Chapter 11
On the Lam
If there is an apprenticeship to being a fugitive, I began serving it in early childhood with all of the runaways from foster homes and military schools. I polished these skills in the escapes from juvenile hall and reform school. I assumed they would do the usual for a parolee at large or a walkaway from a minimum security institution, which means they simply wait until the fugitive is stopped for a traffic violation or arrested for some minor offense then nab him. In most instances he cannot produce false identification. He either has none or his own. He hands it over and prays. It's the computer that nails him. Or else the authorities have a neighbor call them if he goes around the family home. It surprised me when they put forth effort to catch me. They tried to pressure Sandy into giving me up. When she refused to rat ("I don't know where he is," she said. "Let me call my lawyer"), they arrested her on suspicion of burglary, hoping to intimidate her. Instead she went from the sub-station to the Sybil Brand women's facility in a sheriff's bus, eliciting whistles and cheers from the male prisoners. She was the only female in the special wire cage at the front. She wore a tight leather skirt and tighter sweater (it was the era of outstanding breasts in upstanding bras) and opera gloves.
The Sheriff s Department really got angry when a lawyer arrived two hours later with a writ that set bail for Sandy followed by a bail bondsman who put it up. The real effect was to make me far more cautious than I would have been otherwise. My false identification would withstand anything except a fingerprint check. Back then, that could be done only in the station house. It took three days to come back from Sacramento or Washington, unless there was an urgency call attached to it.
A fugitive, like everyone else, is confronted with making a living. Social Security and the computer make legitimate employment unavailable unless you want to do something like herd sheep in Montana. From my earlier check-passing schemes I still had several partial batches of payroll checks. They had cooled off in the intervening months and it was easy to find people willing to go around cashing them. It was safe and lucrative.
I rented an apartment in Monterey Park, a community in Los Angeles County east of the central city. The apartment budding was on two levels, with a balcony running around the upper level. It was shaped like a horseshoe and had a swimming pool in the center. One night I returned to my apartment, turned the key and opened the door. Facing me was a pair of detectives, one of them with a pistol. Instantly, even before he could speak, I made a right pivot and took off along the balcony.
"Stop! Stop!" someone yelled as I reached the end of the balcony and vaulted the rail to the stairs and landing. I hit them wrong and fell the rest of the way to the bottom, stopping my fall with my hands. I sprained both wrists and scraped off the skin to the meat, something I didn't notice at the time.
"Stop!" he yelled again. I ignored the voice and headed for a low wall at the rear. Three shots rang out, the last one as I went over the wall. I saw it kick up sparks as it angled off the concrete. I was now in the parking lot, but I ignored my car. It would take too long. I kept going and spent the rest of the night lying in low bushes in front of a house while police cars cruised back and forth through the neighborhood, their roof lights glowing and their spotlights illuminating driveways and other possible hiding places. The bushes were so low that I had to he flat. They were so unlikely a hiding place that they got only passing scrutiny. As the sky turned gray with first light, it began to rain. I'd once gotten a sort of thrill at playing fugitive, but on this particular dawn I was a wet, miserable wanted man. They gave up the search when it was time to change shifts.
Someone had fingered me. Perhaps half a dozen people knew where I was staying, but I had no idea who was my Judas. Maybe they had confided in someone else and the confidant had dialed the phone. I now had lost my car, clothes, typewriter and another partial draft of my second attempt at writing a novel. I had 300 soggy dollars in my pocket. Using a hundred, I bought a '46 Ford. Another hundred went for a .32 Colt semi-automatic pistol and a double-barreled twelve-gauge, plus a hacksaw to shorten the barrel and cut off the handle. It looked like an eighteenth-century pirate pistol, complete with double hammers. The last thing I did was rent a furnished room near 7th Street and Alvarado, a mile west of downtown. It cost a pre-inflation $12 a week.
