It was also obvious that I could no longer count on or conspire with Louise. She had given me so much that I fairly ached near tears with gratitude for what she'd done, and only partially realized at the time that her main gift was to let me look from the outhouse into the mansion. I was far too wise about too much to accept the future that the past wanted to mandate for me. Maybe she would help me sometime in the future, but for now I needed a plan. Obviously I wasn't getting into a studio story department. I might have been able to get an office boy job at the Herald Express, as the afternoon Hearst newspaper was then named. Vanity of vanities, I could not see myself as an office boy, thank you.
Yet I needed a job of some kind, both to pacify the parole officer and to make a living. I had clothes, a nice apartment without rent and a Jaguar roadster, but no cash flow. I applied for an insurance salesman job. They were enthused by my manner and appearance, but I never heard from them again after they discovered my background.
When I realized how slickly the used car salesmen who had sold me the Jag had taken me off, me who thought I was half slick, I decided it was a game I should learn. I became a used car salesman. My first job was at a Chevrolet dealership on Wilshire Boulevard in Beverly Hills. They hired anyone who walked in the door. It was all commission, so what did they care? The idea was to sell your mother and father, brother and sister, friends and lovers. Bring them in and turn them over to a closer. In'about three days I understood that this was no way to anything.
Then I spent a couple of months at a dealership that sold Nashs and Ramblers. I don't recall if it was then called American Motors or something else. It was a terrible year for car sales, and what we sold was opposite from the swept-wing yachts then in vogue. I made a little money, but not much. I did, however, learn the game.
I finally went to work for the English mechanic who worked on my Jag. His business was on 2nd and La Brea. He fixed foreign cars, especially English, and sold used sports cars of all varieties. It was the age of the Jaguar, MG and bathtub Porsches. He only had two salesmen. We worked hours that I liked. I would come in at noon and stay until nine in the evening. The last three hours I was alone. The next morning I would open up at 9 a.m. and work until noon, when the other salesman took over. Then I was off until noon the next day. I had unlimited free use of a telephone and anyone could visit me about anything in the privacy of my small office with the loud little air conditioner in the window. I could dress in jacket and necktie, and no grime got under my fingernails. It was the conservative '50s, long before anyone even heard of grunge as a style choice. Even beatnik poets were neat and stylish, albeit with individualized flair. Another fringe benefit was that every other evening when I locked up, I could use any of the two dozen or so foreign sports cars on the lot. A bathtub Porsche one night, a Jaguar or Mercedes SL190 the next. The owner did bring in a gull-wing SL300 Mercedes, which he asked me not to take. "I wasn't thinking about it," I told him. "And why not?" he asked. "It's almost empty of gas." For although Richfield premium was about 20 cents a gallon, I almost always took a car that was full or nearly full.
In the argot of the underworld, a car salesman's job proved to be a good front . . .
Chapter 10
The Run
Professional thieves recognize that playing the game means doing time. They measure success not by the certainty of eventual imprisonment, but rather by how long the imprisonment vis-a-vis how long a run they have and how well they live before being incarcerated. Although the subculture of the professional thief depicted by Dickens, Melville and Victor Hugo was first eroded by Prohibition's organized crime and its turf wars, it was destroyed by drugs and the drug underworld until today a young criminal's crime skills are limited to shooting somebody and dealing crack. Back in '57 there were still enough adherents for me to find righteous thieves, safecrackers, boosters, players of short con and burglars. My initial parole officer had said, quite correctly, that he never worried about picking up the morning newspaper to read that I had shot my way out of a supermarket or a bank. He had over a hundred cases, and others needed his attention far more than me. After about six months without trouble, I saw him no more. The only requirement was that I send in monthly reports. That put no strain on my resentment of authority. I could do that.
