by Les Edgerton
“I had to leave ‘cause her dad didn’t like white boys. Honkies.”
Fuck. I wouldn’t buy this lame crap myself. I did the only thing I could do at that point. I walked past her, just barely brushing her shoulder and went on out the door of Alexander’s and out into the cold. It was January and snowing and there was gray slush on top of the clean snow, the snow plows having just been by, flinging crap all over everything, the sidewalk, all over my windshield, this piece of junk I’d just bought for fifty bucks, another Ford. I didn’t have a scraper so I just used the Styrofoam box my ribs were in, trying not to spill them, but got the fries and the French bread and ribs all mixed up, sauce on everything.
Back in my room I kept getting this picture of Donna and the way she kept folding and unfolding her hands and right behind it I got this image of Bud and the guy in Tennessee, the one whose hand he squooze and broke and that we left holding his goodies wishing he had a fig leaf. The whole time she was doing that with her hands, it was like she was doing it to my insides, same as Bud did to that big hillbilly.
Way it turned out, I got shot in the leg breaking into Smiley’s over on Vance Avenue and now here I sit in city lockup awaiting transport back to Pendleton. There was a lot of boozy nights and days, I suppose, led up to me making that kind of mistake.
I usually don’t go for the sauce that much and I hate guys who blame everybody but who they ought to blame which is themselves when they lose control, take up drugs, booze, whatever, and so I got to do the same. But all I know is I kept thinking of that fucking bitch Donna. I’m not saying it’s her fault—I’m not saying that—fuck, I’m a big boy and ought to be able to keep it cool. I’m not even that sorry I lost it there for a while and I’ll be damned if I even knew how it happened. I’m sitting in a bar one day, tossing back a quick one and just about ready to leave when I thought, what the hell and I had another one and ended up spending the rest of the afternoon when I should have gone back to work. That was pretty much it for work. It was that second drink did it. Just like that. That’s when I started making bets that weren’t too bright.
I did a lot of thinking during that period, which is what you do when you drink. Unless you got a compadre wants to sit around getting stinking with you, which don’t happen as a rule, all you got to do is think. Think and drink.
It’s funny. I’ve read as much as anybody about why guys like me end up spending half their life behind bars and they’ve got all kinds of theories except for the right one. Doing crimes is like drinking. It’s the same, exact thing.
There’s a jolt you get when a job goes down. Ain’t nothing like it in the entire universe. Better than whiskey, better than coke, matter of fact, it’s better than sex in a lot of ways. I sure never got as high after a mattress marathon as I have after I stick up a guy. That sex high lasts about ten seconds but the buzz you get when you just got off some motherfucker’s poke can go on for weeks. It’s a drug is all it is. The body’s own natural drug. Adrenaline. I finally figured it out and that’s the secret. Which means nothing’s gonna change in society. Only way it’s gonna change is take out the gland makes the adrenaline. It ain’t even about money only you couldn’t convince the do-gooders of that. They got this idea that if everybody gets a big piece of the pie then crime will disappear. They just don’t get it—it’s not about money or any of those things.
Besides that jolt, there’s one other reason guys pull crimes. For control. Most of us haven’t ever been in charge of even a little bit of our lives. Holding a .45 on some clown in a liquor stores makes you God, at least for a few minutes. In the back of your head, you know that situation’s gonna come to a crashing halt eventually, but for a few minutes you get to be in charge, make the other guy feel the fear you carried around with you all the live-long day.
When I was pulling jobs, when I first started doing burglaries, stuff like that, I had all the money I ever wanted. Give me twenty bucks, I’d say to my mom and she’d fork over thirty. Any time I wanted. Money wasn’t why I broke into places. I did it for the high. All the money in the world, all the things that all the money in the world could buy legitimately for you couldn’t duplicate that high. Nothing there is can match that ‘cept you pull the crime. If you had a million dollars in your back pocket and you got the crime monkey on your back then you’d hold up somebody for his thumbs, for the lint in his pocket. Whatever. Like they always say about guys who wheel and deal on Wall Street—money’s just a way of keeping score. That’s all it is and until the sociologists and other book freaks figure that out, there ain’t no way criminals are going to disappear.
