I’d thought about going to a neighborhood movie, but that was before meeting Augie. The ten-dollar drain changed my mind. I read for an hour and dozed off. After midnight I woke up hungry and walked to a coffee shop on Alvarado. The sidewalks were still full, brassy music escaped from beer joints and cocktail lounges. The giddy laughter of couples coming out of these places aroused my envy. Everything magnified my yearning to be out on the Strip, or in Malibu—anywhere with good clothes and money in my pocket to enjoy life.
I settled for coffee and a piece of stale pie.
8
THE next morning, a Friday, I telephoned Olga Sorenson at the temporary employment agency. I wanted to hold down two jobs, if possible, and get money for clothes and some kind of automobile. She promised to keep me in mind, took the hotel’s telephone number, and said that she would keep it on her desk. She’d be in the office over the weekend and wanted me to call again Saturday afternoon.
Then I called Abe. He, too, was glad to hear from me. A lawyer would be waiting for us at 5:00 P.M. in the parking lot of the Central Jail. He’d wasted no time in arranging the visit.
At 4:30, Abe picked me up on a Wilshire Boulevard intersection and headed toward the freeway. He was wearing a suit of light gray iridescent silk, elegantly tailored. On his little finger was a fourcarat diamond pinky. It would buy me several suits—and an automobile. Taking it would be easy: wait in the alley behind the club and jam a pistol in his ribs. I could even walk him back inside and clean out the safe. I suddenly realized what I was thinking and stopped it.
He noticed my withdrawn mood, mistook its source. “Don’t worry,” he said. “There’s no sweat with Stan. He’s up the creek without a paddle. He helps us and we’ll help him stay away from a habitual criminal sentence.”
“Maybe the kid won’t listen to him,” I said.
“Oh, he’ll get the message between Stan, Stan’s wife, and you. We might even put him onto something good, get him a whore. Anybody that young can be dazzled.”
“For your sake, I hope you’re right.”
“Mmm, maybe for my sake, but probably for his. I’m not a sitting duck. I can throw a little muscle when I have to—better believe it! And I’ve got money. I’ll hire what I can’t put out.”
I said nothing, but I silently modified my evaluation of Abe Meyers. He was riveted together with anxieties. Fear always sat on his shoulder. Yet it wasn’t the kind of fear that paralyzes. Under pressure he could be dangerous. And he was cunning—probably too cunning for the youngster.
Leaving the freeway, we wound through ghetto streets, passed scrap yards. Suddenly we were on a dingy street where the sidewalks were lined with plywood bungalows, each with a sign: Bail Bonds, 24 Hours. The jail was nearby.
Moments later we could see the jail, across the street beyond a trimmed lawn and trees. The huge, beige concrete building was brand new, totally bland—yet it was the most modern and expensive structure in a square mile.
Word had come to prison that the new jail was worse than the old—that brutality was more freely dispensed—and I remembered being fifteen years old in the other one and having a fight with another juvenile. Three deputies handcuffed me to a drainpipe and took turns punching me in the body. After breaking three ribs they threw me in the hole, a steel box on wheels. It was utterly dark; I couldn’t see my hand an inch from my face or know if it was noon or midnight. A quart of water and three slices of bread were the daily food ration. Every three days they brought a paper plate with a gruel of oatmeal sprinkled with raisins. Kneeling in the darkness, I lapped it up like a dog. Nineteen days later they took me back to the reform school (it was when I was captured on the escape) and I collapsed. I had pneumonia. And even if I’d now changed my life, I hadn’t changed my loathing for such places and those who ran them.
Abe turned into the vast parking lot. “There he is,” Abe said, indicating a man leaning on the fender of a brown Rolls Royce.
“Whose Rolls?”
“His … and the finance company. They’ve been trying to repossess it for nine months. Allen McArthur is the world’s greatest dead-beat.”
“That’s Allen McArthur—the infamous motherfucker?”
“You know him?”
“Just about him. He took money for a friend of mine’s appeal and let the time limit lapse. And he’s done worse to others, so I hear.”
“He’s okay, for what he is.”
