Mr. Blue: Memoirs of a Renegade

by Edward Bunker

  In addition to the boxing equipment, I put a loose carton of cigarettes inside my shirt to pay a gambling debt. The goddamned Yankees had lost the night before. What was the adage of my childhood: never bet against Joe Louis, Notre Dame or the New York Yankees. Bullshit! I picked up a book I was returning to someone. Science and Sanity by Korzybski, the fountainhead of general semantics. Frankly, it had too many examples in mathematical equations, which turned off my brain as if by a light switch. I thought semantics was an important discipline in understanding reality, but I preferred the books of Hayakawa and Wendell Johnson.

  I debated carrying out the pages of the new book to show Jimmy and Paul and Leon — but decided that I was packing too much already. I would have to carry what I took all day.

  I was waiting when the second tier was released. I stepped out, closed my cell gate and waited until the bar went down. Some cell thieves lately had been running in and out of cells to grab things if the occupant walked away before the security bar went down.

  The near 2,000 convicts in the four sections of the South Cell House walked to the center stairway that led down to the rotunda and the steel doors into the mess hall. As usual the food was barely edible. The menu proved that between the word and the reality lies the chasm. I could eat this one breakfast: oatmeal and a hard cinnamon roll with peanut butter. It softened in the tepid coffee. I got the food down and went out into the yard.

  The Big Yard was already full. The South Cell House ate last. Exiting the mess hall door, I plunged through a wall of sound made by 4,000 numbered men, all convicted felons imprisoned for murder, robbery, rape, arson, burglary, selling drugs, buying drugs, buying and selling stolen merchandise, all the crimes set forth in the California Penal Code. The crowd was thickest near the mess hall door, for although a guard told everyone exiting to move out, they tended to go ten feet and stop to light up cigarettes and greet friends. As I squeezed through I was sure to say, "Excuse me . . . excuse me," if I brushed against or bumped someone. Convicts may have the foulest mouths in the world, but unlike the images set forth in movies and television, they are better than New Yorkers about certain amenities. Still, among the numbered men there were always a few with a paranoid streak. Prison adages include: "Everybody bleeds, anybody can kill you." Where anyone can get a big knife, good manners are the rule of the day - even if they are accompanied by vulgarity. Think about it.

  There was more room beyond the packed crowd. I circled the yard counter-clockwise, looking for my friends. First I headed for the inmate canteen. Only convicts actually in the canteen line, a row of windows reminiscent of those at the race track, could cross the red "deadline" thirty feet away. Above was a gunrail with a rifleman, looking down on the crowd. I saw many men I knew, but none of those I was seeking at the moment. I was both confident and watchful, for while I had many friends, I also had my share of enemies. I didn't want to come upon them unexpectedly; they might think I was trying to make a sneak attack.

  Outside the gates to the East Cell House I saw San Quentin's two pairs of bookmakers. Sullivan and O'Rourke were the Irish book, Globe and Joe Cocko were the Chicano book. Each pair had a green sport page from the Chronicle, checking race results from the eastern tracks. Waiting nearby were the horse players. Most of them were compulsive horse players, and some were quite good. They had lots of time to study the charts

  I walked between the East Cell House wall and the domino tables. The games were hot and heavy, the sound of plastic dominoes loud as they were slammed to the tables. Double six went down first. The next player had six three. He slammed it down. "That's fifteen." "Goin' behind the house for the change," said the next man, playing six two on the six. Each game was owned by a convict who took a cut, collecting from the losers and paying the winners. I knew how to play, but not well enough to gamble. It had been too expensive to become a first-class poker player to now get involved in dominoes. These were some of the best domino players in the world. They played from breakfast unlock to afternoon lockup. They even played in the rain, holding newspapers over their heads.

  The East Cell House wall intersected with the North Cell House rotunda door. The yard outside the North Cell House was first to catch the warming rays of morning sun. The Big Yard was usually cold in the morning: its concrete seemed to hold the night's chill until the sun was high. Most blacks congregated in that area. Although each race tended to congregate with their own, there was little overt racial tension or hostility. Any altercation between convicts of different races involved only them and, perhaps, their close friends. That would change in the decade ahead.

