Mr. Blue: Memoirs of a Renegade

by Edward Bunker

  I was learning other things, too. When the poker game broke up for meals, or count, or at lights out, there was always a lot of conversation from cell to cell. D'Arcy was too far away, but Sampsell was next door. He told me about heisting the payroll at Lockheed sometime back in the '30s or '40s, I don't remember which. He had an analytical mind and a slight country twang. He got excited when he told his heart-stopping adventures in crime and recalled legendary tales of San Quentin, including his own escape from inside the walls of Folsom. I heard other stories, too, of crazy Bugsy Siegel, who disliked being called Bugsy although he let some people call him that because they didn't care how crazy he was. I learned that behind bars it was good to have the reputation of being as violent as anyone but not crazy, not unpredictable. You didn't want fear, for fear can make even a coward dangerous. In a world without civil process or appeal to established authority, one needed others to think they had the ability to protect themselves and their interests.

  Al Matthews came to see me. I had no money, but he said he would handle my preliminary hearing and have it expedited to the Superior Court. There he would seek to be appointed by the judge in lieu of the public defender's office. He said he would try to waive a jury trial and have the case tried in front of the judge without the jury.

  It went just as he planned. He made no attempt to refute the charges, although the victim said he had few stitches and didn't even miss a day of work. What Matthews did was to reverse things and put on trial what they had done to me. He showed the mug photo taken of me when I was booked into the county jail, then a guard who had quit the Department of Corrections gave graphic testimony about how they had stomped me. The judge found me guilty, but what had been done was planted in his mind. A date for a probation hearing and sentence was set. Al Matthews moved the judge to appoint Dr Marcel Frym of the Hacker Clinic to examine me and file a report. The judge granted the motion.

  Dr Frym an Austrian Jew with jowls that vibrated and an accent that reeked of intelligence, came to see me. In Vienna he had been a defense lawyer and had studied under Freud. He was a renowned expert on the criminal mind. In Vienna, which operated under the inquisitorial system based on the Napoleonic Code rather than the adversarial system used by nations under England's sway, the accord's mental condition was extremely relevant. The charge of the public prosecutor was not to convict, but to find and present truth to the judge. The philosophical underpinning is to find truth, not defeat an adversary. All questions must be answered. There is no Fifth Amendment. The defendant must answer the questions. The tangled mind is also part of the search. America's law is an outgrowth of trial by combat, with lawyers as champions and judges making sure the rules of combat are followed. Each system has its virtues and its flaws, but I do think the Napoleonic Code more efficient, fairer and, as a result, it produces more truth. As for justice, who knows what that is? I have violated many laws, but if there was a God of Justice, I am unsure what would happen if He put what I did on one end of the scale and what was done to me on the other. At the sentence the judge suspended proceedings, placed me on five years' probation with the first ninety days to be served in the county jail. A condition of the probation was that I undergo psychiatric treatment under Dr Frym at the Hacker Clinic in Beverly Hills.

  Hip, hip, hooray! In spring I would walk from the Hall of Justice onto Broadway. I would be free, and we would see what was writ on life's next page. I wasn't about to start fretting over liabilities, real or fancied, societal or psychological. I lived in the momentary impulse.

  A day or two after my sentence, while I was waiting for the Sheriff's Department to classify me, word came from the booking office. "Chessman's down from the row for a hearing." The news excited the ex-cons and professional criminals in the tank. His quixotic battle through the courts, which had just started, added to his already substantial underworld legend. His book, Cell 2455 Death Row had not yet been published but he was already famous, or infamous, in San Quentin and Folsom and in all of the Southern California newspapers. Within the hour, a deputy came down the tier, pushing a handcart on which were several cardboard boxes. Chessman's legal materials. He had "orders" from the court, and the Sheriff's Department got heightened blood pressure when a court ordered them to do anything. He was sentenced to the gas chamber for a series of small time robberies and sexual assaults along Mulholland Drive. He was dubbed the "Red Light Bandit" because victims were pulled over with a red light. It was probably just the red cellophane over the spotlight that many cars had back then. He claimed, and most criminals believed, that the LAPD had framed him while knowing he was innocent, or at least messed with the evidence. He had been a thorn in their side for many years. He had once heisted illegal casinos and bordellos that the Sheriff's Department let operate in the hills above the Sunset Strip. It did seem unlikely that someone who did that would turn around and commit nickel and dime robberies and vicious rapes. I believed him innocent. Had I thought otherwise, I would never have talked to him. My moral code didn't allow fraternization with rapists and child molesters.

