Читать книгу Hands Through Stone - James A. Ardaiz - Страница 16

6

Even Criminals Have Standards

December 16, 1976

Alderson Women’s Prison

Alderson, West Virginia

The Alderson Federal Women’s Prison isn’t a long way from nowhere, unless you are inside it. It’s about 270 miles southwest of Washington, D.C., and is near Alderson, West Virginia, which is back to a long way from nowhere.

The oldest federal women’s prison, Alderson was established with the help of Eleanor Roosevelt, while she was first lady. It looks more like a place where you would go for week-long business retreats, except you can’t leave. There are no metal fences and no walls, except on the inside. It looks different than what you would expect for a reason. A women’s prison is different because women are more communal than men. They aren’t as violent; notice, I didn’t say they weren’t violent. They just aren’t as violent. If you’re sent to a place like Alderson and if you’ve been around, you know what the alternatives are if you don’t obey the rules. Given the alternatives, people generally obey the rules.

Most of the inmates are there for crimes involving men they hooked up with or for drugs. Some of them are there for more sophisticated, white collar crimes. Alderson has been home for some celebrated criminals. Axis Sally was incarcerated there after World War II for treason, and so were Squeaky Fromme and Sara Jane Moore for shooting at the same president—but at different times, of course. More recently, Martha Stewart worked in the laundry there. Some of the inmates are there so that law enforcement can make a public point, and when that kind of prisoner leaves, she seldom returns to the system. But some inmates are basically just criminals; it’s what they do, and they don’t need men to help them. For them, doing time in Alderson is just the cost of doing business and it is sometimes far better than the alternatives. Barbara Carrasco was a criminal. However, even criminals have standards. The question facing Blade and Lean, as they waited to get inside, was what kind of standards Barbara Carrasco had.

You have to be careful when you question a woman. You have to be a little more oblique than you are with men. But the tricks are the same as with any interrogation—keep them talking. Don’t confront unless you have to. Wait until they make a mistake and keep massaging that conscience buried down there somewhere. With a woman, you have to watch for just the right moment before you bring up the big question. When talking about their man, they are more loyal than men are to each other. So it can take longer. And the reality is that women will talk for a long time while they are thinking about where they are going to wind up before they get to the point. If you push them too hard, they will just stop talking. Men don’t talk as much so you have to push them differently. No one knows better than a homicide detective how different men are from women.

Carrasco was no cherry; she had been through the system. She was used to jail and she was used to cops. A cherry breaks easier and they talk easier because they still have a certain respect for authority—and they are afraid of you. They don’t want you to think they are really bad people. That’s a funny thing about people being interrogated for the first time. They are concerned about what you think of them, and they don’t realize that just because you sound friendly, you don’t really care about them. You would think that when a person is in custody, they would realize you probably aren’t very impressed with them. But wherever they are, most people still want to be liked—even in prison.

When you talk to somebody who has been through the system, they aren’t afraid of you. They know who you are, what you are, and what you can and can’t do to them when you sit down in front of them. People like Carrasco know you don’t have their best interests at heart. They don’t give a damn what you think of them and they know you don’t give a damn about them. You want something; they have something. How you talk to a person like Carrasco is entirely different than how you talk to a cherry. So, for Blade and Lean, the whole issue was Carrasco’s motivation: What did she want and what was her reason for wanting it?

Carrasco wanted help for her kid, but most of all she wanted to get even with the man who hurt him. Since she was in the joint, the only way she could get even was by using people on the outside. Basically, she needed cops to do what she wanted—that is, as long as she wanted it to be legal. So Blade and Tommy knew that the key with her was to stay on her good side and to convince her they could help her get even. They would let her use them, but they had to be careful. After all, she was a criminal. She could lie, and most of the time she did during her everyday life. You would take what she said for what it was worth and figure how you could use it. She would give it for what she thought it was worth and what she could get out of it—no more, no less. Blade and Tommy had already decided their MO—give her the opportunity to screw Allen and thus create a mutually beneficial relationship.

