Mr. Blue: Memoirs of a Renegade

by Edward Bunker

  Although my preference in singers leaned toward a quartet of black females — Ella Fitzgerald, Dinah Washington, Sarah Vaughan and Billie Holiday — when Patsy Cline's twangy voice filled with lament came over the speaker, I stopped turning the dial and listened. She had what they had — soul.

  Somewhere in Missouri I made a wrong turn. I found myself in Cairo, Illinois, where the Ohio River joins the mighty Mississippi. I crossed into Kentucky. My car began throwing oil. Somewhere east of the Mississippi I bought a case and stopped every hundred miles to pour in another quart or two. It was messy on the undercarriage, and when I came out of a coffee shop a thick pool of oil was on the ground. But as long as I kept pouring it in, the engine kept running. I was a few miles outside of Paducah, Kentucky when suddenly the engine stopped. I rolled to a stop on a long, slight grade, the kind that giant trucks and trailers race up if they have gathered momentum. The last thing any driver wants to do is stop for some fool standing beside a stalled car at 4 a.m. on a freezing night. It was cold but now I had some warm clothes. The ground was barren black, but where it was shaded by bushes or tree trunks there were white patches of snow. The air was icy and clean — and the sky was filled with more glittering stars than I'd ever seen. A shooting star arced for a few seconds and went out. I had a thought I've had many times since. How reasonable was our idea of God when the tiny blue marble of Earth was, compared to the universe, less than one grain of sand on the beach at Santa Monica? If we could see galaxies of a billion suns each two million light years away, how could it be that God spoke personally to Moses, or had a son named Jesus? The Bible did have some truth and insights, the most obvioius one being "All is vanity ..."

  When the sun came up, a pickup truck stopped. The driver took me to a gas station with a mechanic, on the edge of Paducah. I thought the fuel pump had gone out. The gauge said a quarter full but the engine wasn't getting any gas. A tow truck was sent to bring it in. A new fuel pump was installed but the engine still wasn't getting any gas. The mechanic put a stick down the gas tank and it came up dry. It wasn't the fuel pump. The float in the gas tank had gotten stuck. I was sure the mechanic had known the truth and, by not checking before installing a new fuel pump, had taken advantage of me. I envisaged his consternated terror if I put a pistol in his face and took all his money. I figured it wouldn't be worth the heat I would bring on myself so I choked back anger and paid him, remembering the con man's adage that if you're going to be a sucker, be a quiet one.

  In Paducah I rented a room in a three-story brick residential hotel. It cost $50 a month and it was a respectable establishment. Its residents were bachelor sales clerks or were otherwise employed. One was a recendy graduated law student working in Paducah's most prestigious law firm and preparing for the bar exam. Another was a bartender. The hotel arranged for me to rent a TV from a nearby furniture store that was owned by the same people who owned the hotel. I told them I was a writer, but acted mysterious when asked what I was writing. I was actually working on my second novel, the same for which the manuscript had been lost in the Wallis house move, and also a journal of my travel as a fugitive, much of which I sent in letters to Sandy via another address. One of the residents commented that he'd heard my typewriter when coming in late one Saturday night.

  Having been born in Southern California, where anything older than forty years was positively decrepit with age, Paducah was the oldest city I'd ever seen. It seemed all dark brick with abundant wrought iron. In a cocktad lounge near the river I met a whore named Jetta. She was from Detroit, and her "old man" was doing six months in the local jad for playing a con game called "the pigeon drop." She knew the meager extent of Paducah's fast life - and we both needed companionship. I told her a litde, but not too much. She could probably have traded me for her old man if she knew the truth. I told her that I was hiding from an ex-wife who wanted chdd support. "I'd pay it," I said, "but I don't think the little rug rat is even mine. Kid looks more like her goddamned boyfriend."

  Within a week, Paducah grew boring. I'd seen all the movies, some of them twice and, because it was so cold, I spent lots of time in my room. I got some work done on the second of what would become six unpublished novels. In Paducah I made another mistake of hubris which, as you know, is one of my many character defects. I sent the parole officer in Los Angeles a postcard: "Glad you're not here. Ha ha ha ..." I mailed it the day before I left town.

