Mr. Blue: Memoirs of a Renegade

by Edward Bunker

  Every morning (actually closer to noon), I sallied forth in search of adventure. Schwab's drugstore on Sunset where Crescent Heights ends and Laurel Canyon begins (and Lana Turner was discovered) had a counter with a great breakfast. Next door was Sherry's, a cocktail lounge frequented by bookmakers, gamblers, fringe gangsters, high-powered call girls and their pimps, although they took umbrage at the term "pimp." They called themselves "players." Outside of Sherry's, somebody ambushed LA's famous gangster, Mickey Cohen. He was unscatched; his bodyguard was slain.

  I was brought to Sherry's by Ann J., who used the name of Sandy Winters. Raised in a Los Angeles suburb, as an adolescent she had been big and shapeless. Her friends in high school were the dope smokers and delinquents, a few of whom went on to serious crime. Her boyfriend went to a reform school for car theft. While he was gone, she lost the baby fat, revealing the body of a Las Vegas showgirl, full breasts, narrow waist, big hips and thighs, closer to Jayne Mansfield than Jane Fonda. She'd "turned out," become a high-priced call girl for a pimp (excuse me, "a player"), but she was his "second store," and she disliked giving him all her money, even though he bought her clothes from Bullock's, and gave her a Coupe de Ville - but kept the ownership certificate. The pimp/player was the kind that rules by terror, although he was carefid not to bruise her where it showed. After a few months Sandy packed up and went home to the San Gabriel Valley. She took a copy of her "book," several hundred names and phono numbers in a green ledger. Coded marks after each name indicated what each paid, what they liked, when last seen - and sometimes notations ran down the margin. Among the names were movie moguls and movie stars. Why would Mitchum frequent a call girl? Because there would be no repercussions, although recently some hookers had been feeding things to the notorious scandal rag of the hour, Confidential.

  Ann J. stopped turning tricks and started work as a secretary, but she was not averse to playing weekend courtesan if someone she liked wanted to buy her diamonds and drape her on his arm. Although not the most beautiful of women, she had the sexiest walk I've ever seen, and she did turn men's heads wherever she went. After a weekend in Vegas or New York, she invariably had another piece of jewelry and what amounted to a month's wages to deposit with her stockbroker.

  Sandy and I were introduced by Jimmy D., whom I mentioned earlier. He had been awaiting sentence to prison when I paroled. Now he was gone. Although we were the same age, Jimmy had a fraction of my knowledge, academic or street. At twenty-two I'd graduated with honors after a nickel in San Quentin. Jimmy did know young women who liked to get high and party, and where to do it. I had the money and the Jaguar sports car, which was rapidly accumulating dings and dents and a headlight that threw a skewed beam toward the sky.

  One night he called me with excitement in his voice. "Ah, man, I'm gonna cut you into this big redheaded stallion. She's so fine . . . me oh my . . . she likes to get high."

  It was before seat belts, much less seat belt laws, so all three of us squeezed into two bucket seats. "So what're we gonna do?" I asked.

  "It's on you, baby," Jimmy said to Sandy.

  "I want to get loaded," she said. "I called my connection. He's holding."

  "Where is he?"

  "On the east side . . . near Brooklyn and Soto."

  We were on Sweetzer just north of Santa Monica Boulevard in the Sunset Strip. It would be renamed West Hollywood when it incorporated as a city, but in '57 it was still a "strip" of county territory surrounded on three sides by the City of Angels and on the fourth by Beverly Hills. The Strip was home to most of the flashy clubs, vice and gambling. A hooker busted in county territory got a $100 fine. In Beverly Hills she would get ninety days the first time, six months the second.

  "East LA is a long way," I said. "I know somebody a mile from here."

  "A connection?"

  "Uh huh ... a friend of mine."

  "A drug dealer in Hollywood?"

  "Uh huh."

  "He must be the first one."

  It was true. Until then anyone who wanted drugs had to go east, at least to Temple Street just west of the civic center, or to the Grand Central Market on 3rd and Broadway, where drug dealers stood around with tiny balloons of drugs in their mouths, like chipmunks. If the narcotics officers jumped out of a doorway, the street pusher simply swallowed.

