I hardly ever cheated. Naturally I'd form favorites, and there would be certain players that I'd like better than others, or somebody would get close to a record legitimately and then it would be very hard not to cheat a little. A pitcher might have a shutout, two outs in the ninth inning, and somebody would hit a single, Then I might get angry and re-roll, but the few times I did that I felt bad about it. It spoiled the record, and I swore that I wouldn't do it anymore.
And so, when I was twenty-seven years old, I still had a baseball league going, if you can imagine that. It was something Patti could never understand. I'd be loaded and be up all night in the kitchen playing games. And when I went into the sanitarium, I took my notebook with my schedule, my dice, erasers, pencils, ruler and the whole thing, and I'm playing my league in my room. The nurse came in a couple of times and I explained it to her and she couldn't believe it.
There were some women and a couple of men who had rooms in this place. It was like a hotel. After a few days I started getting out and talking to the people. I met one lady who was about forty-five. She had diamond rings on and just reeked of money. Her pupils were pinpoints. She said, "Oh, hello! Are you the new boy in number seven?" She said, `I'm Mrs. So-andso." We started talking. She said, "What's your trouble?' I said, "I'm a dope fiend." She said, "Tsk, tsk, tsk! Oh, what a shame!" I said, "What's your trouble?" She said, "Well, I have this condition-my veins don't function correctly-and I have to have morphine. It opens up the veins into my brain. And I have trouble sleeping: they give me morphine to help me sleep. And I need the massage-I have muscle problems, you know-I have pains in my back, in my legs, in my lower legs." She showed me her legs.
I met the other patients and they all looked wealthy and they were all stoned. I found out that these people just checked into the sanitarium from time to time, stayed there, and stayed loaded. They get their morphine and their massages, and who can tell what else they get. You know, the guy massaging them-probably whatever they want they get. I thought, "Wow, these people really have it made. No police involved. No jail." I thought, "How beautiful!" I mentioned it to my doctor and he said, "Yeah, but unfortunately you're not in that position, are you, financially?"
I kicked after about two weeks, and I was in pretty good shape with the whirlpool and the rubdowns and the vitamins and the food, but I had a terrible mental craving and I'd have nightmares about dope, just continuously. I was worried. I thought, "Well, here I am checked into this place, and it's costing all this money, and right away I'm trying to get the dosage up." I knew that wasn't right.
It came time to leave, and I went home to Patti, and after we made love she said that she'd decided that maybe it would be better if we didn't stay together right away-just to see how I did-because she was afraid I'd start using again. My feelings were hurt but there was nothing I could do. I stayed with my dad and Thelma for a while and then I went up to my mother's house. And immediately, as soon as I got there, I got ahold of this guy Henry and scored.
Right after that, I went to a jam session with some guys at a place called the Blue Room in Santa Monica. I was playing and drinking and I got sick to my stomach and had to vomit, so I went to the bathroom. Everybody at the place was guys that I knew, so I left my horn sitting on the stage. When I came out it was gone. I said, "Did anybody see my horn?" Nobody said anything. I said, "Man, somebody must have seen it!" They all just froze. I looked everywhere. The case was gone; the horn was gone. One of them just stole it off the stand. I thought, "These are the kinds of people I'm dealing with. These are my friends." Here I'd just gotten out of the sanitarium; I'd lost my saxophone; I had no money; my wife didn't want me in the house I'd bought; I was completely alone; and I was getting hooked again.
I started working with a borrowed horn at different little gigs with a trio or a quartet or as a soloist with somebody else's rhythm section. I had run into this girl Penny. She was short and had a gorgeous shape, black hair. She was Jewish. Extremely pretty. She kept calling me and wanting me to score for her. She had a little car and she'd drive out and meet me and give me the money, and I'd go to East L.A., and then we'd go someplace and fix.
