The Onion Field

by Joseph Wambaugh

  Regardless, the craniotomy provided a necessary rationale for Rusty and Ethel Powell. It comforted them. Greg’s troubles were organic, they were sure of it. The old guilt became at last tolerable. It was a blessing.

  Greg was almost twenty-nine years old when, in May of 1962, he was finally paroled from Vacaville to his parents’ home in Oceanside, California. He had spent ten of the past thirteen years in penal institutions, only nominally able to shape the family’s affairs through scolding extravagant letters. His prospects were not good when, shortly after release, one of his sisters introduced him to Maxine.

  But then neither were Maxine’s, and had not been for years. She was twenty-six years old, plain, with worn out eyes and three children. But her smile was pleasant enough and Greg began seeing her often. Soon he had all but moved in with her.

  Maxine, like Greg, had been through years of family wars and was currently involved in a separation from her soldier husband from whom she drew an allotment, and was in a court battle with her parents, who wanted custody of the children. In September, by court order, the children were given to Maxine’s mother and partially blind father, who proved their daughter’s failure to care for them. Some months later the army discontinued Maxine’s monthly allotment check, which she and Greg had been spending, and diverted it to Maxine’s parents for the children. Maxine was upset and wrote to the army, to no avail.

  “You and me’ll soon get married, honey,” Greg promised her.

  “Yes,” she sobbed, “and we’ll get the kids back from my folks.”

  “You bet we will,” said Greg, hugging her close.

  “And then the allotment check’ll stay with us.”

  “Well, not if we’re married, honey,” Greg reminded her.

  “Oh, that’s right. But I’ll get something, won’t I?”

  “Those things have to be worked out. But don’t worry, my luck’s gonna change.”

  And Greg tried a car wash and gas station and finally a scheme to open his own automotive garage, and for one reason or another all ended in failure. Then the final battle of Gregory Powell’s family war drove him out of the house for good. It evolved over an anonymous letter one of his sisters received accusing her of various marital infidelities and of having had incestuous relationships with Greg. The girl took the letter to the family council, and Greg’s father found some notes in Greg’s pocket written by Maxine and, after a family conference and homemade handwriting analysis, it was decided that Maxine was indeed the culprit. And further, that the vile and libelous letter should be brought to Greg’s attention. It was, and Greg drove Maxine straight to San Diego to a detective agency where he paid sixty dollars for a polygraph examination and the examiner said he was satisfied Maxine was telling the truth. Next, Greg returned to the family with his polygraph results and demanded they turn the letter over to a handwriting analyst for further clues as to who wrote the despicable letter. But they had already made up their minds. “You’ve got no feeling for my private life,” Greg told them, his jaw muscles throbbing. “You went in my pockets and took notes from my girl to me. You had no right. None at all.”

  “Look what she wrote about your sister. And about you.”

  “I don’t believe she wrote it. She said she didn’t. And now the point is that you’d treat me like this! Just go into my pockets!”

  “It’s for the good of all of us. It’s for the family.”

  “I oughtta tell you what I think of this family. That’s what I oughtta do. But I won’t. I’m leaving this house as of now. Oh, I’ll still see you, don’t worry about that. I won’t abandon you. Somebody’s gotta direct you or you’d all walk off a cliff or something. But I’ll never live in your house again.”

  And he was right. He never would.

  Toward the end of 1962, Greg and Maxine decided to go to Boulder City, Nevada, to care for his sister Lei Lani, who had been in a traffic accident, leaving her neck broken and her leg terribly burned by battery acid. Gregory Powell found he still couldn’t get away from them, and it was not only his sister but his mother who became disabled by illness and again announced that she was going to die. He found himself making trips between Boulder City and Oceanside with Maxine, his father, brother, and mother when she was able.

  In January they knew Maxine was pregnant, and Douglas, by now a heroin user, had come to Boulder City. Greg told Maxine that he could never escape the family. Never. And once again he was right. But he was always to wonder if he really wanted to escape.

