The Onion Field

by Joseph Wambaugh

  Then Jimmy was marched to a cage at the end of the corridor leading to the cells unit. Once inside, two guards entered and the sergeant locked them inside calling to a gun guard to admit them. The gun guard had a walkway that ran the length of the cells and was protected by bars and steel mesh. The gun guard pulled a release bar and Jimmy walked into what he thought would be his home until he died.

  None of the condemned men spoke as he marched down the corridor, and at first Jimmy thought the cells were empty. He squinted into each of them and finally made out the cigarettes glowing and forms lying on the bunks looking up at the TVs perched on platforms near the top of the bars.

  Cell number nine looked like the dozens of others Jimmy had inhabited in his life. It contained one bunk bolted to the wall, a small table, a heavy wooden stool. As he was making his bunk he heard a familiar voice calling him. It was a huge condemned man he called the Bear, who had been to college and played Canadian football and was something of an artist. Jimmy had known him in the county jail high power tank. That first day in the high power tank when Jimmy urinated in the toilet, the Bear had said to him, “Now after you’re through pissing, you take some toilet paper and wipe off that stool real careful, and if you ever miss and hit the floor you wipe that up too.”

  And the Bear had said to the inmate delivering the tray of chow to high power: “I know what kind of sex acts you punks do. Now you go wash those filthy hands and bring a new tray.”

  “Screw you,” said the man with the food tray and it was the last thing he said for the five minutes it took to revive him.

  “That’s all I fuckin need,” Jimmy mumbled to his neighbor on the other side, “the Bear livin next door to me. I’ll probably accidentally drop a match near him when he’s house cleanin and he’ll break my back. My life is just one big junkyard full of misery and bad luck,” moaned Jimmy Smith.

  Cell number nine of Death Row. This was the real thing. This is where every event of his life had inevitably led him, he thought. He was sullen and teary when breakfast came, but then he perked up.

  “Hey, this is okay,” he said to his neighbor. “Like, good enough for some fancy café on the outside.”

  “Enjoy it while you can, brother,” said the voice next to him, with a loose slobbery giggle.

  The first day on the row was routine. The second found two of the residents locked in a fierce fistfight as soon as the doors were opened for exercise. A black man, a robber and murderer known as Taco, was battling a white youngster named Junior, a cop killer who had been slightly crippled while trying to run a police roadblock. Junior was clearly the winner in this fight, and while he was pounding the black man, the gunrail guard, after several warnings, fired a shot. The shock literally blew Jimmy back into his cell onto the floor.

  Ten minutes later when he recovered from the fear, Jimmy was told the first shot is a blank, it’s the second one you’ve got to worry about.

  “Jesus,” Jimmy whispered. “It ain’t safe. It ain’t safe nowhere in this miserable world.”

  “Don’t worry about it,” said a middle aged white man who murdered wives. “Nobody’s going to kill you before the state gets its chance.”

  Time passed even for condemned men. For some the months passed much too quickly. One unforgettable winter day Jimmy Smith found Gregory Powell on the floor at his feet.

  The fistfight erupted so fast that Jimmy could not even remember what caused it when it was over. They were in the corridor. Someone made a snide remark, but that was common enough between them. Then Greg had thrown something in his face. What was it? Jimmy thought, now that it was over, and he was lying on his bunk nursing his bruised knuckles. Paper! That was it, wasn’t it? A ball of crumpled paper!

  Jimmy had plowed into him so fast they were both surprised. Powell went down. Oh yeah! Jimmy thought in exultation. Powell went down to his knees after one punch, like the whinin snivelin punk he was! It was easy, so damn easy Jimmy couldn’t believe it. Big man. Big tough man with a gun. Now Jimmy vowed to punish Powell. Maybe once a week. Maybe twice. Just kick his ass, just a little, when the gunrail wasn’t around. That was all that saved Powell this time, the gunrail cocking that gun. The metal sound was like a lightning bolt to Jimmy Smith. Powell was on his knees trying to hold Jimmy’s arms. Oh yeah!

