Cell 2455, Death Row

by Caryl Chessman

  The clerk handed across forty or fifty dollars, which I pocketed along with the cigarettes. “Now the rest of it,” I said. Automatically you say that, because there’s almost always a plant. The clerk reached under the counter and came up with a cigar box. I took the box, said, “Thanks,” and walked out, unhurriedly. If the clerk had had a gun he could have shot me dead when I turned my back. But right then clerks with guns were the least of my worries.

  I drove off. I pulled into the first service station I saw, pocketed the money I took from the cigar box and washed up in the men’s room. Then I combed my hair. The mirror on the wall told me I looked half human. But I didn’t feel half human. I didn’t feel any part human. My eyes didn’t want to focus. My head continued to expand—and contract.

  I had to hurry. I had to get to Tim’s. I booted the Chevvy out into traffic. When I saw a liquor store I double-parked and bought a pint of whisky and took two or three big slugs as soon as I got back to the car. I was hoping the whisky would help. It didn’t. I started seeing double, and flung the bottle.

  I thought about Judy as I pushed the Chevvy along Verdugo Road. Sure, all I had to do was go get her and take off, make a run for it. Of course that would be involving her, risking her life, and running out on friends. But who would worry about such minor points of ethics in this kind of crisis? It would be a cinch to rationalize making a run for it with Judy. A little devil told me that Judy would want to be with me no matter what the risk and that in this variety of jackpot a guy should look out for his own skin first.

  But I held the nose of the Chevvy pointed toward Tim’s and kept the accelerator pedal rammed against the floorboard. And damn the rationalizing and all the little devils in the world! Groggy as I was, I still wasn’t ready to run. I still wasn’t ready to expose Judy to police bullets or to the women’s quarters of a jail.

  The street was dark, quiet. I drove slowly by the parked car. It didn’t look like a police car. I kicked in the clutch and revved the motor. “All right, you bastards,” I shouted, “I know you’re there!” Still nothing. No movement. No sign of bulls. At an intersecting street I U-turned and drove back, kicking off the headlights. I glided to a stop at the curb in front of Tim’s, clutched my gun, waited. Five seconds. Ten seconds. Fifteen seconds. Nothing. I alighted, walked as swiftly as I could along the driveway to the rear of the front house, then cut between it and the little place in the rear.

  I knocked. No response. I tried the doorknob; it turned. I shoved open the door, peered into the darkness. “Tim?” Nothing. No answer. “Bill!” Silence. I felt for and found the light switch. I squinted against the sudden blaze of light. The place was a shambles.

  And no Tim, no Bill. I guessed the truth, but not all of it.

  The bulls had been here. They had gone to the front house. Tim’s mother had called him. The bulls asked Tim about me. I wasn’t there, Tim said. The bulls wanted to see for themselves. So they came around to this little place here in the rear, walked in unannounced and found Bill in bed. Taken by surprise, Bill sat up and glared at them.

  “We want to question you,” Detective Fred Bovier of the Glendale police told Bill. “Better get up and get dressed.”

  For reply, Bill whipped a snub-nosed heavy-caliber revolver out from under the covers and thrust it against Bovier’s abdomen, squeezing the trigger. At the same instant the detective grabbed for the gun, his hand closing behind the hammer. For a few seconds there was an intense struggle. Then Detective William Weaver drew his own gun and slammed Bill on the head with the gun butt until Bill relaxed his grip on the snub-nosed revolver and had it jerked from his hand.

  Bill and Tim were handcuffed. The cops were on fire at Tim for not warning them about Bill. They ransacked the place and found another gun—one of the two taken from the radio-car bulls almost a month earlier. Then they knew what really hot suspects they had. The pieces were beginning to fall together. Bill and Tim were rushed to the Glendale jail. They were told: “This guy you call Tuffy is dying and you two are lucky you’re not dead. We caught another one with Tuffy and we got a lead on two more of your gang. But Chessman got away. What we want to know is, where can we find him?”

  Bill swore he didn’t have any idea, but Tim, separately questioned, threatened, growled at, said, defiantly, “He’ll come back to get me and Bill if he can.”

  The police rushed reinforcements to Tim’s place. Cops with submachine guns were strategically located. A battery of recreation lights from the back yard of an apartment house next door was turned to face the front house at Tim’s, then extinguished.

