Mr. Blue: Memoirs of a Renegade

by Edward Bunker

  I called Sandy from the machine shop. "Hey, baby, is he there?" I asked.

  "He went out somewhere ... I think to see those guys about the money they owe him. He'll be back in a littlewhile."

  "Hold him. I'm on my way."

  "Did you get them?"

  "Yes ma'am."

  It was still dusk when I turned down the ramp onto the Pasadena Freeway, but when I exited the Hollywood Freeway at Highland Avenue, the city's lights were biting into night. I followed Highland to Fountain, went west to Sweetzer and found a parking space at the curb.

  The apartment building was from Southern California's architectural heyday, around 1940. It was a two-storied stucco with red tde roof. To enter from the street you had to pass through the gate of a walled courtyard with lush ferns and a fountain.

  When Sandy opened the door, she let me know that Ronnie was in the apartment.

  "Has he got my money?"

  "I dunno. Talk to him."

  He was in the living room watching a football game on TV. As soon as he saw me and stood up, I knew without a word that he didn't have the money. "They were supposed to meel me," he said.

  "Uh uh! No! That's bullshit. That's got nothing to do with me. I need my money."

  "I know you do," he said. "I'll pay you out of these checks right off the top."

  "Look here, Ronnie, you and me are all right . . . but I don't commit felonies for free. I want my money tomorrow, and I want $50 a check instead of $40."

  Ronnie nodded before I finished. "Sure, man. Thanks, man. Fuck, I'll even cash some tonight and give you the dough." He looked toward the door to the bedroom, where Sandy was packing up. "Can you get me a check protector?"

  "I don't know. Maybe."

  "Let's go get some money," he said. "We'll take my car, but you drive. Okay."

  It was fine with me. I could keep track of my money. We went to my apartment to type a name on the checks. It was then I learned that Ronnie lacked phony identification. "We'll use my ID," he said. "Why not? I mean . . . what the fuck . . . I'm gonna be a fugitive anyway. What's the difference between a parole violation and a new check beef?"

  His logic had some validity. I wouldn't have done it, but the truth was that he might serve about the same time for hanging paper as for a parole violation. He'd gone down the first time foi armed robbery. The parole board might think he was improving if he came back on a forgery.

  When he came out of the first market and handed me the money, he said, "Don't tell Sandy about this."

  "About what?"

  "About using my own identification."

  "Yeah . . . sure."

  "I'll get the rest tomorrow," I said.

  "Yeah, sure. It's going good, huh?"

  I nodded. "You better get all the money you can . . . because the more you have the longer you can run."

  "That's right. We'll have plenty when we pass the rest of that paper."

  The next morning it fell upon me to evacuate Sandy from the apartment. What she wasn't taking with her was going to the garage at her parents' home in the San Gabriel Valley. When I arrived at the apartment she was in a heated argument with the landlady, who refused to return the security deposit because Sandy was leaving before her lease expired. "C'mon," I said, almost dragging her away. Sandy was a big girl, and although she dressed like a socialite, she had been raised on mean streets and was not averse to punching the landlady in the eye. I didn't want that to happen. As I pulled her to the car, I said, "Take it easy. We'll get her. I'll come back and clean it out." Which I did several nights later, carting away everything that would sell, including a rug that, by itself, brought twice the security deposit. The landlady was a shrewish bitch, but she did have good taste.

  After leaving everything except two suitcases at the small but neat tract home, we went to a house in Alhambra. It was a frame house built before the Depression situated far back on the lot. The unpaved driveway had two grooves from the passage of coundess cars. Once there had been a front lawn; now some patches of grass remained, and it was obviously a common practice to park on the front yard. Two cars sat there. I recognized neither. Ronnie's wasn't there, nor was his crime partner's. R.L. was in on the forgery scheme. In fact he was supposed to pay me the rest of the money. He drove an old maroon Cadillac convertible. It predated the rear fins, which in 1957 had evolved to their maximum flamboyance.

