Mr. Blue: Memoirs of a Renegade

by Edward Bunker

  When we were past the queens' tank, we continued through a maze of steel stairs, bars, past pale green tile walls, past white tanks, black tanks, Mexican tanks. We came to a tank with a nearly empty runway. A bridge game was in progress on the floor, a folded blanket serving as a table. The escorting deputy handed the tank deputy my booking papers and a name tag that went into a slot on a board. "You're in cell six," he said, beckoning me toward the gate into the tank. First he had to unlock the steel door of a control panel beside the gate. "Fish on the line!" he yelled. "Cell six."

  He unlocked the tank gate, pulled it open and I stepped inside.

  The bridge players looked up; a few heads appeared in open cell doors to look me over. One was black. Everyone was segregated in the jail except fruiters and killers. That seemed to have some irony.

  I walked down the tier. It was narrow and I had to step across the bridge game, excusing myself as I did so. I reached cell six. It already had two men on the two bunks. I'd known the jail was crowded, but somehow I expected that men on trial for their lives would have a cell to themselves. I hesitated. "Come on in," said the man on the top bunk. He was small and muscular, in his late thirties, with gray sideburns. The man seated on the bottom bunk wore a tank top undershirt that bulged at the gut. He looked to be Italian.

  From the front the jailer shook a lever that made all the cell gates vibrate loudly. "Grab a hold a one! Grab a hole!"

  The card game broke up. The two or three other men out on the runway made for their cells. The tier started to clear. I stepped inside. I had some fear. I was being locked in a cell with two grown men facing the most serious felonies imaginable. From the front the jailer yelled "Watch the gates! Coming closed!" All the cell gates slammed shut with a horrendous crash of steel on steel.

  Throughout the jail, gates were vibrating and slamming shut. It was a general lockup. The heavyset man on the bottom bunk moved over. "Sit on down. How old are you?"

  "Nineteen," I lied.

  He shook his head and grunted. His name, I would learn, was Johnny Cicerone, and he was a real mob guy, or the LA version thereof. The mob, I would learn, has little enclaves around Southern California, but it doesn't carry the power it wields in the east. Johnny controlled a bookmaking operation in several factories and the general hospital, plus he was the muscle for the Sica Brothers, Jimmy the Weasel Fratianno or Dominic Brooklier, the capo de regime on the west coast. Legend had it that they made their bones taking out Bugsy Siegel.

  "How'd you get in high power?" asked the smaller man, whose name was Gordon D'Arcy. "Who'd they say you killed?" (In jail or prison, I would learn, you never ask anyone what they did, but rather what the authorities allege they did. That way you could answer without admitting anything.)

  "Nobody. I stabbed a bull in Lancaster." I kept silent about how superficial it was.

  "Stabbed a hack! Damn!" His surprise was evident. He gestured toward my bruised and battered face. "Looks like they fucked you up."

  "Yeah, they danced on me a little. It's no big thing." The stoicism valued in the underworld was already part of me. Never snivel. Try to laugh, no matter what.

  D'Arcy grinned. In the up-coming days I learned that he was a professional armed robber facing a life sentence for "kidnap/robbery." It was a technical kidnap: he'd moved a supermarket manager from produce to the rear office to open the safe. Moving someone from room to room triggered the "Little Lindbergh" law. If the victim had suffered any injury, D'Arcy would have faced the gas chamber. As it was, he only faced life if convicted. The victim said he could identify D'Arcy solely by his eyes. The perpetrator had worn a ski mask over his entire face, so the defense attorney put five men in identical clothes and ski masks and paraded them in front of the witness and jury. The witness instantly pointed to D'Arcy. He screamed then fainted. The jury deliberated for less than three hours before finding him guilty. Now he was on appeal.

  Cicerone rifled a deck of playing cards. "C'mon, Gordon, lemme get my money back."

  "Get your ass up here and get whipped."

  Cicerone grabbed a pencil and a tablet already marked with the scores of previous games. "Go ahead and stretch out on my bunk," he said to me. "We don't eat for about half an hour or so."

  "Thanks. Say, where do I sleep?"