  Chessman had been called down for a hearing on the veracity of the trial transcript, the document used by the California Supreme Court — and all subsequent courts — to determine exactly what went on moment by moment in the long trial, where he had represented himself. Al Matthews was appointed as his advisor. The court reporter had used shorthand, not a machine, which was immaterial as long as he prepared the transcript. Alas, he died part way through the job and Chessman complained that the reporter who took over made errors critical to the appeal. That one issue would keep him alive a dozen years, but he never got another trial. Back then, a direct appeal to the California Supreme Court took about a year to eighteen months between the judgment and the cyanide, sometimes less. At two years, Chessman was already beating the averages.

  The crimes he supposedly committed went as follows: A car with a red light pulls up to a parked couple looking out at the clusters of lights in the bowl of the San Fernando Valley. A figure gets out. He comes over to the car. He has a gun. He robs them and then makes them perform sexually. In viewing the situation, I couldn't imagine getting it up if I was either victim or criminal. When I robbed a bank, my penis usually shriveled up nearly out of sight.

  I was told, never having personally read the transcript, that he put himself on Death Row when he asked a female victim in

  Camillo state hospital some kind of ignorant question that opened the door to damning testimony. With a decent trial attorney he would have gotten life which, in those days, made you eligible for parole in seven years. I never heard of anyone doing a first degree murder conviction who did less than fourteen, but he had no murder, and many with comparable crimes did a dime. In those days, and in most places around the world, ten years is a long time to serve in prison, but nowadays, at least here, ten years is the sentence for misdemeanors, or what should be misdemeanors.

  I thought they had deliberately manufactured a case against Chessman, something I don't believe now. He was guilty. He did it even though it still seems illogical. His legacy to the justice system is that he is considered the "jailhouse lawyer." Before Chessman, a convict carrying legal documents around the yard was either a dingbat or a con man selling lies to fools. Some prisoners once forged a Supreme Court opinion, and sold copies on the yard for a carton of cigarettes each — although that was after Chessman. The truth is that far fewer would be imprisoned and/or executed if everyone had one fourth of the prosecution's resources. We say our system is the best - by what criteria? Do we free the innocent and punish the guilty better than others? We do all right unless the guilty are rich, but nobody manages to punish the rich very much. Thank God the poor commit so many more crimes.

  Chessman seemed to swagger when he walked but actually his stride was the result of an injury in childhood. His hawk-like nose had been broken; now he had a bent beak. He looked tough but not menacing. I could hear him unpacking the boxes of papers.

  Sampsell: "Chess
, you get your typewriter?"

  "They got it. They gotta look it over. You know how that goes?"

  "Sure do."

  Chessman: "Say, next door."

  That was me. "What's up?"

  "What'd they say you did?"

  "They say I stabbed a guard in Lancaster."

  "Oh yeah! I heard about you. You beat the fuck outta Billy Cook, right?"

  I did the best I could."

  "He deserved it . . . fuckin' turd . . ."

  I heard the thud from the heel of a hand hitting the wall, and Sampsell's voice softer than usual said, "Hey, Bunk."

  "Yeah."

  His hand appeared, reaching out between the bars and in front of the corner of my cell. He had a kite folded tight. (A "kite" is an unofficial note between convicts.) I reached out and took it.

  "For Chess," he said.

  I pounded on Chessman's wall. "Hey!" "Yeah."

  "Reach out."

  I handed the note to Chessman. I have no idea what it said, but within a minute, Chessman called, "Yeah, Lloyd, that's a good idea I'll tell him when I see him. You got any smokes over there?"

  "Sure. Hey, Bunk."

  "Yeah."

