No Beast So Fierce

by Edward Bunker

  Aaron finished in twenty minutes. He then put on gray coveralls with Pacific Telephone blazoned in red on the back. With a tool belt around his waist he looked as if he were a telephone company lineman.

  “I’ll cover you on the trial run,” I said.

  “We’ll just open the manhole and you drop it closed after me. No use using the barricades for that. About five in the morning should be the best time for that.”

  Willy was still gone when the box was again full and Aaron was in his street clothes. We waited in the shade of the garage doorway. After fifteen minutes of watching vehicles speed past the driveway without Willy pulling in, I was smoldering. Aaron asked where Willy had gone.

  “To buy some dope, the jive ass is undependable … I knew he’d fuck around.”

  “He might be busted. I’ve got to be in town by two.”

  “Let’s go call you a taxi. There’s no telling when that asshole will get here.”

  Uncaring about Selma’s possible attitude, I led Aaron into the house through the kitchen door. The room smelled of boiled cabbage and the sink was stacked with unwashed dishes.

  Our entrance brought the two boys to the doorway arch, one peering over the shoulder of the other. Moments later Selma loomed behind them, brushing them out of the way and glaring at me. In her anger, her gauntness was more apparent. She was as worn as a sharecropper’s wife in the great depression. She refused to look at Aaron. He might as well have been invisible. He seemed amused. Before she could speak, I did.

  “Willy’s got my car and I need to use the phone to call a taxi for my friend.”

  Her teeth clicked shut. She wished to refuse—but wished more urgently to rid her house of our unwelcome presence. She pointed out the phone.

  Twenty minutes later, Aaron departed—and Willy hadn’t returned. I was furious. I thought about punching him in the mouth, but knew that in a brawl he was capable of breaking me in pieces. When he whipped me, I’d be forced to kill him. It was my fault for having given him the keys. I’d talk bad to him and let it go.

  Willy drove up almost three hours late, grinning as he turned off the motor and got out. “Man, I got hung up. Where’s your partner?”

  “He’s gone. And where the fuck did you go? Tijuana?”

  “I’m sorry, man, but my connection didn’t have anything on him and wanted a ride to East LA. to see his connection … and he got hung up for an hour. You know how that shit goes.”

  Willy wasn’t high. He was more sick than when he left. This phenomenon blunted my anger by arousing curiosity, for a junky will fix with the police kicking in the door, especially if he’s sick.

  “I gotta wait. Nalline today. But I’m ready when I get done.” He brought forth a condom swollen with beige powder, its open end tied into a knot. “An ounce.”

  “You didn’t get a piece with forty pesos.”

  “He gave me a little credit for the ride. He knows I’ll pay him … and pull the rent money, too.” Willy was happy, feeling that he had something going. “Hey, why don’t you give me a lift to the nalline center? My short is fucked up and I don’t wanna borrow Mary’s wheels.”

  “I’ll drop you off but I’m not driving you back. You’re on your own there.”

  “Well, can you wait until I get through and drop me at the bus depot downtown?”

  “How long will you be?”

  “Twenty minutes.”

  “Yeah, like the twenty minutes with the car.”

  “Man …”

  “Fuck all that ‘man’ shit. Put that box in the trunk and get in.”

  Willy wrestled the heavy box to the automobile and set it inside. “What’s the portable telephone for?” he asked.

  “I told you we’re gonna jam an alarm and rip off a spot in Beverly Hills.”

  “Good luck.” He slammed the trunk lid down. “Wait a minute while I stash this junk and tell Selma where I’m going.”

  The “minute” became fifteen minutes. I pumped the automobile’s horn. Willy rushed out, buttoning a shirt.

  “That broad was making a bad scene. She doesn’t dig you.”

  “I don’t dig her either.”

  Twenty minutes after leaving the house we were on the dingy street with the featureless building where Rosenthal had taken me. Willy got out half a block away. I told him to wait on the same corner when he was through; I’d come back by in half an hour. I didn’t want to wait too close to the repulsive building. I drove several blocks away and ate chili and salt crackers at a greasy-spoon cafe in a neighborhood of scrap yards and industry.

