All four inmates were confined to isolation cells for the maximum term allowed, twenty-nine days, with loss of television and commissary privileges for the entire time. In addition, inmate Powell was charged thirty-two dollars for the broken porcelain toilet. This was the second isolation punishment for Joshua Hill. He got twenty-nine days the first time for slashing a fellow inmate’s throat.
Gregory Powell had been five minutes from the roof of building number eight. With two hundred feet of rope and a San Francisco fog going for him, he came perhaps closer than any man to escaping the row.
Jimmy Smith now lived next door to the Gamblin Man, Aaron Mitchell, who would become the most famous member of the row. They shared the same television set and seldom bickered over control of the channels, each usually checking with the other before using his remote control switch.
Jimmy and Mitchell played bridge avidly and Mitchell talked of his early life in black ghettos, of petty stealing, and of finding a white woman whom he felt obliged to steal for. He told of finally killing a policeman in a robbery and of nearly being killed himself in the shootout.
Jimmy played cards with the Gamblin Man until one day Jimmy went to the dentist. When Jimmy returned with the escort guards he was surprised to see Mitchell standing naked in his cell.
“Jimmy, get the bull to pull the bar,” said Mitchell in a strange voice, and Jimmy walked to the rear of the block.
“Just got a tooth pulled,” said Jimmy to the guard pointing to the cotton in his jaw. “Want back in.”
When Jimmy got to the other end of the block Aaron Mitchell walked out of his cell still naked. He looked around with a confused expression and began pacing up and down the deck for a space of forty feet.
The guard on the gunrail rose from his stool and gaped. All talk and card playing stopped. Those men who were close watched Aaron Mitchell slash his wrist and raise his left arm letting the blood splash to the floor. Then he continued to walk, saying: “Do you know I am gonna die just like Jesus Christ did? I will die to save you guys.”
Four guards rushed into the cellblock and carefully coaxed Aaron Mitchell into giving up the razor blade and surrendering. The doctor went into his cell and no one ever heard another word from the Gamblin Man. Not that night, not ever. The next morning they executed him.
Jimmy could smell the fumes being filtered through the water out into the air that day, April 12, 1967. Jimmy smelled the gas for days even when logic told him it was gone. Two weeks later a judge issued a blanket stay of execution to cover every man on Death Row. Jimmy’s stomach at last began to unknot. The Gamblin Man was the last of them to die.
The gardener was reading the paper in his truck. After this break, he would finish up the yard and be through for the day.
He thought how strange it was to see so many Christmas advertisements already in the paper since it wasn’t even December yet. They just started earlier and earlier each year, thought the gardener. It was going to be the biggest Christmas season ever, they said. They were selling everything at exceptionally low prices to celebrate the coming year and it would be a most jubilant New Year, they said. The 1960’s were finished and they were starting a more hopeful decade. They would help you to celebrate the coming of 1970 by giving you rock bottom, end of the year, closeout prices, they said.
He couldn’t help remembering all the things he had stolen during that one Christmas season. Then he saw the ink smeared on his fingers from the newspaper. He couldn’t believe how badly his hands were sweating. They were dripping sweat and black with ink. His hands were usually wet, but not like this.
He knew there was no avoiding it. He had to think of his last crime. When they stopped him. When he was caught. When they exposed him for the thief he was.
He hadn’t committed his last crime during a Christmas season. No, it was even a more insidious time of year, when California gardens are bursting with life, vigor, potency. It was in May, the gardener’s favorite month.
He was caught at a supermarket. It wasn’t the first time he had stolen in this place. In fact, less than a month before, he was almost caught here. He was seen on the first occasion when he stole two packages of cigars. He had come back to steal again.
It troubled him the second time he stole cigars. He thought it was doubly wrong to steal what you couldn’t use. Why would someone steal what he couldn’t use? He had just grabbed the cigars on an impulse. He smoked them so they wouldn’t go to waste. Well, he reasoned, hadn’t he often smoked a cheap cigar in those ancient college days when he played poker? It had been his dormitory trademark.
He always remembered trivia like that. What was so difficult to remember were things that happened from March 1963 when Ian was killed until May 1966 when he was finally caught for his crimes and stopped stealing, and became a gardener. Certain things would stand out when he really tried to remember, but other things just weren’t there and his wife would have to remind him. Why didn’t the crimes fade like that? Why did he have to remember his crimes so well?
He was almost positive the store employee was watching him shove the packages of cigars in his pocket. Then he had the cigars. Now came the critical period. The thing he always thought about and dreaded. The critical period of making his escape. There could be no doubt. He knew he was seen. He could hardly control his legs. He walked slowly, deliberately, just as always. The store employee followed him.
It was the same store employee who had seen him do it the other time when the employee wasn’t sure enough to challenge him. This time he was sure and the employee followed him to the parking lot and copied down the license number.
