Mr. Blue: Memoirs of a Renegade

by Edward Bunker

  I was rudely awakened by a screaming Jack Santo. "Lemme talk to the Governor. I'll tell 'em about some unsolved murders — murders we didn't do. I know who iced the two Tonys! And Bugsy! I have a lot of things I want to tell somebody. I know who killed two kids in Urbana back in '46."

  Beneath the cries, in counterpoint, were Emmett's vile curses hurled with contempt at his crime partner. Thieves fall out. This time it was surely true.

  A giddiness overcame me. I felt the fool in a wild carnival. "Toilet paper!" I yelled at the very top of my lungs. "Toilet paper! I gotta wipe my ass! Help! Toilet paper!"

  The first watch Sergeant appeared outside my cell. "Bunker, what are you screaming about?"

  I felt guilty. It was Sergeant Blair, one of the kindest human beings I ever met in my life. He had worked in San Quentin for over twenty years then, would stay nearly another twenty, and would write just one disciplinary report in all that rime. He was not unctuous; he was no religious fanatic. He was simply a nice guy when he was young, and would stay nice when he got old. "Sorry, Sarge . . . but I do need some toilet paper. Whaddya want, I should tear off my shirt tad and wipe my ass with that?"

  "No. I'll get some. Hold it down, would you."

  "Sure, Sarge. I'll do that." How could I do anything else? I was the only prisoner on the tier. Any disturbance had to come from me, and most guards would be less forbearing than Sergeant Blair.

  During the long night of waiting, I sat leaning against the cell bars. I dozed off once or twice, only to be snapped alert by some sound down the way, a key rammed in a lock and the voice of the chaplain, which I recognized although I couldn't hear what he said. I did hear Perkins tell him, "Get the fuck outta here you psalm-singing sonofabitch!" Although I would have gladly thrown the switch on both of them, I had a grudging respect for Perkins, who was facing his mortality with courage (far more than I would have shown), whereas Santos was a despicable, sniveling cur. I could hear his sobs from time to time.

  Soon enough the high window outside the walkway slowly turned gray and the rising sun cast shadows of the bars across the polished concrete floor. The elevator came often as officials brought word of final denials from the courts. The morning was bright when the elevator came for the last time. I could hear many guards down the tier. The condemned men would be cuffed and

  put in restraints. The guards would press tight around each of them, so they could do nothing but go along. Down the elevator, through the green steel of the rotunda, through another steel door, they would walk past Barbara Graham. She was in the overnight condemned cell. On this morning it would not be a courteous "ladies first."

  Goodbye, fellas, you lousy child-killing . . . Kill a threat, an enemy, for vengeance and for gain, that could at least be understood. But to kill five children for no reason but viciousness, goodbye and go to hell, and even Lucifer, the Great Satan, might not want you.

  The beam of sunlight on the floor had moved almost to the mesh. The gun guard walking behind the mesh threw his shadow through the screen onto the concrete outside my cell. I looked up from the rich poetry in Song of Solomon. "They went. She got i stay," he said.

  "What kind of stay?"

  "I dunno. A stay of execution." He turned back and disappeared. Normally he would have continued on crepe soles all the way to the front, but this morning I was the only convict in isolation. Ah well, what the hell . . . back to Ecclesiastes. There is timeless wisdom: "The words of a wise man's mouth are gracious, but the lips of a fool shall swallow him up . . ." If you don't learn to follow that wisdom, you are fool indeed.

  A couple of days later, when I was partaking of my daily hour walking up and down, a key banged on the gate up front. I thought it was a signal to return to my cell until I saw the front gate open and the bull, Big Zeke Zekonis, his hat cocked wildly in the side, standing there beckoning me. I pointed to myself, disbelieving. He nodded. I went, warily. Maybe they were around me corner, wanting to stomp me good for turning the desk over OR a lieutenant.

  As I neared the gate, he extended a folded magazine. I wondered why. My first thought was not that he was handing it in to me. Except for the good old Gideon, reading was verboten in the hole.