  I planned to drive to New York City, which always had a fascination for me. I knew it as well as anyone could who hadn't been there. I'd read Thomas Wolfe's symphonic descriptions of Penn Station and Park Avenue, and of walking the city at night. I'd been on top of the Empire State Budding with Cary Grant and Deborah Kerr in An Affair to Remember, and in Harlem with Richard Wright's Outsider. I knew about the Cotton Club and the Fulton fish market. I'd never seen a play or a Broadway musical, but I knew I could find both near Times Square. New York was somewhere I wanted to see more than anywhere else.

  Instead of taking a highway that angled northeast, I wound up on US 40, heading due north toward the windy city of Chicago. I knew my mistake within a few hours when I saw the signs. What the hell, I might as well see Chicago, too. What did Sandburg call it: "Hog Butcher to the world . . . ?" I knew Chicago, too, from Nelson Algren and from Willard Motley's great novel, Knock On Any Door, which made me cry late at night in the County Jad as Nicky (Live fast, die young and have a good looking corpse) Romano went to the electric chair. I don't remember if he saw his son before he died. It was a story I really identified with. It would be okay to see Chicago, too.

  By morning I was approaching the south side of the great city. Born and raised in Southern California where flowers bloom for the entire year and the worst slums are single family bungalows with front yards, to me Chicago's south side was a bleak revelation. The recent snow had turned to a filthy sludge mixed with rock salt. All the buddings seemed to be three-story brick with wooden stairs and porches attached to the rear. It was poverty unlike anything I had ever seen. I wanted to get out of Chicago — but I ended up going north along the lake shore, and it wasn't untd I neared Northwestern University that I realized it was the wrong way to go around Lake Michigan. I'd have to go through Canada to head east that way.

  I turned around and was glad when I crossed into Indiana where for the first time on this journey I got a road map. From Chicago to New York City, the highway was wide, flat and straight. The only time I had to stop was at a state line and for gas — and oil. Lots of oil.

  Outside of South Bend, I checked into a motel. By morning more snow was falling, and there was a lake of od beneath the car. It refused to start. I unloaded it, removed the license plates and threw them into a drainage ditch behind the motel. A taxi took me to the Greyhound station. The bus took me to Toledo, my father's birthplace, or so I thought, and still think, even though I cannot remember where I got this idea. He and my aunt had been raised in Toledo, so I assumed they had also been born there. I knew, too, that my paternal ancestors had come from France in the eighteenth century and became fur trappers in the Great Lakes region, which included Canada. There is a large Bunker Famdy Association whose members gather yearly from all over America. I subscribe to their newsletter, but that Bunker family is from Anglo-Saxon forebears who setded first on Nantucket and in New Hampshire. I doubt that I am one of them, or that they would even want me. I know nothing of my paternal grandmother, neither her first nor her famdy name, although I think her first name was Ida. I also think, more confidently, that my grandfather's name was Charles. I was told that he was captain or an officer on a Great Lakes sailing vessel and drowned when my father was quite young. It is meager knowledge about a famdy history that might be interesting since it spans America's history, too. When I arrived in Toledo I thought about the stories I'd heard from the turn of the century when my father had seen the Dempsey—Firpo fight: Firpo knocked Dempsey out of the ring. It was one of the most furious heavyweight fights of all time.

  I stayed in
Toledo at a motel untd the weather cleared. It was still cold, but it was at least bright. From a classified ad I saw in the

  Toledo newspaper, I bought a '54 Olds Rocket 88, a hot car of the era. When the weatherman predicted bright shiny days for the rest of the week, I continued on my journey. I'd now decided that I would eventually arrive in New York, but before that I would take my time and look at the countryside. I wished I had done that instead of burning up the highway at the outset. Recently I had read Bruce Catton's A Stillness at Appomatox and knew that major Civd War batdefields were within a few hundred miles. Pennsylvania had Gettysburg. I wanted to see that. I wanted to see many things. I had time and money, so why not drive where my whim dictated?