  "Take a couple packs and pass this along."

  It was a carton of Camels with one pack missing. I took two and passed the rest to Chessman. Being accepted by men sentenced to die was bizarrely gratifying. In this dark world there is nothing more Promethean than attacking a guard. The powers that be take worse umbrage than merely having an eagle eat the transgressor's liver. When I said I'd stabbed a guard, the image conveyed to listeners was far different than the reality.

  "You like to read?" Chessman once asked me.

  "Oh yeah. I'd rather read than eat."

  "Maybe for a little while. Anyway . . . here. Pass 'em along if you're not interested."

  Around the bars he passed two paperback books, Jack London's The Sea Wolf and George Santayana's The Last Puritan. I remember reading Jack London's Iron Heel in the Preston School of Industry. It stood out. I immediately began to read the tale of Wolf Larsen who lived by beating and stomping and clubbing his way through any who opposed him, except for his brother,

  who was more feared, and more fearsome, than he. Their ships prowled the Pacific. When the tank lights went out, I said: "What a great fuckin' book."

  "The Sea-Wolf?"

  "Uh huh."

  "Jack London was great. They love him in Russia."

  "In Russia!"

  "Yeah. He was a communist... or at least some kind of socialist. He was also a way out racist. It seems almost a paradox ... a racist commie. Weird, huh?"

  "Who's your favorite writer?" I asked.

  "You mean this week? That's how much it changes. You'll get to read a lot of books in the joint."

  "I'm not going to the joint." For a moment I thought he'd forgotten what I'd told him about the probation and jail sentence.

  "Oh, not this time, but you went to juvenile hall at ten, reform school at thirteen, and at sixteen you've been convicted as an adult. Someday you're going to prison. I just hope you don't wind up next door to me."

  "I'm next door right now."

  "I mean next door on Death Row."

  The Death House. I saw Cagney's sniveling shadow as he was dragged to the electric chair. It was a time when executions were so common that nobody kept count, but it seemed all too likely to me — far more back then than now. Murder is perhaps the easiest serious felony to get away with. Only the most stupid and the most impulsive are apprehended and convicted. Only a fraction of the poorest and most ignorant are among those who go to the Death House. Fear of the death penalty would not make me hesitate one second now that I'm old and harmless, my fires of id burned down to ashes. But back when my rage and defiance always burned near explosion, I was afraid of the gas chamber.

  "It scares me," I told Chessman.

  "Shit, it scares me, too. How about you, Lloyd?"

  "Yeah," Sampsell said laconically. "But it's too late now."

  "You got a chance at reversal?" Chessman asked.

  Sampsell's reply was a laugh.

  "Me, I think I've got a shot. How can I have a fair appeal without the right transcript? They hired this reporter after the i it her one died . . . and where he couldn't decipher the shorthand, he .asked the fuckin' prosecutor to clarify what was said."

  "The prosecutor! How could he do that?"

  "Because the judge said he could."

  "Fricke?"

  "The one and only."

  "Does he ever get reversed?"

  "I've never seen him reversed. Fricke On California Criminal Law is the numero uno textbook. How can they reverse the guy ih.it wrote the book they learned from?"

  I listened to them in the jail night after night, two men who would both be put to death in the small green octagon chamber, where the cyanide pellets were dipped into acid beneath the chair. They reminisced about the legends of San Quentin. They mill me about Bob Wells, a black man who was on Death Row for knocking out a Folsom guard's eye with a spittoon. He started with a car theft and parlayed it all the way to Death Row. "In the joint the best thing is to avoid trouble if you can . . . but if you get jammed and you gotta take somebody out, if you want to avoid the gas chamber or Life, make sure you stick him in the front — not in the back. In the front you can make a case for self-defense. Another thing, don't ever go over to his cell house or his job: You'll be out of bounds . . . where you're not supposed to be."

  Theirs was good advice for 1950. Twenty years later it was impossible to be convicted of a prison murder without at least mil- guard as eyewitness. In the '50s, most convicts felt such helpless defeat that they usually confessed after a few days, or weeks, or even months, in the dungeon, which was what they called a certain row of cells in Folsom's #5 building. Nobody even thought a convict might have the right to a lawyer. Bob Wells only ever saw his lawyer in the courtroom.