  I wasn't looking for him but I spotted Leon Gaultney standing with two other blacks, one being Rudy Thomas, the prison's lightweight champion. Rudy had the skills to be a world champion. Alas, he was a junkie. Also standing there was the heavyweight champion, Frank Deckard, who was doing time for killing a man with a single punch. Deckard and I were civil to each other. He had once threatened to break my jaw, and I said that I would stab him in the back. I was bluffing, confident he would back off, which he did.

  Rudy Thomas and I were friends, but I think he suspected all whites of being racists at some level. True enough, if it came to a race war, I was white and I would fight, but I didn't think anyone was better or worse than anyone because of race.

  Then there was Leon. Over my life I've had an unusual number of close friends. American men seldom have really close male friends, the kind that can be called "brother." I've had at least a dozen, or twice that, and scores who were partners. Leon was among the top half-dozen, and for a while he was my very best friend. I don't recall how we met. During my first year or so I would have been too self-conscious to have a black man as a running partner. I had several black friends, guys I'd known from juvenile hall through reform school and, now, in San Quentin - but they were not running partners. I did not walk the yard with them. Now, however, I had enough recognition and status, despite being just twenty-one, for nobody to think anything, and even if they did, they wouldn't say anything. Moreover, through me, Leon developed friendship and gained respect from many white convicts of high status. Jimmy Posten had gotten him a job in the dental clinic. The chief dentist would not sign a job change for anyone without Jimmy's giving a nod. Leon was the only black to work there. It wasn't because of racism; it was because you get your friends the good jobs.

  Leon was precisely six foot tall, and weighed 175 pounds. He was average looking and never wore starched and pressed bonaroo clothes. It was when he talked that one realized how unique he was. All traces of the common black accent had been effaced in favor of precise enunciation. He told me that he had studied Clifton Webb and Sydney Poitier for their speech, and he practiced by reading James Baldwin and others aloud. In the three years he'd already served, he had taught himself Spanish well enough to translate Shakespeare back and forth. He had also become fairly fluent in French and Italian, and was presently studying Arabic. The only decoration in his monkish cell was a pencil sketch of Albert Einstein. He was the most intelligent man I'd met in prison. Few of those I'd known in reform school could be called intelligent. It wasn't the breadth or the depth of his knowledge that was so impressive. I'm sure I was more widely read. He seldom read fiction, whereas I believe that nothing explores the depth and darkness of the human mind better than great novels, and even an average novel can throw a beam of light into an unknown crevice. Dostoevsky makes you understand the thoughts of gamblers, murderers and others better than any psychologist who ever lived, Freud included.

  As I walked up, I nodded to Frank Deckard and Rudy, and patted Leon on the back. "What's up?" I asked.

  "I saw your name on the boxing card," Rudy said.

  I nodded. "Yeah. Frank talked me into it. He said Tino Prieto will hurt Rooster."

  "When's the last time you had the gloves on?"

  "I dunno. I guess about a year ago."

  Rudy shook his head and looked to the sky. "He might hurt you, too. He's old and he's got a litt
le gut, but he had about thirty, thirty-five professional fights. Look at his face."

  "I know . . . but fuck it, you know what I mean. I've got about I en or fifteen pounds on him. He's really a lightweight."

  "He's in good shape and you damn sure ain't in good shape."

  "Too late now."

  Leon interrupted. "Let's go. Littlejohn wants to see you in the gym."

  It was just after 9 a.m. The yard gate had just been opened so convicts could go down the concrete stairs to the lower yard. The first fight wouldn't be until one. I was the third bout. I wouldn't answer the bell until at least 1.30.

  I nodded, then said to Rudy, "Are they gonna bring that lightweight in from Sacramento?" Frankie Goldstein, a fight manager who often came to San Quentin for fight cards, to referee and simultaneously see if there was any talent in the prison, was supposed to bring a lightweight contender to box an exhibition with Rudy, who had gone through everyone who would get in the ring with him. I had sparred with him in the gym when I had secret ambitions to be a great white hope. I had never landed a clean punch. And when he hit me, I seldom saw it coming. I think Rudy Thomas could have been a world champion. Alas, he could not get away from the needle.