  That night, most of the men on the row could hear Jimmy Smith screaming triumphantly into the toilet telephone, the voice echoing through the corridors.

  “Powell’s a lyin braggin punk!” Jimmy screamed. “Powell says he was a boxer at Vacaville! I heard what he was! He was a punk in the gym! The other guys’d bend him over a workout bar and brown him! He was a gymnasium punk!”

  “Shut up, Smith,” the Bear growled. “I’m trying to watch television.”

  “And that ain’t all!” Jimmy shouted to everyone and no one. “He’s worse than that! Yeah! He’s a … a incestuous bastard! That’s what he is!”

  “Smith, if you don’t shut up I’m gonna twist your head off tomorrow,” said the Bear, and Jimmy Smith was finally silenced that night.

  The following entry was made in the record of the prisoner.

  February 15, 1965: Found guilty of fist fighting with Powell in violation of Prison Rule D 4515 concerning fighting. Sentenced to 3 days cell status.

  His ecstasy was halted the next night when a friend whispered, “Jimmy, that ain’t too cool what you done.”

  “What’s that?”

  “Throwing blows with your partner.”

  “My partner? That punk?”

  “He’s the only one in the world can save your life, baby.”

  “What?”

  “Jimmy, looky here. You guys got a chance for a new trial. Man, most of us got a chance what with the Escobedo case, and now the Dorado case. I’d bet a million bucks you two guys’ll get a new trial.”

  “So what? It’s gonna end the same.”

  “For him, sure. He ain’t got a chance. But you, Jimmy, it’s different for you.”

  “Different? I got a hot beef too.”

  “You just gotta get separate trials. Have your lawyer make him out a fucking devil to your jury.”

  “That ain’t hard to do,” said Jimmy.

  “Subpoena him to your trial and have your lawyer ask him if you really shot the cop or is he lying on you.”

  “I suppose he’s gonna say yeah, and ruin any little chance he might have, huh?”

  “He don’t have to, Jimmy,” the voice whispered. “He just gotta look tough and scare the fuck outta the jury. And take the fifth.”

  “The fifth?”

  “The fifth fucking amendment! It can’t be used against him at his trial. It won’t hurt him none, and it’ll probably save your ass. Other partners have pulled it off. You know how fucking goofy juries are. It’ll work, I tell you.”

  “Jesus.”

  “But it ain’t gonna work if you go around using him for a punching bag. You gotta play up to him, baby.”

  “Jesus,” Jimmy breathed, and he did not sleep that night. Not for a moment.

  Three days later, it was a haggard nervous Jimmy Smith who knew what he had to do and who offered his old partner a cigarette during exercise. And he smiled at his old partner and made a self-effacing joke. And at the end, just before returning to their cells, put his hand on his partner’s arm, something he had never done, and looked in his eyes, and said friendly things. And the next few days, he sat with his partner and flattered him and touched him often. He took his partner away from the others and talked privately with him, whispered many things, letting his lips touch the ear of his partner.

  Several weeks later, the following entry was made in the prison records:

  April 20, 1965: Jimmy L. Smith pleaded guilty to possessing pitcher of home brew in violation of Prison Rule D 1205 concerning contraband. Also found guilty of committing oral copulation on Gregory U. Powell in violation of Prison Rule D 1206 concerning immorality. Sentenced to 10 days isolation.

  The changes in both me
n were reflected in prison disciplinary records. Greg’s behavior improved. In fact until an escape attempt in 1967, there would be no more minor troublesome prison violations on the record of Gregory Powell. Though the plans for escape never ceased, the other irritations seemed to have vanished. Greg had sexual contact with many inmates in San Quentin, both in the Adjustment Center and on the row itself. But this was different. It was the final utter submission of the recalcitrant member of his former “family.”

  Jimmy’s behavior deteriorated, became sex-oriented, erratic.