When she walked through the door, they knew in an instant that this interrogation was going to be conducted on equal terms. Barbara Carrasco was about five feet, four or five. Her face had the ruddy look of a fair-complexioned person who had worked long hours in the sun, although you couldn’t tell what it had once been like, as it had coarsened from hard times. Her hair was beginning to show gray through its original brownish color, and it was pulled away from her face. If it had been brushed, the brush had been her fingers. She didn’t bother with makeup to cover up what she was; it was clear she was comfortable with her looks. She was heavyset in a way that told you this was a woman who could do hard work. She was around forty but she looked older, as if she had earned every one of her years the hard way. You had the sense that Carrasco wouldn’t be afraid to hit a man, nor would she fear getting into a fight with a woman—or a man. Some people just have that look—like they may not win if you tangle with them but you’re going to get hurt if you do. Barbara Carrasco had that look. She didn’t extend her hand. She looked at the two detectives, tilting her head like she was sizing them up and sat down. Carrasco understood her world. She knew the ropes and she had a certain amount of stature in the prison; the older inmates usually do if they’ve been around. Barbara Carrasco had definitely been around. She wouldn’t take crap from anybody, including cops. Both detectives knew immediately the usual bullshit wasn’t going to work.

Blade and Lean had agreed that Blade was going to do most of the talking until they could evaluate which of their personalities was more effective. Most women liked Lean because he was charming and good-looking, but that wouldn’t work with a woman like Carrasco. It didn’t mean she didn’t appreciate charm and good looks. It just meant she didn’t run with charming and good-looking men and she wasn’t going to buy into it. She knew what she was and who she was. Her style was men like Blade, who had a little rougher edge. He would start; they would keep the charm in reserve.

Blade smiled. “Mrs. Carrasco, I’m Art Christensen and this is Tom Lean. We’re the detectives from Fresno who talked to you on the phone. Thanks for agreeing to talk to us.” He waited to see if there would be any response. Carrasco looked at Christensen through narrowed, unblinking eyes, sizing up the two men in front of her. Blade had seen the look before. For her, they were her natural enemy and any alliance would be uneasy and temporary. He cleared his throat and nodded slightly, a demonstration that he understood what she was thinking. “By the way, we wanted you to know that we’ve been talking to the authorities in Sacramento, and your boy, Raul, is doing fine. He was lucky; he dropped the gun when the sheriff’s deputies got there. Whoever gave him that .45 should have thought about how dangerous it was to give a gun like that to a kid. Even men with experience can easily shoot themselves by accident with a .45.” He waited. He had scratched the scab a little bit, by reminding her that Allen had taken advantage of her boy. Her mouth opened slightly, showing teeth that were surprisingly white. And then she spoke in a voice that reflected its share of border bars and border men, a voice raised loudly enough to be heard and used to being listened to.

“Clarence Ray Allen is a son of a bitch. He shouldn’t have given no gun to a kid. He shouldn’t have left him there like he did.” She moved her heavy body forward in the chair. “Let’s get to it. I only got nine months left before I get out but if it’s the last fucking thing I do in my life, I’m going to get a piece of him.” Blade nodded, waiting for her to keep talking, wanting to give her a feeling of some control.

“If those cops in Sacramento haven’t told him nothin’ about me, then it’s cool. I got lawyers. I know what it’s all about. I know about circumstantial stuff and I don’t want any of that circumstantial shit. He knows where my kids are. I want you guys to take him down good.”

Carrasco had enough experience with the system to know that if Allen didn’t know there was an insider talking, it would be easier to get solid evidence on him. Lean pushed the tape recorder forward so Carrasco could see it. “Mrs. Carrasco, we’d like to record this.” He didn’t ask it as a question. When you shove a tape recorder in front of most people, it scares them. If you ask their permission, they may say no and that leads to a whole lot of other problems. If they don’t say anything, then you’re okay. You don’t ask for permission. You just assume you have it and they may not think about asking if they can refuse. You want to avoid confrontation. Carrasco knew the drill. She eyed the recorder.