  "Supposed to bring him in. We'll see."

  I gestured goodbye to big Frank Deckard; he nodded impassively in response. Leon and I walked away. "When you get done this afternoon," he said, "I've got something to get high on."

  "Let's do it now. What is it?"

  "Hey, I'm not gonna get you loaded and then send you into the ring. You'd get beat to death and wouldn't even know it."

  "So it's better that way."

  "Not if you get your brain scrambled. Sometimes one terrible ass-kicking will do it."

  "I see you've got a lot of confidence in me."

  "I think Jimmy Barry set you up . . . over that thing last year."

  That thing last year was a fight between Leon and Jimmy. It happened after I'd gotten to know Leon, but before we were partners. I'd been working out, shadow boxing in front of a full-length mirror when someone said a real fight was in progress. I had to be a spectator. It was happening in the handball court at the other end of the gym. When I got there, Leon and Jimmy Barry were fighting. Jimmy was twenty years older and twenty pounds lighter than Leon, plus Leon was a good amateur light heavyweight. Jimmy Barry, however, had been a top ranked welterweight. He was the matchmaker; he ran the boxing department. He also had a bad name and a rat jacket. Good convicts shunned him as much as possible, but it was hard to do so completely because of his position. He controlled the boxing department. He distributed all equipment. Nobody was assigned a locker or issued boxing shoes and mouthpiece except through him. He made the matches, deciding who was to fight who.

  About a dozen convicts had been standing outside the handball court watching the fight. Leon was forcing the action, trying to come in behind a jab and hook to the body — but Jimmy was slipping the jab and blocking the hook. Neither was doing any damage until Leon barreled in with his shoulder and rammed Jimmy back against the wall. That brought a gasp as he fought to breathe. Without warning, from the sidelines, Jimmy's "kid" sprang upon Leon's back and tried to stab him in the face or eye with a ballpoint pen.

  "Get him off me!" Leon yelled.

  To my great shame, I hesitated. We were not as close as we would become, but we were friendly. Moreover, he was a solid convict and Jimmy Barry was a reputed stool pigeon. Yet he was white and Leon was black. Race made me pause for ten seconds . . Then I moved toward the door into the handball court, yelling, "Get off him." Jimmy Barry was looking at me over I eon's shoulder. Before I could get through the door, someone else pulled them apart, and some other convict called out: "The Man's coming!" Everything broke up before the patrolling guard arrived. He could feel the electricity or ozone, but had no idea what had happened. The crowd broke around him as if he was a rock in a river. Befuddlement was written on his face. En route to the yard, I found myself walking with Leon. "Thanks," he said. He was holding a handkerchief to his cheek. It was bleeding slightly from the puncture wound by the ballpoint. Was there a note of sarcasm? Maybe he hadn't known that I was among the spectators. That was immaterial. What mattered to me was that I had failed to behave as my own values dictated.

  The fight in the handball court had occurred more than a year earlier. Since then we had become close friends. He was respected by white convicts, who were still about 70 percent of the prison population. Leon also had status with many young blacks, especially those from Oakland and San Francisco.

  The months passed. I went to the parole board and got a parole date. A few weeks after that I got in an altercation with two of San Quentin's toughest black convicts, Spotlight Johnson and Dolomite Lawson. Either one could have whipped me without much difficulty. Both were squat, powerful men - and ugly as sin. In the Los Angeles county jail, the deputies would put Dolomite in a tank to "straighten things up." He had rammed one man's head into the bars and killed him. Spotlight lived in the East Cell House, but I did not know what tier. Dolomite lived on the fourth tier of the South Cell House. He would not expect me to be out of the cell first. He would go out to the yard so he and his partner could brace me together. Instead I would stick him the moment he stepped out of the cell. He would never think about the early unlock. He was a stupid, illiterate brute. Unfortunately he was a: very tough stupid, illiterate brute in a primal milieu to which he was perfectly adapted. But I knew my way, too.