  September 14, 1965: Smith attempted to engage other prisoner in homosexual practices, necessitating moving the other prisoner to a new cell.

  September 18, 1965: Subject accused other prisoner of snitching and was attempting to have others join him in a mass rape of this prisoner.

  October 12, 1965: Smith provoked a fight between two other inmates.

  October 14, 1965: Smith talked about suicide for the last two days. Is not only a compulsive prevaricator, but is quite unable to accept responsibility for creating his own difficulties.

  Jimmy Smith had at last surrendered, yielded utterly. The last overture was made to Gregory Powell. He was literally on his knees—abject, humbled, degraded. He didn’t want to die.

  THIRTEEN

  Once he was driving for the chief of police, spending in-between hours answering telephones, cutting newspaper clippings which might interest Chief Parker, doing the perfunctory public relations tasks required of the chief’s driver, he thought for sure the dreams would go away. They did not. They started to come almost every night.

  Karl Hettinger was not a man of great imagination. His dreams were more literal than symbolic. They had a beginning, a middle and an end. They started at the intersection of Carlos and Gower in Hollywood and continued with him caught screaming on barbed wire, ripping free only to run in slow motion through an onion field, finally hunched over in the front of an ambulance looking back at Ian on the stretcher. When the dreams first started, he would always look back with great hope unable to see the bloody holes torn in Ian’s chest. He would see only the blood streaming from his mouth down his cheeks into his ears, filling the ears, and spilling out onto the crisp white stretcher sheets. As he got accustomed to the dream he never looked back with hope at his partner. Though he couldn’t see the bubbling holes, he knew Ian was dead. There was never any hope in the later dreams.

  The intensity of the dreams did not abate. Helen, after the first few months, was becoming accustomed to the thrashing and sweating and whimpering in the night.

  “Why don’t you go to a doctor about these dreams, Karl,” she would plead.

  “It’s nothing, Helen. What can a doctor do? I just had a shocking experience and I’ll get over it. It’s not so bad now.”

  “That’s not true, Karl. They’re coming more often now.”

  “No, they’re not. I should know, shouldn’t I?”

  And Karl would set his jaw and press his lips and Helen knew it was over. He wouldn’t argue, he just stubbornly resisted, saying it would work out.

  It was a blessing to work for the chief of police, though he hated being indoors so much. But at least it wasn’t strenuous. His body was unaccustomed to functioning with half a night’s sleep. Before Ian Campbell was killed he had slept long and deeply. Fatigue often set in early in the afternoons these days.

  And he liked, or perhaps loved, the chief himself. William H. Parker was unlike any man Karl had known. He was eloquent, outspoken, perhaps the best educated and best read of any chief in Los Angeles history. The chief was married but childless, totally committed to his duties. He obviously liked his driver, would take him into his confidence telling him things that even his closest colleagues were never told. The chief was said to be a good judge of men and seemed to sense that his serious and silent young driver would never betray a confidence. He was right.

  The chief also seemed to sense that perhaps Karl Hettinger felt patronized for being there. So often the chief’s conversations subtly veered in that direction, and he would say things to reassure his driver and tell him what a splendid bodyguard and companion he was. The chief would become angry when he overheard insensitive policemen questioning Karl about the Campbell murder, or the recent trial. He saw that it still caused the young officer some anxiety to talk about it.

  The chief’s kindness was rewarded by zealous loyalty. His new driver felt a compulsion about protecting the chief and even though Parker would tell his staff to remain at their desks when he took one of his frequent walks to City Hall, there would be a figure behind him, following unnoticed at a discreet distance—a slender figure in a suit which was too big, a young man with close-cut strawberry-blond hair, and blue eyes which were darkening and sinking.

  Helen Hettinger deeply regretted she had not married Karl sooner than she had. She had not known him well enough before the killing to gauge how much the event had changed him. There were some changes however which were very obvious.

  “Karl, you just ran through another red light!” she would say.

  “I did?”

  “Karl, what’s happening to you? That’s the second time today you did that.”