“Whatever. Just call me Mom. Most people in here call me Mom.”

Lean squirmed, so Blade replied, “Okay, but we have to type up the report, so how about if I just call you Barbara. I’m too old to be calling you Mom.”

Carrasco sniffed. “Okay. Whatever you want. So, like I was sayin’, Clarence Ray Allen ain’t nothin’ to play around with. But if you want me to be buddy-buddy with him to get what I want, honey, then I’ll do it, ’cause like I say, nobody messes with my kid. What I got to say is things been told to me. Somethin’ about me—people like to tell me things they don’t tell nobody else. I don’t talk. Never have, not once. But this is different. Nobody’ll blame me for talkin’ about a man that hurt my kid.”

Blade leaned back in his chair. She was talking. You don’t interrupt. Just keep them talking. First rule.

“Clarence Ray Allen carries around a big roll. I seen as much as $12,000 at a time he’s laid out. Drives a ’76 Lincoln Continental and he runs a henhouse security agency out of a little town outside Fresno—Sanger. That business doesn’t pump out this kind of money. We been in some shit together along the line but nothin’ that turns out the kind of money he throws around. He told me you guys almost got him last year with a shotgun in the back of his car. If you’d a’ waited, he was gonna take down a lumber business. He told me you boys got too eager.”

Blade gave a slight smile. “We had some young officers out there.”

“Yeah, jumped the gun. Anyway, he likes to brag a lot. Like I said, people tell me things. I never say the wrong thing, honey. I’m smuggling aliens, okay. I do something where I believe I’m okay. Ain’t got the guts to go in and put a gun to somebody and say give me your money. So I’ll do it the sneaky way, ’cause I ain’t got that much guts. I don’t make that much money from those poor suckers. See, I’m a sucker too, ’cause them fools come over, they got a wife and ten kids in Mexico and then when I get them over, they ain’t got no money. I mean it costs me money to bring ’em but I say, shit, what are you gonna do?”

Blade nodded sympathetically. “What are you gonna do?”

Barbara looked at him out of the side of her eyes, weighing whether he was with her or jerking her chain. She decided he understood. “So, that old bastard, Clarence, called me after the robbery in Sacramento went sour. I asked him what did you have my kid up there for? And he says well it ain’t important what Clarence Allen says ’cause it don’t mean shit. You don’t want to fuck with him. So I just kept my mouth shut. Now I’m talking to you guys. Been messin’ with your guys for years. Now I’ll work with you two—this time I guess.”

Carrasco slumped slightly in her chair. “What he done, he got my boy there. Now my boy, he ain’t mine, but he’s mine. He belongs to me. I raised him, loved him, since he was eight years old. I’m all he’s got. I picked him up in a street in Tijuana and raised him ’cause he didn’t have nobody. When I got sent here, I told him that Clarence would help him. Just stay at his place until Mama gets out of jail and then we’ll be a family again—it will all be okay. So he goes there. I tell Allen that he’ll help with the horses. You seen his place?”

Blade shook his head. It wasn’t the right time to tell her Allen was in jail for the robbery. She might decide that was enough and she could deal with Allen another way, the way personal grievances are handled by people inside prisons where justice is much more abrupt and very final. “Not yet.”