“He’s a piece of shit to me. Shyster lawyers are worse than stool pigeons.”
“Hold it. We need him right now.”
“Yeah, okay.”
Abe parked in an empty space near the Rolls Royce. Allen McArthur came over and Abe introduced us. I took his handshake, but my lip was curled. The hand was delicately boned, and the face had a sunken chin, rheumy eyes, and acne-pitted visage. He saw my hostility and put Abe between us as we walked toward the building.
Entering the attorney room required passing through two electrically controlled gates ten feet apart, synchronized so that only one would open at a time. It kept anyone from rushing the gate. A deputy sat in a bulletproof control box between them. Allen McArthur showed his attorney credentials and filled-out forms. The deputy dropped them in a pneumatic tube for delivery to another part of the jail. The second gate opened and we went in to wait for Stan Bergman. The room was forty feet long; four lines of tables ran lengthwise. Along the center of each table a plexiglass partition was chin high to a seated person. A deputy stood at the end of each long table, able to watch down it and make certain nothing was passed over the divider without permission and examination.
It was the jail’s supper hour and the room was only half-filled. Usually the room was jammed with lawyers, bondsmen, parole and probation officers—everyone involved with criminal justice except judges. The prisoners sat on one side, jail-pallored (the blacks turned a sickly gray), haggard, reduced to urchins by wrinkled denim with County Jail blazoned in orange paint across knees and butt and chest and back.
Even half-filled the room babbled, each person in his own crisis, unaware of anyone else. Lawyers with calculating eyes drained every penny. They were selling hope, and the price goes high. Frequently they discarded the money-drained cadaver, or traded it to the district attorney’s office for one who paid more: “I’ll plead this one guilty. You give that child molester probation.”
The room’s clamor and my curtness to Allen McArthur stifled small talk. We sat in a row, Abe in the middle.
Stan Bergman appeared, stopping to check with a deputy at the door, his eyes meanwhile swinging over the room, seeking his visitor. I knew his worried thoughts. He wanted to be prepared for detectives.
Abe waved and beckoned. Stan came down the row between the tables. It had been years since I’d seen him. He’d aged two decades. He was stooped; his shirt seemed to be on a clothes hanger more than shoulders. His hair was gone and his eyes, sunk into cavernous hollows, burned with sick ferocity. In a single moment of utter and blinding clarity I was able to view existence through his eyes—a forty-year-old three-time loser waiting trial on armed robbery.
He recognized Abe from a distance and scowled—but when he got closer and saw me the scowl became a huge grin. We were friends, but hardly such good friends as to justify the radiant expression. It was his desperate predicament that added luster to his feelings. Abe had been right to bring me. I’d have influence.
Nodding terse acknowledgment to Abe and McArthur, Stan sat down directly across from me. The rules forbade handshakes. “Hot damn, Max! When did you spring?”
“A few days ago.”
“Me and the Horse were cutting you up last night. He said you were short.”
“Horse just got out last month. What happened?”
“Hot burglary. There’s four ex-cons in our tank, all of us drove tight.”
“Damn, baby, you’re looking hard about the mug. You used to be a halfass pretty kid. You won’t be able to catch yourself a man when you get back.”
Stan laughed. Prison’s ubiquitous homosexual banter gave a touch of humor to his grim situation. “Shit,” he said, “I might turn jocker if I can’t get a man to take care of me.”
“They say all jockers are punks lookin’ for revenge.”
“Are you coppin’ out?”
“Man, we’re not discussing my sophisticated sexual habits.”
Laughter flashed color to his sallowness.
“How you doin’ otherwise?” I asked. “How’s the jail?”
“About jails, I’m Duncan Hines—and this is the shiniest fuckin’ jail in the world.”
“I heard it was a motherfucker.”