  "There's a mattress under there." He pointed under the bottom bunk. "We pull it out at night. You're lucky you're not in some other tank where they've got five to a cell."

  I pulled out the mattress. It was more of a pad than mattress, and it was coated with a sheen from hundreds of sweating bodies. I was too tired to put the clean mattress cover they'd given me on now. I pushed the mattress back and stretched out on the bunk. It was like a little cave. What a day - and it wasn't over yet. What was going to happen? No doubt they would take me to court in a few days and rule me unfit to be tried as a juvenile. Then I would begin the process of trial in the Superior Court. What then? I'd personally known one young man, Bob Pate, who had tried to escape from

  Lancaster. He had been a juvenile court commitment and they had brought him here. He was eighteen or nineteen and they had given him six months. I would turn sixteen in four months. Would a judge send me to San Quentin? One thing, at least I'd be an adult in the eyes of the law.

  While I mused, I heard the gate at the front of the tank rattle as metal bowls and coffee cans and other things were pushed inside. A khaki clad trusty soon appeared outside the bars. He counted out nine slices of bread and put them on the bars. After him came another trusty carrying a huge water can with a long spout.

  D'Arcy jumped down off the bed and grabbed several cups that he put on the floor inside the bars. The trusty hesitated until D'Arcy gave him a quarter. He then filled all of them and continued down the tier. Everything was cheaper back then.

  My cell mates ended their game to drink the hot beverage.

  It was a sweet tea with a taste I'll never forget. It was served every night.

  "Chow time!" bellowed a voice at the front. I heard the click lack of a gate being opened at the rear. An obese Asian shuffled past in slippers. "Who's that?" I asked.

  "Yama shit or somethin' like that," Cicerone said. "He's been here since forty-five ... or maybe forty-six. Sentenced to death for being a traitor."

  A traitor? What happened?"

  "You tell him," Cicerone said motioning to D'Arcy.

  "He's an American citizen. He either joined the Japanese Army in Japan, or in the Philippines. He was in on the Bataan death march. I don't think they'll top him. He'll get a reversal or a commutation or something."

  "Motherfucker deserves a gassing," Cicerone said. "If anybody does."

  When the fat Japanese American came back, another gate opened and another man came by. He was Lloyd Sampsell and he nodded to D'Arcy. They knew each other from the Big Yard in San Quentin. Sampsell was one of the "Yacht Bandits," so-named because after they took off big payroll robberies, they would sail up and down the California coast in a yacht. He had escaped from prison, killed either a security guard or an officer in a robbery, and was sentenced to die. He had been brought from Death Row for some kind of court hearing.

  The next man was also headed for Death Row. He was big, with a hawk nose that had been broken more than once. He was Caryl Chessman, the "red light" bandit. I'd heard about him. He was supposed to be very smart. A detective once compared me to him. He passed and returned to his cell. Next was a small man with a sharp ferret face and scar tissue that stretched the flesh around his right eye. I was standing at the bars. He did a double-take and stopped when he saw me. "Goddamn! Who're you?"

  I recognized the underlying message. My face turned fiery.

  "Move it, Cook!" yelled the guard up front.

  Cook winked at me and continued to the front for his food. When he came back, I was at the rear of the cell, sitting on the toilet. He was looking for me. When he saw me, he blew a kiss. I didn't know who he was. I didn't care who he was. I jumped up. "Fuck you! You fuckin' punk motherfuck
er."

  "Aww, baby, don't be so mean."

  "Get in your cell, Cook," yelled the jailer again. "Grab a hole!"

  When Cook was gone, I asked my cell partners, "Who's that motherfucker?"

  "Billy Cook," D'Arcy said. "He killed a family in Missouri and dumped them down a well. Then he killed some other people while he was coming west. They caught him in Mexico and threw him back across the border. He killed some guy that picked him up here in California. He got sentenced to death yesterday."

  I vaguely remembered hearing about the case. "He's got an eye that won't close, right?"

  "Yep. When he nabbed them, they didn't know if he was awake or asleep because of that eye."

  "Front section . . . comin' open," yelled the jailer. "Watch the gates."

