the Onion Field (1973)

by Wambaugh, Joseph

  She laughed and looked him in the eye for a moment and then shook her head still smiling and said, "Thanks for the help." She handed him fifty cents which he put in his pocket.

  And that night he lay in bed in his room at the hotel and thought of a slim white girl with shiny hair and painted legs and the way she looked at him and gave him money. And then he laughed aloud as he thought of Hip-enuff, who claimed he got his from staring them down.

  We all got our ways, Hip-enuff, Jimmy thought. You git yours by starin em down. Some guys git theirs by jackin off in a black leather glove. I git mine with my smile and my soft voice, and my curly hair, and let's see who's the biggest fool after all. He lay there giggling until he fell asleep.

  "And one day the police brought Jimmy to my door," his Nana told a jury. "They knocked on my door and told me that Jimmy and three other boys had broken in a warehouse and stolen some boy scout things. Jimmy had been a boy scout when he was younger but he never had any boy scout things. Then they left Jimmy there with me and told me to bring him to court.

  "Jimmy was raised in church. Church and Sunday school. Church and Sunday school is something that any kid live with me gets because I believes in God. I told them that.

  "Yes, I took Jimmy down there. There was six other boys and they asked him why. And well, he said, he never had any boy scout things and he wanted them. I don't know anything about the boy scouts, but he got up and he recited several verses in the boy scout code he still remembered, and the man asked if Jimmy had any people that I could send him to to get him away from this bunch. And I sent Jimmy to Wyoming to his real mother.

  "Well, his mother didn't understand. She didn't understand children. They called me up one night and Jimmy was cryin that she had choked him and he wanted to come home. I wired him the money that night."

  Jimmy's Nana did not mention that he had conceived a child on this trip to Wyoming. He was to deny paternity, but two years later Jimmy was to see a photo of the handsome, yellow-skinned child named Ronnie, and there was no doubt. But he never saw the boy and wondered vaguely about him only once or twice over the years.

  Now Jimmy was back at the shine stand. It was also a good place to score a few cans of pot which could be cut and resold. The stolen wine could be diluted to water and as long as there was a bit of color someone would buy it. There were lots of ways to make a sting at the shine stand and his Nana would never take any money from him, only cautioning him to save what he earned. She was proud of him when he got a job selling papers. It didn't last long, because he got too greedy and stole too much from the pa- perman on collection day. Yet it wasn't bad while it lasted because he had the opportunity to stuff cotton in some pretty good pay phones along the paper route, and later collect the coins that didn't fall through. And it was nice riding a bike around his route. Of course he had the finest, because why steal a cheap one when people were so careless with good ones?

  The pot started getting to Jimmy. Eventually he wanted nothing but a can of pot in his jeans. He became a stone grasshopper, ditching school, wearing a Western Union cap so that if a cop stopped and asked why he wasn't in school he could point to the cap and say he was working part time and therefore wasn't truant.

  "The weed smoking made me so lazy and lackluster that I hardly done anything except lay around the streets and panhandle the pimps and whores," he was to say.

  "Well, I went to Bakersfield in '48 and I stayed there until '51, and Jimmy weren't with me all the time there," said his Nana. "He struck out on his own, doin farm work, but he would come and see me from time to time. And then Jimmy started gettin into trouble, in and out of prisons. But he never changed toward me. He never talked back or raised his voice to me. I don't believe he'd do it now. He doesn't, he just doesn't. He'd cry before he'd even talk back to me. He'd rather cry.

  "Jimmy would never do a violent thing," his Nana would plead to a crowded courtroom when she was seventy-eight years old. "Why, once he sat up with his hurt dog and cried all night. He was always cryin cause he would get hurt so easy."

  When he was twenty years old, Jimmy Smith fathered his second illegitimate child, a girl. He was in jail when he heard of the birth in Bakersfield. The light-skinned boy and the girl named Helen Marie were the only two children he knew for sure that he fathered. He was to say of his daughter: "Somewhere along the line I heard she was livin in L. A. but I never thought to look her up."

