The flashlight tapped on the side window; the beam was direcdy on my face. I could see the glare through closed eyelids. I opened one eye at a time. "Wha . . . what's happening?"
"Step out of the car."
I got out. "What's the problem, officer?"
"Over there. Let's see some ID."
As we each showed identification, Billy wanted to know what this was about. It seemed that the officer, walking a beat, saw us turn the wrong way into a one-way alley. "What're you doing back here?"
"Taking a leak," they said.
"I dunno," I said. "I was sleeping in the back seat."
"Let's take a walk," the cop said.
We walked from the alley along a street. My instinct was to run. Although I was always notoriously slow, the policeman had a pot belly that said he wasn't a sprinter either. If I ran, he would face a dilemma: if he chased me, they would get away. What kept me from running was the fact that I hadn't done anything.
He unlocked a call-in box and picked up the phone. We waited until a sergeant drove up, and then drove back to the alley. En route the Sergeant asked what we were doing in the alley. I said I was asleep in the back seat. They repeated that they were taking a leak.
The Sergeant flashed the light around the car. "Open the trunk."
Billy unlocked the trunk. The Sergeant trained his flashlight inside — and there we saw a portable acetylene torch, with straps so it could be carried on the back. Inside a bag was a drill and bit, a handsaw that could cut circles, a jimmy bar, several freshly sharpened chisels and a small sledgehammer, plus other tools. "You're under arrest," he said, pulling out his weapon. Now it was too late to run.
As soon as we were being booked, I began demanding a telephone call. The booking officer said I had to wait for the detectives to approve it. "No I don't. I've got a right to a phone call."
"You've got a right to an ass kicking."
That temporarily silenced me — but as soon as I was in the cell, I began to yell: "I want a telephone call!" Everyone who passed outside the cell, or within earshot, heard my cry for a phone call. I had to get out on bail before Monday morning when the parole office would learn that I was in jail and would automatically put a parole hold on me. The earliest I could hope for release was after the charges were setded, whatever they might be. If I was convicted of so much as a misdemeanor, I would likely be returned to San Quentin as a parole violator, and the parole board could re-fix my term at the maximum. I would be in company with "known felons" and "persons of ill repute." I had to get a phone call. I was booked on suspicion of burglary. A lawyer could go to a judge with a petition for habeas corpus, and the judge would issue a "show cause" order and set a bail. A bail bondsman would take 10 percent as his fee, plus a lien on something like a house for the whole amount. It would go down to a misdemeanor and a lower bail on Monday, but I could not wait for Monday. "My mother's got thirty million dollars and I WANT A PHONE CALL'." I yelled through the night.
The detectives came in on Saturday morning, their day off. They drooled at the chance of putting the two wily old safecrackers into prison. They called me first. They knew my story about sleeping in the back seat was bullshit. "You're on parole, Bunker, you can go back that fast." He snapped his fingers. "So?" "You know those guys were starting to break into one of those stores. You help us and we'll help you."
"I'd like to . . . but you don't want any lies, do you?"
They looked at each other, and then at me with eyes of dislike.
"Go back to the cell. We'll talk to you later."
As they walked me back to the holding tank where a jailer would let me in, I asked them in front of him, "Tell this guy to let me make a phone call."
"Let him make a call," the detective said.
The jailer nodded as he opened the gate and slammed it shut behind me. Twenty minutes later, he took me out to the pay phone. "Go ahead."
"I need a dime."
"You don't have a dime?"
"Man, you guys took my money when you booked me."
"I didn't book you. I wasn't here."
"How am I gonna make a phone call?"
"Without a dime, I don't know."
My face was aflame when he put me back in the cell. I swung on an emotional pendulum between indignant fury and despair.
An hour later, an old Chicano, a trusty in khaki with county jail stamped across both knees, the breast pocket and back of the shirt, came down the runway outside the cells. He was pushing a broom. "Hey, man, esel"
The trusty looked around to make sure no jailer was watching. "Yeah."
"Hey, man, I need a fuckin' dime to make a phone call."
He made a face of pain. He was torn between fear of the jailers and desire to help another prisoner.