  The gates of all the other cells began to vibrate; then they opened.

  "Come on," D'Arcy said. I followed him and Cicerone onto the runway where about a score of men were lining up at the front while khaki trusties scooped spaghetti with a red sauce into a combination plate and bowl. It had the width of a plate and had sides like a bowl.

  "How come we come out together and those other guys come out one at a time?"

  "They're full-fledged monsters. We're only half monsters."

  "The ones already sentenced to die, they keep them apart — or if they think they might cause trouble."

  The cells were left open while we ate; then we were locked up while trusties swept and mopped the run. When the floor was dry, the gates in the front section were opened again. D'Arcy look a folded blanket and spread it outside the cell doorway and plopped down two decks of Bee playing cards. Other prisoners gathered and sat down on the runway around the blanket. "You in?" D'Arcy asked Cicerone.

  "Uh uh. My lawyer's comin' tonight. I gotta write some shit down for him."

  It was a poker game. Lowball, where the lowest hand wins, and the best is ace through five. It is also, as I would learn over time, me poker game that requires the most skill. Lying on the bottom hunk, I watched the game without being in anyone's way.

  After dinner, the jail was quieter, though never silent. On the walkway outside the tank, little bells dinged and little red lights flashed. These were signals for "prowlers," the guards who walked on quiet feet along the tanks. Cicerone was called out. While he was gone, the game broke up for count. We had to line up on the runway in ranks of three, so the two jailers walking along outside could count us by threes. "Count's clear," yelled a deputy when he reached the end.

  "Want some tea?" D'Arcy said.

  "Yeah. But I'd rather have a cigarette."

  "You don't have any cigarettes? Here." He dumped several from a pack of Camels and handed them to me. I hesitated. I wanted no obligations. It was one of the primary unwritten rules of jail and prison: don't get obligated. "Go ahead," he insisted, so I kept the cigarettes.

  "Have any money?" he asked.

  I shook my head.

  "Family?"

  I shook my head.

  He shook his head. "It's a tough life if you don't have nobody."

  He took a roll of toilet paper, unrolled and loosely re-rolled a bunch of it; then tucked the bottom up through the hole in the middle, put it on the rim of the toilet bowl and set it afire. It burned in a cone, like a burner, and lasted long enough to make a metal cup of hot tea. He poured half into another cup and handed it to me. It was good, especially with a cigarette. He told me about Johnny Cicerone. The so-called "gangster" squad of the LAPD was after him. He was collecting a $2,000 debt from a wanna-be who had stiffed him. In the course of the collection, he had slapped the guy and taken him to a cocktail lounge in a bowling alley on Vermont that the debtor owned. That was where the money was. He'd gotten paid, but the LAPD was trying to bury him. Because Cicerone had slapped the stiff with a pistol they had charged him with kidnap/robbery with intended violence. It was the same offense that had gotten Caryl Chessman on Death Row. Even if a death sentence was unlikely, a life sentence was not . . .

  "What's going to happen to him?" I asked.

  D'Arcy indicated that he had no idea. (A couple of years later I would discover that Cicerone had plea-bargained to something else where he served about three years in Soledad.)

  The front gate opened and Cicerone came down the tank and into the cell. "Any tea left?"

  "Yeah. I saved you a cup. Gotta heat it."

  From elsewhere in the jail, through the walls came the vibration of the gates as they slammed shut.

  A minute later, our deputy yelled, "Grab a hole A one."

  The men on the runway headed for their cells. One of them slopped at our gate. "Here," he said, handing me a folded note. "Cook sent it."

  I opened the note, reading only a few words before I threw it in the toilet. He would see me when the tank went to showers. D'Arcy and Cicerone were looking at me with sympathy. "He's a sicko," D'Arcy said.

  "Yeah." I half hoped that my cell partners would help me even I though I knew it was unlikely. They had just met me. They had their own very serious troubles. Their sympathy ended with sympathy, not intervention. Besides, in the cage he who cannot stand alone must certainly fall.

  "Fuck him," I said.

  "What're you gonna do?"

  "I'm not gonna let him fuck me . . . and I'm not gonna run to the Man. When do we shower?"

