Mr. Blue: Memoirs of a Renegade

by Edward Bunker

  I turned in and stopped, bending down the license plate as I got out of the car, in case someone came by. We began piling stuff into the Buick, which still had its back seat removed. In less than two minutes we were rolling.

  The fence bought everything except a full-length women's coat. It was cashmere except for a mink hood, collar and label. The label said Bullock's. The fence offered less than I knew I could get from a cocktad waitress on Sunset Boulevard. Anyway, I preferred letting her have it. In fact, if she was friendly enough, I might make her a gift.

  My new crime partner, whose name I didn't know, was simultaneously sweating and shivering and yawning. "You're sick, huh?" I asked. The term "sick" on the street meant sick from heroin withdrawals.

  "Like a dog, man. You use, man?"

  I shook my head. "I'll smoke some grass."

  "Would you drive me to my connection?"

  On impulse, I agreed. Actually I had to drive him to two connections. The first one wasn't home, the second one wanted to know who I was. We were so far from a white area that we might as well have been in Nairobi.

  It was dark when I took him to his home near Manchester and Western. It was a nice bungalow on a residential street. I went inside to use the telephone. I wanted to tell a barmaid that I'd be late, and not to make another date.

  While I was in the house, someone knocked on the door. My new crime partner's girlfriend went to answer. I heard voices that had an unfriendly timbre. It was time for me to leave. "I'm gone," I said to my associate, heading toward the front door.

  The "newcomer" was actually a pair of young black men. Both of them were 6'3" or more. As I squeezed past and stepped outside into the darkness, I could feel their eyes burning me.

  Down the walk and out the gate. My car was at the curb thirty feet away. As I reached it, I heard the gate squeak. I looked back. The two men were following me. I got in and opened my knife just as they arrived. One came around to the driver's side. Suddenly he reached through the back window and grabbed the mink-trimmed coat. "That's my mother's coat."

  As soon as he spoke, I understood the whole thing. My "crime partner" had burglarized someone he knew, someone who suspected him as soon as the crime was discovered.

  He reached to open the driver's door. I swung the knife and he jumped back. I turned the key and punched the gas. The big Buick fish-tailed and burned rubber.

  I turned a corner; and another, constantly looking in the mirror. I saw a pair of headlights. Were they following me? I couldn't tell. I turned a corner and hit the gas.

  A car behind me announced it was the police with flashing lights on its roof. Here we go again. I pushed the accelerator to the floor and the car jumped forward. The scream of a siren filled the LA night.

  I had to abandon the car. I was out of my area and didn't know the streets. But first I had to get around two corners — and then bale out. I could just imagine the chase. The radio was being cleared, and the car in pursuit was giving them a running account: "South on Budlong, turned west on Forty-third . . . South on . . ." Other police cars were coming to join the chase.

  I drove down a side street toward a boulevard with a traffic light ahead. Both lanes were blocked with waiting cars. I spun the wheel to the right, half jumped the curb and driveway into a gas station, hit the brakes and swerved. My back end swung around and smashed into a signpost. Over the curb onto the boulevard. Punched it. The speedometer climbed. They weren't around the corner when I turned the next one. Halfway down the block, I stomped the brakes. The tires screeched and the car skidded to a halt. Before it stopped, I was out and running in a line across the street and down a driveway beside a house. Behind me the police car came around the corner. Had they seen me?

  I sprinted through a back yard, hands extended. Before everyone got washers and dryers for their laundry, clotheslines in back yards were a menace to fugitives running through the darkness. I'd once caught one across the forehead while running full tdt. My feet kept going, and went right up into the air. I came down on my head and was lucky that I didn't break my neck. The line cut me to the bone, and blood flowed copiously down my face. That is how the face bleeds.

  Through the back yard, over a fence that teetered beneath me I ran. Out the next back yard, along a driveway and across the next street, praying in a silent scream that another car didn't turn the corner at that moment. It didn't. I had a chance if they spread out like water in all directions from the site of the abandoned car.