Carrasco nodded slowly, her mouth drawn down into a knowing line. “Well, he’s got himself a stable and a big pool out there and everything. He said he’d take my boy and take care of him ’til I got out. He knew I was good for it. Look, I never had nothin’. I don’t expect nothin’. My kids, they sent me twenty dollars on my birthday. Allen told him he could help me. He’s a con artist, baby. He can sucker you. Like he had these men working for him and suckered them, you know, burglaries and everything. Used his men to knock over places they was supposed to be guardin’. So he tells my boy that I need money to get home on when I get out and the kid believes it. I would’a got the money together; probably be ridin’ my ass on the rails or the bus, but Clarence, he tells the kid he can get money to help me and maybe buy me somethin’ for Christmas. He’s put a story on my kid and then he put a gun in his hands and said walk in that store. I talked to my boy before Allen took him to that store. I asked him what he was doin’ and he said he was gonna buy some stuff for me for Christmas. So when the Sacramento police called, I knew what went down. Plenty of older dudes on the street. You don’t have to put no gun in a kid’s hand.”

Blade stepped in. “So Barbara, what happened with Clarence Allen and this Lee Furrow?”

Carrasco stopped. She had a story and she was going to tell it her way. They needed her but she needed something, too. She hadn’t had any visitors since she’d been inside, so talking to people from the outside, even cops, was entertainment. “Hurtin’ my kid. Look, that’s where Clarence made his mistake ’cause otherwise I’d never be talking to you at all; you believe that?”

Lean had been sitting quietly. “Yeah, we do.”

Carrasco looked over at the younger detective and nodded. “Good. I want something done for my boy. I want to protect my kid; don’t want him going to prison. You get it?”

Christensen nodded. “Yeah, we get it.”

“He may have to do some time. I get that. But if I can help him—I’m responsible for him. I’m the one that got him mixed up with that no-good Allen. All I know is I got my one boy, so I want something done for him.”

“We can’t make promises, but we’ll do what we can.”

“I been around. I understand no promises, but I’m counting on you boys to do right by me if I do right by you. You understand?”

Blade had put a little edge in his voice when he had asked about Lee Furrow and Carrasco’s eyes had flashed briefly. “Okay, so I had these accounts, you know? People owed me money. Now, you aren’t going to tell all this shit to the income tax people are you? Those are guys I never want to mess with.”

“Income tax isn’t our problem.” Lean laughed. “We all understand income tax.”

Carrasco was opening up more and more, telling the detectives that Furrow and Clarence’s son, Roger, had worked for her when she needed some money collected and she sent them out to collect it. She had been in jail on charges different than those that caused her to end up in Alderson and needed bail money. Upon her release, Furrow and Chuck Jones, another boy who worked with Clarence, came down to her house in Mexico. They carried American Express money orders they ripped off of one of their accounts at some joint. She couldn’t remember the name. But she could remember one thing that turned out to be crucial.

“Anyway,” she added, “when they came down, they had this little, blond-haired girl with them. Just a little thing.”

Blade held his hand up to stop Carrasco from going forward. “And can you describe the girl?”

“Well, she was young, maybe seventeen or eighteen. Clarence’s boy had been running around with her. Anyway, she had hair just past her shoulders. She was maybe five foot, four or so. Only weighed around a hundred. I notice things like that.” Carrasco looked down at her square body. “No time in my life was I built like her. She was built pretty good. But I had other things, you know?” Blade and Lean laughed and nodded, encouraging her to continue.

“See, Clarence wanted to pass these money orders and I told him, if you can get to the money exchanges in Mexico, maybe they can do it. Anyway, nobody would exchange them. They came to my house and my old man—I got one you know, at least before I got in here—he went over to San Diego with Allen, and I went with them in a different car. Furrow was driving me. So, they got some of the money orders passed in San Diego. Then Clarence took all of us to this restaurant, but I left before everybody was finished. I had some runs to make that night. Had to make a living, you know—business.”

Tommy broke in. “And what about the girl?”

Carrasco looked over at Tommy. “Don’t get ahead of me, honey. I’ll tell you everything but you got to let me get to it.”

Blade laughed. “Well, he’s young. Just go on.”

Barbara smiled at the older detective. “See, I was in jail around August. It was after I got out that Eugene Furrow told me about the girl and what happened to her.”

“Did you talk to Clarence about this?”