  Ironically, the trap the police set had been baited by their quarry himself; all they had to do was wait to spring it. They waited, ever so patiently. . . .

  I snapped off the light and, gun in hand, stood in the doorway, straining to hear some tell-tale sound, to catch some suspicious movement. I remained frozen there for a full two minutes. The cops out-waited me. I pocketed my gun, not wanting to be waving it at any chance passers-by, stepped out the doorway and began walking along the driveway to the street.

  Then it happened. A blinding blaze of light. A glimpse of armed men crouching in the surrounding darkness, waiting to pounce. A voice ringing out, sharp and clear and assured:

  “All right, Mr. Chessman, put up your hands!”

  • 23 •

  Deus Ex Machina—with a Twist

  The bulls had us racked up or on the run and the newspapers had a field day. Headlines shouted: L.A. “BOY BANDIT” GANG ROUNDED UP. LOS ANGELES DEVELOPS ITS OWN DEAD END KIDS. POLICE GUNS WRITE FINIS TO YOUTHFUL CRIME SPREE. Gunfights wreck boy bandit gang; 2 shot, 3 jailed, 2 others at large. “Youth shot by police is near death.” “Girl, 16, Companion Seized in Young Bandit Roundup.” Alleged boy bandits joke as high bail set on 39 counts.

  The stories beneath those headlines were the usual breathless, excited stuff ground out for such occasions:

  “Five tough young eggs . . . carnival of crime . . . swaggered into municipal court to be arraigned on 39 felony counts . . . charged with various counts of robbery, assault and attempted murder . . . Chessman . . . assertedly the leader of the gang . . . held for lack of $60,000 bail . . . amazing way in which they had organized to stage a reign of crime . . . widespread activities of a junior crime club . . .”

  Plus all the details, real and imagined. And with great emphasis, always, on how police had “smashed” this boy bandit gang, this “juvenile crime empire.” Nor was there a lack of pictures to accompany the big, black headlines and the adjective-laden stories. Pictures of the “suspects,” “the young desperadoes,” “the tough young eggs.” Pictures of their captors, the cops. Pictures of the “arsenal,” the many guns taken from the gang. Pictures of the demolished, bullet-riddled Ford.

  And then came the inevitable editorializing, the inevitable articles on Los Angeles’ “young crime wave.”*

  “Who,” one of the inevitable editorials demanded, “is responsible for the abnormal situation which makes mere children the small counterparts of Dillingers and Buchalters?”

  The answer: “Nobody—and everybody.”

  Getting back to us and our plight: Tuffy didn’t die. An emergency operation was performed on him and he was then placed in a high-custody room in the jail ward section of the General Hospital. His shattered hand repaired, Little Andy was locked in an adjoining room. Tim and I were first questioned at one outlying police station before being taken downtown to the Hall of Justice for more questioning. Those inquisitorial periods got pretty rugged. Most cops aren’t at all pleased with young gangsters who slug, beat, fight, shoot it out with, disarm and appropriate the squad cars of their brother officers. Be assured this isn’t something I inferred from vague rumblings; it’s something I was told, monosyllabically, emphatically and with an impressive show of aroused indignation. Cops are usually objective and impersonal when dealing with crimes against the citizenry, but crimes against cops—well, that decidedly is another matter. That’s a personal
affront, a challenge, heresy of the worst sort.

  Tim was the first one to be questioned privately. They took him to a small back room where eight oversized dicks, a police stenographer and a chief of detectives impatiendy awaited him. They growled at him a couple of times, crowded around him, and he began to talk. He told what he knew.

  Bill was next. He volunteered nothing, cautiously admitted no more than appeared certain the bulls already knew.

  I was last. And I was their boy. The chief of detectives, a tall, thin, sharp-faced gentleman, was a picture of grinning, breezy self-confidence. “Well, Chessman, I guess you want to tell us all about it.” And the eight big bulls nodded their respective heads, as though that indeed must be my wish. The steno had his pencil poised expectantly over his notebook. Ten pair of eyes were on me.

  “Tell you all about what?” I countered blandly, outwardly all grinning, polite contempt, for cops and their inquisitions and their smugness—and for what I knew came next. Inwardly, however, I was tense, wary, very angry.