  "Tomorrow."

  "He wants to see me in the shower."

  "Jesus."

  "Got any old blades and a toothbrush?"

  "In the milk carton." Cicerone glanced over at a milk carton on the shelf at the rear. It had one side cut away so it served as a knick-knack box as well. Old rusted razor blades, pencil stubs, a toothbrush whose bristles had been used to clean something besides teeth. Using the flame from half a book of matches, I set the toothbrush on fire. When it was soft, I twisted off the bristles, lighted more matches, and when it was burning and soft, blew out the matches and pushed half a razor blade into the plastic, squeezing the plastic around it. I'd seen a Chicano in juvenile hall open a guy's back from shoulder to hip with one slice. A hundred and twenty-five stitches. As deadly weapons go, it wasn't much, but it was the best I could devise under the circumstances. My cell partners watched me with impassive faces. Only when Cicerone patted me on the back and said, "You've got guts, youngster," did I know positively that they were on my side.

  Despite total exhaustion, I found it hard to sleep that first night in the county jail. High power was an outside tank. It had the wall of bars, beyond which was the jailer's walkway — but then there were small windows, through which came the sounds of the city at night, autos and streetcars on Broadway ten floors below. The streetcars rang two bells before moving from each stop. The sound stirred the same inchoate feelings as a train whistle in the night. Why was I so different? Was I crazy? I didn't think so despite my sometimes seemingly insane behavior. There seemed to be a preordained chain of cause and effect. In the morning I planned to attack a maniac who had killed at least seven times. What else could I do? Call out for a deputy? Yes, they would protect me this time, but the stigma of cowardice and being a stool pigeon, which is how my peers would see it, would haunt me forever. It would invite open season on me. I did have one advantage: he would never expect me to attack without warning, not the skinny little kid he saw. He would assume his string of bodies would paralyze me.

  Despite the storms in my mind, my exhaustion was so complete that I fell fast asleep.

  In the morning, before going to showers, we had to strip our mattresses, fold up the covers and blankets and line up all our personal property on the floor against the cell wall. We were only allowed to wear underwear and shoes and carry a towel. While we were showering a dozen deputies would search the tank for contraband. I folded my towel around the toothbrush handle. I was confident it would pass unnoticed as I went through the gate in the crowd.

  Several deputies passed our cell. The gates of the rear section popped open. The men already sentenced to die went first. Billy Cook look
ed at me and winked as he passed. I was expressionless although my stomach was hollow.

  Seconds later, a jailer called, "Bunker, property slip and jumper." In those days, before riveted wristbands, we carried property slips for identification and, because jail prisoners kept their civilian shirts, a denim jumper stamped l.a. county jail was required when out of the tank. I pulled on my pants and the denim jumper. I couldn't take the toothbrush with me.

  "Give it here," D'Arcy said.

  I handed it to him.

  "Cell six! Coming open! Watch the gate!" yelled the jailer.

  The gate vibrated and popped open. I walked down the tier, past the faces behind the bars. Where was I going? Had somebody snitched that there was going to be trouble?

  An escort waited. "Where'm I going?" I asked.

  "Bertillion Room."

  Bertillion Room? That was where mug photos and fingerprints were taken. Bertillion was the nineteenth-century man who used skull and bone measurements to identify criminals, a useless procedure that was replaced by fingerprints. The name remained. What did they want me for?

  I It was for a thumbprint for a Youth Authority detainer. It took but a minute; then the deputy escorted me back through the jail. Billy Cook was on my mind. If showers were over it would be another week until we confronted each other. Anything could happen in a week. He might be moved to Death Row at San Quentin. He had already been sentenced.

  We came to a corner. Straight ahead was the route to the tank. The deputy turned: we were heading for the shower room. Showers were still in progress.

  The dice had thrown me snake eyes. My stomach sank. For a moment I wanted to blurt out: "I've got trouble with Billy Cook." I couldn't do it. Whatever happened ... let it happen.

  We turned another corner. A score of deputies filled the corridor outside an open grille gate, beyond which was a short hall and a room full of benches and steam. The showers were beyond that.