I remember the first time. We went back to my mother's house to fix, and my mother was asleep. There was a garage in the back that wasn't being used so I had Penny park her car in there, and then we went into the house, snuck into the bathroom, and locked the door. I fixed about three or four caps and put half a cap or a cap in the spoon and fixed her. I started to go to the sink to clean the outfit, and all of a sudden she looked up at me, put her arms around me, pulled me down to her, and she kissed me. That was her thing, kissing and having that intimacy at the same time the stuff was hitting her. She was so sweet and so nice, I couldn't believe she was actually using heroin. All of a sudden I hear a noise, a voice: "Junior, is that you in there?" I whispered, "Cool it. It's my mother." I said, "Yeah, it's me. I'm just going to the bathroom." "I thought I heard voices." "No, I'm here all alone. I'm just going to the bathroom." "You don't have any of that stuff, do you?" "No, ma, go back to bed. Everything's alright." "I thought I heard a girl's voice." "Don't be silly, ma, go back to bed. There's nobody here but me." I waited, and meanwhile this girl is kissing me, trying to hold on to me. She put my hand on her breast and was rubbing up against me. She was grabbing my joint. I told her, "Cool it! Cool it! We've got to get out of here! Just be quiet!" I opened the door and looked out in the front room. There was no light. Straight ahead was the front door. I told her, "Come on!" We ran out and into the garage, and I pulled the door closed.
Usually heroin kills your sex drive, but for Penny it was like Spanish fly. We got into the back of her car and she was all over me; as I say, she had a beautiful body, and she was so ex cited she got me excited. I got most of her clothes off. In fact, I got all of her clothes off, and there she was naked in the car, and I started making love to her. She was clean; she smelled good; and she begged me to take my pants off, so I did; she started licking me and sucking me and she said, "Please put it in!" I didn't know how old she was. She looked, very young to me. She said, "Don't worry. I'll be alright. I've got a diaphragm." So we had intercourse, and it was really nice, and when we finished she started telling me "I love you." and everything. "I wish we could live together." She was really far-out. I told her, "Well, give me a call, like, whenever you want." She left and I went back to the house.
There were lights on in the front room and the bedroom and the bathroom. At first I thought it might be the police, but I looked in the window and saw that it was just my mother. She was in the bathroom with the door open. She was down on her hands and knees. She had forbidden me to fix in the house, and I hoped I'd cleaned up everything. I walked in and said, "What's wrong?" She says, "I was right! There was a girl!" Penny had left a little scarf and her purse in the bathroom. My mother holds out her hand. Here are these capsules, three empty capsules. She flipped out and told me, "If you ever do that again I don't want you coming back here!" We had a terrible argument. I said, "What do you want me to do? Get busted? I'm not hurting anyone coming here. I'm not putting any heat on you." She said, "I just don't like it! It's not right!" I told her alright, I won't do it again.
I got a job at a club in Inglewood with a Hawaiian name. It was a well-known place in those days for jazz sessions, and I told Penny about it, so she came to the club. Right before this I'd run into a guy that was a merchant marine. He'd been to Saudi Arabia or some place where he'd gotten some incredible heroin. Sometimes with stuff, when you put the water in it in the spoon and you put the match under it, it'll dissolve but dirty particles and residue will be left. His stuff would cook up perfectly. It was a light shade of green; I'd never seen anything like it; and it was just dynamite. I had some of this with me, and it came intermission time, and it was an afternoon session, and I wanted to fix. Penny said she was sick and would I please give her a taste.
I couldn't figure out any place to do it, so we went for a drive. I didn't have very long. Then I saw
a gas station that looked fairly deserted. There was only one guy working there. It was early evening. I parked the car around by the restroom, and I figured that this guy would be pretty busy. He was waiting on somebody out at the island, and he couldn't see the bathroom. It was a pay toilet. I opened the door of the men's and I said, "Come on."
I used my belt to tie up, and I fixed first. As I say, the stuff was marvelous; it was all I could do to keep from falling out. I cooked up just a little more, and I'd just started to fix Penny when I happened to look up and see, on the frosted glass of the door, a black sleeve with a white insignia. It was the arm of a policeman's uniform, and he was working on the lock. They were trying to break in without making noise. As soon as I saw that, I shot the stuff in, and "Mmmmm, oooooh, that's goooood." I whispered, "Shut up! The cops are out there!" She said, "Ohhhh!" I said, "Shut up!" I looked at her. Her eyes were going back in her head and I thought, "Oh, God, this is too strong for her!" She's got a little trickle of blood running down her arm.