  Greg was growing restless at his sister’s home surrounded by his family. One day he concocted a bizarre scheme in which he and Doug were to drive to Oceanside and kidnap Maxine’s children from their grandparents and bring them to Boulder City and their mother’s loving care. After several hours of planning the brothers drove to Oceanside but they returned the same day. Greg once more had changed his mind.

  Then on January 29, Douglas Powell, using the identification of a cousin, Thomas Powell, residing in Michigan, bought a Beretta 7.65 automatic from a Las Vegas pawnshop.

  On January 31 a service station in Las Vegas was robbed by a lone gunman. On February 6 a Las Vegas drugstore suffered the same fate. On February 9 the original service station was robbed again. The Powell brothers announced to the other family members that they had acquired a night job driving a truck and unloading boxcars. The job would last about four hours on each night they worked. The pay was surprisingly good.

  Then Douglas and Greg both left Boulder City separately for Los Angeles, Greg explaining he wanted to collect some money owed him. On February 15 Greg made two “collections” at a West Covina liquor store and another at a Santa Monica liquor store, but by then Douglas had returned to Oceanside. In late February Greg’s “collections” were interrupted when his sister broke into his apartment and took his automatic. Every dollar he had stolen also disappeared, more than six hundred. It was the final ignominy.

  “I know why she did it,” he raged to Maxine during the telephone call to Boulder City. “She’s trying to stop me from robbing, Max. She’s trying to straighten me out by stealing my gun. But goddamnit, why the hell did she take the money too? She could at least have left me the money. It’d take the whole goddamn staff at Vacaville to figure out just one goddamn move by one goddamn member of my family! They’ll drive me to a little rubber room, I tell you!”

  Greg drove to Las Vegas, bought a Colt .38 revolver with a four-inch barrel, and returned to Los Angeles with Maxine, where they moved into the apartment of a black drag queen he had dated in the past. One day a knock at the door startled Greg, who ran into the kitchen, drew the revolver from his waistband, and accidentally fired a shot through the floor. The drag queen suggested that they find other lodgings.

  Then Greg met a little black man named Billy Small who helped them find an apartment in a black neighborhood on 65th Street. Billy and Greg were to keep very busy for the next few nights.

  After the gardener had finished the old woman’s yard, he went to his next stop, an old California home, with a line of yuccas out front. They were sound healthy yuccas with long stout spiny leaves bending from massive trunks. Out near the street was a leaning Japanese black pine. In just the right place, so that the majestic plants didn’t overwhelm it, was a dwarf nectarine with droopy shiny leaves. The gardener wished he had the training and license to landscape places like this, not just maintain them. A landscape architect, that would be the thing to say when people asked what you did for a living.

  When the gardener used to do his job with an old friend it was always he, the gardener, who had the touch for slipping plants. The friend often admired the way the gardener could make things grow from cuttings.

  “He has a way of making things live,” the friend would say. “He cares about living things and that’s something a license can’t give you. I’d rather have him landscape and care for my yard than someone with more imagination. He cares about living things.”

  And now the gardener knelt beside a
potacarpus and wondered if perhaps this weren’t the only error the owner had made in this otherwise magnificently landscaped property. A touch of greater delicacy was needed on this side of the yard, not this evergreen with its illusion of fullness. The Italian stone pines around it were enough. You mustn’t be afraid to have a little spot of bare earth with nothing growing there. You must know when you’re finished and then stop. That’s the way he committed his crimes. He had a regular route. He stole from each place on his route and he didn’t stop for the day unless he got something of value from each of them.

  Then he unloaded his mower from the bed of the truck and with the sun straight up and hot, rolled up the sleeves of the workshirt and took off the hat to wipe the sweat from his forehead and neck. The headache wasn’t so bad now. As he stood there on the lawn he saw a mailman walk down the street carrying a leather mailbag. The mailman looked familiar, but the gardener couldn’t remember. He started getting stomach cramps and hoped it wasn’t another attack of diarrhea. It was so hard to remember faces anymore. Maybe the mailman was from the other life, back in those days. But how could he be? Then it struck him. The mailman looked like the man in the yellow shirt, the one who was surely a security officer, the one who watched him that day when he had his pockets loaded with loot and a set of wrenches under his coat inside his belt, and even his hands full of packages of screws and bolts and other items of hardware.