  I let Sandy out and went around the block to park. It was unlikely that the police would arrive, but it was possible. If they did pull up in front, I would have a chance to go over the rear fence. If that happened, I didn't want to leave my car. I always parked some distance away when I was doing something wrong.

  Sandy was alone in the living room when I entered. "Who's here?" I asked.

  "R.L.'s old lady and some teenage chick." She gestured toward the archway into the kitchen. There I found Charlene, the wife, called "Charlie," and a neighborhood girl named Bonnie. Charlie was feeding a baby in a high chair. Piled on the kitchen table were sacks of groceries. Somebody had been cashing the checks. Hanging paper in supermarkets, which was the place to cash them, created a byproduct of many groceries. I would give them to Jimmy D.'s sister-in-law, whose husband was in San Quentin. She could use it all, especially the baby food.

  Charlie's greeting was cold, and when I asked the whereabouts of her husband, she made a face and a sound of disgust. "I don't know. I don't care. Here." From beneath a magazine she produced a stack of greenbacks. "We still owe you six hundred," she said. "Get it from him."

  To Bonnie, I made a face intended to be a humorous reaction to Charlene's manifest anger. Bonnie didn't respond, and on closer scrutiny I could see that she had been crying.

  The sound of the front screen door banging shut brought me back to the living room. R.L. had returned. He was grinning at Sandy with drunken stupidity. "How ya doin', ya big fine . . ." Then he saw me. "Hey, big E.B. Damn, you dress sharp. Where's that baaadass Jaguar of yours?"

  Charlene came past me. "Well . . . ?" she said.

  "'Well' what . . . ?" R.L. responded.

  "Did you pass any?"

  He shook his head. "They won't take 'em from me."

  "Lyin' bastard," she said; then snorted and went back to the kitchen.

  R.L. looked to me as the appeal judge. "I don't know why, man. I swear, they won't take 'em from me."

  Fifteen minutes late we pulled R.L.'s Cadillac into a parking lot beside a supermarket on Huntington Drive. While driving there I told R.L. exactly what to do. He got out and I waited. Five minutes later he came around the other corner and hurried to the car, shaking his head even before he got in. "I told you. They just won't."

  It was obvious that he had simply walked around the market without going in. When we stopped at the next market, I accompanied him. It was a huge Safeway. "Get a cart," I said.

  He pushed the cart and I piled it high with groceries. I went with him to the checkout line. When he was one customer from the cash register, I went around and stood by the door. He handed over the payroll check. The checker called the manager, who looked at the driver's license and initialed the check. The groceries were bagged and loaded back into the cart while the checkout clerk counted out the change and handed it over.

  "That was easy," R.L. said when we were back in the car.

  I held out my hand.

  "Oh yeah, I owe you," he said, handing me the wad of bills.

  I took him through the same dance twice more, loading the cart, leading him to the checkout line and patting him on the back before stepping to the sidelines. "Man, it's easier than I thought," he said as he handed me the money. It was all he owed me. "Let's get a couple more before we go back."

  At the next market, as we neared the front door, Ronnie H. came out pushing a cart of groceries. "Don't go in there," he said. "The manager was a little bit suspicious. Let's go back to the house."

  When we got back, I had all the money owed me. I had wads that bulged both pants pockets and the inside pocket of my
jacket. I got my car and loaded it with the groceries to give away. Ronnie was taking a temporary rest before going out again. He knew that it didn't matter if he cashed ten checks or two hundred; he would

  serve the same amount of time when caught. The more he cashed, the farther he could travel and the longer he could stay out of danger. Give me enough money and it would be impossible for the authorities to catch me.

  Sandy was still waiting on the sofa. Ronnie looked at her and said, "You're the smartest one of all. You're getting everything without doing anything."

  "No," she said. "I'm not the smartest. He is." She nodded toward me.

  I was at the screen door. "Goodbye and good luck to one and all."

  "I'll call you tomorrow," Sandy said.

  "You're leaving town."

  "I'll call you from wherever I am. You'll want to know how I am, won't you?"

  "Of course. Later."

  I gave them all a salute and walked out into the late afternoon light, humming a song and snapping my fingers: "I'm the king of everything . . . gotta have a joint before I swing."