"Please, man."
When he reached my cell he put a quarter on the bars and kept going.
"Jailer! Jailer! My mama's got thirty million dollars and I want a phone calll" I punctuated the cry by shaking the gate as hard as I could. It banged loudly.
"Shut the fuck up down there Mr thirty million mother- flicker."
"Fuck you, and your mama, too. Officer! Jailer! I wanna make a phone call!"
On Saturday night the detectives began taking us out at roll call. That is when the shift of officers changes. They meet in the muster room. After checking the roll and assigning cars, they are told about recent crimes and other things they should know about. The burglary detectives marched us downstairs and paraded us in front of the graveyard shift. Our pedigrees were announced. "... two of the best safecrackers in California . . . and this one looks young, but don't be fooled. This—" he shook several pages of yellow paper — "is his rap sheet ..."
We were taken again when the day shift came on. As I stood under the hot lights, I called out, "Do I get to make a phone call or not?"
"Didn't they let you make one already?"
"No."
When they took us back, a different jailer took me back to the pay phone. "Go ahead," he said.
As I stepped up and dropped the quarter into the slot, I watched the jailer's face — and his surprise was almost neon across his mug. I dialed Louise's private number, to her phone in her bedroom. "Hello," she said.
"Hello, Mama, it's me. I need help ..." I explained what my situation was. I had no one else to call. I told her what had to be done, and even gave her the name of a shyster mouthpiece who would take care of it.
It took until late Sunday evening to get the writ and post the bond. While I was out seeing the bondsman, Billy the Bouncer was out seeing his lawyer. He wasn't going to bother with a writ. Tomorrow they would be charged with a misdemeanor and have a misdemeanor bail. It was about one fifth of the felony bail I had to post today. He didn't have a parole officer to worry about. He laughed with bad teeth and told me the detectives were angry. They'd hoped to match the tools in the car trunk with tool marks on several open safes. Alas, all the tools had been freshly ground down and sharpened. They were so clean that they didn't even have fingerprints. "How the hell can they get in a car trunk without being touched by a human hand?"
I walked out into the Beverly Hills night, palm trees blowing in a Santa Ana breeze. Louise waited, her presence unexpected. She drove me to my apartment on 9th and Detroit. I told her exactly what had happened, and in my view I was innocence personified. I was, indeed, the drunk in the back seat. Whether she believed me or not, her voice and manner registered disappointment, partly for the trouble and partly because I had almost stopped coming to see her. "You went to see Marion last week. Why didn't you visit me?" True enough, one afternoon I had stopped by Marion Davies's house and had a gin and tonic with her. She drank a left of gin.
The writ was returnable in the Beverly Hills Municipal Court in ten days. I was to be there at 10 a.m. with counsel. I marked it on the calendar and forgot about it. I had other things to think about. This meatball case could be stalled for many months, quite possibly until I was off parole. Then a misdemeanor convicti
on would be inconsequential. I would gladly serve six months in jail if I could get rid of the parole leash that was choking me.
As expected, all they could charge me with were several misdemeanors. Instead of entering a plea, we motioned for a month postponement to study the arrest and investigation reports. My lawyer, an old man who taught criminal law, who knew the judge but was long of tooth for trial wars, combat by words, was able to get us five weeks' postponement to study the reports. The City Attorney objected; he was young and feisty. The judge ignored him and set arraignment for a Monday, at 10 a.m., five weeks away. We would probably enter a "not guilty" plea and have a trial date set for ninety days away. Even if we went to trial and a jury found me guilty, during the appeal of a misdemeanor conviction the defendant has an absolute right to bail. An appeal would last a minimum of eighteen months. In other words, if all things went bad, the earliest I had to confront fleeing the country or going to jail for a few months was over two years away. That was eternity relative to the pace that I was living.