“These deputies must’ve been trained in Auschwitz. Even without the head thumpin’, the place is a nightmare. Just going to court. They roust you up at 3:30, run you down to the bullpens, and put you in chairs, six dudes to a set. Each bullpen is eight by twelve, and each one is for a different court. So if there’s fifty dudes going to Pasadena or Long Beach, there’s fifty men in an eight-by-twelve cage, in chains—and they leave you like that until eight or nine in the morning. If you gotta piss, you drag five dudes with you. If you don’t like it, they’ll rattle your head. If I wasn’t facing a life sentence I’d plead guilty just to get back to the pen away from this stinkin’ motherfucker.”
“You’ll make it.”
“I’ll make it—but goddam! I ain’t been convicted yet.”
“Quit arguin’ ethics. You know white folks don’t care about that shit. What’s your beef look like?”
“Routine supermarket heist.”
Routine heist, I thought, but with two prior convictions it meant the habitual criminal sentence. And a supermarket! So many had been robbed in the early ’50s (when supermarkets became abundant) that most of them now had elaborate security.
Stan gave the details. He’d used a stolen car, and someone had taken the license number, which didn’t matter except that when the police found it they also found a single fingerprint on the rear view mirror. A single print was insufficient to pick him from the FBI fingerprint file (which is classified by ten fingers), but if there is a particular suspect the single print is positive identification. Eight months later someone had whispered his name to the police. His prints on file compared with the one from the car got him arrested. In a line-up one witness was “pretty sure” it was Stan who had the gun. “Might beat it with a good mouthpiece,” he said. “But with the public defender …” He shook his head and turned a thumb down. “I can get some alibi witnesses, but with my record I can’t get on the stand.”
Stan was right about public defenders. He had no hope if that was his representation. Most were callow youths, totally inexperienced, or incompetents, and even if there was a budding Clarence Darrow among them, his hands would be tied by having sixty or seventy cases. No attorney can keep track of that many cases, much less represent each one individually. All a public defender could do was go through the ritual of “so stipulated … waive reading of the information,” and try to keep the mill turning. And if most criminals’ lawyers were equally incompetent, they could at least stall. From what Stan said, he wouldn’t be acquitted without a miracle. But a decent lawyer might intimidate the prosecution, not to the point that Stan would win, but to the extent that he would stall for months, draw things out, jam up courtrooms, and cost money. The prosecution might well deal for a guilty plea to a lesser charge, or drop the habitual criminal complaint. What remained of Stan’s life was in the balance. No wonder he’d aged. I felt sorry for him.
Woven into my compassion was disgust at Stan’s incompetence. A squarejohn watching Dragnet would avoid Stan’s blunders. Without a witness able to say, “That’s the man,” it was virtually impossible to get a robbery conviction. Yet Stan had gone bare-faced and he’d left a fingerprint.
Abe came into the momentary silence. Stan looked at him, the grin he’d worn talking to me was now turned cold. The outstanding accusations against Abe were enough to justify coldness. “How’re things going?” Stan asked.
“Pretty good. Been planning to get down to see you—find out what I could do. When I ran into Max I figured you’d like to see him too.”
Stan nodded, but he was scarcely listening. His mind had returned to viewing the gray hopelessness of his position. He sagged within himself.
“And I wanted to talk to you about Bulldog, get that business straight.”
“That’s none of my business,” Stan said, again cold. “It’s between you and him.”
“The ’Dog’s kid brother, your brother-in-law, is trying to put weight on me. Maybe you can talk to him.”
“I haven’t seen him since he was thirteen.” Stan wasn’t really listening. He was hardened against Abe.
“Maybe your wife knows where to get in touch with him.”
“What!” Stan flushed. “I’m not gonna help set him up for you.” Stan’s eyes burned me—accused me of being Abe’s hatchet man.
“Nobody’s gonna hurt him,” I said. “We just want him to lighten up. If you can help, it’s to everybody’s benefit, including yours.”
“How’s it to my benefit?”
I raised a hand to quiet Abe. “Look, homeboy, talk to him, or have him get in touch with me. I won’t cross you. But put yourself in Abe’s shoes. What would you do if some gunsel was talking about blowing you up? You’d get him first. Abe’s trying to be sensible.”
“What if it’s true? What Bulldog says?”