He was frightened. He would be stopped now. They were going to arrest him. Would he run, fight, surrender? He didn’t know. He knew nothing except that there were waves of blood cresting, surging, breaking in his head. He got in his car. Still he was not arrested. He paused before starting the engine. Still nothing. He knew the store employee had taken his license number. He must have taken his license number. He didn’t sleep at all that night. He couldn’t eat at all the next day. Finally it came. The telephone call. Report to the fifth floor of the police building. To Internal Affairs Division.
FIFTEEN
They made him wait in an outer office of Internal Affairs Division for a long time before calling him inside for the questioning. It was a technique they used on all their subjects, even though all their subjects were police officers and presumably knew about such obvious interrogation devices. They usually dragged out the Mutt and Jeff routine where one investigator sides with the subject against another ostensibly more hostile one. They used every old trick on their subjects, and the strange thing was that it worked. It worked on policemen who understood, even better than it worked on ordinary criminals who did not. The thing which made it work on policemen was the thing which made the lie detector work better—the conscience of the subject. So many ordinary criminals are sociopaths that the lie detector is utterly useless and interrogation techniques are frustrated because there isn’t a sense of guilt, the most valuable tool of the interrogator.
Karl waited and knew what it was for. He tried to think of a plausible story, but the more he thought, the less likely became any excuse he could conjure up. Instead of thinking about what he would tell them, he thought about an incident which had dominated his thoughts lately. It had happened since his recent transfer to Highland Park Detectives.
They had surrounded a house in a narcotics stakeout. A suspect had suddenly come running into an apartment from the direction of the house and up a flight of stairs with Karl running behind and commanding him to stop. Karl drew his magnum as he ran into the building and shouted at the runner. Then Karl stumbled and fell on the stairway, and his hand instinctively gripped the gun but the hammer only popped back part way and the gun didn’t fire. The runner was apprehended and turned out to be a frightened teenager who had seen men with guns and had nothing to do with the narcotics stakeout. Karl had to clench his fists to keep his hands st
eady every time he thought about what he had almost done accidentally that day.
He had bought that four-inch magnum partly because he felt it would let him fire more accurately now that he was having so much trouble with his monthly shooting qualification. He had come to a conclusion about the inexplicable bouts of fear which were attacking him with such great frequency. He reasoned that he was probably afraid of Gregory Powell’s friends. Perhaps while the case was on appeal Powell would send someone to harm the vital witness or his family. He never feared Smith, only Powell. That must be what the fear is all about, he told himself. He bought a better gun to make the bad feelings go away.
At last they called him into the Internal Affairs interrogation room, and Karl Hettinger discovered he was not a man to escape irony. One of the two investigators was Sergeant Riddle, whom he had worked with in the past, and who had been the chaplain presiding at the funeral of Ian Campbell.
“I put a dollar down on the counter before I walked out,” the subject told the two investigators after only a few prefatory questions.
“That wasn’t enough to pay for the cigars,” said Riddle. “We’re old partners, Karl. Do you want to tell me about it?”
“Well I just made a mistake then.”
“You didn’t make a mistake, Karl. The man at the market saw you stealing cigars there last month.”
“Well if I did it, I didn’t know I did it.”
And the investigators settled for that: a passive, tacit admission of guilt. He was ordered back in the afternoon.
His lunch was two cups of coffee. He thought about the interrogation during the lunch hour. Just a table and three chairs. A tape recorder on the table. Four walls which closed in on him. He thought of all the criminals he had interrogated in similar rooms, so stark and bleak and inhospitable. Strange he never thought about it before. He never thought about how frightened some of them must be.
That afternoon he sat across from Captain Colwell, the commander of Internal Affairs Division. The captain was not a man noted for a sense of humor. Now as he sat so still and somber, and stared at the subject, Karl felt himself hunching forward even more than usual. He was going to try to explain to the captain that it was a mistake. He intended to lie and say that it had never happened before. He was going to tell the biggest lie of all and say that he was not a thief. Instead he withered under that gaze. The captain looked so stern, so disapproving, so right to the subject.
“This is a resignation,” said the captain in a voice as businesslike as his gaze. “Do you wish to sign it?”
The subject looked at the form. It was already filled out. It had his name on it. He signed his name and resigned from the police department.
“You won’t be prosecuted for this theft,” said the captain. “But if we find you’ve been involved in other thefts, I can’t promise you anything. We have men checking. Do you understand?”
“I understand,” said the former police officer.
Internal Affairs Division report 66–703 was only six pages long. It sketched the circumstances of the theft and listed the witnesses’ names and addresses, and the address of the store, along with the date and time of occurrence.
There was no comment either official or unofficial as to extenuating circumstances. No other thefts were discovered, nor was anything said about the inconsistency of the shoplifting with the subject’s unblemished past. It was much the same as an ordinary police report which a policeman would write on an ordinary shoplifter.
Of course, the staff in the chief’s office and elsewhere where Karl had worked were deeply shocked. Everyone had liked the silent young officer with the sad eyes. It made them very uncomfortable to think he was a thief.
Helen Hettinger had never seen her husband cry, did not know of the episodes in the night when he cried, but she heard him just this once. He telephoned her to tell her he’d resigned.
“But I don’t understand, Karl. For shoplifting? What did they say you shoplifted?”