Not knowing who had ratted me off, I trusted no one thereafter except Sandy and Carlos Guitterez, AKA "Boonie." It wasn't Sandy. She had already gone to jail rather than rat me off; and I trusted Boonie simply because I knew his integrity. He was a mediocre criminal mainly because he wouldn't do anything unless he was broke and desperate for money. Indeed, most crimes are acts of desperation. God knows how many liquor stores or gas stations have been robbed because the criminal is desperate to pay off a traffic ticket or get the transmission fixed on his car. Of course the single overwhelming cause of desperate crimes is the need for money to buy drugs. Hard times make hard people, and nothing makes anyone harder than heroin addiction or the madness of craving cocaine. At the start of a cocaine run, nothing, not even religious ecstasy, will provide the same joy, but soon the craving becomes obsession, the high a keening paranoia, and then it is as awful as the depression. The black dog in the white powder consumes the whole soul.
Most thieves steal or rob only when poverty is fast approaching or is already at hand. I tried to avoid that mistake. When I was a thief, it was a profession practiced twenty-four hours a day. My eye was always looking for money or something that could be turned into money. I never owned a Rolls Royce, or even a fancier model
Mercedes, but I usually managed to keep a fat bankroll — if not a bank account — and a credit card or two, even if they were bogus or stolen.
After nearly a year on the run, they almost got me again, although they had been waiting for my pal, Denis Kanos. We were going to meet twin sisters, whose claim to fame was having done a Penthouse photo spread. They were both kind of gaunt from shooting speedballs. We were to meet them at a motel on Sunset near the Silverlake District. Although Denis had the virtues of loyalty and generosity, which I value more than most others, he was habitually the latest person I ever met. If he was to meet you at seven, he might arrive at eleven or midnight. I stopped paying attention, and went on about my business even if he was late. On that night, however, I was with him. He was supposed to be at the motel around 5.30. As darkness fell on that December evening, it was 9.45 when we turned the corner and saw several black and whites, roof lights spinning bright. As we drove by, we saw the sisters in handcuffs with a female officer. Later we learned the police had staked out the motel for Denis. They waited and waited and got tired of waiting, so they kicked the door in. Denis's excessive tardiness had kept us from walking into a trap.
A couple of weeks later, Denis and I played police detectives and arrested a Compton drug dealer. It was a nice score.
I decided to leave Los Angeles. My only trips outside of California had been several visits to Las Vegas, which was really no more than a distant suburb of the City of Angels, and to Tijuana, Mexico. I wanted to see New York City and all the country between the two oceans. It was February when I started east on Route 66, reversing the sequence of the song. San Bernardino was first instead of last. Arizona seemed starkly of another world at twilight, its flat mesas rising to golden orange at their summits whde the deep purple of night gradually climbed their sides. I had to drive slowly enough to appreciate the sight, for the Arizona highway back then was one axle-busting hole after another.
New Mexico's portion of Route 66 was equally rough. Albuquerque had a stretch of "motor courts," seedy bungalows, some that were cheap facsimiles of haciendas, and one a cluster of lath and plaster Indian teepees, something I'd expect to have seen in the LA of my chddhood.
I stayed one night in Albuquerque looking around the town. Nothing attracted me to remain longer, so before first light I was on the highway, pedal to the metal. I passed without stopping through part of the Texas panhandle, and pulle
d into Oklahoma City, and it did look mighty pretty. I ran into an LA musician at an all night coffee shop, and he knew some people around town so I stayed three weeks before pushing on.
I should have listened to the weather reports, for between Oklahoma City and Joplin, Missouri, the wind rose and the snow began to fall slanting across the road. I had no chains and skidded more than once. The cold began to seep inside, despite the car's heater and the radio said it was snowing all the way to St Louis. I was alone in the storm at night in the middle of America. My clothes were for Southern California's gentle clime, where a sweater and jacket are all anyone ever needs. I didn't own a muffler or a pair of gloves or a hat or anything like that. I pulled to the side of the road and put on another pair of pants, another shirt and a sweater. My hands were still freezing on the steering wheel. I traded off, using one on the wheel and the other down between my thighs. Needles of icy wind came through cracks in the car I didn't know existed. The road froze in spots, first on the occasional bridge because the cold could work on bridges from both top and bottom. Ahead were red flares and a figure waving a flashlight. The traffic was inching past a giant tractor trailer that had jack-knifed and fallen on its side. There were several police cars with flashing lights alongside the road, and an ambulance arrived from the other direction.
