White sister

Chapter 48

They woke me again at two A. M.

Rafie and Tommy were back inside my cell with two sheriff's deputies, everybody in a big hurry to get moving.

"Come on, we're going for a ride," they said, as I started rubbing my eyes.

"Where?"

"You've been cleared by the docs here. You're getting booked at MCJ."

Ten minutes later I was back in cuffs, rolling down the corridor in the wheelchair, heading toward the elevator.

Rafie told me the thirteenth floor had booked fifteen people from the El Rey riot tonight. The rest were over at the Men's Central Jail. Because of all the celebrities involved, there was press roaming everywhere. In the lobby, on the first floor. They were even sharking around in the parking lot, writing down license plate numbers. To defeat them, the deputies had cleared the fire stairs and locked the interior doors for the three minutes it would take to transport me to the loading dock. I was pulled out of the wheelchair by Tommy Sepulveda and stood up next to the fire door on thirteen. I felt ten feet tall and a foot wide as I wobbled there lightheaded and confused. Tommy looked tired and frustrated as he studied me.

"You okay?" he asked.

"You really care?"

"Yep, I do. I feel terrible about this, Shane. We both do. Tell us how to play it differently and still keep our jobs, and that's what we'll do."

"How was / supposed to play it, Tom? My wife is shot and maybe dying."

"I know," he said sadly. "It all sucks."

Rafie came up the stairs after checking the eleventh-floor door, and motioned us forward. "Okay, let's go."

We walked down thirteen flights and took a supply corridor out of the hospital to the rear loading dock, where their Crown Vic was parked. A light rain was falling. Rafie led me across the dock, down the steps. He pushed me into the back of the car and then climbed in beside me. The handcuffs were rubbing my wrists raw, but I decided not to complain. I just wanted to get this over with. Tommy got behind the wheel, and with the windshield wipers clacking, off we went, zipping quietly around the side of the hospital, tires humming on the wet pavement. The parking lot at the front of the hospital was full of TV trucks. All seven local news channels and some cable and wire services were camped out waiting for a glimpse of me in handcuffs. My life had gone from bad to worse.

The drive across town was quick because there was no traffic at this hour in the morning. We got up on the freeway where the tires sang loudly in the rain cuts on the pavement as we flew along. The downtown horizon glowed a dull orange in the distance, the strange coloring caused by low clouds over L. A. that were up-lit by powerful yellow street lights. As we rolled down Sixth Street, the Police Administration Building loomed ahead.

"Turn right on San Pedro," Rafie instructed from the backseat. "Let's not go past the front of PAB. The press is still all over out there."

Tommy turned onto San Pedro and made a radio call to the jail, telling them we were seconds away. Then we pulled up to the rear of Parker Center and stopped outside the chain-link fence at the back entrance to the MCJ.

While the windshield wipers metronomed, Tommy blinked his lights for security, and after a second the electric gate opened. The car passed through the narrow driveway and pulled into an empty metal caged area where the gray jail buses were staged each morning to transport prisoners to court. A trustee wearing a purple jumpsuit pulled the gate closed behind us and locked it, securing us inside the chain-link box. There was an opening to the right of the car that led up ten steps to a sally port. The wire-enclosed pathway bent left and led to the booking area at the back of the jail. I'd been here hundreds of times, but it looked different to me now. Foreboding and dangerous.

Rafie again triggered his radio mike. "This is D-Nine to MCJ Central. We're in the pen with the prisoner. Send out some custodial officers and make sure the booking area is clear."

"Roger that," a voice answered.

Minutes later, two police custodial officers in blue LAPD-like uniforms came out of the cement block booking shed and approached inside the wire-enclosed walkway.

Jail custodians were not sworn police officers, but were trained at the Police Academy in jail tactics only. They carried no weapons and had spent no time on the street. They were strictly custodial specialists. Both men descended the stairs and opened the back door of the car. Everyone wore the same cut-from-granite expression. No one engaged my eyes.

"Hang in there," Rafie said, as I was pulled out of the back of the car.

I looked back at Figueroa and Sepulveda. We had shared space on the fifth floor of this building for almost a year, their desks only a few feet from mine. Now a cavern of distrust loomed between us. But I wasn't mad at them. They were as compromised as I was.