  For a time Jimmy worked close to the land, in the sunshine and the dirt of the San Joaquin Valley. He hated it. All of it. The dirt in his teeth, and the sweat like turpentine in his eyes, the sun burning his skull from the inside out. The land was a hateful place, intimidating, defeating, dehumanizing.

  "No more nigger work for me. No more pickin cotton in Bakersfield. No sir. No more pitchin watermelons in Blythe. Uh-uh, not this cat. No more swampin potatoes and pickin grapes like a fuckin wetback. Not Jimmy Smith. Not this dude. Catch you later, baby." So he returned to the city to something he understood.

  He was to say that heroin gave him the finest hours of his life, the loveliest of all. He was now an addict, a shoplifter, a petty thief.

  Once he was convicted of stealing a suit out of a car and pawning it for two dollars. And there were state prisons. Hard time. Soledad. San Quentin. Then he was caught stealing a nine-dollar toaster to sell for heroin, a felony crime because of his prior convictions. He ended up at Vallecito Honor Camp fighting a forest fire, but ran away from the camp. Five months of freedom, the longest he would have as an adult, and then he was rearrested on a narcotics charge and convicted of the escape from Vallecito. Then the real jolt: the dreaded Folsom Prison. The theft of that toaster ultimately would cost him more than five years of his life.

  Chapter 5

  Ian and Karl had not gotten around to discussing where they would eat tonight. Few policemen brownbagged on a Saturday night. It was the night to eat as well as they could afford. Felony car Six-Z-Four could easily have been in a restaurant during the time the little Ford passed through Hollywood.

  Gregory Powell, the driver of the Ford coupe, was turning north toward the Hollywood Freeway. His partner, Jimmy Smith, was considering putting his automatic in the glove compartment until they arrived at the market.

  "You know something, Jim?"

  "Say what?"

  "You know what I was thinking? I was thinking it seems like you* and me been partners a long time."

  "Uh huh," said Jimmy, thinking: Amen, motherfucker, and it ain't gonna last much longer.

  "When you find a partner you can depend on, you gotta be loyal to him. That's one thing I admire."

  "Uh huh," said Jimmy Smith.

  First time he ever made sense, thought Jimmy. It did seem like they'd been partners for a long time. Nine days? Jesus! Would he ever be free of him? It was worse than being in the joint. Less than two weeks ago he was in the joint. Had never heard of Gregory Powell. Had never been shot at, or carried a gun. Less than two weeks ago. He was freer then. Jesus!

  The young man lying on his bunk that night in Chino Prison had thought vaguely of the past sixty-two months and wondered what his future would bring. He'd learned house painting in the joint this time and fancied himself a good workman. There would be painting jobs out there. And he'd heard about factories hiring ex-cons.

  No more sissies for Jimmy Smith. No more visits to a "little friend." The sissies were always "my little friend" even if they were six feet four. No more pot partners parading around in their tight tailored pants eating ice cream and making the jockers guess how they were. Who the fuck needs em now? Jimmy thought. Now it's women. Broadway. Out there.

  No more bulls coming by at midnight with their count and shining their lights in your eyes for the fun of it. No more endless, boring convict discussions. There were only three things to talk about in the yard. First, legal issues-cases handed down or expected to be handed down-motions, appeals, writs. Second, the dangerous dudes: who to watch out for, who to flatter, who to follow. Who is so
dangerous that it is best to avoid him completely. Who will hit you with his piece at the least provocation, the piece being a knife, not a gun. Third, the sex, the canteen punks: who is doing it to whom.

  He no longer thought of the small successes he had in crime, the good things. He no longer thought very much about the armload of dope, the thing he once could not drive from his mind for even an hour.

  It was Broadway for good. Broadway! The Great Out There! This time he wouldn't be scared of it. No need to ram a spike in his arm this time. He was a mature man now, thirty-two years old, grown up emotionally. He'd been in enough group therapy encounters to know that heroin was an escape. Lots of his Fifth Street partners grew up with the same crutch. Now he was cutting it loose, shining it on.

  He did not think of the old street partners, Smooth-move Wilbur, Hell-fire Jack. He realized he didn't even know their true names. And they called him Youngblood and didn't know his.

