Mr. Blue: Memoirs of a Renegade

by Edward Bunker

  A big steel key banged on the front gate. "Eleven B One . . . roll ups. Bunker, Ebersold, Mahi, roll 'em up for the night train north!"

  "That's you, Bunk," said the dealer.

  "They won't go without me." I squeezed out my cards, saw the faintest hint of a curve and knew I had a six. "On you," I said to the player ahead of me.

  "Check."

  It was ambush time. "Check," I said, and even made the slightest motion of throwing my hand away without further ado.

  The pat hand saw it, sensed weakness and fell into the trap. "Ten dollars," he said.

  The first player threw his hand away.

  "Where are my roll ups?" yelled the deputy through the front gate. He was looking down the runway in front of the cells. He saw the poker game, and he knew my name. "Bunker, roll 'em up, goddamnit!"

  Ignoring the deputy, I dropped three $10 bills in the pot. "I raise."

  The man with the pat hand turned beet red as he felt the trap close. As a poker player, I usually prefer to bet my own hand rather than play check and raise. Now and then it is good to do because it warns other players that a "check" is not tantamount to surrender.

  He looked at his cards. He couldn't decide what to do.

  "Bunker! Roll it up" the deputy yelled.

  I raised my hand and waved. "Pass or call or raise," I said, getting up on my haunches. I had to go, no matter what.

  "Don't rush me, man," he said.

  The tank trusty came out of the first cell and headed down the run. "Hey, Bunk, you better go. That bull is an asshole."

  "I'm comin' as soon as this guy decides whether to shit or get off the pot."

  Ebersold and Sam Mahi were already on the tier with their personal property in hand.

  My opponent wanted to exploit the situation. He squeezed his cards, as if to look at them.

  "Bunker!" the deputy yelled down the tier. "You better move your ass or there won't be a card game in eleven B one."

  I stood up and leaned over the other card player. "You either throw your cards in or call the bet . . . right now ... or I'm . . going to kick you in your motherfuckin' head in about two seconds. Don't try to get up."

  He threw his cards away. I gobbled up the money in the pot and hurried into the cell. My cell partners had gathered the meager gear I was taking with me. I rolled the money tight, coated it in Vaseline and stuck it up my ass. Cash money is useful in San Quentin.

  Ebersold and Sam Mahi were waiting at the tank gate. I knew Ebie's younger brother from reform school, but I met Ebie and Sam Mahi here in the county jail.

  The deputy unlocked the gate. "The adventure begins," Ebie said. He and his brothers were already legends in the San Fernando Valley. Although he was virtually illiterate, he was one of the world's great raconteurs. His speech rhythms were fascinating. He gave me a wink and a thumbs-up. We would be friends for many years without a single disagreement. Sam Mahi, like Ebie, would be a friend for twenty years, but because he was a friend to everyone who had any status the depth and strength of his loyalty was always suspect. He had no enemies, and a man without any enemies usually doesn't have any real friendships either.

  We three joined the stream of prisoners from all over the Hall of Justice, about two dozen riding the prison train, the weekly catch of fish en route to California's three prisons. Everyone was in the bathroom, changing into whatever civilian clothes they'd worn when arrested, had slept in for several days at the precinct, and had worn to court appearances. Most were scruffy by the time they reached the county jail. Their civilian clothes had been stored on hangers, crushed together so they had no air. Now they also had a musty smell. Just one man looked sharp; he wore a double-breasted gray sharkskin suit, a light-skinned black man named Walter "Dog" Collins. Tall and handsome, he was a junkie con man to whom Ebie introduced me. I would get to know him better in the penitentiary. He was clean because he'd been on bail until he was sentenced.

  When we were dressed, deputies checked our names off the list and chained us up in batches of six. In two groups, we were loaded onto the huge freight elevator and taken to the basement tunnel where signs pointed to Coroner's Office and County Morgue. A Sheriff's Department bus took us a short mile to Union Station, where a section of booths in the Harvey House was roped off. Hamburgers and fries were pre-ordered. We could choose between coffee and Coca-Cola, served by a whey-faced young lass who was nervous indeed. Nobody said a word, but eyes burned through her clothes, noses flared and fantasies were rampant. It would be years before any of these men scented another woman.

