“Stand still, hell!” I replied, and leaped for a tree near a high fence. With a growl of brute rage, one of the dogs sprang after me. In the nick of time I scrambled out of range of that enraged engine of destruction. Then I whipped out my pistol, quite expecting to see my foolish confederate being torn to bits. Instead, I witnessed the unbelievable. Al not only wasn’t touched but he sent the two dogs slinking off in shame for having perpetrated such an outrage in the first place. To this day, I still have no idea how he managed such a feat. I watched him stroll calmly to a gate and pass through into the next yard, whistling softly, unconcernedly. I hastily climbed out on a limb to the fence and then dropped to the ground on the other side, rejoining this overbold tamer of man-eating canines. He was enjoying my discomfiture immensely.
“O.K., O.K., Smart Guy,” I said. “But after this don’t ever again tell me that Chessman is the crazy one in this crowd. The only reason those damned dogs didn’t tear you to pieces is that they figured you were too damned skinny to make a good meal.”
I stood guard duty while Al, silent as a cat, hot prowled a mansion. We had parked the Packard some distance away and the loot was too much to carry, so we hid the loot in some bushes and rode off to the Packard on a couple of bicycles we had found in the mansion’s three-car garage. The next thing we knew we were being hotly pursued by a night watchman with the voice of Stentor, also on a bicycle. This crazy chase lasted for several blocks. I am still convinced the only reason we finally managed to give our stentorian pursuer the slip is that he shouted himself out of breath. We made it to the Packard, abandoned the bicycles, returned and claimed the loot and then almost literally ran into two cops in a radio car. Another wild chase followed. I breathed a long sigh of relief when at last I ditched this most recent pursuit. We got back to Hollywood at dawn and caught a few hours’ sleep.
I accompanied Al when he took some more hot jewelry to his fence. The fence still was urging us to knock over a volume dealer in precious stones with a place of business in Beverly Hills. The fence had a tip from an inside source that the dealer was to receive a large shipment of stones in the near future. If we took the dealer then, the fence said, he could guarantee us, cash on delivery, ten per cent of the total value of the stones we would get. By the most conservative estimate, our percentage would add up to a small fortune.
“All right,” I said suddenly, “we knock the guy over. That’s settled. Now let’s have the details so I can look over the place and get ready to take it when we get the signal from you.”
After a thorough briefing by the fence, we laid careful plans for the robbery and then waited for word the shipment had arrived. The prospect of possessing such a large sum of money for a few minutes’ work was most satisfying. It would finance flight if my plan with Christopher fell through. I would have a financial lifeboat.
That afternoon I phoned Christopher. He had checked and now urgently wanted to see me. I saw him, at his home. He turned out to be a shrewd, granite-faced character with a cephalic index of not more than sixty. I smiled indulgently at his questions. No, I hadn’t brought his papers with me; what I had brought with me were some papers of my own. I had taken the precaution of leaving his papers in a sealed envelope with a friend, and I had instructed that friend exactly how to proceed if I failed to call for those papers that evening. I also had had the foresight to place a note in the envelope which the police would find both interesting and informative should it fall into their hands. Now, with those preliminaries out of the way, was he ready to talk business?
Christopher hedged; he talked around his subject; he played it coy. The papers weren’t what they seemed to be. Why didn’t I just return them, accept a substantial reward, forget the whole thing? Then, ever so slyly, he suggested that it might be the safest and healthiest course.
“Christopher,” I told him, “it’s now your turn to listen to me, and I advise you to listen real carefully.” Then I laid it on the line. . . .
Not many hours later we landed in Mexico City. Minutes after that I had been introduced to and was closeted with a nervous, pompous little man high in the un-angelic hierarchy of the Third Reich. It was apparent that this small peacock regarded his United States citizenship as an accident of birth at best. His vanity and a flair for the bizarre helped me hook him.
“You can be useful to us, Chessman. Most useful.”
