Mr. Blue: Memoirs of a Renegade

by Edward Bunker

  "Nothing would surprise me."

  "That sadistic bastard called my producer friend and — ohhh shit! Double shit!"

  "I'm sorry, girl. Really . . ."

  "Fuck it. It's over. No use snivelin'." She paused. "You know what, I think that parole officer has some kind of sexual hangup . . . probably can't get any."

  "He's got an ass like an elephant."

  That made Sandy laugh, but made me feel no better. "Forget him," I said. "Where do you want to go eat?"

  "What about the Captain's Table?"

  "That's fine with me."

  "I'll be ready in about fifteen minutes."

  While Sandy dressed and put on her face, I put Ella Fitzgerald Sings Rogers and Hart on the hi fi record player and stepped onto the balcony to smoke a joint and look out at the plain ol lights beginning to glow in the growing night.'The music and the lilting, perfect voice came through the open door. Screw Sanders. I was king of everything — or at least the pot made me feel that way — and my city was spread out as far as I could see I popped my fingers to the music and laughed into the dusk. Oil man, for a twenty-three-year-old, state-raised convict, I had hie by the balls. Should we take my Jag or her Cad? How many twenty-three-year-old, state-raised ex-convicts had that choicc? In retrospect, 1 should have had less hubris.

  It came time to appear in the Beverly Hills Municipal Couri The police had originally booked me on suspicion of burglary, a felony, but all they could fde were several misdemeanors My lawyer, retained by Louise, was an old man who taught at Loyola. He was no lion in court, but he did know a lot of people in the legal system. The judge had been his student. The City Attorney prosecuting the case would drop everything except one misdemeanor vagrancy - if I would plead guilty. And they would not argue for any time if the judge wanted me to pay a fine. "They couldn't care less about you. They want the other two."

  "You guarantee it?"

  "I can't guarantee it, but if the prosecutor doesn't oppose it, I've known this judge a long time. If we go to trial, the jury might find you guilty of everything and he could give you six months in jail orf each count. As soon as they find you guilty, he's going to rescind bail, sure as the sun rises. If you plead guilty, he'll leave you out until the day of sentence . . . and if you get a fine. . . ."

  "How long before the sentence?"

  "Six weeks . . . two months . . . and pay a fine."

  With hesitant misgivings, I nodded acquiescence.

  In the courtroom devoid of spectators, I entered a plea of guilty to one count of vagrancy. The judge set a date for probation hearing and sentencing seven weeks away. He referred the matter to the probation department for a report.

  On the way out, the lawyer squeezed my shoulder and said that he would call the chief probation officer. "Don't worry about it."

  Don't worry about it. Was he crazy? All I would do was worry, or so I expected. By that night, however, seven weeks was far away, and every day was a fresh experience. Sandy knew things that I didn't know — about sex and how to have fun. It was before the era of the hippie and dawn of sloppy dress, so we were stylish when we went to dine at such restaurants as Perino's, Romanoff's, Chasen's, Edna Earle's Fog Cutter, Don the Beachcomber's, and after that we went to hear Francis Faye at the Interlude, above the Crescendo. We caught Billie Holiday at Jazz City on Hollywood Boulevard near Western. Billie was obviously half sick with withdrawals, so during the break between sets, when she went to the ladies' rest room, Sandy followed her. There was no chance to take a fix, but Sandy offered her a toot — and when she sang her next set, her voice was husky and deep and at its unique best. It is phenomenal how fast a little toot of smack will take away the agony of withdrawal, and most other kinds of pain. What it cannot take away it makes meaningless. You may still have a broken arm, but somehow it doesn't matter so much. The same is true for angst and anxiety. Toot instandy wraps up your troubles and throws them out the window. It cancels pain so hidden that you were unaware of its existence until it disappeared.

  After the regular clubs closed, we often went to the after- hours clubs around 42nd and Central Avenue, where the whiskey you ordered was poured from teapot into teacup, where the lights were low, the cigarette smoke was thick, and some legendary musicians came after their regular gigs to jam until the dawn.