  "Here," he said, erasing doubt. "Chess sent it over."

  He meant Caryl Chessman. I sputtered my surprised thanks. He was not known for doing favors for convicts — but he had done this one. It wasn't smuggling a gun, or even drugs, but it was against the rules and would get him a suspension.

  I waited until the evening meal trays were collected and the mattresses returned; then I took out the Argosy magazine. A man's magazine, it had several million readers. It was on the cover, the lead piece. Caryl Chessman, LA's notorious "Red Light Bandit," had written a book, Cell 2455, Death Row, that was scheduled for publication in a few months. Argosy had excerpted the first chapter. I turned to it forthwith.

  Although the complete book, which I would soon read, was about Chessman's life, the first chapter recounted how a convict named Red was put to death in the gas chamber. It began with the evening count the night before. The entire prison was locked down; that was when the doomed man was moved to the overnight condemned cell. First he was given all new underwear and clothes. He was cuffed through the bars before the gate was opened. Surrounded tightly by four or five guards and a lieutenant, Red was allowed to start at the rear of Death Row and walk to the front, saying his goodbyes to the other, waiting to die. His personal possessions had already been given away, or packed for shipment home. They took him down In the elevator and through the green door to where he spent the night.

  Chessman's written words took me step by step to Red's death at 10 a.m. Red had a photograph of President Eisenhower. As he stepped into the gas chamber, he handed it to a guard and said, "He doesn't belong in here." The cyanide pellets were dipped in sulphuric acid and deadly cyanide gas rose around him.

  I couldn't judge the writing, but it was so real to me that my heartbeat increased. Of course I had the advantage as a reader of being where I was, not far from the reality. I read it again, and although I had no training in critical judgement, it was impossible to be more astounded. A convict had written it, a convict I knew and had it published in a huge national magazine, not the San Quentin News. A book was coming out soon. To write a book look a magician, or even a wizard, or an alchemist who took experience, real or imagined, and used words to bring it to life on a printed page. I have many flaws, but envy is not among i hem. Yet I was afire with envy that late afternoon in the hole of San Quentin.

  Dusk became darkness. The lights gained power. Zekonis came for the magazine before going off duty. If I was farther down the tier, I could talk to Chessman through the ventilator, but he was u one end on one side, and I was at the other end on the other side. I could hear him, or at least his typewriter. It rattled through die night. The only time it hadn't was when Santo and Perkins were on Death Row.

  Sounds from below marked the evening's passage, footsteps and voices echoed against the building-formed canyons. Convicts were filing back to the cell houses for the night. Soon the sound of "Taps" would waft through the prison. The shadow of the gun hull passed outside the mesh wire and steel bars. Chessman's typewriter stopped. Why was it he who had written a book? He was on Death Row. The book wouldn't change that. If it was me, it could change my life.

  Suddenly, with the force of revelation, I said aloud: "Why not me?"

  The idea was so sudden and intense that I jumped up from the mattress, and immediately got dizzy and grabbed the bars for support.

  As quickly as the thought had come, I sneered at my own hubris. How could I write anything worth publication? I was in the seventh grade the last time I attended school. Voracious reading was a different game than writing. Writers went to Harvard or Yale i Princeton.

  Hut Chessman hadn't gone to Harvard. He'd been in Preston Reform School, the same as me. If he could write a book, why couldn't I do it? I'd had detectives say I was like Chessman. At least I didn't ha
ve the pressure of a death sentence. I had time on my side - and desire. I would rather be a writer than a movie star, or President, or a justice of the Supreme Court, all of which were closed to me anyway. I went to sleep thinking about it.

  I woke up and it was the first thing in my mind.

  When I got off the shelf, I wrote Louise. By now I was opening with "Dear Mom," and she signed with the same word. I told her I wanted to become a writer. Would she send me a portable typewriter?

  Of course she would. It was a second-hand Royal Aristocrat. The case was covered with a heavy waterproofing and it had a key face unlike any I'd seen. It was seemingly brand new.