Once you’ve had a rush like that it’s only a matter of time before you get around to it again. We’re like alkies or dopers, us thieves. Same for other kinds of outlaws ‘cept maybe rape but I’m not even sure about that since that doesn’t happen to be a trick in my own bag.
You got to get away from anything that makes it easy for you to take up the habit again, get a fix. The Man kind of knows that. That’s why they have all these rules when you make parole, like no drinking, no drugs, can’t associate with known criminals or other parolees, stuff like that. They know that even if you got the best intentions in the world, you get with other guys who’ve got the habit same as you, sooner or later one of you is going to get an idea and before you know it, you’re out there with a cut-down 12 gauge in your mitts, looking over the counter at the local 7-Eleven at some punk who’s stuffing money into a paper bag. It’s like being a smoker. You can break the habit for a while, but if you hang out with enough smokers one of these days you’re gonna reach over and pick up a butt and then you’re smoking again. That’s exactly how it happens.
The thing is...there just ain’t nothing on earth like crime. Slashing and ripping and tearing up, that’s a kick can’t be had anywhere else. There was nights when I was going good, had the juice going, when I’d rip off eight, nine, ten places in a row. Not even plan none of them. Just do it. I’m God in a getaway car.
I’d be driving around town see a bar all dark and it just drew me in. Park the car a block away, hike on over, check out the layout. No tools, nothing but my smarts. There’s those think burglars have all these fancy-schmancy burglar tools, and sure—there’s some do, I have myself, but usually it’s nothing that complicated. Most places have glass someplace and wherever there’s glass you can get in with nothing more than a rock or a brick. Get in, get out.
Even if there’s no glass, at least none you can break through easily, you can go through almost anything. I seen businesses where they had all the fancy locks in the world on their back doors but the wall itself was basically wallboard, something thin like that. A five-pound sledge and a crowbar will take something like that down in two minutes. It always made me laugh I seen a setup like that. They must figure burglars can only go through doors or windows. Hell, if the wall’s thin that’s the best place to break through.
I went in a house once, had these big heavy-duty sliding glass doors on the back. I knew the owners were gone and it was out in the country so nobody could hear me break the glass. Once I was inside, I had to admire the locks on that door. Nice ones, must have cost a lot of money. The owner even had a steel bar he’d put down at the bottom of the runner. Guy like that must think people who break into houses can’t figure out any other way than to pick a lock to get in. Picking locks only eats up time and gets you caught. Bust the fucker down’s the ticket.
The bolder you are the less likely you’ll get caught. One time, over in Bremen, this little town south of South Bend, I pulled into this strip center had about seven businesses in it, along about two in the morning. Everything was closed up except an all-night laundromat. Just across the street was a gas station and there were two state police cars parked by the pumps and both the guys were standing outside their cars jawing, probably about what master criminal-catchers they were. I give ‘em a little wave which they gave back and went into the laundromat. In the back was a coin changer bolted by two steel
bands to the wall. I went back out to the car, got a crowbar and hammer and went back in and ripped the machine off the wall. Made all kinds of racket. I carried it out and put it in my trunk, climbed behind the wheel and drove off. On the way by the cops I give ‘em another wave and they waved right back. Being bold’s the only way to fly.
That was a serious rush. You get a rush like that no way you’re gonna be happy sitting home watching “I Love Lucy” reruns. No, you got to have more.
They figure out something a guy can do that will replace that kind of high that’s legitimate they can start tearing down prisons. Ain’t likely that’s gonna happen. Put too many lazy fuckers out of work. What would cops and hacks and judges have to do? Get a real job? Coffee shops would all close up and doughnut factories would start laying off. You got a whole entire economy depends on criminals.