  The pre-sentence interview and report went well enough. The probation officer was overworked and indifferent. He accepted as real the facade of a job I gave him, and there was, in fact, some question if I was involved in the safecracking scheme. Even the police report said I was apparendy asleep in the back seat when tin- officer walked up to the car. After reading the probation report. my lawyer talked to the judge, "kind of unofficially . . . and lie thinks it calls for something like $100 or fifty days ..."

  "Fifty days!"

  "No . . . no. It's fifty days if you don't pay the fine. Two dollars a day."

  I stopped worrying and continued devouring hedonistic pleas ures. The days ticked away. Finally came the day circled on the calendar.

  It was an afternoon appearance and I was late. I don't remember why. I do remember meeting my lawyer in the corridor outside tin- courtroom. He was upset. "They already called you. The judge was ready to issue a bench warrant." While speaking, he ushered me through the courtroom door. The courtroom was not crowded but still had plenty of business. The judge was hearing arguments on another case; someone seeking a bad reduction. My lawyer had two seats on the aisle. When we sat down, he handed me some papers. "Jesus, why didn't you warn me?"

  I read, "Department of Corrections, Parole and Community Services." Oh God! It was him, my elephant-assed bete noire. I read in snatches, my mind jumping too much for continuity. ". . . LAPD has suspected him of two murders ..." Was he nuts? What was he talking about? A long time later I would realize that he was referring to the Hollywood Prowler fiasco — but I never did find out what other murder he was talking about. ". . . involved in drug trafficking and exploiting prostitutes in the Sunset Strip-Beverly Hills area ..." Had he been in the courtroom and had I a pistol, he would have been shot dead in front of judge, bailiffs, deputy District Attorney and God Almighty. I was going to jail on bullshit. Murder! What kind of shit was that? Exploiting prostitutes! That was crazy. I was a whore's best friend. I hated pimps.

  If I had just known about this . . . "I'm gonna take a piss," I said, intending to leave and not come back.

  "The People versus Bunker, number 5696 dash 57 . . ."

  The judge gave me ninety days in the county jail, and the bailiffs closed in and took me to the bullpen beside the courtroom. When the heavy door was unlocked I was met with the combined stench of unwashed bodies and a stopped-up toilet. As with most courtroom bullpens, it was crowded. All the benches were taken; so was most of the floor. I was by far the most elegantly dressed. All the others had come from a precinct house, where they'd slept for two or three days in whatever they were wearing when arrested. Nearly all were poor, and it showed in their clothes. I found space near the wall, took off my camel hair sport coat and used it for a pillow. If my past experiences were any indicator, it would be a long wait before we went anywhere.

  At about 6.30, the deputies arrived with the chains. The bus waited outside. From Beverly Hills we went to Inglewood and picked up more prisoners, and from there to Long Beach. It was long after midnight when we were disgorged at the old Hall of Justice at Temple and Broadway. A new central jail had been planned for a landfill over a dump behind the Union Station, but it was a couple of years away. It took eighteen hours to go through the booking process, most of it spent waiting somewhere in the building. The visiting room was used after visits were over, ditto for courtroom bullpens downstairs during the night. Once a fish was dropped into the processing hopper, not even God could find him until he came out the other end, his body sticky with DDT sprayed on after a shower, wearing rumpled, ill-fitting jad clothes and carrying a mattress cover bedroll.

  It was Friday afternoon when the judge sentence
d me. It was about four in the morning on Sunday when the jail tank's gate crashed shut behind me. The runway outside the cells was wall to wall mattresses and mostly sleeping bodies. One or two men were reading paperbacks in the light that was coming through the outer bars from the jailers' walkway. I was able to stretch out on the concrete without a mattress and use the folded mattress cover for a pillow. Despite the discomfort, I quickly fell asleep. I'd gotten less than an hour the night before, and that, too, was on a hard floor.

  On weekday mornings, at 4 a.m. a deputy with a clipboard would start calling names for court. Because it was Sunday, it was 6 a.m. when the lights went on and the tank trusties came out of the first cell and began waking up those sleeping on the runway. Around the jail the gates were beginning to open. The runways were being cleared of mattresses and bedding so breakfast could be passed out. I struggled hard against the awesome need for sleep. The runway was rapidly getting emptier as prisoners rolled up their mattresses and carried them into cells. This wasn't the same as high power, which always had room. This was five men to each two-man cell. I turned toward the first cell; the tank trusties would assign me to one.

