Mr. Blue: Memoirs of a Renegade

by Edward Bunker

  "Here's Bunker," the escort said to the tank jailer. "Back from Bertillion."

  "Go on, get wet," the jailer said, gesturing to me for emphasis.

  The shower room beyond was almost empty. There were a few vague figures in the steam, men who had already finished and were drying themselves. The benches were full of underwear and shoes. Everyone was in the showers — where it was really steamy.

  D'Arcy appeared. "Here." He handed me a towel. I could feel the toothbrush inside the folds. "He's in the back of the first row."

  I clenched the meager weapon through the towel. Fear tried to sap my strength. I shut it off. I set my mind on frenzy.

  Without undressing, I headed for the archway with the steam pouring forth. Inside were several waist-high partitions. Down each were half a dozen shower heads. Two or more naked men shared each shower, some soaping while others rinsed. As I squeezed along the wall, avoiding naked bodies, I stared into the thick steam, holding the toothbrush tight and ignoring the water wetting my pant legs.

  He was alone in the last shower. He had shampoo in his hair and his face was turned up into the stream of water. His skinny little white body was pitted with acne, his arms covered with blue jailhouse tattoos. He was two steps away and I hesitated for one moment. When he turned his head, the white shampoo foam rolling down, his eyes were open and he saw me. His eyes widened and he started to smile; then he saw the weapon, or something in my face. He turned to reach for a towel that had been thrown across the half wall separating the rows of showers. I was sure it held a weapon. He would have gotten it if he hadn't slipped on the wet floor. One foot shot out and he went down on one knee.

  Before he could recover, I pounced, swinging the toothbrush handle with the protruding razor blade. It got him high on the back, near where the neck begins and sliced down about six inches before his movement carried him out of the blade's arc. I chopped again, this time so hard that the razor blade snapped and flew away. His ducking plus the force of the blow threw him on his knees with his back to me. He was naked. I was fully clothed. Killer or not, at the moment Billy Cook's life was at my mercy and he was yelling for help. Naked prisoners were rushing to get out. I jumped on his back, grabbed his hair from the rear and slammed my fist against the side of his head. Pain shot up my arm, but his cry made it worthwhile. I was soaked with water and blood.

  Someone came up behind me. Fingers dug into both cheeks and my eyes and tore me loose, gouging out flesh as I was hauled back. I saw the olive green of uniform legs.

  The deputies dragged me out of the shower room and moved me through the maze of the jail, passing all the curious eyes behind bars. They opened a steel door and pushed me into a room with three smaller doors of solid green steel.

  "Strip 'em off," was the order. Half a dozen deputies stood around me, young, strong ex-Marines. They vibrated with the desire to dance on me. I followed the order.

  When I was naked, someone threw me a pair of cotton long johns and I put them on. Another deputy handed me a round cardboard container, a quart of water. One of the three doors was open. The windowless room was eight foot square and had solid steel walls and a concrete floor. In a corner was a hole for body waste. It had no furnishings. Someone said "five days" and understood that was how long I was to be here. Five days. I stepped inside and the door slammed shut, steel crashing on steel. I was in the blackness of the grave. From outside a key banged on the steel. When you hear that, you answer up. If you don't answer and we have to open the door, you'd better be dead, because if you're not dead, or damn near it, you'll wish you were. Got it?"

  I heard muffled laughter; then an outer door closed and I was alone Would I go crazy? What difference would it make? I'd simply be crazy by myself in the blackness. Nobody would care. Imagine the darkness of the blind in an eight by eight steel-walled cage. What would you do?

  You meditate on everything you know. You sing all the songs you might recall in whole or in part . . . You jack off — rough sex on the concrete floor. You think about God — is there one or many — and why he allows so much pain and injustice if he is the Joe Goss. My mother said God was real; everyone accepted Him without question. I, too, assumed that God was real — until I really thought about the facts in support or against. Maybe there was something spiritual in the universe, but God seemed to have stopped paying attention a few centuries ago.

  I heard noises through the walls and floors, many gates crashing shut. Dinging bells signaled "prowlers." I had no idea what the various signals meant.