  Before going back for Willy, I telephoned Allison. She’d gone to the beach alone, her usual activity on days when I was busy. She’d expected me home by this hour—but my lateness didn’t disturb her. She was happy, as if it was a pleasant surprise, as if she hadn’t seen me six hours earlier and wasn’t expecting me for days. Her radiance increased my good feelings. She’d planned a surprise, a super fancy supper, and wanted me to hurry because she was already cooking. “But don’t ask me what it is.”

  “An hour more.”

  “Oh! There’s my schedule down the drain.”

  “I’ll make up for it with bonbons and flowers.”

  I started to say goodbye.

  “Wait … wait. Bring some avocados with you. Just a couple.”

  “Okay, baby.”

  Willy wasn’t on the corner when I drove by. I circled several blocks and came back. The corner was still empty. Two Mexicans were coming down the sidewalk; one was vaguely familiar. I pulled to the curb, assuming that they’d just come from nalline, and called them. Neither knew Willy by name, but when I described him they told me that he’d been held in custody, locked in the cage at the end of the corridor. I confirmed what they said by telephoning the testing center and passing myself off as an attorney. The parole officer who answered was evasive; when dealing with the poor the parole department was unaccustomed to answering questions; it was also unaccustomed to lawyers asking the questions. He finally put his supervisor on the line. The supervisor reluctantly and with a note of challenge told me that Willy was in custody as a parole violator—but the supervisor refused to say why. It wasn’t really necessary. I knew Willy’s pupils had grown larger instead of smaller. He’d failed to run the gauntlet.

  Before starting home, and with trepidation, I called Selma, gave her the news in a couple of sentences, and hung up before she could burst into recrimination and self-pity. Tomorrow I’d drive Allison to the jail to visit him with clean socks, underwear, and cigarette money. As a fugitive I was going no closer to the jail than the parking lot. After the visit I’d give Selma some money to help tide her over until welfare checks began. It was the right thing to do, by the thief’s code.

  If Willy was lucky, if the prison system had enough bodies on hand to justify its budget to the legislature, some anonymous bureaucrat or committee would order him a “dry out’, thirty to sixty days in jail. If he was unlucky he’d be sent back to the rehabilitation center for another year or more of group therapy. I felt no great sympathy. He’d been a fool to go in for the test in the first place, for he’d certainly known the likelihood that he’d fail to pass it.”

  “Like a fuckin’ fly to flypaper,” I muttered.

  Afternoon shadows were stretching themselves on the jail’s parking lot when Allison and I arrived. We’d overslept because after going to a drive-in movie we’d driven through the hills, following the curves of Mulholland Drive from its origins in Hollywood past expensive homes to beyond Beverly Hills, where except for a few palatial homes the countryside became almost empty. We ran out of gas in an isolated spot, but thought it was the fuel pump because the gas gauge showed a quarter tank. It took two hours to find a house, telephone for a truck, and be towed twenty miles to an allnight garage in the San Fernando Valley. Only after a new fuel pump had been installed and failed to work was a stick probed into the gas tank. The float in the tank had stuck and told the gauge a lie. When the tank was full the gau
ge still registered a quarter tank.

  As we trudged upstairs to the apartment, Allison hanging on my arm and trilling laughter at how our sentimental night had fizzled, it was so near dawn that baby sparrows in the dark shadows of trees were calling out for food.

  So we slept until noon and then rushed, missing breakfast, buying socks and underwear on the way. I told Allison to inform Willy that on the next visit the border on the three one-dollar bills would be saturated with the clear solution of cooked heroin.

  “How do you do that?” Allison asked.

  “Just cook it like a fix, and then use the eyedropper. It soaks into the paper like it was cotton. You waste two-thirds of it, but Willy can slice off the rim, put it in a spoon with some water and, wham, he’ll get fixed.”