"Would you guys call Glen Gustafson and tell him I need his help fast? If he can come down here tonight it would really help."

Rafie and Tommy exchanged a look. "You really gonna use that liar?" Tommy said, surprised. "Even for a lawyer, he's roadkill."

"That's why I want him."

"Can't do it, Shane," Rafie said. "We're on this side now, you're over there." That pretty much covered it.

The custody officers removed my cuffs and gave them back to Rafie. Then I was led down the chain-link corridor into the jail area.

The booking shed was painted in ugly, contrasting colors, creamy yellow with a bilious green trim. In front of me were five booking windows that looked a lot like teller stations at a bank, complete with bullet-resistant acrylic glass. I was led up to the first station and the lone booking officer inside nodded at me.

"Empty your pockets and take off your belt and shoelaces. Leave all your money and personal effects on the counter, comb included."

I did as instructed, then asked through the scratched glass, "When is my bail being set, and when am I being arraigned?"

"No bail. Not tonight."

"Bail gets set automatically when you're booked," I reminded him.

"Except when the D. A. puts a hold on you. He's going before a judge on a bail deviation hearing at your arraignment, which, right now, is scheduled for Tuesday at nine a. M."

He put my possessions, including my badge, wallet, and both empty, clip-on holsters, into a cellophane bag and counted my money, laying it on the counter, getting ready for me to sign off on it.

I started to panic. If my arraignment was Tuesday, I was stuck here until then. I needed to get out, now. I needed to be at UCLA by ten a. M. I couldn't remember what I had done in the El Rey Theatre, but since they were charging me under the Felony Murder Rule, the witnesses and videotapes obviously couldn't get me for shooting that rapper straight off. The standard bail cap for all homicides is one million dollars. More than I had. But I had a plan on how to get it knocked down. I'd been hoping to hire a criminal defense attorney named Glen "Gunner" Gustafson. Twice I'd testified against clients of his whom I'd arrested. Both times during the cross Gunner had shredded me on the stand, attacking my choice of words and recollections, creating the impression I was impeaching myself even though I wasn't. He was brutal but damned effective. I was hoping Gustafson could get the charge knocked down to involuntary manslaughter or even wrongful death. That would depress the bail to a figure I could handle. Bail on lower weight felonies were usually in the hundred-thousand-dollar range.

Bondsmen will traditionally take 10 percent of the bond in cash and a guaranteed appraisal on your house or other personal property as collateral for the rest. I had about ten grand in the bank that would cover the lower bond. There was no way I could see to get our house appraised before eight a. M.

I signed for my possessions and was moved back over to the booking area where I was instructed to sit at a small wooden desk with a night-shift WC named Patrick Collins. I watched Collins fill out the booking sheet, charging me with first degree 187, which was a joke. Then he led me to the fingerprinting area to be photographed and printed. Just as on the thirteenth floor, all the sleeping drunks and bystanders had been cleared out of the downstairs holding cells. The rooms were empty as they rolled my prints electronically and shot the mugs.

"I need to talk to my attorney," I said.

"It's pretty late," Collins said. "Let's get you settled, then we'll see if anybody's up to take your call."

He led me to the first-floor elevator. "We're putting you on the Walk of Fame," referring to A-block, which was a corridor of single occupancy cells where celebs like OJ, Robert Blake, and Robert Downey were all held in isolation before their arraignments. Afterwards they were transferred to the Iso unit in the main jail at the Twin Towers two blocks away. A-block at Men's Central Jail contained ten cells, and unlike the large dormitories situated on the second floor, none of these cells had pay phones inside.

We took the elevator up and I was led down the hall past the sleeping figures of men locked in large, twenty-man barred rooms. As I passed one dormitory, I noticed a man dressed in a silk shirt and shiny leather pants. His scowling face looked familiar.

"I smell bacon burnin'," the man said malevolently as I passed. I was closed inside my isolation cell before I realized who he was. Stacy Maluga's bodyguard, Insane Wayne Watkins. He was locked up in his Oasis Awards glitter clothes, looking like he wanted to tear my head off. Worse still, he was only twenty feet away. Almost close enough to do it.