  Once a day they unlocked the door, exchanging the cardboard container of water and leaving six slices of white bread. Bread and water. On the third day they inserted a paper plate piled high with macaroni. My stomach had shriveled and my appetite had dwindled. It was a huge ration, so I ate about a third and put the rest inside the six slices of bread. I made big fat sandwiches. I wrapped them in toilet paper. One for tonight, two for tomorrow. Then I figured I would have one day left.

  A little later I heard a scratching sound. When I reached out for the sandwiches, my hand touched the greasy body of a rat. Yoooo! I leaped up, and almost fainted from the sudden rush of blood.

  Goddamned rats had come up through the shithole. No wonder they survived. Some suckers in India worshipped them. I'd read that in a National Geographic somewhere along the line.

  I found the sandwiches. The rat had torn through the toilet paper and gnawed a good hunk out of one of them. I tore off the part he'd bitten and threw it down the hole. Then I ate all the rest. Fuck the rat. He had his chance. He got no second shot.

  The gouges on my face from the deputy's fingernails scabbed over. So did my busted scalp. One thing I had to say, I could take a beating with the best of them. I thought of Billy Cook crying like a bitch as I kicked his ass. "He won't fuck with me no more, what you bet?" I said; then brayed laughter like a jackass into the blackness.

  It was time to do pushups. Several times a day, I did four sets of twenty-five. I spent a lot of time masturbating. Jesus Christ I screwed many a goddess of the silver screen in the privacy of my mind. At other times I played a game with a button torn from my long johns. I threw it against a wall at an angle so it would bounce. Then I would make a ritualized search, using one finger, poking it down every few inches rather than sweeping the floor with my hand. That would have been too easy.

  Six or seven times a day the outer door opened and, a few seconds later, a heavy key clanged against the door. "All right in here," I called back and the outer door closed, leaving me alone.

  The five days seemed eternity when I was facing them, but when they were finished they were nothing. When the door opened and I stepped out, the light made me turn my eyes away. I was dizzy and fell against a wall when I started putting on my pants.

  "Hurry up," said a deputy. "Unless you wanna go back in there until you're ready." "No, boss, I'm ready."

  When we got back to the high power tank, I was assigned to one of the rear cells. In fact it was Billy Cook's cell. He had gone to the Death House at San Quentin the night before. I would never see him again, but in a couple of years I would talk to him through the ventalators between Death Row and the hole two nights before his execution. The cells were back to back with a service alley of pipes and conduits between them. The night before the execution they would take him down to the overnight condemned cell. I yelled at him, "Hey, Cook, you baby killing motherfucker! How long can you hold your breath? Ha, ha, ha . . ." In my youth my heart was hardened to my enemies. Billy Cook was one I found despicable even without my personal grudge. The family of five he had slaughtered included children.

  When the jailer told me they were putting me in the back for protection," I protested with vehemence: "I don't need any protection." The reply was, "We're protecting them from you."

  It was a lie, but it soothed my indignation. As I walked down the runway to the rear section, one of the faces that looked out between bars was D'Arcy. "Hey! Wait a second," he said.

  I s
topped, ignoring the yelling deputy as D'Arcy went to the pillowslip hanging from a hook where he kept commissary. He pulled forth a few candy bars and a couple of packs of Camels.

  "Hunker! Move it!" yelled the deputy from the gate, banging his key on the bars for emphasis. I held up a hand so he'd know I wasn't ignoring him.

  "One second, boss."

  D'Arcy handed me the cigarettes and candy. "You sure nailed that fucker."

  "Bunker! Move it!"

  "You better go."

  "What's he gonna do? Put me in jail?" Despite my bravado, I headed toward the cell I could hear being opened. As I walked past other cells, the faces seemed friendly and approving. Before stepping in, I noticed that I was next door to Lloyd Sampsell. He nodded, but his face was inscrutable. I stepped into the cell. "Watch the gate!" yelled the deputy. It began to shake. "Comin' closed!" It crashed shut.

  "Hey, Lloyd," called D'Arcy down the tier.

  "Yeah, what's up?"

  "Look after my pal down there."

