Free Silent Joe by T. Jefferson Parker Page B

the plumbing tunnel in Mod F of the old Men's Central and squatting behind the cell belonging to one of Sammy’s lieutenants. You can hear through the vents. We deputies are encouraged to gather intel however we can, and lingering in the plumbing tunnel is one way. Another way is to use a mechanics' sled to roll quietly down guard walk that separates the tanks in the older part of the jail. The walls of the guard walk are concrete up to waist height, then they're Plexiglas. If you stroll down the walkway, the inmate in the first cell yells out " walking!" and all the other inmates stop doing whatever they're doing, if you slide along quietly on the mechanics' sled they can't see you, you can stop and peek over the concrete and spy. We call it "sleighriding.”
    The rest of what I learned was put together by the court-ordered psychiatrist who had read letters that Sammy had written to a then-thirteen-year old girl named Bernadette Lee, and never mailed.
    According to Sammy, by fourteen he was immersed in the Asian underworld, which is pretty much where he'd spent his whole life. He eventually learned who killed his father, and was actually brushing shoulders them by the time he was sixteen. They were traveling home-invaders, which was a good criminal living in the early Vietnamese refugee years, because the refugees didn't trust American banks. Thus, riches under beds, in safes, etc.
    Anyway, Sammy got himself included in a job with these guys, did it well, and was invited along for another. Maybe they thought it was funny, using the son of a guy they'd killed. Maybe they were trying to help him----Sammy didn't know and obviously didn't ask. The next piece of work well. Working off a tip, Sammy and his bosses had almost $65,000 in cash and jewelry and one terrified family duct-taped and gagged in the garage; But just as they were ready to get out, young Sammy used his sawed-off twelve-gauge to force one of his bosses to tie and gag the other and sit him down with the family. Then Sammy tied up the other. He cut the one's throat, made the other watch him bleed out, then cut the second one's. He used a Boker ceramic carried in a calf scabbard. He didn't harm the family, but he made sure they saw everything he did. And he told to tell everybody they knew except cops that Sammy Nguyen was a good guy but if you crossed him, he'd damage you. In a compromised version of chivalry, he left the family about ten grand's worth of stuff—mostly jewelry.
    That's what his letters to Bernadette said.
    "You still have no arrests of who killed your father?"
    "Not yet."
    "Let me out and I'll deliver his killer within twenty-four hours. Talk to the DA, Phil Dent. He can get me out."
    "You killed a cop, Sammy."
    "I'm innocent. I'll prove I'm innocent."
    "Until then, maybe you could find out about Alex."
    "I need more phone time to do that."
    "You've got half an hour coming up at four."
    "I'm only supposed to get fifteen minutes."
    "I'll get you a bonus, Sammy. Please produce."
    "I've got some stuff on the Cobra Kings," said Sergeant Ray Flatley. Ray was in charge of the Gang Interdiction Unit. I sat in his sheriff's department office, looking out the narrow window at the city of Santa Ana below.
    "I appreciate your time, sir."
    Flatley's a slight man, graying hair that looks too neat to be real, but it is. He lost his wife to cancer two years ago, and it obviously haunts him. He's a piano player and his wife was a singer, and they used to moonlight as the Sharp Flats—restaurant lounges, private parties, that kind of thing. They played one of my Academy graduation parties. Ray impersonated popular singers, could sound like any one of them, really made good fun of them. But his wife was the one with a voice like an angel. I remember seeing his eyes get a little misty when he backed her on "When a Man Loves a Woman," though he'd heard her sing it a thousand times. Actors can mist on cue, but not Gang Interdiction cops.
    "Sure," he said. "I always