“I’ll tell you later. Anyway, it’s all over.”
“All over? Just like that? You resigned?” Fear was in the pregnant girl’s voice. He heard it and he burst into tears.
“Oh, Karl,” she said, and now she was weeping with him. “Oh, please, Karl. Come home and tell me. Please.”
“I … I … don’t want to come home just now, Helen. I … I … just feel like going fishing. I just … I’ll take a drive and go fishing.”
A few days later he received a written notice that the police credit union was calling back its note for six thousand dollars. The credit union demanded payment within forty-eight hours. Helen’s parents helped them secure the money to pay.
The Hettingers also learned that their police medical insurance would be canceled May 30, two days before the baby arrived. Fortunately, Kaiser Hospital, with whom they were insured, said they would deliver the baby for the group insurance fee just as though they were still insured.
“Care to talk about it?” asked Jim Cannell on the telephone when he first heard the shocking news.
“I just blew it, Jim,” said Karl, and that was as much explanation as he offered to any of them about his disgrace.
“Okay, that’s good enough for me,” said the chesty voice of Cannell on the other end. “How’re you fixed for bread until you find a job?”
“I’m okay, Jim.”
“Stew James wants to know too,” said Cannell. “About whether you need a loan.”
“With all his kids? Working three jobs? Tell him thanks, Jim. Tell all my friends thanks but we’ll get along.”
And that was all he ever said to any of his friends on the subject of his resignation.
His parents came as soon as they heard.
“You say you don’t know why you took things?” his mother asked, as the three of them sat in his living room, father, mother, son.
“No I don’t, Mom. I just did it and I don’t understand it.”
“Well, you’re out of it now,” she said. “Maybe it’s a blessing that you’re out of it, son.” And she turned and looked at Karl’s father who sat awkwardly on the other side of the room, his big workman’s hands dangling uncomfortably from his huge wrists. He leaned forward once or twice to catch a word here and there, but he was partially deaf.
“I’ll explain it all to your father later,” she said. “The main thing is don’t fret about it. It’s over now and everything’s going to work out.”
“Thank you,” he said, and for the first time ever she saw tears in her son’s eyes.
Karl looked across at his father, and the carpenter looked helpless and confused as though he wanted to say something to his son, but didn’t know what to say or how to say it.
Helen Hettinger stepped into the room for a moment, big with her eight-month pregnancy. She looked at the three of them, the saddened family trying desperately for the first time to talk intimately to one another. Helen thought of the story Karl had once told her about his wanting a baseball glove so badly, and dreaming of being a second baseman or shortstop, and how, when the gift from his father finally came, it was a catcher’s mitt. He had laughed when he told her how he played second base for years with that catcher’s mitt. And how when he got older and begged for his first fishing tackle, his father had mistakenly bought him ocean fishing tackle. The boy had strapped the cumbersome gear to his back and bicycled all the way to Hanson Dam to fish for tiny bluegills. Helen never saw a blond boy fishing alone on a lake bank without thinking of young Karl Hettinger.
Now it was the carpenter she pitied, sitting there, with his big awkward hands. He would have been willing to drive a nail or a million of them, to saw a forest of lumber, anything to help his son. But there was nothing he was able to do. They couldn’t even speak. It was the ancient inherited shame of fathers and sons.
When they finished the brief quiet talk, Karl, for the first time he could remember, kissed his mother. His father touched him with a bruised, knuckle-heavy hand, and nodded, and tried to
say something. Then they left.
That summer, after their daughter, Christine, was born, Helen Hettinger insisted that her unemployed husband accompany Jim Cannell on a fishing trip to Crystal Lake in the High Sierras. It was a therapy trip for Karl, the first tolerable days since he left the police force. The two men fished and drank beer and shucked their clothes and swam in the cold water, never once talking about police work or of Karl’s leaving the force.
Jim Cannell wanted to tell Karl how he felt, how they all felt about his leaving the department. That it didn’t matter at all. That if he stole, there had to be an underlying reason, because he was the most honest man Cannell had ever known. He wanted to say that if Karl would just go out and see, he’d learn that none of his friends had deserted him. But Karl was such a private person Cannell didn’t know how to tell him these things. And Karl never asked, was afraid to ask.
While crossing Donner Pass in the pickup they heard the news on the radio. Los Angeles Chief of Police William H. Parker had been fatally stricken with a heart attack. Cannell was stunned by the news. Parker had seemed invulnerable. Karl was deeply shocked and spent that night talking more than Cannell had heard him talk in years. He told one story after another of the chief, things he had learned while driving for him. Now it didn’t matter if he broke the confidence. He admired the chief to the point of adulation. He was grief stricken that night.
Someone later mentioned that the object of his loyalty had every opportunity to prevent his dismissal. Could have ordered a more thorough inquiry into something as strange as an outstanding policeman like Karl Hettinger stealing cigars. Could have saved his devoted subordinate.
Someone else would say these things. Such a thing would never have occurred to Karl Hettinger. He was a thief a hundred times over. He had betrayed the department. He had betrayed the chief.
The Onion Field Page 39