  I was told: All about everything, from the beginning. About—and then the chief glibly rattled off what he knew or guessed concerning our criminal doings, which was much too much. But still, significantly, there was also much the omniscient chief didn’t know—and, thank God, he hadn’t mentioned Judy or Tuffy’s wife!

  So I said, flatly, “I prefer not to say anything until I’ve had a chance to talk with an attorney.”

  “Why not?” demanded the chief.

  “Because I think I need legal advice very badly in the face of such serious accusations.”

  “Here’s eight good men,” the chief said, indicating the dicks with a sweep of his hand. “What’s wrong with getting advice from them?”

  “Nothing,” I said. “Nothing at all. Except that they’re cops.”

  The chief jumped to his feet. “What’s wrong with cops?” he roared angrily.

  “I don’t think I should answer any questions until I talk to an attorney and get his advice.”

  The chief said, “Do you mean to sit there and deny that you were one of the three men who . . .”

  I broke in. “I’m not denying and I’m not admitting anything until I’m allowed to get some legal advice from an attorney.”

  The chief glared at me. “I can see we aren’t going to get anywhere by talking to this guy,” he said ominously. Then he walked out, slamming the door behind him.

  “The chief’s right,” said a dick. “This punk don’t wanta be reasonable. He don’t wanta talk.”

  “He thinks he’s tough,” said another, who grinned at me as he approached the chair where I was sitting. “He’s a cop-hater. Ain’t you, kid?”

  “Why, no,” I said. “I love cops. Just the sight of a uniform gives me a thrill.”

  “Shut up!”

  “Don’t be a wise guy!”

  I loved cops, the cops loved me. Right then my feelings weren’t too selective. I didn’t try very hard to keep in mind that big, burly cops who question you in back rooms are in the minority. At the moment I was perfectly content to hate all cops with a fine impartiality. Right then I needed the hate.

  An hour or so after this last inquisitorial session got under way, we were booked into the county jail on suspicion of virtually every crime known to man. As soon as this booking was completed, we were taken to the jail’s “little green room” and the questioning got under way again. Another contingent of detectives was there to see what they could see, as it were. This group, however, was more amiable, more agreeable. The fine edge of official indignation had worn off. After all, we were in custody and they seemingly had enough evidence and charges to bury us, figuratively if not literally. Thus, law enforcement had triumphed, hadn’t it?

  “Here, Chess, have a cigarette.”

  “Sure.”

  “Light.”

  “Thanks.”

  “You know, you boys did give us a headache for quite a while.”

  “Yeah, come to think of it, I guess we did. Well, now it’s your turn to give us one.” I grinned wryly. “Or maybe I should say it’s your turn to give me a worse one than I already got.”

  “Relax. With me this is just a job. We got a lot of unsolved robberies and other crimes on the books and we believe your bunch is responsible for quite a few of them. What we’d like to find out is, which ones did you commit and which ones didn’t you commit.”

  “And the more we tell you the more charges we get filed against us.”

  “Not necessarily. You see, Chess, you know and I know that we got enough on all of you already to put you out of circulation for a long, long time if that was all we were interested in. But it isn’t. We’re interested in solving crimes, in finding out what you did and what you didn’t do. Besides, we realize that all of you are just kids and we can make it a lot easier for your bunch if you all cooperate.”

  I nodded I’d heard. Then I asked, “How’s Tuffy?”

  “He’s going to be O.K.,” the cop assured me.

  “And Little Andy?”

  “He’s doing all right too.”

  Off-handedly, the cop added, “And we don’t intend to bother your girl friends.”

  I stiffened.

  “Relax, Chess, relax,” the cop said. “We know they really aren’t ia this thing with you.”

  “You seem to know a lot,” I said.

  “That’s right, Chess. We always got people ready to tell us something. You know that.”

  Yes, I knew that. I knew the cop was unquestionably right. There were always people ready to tell the cops something, for one reason or another. Because they were professional finks. Because they were good, civic-minded citizens. Because they were trying to sell somebody else out to save themselves. Because the cops scared or third-degreed something out of them.