  I got in the car and fired up a fat joint called a bomber.

  When the phone rang late the following afternoon, I knew it was Sandy. I picked up the receiver and I said, "Hi, baby."

  "How'd you know it was me" "E.S.P."

  "Wanna go to a movie?"

  "Sure."

  "Pick me up at my mother's."

  "What time?"

  "Whenever you get here."

  That evening we drove to Pasadena where we saw Frank Sinatra play the Prohibition era comedian, Joe E. Lewis, in The Joker is Wild. It seemed a good movie, although my memory of it is less clear than of some I've seen. I lost track of the movie while thinking about her body beside me. I'd played a waiting game, hiding my lust for many months, certain of her contempt for a man she could lead around by his sexual desire. Now she was ready to be my woman. The idea was dizzying. She was the perfect female for me, streetwise yet educated. That she had been a call girl was great with me. I had no use for a square john chick who, if I was in jail, would come to the visiting room and cry on the glass. I wanted a partner who could, and would, trick the bondsman to raise me on bail. She was fine, too, 5'9", with an eye-turning shape and long, gleaming red hair. She had the most sensuous walk I've ever seen on a woman, with long tanned legs that were shapely, although her thighs were bigger than is fashionable today - but just what I like. So do most men.

  Visions of having her on white sheets with those legs spread wide filled my mind and I knew it would come to pass, but this wasn't the right time to bring it forward. A lot of things were communicated wordlessly. "We can be a great team," she said and, after a pause, added: "Incidentally, I hear well..." I said nothing; I even liked that she said it, for it validated my dominance in the relationship. Why tell her that the very idea of hitting a woman was anathema to me?

  A week later we had an apartment on Sunset Boulevard near where Holloway Drive intersects. I remember standing on the balcony, high on pot, looking out over the plain of city lights, with Ella Fitzgerald's voice singing the Rodgers and Hart Songbook. I was waiting for Sandy to get ready for dinner. The whole world was spread at my feet. I was king of all I surveyed.

  Chapter 10

  The Shit Hits the Fan

  The phone rang. I picked it up. "Hello."

  "Edward Bunker."

  I didn't recognize the voice, but warning bells rang in my brain "Who's calling?"

  "Who's this?" he asked.

  "I asked first."

  There was a pause. "I'm his parole officer . . . and he's in big trouble."

  Oh shit. "He's not here right now."

  "Who're you?"

  "I'll tell him to call you." I hung up. My shirt was wet from sweat.

  The phone rang again. I let it ring.

  The next morning I put a handkerchief over the phone, affected a slight southern accent and called the parole office. I was put through to Harry Sanders.

  "I got a message you wanted to talk to me."

  "I'm your new parole officer. Who do you think you are, driving a Jaguar?"

  "I had permission to get a car."

  "I can't find any written authorization in your fde."

  "Well, my old parole officer gave it to me. You can ask him." "He isn't here anymore. Besides, it's supposed to be in wri- ting."

  I said nothing. What could I say?

  "You haven't even tried to do this parole."

  "I've got a job."

  "You've got a job selling cars. That's a con game. You're supposed to be in jail right now with those charges pending in Beverly Hills. I don't know how the hell you got out."

  Again I was sdent.

  "Get down to this office right now."

  "Are you going to put me in jail?"

  "We'll decide that when you get here."

  "I just wanted to know if I should bring a toothbrush and clean underwear."

  "You're a smartass, too."

  "No I'm not . . . not really."

  On hanging up the phone, I debated flight. In my opinion it is better to be hunted than caught, and it was obvious that a new day had dawned in my relationship with the Division of Adult Paroles. With great misgivings, I got in my car and drove to the parole office. It was downtown in the office building above the old Million Dollar Theater. Once you entered, the receptionist had to buzz the door for you to get out. The cubicles used as offices were down a narrow passageway, very much like a vision from Kafka. A door opened, a head appeared and a hand beckoned me.

  "Personally, I'd put you in jail right now," was Harry Sanders's first sentence. He was in his thirties, fat and unattractive, with jowls hanging over his shirt collar. They vibrated when he moved his head. "My supervisor said to wait."