  “What about the … hypo kit? Where does he get that?”

  “Believe me, there’s one in there he can get hold of.”

  I parked at the farthest corner of the lot from the building, beneath a stripling tree. Other cars had been parked close to the building to shorten walking distance. No car was closer than thirty yards. Nobody could sneak up on me. If something did happen, which was unlikely, I could drive through a flower bed and over the curb into the street. I also had the Browning pistol on the floor boards between my feet. Coming here where hundreds of deputies worked, and where every law enforcement agency brought prisoners, aroused tension that was cousin to what I felt going on a caper. I watched closely from the moment we arrived.

  Allison came back in ten minutes. The bag of socks and underwear was still in her hand. Her quick return and the bag indicated that she hadn’t gotten in, but she walked too leisurely for anything serious to have gone wrong. I pulled the car across the lot to meet her halfway. She’d been refused the visit because Willy was allowed one visitor per day and someone had already been there. Obviously it was Selma, and I should have anticipated that she’d rush to the jail as soon as possible to vilify him for his failures.

  I felt compelled to drive out and give her some money, unpleasant a task as it would be. There was no reason to confront Allison with Selma’s acrimony, so I dropped her at the nearby Union train depot where she could take a taxi. I promised to be home in two hours and to call if something came up.

  When I reached Willy’s home, Selma was gone. Willy’s automobile was still leaning on its flat tire in the driveway.

  I drove to Mary’s, wondering if she had any news and to leave the money for Selma with her. Willy’s two boys were there. Actually, they were somewhere in the neighborhood with Joey. Selma had left them and borrowed Mary’s car. She was expected back at any time. I gave Mary a hundred dollars for Selma, glad to have missed her. I left quickly, not only to avoid Selma, but because Lisa was in the kitchen. The girl said nothing, and would hardly meet my eyes, except furtively. The vibes were bad.

  * * *

  Two days later I again drove Allison to the jail. Again she was turned away, this time because Willy was gone; he’d been released that very morning. It was a pleasant surprise. I hadn’t anticipated his quick reinstatement on parole. I telephoned him to see what had brought about the miracle. Nobody answered. I planned to phone again later, but the momentum toward the jewel robbery was increasing and I was caught up in that, and so forgot Willy. That night, Jerry, Aaron, and I rehearsed and timed everything except the action with Gregory’s. Aaron would drive, let us out, jump the alarm and pull around to wait and drive getaway. The alarm had to be fixed minutes before the robbery, because once it was done the phone in Gregory’s would go dead. He’d wait across Wilshire with a radio tuned to police calls and the walkie-talkie—and he’d have the motor running when we came out. A huge market six blocks away had a block-long parking lot in its rear, an ideal place to switch cars. There were no traffic lights between the market and the jeweler’s. After switching cars, it was two more minutes of slow driving until we reached the teeming traffic of Sunset Boulevard. We could follow it, hidden by the multitude, into Hollywood, or swing through the hills. Nobody in Gregory’s would see a Negro among the robbers, so Aaron would be behind the wheel while Jerry and I lay on the floorboards. By the time the police got the description of the original getaway vehicle—panel truck or plain sedan—we’d be at least eight or nine miles away in an entirely different (and differently described) automobile.

  Enthusiasm began pulsing through our conversation. Jerry was no longer hesitant as he drove me home, meanwhile looking over the route through the hills. We decided there was no use waiting. We’d all spent many hours casing the score. Saturday morning we’d make our move—the day when Wilshire’s traffic was lightest. Gregory’s opened at 9:30. We hoped to shorten its business day, drastically so.

  As Jerry parked before the apartment, I invited my partners to a home-cooked meal on Friday night. I hadn’t consulted Allison, but I knew she liked both of them. They liked the idea.

  When I entered the apartment Allison was cross-legged on the floor, sketching something in charcoal and watching the election returns on television. The California polls were just closed, but CBS Election Central was declaring Lyndon Baines Johnson a landslide winner. Allison waved a greeting but said nothing until I came back from the kitchen with a cup of coffee and sat behind her.