  "Oh yeah! Anybody'd nail that piece of shit is aces with me," Sampsell yelled back; then to me in a conversational tone: "Hey, Bunker, you got smokes over there?"

  "Yeah. D'Arcy gave me some."

  "You need anything, you lemme know. Okay."

  "I need something to read."

  "Whaddya like?"

  "I dunno. Whatever."

  "I got a whole bunch. You might like Knock On Any Door."

  I remembered the movie with Humphrey Bogart. If a book became a movie, it was probably pretty good, or so my logic went at the time. "Send it over," I said.

  Sampsell handed the fat, worn paperback through the bars. Before I could get into it, the morning cleanup finished and the cells in the front were unlocked: The accused kidnappers and murderers and other notorious criminals (but apparently less notorious than Sampsell or myself) were allowed to roam the runway outside the cells. The daily routine was for D'Arcy to bring out a gray blanket and spread it on the floor outside Sampsell's cell so the perpetual poker game could crank up. On Wednesday, the day that the money man delivered the allotment of cash that could be drawn from a prisoner's account, there were more players than room — but as the week passed the losers were gone and the game got down to the four or five best players: D'Arcy and Sampsell and Cicerone were always left. D'Arcy had no money on account, nor any visitors. He lived on the poker game. Sampsell played with his hands through the bars. The others sat cross-legged on the floor, or leaned on elbow and rump. The game was lowball, of course. It isn't a chess game where the inferior player never wins a game. In the short run the neophyte may be dealt unbeatable hands and sweep all before him, but over several hours, or days, the hands even up. The skilled player will minimize what he loses on losing hands, and maximize those he wins. It could be said that he who says "I bet" is a winner, and he who says "I call" is a loser.

  Day after day, ten hours of each of them, I watched the game through the bars. D'Arcy sat to Sampsell's left, right by the corner of my cell, and he began to flash his cards to me. He showed me if he bluffed (not often) and got away with it. The bluff, he told me, was really an advertisement to promote getting called when he had a powerhouse hand. It was nice to bluff successfully, but getting caught was also useful. If you never bluffed, you never got called when you had a good hand. More than any other poker game, how one plays a hand depends on their position relative to the dealer. Raised bets and re-raises are frequent before the draw, and although there is a wager after the draw, and sometimes it is raised, an axiom of lowball is that all the action is before the draw. D'Arcy gave me another poker axiom: be easy to bluff, for it is far cheaper to make a mistake and throw a hand away, than to "keep someone honest" and call.

  One afternoon they summoned D'Arcy to the Attorney Room.

  The other players moaned because he was the big winner and they weren't going to recoup their losses with him gone. On impulse and because winning $30 or $40 has scant importance to a man facing "natural life" in San Quentin, he gave me a wad of money and told me to play for him.

  With a pounding heart, I reached through the bars and picked up the five cards spinning across the blanket toward me. I was both excited and scared. I wanted to win. Even more, I didn't want to. lose D'Arcy's money. He was gone about half an hour. I'd played three or four small hands, winning one. I was just about

  even when D'Arcy came in the gate — and I was involved in a big pot with an old man named Sol, who was awaiting trial for killing his business partner. The main evidence was plenty of motive: the partner was stealing from the company and sleeping with Sol's wife. The hand started with my having a pat eight, five, ace, deuce, trey. That's a good hand, especially pat. I was ahead of Sol. I raised the pot. Sol raised behind me. I called his bet. The dealer asked how many cards I wanted. If I stayed pat without re-raising Sol's raise, he would know that I had either an eight or a nine. With a seven or better I would have surely raised him again before the draw. His raise of my raise indicated the likelihood of him having a pat hand too, maybe an eight, maybe even a nine, but very possibly a seven or better. Should I throw away the eight and hope for a seven, a six or a four, or even the joker? If I knew he was going to draw a card, I would surely stand on the eight. I didn't know that. "One," I said, holding up one finger. The card came across the blanket. I covered it without looking.

  "One card," Sol said, turning over the queen that he discarded. Damn, I cursed in my mind; he had outplayed me, made me break my hand and chance.