Without Louise Wallis the movie business was closed to me in 1957. The biz was a fraction of the size it is today and the boss of one of the top three agencies, sister of Paramount's number one moneymaker year after year, had shown her dislike of me. She had gone out of her way to salt me down and slide grease under me. Once I would have told Louise and we would have plotted something together. That was now impossible. She was borderline schizophrenic — or clinical depression aggravated by alcoholism. I couldn't be sure that her telephone wasn't monitored "for her well being," and it was like visiting somebody in jail when I went to see her. Writing screenplays had to wait. I took the attitude that if I couldn't have it, I didn't want it. It wasn't my true milieu anyway. I was more comfortable in Hollywood's dark side, amidst call girls, vice and drugs and nightclubs that glittered in the night.
The thief s underworld, which is different than that of the Mafioso, gang bangers and racketeers, has many adages and observations. "If you can't do time don't mess with crime" is the best known. Another is: "A thief s nerve is in direct proportion to his financial condition." Or "Hard times make hard people."
I started with the advantage of a classy apartment, a nice wardrobe and Jaguar roadster, which still had panache despite a dented fender and a bent front bumper. I was under no pressure for a quick score. Many crimes are committed because of traffic tickets or child care payments. I wasn't confronted with such problems. I could take my time. Thinking back, I cannot recall a moment when I decided to return to crime as a way of life. I was simply trying to get by and live well in the world that 1 found.
For confederates, I went to neighborhoods and barrios east of the LA River, where I had friends and a certain amount of reputation and respect. In Beverly Hills a Jaguar was just another car, whereas in East LA they were seldom seen. As a criminal you might say I was a jack of all trades rather than a specialist — but there were crimes I balked at committing. I did not burglarize a private home or steal from the old and the poor. They didn't have anything to steal anyway.
My preferred victims were insurance companies, and I sought non-violent crimes with profit, although I despise confidence men. Books and movies depict them as handsome, suave, witty and likeable, but the truth is that most con men are despicable. They prey upon the old and the weak. They lack loyalty, for they see everyone is a potential sucker. I liked armed robbers better. Most were fools acting from desperation. Needing money to pay rent, or a ticket, or to get a fix, all they knew was to put a gun in somebody's face and say "Give it up." Most of them cruise around until something looks easy - a small market or a liquor store. They park around the corner and go in, never knowing what they will find. If they have been doing it regularly in the area, they could well run into a stakeout, the shotgun-wielding brother-in-law of the owner, or a policeman, hidden behind a curtain. Finally, robbery was always an offense upon which the law looked harshly. It has always been three strikes and out for the armed robber; this was called the "habitual criminal" statutes. I would consider robbery, but it required that there be a substantial amount of money, a minuscule chance of having to shoot and a situation where I could mask my face. I would never commit a robbery where a witness could point a finger from the witness stand and say "that's the man." There are only two ways to be convicted for robbery. One is to be caught on the scene; the other is for the victims to make a positive, in-court identification. The police, even today, will coach a witness to make an identification if they are certain and the witness is not. They tell the witness, "We know this is the man, but if you don't identify him, he will get away to rob again." The only way to counter that is to make it demonstrably impossible for an identification to be made. A rubber mask of Frankenstein doe
s the trick. Even with the best plans and all that protection, I still hesitated a long time. Too many things could go wrong. There are too many x factors.
On the other hand, I wasn't against planning robberies and selling them to others to commit. I'll tell you how this came about.
Far up North Main Street in the Lincoln Heights District, home of the city jail, general hospital and juvenile hall, was a beer and wine joint called Mama's. Mama Selino owned the license, cooked the tastiest pasta and loved the hoodlums who hung out there. Her son, Frank, an erstwhile Van Gogh, ran the place. His paintings were on every surface.
Mama's was a great hangout, but Frank didn't invite new business. Once a new patron wandered in on a hot afternoon when Frank was having a bad art day. After ten or fifteen minutes the customer coughed and tried to get his attention. Frank threw a bottle of Heineken at him and the fool ran out the door. Needless to say, the clientele in Mama's was very limited.