  Another piece of advice I remembered from Sampsell. "Two guys are the perfect robbery mob. With one guy, you know you won't get snitched on . . . but one guy can only watch one person while getting the money. With two guys, one covers the room and the other sacks it up. One guy can cover a lot of people. And if somebody snitches, there's no doubt who it was ..."

  I listened and remembered, but without saying that I was not inclined to armed robbery. Indeed, I had no plans to be a criminal. Neither did I make a vow to God, or anyone else, that I would not be one. I was going to be penniless when the gate opened. All my friendships had been born in one cage or another, juvenile hall, reform school, jail. Whatever happened, I would keep on. Solid convicts would say, "When it gets too tough for everybody else, it's just the way I like it." It's an expression I've used often in my life.

  About a week after my sentence, the jail bureaucracy transferred me to the Wayside Honor Rancho, where I lived in a dorm and worked pushing a Georgia buggy full of pig feces during the day. Nothing known to man smells worse than pig feces. All evening and on weekends, I played lowball poker. An old dope fiend confidence man taught me how to hand muck (palm cards) and deal from the bottom of the deck. Over the years I found that when I could cheat, I didn't need to because I was a better poker player than that. When the other players were so good that cheating would have helped, they were also so good that they, too, knew the moves. Nothing illegal is seen, but there are telltale ways of holding one's hand, or framing the deck. The primary thing was being able to spot a card mechanic. When I did I would give him the signal known to con men around the world, a clenched fist on the table. It signals he must play it on the up and up. A flat palm means go ahead and work. There are also standard signals for con men who play the match and the strap, and for boosters and till tappers and other members of the vanishing breed of professional thieves who go back at least as far as Elizabethan England.

  At Wayside Honor Rancho, which was the county farm, I slept next to a young pimp named Jim Manes. He wore extremely thick glasses and had a sharp mind.
Every Sunday one of his whores brought him enough pot for a few joints. After the evening count, we sat outside the dorm and got high. My poker game suffered when I was high on grass. Manes was serving thirty days for drunk driving and a string of unpaid parking tickets. He came in after me and went out before me. As he was rolling up his gear for the bus ride to downtown Los Angeles, which is where prisoners wire released, he wrote out a telephone number and told me to get in touch with him when I got out. A Jewish bookie named Hymie Miller, an associate of LA's pre-eminent mobster of the era, Mickey Cohen, likewise took a shine to me. He could be contacted through a cocktail lounge in Burbank that was owned by the Sica brothers, Joe and Freddy, both notorious LA gangsters of that time.

  During my sojourn on the county farm, I got into one fistfight.

  It happened during the poker game, although I cannot recall what precipitated it. The opponent was a big man, and added to that, was fat. He was boisterous and arrogant, traits that have always grated on me. We were playing with a cot as the card table, six of us — one seated at each end of the bunk, and two along each side. He was straight across from me. Whatever the dispute, he slammed down his cards, said something like ". . . fuckin' little punk," and started to rise. He outweighed me by at least a hundred pounds, but he must have been near fifty years old. Before he got all the way to his feet, I dove across the cot and crashed into him, one hand trying to tear his testicles through his pants, my teeth looking for an ear or nose to bite off.

  Those things were unnecessary, for my body toppled him back and down into the metal side rail of the adjacent bunk. My 150 pounds came down on top of him.

  He screamed. The others pulled me off of him. I'd broken his shoulder. They took him away to the general hospital and I never saw him again. His name, however, was Jack Whalen, and those who know about the gangster days in LA, of Bugsy Siegel, Mickey Cohen, the Shannon brothers (who were born the Shaman brothers) and others, know that Jack Whalen was the most feared hit man and thug in the LA underworld. I didn't know that until after I had broken his shoulder. Needless to say, nobody else caused me any trouble during the rest of my time at the Wayside Honor Rancho. The days dwindled down: eight, seven, six, five. I would be a free man soon.