Yard recall

Lieutenant Figueroa stept away to play a game on his cellular phone and left us alone with the girls. Leslie immediately wanted to talk about swedish crime drama "Beck" of which she was an avid follower. She started to refer to specific episodes and characters ("the one with the kids in the subway", "the guy who looks like he is just about to loose it at any given time") of the show with most of us nodding encouragingly whilst trying to remember if we´d ever actually ourselves seen one of the sunday night episodes. She continued to relay to us that it in fact got so scary at times, she had cover the TV with a blanket, leaving only a small space at the bottom for the subtitles. I had to compose myself for a moment to take in the fact that I was sitting face to face with a person a great number of people consider the devil incarnated and protagonist to many a horror story herself, and that she was telling me that she found the inspector Beck mysteries at times too much to bear. Helter Skelter in blood apparently has nothing on Gunvald Larsson.

The conversation then turned to repentance; when a crime is paid for in full not only in terms of the debt to society but in regards to more abstract parameters of guilt and payback. To the question if she believed she had paid in full for her crimes Leslie answered: "I can never fully repent for what I did, but I believe that after 42 years behind these walls, I would now be able to serve society better on the outside." 

Leslie, along with Patricia Krenwinkle (aka "kreni") and two younger women that knew Annika well, then took us to see the native american grounds on the prison premises - a small fenced area with a tipi at the far end where services could be held. We strolled around in the afternoon sunshine chitchatting about life, Charles Manson and spending your entire life in prison. It was to quote Hugh Grants character from romcom hit Notting Hill: "surreal but nice".

Last on our agenda was a meet and greet with the prison warden, one Guillermo Garcia. We were escorted in to his office where he cordially greeted us and bade us to sit down at a cherrywood conference table across from his desk. Warden Garcia was short man with a greying mustache and the tired gaze of someone who has had two airport drinks and only nuts. He seemed to be as intrigued by us as we were of him and immediately started telling stories and asking questions. Another hour of candid discussions on crime and punishment followed, sprinkled with one or two battlefield stories ("Ike Turner used to mop my floors when I was social warden over at Quentin you know", "When Rick James was in my prison I had to stop the guards from taking autographs"). I told him that we would probably have Antonio Banderas play him in the movie and he said he did not mind that at all.  Not at all.

After five hours behind bars, we were all tired and went to down some Tacos at a small abandoned joint (pun not intended) across the road from the prison. When we tried to order the sleeping proprietor told us: "What do think this is? A restaurant? We only have Tacos". But boy did they have Tacos.

Mr Warden

"This is no restaurant. Postmodern dining"