The LAPD from the Highland Park Division knew about Mama's. They often parked in front of a hot dog stand across the street. Its owner told the police about the comings and goings until one late night the hot dog stand burned to the ground.
Mama Selino had come from Salerno with her husband in 1920, prospering during Prohibition until he was gunned down a decade later, leaving her two small sons. She loved "her boys." Not only her sons, Frank and Rocky, "her boys" included the hoodlums and thieves she fed pasta and ravioli on credit. They paid her with interest when they made a score. Frank, the older son, was tough as he could be. He and Gene "Dizzy" Davis had done one term together at San Quentin for robbery. Her second son, Rocky, was a taxpaying, upstanding citizen who had a small construction company. Frank now did nothing but paint. The bar provided a meager living. The law said that bars had to quit serving at 2 a.m. Mama's sometimes stayed open until the sun came up.
It was in Mama's that I ran into Dizzy Davis. We had known each other's identity in San Quentin but had spoken just once or twice. He was over average height, moderately good looking, with wavy blond hair that lay close to his skull. His nose was aquiline and his eyes a wet blue. He'd been out about two months after serving nine years. He had no family, although he was one of Mama Selino's favorites. Someone had given him a pistol and he had been sticking up small businesses for survival money, enough for a motel room, food at a fast food counter, and enough to sit in a bar with a drink on the plank. Worst of all, he was giving someone half of what he got just to drive him. The driver picked him up two or three blocks away.
He knew better. "I feel like a fool," he said, but he didn't know what else to do. He personified something I'd noticed about criminals. Many of them knew how a crime should be committed, but they were driven before the wind of circumstances to take risks they knew were stupid. They could not wait, they could not plan, they needed money now. Indeed, many of them didn't commit a crime until they saw themselves in desperate straits.
I wasn't rich, but I had enough to rent Dizzy a furnished room by the week, one of those with a frayed carpet and a toilet and shower down the hall. There was a sink in the room. That caught a lot of piss. I made sure he had a few dollars for meals and cigarettes, and promised to find him a good score. He listened to me. My confidence gave him confidence.
Finding and planning robberies was relatively simple. I sought out places that handled cash, and where control of that cash was under one person's authority. It was before double-key, drop safes that managers cannot open without the armored car guards, so supermarkets were the best, although nightclubs and steakhouses were also possibilities. I would simply drive around until I saw something that satisfied the preliminary requirements. I would go in, and ask for the manager. When he was pointed out, I might even approach him about something. All I wanted was to be able to recognize him. I also tried to get a look at where the money was kept, often a safe in an office. On the way out, I made note of the establishment's hours.
When the place closed, I would watch the employees come out. Invariably the manager was last. I watched what car he got into. Sometimes I followed him home, but usually not.
The next night I brought Dizzy and pointed it all out to him. The night after that he simply waited in the parking lot, grabbed the manager at the car and walked him back to open the safe. On the first score, a market in Burbank, I parked across the street and watched him march the manager across the parking lot and back inside through a side door. I took 20 percent. Dizzy and his driver split the remaining 80 percent. It was pretty good money and I was far in the background. Of evidence against me there was none at all.
This plan was good for three good scores and a misfire. Dizzy grabbed the butcher instead of the manager. Everything went downhill from there. Still, three out of four successes is a good percentage for a predator. I lost him late one afternoon in Lincoln Heights. Several of the fellas were in the parking lot of Le Blanc's, on the corner of Griffin Avenue and North Broadway. Most were known ex-cons, the others were Italian and liked to gamble, so were presumed to be affiliated with East Coast or Middle Western mobsters. One or two might be "made" men; Dizzy was in the group. A pair of young uniformed officers out of Highland Park division, driving a black and white, passed by the parking lot and saw the nefarious group. The officers continued around the block and appeared without warning. "Hold it! All of you!"