  I crossed a front yard and down into the darkness of another driveway. It had a gate. As I reached for the latch, a snarling Rottweder leaped up, snapping at my hand, its breath hot on my face. Shit!

  Without a moment's hesitation, I doubled back. I would go down the driveway next door. I came out and cut across the lawn.

  Across the street, from where I'd come, appeared a dark uniform. "Halt!'

  I ran faster.

  A shot sounded. The bullet kicked up sparks on the driveway ahead of me. I tried to run faster. Ahead of me another gate. Please, God, no dogs.

  I tried to hurdle it. My foot hooked. Down I went head first. My foot was still hooked. The bobbing flashlight, followed a second later by a dark, looming figure. A 357 Magnum leveled on me. "Don't fuckin' move!"

  Another dark uniformed figure, panting hard, arrived. Lights in both houses were going on. One policeman was trying to open the gate while the other held flashlight and pistol trained on me. "Just stay right there."

  A window went up. "What's goin' on out there?" The voice had the telltale sound of the African-American.

  "Police business! Stay inside!"

  They got the gate open and the handcuffs on; then began half pushing, half pulling me down the sidewalk. A couple other cops arrived. They were pumped up and fairly vibrating from the hot pursuit. One kicked at my stomach, but I managed to turn and raise my knee enough to deflect it. "Ixnay . . . ixnay," said one policeman. I remember it clearly because it was a term I hadn't heard since school. Ixnay! What kinda shit is that? The reason was the witnesses. Several of the neighbors had come onto their porches to look. It was a middle-class black neighborhood.

  An alley ran from street to street so they didn't have to take me all the way around the block. Now there were four cops and two more came charging down the alley from the other side, crashing into me like charging linebackers. "Okay, sonofabitch! We'll teach you to run, fuckhead . . . shit for brains bastard ..."

  It has always been de rigueur for cops to kick some ass at the end of a chase. It's all part of the game. I expected it and felt no indignation; in fact I was a littlegrateful because half a dozen were trying to get in their licks. A cluster of bodies rolled down the alley to the next street where several police cars sat with lights flashing. The Buick filled the middle of the streetwith the driver's door still open. A crowd of neighbors was at the curb. They were all black, and over the other noises I heard a voice say in surprise: "It's a white man! Goddamn!"

  I was shoved into the back of a police car. A sergeant came over and opened the door. They had taken my wallet. He was holding up the three driver's licenses in three different names from three different states. "What's your name?"

  "I'm John McCone, CIA. I tried to warn them—"

  "Warn them? About what?"

  "In '36 I told them the Japanese were going to bomb Pearl Harbor."

  "What the fuck have you been taking?"

  "Will you get me to Washington?"

  Another policeman came over and peered in. "He's loaded on something. Fucker thinks he's in the CIA."

  "Who cares if he's the Queen of May. Let's book him so we can go home."

  They took me to the infamous 77th Street precinct house, where I was the first white man they'd booked in two years. They beat on me a whde for being white. By now I was into it. When they booked me, I signed the booking card as Marty Cagle, Lt, USNR and gave my birthday as 1905. The booking officer showed it to the Sergeant. "Put it down. Who cares?" They booked me as "John Doe #1."


  They threw me in a cell. I was a fugitive and a parole violator, ineligible for bad. They were going to have to drag me back to prison. There would be skid marks all the way up the highway. They'd wondered if I was crazy since I was ten years old so I decided now I would be nutty as a fruitcake. Let the games begin. The bravado covered an inner emptiness bordering utter despair.

  One would assume that a situation such as this would have me climbing the walls. Instead an all-powerful drowsiness washed over me. Sleep is an escape from depression. I slept with the stink of the jail mattress in my nose.

  In the morning, a uniformed officer unlocked my cell gate. A detective waited to interrogate me in the standard windowless room with a table and three hard-backed chairs. He looked at me with cold, hostde eyes. "Sit down, Bunker."