“I asked him about it after I talked to Eugene and he said, ‘Yeah, we had to waste her.’ I didn’t ask him more about it because you gotta know Clarence. He said that she opened her mouth about things, about the money orders, and they had to shut her up. But Clarence was always talkin’ shit like that. He would say things like, ‘I had to waste this guy’; I did this, I did that. I never paid attention to it because it always seemed like so much bullshit, you know? But this was after I knew about it from Eugene, so I knew it wasn’t no bullshit about the girl. Anyway, they bailed me out and Furrow came back to San Diego and started working for me again. But when my kid got sick, Furrow took me and my kid to the hospital. We was waitin’ at the hospital for the doctors to finish with my kid. Eugene was talking to me and then outta nowhere, he starts cryin’ and asks me to go outside. He’s gettin’ real upset, so I walked out with him and he starts talking about some robbery and then he says the girl’s name. I still can’t remember it. And he says, ‘We had to waste her, Barbara, the girl that was with us when we was here before.’ He says that Clarence made him do it.”

“So I said, ‘What do you mean, Clarence made you do it?’ And he says, ‘Well, they said they had to shut her mouth.’ Then he said that Clarence was supposed to give her some sleeping pills that were gonna put her to sleep but that it didn’t work so Clarence told him to do it and Furrow just started choking her. He said it was bothering him so bad that he couldn’t sleep. He said that he was choking her and she just kept looking at him.”

“Did you ask him where this happened?”

“Yeah, he said that Clarence and the others said it had to be done and he had to do it, so they did it at Shirley’s house.”

Lean interrupted. “At Shirley’s house? Who’s Shirley?”

“Shirley is Clarence’s girlfriend. I been to her apartment before. She had red hair, a dye job, ’cause she weren’t no natural redhead, you know. Anyway, she’s around 35, maybe five foot, six, got a good figure. Works as a secretary for him, but she does more than type, if you get my meaning.”

Blade held up his hand to slow Carrasco down. “We get it. So this is in August, in ’74?”

“Yeah.”

“And Eugene said he choked her? Strangled her with his hands?”

“Yeah, he said he had his hands on her throat and her eyes was lookin’ up at him.”

“Did he say he used anything else to maybe stab her or shoot her?”

“No, just that he choked her. That’s why I remember so well because he kept talking about her eyes. She just looked at him. Eugene said nobody was with him when he started to do it and when he couldn’t, they called him from outside and told him he had to do it or else. Clarence said if he didn’t he was going to kill him and her, too.”

“So he was in fear for his life?”

“Yeah, that’s what he said, that it was either her or both of them.”

“And it was all over these money orders? She was going to tell on these people?”

Barbara nodded. “She was talking too much and they was afraid that the cops would connect them to it.”

“So, when did Furrow tell you all this?”

“It was in November, but he said that all this stuff with the girl happened while I was in jail and that was between August 2nd and August 21st.”

Lean reached into his pocket and took out the photograph of Mary Sue Kitts. “Do you remember this girl? Is this her?”

“Yeah, that’s her, but she had blond hair, honey. Not like in your picture where it’s kind of brown. I mean it was bleached real blond when I saw her. I heard her mother came to ask Roger about her. Did she report her missing? She is missing isn’t she?”

Blade nodded. “Yeah, yeah. She was reported missing on November the 6th and she was last seen in July of that year.”

Carrasco shook her head. “Like I told you guys from the gate, I ain’t no bullshitter, okay? I ain’t got nothin’ to gain from this except helping my kid. There’s no way I can testify to nothin’.”

“When Furrow told you this, did he say how they disposed of the body?”

“Furrow said it was Clarence,” she explained. “See, I do illegal things but I don’t ask questions. People talk but I don’t say nothin’; people just tell me things. I might say ‘what the fuck you do that for?’ But I don’t ask because I don’t want to know. But Allen told me they dumped her in a creek high in the mountains. They rolled her up in a blanket and I guess put some wires around it and weights and dumped her in a creek in the mountains. But I don’t know where.”