  All of these things had been important to Jimmy over the years, but not now. Not in February 1963, and his parole a few hours away. He lay on his bunk smiling and began thinking of one thing: women.

  He was dragging a tail the next morning-five years-a long tail.

  The nervousness and excitement mingled with dread as he saw the big bus pull up out front to unload the guys who were coming back on a "straight violation." Will I ever be takin that bus again? he wondered.

  He thought of the papers he'd just signed with some fifty rules of parole, rules which would be harder to follow than the ten commandments. The thought of being violated or even busted for some new beef had proved less and less frightening over the years, and even now, the thought of being returned here to a place like Chino didn't frighten him at all. But Chino had been a stopping-off place. Ninety days before parole they had sent him here for special treatment as a paroled drug addict. No, he didn't dread the thought of being returned to Chino, or Soledad, or San Quentin, which he had never properly appreciated while he was there. The thing he feared, which made his stomach churn and his palms sweat, was the knowledge that he was a Folsom parolee. Folsom was where he'd spent the past five years. Folsom was where he would undoubtedly be returned if he was violated by his parole officer. Folsom, where he often saw himself in a dream-aged, insane, like the one they called the Flea-an ancient faggot, unshaved, unbathed, slouching in the yard, exuding revolting odors, making your skin crawl when he came close, mind mercifully destroyed, tolerated by the bulls, loathed by the cons.

  Jimmy shook off the memory and walked toward the twelve-foot storm fence and handed his two little identification pictures to the bull inside the tiny stucco shack. The bull pressed a button on the electrically controlled pulleys and Jimmy Lee Smith was breathing free air.

  Jimmy and two other parolees decided to take a cab to Los Angeles instead of the bus, and forty-five minutes later, after paying his share of the twelve-dollar fare, he was seated in the parole office with sixteen dollars and a new sport shirt, coat, pants, shoes, and underwear, which altogether were worth thirty-five dollars.

  After a bull session, in which he was rebuked for spending money on a cab instead of a bus, Jimmy was taken to another room for his first encounter with naline.

  He'd heard about it of course, and had thought that it was something phony to scare junkies with, that the naline wouldn't really prove conclusively whether you fixed or not. He was sure it would have no euphoric effect. He was wrong.

  The needle itself excited him. The moment the doctor approached with the glinting silvery spike, his heart raced, and he felt a quick thrilling memory. It had been a long time. And when the needle hit, and dug, and slipped through the flesh and the naline surged into the blood, it was there. The delight. Then came a buzz, not the kind of high he would have spent money on but a high nonetheless, a floating feeling which was to last almost two hours.

  The doctor shone a light into his eyes, made marks on a chart measuring pupil contraction, and released Jimmy. He learned that many addicts looked forward to their visits to the Naline Center, came to love the stuff, and would have taken a test every day if permitted.

  Then there was more jive, like a reenactment of a job interview, with a parole officer playing the part of the employer. Jimmy smiled drowsily and played the game. Play the game, play any fuckin game they can dream up, he thought. Then they cut him loose.

  He was free. Out on the streets. Free. Bursting. Floating with natural excitement and a naline high, fantasizing in the light of day, just as he had done so often in the joint. He thought about women, big-busted women who somehow all looked like Marilyn Monroe in the photograph he had seen in Folsom where she is standing over a subway and the wind is blowing up her dress. But he settled that night for a fat ugly five-dollar whore, and after eating a steak and paying for his hotel room a week in advance, woke up the next morning with forty-two cents in his pocket.

  That morning, Tuesday, Jimmy went back to see his parole officer as instructed and was given an additional twenty dollars, the second half of his draw. He was also given the addresses of some car washes where he could surely get a job.

  I'm in for a screwin, Jimmy thought at the first car wash he came to. He was made to sit for more than an hour while the proprietor supervised the line and moved the row of cars which had backed up during the lunch hour rush.

  Jimmy Lee Smith had astigmatized vision but did not wear glasses. He had a cool soft junkie voice and a pleasant, even handsome face. When he raised his eyebrows his forehead wrinkled and his face looked very melancholy. People would tend to trust or at least pity a face like this. No one was wary of that face. Only one jailhouse tattoo was apparent, the L-O-V-E on his right hand.