We flew back to Hollywood. Gabriella and I celebrated the occasion. I happened to glance at a calendar. Less than two weeks before, I had been just another obscure guy doing time. Now, shortly, I would be taking a long and perilous trip across the ocean and my situation would be incredibly unique. A psychopathic compulsion to dream an impossible dream, a tutored, insolent audacity, a perfect willingness to escape the orbit, to say to hell with the orbit—these, with a large assist from Dame Fortune, had put me into a position to play a weird but useful practical joke on history. While the free nations of the earth locked in titanic struggle with Adolf, Benito, Tojo and Company, I brazenly plotted to pull off my own crazy coup, nonchalantly, perhaps, at bottom, just for the hell of it. Perhaps . . . because I wanted to prove that it could be done.
And then it happened, suddenly. A familiar old devil called disaster strode upon the scene. In a matter of hours I was decisively cut down to size. Then, I became just another guy on the lam. Through an inadvertence on Gabriella’s part, Christopher and crowd discovered my deception and the party got rough for a while. Al, my genial, burglarious benefactor, was captured in a bar one midnight while I was home in bed. I slept on while the cops came and cleaned out his apartment. Fortunately, they didn’t then rouse the landlady. I discovered Al’s absence the next morning, packed and got out of there in nothing flat. I literally hadn’t been gone five minutes when the cops returned in force. While being questioned by the police, Al let it slip that I planned to spring a mutual friend from Chino and when I returned to that institution for that purpose, a couple of nights later, I found the place crawling with armed men. It was a miracle that I managed to escape detection and capture.
I was in a bad way and the situation, if possible, continued to get worse. I was hurt in a fight. I was virtually broke. APs fence had disappeared. The stolen Packard had been recovered. I had two guns but ammunition for only one of them, and it was defective; I was lucky if the gun fired one time out of ten. The cops were hot on my trail and would remain there. Christopher and his goons were also after me; in trying to get me, they gave Gabriella a fierce roughing up before I got her away from them by massaging a few heads with a tire iron.
Checking, I found the Duke was still around, a more potent underworld figure than ever. Someone told me he was cleaning up in the black market. I phoned him and tried to bluff him out of the money he owed me. But he was “in” too solid to bluff and he hated my guts. “You smart sonofabitch,” he growled, “the only thing you’ll get from me is a hole in the head.” So, to get by, I stole a car and pulled several hit-and-run robberies—and ran into more trouble. I grew disgusted, bitter, angry. Inexorably, I had been sucked back into the orbit. And if I didn’t flee, I knew it would only be a matter of days or hours until I was caught or killed. I didn’t care.
• 26 •
Stone Walls Do a Prison Make
I should have run. I should have laughed, packed, got Judy and lammed out of southern California. That way I doubtless would have lasted for a while: weeks, months, maybe even years. I should have run and robbed and raised hell until finally the gendarmes caught up with me. Meanwhile Judy and I could be having a second honeymoon, a stolen one. We could live for the moment, selfishly, for ourselves, defying a threatening world and knowing that each day might be the last. Certainly I was equipped and conditioned for the role of mad dog and in my frame of mind that role, with my beloved Judy at my side, offered an appeal I found hard to resist.
But still I didn’t run, even knowing the alternative was death or prison. Death had lost all ability to menace me. Death was nothing more than a wel
come release from this meaningless mockery called Life. But prison was another matter: so far as I was then concerned, stone walls did a prison make. I knew that once 1 found myself inside them I would begin to dream again, to plan again. That was the torment. Even now, galled by defeat, frustrated with the death of a dream, overflowing with anger and bitterness and hate, a small voice was trying to convince me that all was not lost, that prison could offer more than torment and empty dreams.
Well, I would let Life and Death draw straws to see who got me. I would stand pat. I would give the cops a crack at me and, at the same time, I would declare war on Christopher and his crowd and the Duke and his bunch of smart operators. I phoned the Duke a second time and told him I had decided to give him a chance to give me that hole in the head, adding that I was so fascinated with such a gift that I intended to try to make him a present of the same thing. “I think it’s time you saw the light, Duke, and the only way I know how to accomplish that feat is to ventilate that thick skull of yours with some .38 slugs.” Next I called Christopher and gave him a hot tip where he could find Chessman. Who was speaking? “This is Chessman’s worst enemy,” I replied, not untruthfully, I thought. “He’s been running his mouth off about you. You better get him—and quick!”
