooled me in the art of dealing. “Don’t rely on selling pot as your only income! That means get a job or find a vocation. If you have a legal income, you won’t have to rely on an illegal one to pay the bills. If you only rely on the illegal one you’ll take too many chances. You’ll sell to too many people. You’ll get greedy. You’ll get busted. Another thing, do a lot of homework on those you do business with to determine their character. You don’t have to deal with everyone to make money. I only do business with five people right now. Each one of them makes about as much as I do off of them but they have to deal with more people to make that happen. Do you understand what I’m saying?”

  I nodded my head that I did but wondered why he’d do business with me? Probably because he feels sorry for me and can relate.

  Bill read my mind. “With you, youngster… I come from the same kind of childhood and wanting to take care of your brother tugged at my heart. I also saw in your eyes that your mind was made up to get into business. Even though I’m in an illegal business I don’t believe pot is a bad drug and I think of myself as a good person with a conscience so I won’t take advantage of you. It’s a dangerous business. You very well might have met someone without a conscience if I didn’t take you under the wing. Plus to be honest, it benefits me because you’re from Orange County and that’s a network I’m not tapped into.”

  I could respect that.

  Bill continued. “When I do business with you I’ll have you show up to a location and then I’ll direct you to another one so I can have you followed and scrutinized to make sure you don’t have anyone with you or to make sure your not being followed. Then once you get to the meeting spot, the pot will be placed somewhere for you to pick up. I’ll have you put the money somewhere else for me so nothing is changing hands.”

  The passenger seat of Bill’s B.M.W. felt good. I was in the car with a pro. I could feel my life was about to change. It was exciting.

  Bill parked down the street from Mark’s house and got something out of his trunk. I assumed he was getting some product so I pulled out my money. He came back with a U.P.S. package that was sealed and post marked. He sat down and tossed me the box and said, “Put your money away Benny. This is to get you off to a good start. There’s a quarter pound of good Mexican pot along with an eighth of an ounce separated you can use as a guide. I’m giving you the number to my voice mail and when you leave me a message say you’re 007.”

  CHAPTER 5

  Mexico City, Mexico

  Mexico City’s chief of police Fuego Sanchez was busy coordinating the security at the drug boss’s estate for the summit meeting of the cartels. He had most of Mexico City’s police force defending the drug boss and the perimeter of the monstrous property. The drug boss, Juan Carlos Abrego Valdez on paper, but he was known as El Diablo or the devil in English. El Diablo Valdez called on Jorge Espinosa, the leader of
the Gulf cartel, Carlo Garcia, the leader of the Juarez cartel and Felipe Nevarrez of the Michoacán cartel for a meeting of the minds.

  This was the first of the summit meetings. El Diablo Valdez always stayed many chess moves ahead of his competition and the authorities. He knew his nephews along the Tijuana border were taxing every cartel’s shipments crossing their corridor into the U.S. so he was feeling them out and seeing if anything needed to get put on the table to iron out.

  El Diablo looked at the cartel heads at his table and realized that suspicions were so high that nobody was saying a word. It looked like everyone suspected the others of infringing on or wanting their business. El Diablo’s position of power to call this meeting was made possible for two reasons. The first was, he was the longest standing pioneer for getting American dollars into Mexico for their drugs. The second and more important reason was he had the most influence and the furthest reach into both the Mexican and the U.S. governments. He was so far into the U.S. government that he was involved indirectly with the highest up U.S. officials who decided on how much money Mexico would get from the U.S.in aid for fighting the War on Drugs. He also had the Mexican government so far in his pocket that the Mexican military escorted some of his most massive loads of drugs into California along the remote Imperial and Coachella valley.

  After a few tense minutes El Diablo decided it was time to get the conversation started.

  “Thank you all for taking the time to come to this gathering. As always I send my regards and respects to your loved ones and countrymen. I established this meeting and look forward to others so we may pool our resources for our collective gain as Mexicans and to settle any problems that arise in our locales. The bottom line is we shouldn’t fight against each other. I’m going to give up the floor for you, my guests, to represent your interests.”