  A convict clerk in Education brought me a 20th Century typing book. The lessons were page by page. At first I put a small sheet of wood on the cell toilet and sat the typewriter on a stool. I learned the keyboard. Once I had that, I threw the book away Practice was all I needed. When the toilet bowl and stool setup became too painful on my back, a convict in the carpenter shop fabricated a table just wide enough to hold the typewriter. The passage between the side of the bunk and the other wall was less than two feet (the cell's entire width was four and a half feet). Still, it was better sitting on the edge of the bunk to type than bent over the toilet bowl.

  Instead of simply starting "Once upon a time," I sold some of my blood to pay for a correspondence course from the University of California. It was the brief era when society thought education was a path to rehabilitation. The first lessons were about grammer and diagramming sentences, which I never came to understand and it showed in my grades. But when the lessons became actual writing, grades were all As and the instructor, probably a postgraduate student, deluged me with laudatory comments. When the course was over, I set sail alone on the sea of the written word. "Once upon a time two teenage boys went to rob a liquor store ..."

  I had no creative writing course, no mentor. The only writer I'd ever met, excepting Chessman, was an alcoholic newspaperman in Camarillo state hospital. He was writing a book in the linen room where he worked. To get some sense of what | was doing, I subscribed to the Writer's Digest. Maybe I learned something from its many articles of "how to ..." I bought several of the books it advertised. The most useful was by Jack Woodruff (I think that was his name), and he advised that you should picture the scene in your mind and simply describe what you saw.

  In the library I found anthologies and books of literary criticism, from which I learned bits and pieces. W. Somerset Maugham's A Writer's Notebook provided some advice. At least I remember it. If I mined one bit of advice that I could use, a book was worthwhile. At first I tried short stories, but the censor was the librarian, and the Department of Corrections had rules against writing about crimes, my own or others. I could not offend any race or religion, nor criticize prison officials or police, or use vulgarity - and other things. Besides, I had to sell pints of blood to obtain the postage. I had plenty of prison money (cigarettes), and even cash, but it had to be in my account. I decided to learn my craft writing novels. I would only have to deal with the censor every year or so, and I would decide what to do when I finished.

  It took about eighteen months to finish the book. I felt as if I'd climbed Everest when I wrote the end. Instead of going through the censor, who would reject it and might confiscate the manuscript, a friend of mine had his boss, the dentist, carry it out. Smuggling a manuscript from prison isn't immoral. The dentist mailed it to Louise Wallis. She gave it to knowledgeable friends to read. All said I had talent. Despite moments of unreasonable hope, I knew it would never be published. I wrote it to learn my craft and I still have the manuscript. My wife says that if she had read it, she would have advised me to give it up. Hut it is well known that fools rush in, and so I started my second novel. I never imagined it would take seventeen years and six unpublished novels before the seventh was published. I persevered because I recognized that writing was my sole chance of creating something, of climbing from the dark pit, fulfilling the dream and resting in the sun. And by reading this far you must have realized that perseverance is fundamental to my nature. I get up from every knockdown as long as my body will follow my will. I've won many fights because I wouldn't quit, and I have also taken some awesome beatings for not knowing when to quit.

  Chapter 7

  Awaiting Parole

  When I had served four years in San Quentin, Louise Wallis hired an attorney recommended by Jesse Unruh, known as "Big Daddy" in California politics. The attorney talked to people in Sacramento about getting me a parole. In four years I had been to the hole half a dozen times and I had two score disciplinary reports. It was a far worse record than most convicts, but far better than one would have expected from my history. I'd been in several altercations, but only a couple had come to the attention of the officials. Besides being sliced from temple to lip by a cell partner I'd been bullying, I was stabbed in the left lung by a queen protecting his jocker. I never saw him coming. On another occasion I was suspected of having stabbed another convict. The victim refused to identify me, so the Captain let me out of the hole. He warned that he was watching and one slip would get me a year in the hole followed by a transfer to Folsom.