  They knew my name already. Damn! They had pulled out all the stops, or so I thought for a moment. "He's dead," I said. "I am number five. Who are you?" As I spoke, I leaned to the left and looked at the ceding, slowly moving my head as if watching something crawl across.

  The detective's face maintained a studied impassivity, but his eyes narrowed ever so slightly, and he did glance at the ceiling.

  "You know who they are, don't you?" I asked.

  "What?"

  "Catholics. They've been trying to put a radio in my brain, you know."

  "What I want to know about are these burglaries. We found those checks in your hotel room."

  Hotel room! How did they . . . ? The hotel key. Damn. It was in the car.

  "I don't know about a hotel. It's the church . . . it's all of them ... all of it. Don't you see?" My words had a stridency that stopped him. He'd assumed I was high on angel dust or some other hallucinogen. He was a handsome man, well tadored. He also had a cold demeanor. Most wizened old detectives have seen so many human foibles that they are bemused most of the time. An old cop and an old thief will often have more in common than either has with a newcomer of either persuasion.

  He broke off the interrogation and sent me to the cell. I had to walk in front of half a dozen cells, each containing four or five young blacks. It was the age of the Afro hairstyle, which is created by using a hair pick to fluff the hair into an upstanding bush, the bigger the better. Alas, the booking officers took away their hair picks, so after a night in jad their hair looked like wild explosions of countless watch springs. As I went by a cell one of them said in disbelief: "Hey, man, they got a white dude in the back."

  "White dudes break the law," said another.

  "I ain' ne'er seen one in 77th."

  The uniformed officer escorting me said: "He's no white man. He's a white nigger."

  Back in my cage with graffiti on the walls and a striped mattress shiny with the sweat and smell of previous occupants, I sank into the pit of despond. What a life. What had I done to deserve this? The question had an obvious answer, and I laughed at my moment of self-pity. One thing was certain: I would give them one helluva fight before San Quentin's gates slammed shut behind me again.

  In late afternoon, when the light coming through the small, barred windows across from the cell turned gray, the outer door opened and two sets of feet sounded out, coming down the runway. "Hey, man . . . hey . . . hey . . . hey motherfucker!" screamed a brother down the tier. The jailer faded to acknowledge their summons.

  The jailer, a beefy black man in a dark LAPD uniform, still had exasperation on his face when he reached my cell and opened it. Behind him was an older white man. We'll call him Pollock, because his name was Eastern European, I think. He was seamed and rumpled; he had been around.

  I was led back to the interrogation room. The handsome detective waited for me with some files in front of him. I sat down.

  "Your parole officer says you're faking," the detective said.

  "Man . . . he's part of the Church. Don't you see that?"

  It sent his eyes rolling, and there was a barely audible: "Shiiit..."

  "Look, Bunker," said Pollock, pulling forth his wallet anil extracting a card. "I'm not a Catholic. I'm a Lutheran. Look ..." He extended a church membership card.

  I leaned forward and peered at the card with great seriousness, then sniffed. "Forged," I said.

  So it went. They asked about Gordo. Where'd they get thai name? Many months later, reading a police report during a court room proceeding, I learned that he had called the hotel and left his name.

  One dark night, bright with lights, they took me out to the scene of a safe burglary. A woman living next door to the bar had seen a car drive up beside the back door. A man stepped out, she said, crossed the sidewalk and entered the car. She was about thirty yards away and saw him at an angle partly from the rear. Could she identify me?

  I had to get out of the car I was in and stand beside it. One detective stood beside me, whde the other brought the witness to the curb fifteen feet away. We exchanged no words, but I saw her shake her head and toss her shoulder. No identification. It hadn't been me anyway. I had been driving the car in that heist.

  The next morning the detective and his partner took me from the cell of the 77th to the Municipal Court in Inglewood for arraignment. There I would be served with the complaint. They locked me in a bullpen next to the courtroom. It held several others scooped from the streets in the last day or so. All of them were going before the judge for the first time.