I put my belt back on. I grabbed her and pulled her over to the sink and washed the blood off. I threw the stuff and the outfit into the toilet. I put the spoon in my mouth to suck off the burnt part. I'm doing all this-it's incredible how fast I'm doing it. I stick the spoon in the bottom of the trash and that's when I hear, "Open up! Police!" I flush the toilet, praying everything'll go down. I'm telling Penny, "Straighten up! Put water on your face!" I yell, "I'm coming right out." I open the door and see two cops and this gas station attendant, and just as we walk out a detective's car pulls up. One of the cops grabs me and says, "Alright, what were you doing in there?"
I thought they knew we were getting loaded. I heard the attendant say, "Yeah, well, I peeked in, and she was bent down, and I'm sure she was, they were, you know." I got the impression that they thought she was giving me head and I thought, "Thank God!" And then I realized that that was why they hadn't broken the door down. They wanted to catch us in the act.
I immediately told them a story. I told them that I was play ing in a club over here and we'd had a couple of drinks and we were out looking for a place to get a sandwhich when she'd gotten sick at her stomach, so we stopped at the gas station. She was sick and wanted me to be with her, so I took her into the men's toilet. I didn't think there was anything wrong with that. And the harness bulls, I think we had them licked, but then the detectives came over.
The detectives shined their lights in our eyes. They pushed me up against the wall and shook me down. They went into the bathroom and started going through it and came up with this spoon, and they said, "Aha!" You know. They made me take my coat off and roll up my sleeves, and they saw the marks, and they said, "Were you fixing in there?" I said, "No, I wasn't fixing in there." They said, "Well, you're going to jail." I told them, "I'm working at this place. My horn's out on the stand. What's going to happen? Give me a break, man! What are you doing?" They took us to the Inglewood substation.
They separated us and interrogated us, and finally a guy came in and said, "Well, it's all over. The chick copped out." He said, "I don't know if you know it or not, but she's a minor. You're going to prison for fifteen to life." I said, "I thought she was nineteen or twenty!" He said, "Well, she's seventeen." Fortunately, I stuck to my story and she stuck to hers. They'd told her I copped out, too, but she didn't go for it.
They kept us all night. They threatened me. The next morning they took us to the old county jail downtown. They allowed me one phone call, and I called the club and asked them to put the horn away. I never saw Penny again. They cut her loose the next day. But they told me they were going to prosecute me for furnishing to a minor.
They couldn't make anything stick, see: I'd only been out of the sanitarium a few weeks and I'd fixed only a few times at varied places. It would have been very hard to get me on a marks beef. They didn't have anything to hold me on but I didn't realize that, so when they told me they'd give me a break and send me to the psychopathic ward of the General Hospital and then to a hearing before a judge who'd send me to Norwalk or Camarillo for ninety days, I figured anything would be better than fifteen to life and I said alright.
They drove me to the hospital, handed me a paper, and told me to sign. They told me it was for my property. The attendant took me upstairs, put me on a table, and wheeled me into a room. I looked around. Here's an old wino next to me. He's naked. He's strapped to a table, and he's screaming. And he's peeing. Pee's shooting up in the air. There's another guy, and he's playing with himself and growling. I stayed there for two weeks. They put me in a room with eight other people, all nuts, and they filled me with downers, all kinds of downers, millions of downers. I could hardly walk. I slept nearly all the time. That's the way they keep you cool.