  "Bunker! Eddie Bunker!" The speaker was in the doorway of the first cell. He wore a blue tank top that matched the India ink blue tattoos covering both arms and every other spot of exposed flesh, including a line around his neck with the words: cut on dotted line. It was the full beard, which wasn't allowed in San Quentin, that made me frown because I didn't recognize the speaker for a few seconds. He realized the origin of my frown. "Jimmy Thomas, fool!"

  Sure. Skinny Jimmy. I hadn't seen him in several years. "Hey, man, what's goin' on?"

  "I'm fightin' a robbery beef. Me and Buddy Sloan. Bring your gear in here." He beckoned me into the first cell. No matter how crowded the rest of the tank, cell number 1 had just two occupants for the two bunks. Nobody even slept on the floor unless invited — and they invited me. Indeed, from here onward it was impossible for me to enter a jail or prison on the West Coast without knowing several (if it was a jail), or many (if it was a prison) of the occupants.

  The other trusty from the first cell appeared in the doorway, all 6' 4" of lean muscle and shaven head. "You know Bobby Hedberg?"

  "I sure know who he is." I extended a hand. "Eddie Bunker."

  "I know about you, too . . . crazy motherfucker."

  "Not as crazy as you." It was true, Bobby Hedberg was a bona fide crazy man. He seemed to be sane and rational in his conversation — he made sense when he talked — but he did some things so wild that my adventures were minor by comparison. Had I done what Bobby did over the course of his criminal career, I would have spent my entire life in prison rather than a mere eighteen years in three jolts. Bobby was an anomaly. His father, R.B., for whom Bobby was named because he was the oldest son, was rich from building tract homes in the San Fernando Valley when World War II ended. A tough, strict Irish Catholic, everyone to him was either a nigger, a spic, a greaseball wop, a kike, a Jap, a king-worshiping English sonofabitch, a guinea bastard or a fuckin' Protestant. He disliked everyone but the Pope, and he was suspicious of John XXIII for being too goddamned liberal. Bobby was the oldest son, and Bobby broke his father's heart by being a hoodlum. Bobby was no rich boy having an adventure on the other side of the tracks, he was a hard core tough guy to the bone. He would do outrageous things over the next two decades, in prison and out. Being pursued by the California Highway Patrol once, he crashed through the US/Mexican border in a hailstorm of bullets, and surrendered over there. Another time, a parole officer managed to lock him in an office on the ninth floor of a downtown office building. Bobby threw everything out the window: his own ticker tape parade made up of inmate records. He finished the scene by taking Ronald Reagan's picture off the wall and throwing that, too.

  I went to see him one time in West Hollywood. When I reached the high rise condominium it was cordoned off by black and white sheriffs' cars. At a nearby pay telephone I called him. Sure enough, it was Bobby they had surrounded, although now I can't remember why. His voice was slurred with a heroin high. We talked a few seconds and he said he had to go. Months later I learned that he packed as much heroin as he could into condoms tied in tight knots and stuck it up his butt. Then he fixed until he nearly overdosed. When they kicked in the door, he was unconscious on the middle of the floor. He didn't even know he'd been arrested untd he woke up in the jail ward of the general hospital.

  Another time he was in the county jail and he conspired with one of the Manson girls to kidnap a Central American consul general to force his release. The FBI curtailed the plot, and never took it seriously. I would have gotten forty years, Bobby got two — and they ran concurrently with the term he was serving in San Quentin.

  Bobby overdosed himself to death when he was forty or so but that was in the future.

  When we met in the jad, Bobby said, "Man, I've been hearing about you since I went to juvenile hall."

  The tank was packed four and five to a cell, except for the first three cells, which held two, three and three, and the men in those cells passed out the food, swept and mopped the runway, assigned cells and bunks — and maintained order with boot and fist. I moved into the first cell with a mattress on the floor.