  During the wait, I got into costume. I tied Bull Durham sacks to my shirt like a row of medals. I put a towel over my head and tied it with a shoelace. I had my shirt tad out and my pants rolled up above my knees. To the court, I looked like the craziest fool they'd ever seen, although the deputies paid no attention. They had seen many crazy fools pass through.

  Before court convened, we fded into the courtroom and sat in the jury box. The arraignment court buzzed with activity, with lawyers and bondsmen, clerks and arresting offices, and abundant spectators.

  The clerk entered and announced that the Municipal Court of the City of Inglewood, County of Los Angeles, was now in session, the Honorable James Shanrahan, judge presiding.

  When the judge came through the door, I came out of my chair, screaming at the top of my lungs: "J know him! He's a bishop! Lookit the robes! Help! Help!"

  Bailiffs came running, their keys jangling. Chairs crashed. Spectators jumped up, some to see, some to flee. Chaos reigned in the court.

  I was carried out, screaming maledictions, feet waving. I even lost a shoe that never got returned.

  In an adjacent office, a young district attorney asked me a few questions, such as how long I'd been in jail. A hundred and six years seemed appropriate. After a few more questions and similar answers, they took me back into the courtroom before the judge. I was flanked by burly deputies. The young District Attorney made a motion under Section 1367 California Penal Code. With vacant expression, I paid no attention and looked around the courtroom. Actually, Section 1367 CPC stops the proceedings and refers the matter to a department of the Superior Court for a sanity hearing to determine if the prisoner is competent to stand trial. Although it does not deal with guilt or innocence, this can be considered with other evidence.

  As they led me from the courtroom, I looked at the handsome detective who had conducted the investigation. He was seated in the row inside the rading, and displeasure was written large across his face. I wanted to wink, but that would have been too much of an insult, and somewhere down the line he would have to testify. Besides, what did I have to wink about? I was caged and he was free. All my machinations might, at best, slice a tiny fraction from how long I would be imprisoned.

  After court, I was among those called for the first bus back to the jail. It was a new jad, having opened while I was away, and it was already notorious as a place where the deputies busted heads and had killed more than one prisoner. I remembered a friend, Ebie, telling me that some drunk Mexican being booked in had thrown a trash can through an interior window. They had dragged him away. It was when they were in a room without witnesses that the guy
slipped on a banana peel and broke his skull on the bars. In some places a little mouth could bring the goon squad down on you. All places of incarceration have a goon squad, although it may be called something more politically correct than "goon squad." Like "Reaction Team."

  In the Los Angeles central jad it took nothing to get jumped and stomped, maybe tear-gassed and thrown in the hole — and maybe charged with a new crime, for the best way they had of getting away with administering a savage beating was to charge the inmate with attacking them. It was their collective word against his individual word.

  The module where they placed me happened to have single cells. When the gates opened for chow, I saw many familiar faces on the serving line or seated at the tables. The food was barely edible; I could force down a few bites, and eat the bread and drink the hot, sweet tea at night. I lived on oranges.

  A few days later they called me out to court at 5 a.m. We were fed eggs in the mess hall and sent downstairs to the "court line." Our civilian clothes were given to us if we wanted them for court. It mattered not to me. I was in costume and the jail blues helped.

  The sanity court was held over at the general hospital. A deputy public defender came to interview me. I made no sense to him. The court appearance lasted about thirty seconds. The clerk called the case. The judge peered at the poor, demented creature with strips of todet paper stuck in his ears, shirt worn inside out with Bull Durham sacks attached like medals. The judge had seen many crazies in his time and the figure facing him was a classic. He appointed two psychiatrists to conduct an examination and submit a report.

  When the deputy public defender tried to talk to me, I babbled nonsensically. He gave it up and wished me good luck. Riding the bus back to the jad, I visually devoured the city at night, as I always did on such journeys. So today I remember as if it was yesterday a sight thirty years in the past: an open door of a cantina with the sounds of mariachis pouring onto the sidewalk. Incarceration at least has the beneficial aspect of letting a prisoner see the world with fresh eyes, the way an artist does.