It would take too long to recount all my adventures at nearly twenty-four. Having read Aldous Huxley's The Doors of Perception and Heaven and Hell, when a magazine article did a piece on magic mushrooms in Mexico, I happened to have $9,000 and a willing companion in Bill D., Jimmy D.'s brother. We drove old Route 66 through Arizona and New Mexico and turned south through El Paso into Juarez. We drove through Mexico, and twice when stopped by soldiers and asked for a visa, we paid $50 and drove on. We got some mushrooms from an Indian. It was a strange high. Three weeks later we went back to Los Angeles.
I also discovered Las Vegas. Sandy took me there the first time, but after that I would go for two or three days almost on whim. I loved to gamble. No, not gamble exacdy; rather I loved to play poker. Although the casinos of the era seemed the ultimate in wealth and glamour, they were virtually insignificant compared to the gigantic gambling palaces of today. I liked to cross the casino pit and have a pit boss tell me, "Table open, Mr Bunker ..." I was twenty-three years old; it made me feel like a big shot.
One funny thing happened. As I said, I had a Jaguar sports car. My insurance had been canceled so I had a crushed-in bumper and a few other dings and dents, plus it was a world of trouble mechanically. Half humorously I told a youngster that I'd give him a couple of cans of grass if he would get me one that looked like mine. At the used sports car lot where I had the front of a job, I learned that Jaguars have their numbers on a plate screwed into the firewall. What was screwed in could be unscrewed, and screwed in somewhere else — like a better car.
The following Sunday morning I awakened at Flip's apartment next to Paramount (the building is now on the Paramount lot), and for some reason called the neighbor who lived in the bottom apartment of the main house. The neighbor said, "That kid made a lot of noise when he brought your car here last night."
My car! At home. "Wait a second," I said. I went to the window and looked down onto the street. There sat my car. The one the youth had brought was not mine.
We went to look at it. It was an exact duplicate, including skirts along the rear wheel well. It was in perfect condition. It was a jewel.
My problem was to dispose of the old one. With Flip in tow, I went looking for help. I wanted Jimmy D., who knew the scrap metal business, and Jack K., who was a machinist and had access to a cutting torch from his father's machine shop. They would help me cut up the Jag. Its body was aluminium; Jimmy could have that for scrap. Jack was into engines; he could have the Jaguar 6, already a legendary piece of work. The Jag engine was always great; it was everything else, especially electricity, that made them deteriorate so quickly for so many years. We don't know how good they are today; it will take a few years. They do depreciate swiftly.
The day was hot, the asphalt parking lots soft. I found Jimmy and Jack together, coming out of the dim coolness of a bar. They were game for the plan. Jack went to get the acetylene torch. We would chop it up in the garage of Jimmy's father-in-law, whom I had known since I was caught sleeping in his garage when on an escape from juvenile custody. His eldest daughter was then my girlfriend. Now she was married to a man in prison, who had been my running partner in youth. The second daughter was married to Jimmy, and he disliked being married except for his two sons, whom he adored. He had a physical revulsion to routine. He was psychologically incapable of getting to a job on time. He might stay up partying until 6.30, so how could he get to a job at eight? Cutting up a car on a Sunday afternoon was another matter.
The house with the garage was in El Monte. It had a deep back yard, so what we were doing in the garage should not have disturbed the family barbecue. We would make one cut through the body and peel it off in two pieces. Whde Jack put on the goggles and wielded the torch, Jimmy used his considerable muscle with a crowbar, to dig and pry.
More and more family members and friends walked by the garage to the back yard barbecue. Everything might have been all right, except that the torch had set rubber insulation on fire, or at least smoldering so seriously that smoke poured through a broken window at the rear of the garage and billowed out across the yard. The acrid black smoke filled the garage, too. We had to raise the garage door to let in air. The air blew even more smoke through the broken window in the back yard full of coughing and choking Italians.
Flip, wearing white hot pants, white blouse and white headband (the look of Lana Turner in The Postman Always Rings Twice), stood in the garage doorway and laughed until she was in tears.
Soon enough the dispute began: Jimmy would get the aluminum body, Jack would take the engine, but who would get the chassis had not been considered. I told them to finish cutting it and then we would decide.
When the body was peeled off and all that remained was a chassis, four wheels and two bucket seats, I took the license plates, the plate we had unscrewed from the firewall and the car keys, and departed the scene with Flip.