  I called Denis from a pay phone in a Richfield station. He was on his way out, but because we were so close he agreed to meet us in the parking lot of Smokey Joe's, a coffee shop with legendary hamburgers at the intersection of Beverly and La Cienega Boulevards.

  We arrived first and got out of the crowded car to wait. I spotted Denis's new two-seat Thunderbird as it turned in. He parked some distance away. Not knowing my friends he had no desire to meet them, a standard precaution for the cautious drug dealer. As I walked up, he was looking past me at Sandy. "Damn, man, that sure is a big fine redhead. You didn't tell me what you wanted."

  "Just a couple caps." In those days heroin, at least on the streets of LA, was sold in small number 5 gelatin capsules. A cap was still potent, and two non-addicts could share one, but the practice of cutting it with lactose was beginning. Every hand it went through put another cut on it. In a couple of years it would be a fraction of what it had been, and eventually they sold grams in balloons.

  "I didn't think you slammed," Denis said.

  "I've tried it a couple of times. It feels so good that I don't wanna fuck with it. I can see how somebody gets hooked."

  "Yeah . . . and when you've had a good jones, you're hooked for the rest of your life. You always crave it."

  He fished out two white capsules, dropped them into a cigarette pack's cellophane and twisted the top. They would melt if carried by hand.

  "Thanks, D. What do I owe you?"

  "A favor sometime down the line."

  "Damn, who ever heard of a dope dealer giving anything away?"

  "We do it all the time . . . especially to kids. . . until we get them hooked. Then we make them turn tricks and steal the family TV." He said it flady; his face expressionless. It was his idea of humor.

  "Did you cop?" Sandy asked when I returned.

  I opened my hand so she could see the cellophane pack and we stuffed ourselves back into the Jaguar. "So where do we go?" she asked.

  "What about that spot at the beach you told me about?" Jimmy said.

  My apartment was closer, but less impressive than the private cabana Louise had authorized me to use at the Sand and Sea Club on the Santa Monica beach. Jimmy had a good idea, for although I had never been obsessed with girls (or sex) to the extent of my teenage friends, on occasion the serpent of lust would bite me — and it bit me now. I wanted to spread this big redhead's legs until it caused pain in my crotch. And although I lacked experience in the games of seduction, I sensed that Sandy sneered at men who were too obvious. Such men were tricks to be manipulated and not respected. A whore is often more difficult to seduce than a good, God-fearing woman, unless money is involved, at which time the man becomes a "john" or a "trick," deserving only disdain. It was important to hide how much lust I had.

  As I expected, the parking lot was empty and nobody saw us push through a gate and circle the swimming pool to where the stairs rose one flight to a long balcony that fronted all the cabanas. The crash and whoosh of surf further masked our presence. Although I was authorized to use the place, I had no key. During the day the manager opened the door for me. It was a sliding glass door and I had rigged it to slide open without a key.

  I shook my head when it was my turn to fix. "I'm seeing my parole officer tomorrow. I think he's going to test me with nalline."

  "You're on parole?" Sandy asked. Was it with new interest or was it my perception of new interest? In some worlds instead of a stigma, a prison term was a cause for respect.

  "Yeah."

  "He did five years," Jimmy said.

  "Not quite five."

  "In San Quentin," Jimmy said.

  "I thought you were a little rich b
oy," she said.

  "That's my dream, but it's sure not the reality."

  "He knows Flip," Jimmy said.

  "Do you really know the legendary Yvonne Renee Dillon?"

  "I'll never forget her."

  Sandy laughed and nodded agreement.