  The prison train was actually a single coach with sheet metal welded over the windows and a mesh wire gun cage at one end. It was December and dark early. A misty rain fell when we boarded. As we did so, a deputy put leg irons on most; then released them from the six-man chain. That way they could at least make their way alone to the toilet across the aisle from the gun cage. Nobody was ever out of sight. Three, including me, had both leg irons and handcuffs. Some authority had designated us for tighter security. It made the other prisoners look at us with wary respect.

  The rolling crash of steel couplings heralded a jerk - and we were underway through the night. Within seconds the coach filled with clouds of cigarette smoke as nearly everyone lighted up, but after that it was more moderate.

  Throughout the night the train stopped for other men sentenced to San Quentin. In Santa Barbara we added two, in San Luis Obispo ii was four. I was made to sit in front of the guard in the gun cage so they could keep an eye on me. Beside me was a man named Ramsey who had been to the joint before. He seemed happy to be going back. He liked to talk about how things were and what he would do when he got there. I pumped him for a while, but quickly decided he was a phony and cut him off. The sheet of metal outside the window had a three-inch space. When I pressed my face to the inside glass, I could see a narrow slice of landscape. It was Stygian blackness most of the time, broken without warning by a few seconds of light as we flashed through a hamlet, whistle blowing warning. Clickety clack, clickety clack, clickety clickety clickety clack, the steel wheels had an endless chant. For a while the tracks ran beside a highway. I realized that this was the same route I'd taken riding the freight train when I was seven years old.

  The gun cage was close behind me. I could lean my head back against the mesh screen. Across from the gun cage, over my left shoulder, was the toilet. It had a partition toward the seats, but it was open on the side so the gun guard could maintain surveillance through Plexiglas. Maybe they worried that someone would flush himself onto the highway. What an escape that would be.

  One thing that wasn't escaping was the stench. "Goddamn!" said a loud voice several rows away. "Somebody's dead and rotting away. Good God!"

  The way it was said brought a titter of laughter. Amidst the ozone of fear of the unknown ahead there was a convivial leavening.

  Darkness still reigned over the Bay area when the prison coach was unhooked from the train and put on the ferry that crossed the narrows from Richmond to San Rafael. On the other side we moved onto a bus for the last mile to the prison. It had stopped raining, although the clouds promised more and the ground was wet, when we pulled up at the outer gate. Half a mile ahead was the actual prison. A giant cell house stretched off to the left along one shoreline of the peninsula. The silhouette of a huge tower offshore reminded me of something from the Middle Ages. It was #1 gun tower, the prison arsenal.

  Outside the bus, an old black convict, in a yellow rubber raincoat and rain hat, stood beside the first gate made of chain link on rollers. The guard in a little booth called ahead; then signaled for the black con to roll it open. As we drove by, he grinned and shook his head in mock commiseration. A good look at his face told me that he was at least seventy.

  The next gate was also made of chain link fencing, but it was topped with rolled concertina wire brown with rust. The #1 gun tower looked down on the bus as it made a half circle and stopped a few feet from an older building. Several guards were
waiting. The step from the bus to the ground was too far for the leg irons, so as each fish stepped into the doorway, a deputy unlocked the leg irons and let them clatter to the ground. The fish walked between the prison guards into the sallyport. My leg irons were removed; my handcuffs remained.

  As I stepped inside, a guard was telling each man, "Watch your step." We were going through a pedestrian gate set into a vehicle-sized gate. The smaller gate had a ridge several inches high. Despite the warning, the man ahead of me tripped and nearly fell. It warned me.

  Beyond the gate was a tunnel of about twenty yards' length. At the other end was a big steel door framing a smaller steel door, which had a tiny observation window. A guard sat there, looking through the small window and opening the door for authorized persons. Both gates were never opened simultaneously.