“You know what. He’s got it coming. But the thing is—” I purred like a used car salesman, and was ashamed of myself—“we don’t know if it’s true. You’ve been in the game long enough to know how quick dudes cry stool pigeon when somebody’s fucked ’em out of some bread. I heard the story and I’m not sure. I wouldn’t call ’em liars, but I wouldn’t judge it on the evidence I have. You don’t know anything more than I do. The kid knows less than either of us. Anyway, it’s ’Dog’s business. Say the kid gets hurt—or gets busted for hurting Abe. How will ’Dog feel about that? Now Abe wants to help you—get you a lip—but how can he do that when your kid brother is threatening to blow him up?” I stopped, looked into Stan’s eyes and winked, and his eyes narrowed as he understood the situation.
“I guess I could have him visit me and get him to cool it. He used to listen to me. Why don’t you guys come back next week?”
“What day?” Abe asked.
“Wednesday or Thursday. I won’t see my old lady until Monday.”
“Are you sure you can handle him?”
“He respects me. He’ll listen.”
“That’s appreciated,” Abe said. “Now you need a lawyer. I’ll loan you the money. You can pay me back when you get out.”
“If I get out. I’ll be happy to squeeze from under the life jolt.”
“What about Allen here?”
“Thanks, but no thanks.” Stan started to elucidate; it was unnecessary.
“Fine lawyer,” Allen said, and nobody gave him any notice.
“Who’ve you got in mind?”
“Richard Barton.”
“Barton’s expensive,” Abe said.
I interrupted: “If you’re gonna do something, do it. Don’t fake.”
Momentarily, Abe looked hostile, then nodded acquiescence.
“I talked to Barton already,” Stan said, “and the tab isn’t all that heavy. Fifteen hundred, maybe less if it doesn’t go to trial. He already knows I’ll plead guilty to a second degree. I’m going back as a parole violator if a jury said I was Jesus on the cross. With a second degree I’ll have a chance for another parole in six or seven. Barton won’t fight it like a murder beef for fifteen hundred, but he’ll do what he can—and I think he can make a deal. I’m just another case, nothing special.”
“Okay,” Abe said, “you can get Barton. But we can have Allen here check on the prosecution’s attitude toward a deal. That won’t hurt.”
Allen McArthur had mysteriously produced a note pad and silver ballpoint. “I’ll call
the first thing Monday,” he said. “What’s your case number and what department are you in?”
Stan hesitated, then apparently decided that what he said now wasn’t a commitment to Allen McArthur as his attorney. “I don’t remember the case number. It’s up in the tank. But I’m still in Master Calendar, Department 100. I’ve been getting postponements for three months on the basis that I want to get my own lawyer. Judge Keene is getting pretty shitty about it. He’s about ready to jam the public defender down my throat.”
“I know the deputy district attorney assigned to that court,” Allen said. “We get along okay. If he’ll deal with anyone, he’ll deal with me. If not—Barton can get it transferred to another court when they set a trial date. You can dicker when you get there.”
“Maybe this’ll be better,” Abe said. “Why put out fifteen hundred if we don’t have to?”
I asked Stan: “Have you got any money on the books?”
“Not a sou. I keep up my candy and cigarette habit by trimming suckers playing poker. You know how that goes.”
“I’ll leave fifty for you,” Abe said.
“Who’s gonna let me know what happens Monday with the D.A.?”
“Max can tell you Wednesday when he comes about the other,” Abe said.
“I might be working next week,” I said, thinking of the office job.
“Well, somebody’ll be here.”
“Man, not that long!” Stan said. “Put yourself in my jock strap. You’d wanna know what’s being decided about your life.”
Abe paused, obviously pondering what a premature disclosure of the legal situation would do to his lever on Stan. It was playing games with misery. I spoke up: “I’ll let you know Monday afternoon, in person or by telegram.”
“I doubt if the prosecution will make a definite commitment by then,” Allen McArthur said. “They’ll want to check the matter first.”
“You’ll know what their attitude is,” Stan said. “Send me any kind of word. Shit, send word about the weather. When they bury you in here you can’t even see if it’s raining outside.”
No Beast So Fierce Page 9