They wouldn't allow me to shave, so I looked awful, and one day I woke up in this corner they kept me in and there was Patti sitting on the edge of the bed. She looked at me and said, "Why did you do this?" I said, "Well, I thought everything was finished: you didn't want me to come home." She said, "I was going to have you come home right after you got out of the sanitarium, but we decided it would be better to let you have a little time on your own so you'd really appreciate coming home. And then . . . " I said, "Well, it's a bum beef." She said, "It's not that! I found out from your mother that you brought some little whore, some little tramp off the streets, into the house, and you were shooting dope and making love in the bathroom! You took this girl out to the garage at night and made love to her!" She started crying. "How could you do anything like that?" - - -- -- --- - -
I realized that I'd fallen into a trap. All I would have had to do was just be cool for a little while. I started crying, I tried to hold on to her, and I said, "Please give me another chance." She said, "It's impossible. You're hopeless." She said, "It's useless. Look at you." She said, "Your dad will be at the hearing. He'll help you." She shook her head and got up and walked out the door.
When the day came, they marched me down to the hearing in pajamas and a robe. We went to a courtroom that's right there in the building, and here's my dad and Thelma and Patti. All the other cases were for people who had done outrageous things-threatening their families with butcher knives, peeing out in the front yard. They brought up my name and the judge started talking. He said, "We're going to send you to Norwalk and try to save your life. You've tried it with a private sanitarium and you found that that didn't work, so we're going to send you to an institution." Then my father started shouting: "He's not going to go to any state institution! I've heard all about them! They're corrupt, lousy places! And you're not going to get money out of the misery of people like this! You're not going to get it out of my son! If he needs to go back to a sanitarium, I'll pay for it, but he's not going to go to a California mental institution!" The judge really got angry, but my dad kept raving about graft and corruption and the system, and the judge finally just wanted him to shut up so he yelled, "Alright! But mark my words: this boy'll be-I won't even give him a year-he'll be in a state penitentiary instead of a hospital! You mark my words! I'll stake my reputation on it! Alright! Get him out of here!"
I went to my dad and hugged and thanked him. I kissed Patti. Then I got my stuff, changed clothes, and walked downstairs, and when I got to the gate the guy said, "Here, sign this thing." I signed it, and as I signed it I read it, and I saw on the paper where it said "committed by" and it was me! I had committed myself! The police had just put a shuck on me and the funny part was I had spent two weeks in this place and if it hadn't been for my dad I would have been sent to Norwalk for six or nine months or maybe a year because I had committed myself voluntarily and didn't know it.
In 1953 I was separated from Patti. I stayed in Long Beach with my dad for a while and then I ran into a girl, Susan Douglas. She had been married to Kendell Douglas, the bass player, but before that she was married to another guy who was very wealthy and he was in some kind of asylum back east. He was giving her money and she was living up on the Strip in an apartment hotel. I
saw her a couple of times while I was staying with my dad, and she told me she would like to have me live with her. She'd like to take care of me. I realized that I couldn't live in Long Beach because it was too far away from the jobs, so I moved into L.A. and got a little room in Hollywood.
Susan kept wanting me to visit her and stay with her, but she wanted to make love and I didn't want to make love to her. There was something about her; she didn't move me in that way. And she was a beautiful girl, too. Her hair was a chestnut color, and she was very seductive, a real feminine girl, and she was young and unworldly and easily led; I could have led her anywhere. But I couldn't have intercourse with her because she didn't move me, and she was so nice I couldn't act like anything was happening that wasn't happening. She was the kind of girl you wouldn't want to hurt. I wouldn't.
During the time I was going to see her, Susan would let me use her car whenever I wanted. She had a custom-made Cadillac that her husband had given her. A special paint job. The whole thing. When I stopped it at a stop sign people would walk over and say, "Wow!" A couple of times driving downtown, where there was a cop directing traffic, he'd walk over and say, "Boy, where did you get this car? What a beautiful car!" It was a greenish color, but unlike any green I've ever seen. It was a lightish green that had gold flecks in it. A greenish gold that you could see forever into. It was like looking into a lake. It had a white top, a convertible. The seats were covered with actual cowhide and the rugs were white shag. It had every device known. The aerial had a button; the trunk had a button; the hood had a button; and not only the windows but the wind-wings had a button. There was a light that went on if the doors weren't locked, and it had a button you locked all the doors with. It had a radio with four speakers, two in front and two in the back. It had an ashtray for the driver and an ashtray for the passenger ...
Straight Life Page 16