  A bench was bolted along both side walls. Near the other end was an open door on the left. A sign read receiving and release. The new arrivals were being directed through it. Inside were three rows of benches, already full except for one space. Behind me the Sergeant stopped the newcomers. "We'll do it in two groups. Sit the rest out there.

  "Strip down until you're butt ass naked. If you want to send your clothes home, you have to pay for them. If you want to donate them to the Salvation Army, throw them in that laundry hamper over yonder."

  Nearly everyone, including me, threw their clothes in the donation hamper. We went back to the benches, all of us buck naked, some fish white, some nut brown, some fat, some skinny, some soft, some muscular as panthers.

  The Sergeant took a position in front of us, "Shaddup and listen up!" he commanded. Most fell silent, but someone in the rear continued to whisper to his companion. "Shaddup back there. You might learn something if you listen."

  "Hey, Sarge, I heard you give this speech five years ago."

  "Hear it again." He waited until the room was silent and began: "Everybody here has already thought about escaping. As soon as you drove up, you wondered if you could find a way out.

  "You might escape. Every few years we lose somebody from inside the walls. I've been here sixteen years and we've had three from inside the walls. Outside the walls, that's easy.

  "Whatever way they go, we get all of them back. We only have one who's still gone. He was from Ecuador. He got away about eleven years ago.

  "But let me tell you one thing . . . nobody gets out with a hostage. You can take me, you can take the Warden. Shit, you can take the Warden's daughter—"

  "He ain' got no daughter," said a voice.

  "If he had a daughter ... if you take his wife . . . nobody is going to unlock the gate. No matter what, nobody gets out with a hostage. It's against the law to open the gate in a hostage situation. If the Governor orders a gate open, nobody's going to open it."

  At the rear of the room, a steel door opened. The speech stopped and heads turned. A skinny lieutenant with deep acne scars came in, accompanied by two correctional officers. The guards waited while the lieutenant went up front to consult with the Sergeant.

  "Is Bunker with this group?" asked the lieutenant.

  I put up my hand. "Yessir." I had learned to' say "sir" a long time since.

  "Come here."

  Naked, embarrassed, I sidled along the aisle of other naked bodies and went up front.

  The lieutenant was disconcerted. "You're Bunker?" he asked, a note of incredulity in his voice.

  "Yessir."

  "You know Cap'n Nelson?"

  "Oh yeah. From Lancaster."

  "Well, he's Captain here now." The lieutenant looked me up and down. I was a skinny seventeen-year-old with freckles, 5'll" and weighed about 145 pounds. "You don't look tough," he said, almost as if thinking aloud.

  "I'm not tough. Tough guys are in the grave." It was a convict observation I'd heard in the county jail — and would hear often in prison as the years went by.

  "You're not going to be a troublemaker, are you?"

  "No, sir."

  "This isn't a kiddy school. This is San Quentin."

  "I know, sir." My military school training was occasionally useful.

  "Go sit down. Stay out of trouble."

  As I walked back, my peach-fuzzed cheeks were red. I tried to look hard. I made my eyes appear mean to the naked men watching me but avoiding my gaze. Had anyone looked me in the eye, I would have asked them what they were looking at. If the reply struck me wrong, I would ask if they wanted trouble. If I disliked the ensuing answer, I would Sunday punch him. Maybe he'd go down, maybe not, but either way my arrival in the penitentiary would be noted. I'd been taking courses in prison survival since my first trip to juvenile hall at ten. Although men in prison might respect wit and intelligence, the violent had the power. If to seek help from the authorities was a mortal sin no matter what, it followed that each man — often with the help of friends — had to protect himself and make his own space in the Hobbesian world behind the walls. Stripped away were facades of class, family, money, clothes. There was no legal redress for injury or insult.

  When the lieutenant was gone, a convict dragged a laundry hamper into the middle of the floor. It was filled with rolled-up white jumpsuits, one size fits all, pockets sewn so nothing could go in them, plus a pair of socks and cloth slippers.