  With the drapes pulled shut over the glass doors and the ocean smacking the beach and whooshing up the sand, they fixed. "Good junk," Sandy said, her voice slurred and full of gravel, meanwhile rubbing her eye and nose with the back of her hand. "Real good," she said, her head slowly falling to her chest; then snapping erect. She was fighting the nod and feeling a euphoria that went through her entire being, physical and emotional. It was a total absence of pain. It wasn't a time to pitch at her, or even to talk very much. Someone full of junk wants to stay in one place, eating ice-cream cones and smoking cigarettes. Junkies on the nod burn a lot of upholstery. But I could see how good they felt, how they became sufficient unto it, including the ritual, and it scared me. Sandy didn't want any more conversation for the present. I went out onto the balcony and smoked a Camel while watching a big moon low on the horizon. The wide beam of moonlight stretched across the sea like a path that could be walked. The wind was mild and the night comfortable. When the surf finished each crashing roll and rushed up the beach, it left a pattern like white lace that lasted a few seconds before disappearing as the broken wave receded.

  Such scenes as these always triggered a longing, or perhaps epiphany, in me. More than anyone I knew, I liked being alone with my thoughts in certain settings. This was one of them; so was trekking through the dark, sleeping city in the hours after midnight when all was quiet and empty. Good pot would unlock the doors of perception. I was disappointed that Sandy had zonked herself to heroin oblivion. I wanted to know her better. No doubt her body with its high, full breasts and big, tanned thighs stirred my desire, but there was her personality too. Jimmy said she was like one of the guys. In a way it was true; she was as much a man's woman as any I've known, comfortable among the roughest of men. Knowing what they wanted, the primal lust she aroused in men gave her power she recognized, yet hidden beneath that was hunger to be the small, helpless female that is looked after, protected and loved by men. Sometimes she thought she had found it, but so far it had proved a mirage when the masks were taken oil and the face of truth exposed.

  Those insights would come over time as I knew her better. At the moment she had me thinking of Flip, whom I hadn't seen for more than five years, although I had certainly thought about her many times in the darkness of my cell, remembering how beautiful she had been, the alabaster skin, the perfect butt, the way she coul fuck. Although I could not claim wide sexual experience, she made all others seem limp bodies who simply stretched out and opened their legs. Back then the power of her beauty intimidated me. On graduating from a nickel in the House of Dracula, I was no longer intimidated by anything less than a twelve-gauge shotgun two inches from my head. Surviving five years in San Quentin does wonders for one's self-confidence.

  Several days later my telephone rang. Sandy was on the line. "I got your number from Jimmy," she said. "I hope you don't mind."

  "No. What's up?"

  "Flip remembers you. She wants to see you."

  "I want to see her, too. What about tonight?"

  "No. She said Thursday. She's not doing real good right now."

  "What's wrong?"

  "The guy she was with cut her loose. She had everything in her car. She went to score out in East LA and somebody threw a brick through the side window and stole her clothes — all her clothes. It's hard for her to work without a front."

  "Why does she need a wardrobe to he down first and get up last?"

  "She doesn't . . . but she needs to look like Bloomingdale's to walk through a fancy hotel lobby on a date."

  Yes, that was understandable. The difference between a whore on the corner and a call girl in a penthouse was often no more than facade. Take the former to a hair stylist, put her under a sun lamp, dress her from Neiman Marcus and put her in a plush apartment — and her price for the same services goes from $20 to $200 for twenty minutes, and from $200 to $2,000 for the night.

  In 1957 Paramount Studios did not extend out to front Melrose Avenue, as it does now. It was back a block on a street called Marathon. On the narrow street that ran between Melrose and Marathon was a three-story apartment building of lath and plaster in a faux Tudor design. The third-floor apartments had a window opening to a fire escape that overlooked the De Mille gate, that studio landmark somewhat less famous than the snow-capped mountain logo. The window faced west and caught the sunset full on.

  Flip liked to sit in the window next to the fire escape and drink Scotch whisky during the magic twilight hour. She would muse on what might have been had she not been so hell bent on personal destruction.

  When Sandy led the way through the apartment's front door I didn't get a good look at Flip until we were in the living room and she closed the door and turned to us. I don't think I reacted visibly, although perhaps the flesh flinched between my eyes. The idealized image of sexually potent beauty was dashed. Five years of Scotch and heroin had defaced the perfect sensual beauty God had given her. Her face was still unusually beautiful, and with little makeup she would be stunning, but her body showed the flab that came from kicking habits.