I slowed even more, creeping along at fifteen or twenty miles an hour, going tense whenever I felt the tires lose grip and the car begin to skid. Each time it straightened out. I shivered every inch of the way.
In Joplin I saw a red neon sign, hotel, through the snow. It was a cheap hotel over a bowling alley. From the fourth floor, I could hear the crashing rattle of tenpins below me. At least the room was warm, with hissing steam heat, and it had a TV set. The late movie, about ancient Egypt, starred Joan Collins as a ruthless, scheming bitch. She could have schemed on me and I wouldn't have cared.
The snow had stopped by morning but it blanketed everything. I went out to eat and buy some warmer clothes. In a J.C.Penney, the salesgirl recommended long underwear. I thought only old men wore long johns, but I bought them, plus gloves, hat and heavy coat. I carried the packages back to the room and changed.
Now warmly dressed, I wanted to look aroundJoplin. I'd stashed most of my money in the crack of the room's armchair. I stuck my hand down and felt around. Gone! No, it couldn't be gone. I felt around again. I searched the mattress, knowing it was fruitless even whde doing it.
The despair was replaced by my standard rage. I remembered the desk clerk's face when I went by. It had something on it, something imperceptible at the time, but now I recognized it as acknowledgement. I oughta shoot him, I thought, imaging my satisfaction at his cry of pain when I shot him through a kneecap. I couldn't do that. Although I'd used an alias, the license number was real. That could lead them to me. My fingerprints were everywhere. No, I wouldn't shoot him, but he damn sure deserved to be shot — or at least experience a thorough ass-kicking.
My guns were in the car trunk. Thank God for that. Wherever I was, Joplin, Chicago, Rome, Italy or Timbuctoo, I could always get some money if I had a pistol. I didn't even need to speak the language. The pistol muzzle spoke a universal language: "Gimme da money!"
I half grunted a laugh, but inside I wanted to cry. What bad luck.
In winter darkness with Christmas lights and decorations filling the store windows, I walked around downtown Joplin. Everything was closed except a movie theater. I walked some more, and came upon a bank a couple of blocks from the hotel. A bank robbery! Good God. They would bury my young ass if they caught me robbing a bank. But I needed money. 1 couldn't get a job. I didn't even have a Social Security number.
Plus I didn't know how to do anything that anybody would pay me for.
On my way back to the hotel, the movie theater's box office was just shutting down. The marquee lights were turned off and the manager was counting money with the cashier. I knocked on the window. "Can I buy a ticket?"
"It started ten minutes ago."
"That's okay."
He motioned me to enter. In the flickering gray light, I lost myself in a mediocre story. Rock Hudson is the handsome, straight farmer in Kenya, battling the Mau Mau uprising. In retrospect the movie seems to me to promulgate the racist views of civilized European farmers versus the Mau Mau savages, who wantonly slaughtered white women and loyal native servants with big knives called pangas. At the time I made no analysis of the political or historical implications. It was just a story, and the viewpoint precisely as expected. Thirty years later it would be equally predictable: the heroic rebels versus the racist oppressors. We went from the cliche of Stepin Fetchit to the cliche of Mr T., stereotypes at opposite ends of the spectrum. If another movie was made about the Mau Mau, they would be the heroic freedom fighters against the white oppressors. At least the movie relaxed me without making me think.
Back at the hotel, I was glad that a different clerk was on duty. I fell asleep easily.
In the morning, as I walked by the main desk, the clerk said I was overdue one day. I told him that I would be back with what I owed, and that he should get my bill ready because I was checking out.
Without the pressure of being broke, I might not have had enough guts to rob my first bank. As it was, I froze on my first pass. I went in and stopped at the counter away from the tellers, where I began to fill out a deposit slip. I looked around, conscious of the weight of the pistol in my waistband. A man in a business suit was talking to a bank executive; somehow I thought he was a cop. I froze and walked out.