The police had my apartment staked out. I spotted them seated in an unmarked police car and gave a kid on a bicycle a couple of dollars to deliver a note I scribbled on a scrap of paper. “Stop wasting the taxpayers’ hard-earned money by sitting there on your fat asses waiting for me to blunder onto the scene.” As I hoped it would, the note riled the two cops. They came looking for me. That gave me a chance to pay Dick a visit. Did he know where he could get hold of some .38 slugs? He did. Fine. I said, I’d be back after them. He wanted me to fix a definite time. “So that I’ll be sure to be here,” he explained. And he wanted to know, too, if there wasn’t something else he could do for me. Anything at all. A real pal.
I studied the .38 in my hand, juggling it, and then looked from it to this “friend.” Yes, I knew about the orbit and its pull. “I’ll be on my way now,” I said, crossing to the door. “But I’ll be back. You can depend on that. And you can be sure, too, that I always repay favors.” Then I limped out into the night.
I managed a visit with my mother and frankly told her what I had tried to do and how and why I had failed.
I concluded wryly, “So now, Mom, it appears that Uncle Sam and his allies will be obliged to win this war without my help.”
And what would happen to me?
“Have faith, Mom, that whatever happens will be for the best;
Sure, it was evasion, but it hardly would have been a nice thing to have told my mother of the violent possibilities as to the fate of her only son. . . .
I had more trouble. I went looking for it. Then, by prearrangement, I met Judy. She picked me up late one evening.
“Dick’s,” I said. “But first be sure we’re not being followed.”
On the way, quietly, wistfully, without censure, she said: “Caryl, I wish you had stayed at Chino. You told me yourself, before you escaped, that you expected to be out in a year or two. And I was so happy, so eager for the future. Now I’m afraid of it. I’m afraid you’ll either be hunted or locked up for the rest of your life, or that something even worse will happen. I can’t help feeling it’s useless to make any plans for a good future.”
“I’m sorry, Judy Baby. I’m sorry I gambled and lost.”
Judy reminded me, without bitterness, “You’ve gambled twice and lost twice. I’m afraid that will happen again and again. I don’t think you’ll ever be able to stop. And because I love you so much, Caryl, I want to help you, yet I know I’m helpless. I don’t think anyone can help you. I think there is something inside you that keeps driving you.”
“Some day, Judy, perhaps all this will be different,” I ventured.
“Yes,” Judy replied longingly, “perhaps some day all this will be different.”
She parked in front of an apartment house on a side street. Dick occupied the first apartment on the left on the first floor. The front door of that apartment led directly to the street.
I told Judy, “Get out and go to the door as though you’re alone. Dick has had a hint I am coming, so the place may be staked out. I want to find out. If the cops are around, remember—you weren’t with me!”
A light over the door went on and Dick answered Judy’s knock. They stood talking. I slid out of the truck and eased the door shut. The street was dark, quiet. Now for the test: I stepped out of the shadows and walked unhurriedly toward Dick and Judy. Just then, with perfect timing, the police car drove by. A flashlight or spotlight beam caught me. The driver of the police car jammed on the brakes and almost stood his machine on end.
I looked for a fleeting instant at Judy. I was seeing her, out of custody, for the last time. She stood silhouetted in the doorway, rigid with anxiety.
I jerked out my gun and sprinted for the darkness between two buildings. The police car was backing up, its motor whining urgently, and one of the cops had leaped from it to pursue me. The gun in my hand clicked twice—I intended to break a couple of caps as a warning—but each time failed to fire. I managed to give the first cop the slip and could easily have gotten away. But I chose to stay, to hide. Within minutes the district was swarming with police. The net kept tightening. But I still refused to leave; the legions of Hell couldn’t make me go. I slipped into a house through an unlocked back door, locked it behind me, and encountered an old man and two teen-aged boys in the living room, listening to the radio.
“Sit still, please! And act as natural as possible.”