  Nothing I'd done was really serious, considering how impulsive and explosive I had been at eighteen when I started walking the Big Yard. Had I not had Louise Wallis writing me from the Queen Mary and St Tropez, describing the unusual blue of the sea, telling me what a good life I could have, I might well have escalated my war against authority - the war the world declared on me when I was four years old. Every place I went authority told me, "We will break you here." They said it in juvenile hall, in various reform schools and in the reformatory at Lancaster. I cannot recount how many beatings I'd had; at least a score, three of which were really savage. Tear gas was shot in my eyes through the bars, fire hoses had skidded me across the floors and slammed me into walls. I'd spent a week naked in utter blackness on bread and water when I was fifteen. In Pacific Colony, when I was thirteen, I'd had to drag that 200 pound concrete block up and down a corridor covered with paraffin wax for twelve hours a day. I fought back and they punched and stomped me until my face looked like hamburger — and a doctor with an East European accent did nothing. The hospital did say I wasn't crazy and returned me to reform school. They could make me scream and cry out for mercy, but as soon as I recuperated, I always rebelled again. They expelled me from reform school; I was too disruptive.

  In San Quentin, however, they said they would kill me if I stabbed a guard, and if I even took a punch at one, they would kick my brains in. I also knew that I would not be expelled from here. Without Louise Wallis and the hopes and dreams she represented, I might have ignored their threat and escalated my rebellion. I hadn't cared. Now I did care. I wanted out. I had more going for me than anyone I knew. I even managed to have six months' clean conduct when I went to the parole board. Although I didn't know it for years, the prison psychiatrist advised against my parole. But Mrs Hal Wallis had more influence. In February, the Adult Authority fixed my term at seven years, with twenty-seven months on parole. That meant I had six months to go, assuming I could stay out of trouble.

  Memorial Day. Like all days, it was announced long before dawn by the raucous clutch of birds, pigeons and sparrows, in the outside eaves of the cell house. No rooster ever crowed earlier or louder, although convicts slept through it. Then came the early unlock, guards letting out men who went to work before the mainline. On weekdays I was on early unlock. During my last year and a half I worked on the early laundry crew, but not today. This was a holiday.

  I woke up when the convict keymen began unlocking the cells. Using huge spike keys, they could hit each lock while walking fast — clack, clack, clack, the sound grew louder as the keyman came closer on another tier; then receded as he passed, and grew loud again as he came down the next tier.

  Soon the convict tier tender was pouring hot water through the cell bars into gallon cans placed next to the gate. The cells had only cold wate
r, and the toilets used water from the bay.

  From my cell I could see through the outer bars. It was sunny and bright out but nevertheless, I took a jacket. It was always wise to take a jacket when leaving the cell in San Quentin. San Francisco might be sunny and bright while the Big Yard was windy and cold.

  A bell sounded, followed like punctuation by the ragged volley of the fifth-tier convicts exiting their cells and slamming their gates shut. A torrent of trash poured past as men kicked it off the tiers above. Every so often the falling newspapers and other effluvia had an instant coffee or peanut butter jar wrapped in them that exploded as it hit the concrete, sending splinters of glass flying. A voice called out, "If I knew who did that, I'd fuck you up . . . punk!" Nobody responded. It would be another fifteen minutes before the unlock worked its way down to the second tier. That was when I got up and got dressed. I crossed off another day on the calendar. I had sixty-some remaining; I cannot now recall exactly how many.

  It was Memorial Day. There would be a boxing card on the lower yard in the afternoon. I hadn't boxed in two years, but my former trainer, Frank Littlejohn, had asked me to substitute for someone he trained because he was afraid the man would take too bad a beating. Why not? It was only three rounds. I pulled a box from beneath the bed and extracted sweat and bloodstained Ace bandages that I used for handwraps, plus my mouthpiece and boxing shoes. It was a wonder they didn't have spiders in them considering how long they had been in the shoebox.

  As soon as the tramp of feet receded above, another security bar was raised and another tier of convicts came out with another deluge of trash. I gathered what I was taking to the Big Yard.