An hour later, fortified by three shots of Wdd Turkey, I walked back to the bank and to the assistant manager's desk and told him that this was a robbery. I opened my jacket enough to display the pistol butt. To stifle my fear I spoke with fury until I saw the fear on his face. We walked behind the two tellers' cages and he scooped currency from the drawers and put it in a bag. The tellers looked confused, but one of them recognized what was going on when the assistant manager handed me the bag. I could see that he wanted to say something, or sound the alarm, untd I shook my head and put my hand inside my jacket.
The distance to the front door seemed to stretch out like a road in a Salvador Dali painting. Then I hit the door and stepped out. God, the brisk winter air felt wonderfid. I walked along the sidewalk in front of the bank window. At the end of the budding was the alley and when I turned into it I broke into an all-out run. Near the end, I looked back. Empty. Nobody was following me.
Entering the hotel lobby, I choked back my heavy breathing as I passed the clerk, giving him a littlewave. I started to wait for the elevator, and then instead went up the stairs beside it.
With my door locked, I dumped the money on the bed and began to count it. It came to slighdy over $7,000.
Twenty minutes later, I was driving out of Joplin. At a coffee shop several mdes out of town that had big trucks with traders parked in front, I stopped for breakfast of bacon and scrambled eggs. I knew I was in the South because I had the choice between home fries and grits. A newspaper was on the counter, jfk to the moon. I brush-read the story. The handsome young President had committed the United States to landing a man on the moon and returning him to earth within the decade. The weather said the storm had stalled in the Ozarks and that parking enforcement was suspended untd the roads were cleared of snow.
Later as I sped down the black ribbon of highway between fields of white snow, I was elated: I'd gotten away with heisting a jug! I was from so far away that nobody would think to show my mug shot to the victims. It would slip into the annals of unsolved crimes and the statute of limitations expired decades ago.
Soon, however, my elation slipped into something like the blues. It wasn't guilt, for my life experiences had diminished that capacity. It was sadness, loneliness and the desperation of my days. It was always a question of choice, but how one would choose — now there was the rub. I had to heist the bank because I was a wanted man unable to work and without any money. If I could have gotten mone
y without a pistol, which was my preference, I would have done so, but I knew nothing of Joplin, and if I stole something saleable, I had nowhere to sell it. It seemed to me that circumstances had funneled me into the bank robbery. What else could I do? Give myself up. Yeah. Right.
Of course, looking back, I didn't have to jump the fence at the county farm. I could have waited untd they took me back to the central jail and ridden the bus back to San Quentin as a parole violator. That was contrary to my nature. I was incapable of lying down without a fight. I had to struggle. If I hadn't taken that ride with Billy and Al to Beverly Hills on that summer night, all this wouldn't have happened. A square john wouldn't have known a pair of safecrackers or, if he knew them, he wouldn't have known what they were. I wouldn't have known them if I hadn't been to San Quentin. Had I been to Harvard I would have known an entirely different class, but that had been foreclosed when the sapling was bent by the winds of fortune, or misfortune, so very long ago. Everything in life stands on what has gone before. You do this or that because, at the moment, it seems what to do. You are faced with this or that because of what happened somewhere earlier in your journey of life. Who would dispute that nobody stands in a void or a vacuum?
My headlight beams were biting into the gray light before me. It was a sunless winter day; the hour could have been high noon or dusk. Two hundred miles northeast, the night rose up and swallowed the land. Onward, onward, rode the four hundred. I turned on the radio and tried to find some music I liked. Darkness made for clearer reception. Maybe I could pick up Chicago or St Louis. What I got was country and western. I preferred jazz, blues and some classical, especially Mozart, because that was what I knew. In juvende hall and reform school most of the wards were city boys, whatever their skin color, and there was a bias against country boys as corn-fed fools. In prison, however, that prejudice disappeared. The toughest convicts I know are offspring of country people who poured into California from the Dust Bowl of Middle America during the Great Depression of the '30s.
Mr. Blue: Memoirs of a Renegade Page 32