  I was sure the supervisor thought I still had the patronage of Mrs Hal Wallis. He wasn't going to make any rash moves.

  "I'll tell you one thing," he continued. "You're getting a different job."

  "What's wrong with selling cars?"

  "Too much temptation . . . too many con games played on the public."

  I wanted to argue, but I knew the newspapers were full of a scandal lately involving H.J. Caruso, one of the largest car dealers in Southern California. I shrugged and kept my mouth shut.

  "And that Jaguar. You get rid of that car. Who the hell do you think you are, a parolee driving a Jaguar?"

  I dropped my eyes in subservience, but I was envisioning how I would like to have him off somewhere without witnesses. When I got back to the car, I realized that my hands were trembling. As you must know by now, I am not a man easily shaken. 1 wanted to kill him, for I knew, contrary to popular belief, that murder is perhaps the easiest felony to commit and get away with if the perpetrator follows a simple script. First, trust nobody. It is too much weight for them to carry, especially if they come into a situation where they can trade it for their own freedom. Too many people seem compelled to pour it out. Murder weighs so heavily on the soul. It shouldn't, but it does. The second step is to find a place to catch them alone, in the driveway, in a parking lot or a subterranean garage. Step up and shoot them, preferably between the eyes or behind the ear; the heart is okay, too. Make sure you fire killing shots and that nobody can identify you. Dispose of the weapon where it can never be found, and make sure that it cannot be traced to you if it is found. It is a crime without evidence or witnesses. Even if the police believe you did it, that is not evidence they can put before a jury. If questioned, don't lie. Say nothing except: "1 want to see my lawyer." Say it to the arresting officers; say it to the booking officer; say it to the detectives who interrogate you, say it to every officer who passes by, say it to the nurse passing out medications; say it to the janitor: "I want to see my lawyer."

  I could get away with it, but I didn't have it in me to murder in cold blood. In self-defense, yes. If someone was a threat to my life, I would take them out quickly. Harold S. might fit into that category, but might wa
s not enough to take his life, worthless as he was. I would go along with what he said, and try to placate him. It was contrary to my nature, but it was the only chance I had to win. My parole had nine months and twelve days remaining. The state had put a leash around my neck when I was four and they made me a ward of the court. Ever since then I had been on parole or probation. If I could ride it out, hopefully he would have other cases to attract his attention. If I could hang on for a year I would be discharged and truly free.

  I quit selling cars and took a laborer's job at the Disney studio, moving scenery on the back lot in the burning sun. After two weeks I couldn't take it and quit. The brother of an ex-con friend owned a strippers' club on 7th Street near downtown. He gave me a front, writing a check that I gave back, plus I paid the tax deductions and social security. The parole officer would disallow the job next month when I sent my parole report. After that I would simply claim that I couldn't get a job. He would have a hard time violating my parole for not working when he'd made me quit two jobs.

  Another thing that bothered him was women. "How come you have so many girlfriends? Who are these women?" He wanted to see them. I had Flip see him using Patty Ann's name.

  To comply with his order to get rid of the Jaguar, I simply put it in Sandy's name with an appropriate bill of sale. He wanted to know who she was, and when I told him that she was someone who called when I put a "for sale" sign in the window, he demanded her name and number. I couldn't say that I didn't have it. When I told Sandy, she said, "What an asshole." My sentiments precisely. When he called, saying he was a parole officer and wanted to know about the car, she told him to see her lawyer. Instead, he called the bank (because the loan had to be transferred), got the information on her credit application — and called the movie producer who covered for Sandy when she needed a references. He interrogated the movie producer: "Who is this girl? Did you know . . ." As soon as the parole officer hung up, the producer called Sandy, demanding to know, "Who is this Edward Bunker?" She stroked him verbally and calmed him down, but at the end he still said, "I don't know if I can keep on being your job reference. Let me think about it." As soon as he hung up, Sandy was on the phone with me. "That parole officer is fiickin' nutty. Do you know what he did?"