  But the car wash boss was a bald sweating white man and had the look of a man who knew ex-cons, hired many, and could deal with them. He would not trust or pity a face like Jimmy's or any other.

  "You're looking for a job, I hear," said the man, and he threw a pair of rubber boots and an apron at Jimmy's feet. "Okay, you got one. Hit the line."

  Just like a motherfuckin Pat O'Brien movie, Jimmy thought. The tough but kindhearted coach. Or priest. Or cop. Well I ain't one of the Bowery Boys, motherfucker, he thought.

  "Let's hold it right there, sir," said Jimmy. "What's the pay?"

  The man looked hard at Jimmy, smiled and shook his head, muttering something under his breath. Finally he said, "A dollar an hour if you work until nine o'clock tonight."

  "Yeah, well, uh, I want the job, but I can't go to work today. I'll see you at ten tomorrow, okay?"

  "Sure," said the man, looking right past Jimmy, and Jimmy knew the man knew he would not be back tomorrow or ever.

  Motherfuckin dollar an hour, Jimmy thought, as he walked toward downtown. Ain't that a bitch! I'd expect better pay for watchin flies fuck.

  The next two days passed. When you figure it, Jimmy thought, I ain't doin nothin but time even out here.

  First he discovered that his painting course which he took in the slammer wasn't much use when you had to be a member of the union, so he tried a body and fender shop owned by an ex-con he'd known in the joint. Jimmy got a mouthful of sympathy and a glad-to- see-you-back pat on the shoulder, but no job.

  The walking continued in the sunshine and smog of downtown Los Angeles. He walked miles of concrete-wondering, thinking, dreaming, fearing, cursing the cheap prison shoes which were already wearing out.

  Three days were enough. He was ready to make some bread and there was only one thing he knew for certain he was good at. So he was ready, more than ready, for what was waiting at a shine stand on Hill Street, between Sixth and Seventh. He would not cease thinking about it as long as he lived. That shine stand.

  This was not the first trip by the shine stand since he got out. The first time he had strolled by he recognized a black man loafing there, looking seedy and alcoholic, a cheap cigar drooping from oily lips. His name was Small, and so he was, five feet seven, and slender. Jimmy knew him from the old days as one of the best cre
eper thieves in town, but now he was a drunken shine stand proprietor.

  But this day, March ist, Small might have been six feet tall. His hair was straightened and pushed up in glistening waves and he was sipping a bottle of soda which Jimmy figured contained whiskey, and he was wearing a suit and tie. He was lookin sharp, lookin cool, lookin good-lookin like new money, thought Jimmy.

  Small was sitting up high getting a shine, and he grinned as Jimmy approached, and after greetings and handshakes he offered Jimmy the bottle. Jimmy swallowed the whiskey and soda pop and grimaced. Small said, "Say, Blood, what's happenin to you these days?"

  "Nothin to it," Jimmy said, feeling self-conscious now, staring at Small's fine imitation alligators, aware of his own shoes, scuffed and dusty and little more than cardboard, and aware of his own odor, his clothes soiled and soured now. There was another shine man there, taller, darker, quieter.

  "Want him to glaze your skates for you, Jimmy?" asked Small pointing to the shine man in the blue apron.

  "Like, I'll do the job my own self, if it's okay," said Jimmy, not wanting the other man to see the holes in the shoes.

  "Once a shine boy always a shine boy." Small giggled as Jimmy buffed his own shoes, and Jimmy thought, that's right, nigger, but watch this shine boy scam a little bread off you soon as you have about three more drinks outta that bottle.

  Small stepped down, examined his own shine and straightened his tie. "Buy yourself a trip to Hawaii, my man," he said, handing the shine man two dollars.

  Jimmy looked knowingly at Small and said, "Your ship musta came in, ol thing."

  "How you like my alligators, Blood?" Small grinned.

  Jimmy was thinking about a five-dollar touch just as two men walked around the corner. Jimmy paid no notice to the shopkeeper who trailed behind the younger man. It was the young white man he was looking at.