They sat in plain view of a bay window and the searching police. I stood in a hallway where I could keep them covered and still not be seen from the outside. Minutes passed and the sounds of search died. I slipped out of the house and was cautiously making my way through the blackness of the front yard when I tangled with a child’s fire engine, rang its bell, and crashed in a heap to the ground, twisting an ankle. The chase was on again. Somehow I made it to a church and crawled under, hiding behind a large gas meter. I smelled the gas—a leak in one of the pipes—but failed to associate it with my increasing fuzzy-headedness. The gas knocked me out and probably would have killed me if a breeze hadn’t sprung up.
I revived. My head had grown to at least ten times its normal size. I laughed, “You got the big head now for sure.” I climbed out from under the church and got unsteadily to my feet. I was all mixed up and I desperately wanted a cigarette but was afraid to light one for fear of blowing up. That was how groggy I was. When I tried to concentrate on where I lived, little men with jack-hammers went to work in my head. That head threatened to explode before I finally remembered the direction and location of my apartment. It was only two blocks away—the longest two blocks I have ever traveled.
The first time I had visited Dick I had been wearing a slipper (because oi my shot foot). This fact had been reported to the police, who had concluded I must be living nearby. Accordingly, they made a house-to-house canvass of the area, showing my picture and asking if I lived there. They also showed my picture to the proprietors of all grocery stores, drive-ins, drugstores and restaurants within a radius of two miles from Dick’s. When I learned of this door-to-door business, I decided to leave, to move. But I waited one day too long.
I was taken into custody on a Saturday morning. Gabriella came over early that morning to help me move. I went for the stolen car I had hidden (I thought) nearby. Walking along Glendale Avenue, I saw a familiar detective up ahead. He knew I was behind him, but he also knew I had the drop on him, so he just kept walking to his police car. “I realized the futility of attempting to flush the subject alone,” he stated later in his report. He put in an urgent call on his two-way radio for reinforcements. Meanwhile, I ducked into a store and then back to the apartment, positive no policeman had tailed me. None had, but still I’d been tailed—by the young son of the store owner who had been pr
esent earlier when the police showed his father my picture. I had seen the boy but had, unwisely, never suspected he was following me. He ran back and told the police where I had gone.
I stood at the second-floor window of my apartment and watched the police close off the area and begin to move in. Hurriedly, Gabriella and I tore up and flushed Christopher’s papers down a toilet in a bathroom across the hall. I left the bathroom door open, Gabriella concealed behind it. Then I sat down to wait, smoking a cigarette. Guns drawn, two detectives crept up the stairs and inched along the hallway to my door. They knocked.
“Come in, gentlemen,” I called out. “I’ve been waiting for you.”
Their prize in hand, he was rushed to the police station. Cherchez la femme didn’t occur to the police until too late. When they dashed back to the apartment, Gabriella was gone. “All right, Chessman,” they demanded, “who was that woman?”
“That woman, officers,” I replied cheerfully, “must be a figment of your own overstimulated imaginations.”
That was the first lie I told; it was, however, by no means the last. From then on, determined to cover my trail and to keep anyone from learning anything about my dealings with Christopher (for fear that he might revenge himself on Judy or my parents), I took the initiative and told whopper after whopper while being grilled by relays of detectives and questioned by Chino officials and the F.B.I.
I had told Al Collins that if he were caught first I didn’t care how much he told the police about me if it would help him. Shortly after my arrest I learned that he had implicated me in more than a dozen burglaries, which made no difference, since detectives from practically every local jurisdiction were prepared to file robbery, burglary, kidnaping for robbery and other charges. I flatly denied commission of all crimes and actually had committed not more than one-quarter of those the police accused me of committing. Later, I secured the services of an extremely competent criminal attorney, who neatly eliminated the possibility of my being tried for my life, held to a minimum the number of serious felony charges filed, and arranged for me to plead guilty to a single count of armed robbery, with the escape and all other pending charges dismissed. The judge who sentenced me ran this new count of robbery concurrently with all those unfixed, indeterminate terms I was already serving.
Cell 2455, Death Row Page 29