Forty minutes later I screwed the plate with the vehicle identification number, engine number and the rest, onto the pristine black XK140 convertible. I liked it better than the 120 because it had windows that rolled up. The 120 had side panels that snapped into place.
I inserted the key to the old Jag into the ignition of the stolen one. With a tiny jiggle the key turned and I pushed the starter button, which was separate from the key. It kicked over and roared, the sound hypnotic to sports car enthusiasts, of which I was one.
A few days later I discovered that Jimmy and Jack had taken the chassis with four wheels and two seats — but no body, no windshield, no headlights, no license plates — out onto the San Bernardino Freeway, Interstate 10, and driven it to Riverside. They said it was the fastest thing on the road. By some miracle the Highway Patrol didn't spot them and test their speed claim. They sold the engine to someone who put it into a boat.
I drove the new Jaguar for about a year, and once had it impounded without anyone discovering that it really belonged to a Van Nuys car dealer. Even when I became a fugitive, I put out-of-state license plates on the Jag and drove it for a few months. One night I parked it on a steeply sloped street off the Sunset Strip. While I was gone the brakes gave out and it rolled downhill into the front door and entryway of an apartment building. It had been towed away when I came out. C'est la vie.
Sandy moved back to the Sunset Strip, to a sleek apartment on Sweetzer between Sunset and Fountain. Late one afternoon she called me and said to come over. "Somebody wants to see you."
"Who is it?"
"No. No. It'll be a surprise."
When she opened the door, she said, "You'll never guess who's here."
On the living room sofa sat Ronnie H. She was right; I never would have guessed. I had no idea he was out. I hadn't seen him since San Quentin. He was from Sandy's neighborhood; she had known him before he went to prison. Actually she was more friendly with his sister, who would later be murdered in the desert by an escaped convict who was sentenced to die, although I cannot recall if he was actually executed or got a
commutation when the Supreme Court ruled the death penalty unconstitutional as it was then being applied. Ronnie H. was a good convict, although no killer. In prison lexicon, he was a regular. He grinned gape-mouthed, showing a missing tooth. "Hey, Eddie B. We heard you had it all going for you, a Jaguar and all that."
My affability was a front. Although Sandy was not my "old lady," and in fact we had not even gone to bed together, I felt something unusual for me: jealousy, which increased as she told me that Ronnie had lots of money from hanging bad paper, and they were going away on a long trip together. "I always wanted to live a while in New York."
"That's great. When are you leaving?"
Ronnie answered. "In a couple days. I gotta pick up some money that's owed me." When she went out of the room, he lowered his voice: "Bill D. said you could get blank payroll checks. I need some."
"How many do you want?"
"I dunno ... as many as you can get, I guess."
"No, I don't think you want that many. You can only cash about a dozen a day."
"I got some other people cashin' 'em, too. What about a hundred . . . maybe a hundred and fifty? How much is that?"
"How's six grand?"
"That sounds fair enough."
"Okay . . . what's tomorrow?"
"Friday."
"I'll get 'em tomorrow night. You'll have my money."
"Oh yeah . . . sure ... as soon as I see these guys that owe me."
"No, no ... I don't want to wait."
"No, you won't have to wait. If I don't see them, I'll give it to you out of some other money I've got."
"Okay, good. When I get the checks, where do you want me to reach you?"
"Reach me here at Sandy's."
As I went back to my car, I realized that I hadn't known how much I wanted Sandy until it appeared as if she was leaving.
I had a dozen Southern Pacific Railroad checks, and nine from Walt Disney, all made out. Not enough. I knew where to get more, from a machine shop in South Pasadena. It was an easy prowl; there was no burglar alarm. It had security bars on the rear window, but they had been cut so an air conditioner would fit on the window ledge. Wearing gloves, of course, I bent the bars, lifted out the air conditioner and climbed in. In a couple of minutes I had a big checkbook. The checks could not get hot until Monday. That would give them two days before they were on any kind of hot list.
Mr. Blue: Memoirs of a Renegade Page 29