  "Hey, sweetmeat," she said. "You've grown up. I'll bet you shave now."

  I think I blushed; at least my face felt hot.

  "I haven't got much time," she said. "I'm' sorry. I got an unexpected call for a date. A regular. Scott Brady."

  "The actor?" Sandy asked.

  "Uh huh?" Flip said. "Wait here." An exposed stairway went up the side wall to another floor. Bathroom, bedroom and a door to the hallway were up there. "It's a good place for a working girl," Sandy said. When I didn't understand, she explained: "It can stand traffic. A john leaving through that door up there—" she indicated the stairway, "doesn't run into a john coming in that door." She indicated the front door. Then I understood.

  Flip came down the stairs. She had combed her hair, but had done littleelse. She was several levels scruffier than my expectation of a high-powered call girl. "Look here," she said to Sandy. "Do me a favor and give me a ride to his house."

  "We're not going to wait for you," Sandy said.

  "No . . . no . . . that's fine. I'll get back on my own."

  Scott Brady lived in a small white house perched on a flattened bluff somewhere up Laurel Canyon. A swimming pool covered all the property not taken by the house. It was one of those where you can hold onto the rim of the swimming pool and look down and out over the vast plain of Los Angeles or the San Fernando Valley. When she got out, Flip handed me a slip of paper with her phone number. "Gimme a call. I'll cook you a steak and baked potato."

  As we drove Laurel Canyon's tight turns toward the Sunset

  Strip, Sandy joshed me: "Damn, baby, looks like you caught the absolutely fabulous Miss Yvonne Renee Dillon of Palm Springs and Hollywood."

  "The question is, how much trouble is she? They don't call her Flip for nothing."

  "She is Flip . . . but she's still a moneymaker. Her book has over a thousand numbers, and she's got some regulars who won't see another girl."

  "No . . . Uh uh . . . I'm no pimp. In fact I despise pimps. I like whores . . . but not pimps."

  "Some aren't so bad. They look after their old lady . . . don't let them shoot the money in their arm. A lot of girls can't trick unless they're loaded."

  I could understand. Being high would buffer them from the unpleasant realities of sucking a strange prick. "They do have a lot of money," Sandy said, "and they don't go to jail. Not very often anyway."

  At the time of the conversation my attention was primarily focused on the intermittent flash of brake lights on the car ahead of us. What she said registered without being examined. Sometime within the next couple of days, an idea came to mind: I would make these pimps pay me protection. I would, so to sp
eak, play Lucky Luciano and organize them. The main selling thing was to convince them they needed protection. All kinds of things could happen if they didn't have protection from vandals and maniacs. They owned jukeboxes and cigarette machines which could fall over or suffer an accidental sledgehammer blow. Didn't what's- his-name own a nightclub on Santa Monica Boulevard? It could burn down. The wives of their tricks could be called and told about their whoring husbands. The pimps could have an accident somewhere along the line. Wasn't it worth 10 or 15 percent to feel secure and protected? Eighty-five percent of big money was better than a 100 percent of nothing but trouble.

  To make it work, it had to be a fait accompli at the moment they heard about it. The first move had to be checkmate where killing me would bring about the death of everyone they knew. Actually, they only had to believe that killing me would result in madmen they couldn't identify kicking down doors to slaughter them and their whole family.

  Of course I wasn't that capable. It was a game with me, backed up with a vicious Sunday punch and a mouth that would make anyone believe I was ready to murder them at any moment. My eyes rolled, my hand was steady and I was telling them that 1 wanted to go to the — and the muzzle of a twelve-gauge was ten feet away. Nobody ever told me, "Go ahead, asshole." God knows what would have happened in such an event.

  Several bona-fide madmen were loose in LA. I could enlist their help. The problem was, could I control them afterward? Maybe I could use some of Joe Morgan's boys to stand in the background and look mean.

  The protection idea was still floating around in the undecided part of my brain several days later when I called Flip to see if her offer of a steak and baked potato was real. That very night was fine. Six-thirty? Fine.