***
I’ve got to come back in three months to stand trial for the thing at Smiley’s but first I had to go on back to Pendleton, begin serving the rest of my other sentence, the one I was on parole for. Brooks came down to see me but didn’t say much, just kept shaking his head till I let him off the hook, told him it wasn’t his fault, there was just some folks are gonna always be in the joint and that I was one of them. Nothing you can do about it, pardner, I told him and when he left we were still friends. He even left me a carton of butts. Show me another P.O.’d do that.
Vance has always been a bad luck street for me. I got my nose broke in this same bar—probably why I hit it—Smiley’s—and my teeth rearranged in the same circumstance. Smiley’s changed my smile that time and now Smiley’s has changed the way I walk, least till it heals. The bullet went clear through and I found out something. Getting shot in real life isn’t anything like you see on TV. On TV, those guys get up after they been hit and keep on doing whatever it was they were doing before, smacking the bad guy, running over the tops of buildings, whatever. Bullshit.
When I got hit I just laid there and bawled like a baby. I admit it. I ain’t ashamed of it. I thought I was dying it hurt so bad. I couldn’t have walked on that leg any more than I could have flown the first spaceship to Mars. The cops didn’t even have to work hard to find me. Just follow the screams to the back room where I’d crawled. I had this idea that if I tried to get up and make it out of there I’d bleed to death, push the blood out faster, something like that. The way my heart was thumping, I figured I’d have all my juice pumped out in about three minutes flat.
Smiley himself popped me. He was laying up on a rafter like he was making love to it, his .22 rifle in his hands. Later, I find out somebody snitched and he knew all along his place was going to get hit that night. Teach you to talk about a job in a booze-joint. It’s for sure you never know who your friends are.
Fuck it is what I thought, once the paramed tells me I’m going to be all right. I wasn’t even that upset about being caught. You can’t do the time, don’t do the crime is the motto of every man jack’s ever been behind bars and it was a motto I held to in heart and head. Sooner or later they’re gonna get you is what I figured and it was just my time again. It’s funny—once I got shot and busted I didn’t even much care about the gambling. It’s like that happening cured the bug.
What got me in long-range trouble was getting shot. Not getting caught—that’s not the trouble I mean. The trouble I’m talking about is the trouble I got into with a black prisoner while I was in lockup waiting for the bus that was going to take me back to Pendleton. The guard said they wouldn’t send a bus until they had at least five prisoners and they only had three. Me and two black guys who got popped trying to get rich at an ATM. Frick and Frack. That’s what I called ‘em. Little Raisinet and Big Raisinet. The gal they pulled a knife on happened to have a gun on her and she even said that old joke when she pulled it out, I heard. “Don’t bring a knife to a gunfight, bozos.” The black guys didn’t tell me that, one of the guards did. Barry. That was the guard’s name. Nice guy. We both got a laugh out of that.
None of us knew how long it’d be before they drove us down to the joint. There was another guy who’d already had his trial and was having the presentence investigation being done. He wasn’t in with us, was out on bail working at this straight job hoping the judge would see this and be lenient with him. No way, Barry said; I was this guy I’d have my nose up as much pussy as I could or I’d be on a bus smoking south. He’s headed for a fall. Judge Donegal don’t cut no repeater loose, Barry said; his lawyer just don’t want this turkey to run until he gets paid. Soon as the guy turns his paycheck over to him the lawyer’s gonna call Donegal and the presentence investigation is gonna be over. Probably tomorrow bein’s it’s Friday. You’ll be heading back first thing Monday, Tuesday morning.
“You’re right,” I said to Barry. “Lawyers are all assholes. They got you by the short hairs. Fuckers all sit around the country club with their hands on each others’ dicks and then get in court and scream at each other like they hate their guts. Everybody knows it’s a scam, but we all put up with it, buy into the deal. Hell, you got to. What else you gonna do? It isn’t like you can go get somebody that’s going to be square with you. Lawyers, judges, prostitutes, what’s the difference?”
Barry just nodded. He was a righteous guy.
Like when I was out on bail for the first bust and pulling jobs right off the bat as if I hadn’t never even hit a speed bump, when I got popped again. The thing at the motel with the dog. My lawyer from the first time came up and saw me, got them to take me over and sew up my back and he said it was kinda bad, getting arrested while out on bond but he thought he could handle it. It’d take another grand, maybe fifteen hundred but he could pull it off most likely.