No matter how the two investigators tried to discover something about the location of the creek, Carrasco couldn’t come up with it. She added only that some of Allen’s men went with him to dump the body. “I don’t think Eugene went, but I’m not sure. I do know that one of the guys who went was a guy who had a missing tooth. I had met him before, but I didn’t talk to him.”

Blade looked down at his notes. “I know we’re going to have more questions, but for now we’re just starting.”

“Yeah, well you got a long ways to go on this and I ain’t got a whole lot more to tell you. But, I can give you one more thing. Eugene Furrow’s feelin’ real bad about this. This was two years ago and the conscience, well, the conscience is a hell of a thing, honey, and I don’t think there’s a soul born without it. Except, maybe, that isn’t true for Clarence. Hell, I don’t know. Anyway, I think Eugene will crack real easy. You get him and you’ll get the whole story.”

Blade’s mouth pulled back into a knowing smile. “So Eugene isn’t the hardened criminal type?”

“Nah, he said he couldn’t sleep. He said when he went to sleep he could see her eyes open and staring at him and he couldn’t get over her eyes looking at him when he was doin’ it and he probably never would. I told him, ‘What’s done is done. There ain’t nothing I can do for you, all the talking in the world ain’t goin’ to change anything. Either you go tell the police or you gotta live with your conscience. You live with it or you do something and try and make it right.’ And he said, ‘I don’t know how I’m ever gonna live with it.’ And I told him, ‘Then you’ve got to do something about it, don’t you?’ So, I guess he never did nothin’—learned to live with it, I guess. But Eugene ain’t like Clarence. Eugene may have done it but Clarence is the one. He’s the one that made him do it. I don’t think Eugene would ever do that on his own. He was just like me. I mean I break the law sometimes, but I don’t kill people. Guys like Clarence are different.”

“Barbara, is there anything else you can remember right now that we need to know?” Lean asked as he reached for the tape recorder

“Well, you get him. I can’t help you much with testifyin’ and such. I’m an ex-convict, baby. Well, I guess I’m not an ex-convict yet, ’cause I’m still here, right?” She added with a chortle. “Anyway you look at it, somebody’s going to be calling me a liar. I haven’t talked before to buy myself time, so this is the first time with you guys. Make sure you keep me out of it or I’ll have Clarence Ray Allen on me. I know him and you don’t fuck with him. You got to put him in jail for good on this. He shouldn’t have messed with my kid. If he hadn’t of done that, I wouldn’t be talkin’ to you now. Nothin’ personal, you understand, but you guys never did me no good. Hey, maybe you can get me transferred back to Terminal Island in California. I would be closer to my family. Maybe you can do that?”

Blade turned off the tape. “We’ll see what we can do.”

They waited for Carrasco to rise. Lean walked to the door and knocked for the guard. “We’re done.”

Blade stuck out his hand. “Thanks for talking to us, Barbara.”

Barbara Carrasco stood there for a moment and extended her hand. “Just remember, you take Allen down and you leave me out of it. You don’t know him like I do.”

“We understand.” Blade and Tommy waited until the guard walked Barbara Carrasco out the door. She didn’t look back. She had done what she had set out to do. What they had to decide was whether what she said was true or whether she was just trying to bury Allen in a pile of bullshit. Both men had questioned a lot of people, some hard types and some just regular folks. You get a feel for when it’s bullshit and when it’s true and even when it’s somewhere in between. As they walked out the doors of Alderson Federal Penitentiary, they were sure that Clarence Allen was guilty of murder, and that he did it by making someone else do it. They also knew that at least one man was so terrified of Allen that he had been willing to kill a woman for him. There was no question; Clarence Allen wasn’t the kind of man who would crack. They had to take him down. To do that, they had to make others crack.

Blade was one of the old breed. It was time to hunt down Clarence Ray Allen. And Blade knew well that the sometimes it takes a wolf to hunt down a wolf.