  The man in the yellow shirt had followed him, never taking his eyes from him. He had walked slowly toward the door, waiting, tensing, waiting for the sound of running footsteps or a shout: “Store security officer. You’re under arrest.”

  He had walked through the door with his loot and across the busy parking lot to his car. There had been no footsteps, no voice. He had made it.

  The gardener watched the mailman pass by and cross over to the other side of the street. The gardener thought: No, that’s not the man in the yellow shirt. Strange, up close he didn’t even look like him. Not at all.

  FOUR

  The partners in the four-door Plymouth and the partners in the little Ford coupe were both battling traffic at that moment.

  Ian Campbell, the driver of the Plymouth, was turning east on Hollywood Boulevard but decided momentarily it was a mistake and quickly got out of the traffic. Karl Hettinger was cleaning his glasses, feeling his belt binding him and wondering if a hamburger would add to the bulge.

  “One good thing about Saturday night traffic is it gives you a better chance to get lost after a job,” Gregory Powell said as they began to ride from Wilshire Boulevard to Hollywood in the little maroon Ford.

  His partner did not reply but continued fiddling with the gun in his belt, twisting in his seat.

  “Goddamnit, Jim, relax,” said Greg. “You know I’ll do all the real work once we get inside.”

  Jimmy Smith grunted and watched the cars that passed them. The March night air was cold, but he was sweating, and his mouth and throat were dry and hot. He lit a fresh cigarette with the butt of the last one.

  “After tonight we’ll have a stake, Jim,” Greg said and Jimmy Smith wished his partner would shut up for five minutes. He had to think.

  “I’ve got a feeling you and me’re gonna score big tonight,” Greg said. “Our little family’s gonna get well tonight.”

  Family, thought Jimmy. If I hear another fuckin word about family I’ll … Then he looked toward his partner’s belt. He couldn’t see the Colt .38 in the darkened car but he knew it was there.

  He hated it when his partner talked about his family and how Jimmy was now part of it. Jimmy Smith had never been part of anybody’s family, never wanted to be. And if he did, there was always his Nana. I’ll go see my Nana one of these days, thought Jimmy. Soon as I cut this crazy bastard loose, that’s what I’ll do. I’ll go find my Nana.

  “Jimmy is not really my son,” his Nana would one day tell a jury, “but he’s the onlyest son I’ll ever have. I’m really his auntie, his great-auntie. I raised his mother from when she were a little girl and then she went and had her baby in Crowell, Texas, when she weren’t but thirteen years old and she couldn’t take care of him so she give him to me in Fort Worth. I think his daddy was a fifteen year old white boy but I ain’t even sure of that.

  “When he were just a little tiny boy about three years old, I had this accident with a Colt .45 revolver, and he were there with me when it happened. What happened is my husband’s gun was under my mattress. I slept on the floor. I just stuck it under the mattress on the floor, and when I got up to put the mattress on the bed, I rolled it up, little skinny mattress as it was. I looked back and Jimmy were there and I were afraid he would get the gun so I got the gun and the mattress all in one hand. I guess I got it by the trigger when I started to the bed with it. The mattress started to slip and I gripped the mattress. I guess I pulled the trigger.

  “I were shot in my left leg and I had to wear a cast for a year without turnin over. It went up to my waist, and over my left leg all the way down, foot and all. And I laid there a year with that cast on.

  “Well, you might say Jimmy took care of me. We had nobody. I had been makin six dollars a week before this happened, but after this I was crippled for life. And Jimmy would give me water and do things for me. Jimmy turned the gas on at three years old. We had one of those open stoves and if it would get too cold I’d tell him, ‘Son, you have to try.’ And I’d tell him to light a match and lay it on the stove and then turn the knob because I weren’t able to get up at all.

  “And the same way with the lights. We had lights that swung down from the ceiling and we had to turn them off from there, and Jimmy would pull the breakfast table out of the kitchen, get on the table, and turn the lights off. Nobody was there with me daily, just Jimmy and I. My first husband finally left me, you see, after I got shot.