  While we were still getting dressed, inmate clerks began taking our fingerprints, rolling each digit across a card; then the thumb flat, and four fingers flat. Each new inmate had four cards: FBI, Sacramento, Department of Corrections, the prison itself. It took a long time. As the fingerprints were finished, we were photographed front and profile, with a sign: Calif. Dept. of Corrections, with the date and name and number. Mine was forever more A20284. The man ahead of me was A20283, and the one behind me A20285. The brand was a matter of chance. Every memo in my prison life would be A20284 Bunker. Eventually it would be on a Harper's cover, but that was decades away from the rainy morning when A20284 became my primary name.

  I'd just finished with the mug photo when the same lieutenant with the same two guards appeared. He carried a sheet of white paper, a form of some kind. Later I would recognize it as a lockup order. I sensed his purpose now, so I wasn't surprised when he spotted me, said something to the guards and all three headed toward me.

  On the way out, the lieutenant was almost apologetic. "I wasn't going to lock you up. This came from the Captain himself. He's locking you up until he can talk to you."

  They walked me from Receiving and Release through the tunnel and out the inner door to the world of San Quentin. My first vision stopped me cold. At my feet was a formal garden about an acre square. It was criss-crossed with walking paths. Even in bleak December it was impressive. If some of it was winter barren, other places had bright red chrysanthemums and a carpet of yellow and black pansies. I remembered being told about it: the Garden Beautiful they called it.

  Facing the garden on the right was a huge Victorian mansion. Once it must have housed the Warden; now it was the custody office. A porch ran along its front with two doors and a teller's window where passes were issued.

  We didn't cross the garden. We went left along the base of the building we'd just exited. It served as a wall with a catwalk running along it. A guard with a carbine walked along above us, looking down to give cover if necessary. The catwalk led to others throughout the prison. It was designed so men with rifles could disperse to almost anywhere inside the walls without coming down to the ground.

  Across the garden from the mansion was a hundred year old cell house. The roof was of corrugated sheet metal. The second and third floors had wooden slat walkways, a tiny space between each. The cell doors fastened with huge steel straps on hinges and swung over hasps so a huge padlock that hung on a chain could be snapped shut.

  To reach the walkways necessitated going around the vintage building. It was called the Old Spanish Block. There was a fence topped with barbed wire. A grizzled sergeant opened the gate and took the paper from the lieutenant. "He's been searched?"

  "Yeah. H
e just got off the train."

  "You're startin' quick, boy," the Sergeant said, peering at me down a cigar clenched in his teeth. "C'mon."

  He unlocked a gate to some stairs leading to the walkways around the building. He led the way, I came next and the lieutenant followed. The two guards waited below. On the second tier the Sergeant walked around to the side facing the garden and the mansion beyond. The solid steel doors had observation slits at eye level. Someone inside could stick out four fingers, nothing more. Eyes peered from one or two. As we passed one, a voice called: "Hey, Sarge, lemme see you for a minute."

  "On the way back," the Sergeant said. At the last cell he produced a big key that fit a big padlock. He removed the padlock and peeled off the steel strap. Using another key, he opened the steel door.

  The entrance was a round arch about three feet thick and made of brick. Later I would learn that both brick and mortar were rotting. A diligent convict with a spoon could dig himself out, or at least into the next cell, which is what two lovers would do.

  "Step in," the Sergeant said.

  I entered and the steel door slammed into the steel frame, cutting off all light except the sliver that came through the observation slot. The lieutenant's eyes blotted out that as he looked in. "You've got two buckets in there," he said. "One's got drinking water, the other is to shit and piss in. I don't think you'll mix them up. They'll bring you some bedding after count. Take it easy."

  Their footsteps sounded as they moved away. I stood at the door, my eyes adjusting to the near total darkness. I could see the shape of the sagging US Army cot, circa 1917, with a thin mattress that sagged with it. The cell block was built before the advent of electricity, so the meager wiring came through a conduit along the ceiling. Wires dangled and held a bare 40 watt light bulb. It went on when I screwed it tighter. Its glow was faint; then again, there was little to see. The old cot had missing springs along one side, so when I stretched out, that side gave way. I dragged the mattress onto the floor. They would see me easy enough when they looked through the slot. Sleeping on the bunk was out of the question.