  It was Sunday and slow. No court appearances, no visits, no vendor wagons selling things except for Oscar with the newspaper and magazine cart. Oscar had the jad concession for decades; selling thousands of newspapers and paperbacks every day made him a wealthy man. I slept on Bobby's bunk through the day. After the evening count, I played poker to occupy my mind so I wouldn't dwell on my troubles. There was nothing I could do except worry. Better to concentrate on the cards coming off the deck.

  Finally, it was lockup and lights out. I went to sleep quickly to escape thinking about my situation.

  Late the following morning, I was called out of the tank and told to go to the Attorney Room. As I checked in with the deputy on the desk, I looked around the room and saw the parole officer. I walked between the tables toward him, and saw the malicious glee in his little pig eyes and the corners of his mouth.

  "You know you're going back, don't you?"

  I nodded, not trusting what would come out of my mouth. Sheer willpower kept me from diving across the table and smashing him in the face. It wasn't the consequences that bothered me. It was that in seconds they would pile on and pull me off. If I'd had even two or three minutes I would have assaulted him. I'd be lucky to get fifteen seconds, and that wouldn't have provided enough satisfaction for the beating they would inflict on me, the stint in the hole and the addendum to his parole report. Actually he was merely confirming what I already knew. It was standard policy that any parolee sent to jad for anything went back to prison; then the Adult Authority reviewed the matter. Nobody was ever reinstated on parole. Some men did more time on the parole violation than on the original conviction. I'd been trying to maintain hope despite what I knew. That was over.

  As I walked back through the corridors to the tank, I was resigned to seeing the Big Yard. Now my biggest hope was that the paperwork would go through quickly so I didn't have to spend a couple of months in the county jail.

  When I reached the landing outside the tank, Bobby Hedberg was waiting inside the gate. He had my meager gear in hand. "Who was that?"

  "The parole officer." I turned my thumb downward; the gesture said it all.

  "They called you for roll up to the farm."

  "To the farm."

  "Yeah. Right after you left."

  The deputy who ran the four tanks on the landing came up to unlock the gate and let me in. Bobby told him, "This is Bunker. Here's his gear."

  The deputy unlocked the gate and Bobby handed out the mattress cover.

  Half an hour later I was on a sheriff's bus heading north through the San Fernando Valley. I wore no handcuffs. The county farm was minimum security. As the bus rolled, I realized that the jail bureaucracy, which always needed space in the downtown jad, saw me as so
meone eligible for the farm. The parole officer had not yet put the detainer on me when the roll up was called.

  As the bus turned off US 99 at Castaic, and through the gate onto the farm, I prayed silendy that they wouldn't be waiting for me.

  The bus pulled up. A sergeant was waiting. He called off names and assigned each of us to a barracks. "Bunker, barracks eleven, bed fifteen."

  I walked into the barracks, walked past bed fifteen, went out the back door, sucked up my courage and leaped high on the fence. The fence shook, the sound vibrating along its surface for some distance. I kept climbing. It had three strands of barbed wire at the top. I got a leg over it, the barbs hooking my pants and gouging my leg but I tore loose and kept going, oblivious to the cut. It was far riskier jumping the fence in daylight than at night. Any passing deputy might spot me, or one of the supervisors for the many work crews constantly laboring on the reservation. At night, darkness would cloak me once I was over the fence. But I didn't have the choice of waiting for night. The teletype could come at any minute.

  I dropped onto the dirt road that ran along the other side of the fence. A sharp pain ran up from my ankle. I'd twisted it enough so that I limped up the first slope. It was bare desert earth with a few dry plants. As I neared the summit I was high enough for anyone in the compound to see me. I got lucky. Nobody sounded the alarm. I went over the summit of the low ridge, and out of sight. Now the odds were in my favor. I began telling myself: I'm gonna get away! I'm gonna get away! It was a chant that matched my pace. Gone was my depression. Now there was excitement. Somewhere down the line, in a month, two months or two years, they would catch me. That I knew. But right now it was better being wanted than caught. Better a fugitive than a convict. LA, here I come again.