  I saw Cincinnati then crossed the river back into Kentucky. America has transcending beauty in incalculable quantity, but the serene beauty of Kentucky's bluegrass country — mile after mile of white fences; horses feeding beneath trees in verdant pastures with a brick colonial or federal house in the distant background — that to me was it. If I had my choice of living anywhere, this area would get a long, hard look - but so would Paris, London, Capri, Martha's Vineyard, Roxbury Court, or eight months in Montana and four in LA. Still and all, I loved the bluegrass country.

  Memphis in June was all right, too, although the days were now getting a little hot and sticky. The nights were balmy and beautiful. I was planning to stay a few days, but I met a girl at a Dairy Queen and stayed almost a month. It was before sexual liberation, and although she would neck and pet until I was crazy, she wouldn't let me fuck her. I figured it was time to move on.

  I put off going to New York. They said it was at its worst during midsummer — too hot, too humid. Those who could afford it departed in the baking months.

  After a few days of driving around the South, staying a night here and a night there, I found myself in Fulton County, Georgia, where I pulled into a motel of neat frame bungalows that were arranged in a horseshoe, with the space in the middle paved with gravel. It had no landscaping and the office was equally bare and excessively prim. When the clerk, or proprietor, or whoever he was came from the rear, through the open door I heard opera. I think it was Wagner.

  Later after checking in, I took a drive and passed a tiny cluster of businesses - gas station, coffee shop and a store less than a mile up the road. As the sun started to set, I took a walk to get something to eat and a pack of Camels. When I came out of the tiny convenience market a state trooper with his lights flashing went by. I turned down the road and watched him. The flashing lights went out before he reached the motel driveway and turned in. Oh oh!

  My first thought was, At least I have my money. The truth was, that was all I had. Clothes, car, guns, typewriter - everything else was in the car or in the room. Could I get some of it back, maybe the guns? They were all in the car trunk and I had the keys.

  I set out down the road, remaining in the shadows and keeping my eyes on the spot ahead where I would see headlights. About two hundred yards from the motel's driveway I veered into the woods. The greenery was wet with dew and the ground was uneven. I saw the lights again and when I reached the edge of the woods I now saw two state troopers' cars, and uniformed men with wide-brimmed hats. They were at the open door of my bungalow and around my car. One of them was looking inside the car with a flashlight.

  It was time to run.

  Rather it was time to start trudging through the night. I had no idea how much manpower was mustered to catch me in the area. I saw nobody; then again I stayed off the roads as much as possible. I passed farms and aroused barking dogs. At every pair of headlights I hid myself untd they were gone. By morning I gave up hiding and walked beside a narrow state highway with my thumb out. A black man in a pickup truck gave me a ride to a hamlet, the name of which I cannot recall. It had a Continental Tradways bus depot with a waiting room and a coffee shop.

  At the window I asked the price of a ticket to New York, to Miami, and to Los Angeles. The young woman quoted the prices.

  "Which one leaves first?"

  "A bus to the south leaves in twenty minutes. For Miami you have to change in Jacksonville."

  "That leaves first?"

  "Yes."

  "Give me a one-way ticket."

  "You really want to go somewhere, don't you?"

  "How can you tell?"

  "Psychic powers."

  Soon I was riding south. I found out that I could get off wherever it stopped, and catch another bus going the same route. I got off in Jacksonville, rented a hotel room and bought a cheap pistol. The next afternoon I robbed another bank. Rather I tried to rob another bank. When I handed the note to the teller, she looked me over. Seeing that I had no weapon in view she dropped down out of sight and began screaming: HELP! HELP! HELP!

  Even if I'd had a pistol at her head, I would never have fired - but I might have punched her. I spun, tucked in my gun and walked, swiveling my head with a frown, as if I, too, was looking for the cause of the screams.

  Everybody was looking around. My eyes locked with those of a young man in a business suit behind a desk. He was focused on me. Had I been moving faster, he would have yelled and pointed a finger. Instead he hesitated — until I was two steps from the front door. My hands were raised to push it open when I heard: "There he goes!"