  “Are you sure the light was red?”

  “It was red, Karl. You used to be the most cautious driver in town. What’s happened to you, lately?”

  “Are you sure it was red?”

  Karl Hettinger was given an annual physical examination. It was the same examination as always. The doctor asked him if he had any medical problems, the patient answered that he had not. The patient gave his blood and urine specimens to the lab technician, had a chest X ray, an eye examination, was measured and weighed and released. Nothing unusual was noted or reported except that one nurse took his folder from the examining room and saw something which caught her eye. The patient had lost twenty pounds.

  “Think I’ll ask this officer for his diet,” she said.

  “How’s that?” the other nurse asked.

  “This officer’s lost twenty pounds.” Then she began comparing the new physical with the last one. “That’s funny. He’s an inch shorter. He’s barely five feet nine now. What the hell kind of diet is that?”

  “Let’s see,” said the other nurse going through his folder.

  “His vision. It went from 20/20 and 20/30 to 20/40 and 20/40. What’s going on here?”

  “Look, honey,” said the older nurse, nodding toward the far examination room. “When you know who examines them you can’t tell what he’ll write down.”

  “Karl H.,” read the first nurse on the label and opened the file to find the patient’s last name. “I wonder if the H is for Houdini?”

  “Why do you say that?”

  “He’s lost twenty pounds. He’s going blind. He’s shrunk an inch! This guy’s pulling a disappearing act.”

  On his next physical the patient’s sight returned to 20/20 and 20/30 just as it had been before. However the weight did not return. Nor did the inch of stature. No one took official notice of the metamorphosis, and the patient would be the last one to ever mention it.

  On the thirtieth of August, 1964, just one day after the thirtieth birthday of Gregory Powell, just nine days after what would have been the thirty-third birthday of Ian Campbell, a son was born to Karl and Helen Hettinger. They called him Kurt, and Karl began to dream of taking his son on camping trips and teaching him to fish and play baseball, and spending hours talking to him. He wished for his son, without knowing it, all the things which had been absent in his own boyhood.

  “How about some Mexican food, Karl?” his wife said when she recovered from the childbirth and was anxious to get out of the house.

  “Oh, I’d rather not.”

  “Well how about Italian food?”

  “Oh, I can get some and bring it home, I guess.”

  “You used to love Mexican and Italian food when I first married you.”

  “I still do, Moms.”

  “But you used to
really eat. Now you just eat enough to live.”

  “Let’s not start that again, please, Helen.”

  “I hate to be a nagging wife, but I think there’s something very wrong with you.”

  “There’s nothing wrong. I’m just getting a little tired of working in the chief’s office and listening to all these questions about the murder. All these policemen that work in these office jobs love to hear about all the exciting police work they’re not in on. But they won’t go out in the street and do it. It might spoil their chances to butter up to the brass and get promoted.”

  “Well whadda you know? You actually got a little mad for a minute. That does my heart good. Why don’t you get mad at me sometime? Why don’t you swear at me?”

  “Why should I get mad at you, Moms?” said Karl smiling into the hazel eyes of his young wife, who at twenty-two seemed to him more mature and infinitely stronger than he. These days he doubted his strength.

  “We never talk. Really talk about things.”

  “What things?”

  “You know. About things that bother you. The things you think about. About the dreams, maybe.”

  “The dreams aren’t coming so often anymore.” Karl sighed. “I told you that.”

  “I sleep with you. Don’t tell me.”

  “I’m thinking about going to the Detective Bureau. Chief Brown himself asked me to transfer into his bureau. I’ll bet when I get out of this chauffeur job and start doing police work again I’ll be a new man.”

  “Why don’t you stay in the chief’s office? You’re almost thirty years old. You’ve had enough cops and robbers. Stay inside.”

  “There’s nothing to worry about, Moms,” said Karl. “Tell you what. Let’s plan a camping trip now that you’re on your feet again. We haven’t been for a while.”