  I looked at what I'd drawn. A five. I had a five already. Now I had a pair of them, and a shitty hand. "I check," I said. By then, D'Arcy had arrived and was standing next to my cell.

  "Ten dollars," Sol said.

  It was a big bet in a jailhouse poker game where all one could draw was $12 a week. Yet somehow, intuitively or perhaps with ESP, for which I have been subsequently tested and found to have under the Duke University standards established by their famous experiments, I knew Sol was bluffing. He bluffed all the time anyway. Even though I was sure he was bluffing, I could not call the bet. I had a pair, a big pair. I might have called with a jack, or even a queen — but a pair I couldn't call with a pair. He couldn't have a bigger pair. Then I remembered something D'Arcy had done once.

  "I raise," I said. "All I have here." I started counting out the money D'Arcy had left me. It was about $30. When I was up to $18, Sol threw his cards away as if they were on fire. "Fuckin' kid sandbagged me! Checked and raised!"

  To check then let someone else bet and then raise, is the coldest trap in poker. Some card parlors don't allow players to check and raise. If someone checks to me and then raises, I throw my hand in without thought unless I have a real powerhouse.

  "Can I see?" D'Arcy asked. Sure. It was his money. I handed him my cards while I dragged in the substantial pot. I was aglow inside.

  D'Arcy looked at the cards without changing expression.

  "Lemme see, too," Sol said.

  "No, no," D'Arcy said. "You gotta pay." He winked at me and threw the cards on the blanket.

  Sol reached for the cards. D'Arcy, who was standing, stepped on Sol's hand, pinning it and the cards to the blanket.

  "Hey . . . what the fuck!" Sol said, pulling his hand free, but leaving the cards face down. "What the fuck do you think you're doin'?" Sol was sixty pounds heavier than D'Arcy. He coiled to get to his feet.

  "If you stand up, I'm gonna try to cut your head off," D'Arcy said, his usual congenial good manners replaced by the rattle of a sidewinder.

  Sol folded back on his rump and raised both hands in surrender. He was intimidated and chose to put a humorous face on things. "I'll bet he had a six," Sol said. "Did he?"

  D'Arcy winked, as if confirming Sol's supposition. Then he took off his denim jumper and sat down to play and conversation resumed.

  "Who was it? Matthews?" Al Matthews was the criminal defense lawyer of choice. He had been the chief trial attorney of the public defender's office, and had recently go
ne into private practice. He was "hot" with those who knew how to select a lawyer for a criminal trial. At this point he had never lost a client to the gas chamber, and he had represented a lot of indigent capital defendants in Los Angeles.

  "Yeah Matthews," D'Arcy said. Then grunted and turned a thumb down in the classic Roman gesture.

  Meanwhile the cards came skidding across the blanket.

  "What's that mean?" Sampsell asked.

  "They revoked my stay."

  "You'll be traveling."

  "It'll take a few days for the papers, then I'll catch the train. What the fuck, they eat better up there." He picked up his cards and glanced quickly. Someone else opened; D'Arcy threw the cards away. Then he glanced over his shoulder at me behind the bars. "He's gonna call you down in a couple of days. You tell the deputy you want to see him?"

  Before Al Matthews called me to the Attorney Room, whoever did such things had me taken to the Juvenile Court with Judge A.A. Scott presiding. A little over three years earlier Scott had committed me to the Youth Authority. The People of California were petitioning the court to have me tried as an adult. It was not contested. I had no attorney and I cannot remember being asked to say anything. I might as well have been a passenger on a train. The journey took ten minutes, and when it was over, they took me to a department of the Municipal Court and filed a complaint charging me not with Section 4500, but with 245 Penal Code, Assault with Intent to do great bodily harm. A date for a preliminary hearing was set. Bail was set at $20,000. Of course bail was unattainable while the Youth Authority had a detainer on me. I knew all of this was going to happen. I was learning something about court procedures from the men around me. I wondered if the change in the complaint might get me placed in another tank, but there seemed to be minimal communication between the Sheriffs Department, which ran the jail, and the courts. There were routine procedures for routine things — releases and court appearances — but nobody would notify the jail about this difference. The court had no reason to know I was in "high power."