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| California Correctional Medical Facility at Vacaville |
The
Correctional Medical Facility at Vacaville has a psych ward at the very end of
the main-line’s long corridor. It is isolated from the rest of the prison
population with its own wing and sally port, we are protected against the
general population. Most of us are maintained on high doses of psych meds that
have more to do with custodial control than to fix us. I have the honor of a
private room… cell. I don’t know why. Some of these guys are more fucked-up
than I am. I feel perfectly sane by comparison.
Ryan
waited for me three weeks after the trial on one of those uncomfortable plastic
seats attached to a round table universally characteristic of visiting rooms.
He stood and greeted me with a warm hug and started talking the usual; how you
doing, are they treating you okay, you look like you’re putting on weight. He
let me know a little more about what was really going on.
“Nice
to see you Crash. Not even a visiting day. I haven’t seen that in here before.”
“I
wondered about that too. Do you think they found out I’m royalty?” I grinned.
He
didn’t smile back.
I
asked, “Are you in touch with that bitch?”
“You
mean, Anna?”
“No,
Santa fucking Clause! Who do you think I’d be asking about?”
“She’s
gone.”
“What
do you mean, gone.”
“Doctor Spawnn disappeared shortly after sentencing and Anna was gone right after testifying.”
She
was no longer a bitch. I almost cried, “Gone, where, what, the Bratva?”
“No,
she married a guy from up north, Rafael Montano. I believe you know him, and… well, it’s another version of witness protection.”
“Against
Smerdyakov, I get it.” The way he looked at me was the same way I imagined a
father would look at a son that just came out of the closet, “Why, Ryan… what’s
going on! I thought you and Bird Dog had my back.”
“David,
please, forget it. I was warned about bringing up the past. But there was no
Bird Dog. He hasn’t been around us since Saigon.”
“Witness
protection against me then? And Doc? I thought maybe you must’ve been
protecting some sort of CIA secrets. Since I’ve been here I have had lots of
time to think. The tapes about what happened… the whole goddamned business runs
over and over through the thick of Thorazine. I can’t stop thinking about every
detail. If there was a reason that made sense, I’d go to prison just for that.”
“Look,
David… Anna’s not what she seems.”
“She
said I raped her. It’s not true. Why would she say that!”
“Doc
pressed her, we think. We couldn’t prove there was a Bratva.”
“Smerdyakov
and Yuri?”
“Yuri,
yes. He is real. Smerdyakov. It’s better we don’t know.”
“So,
I’m supposed to rot here for the rest of my life because it’s better we don’t
know what?”
“David,
there’s only so much we can do.”
I
hadn’t planned on breaking down. It just came on like a Tsunami, “It’s okay,
Ryan.” I straightened up after embarrassing myself and put on my best face,
“We’re a brotherhood in here. We don’t need shit from the outside. No shit. No
sex either. The meds take care of that. All of us are castrati and we like the
less complicated life.” I stood. “Ryan, you have to help me! I can’t stay here.
I’m no good for this shit. I won’t live five years on this food and these
meds.”
“You’re
just being medically evaluated and will be sent to Atascadero. It’s a better
place. They even have air conditioning.”
“Oh,
so it’s like heaven after this. I’m going to a better place… on Thorazine and
psych-meds… I won’t suffer anymore. Fuck, I’d rather be executed. The VC we
snuffed were better off than this. One shot in the nape-of-the-neck and it was
over for Charlie. Locked up with the looney-tunes in here is cruel and unusual
punishment.”
Epilogue: A.S.H. Atascadero State Hospital, December, 2016
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| A.S.H. Atascadero State Hospital |
You get used to it. Ryan was shot
by a dirty cop a few years after all that shit went down in the eighties.
Ancient history in here. I’m okay. I get three squares… a cot and a hot… dental
and medical for life. No problem. My heart is bad… ticker cholesterol levels
clogging half the arteries in the ole blood pump. I’ve become a jailhouse
attorney. I hit the books for this or that under CRIPA, Criminal Rights of
Institutionalized Persons Act. Inmates and staff get shanked more often but
it’s okay. Life is as short as it is hard for some of us in or out of here.
We’re trying to get to the Supreme
Court on a case for cell phones and laptops. Inmates with access to online porn
are few and far between… you know, the ones working up front in administration.
Some printout pics and slip ‘em in for a price. Get almost as much for them as
a sniff of cola.
I’m being moved to the new facility at
Coalinga. It is more like a dorm. A dorm that is still a prison. You are
supposed to go to therapy and take your meds to be eventually considered for
release after the term for your criminal offence is served. The Catch
Twenty-Two is that everything revealed in therapy can be considered of evidence
in court. There is no patient confidentiality in prison. Therefore, very few
inmates are released other than feet first in a body bag… about one a year
otherwise.
Speaking of sex, I found Anna online
this year while working in the Admin Office. It didn’t have her name on the
site it but I could tell who she was from her picture. Children of Operation
Babylift. I searched through Google Images until I found another pic with a
name on it, a Vietnamese/Irish name, Kim Phan O’Brian and another old News
Press trial picture of Anadel Bonnaire. Older, of course, but more beautiful
with age. I did a search… variations on the web until I found one… It was a PO
box.
I sent an Email from my own illegal address.
I was delighted she wrote back. She told me all of that in a code of her own…
that she and Casey were sorry but had to testify against me or the Bratva would
kill her mother, my Saigon wife. She ended it with saying I was a grandpa and
that my grand kid was twenty-nine and he will visit me someday.
I tried writing back to her but never
get answered. Go figure… probably just too busy with life.
I gleaned that much from the email. It
read:
David,
I heard you were still alive when a
friend told me to check your blog. I wasn’t forced to testify against you
like that conspiracy theory you concocted on-line. I don’t hate you but I am sorry you live so that your grand-child of 29 years can’t piss on your grave. I
promise you, he will someday. Please don’t try to contact me.
Your Saigon Package
Annadel
Detailed and realistic.
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