  Through the evening I dwelled on the problem, sometimes enraged, sometimes aching inside because it would be a Pyrrhic victory at best. It would cost me at least six or seven more years even if I didn't kill him. He wasn't worth it.

  At 10.15, convicts started returning from night activities. As their feet sounded on the steel stairs, some went past my cell Leon appeared and stopped. "Somebody said you had words with big head and his pal. Is it over?"

  I hesitated. I wanted to tell him everything and seek his help, yet my own code, personal and perverted as it may have been, ruled that I should take care of my own trouble. I said, "It's not quite over." As soon as the words were in the air, I felt guilty.

  A guard at the end of the tier raised the security bar. Convicts who were waiting stepped into their cells. Leon was alone on the tier.

  "Where are you supposed to be?"

  "I'm going there, boss," Leon said. "See you in the morning," he said to me.

  It seemed that I was awake the entire night, but I must have slept a little, for when the guard tapped the bars and shone his flashlight on my face, it awakened me. "Bunker . . . early unlock."

  "I got it."

  Ten minutes later the security bar went up and the guard unlocked my gate. As I stepped out a couple of other figures were on the tier.

  It was summer and already daylight when the laundry foreman took his washing machine crew across the Big Yard, empty save for a few seagulls and pigeons. The washing machine crew was all white, the crew for the tumblers (huge machines that wrung out excess water by spinning at high speed) was all black, and the drying machine crew was Chicano. Each had to cooperate with the others to get their bonaroos done. The steam presses were divided evenly. The con boss was black.

  As soon as we entered the building I went to my stash and got my knife. It was sixteen inches overall, its handle wrapped in electrician's tape. It had the Arkansas toothpick shape, a sharp point that widened a lot. I carried it over behind a huge washing machine where my rubber boots waited beneath a bench. The shiv went down the side of my big rubber boots.

  All morning, I watched the clock. At 7.44 I told the foreman (hat I was going up to sick call.

  It was a bright morning and a very long walk across the Lower Yard, up the stairs into the Big Yard. The first convicts from the West and North Cell Houses were beginning to exit the mess halls. As I went into the South Cell House and up the stairway, the fifth tier was coming down. Good. Dolomite was still in his cell. On the third tier, I turned to walk in front
of the cells. Ahead of me was Leon, standing in front of Dolomite's cell. He saw me and gestured with his hand down beside his leg. Go back.

  I stopped and stepped back. A minute later Leon came toward me. "C'mon," he said, leading me down the stairs.

  "What's up?" I asked. Mentally I was ready, and I resented being called off.

  "It's settled," Leon said. "They really don't want trouble. They're running a game on Fingers, too. They think you're crazy . . . and being known as slightly crazy is an advantage around here."

  Leon had saved my parole date, and probably saved me from an additional sentence for assault or even murder. It was a great debt made even greater by my earlier hesitance in helping him. He was really my friend. (I must add, especially to convicts who read this, that such a friendship would never have started in San Quentin after the early part of the 1960s, when the race wars began.)

  But today was Memorial Day and I was being paroled in the first week of August. As Leon and I walked toward the gym, the Frisco Flash, a skinny little character, arrived and beckoned Leon to the side. The conversation was brief. Leon came back shaking his head. "I fucked up. I shouldn't have given it to him."

  "Given him what?"

  "Some pot and pills. He was selling them for me. You know Walt and Country and Duane, don't you?"

  "Yeah ... all my life."

  "They got some reds from him and claimed they were bogus. They burned him."

  "Let me talk to 'em."

  "I don't want any profit, but I would like my investment back."

  "No problem. I'll take care of it." I thought it would be no problem. All three were friends with some obligation to me. I changed the subject: "Littlejohn will need somebody to work my corner with him. Are you up to it?"

  "Sure. I'll stop the blood."

  "I love your confidence. Keep the towel ready in case I'm getting killed."