One of the guards, guy I thought was a righteous dude named Robin something, told me the lawyer I was using was a dirtbag, couldn’t get the Pope off for a parking ticket but he knew this public defender named Brockman was the best legal eagle outside of F. Lee Bailey and I wouldn’t even have to pay the guy, just plead poverty and the court would assign him if I asked.
I bought it, the whole deal—what’d I know?—and fired my lawyer, Mr. Connors, and sure enough, it worked just the way Robin said. I told the judge I was broke and wanted a public defender and could I please have Mr. Brockman and the judge smiled and said, why not, that’s fine with me, only it’s on record you paid Mr. Connors so I’m not buying this poor routine, you’ll have to pay Mr. Brockman you want to use him.
A month later, I’m sitting in quarantine at Pendleton and a couple of inmates let me know how stupid I was. It seems Brockman used to be a fair lawyer but he’d spent all his time these last few years trying to break the land speed record for getting to the bottom of a bottle and had lost his job and family and everything and the only work he could get was what was doled out to him as a public defender. Robin Jones, that was the guard at the lockup’s name, was Brockman’s shill. Sent him customers and Brockman took care of him. The guy I fired, Connors, was a for-real attorney, won about eighty percent of his cases which was about the opposite percentage for Brockman.
I ended up paying Brockman the same as I would have paid Connors and the mistake I made was paying him upfront. If I’d slowwalked him or told him he wasn’t getting his fee until I got cut loose I most likely wouldn’t’ve ever seen Pendleton. As soon as the check cleared—I had to ask Mom for the money for which I’ll be forever sorry—Brockman says the best thing to do is forget this not guilty plea crap and plead guilty—waive my right to a jury trial and take a bench trial and he’d get it assigned to this judge who owed him a favor. Just plead guilty and I’d be back on the street in no time at all, he said.
You don’t never pay your attorney upfront, an old con told me. They don’t have to do no work then and most of them won’t.
Only problem with that advice was that I didn’t get it until I was back in Pendleton. Timing is everything in life.
“Your Honor,” says Brockman, and that’s the only words he got out without slurring his
speech. He was dead drunk but did that matter to the judge?
“My client...” and here he had to look down at the papers in front of him to remember my name, “Mr. Mayes wants to plead guilty but also wants the court to know he’s truly contrite over his actions and will never commit another crime as long as he lives if you will but grant mercy in this instance.”
Whoop-de-do. Some long-winded, flowery speech. I sat there and groaned aloud, at which both the judge and my legal eagle both gave me the eye.
The judge was this little ol’ baldy peckerwood looked like he was about three sheets to the wind himself and he looks up over the edge of his throne and said, “Mr. Mayes, your words are handsome but I look at your record and all I see is an incorrigible criminal. Two to five, including time already served. Next case.”
The whole shebang must have lasted all of six minutes. Last I saw of my lawyer, he was walking at a fast clip out the door. On his way to a meeting with Jack Daniels I figured, way he was stepping smartly, his cheeks twitching. You live and learn.
Anyway, in my present situation, that made four ready to be sent down and Barry said there was a warrant out on somebody else for parole violation and his cop buddies knew where the guy was, they were trying to decide who would be the unlucky stiff who’d go bring him in. The guy was a head, always high on skag or something and he liked guns. The dangerous ones nobody likes to have to pick up, Barry said and that made sense. No way I’d ever be a cop. Too many assholes out there anymore putting shit in their veins, thought they was Superfly, The Green Hornet. Some of these clowns, a bazooka wouldn’t bring down, only make them crazier. I done dope, who hasn’t? But I never let it get to me like some of those weak mothers.
He’d be coming in tomorrow morning, Barry said. Barry was always pulling me out of the cage to mop the floors downstairs, give me a break from the drunks and other derelicts in the tank where they kept all of us. We did more talking than I did mopping. Some of the guards are all right, guys like him.