  “After I was shot I were never able to get Jimmy to take a nap anymore unless he could wrap his head up and just smother hisself practically, so I just had to discontinue his naps because after that he was afraid to go to sleep in the day. It was all right at night, but takin a nap in the day, Jimmy refused to sleep unless he could wrap his head up.

  “When Jimmy were about seven, a playmate got hit by an automobile. Jimmy thought he was dead. It didn’t kill him, but Jimmy ran to the woods. It happened at school, and Jimmy told them he was goin to the woods and never come back.

  “Well, the whole town, practically, went lookin for him. They found him with his head and shoulders under some bushes, and only his feet was stickin out, and he jumped up cryin, and he come runnin and said he was sorry this boy was dead. He just could not stand to see anyone hurt.

  “He were afraid of a gun as far as I can remember because the lady I worked for, she bought him a tricycle and a little cap pistol for Christmas. It scared him to death, and I didn’t want her to know he couldn’t play with it, so I put it under the mattress and hid it. But he found it one day and I finally had to give it away. She bought it for him, but Jimmy was extremely nervous ever since I got shot. And he wouldn’t fight. The children would hit him, fight him, but he wouldn’t fight back.

  “It were hard with a little baby, and me already past forty and never had a child of my own. And my new husband, Sylvester, never gave Jimmy a dime in his life. All he did was nag and fuss at him.”

  The only man in Jimmy Lee Smith’s early life was his Nana’s second and last husband. Sylvester was a gambler who would leave for weeks at a time, then return to abuse him and his Nana, and to take what little money she had. Once he beat her severely when she said the money was for Jimmy, for school shoes. And during the beating Jimmy called Mr. Ed, who was a neighbor. The giant black man stopped Sylvester. Then when his Nana limped off to work, Sylvester tied Jimmy to a bed with a pair of stockings and beat him with a board from a crate. His screams and pleas were heard by all the neighbors and when his Nana came limping into the apartment, she had already heard about it. Without a word, she got Sylvester’s gun, and shoved it in h
is face crying, “You ain’t never gonna lay hands on my boy agin. Never!”

  She didn’t know how to cock and fire the old revolver and Sylvester got it away from her. But he retreated, never again to strike Jimmy in anger, and after they went to Los Angeles he left their lives for good.

  Whenever in later life Jimmy Smith tried to remember triumphs, it was somehow the defeats which came to him. Like the time the Goodwill Industries in Fort Worth had given him a pair of candy-striped overalls for Christmas and he was so proud of them he wore them to the movie that very Saturday, and Flatnosed Riley surreptitiously unbuttoned the flap. Jimmy had wondered all the way home why the other boys were snickering and pointing at him. When he discovered the truth, he burst into tears, crying, “You all played the dozens on me. You all played the dozens on me!”

  Jimmy was never very popular with the other boys. There were distinct disadvantages to having light skin and mulatto features. “You ol yella-faced ponk. You ol half-breed nigger. Thinks you is white, dontcha? You oughtta git a ass kickin.” And then they would do it.

  But the advantages came later. With the girls, especially the very dark girls. “My, Jimmy, you a fine bright lookin boy. Take the shirt off, Jimmy. Mmmmm, ain’t you a fine lookin bright boy.”

  But he couldn’t be too bold about picking the prettiest girl even if he knew he could get her. Not when he was resented anyway because of his fair skin. So Jimmy decided to choose the ugliest chick when he was with the other black dudes, and to score on the pretty ones when he was alone. And it worked out fine. Picking the ugly chicks made the other boys approve of him.

  Jimmy learned to hustle in Fort Worth during the Depression. There was treasure in tow sacks and even in rags, but nothing compared to what junk dealers would pay for zinc fruit jar tops and old copper. Even rich white folks hoarded such items. It took boldness to sneak into their garages and creep onto their screened back porches to get the tops off the fruit jars which they were using for canning. But if he were caught he would throw himself on the ground and sob as though his heart were breaking and tell them how hungry he was, which was true enough. Inevitably they would look down at the dirty, yellow-skinned boy with the tears streaking through the grime and give him only a mild scolding. Sometimes a lady would even open her purse and give him a dime and a motherly pat on the rump.