  I hit the revolving door and spun out onto the sidewalk at a dead run, straight across the street. Brakes squealed as a driver stomped them, followed by the crunch of cars hitting other cars. I kept going without a glance. On the other side of the street I went around the corner and down a side street. An alley ran behind the storefronts. Halfway down the alley I looked back. In hot pursuit were three or four high school students. I pulled the pistol and fired a shot over their heads. The leader stopped. Those behind crashed into him. They all went down in a heap.

  I fired another shot and they retreated, around the corner of the budding. I took off running again. The bus depot was a block and a half away.

  Sweat dripped through my soaked clothes and I fought to breathe as I climbed the steps onto the bus. I could see down the exit ramp to the street. A police car sped by. I flopped on the seat and closed my eyes. A few minutes later my body declared that this had all been too close for comfort. I began shaking, and the fear I had stifled went through me in waves. Jesus Christ, a fugitive ex-con firing shots in a bank robbery. They would bury me in Leavenworth. I'd be fifty when they let me out again.

  Chapter 12

  Adjudged Criminally Insane

  Although I occasionally pulled an armed robbery in my lengthy criminal career, it was never my first choice among the various methods of thievery. Firearms created a situation too inherently volatile. There was always the chance of something going wrong Guns had explosive consequences. Similarly, the authorities coil sidered armed robbery far more serious than forgery, or even safecracking. At the end of the day, I was primarily a merchandising burglar. I didn't burglarize homes, but beyond that I stole whatever I could sell. The best things were cigarettes and whiskey, of course and I have stolen those in abundance, but I have also stolen a truckload of outboard motors, 2,000 paintbrushes (which sold quite rapidly, believe it or not), a room full of cameras, the contents of a scuba diving store and a couple of pawn shops.

  On a rainy weekend an old professional thief named Jerry andl I took off a cocktail lounge in the Rampart district of Los Angelos It was ridiculously easy to enter. The door had a burglar alarm, but it also had a transom without an alarm. Jerry boosted nic me his shoulders, I put masking tape over part of the transom above the latch, then hit it with a fist wrapped in a towel. The glass cracked without falling. I peeled back the tape with the glass stuck to it except for a couple of shards that fell with a tinkle.

  Seconds later I dropped inside the lounge, landing sofdy as a cat. I listened for a couple of heartbeats; then I unlocked the door for Jerry to enter. The rainstorm covered for us. Jerry had a Roadmaster Buick. We had taken out the back seats and filled every inch of space
with cases of whiskey. I also found a shotgun and a few other things worth money. In the desk was a checkbook: I tore out several pages at the back and returned it to the drawer. From a pawn shop I could get a check protector machine. I figured the bar owner might not notice checks missing from the rear.

  A Hollywood club owner was waiting for the whiskey. We unloaded it into the back door on a wet Sunday afternoon, and the next morning I took the other stuff to a fence who owned a small car wash on Venice Boulevard a mile from downtown Los Angeles. While we were negotiating prices his telephone rang. The fence answered it and his side of the conversation consisted of grunts and monosyllables: "uh uh . . . yeah . . . uh huh . . . yeah. Right." Then he said: "Tell this guy." He handed the telephone to me.

  "What's up?" I said.

  "Look here," said the voice of a black man. "I'm down here on Western. I've got all kinds of stuff out in the alley behind an electronics store. I can't get my car running and I need a ride ..."

  "Where are you?" It was down Western in the 70s.

  "I'm tellin' you, man, it's a taxi job."

  It would cost me nothing to look, and I was intrigued. It was crazy, but I had a fascination with crazy once upon a time.

  On the corner of Western and a cross street a skinny black man with the haggard face of a hooked junkie met me. He had me go around the block and turn down the alley. Sure enough, covered by a blanket in the parking space behind a shop was a pde of stereos and television sets and a thousand LPs that sold for a dollar and a half apiece on the hot goods market. It wasn't Fort Knox, but as he said, it was a taxi job.