  So far I had admitted no more than my right name. The tougher, the more rugged the back-room sessions, the less communicative I became. According to my code it was unthinkably wrong to betray friends and confederates; hence, stubbornly defiant, I had refused to “talk.” I did, however, want to see that all of us got off as lightly as possible. And being defiant or acting smart certainly couldn’t help any of us, not when the police were willing to treat us reasonably. Moreover, I was willing to take the weight on my shoulders, which was where most of it rightfully belonged.

  So Chessman smiled and became as seemingly affable as his inquisitors.

  Yes, I said, I was sure, so long as it did not involve turning against one another, that we would all be willing to cooperate. Yes, cooperating was the most sensible thing to do. We were then told that newspaper reporters and photographers wanted a crack at us, and as evidence of our willingness to do the right thing we posed for pictures with the cops. It was the way the newspapermen wanted it. The reporters asked a million questions. As politely as possible, we avoided giving more than vague and general answers. We said we preferred not to make a more detailed reply until the police had brought us all together and permitted us to talk it over between ourselves. The detectives agreed not to question us further until this was done.

  The next morning Tim, Bill and I were driven under guard to the prison ward of the General Hospital and allowed to talk with Tuffy and Little Andy in private. Once greetings were exchanged, I got right down to business. “Look, you people, we have a problem; how to avoid growing old in one of The Man’s prisons. I think we can solve that problem by keeping the gendarmes from wanting our scalps. So now we quote cooperate unquote. Without going overboard, we help the cops clear their books and they don’t try to bury us too deep. Let me do most of the talking. Agreed?”

  It was. At our signal, the detectives filed into the room. Tuffy, still far from ambulatory, was propped up in bed and we grouped around him. Deputy Sheriff John Toohey read off a long list of crimes which the police believed we may have committed. He read slowly and occasionally we would interrupt to ask a question about the manner in which the crime had been committed or what may have been said at
the time of commission.

  Then we would say, “You can chalk that one up to us.”

  Or, “No, that’s one we didn’t pull.”

  By the time the end of the list was reached, we had tentatively admitted to the commission of approximately thirty robberies and eight car thefts. We politely hedged when some of the gun fights with the cops were mentioned.

  Then I said, “Now that we’ve kept our part of the bargain where does that leave us? Little Andy here, for example, isn’t really involved at all, except maybe technically. And neither is Tim. What are you going to do with them?”

  “If your story holds together after we’ve checked it and after we’ve run all of you through a show-up, then they’ve got nothing to worry about,” I was assured. “We’re not out to send any innocent men to prison. We don’t do business that way.”

  And the cops proved to be as good as their word. Little Andy was allowed to plead guilty to one count of second degree burglary, a crime unrelated to anything “the gang” had done. No new charges were filed against Tim. He was sent to San Quentin for violation of probation only. (The cops carefully kept from us the fact Tim had talked, telling what he knew. Tim swore he had told nothing.) The Rabbit, soon apprehended after being fingered by Tim, was released for lack of evidence and later rearrested and sent to prison on a charge with which we had no connection. Similarly, a shoplifting partner whom Tim had also named was committed to prison for a crime in which we had not figured. Several of the others involved with us were never even arrested. These were mostly friends and confederates about whom Tim, fortunately, had no knowledge. Most importantly, the girls were never bothered, never questioned. The press never learned of their existence.

  Immediately after our talk with the cops in the jail ward, there followed another lively session with the impatiently waiting reporters and photographers. More posed pictures. More stock, loaded questions. As spokesman for the group, I couldn’t resist the opportunity to give the gentlemen of the Fourth Estate their money’s worth, since I had already had a chance to glance over some of their sensationalized accounts of our activities and capture. For all their worldly wisdom, their glib sophistication, not a one of them seemed to realize that, with a coldly calculated objectivity, I was pulling their leg. I was—and this is an old, old device—focusing attention on myself and an ever-smaller number of our group, thus turning attention away from those who could be helped, cleared first. Slowly but surely, one by one, we would, so far as possible, take the weight off ourselves, and meanwhile the newspapers would happily and enthusiastically be thumping the remainder. We were more than willing to have the story of us and our activities molded to fit the stereotyped pattern—the familiar Procrustean bed. After a couple of sessions with the press, we became, in public print, such stock, standardized characters in such a stock, crime-doesn’t-pay plot that we lost our individuality and hence our significance.