  “You’re early.”

  “The guy hung me up. I’ll see him Saturday morning. If it’s a nice day you can go to the beach. You’re losing color, and you know how I dig licking on that suntan.” I wanted her gone while we used the apartment to examine the loot.

  “‘Lick a suntan’. You’re not coy, not even subtle.”

  “You dig it. That’s your fetish. Want to go somewhere?”

  “Let’s stay here for once. Take the TV in the bedroom and watch a movie.”

  “I invited Jerry and Aaron for dinner Friday night. Okay?”

  “It’s got to be okay, doesn’t it? I can’t say no. It’ll be fun anyway. Is Carol coming?”

  “No. It’s sort of a business dinner.”

  Allison smiled and shook her head. “Monkey business.”

  I carried the television set into the bedroom and we watched it and made love at the same time.

  Part Three

  Do not go gentle into that good night.

  Rage, rage against the dying of the light.

  Dylan Thomas

  1

  THE morning of the robbery was bright. Mild rain through the night had washed away both smog and November’s grayness. The yellow sun was mellow warm, and in the sky, tendrils of cumulus basked in lazy turnings.

  Jerry led in his station wagon over the hill road that divided the San Fernando Valley from Beverly Hills. Aaron, wearing gray zip coveralls, drove a stolen panel truck a hundred yards behind. I sat on the floor in the back of the truck, holding onto the yellow and black wooden barricade (also stolen) with the Men at Work sign, and a lantern. On this much-traveled road motorcycle policemen frequently hid behind curves and bushes. The sight of a black man and a white man riding together would register sufficiently in his mind to be recalled in a few minutes when the robbery alert crackled over his radio.

  The automobiles wound past houses cantilevered over precipice and sky. At the summit of the hills, I saw the momentary sparkle of the sea in the distance. Allison was there, lying on the beach, soaking up a last good day of sun. Tonight her body would contain a residual warmth.

  Aaron was humming as he drove, one elbow propped casually on the window frame. He was showing no fear. Confidence in my henchmen relaxed me. Despite the robbery’s size, I was less keyed up than usual, almost detached in my confidence. Once more I visualized what we were going to do—each step flashed through—and once more the X factor appeared reduced to the absolute minimum. The very simplicity of the plan left little that could go wrong.

  Now the panel truck was on level ground. Over Aaron’s shoulder I could see the rear of the station wagon, its brake lights flashing as Jerry halted for Sunset Boulevard’s traffic light. We slowed, the light flashed gr
een, and Jerry crossed the intersection and kept going straight. Aaron turned left, mingling in the flow of eastbound traffic. At the first corner, Aaron turned right, now going parallel to Jerry’s course, but a block away. We went three blocks and turned into a long parking lot that ran the entire length of a shopping district. Aaron went through very slowly, stopped at the far end, and Jerry was waiting. He swung into the front seat with scarcely a pause. I passed him the long flower box with the M16. None of the Saturday morning shoppers gave the nondescript truck a second glance.

  “My short’s right where we planned,” Jerry said. “Last row next to the curb. Keys under the floormat.”

  We were a block from Wilshire. I slipped into the suit coat, straightened my necktie, jacked a shell into the chamber of the Browning automatic—thirteen shots of Remington hollow point ammunition—and stuck it in my waistband at the rear. The tiny receiver (earplug) went into place, and the hat with the mask inside went on my head.

  From the front seat there was a sharp clack of steel. Jerry was checking the automatic rifle. Between the divided seats I watched him lower it back into the flower box and pat his pockets to make sure the gloves and mask were in place.

  Aaron’s pistol was covered by a folded newspaper on the floor-boards. His belt of tools and equipment was on top of it.

  The truck pulled to the curb twenty feet from the intersection, across which sat Gregory’s, gleaming sedately white, hinting of the riches within. A Mercedes roadster was pulling from the parking lot, and an old woman was waddling toward the side entrance.