After a few minutes of checking identification to make sure nobody had outstanding warrants or "wants," and writing down all the names, most of which they knew, the officers were ready to leave. But an incident of a month earlier in El Segundo caused a ripple that changed a lot of lives. Two police officers had stopped a man, and suddenly he killed them both. No weapon was found, they had not taken a license number immediately on deciding to stop the vehicle, so there was no way to trace the car. For many years there would be a composite drawing in every precinct and jail of the suspected cop killer. All the hundreds of thousands of those arrested were compared to that drawing. This parking lot scene with Dizzy was soon after the double homicide. It was also before the California Supreme Court case, In re Cahan, and the decision by the Supreme Court of the United States, Mapp v. Ohio, both of which held that all remedies had been tried to make police comply with the Fourth Amendment, the right of the people to be free of "unreasonable searches and seizures," including the application of civil and criminal penalties, which juries would not enforce. After a century of futility it was time to take from them the motive of their unconstitutional behavior, i.e. the evidence they seized, plus evidence that the primary illegality led them too. That was "fruit of the poisoned tree" (Wong Sun v. US).
Mapp v. Ohio was still a couple of years away. The uniformed officers decided to pat Dizzy down. The gun they found was lawful evidence. They put him in lineups. Before I had taken him under my wing, in addition to the liquor stores and neighborhood markets, he had robbed the teller of a Wells Fargo bank. The teller pointed a finger from the witness stand and said, "That's him." The jury said "Guilty." The judge said "Eighteen years." Sic transit gloria, Dizzy Davis.
Although I kept a few capers on file and sold them from time to time, my days as a planner of robberies were essentially over. It was just as well because I had another thing going. A friend of the Hernandez Brothers in Tijuana would supply three sets of identification, mainly a California driver's license backed up with other things, and a hundred payroll checks for $1,000, would get the identification in common Mexican names, Gonzales, Cruz, Martinez, and the description 5'8", black hair and brown eyes. My first batch of checks was on Southern Pacific. Lots of Chicanos worked for the railroad. A fellow I knew named Sonny Ballesteros found three willing youngsters from the neighborhood and we gave them three checks apiece. When those were cashed and the money handed over, I gave Sonny the remaining ninety-one checks. I don't know what deal he made with them, but I was happy with what I made — and again I was out of harm's way. The check scheme worked three times; then my connection in Tijuana was shot and paralyzed. I had enough money fo
r several months and another plan.
To anyone morally outraged by my schemes and lack of apparent remorse, let me say that I only had to justify myself to myself, which is all that anyone has to do. No man does evd in his own mind. I thought, and still think, that if God weighed all I have done against all that has been done to me in society's name, it would be hard to call which way the scales would tilt. I only stole money, and stopped doing that as soon as I sold a novel. I refused to accept the position to which society relegates the ex-offender. I would rather risk going back to prison than accept a job in a car wash or a career as a fry cook. Nothing is wrong with either for someone who doesn't care, but not for me. I'd read too many heroic tales and raged to live. I had no family to constrain me with shame, and, as far as I could determine, I owed society nothing and considered most of its members to deserve whatever happened to them. They were classic hypocrites, proclaiming Christian virtue, but at best living by older, meaner ideas, and violating even those if to do so was expedient and if they could suck up their courage. They do not live in good faith with the values and virtues that they profess, explicidy or implicidy. I had no misgivings about stealing their money. They might have gotten it legally, but not by creating anything, doing anything constructive or otherwise contributing to the commonwealth or to human freedom or anything else save, perhaps, their immediate family. The Salvation Army and Franciscans were real Christians. They didn't domicile in the greatest palace on the planet, amidst riches and art greater than any two museums on earth; they were out on the street trying to help. There are others who do live in good faith, but they are a minority. One thing that gave me unique freedom was my lack of concern about what they thought of me, or what they could do to me. I was more concerned with the truth — and having as much fun and as many adventures as I could find. What I liked I would do until it became boring.
Mr. Blue: Memoirs of a Renegade Page 25