Mr. Blue: Memoirs of a Renegade (16 page)

She also helped Notre Dame High School. Over the years
she tried to help Edward G. Robinson Jr., a handsome but tormented youth with
an affinity for trouble, who would die too young from too much wealth and
insufficient responsibility. She told me, too, that thinking about someone
else's troubles was a balm to her own. At the time I wondered what troubles she
could possibly have. A week or so later, I read a newspaper feature story about
"starmaker" Hal Wallis and his latest protegee, the husky-voiced
Lizabeth Scott and recalled some hints and innuendoes. Later on, I told Louise
Wallis that I'd heard Lizabeth Scott was a lesbian. "I heard that
too," she said. "I don't know what that makes Hal."

As with virtually all reform school graduates, I had
some haphazard India ink tattoos. I had a diamond in the loose strip of flesh
between thumb and forefinger where most others wore a Pachuco cross. It
indicated my loyalty to "La Diamond," the only inter-racial street
gang of the era. I had
WSS
and
PSI
on my upper arm, the middle "S"
serving for both - read one across and one up and down. Whittier State School,
Preston School of Industry.

In my night world, after I left Mrs Wallis for the mean
streets, having been in reform school was no stigma. Indeed, it had a certain
cachet. On one visit to Al Matthews's office, Emily called me aside and said
that Mrs Wallis wanted to pay to have my tattoos removed. That was fine with me
- and thank God my defacement was so minor. Many of my comrades were highly
illustrated men.

A week later, a Beverly Hills cosmetic surgeon removed
the tattoos on my body. What was tattooed into my brain was a different matter.

My nights and weekends were spent in the underworld. I
now had a furnished room in a residential hotel near MacArthur Park, half a
mile west of downtown Los Angeles. Although just sixteen and not looking older
than my years, I hung out in Robin's Club, on 8
^th
Street. It was
literally a den of thieves, mostly artists of the "short con"; the
match, the strap and laying the note (a form of short change) were standard
games. The days of "long con" were over. In a short con, one simply
takes what the sucker has on him. Long con is what the name implies, and a good
example of a "long con" is the fake bookie parlor in
The Sting.
There were also "till
tappers" and a few burglars. These were thieves who looked down on armed
robbers and violence.

One night, Sully the bartender at Robin's who was also
the patch (he took the payoff and gave it to the bunco squad), told the con men
that LA was closed down. Con men couldn't work the sheds, the train and bus
depot where 90 percent of short con games originate. People who are going
somewhere usually have a good amount of money on them. When they were on
"juice," the bunco squad let them take off anyone who was traveling
and wouldn't be around to make noise. Suddenly all the con men were closed
down. They couldn't go into the sheds because the bunco squad detectives knew
them by sight. Still, they had to make money. Most of them were junkies, the
older ones on morphine, the younger on heroin.

Charley Baker and Piz the Whiz, whom I'd met in the
county jail, asked me if I knew how to play the match or the strap. Although I'd
had them explained to me, and even performed for me, I had never played con,
which is quite comparable to an actor memorizing a script and then performing.
Indeed, the game is in the spiel, the script. I shook my head.

"Never mind. You don't need to play. All we want
you to do is steer." They wanted me to go into the shed, find the suckers,
qualify them with a spiel they would teach me (it was easy), and bring them out
onto the downtown sidewalks where the con would go down. Usually the steer
played the
inside,
but they would take over,
one at a time, when I brought the sucker out. They would cut me in for a third.
Was I interested?

I was very interested. I wanted to see these con games
because it seemed awfully weak. I wanted to see someone go for it.

Besides, it was a new adventure, and I was always
prepared for new adventures.

I looked through the crowd for young men with short
haircuts and ill-fitting clothes in the downtown Greyhound bus terminal. Anyone
with this description had a high likelihood of being a serviceman on transfer
from base to base, which meant he was carrying a few hundred dollars in cash,
and a few hundred in 1950 was equal to a few thousand half a century later.
"Hi, good buddy, where you stationed?" If the response was cold or
hostile, I veered away like a shark looking for easier fish. If they said St
Louis or Oklahoma City or wherever, I'd say, "You goin' on that bus?"
Whatever bus he said, it was then, "Me, too! That bus don't leave for an
hour ..." (Or whatever time the bus schedule said.) Next I'd tell him
about some waitresses I met. "They got bodies . . . Mmmm, mmmm, mmm.
C'mon, let's go check 'em out. I'll buy you a drink."

If he came along, out on the street we would go one
way; then I would change my mind. "No, this way. C'mon." The idea was
to ensure dominance and leadership. After half a block, Charley Baker would
appear. "Hey, man," he would say to me. "I was lookin' for you.
Those chicks are waitin'. C'mon." So three of us would be walking along
the crowded sidewalk. On the next block, Piz the Whiz would cut into us,
usually using either an Irish brogue, an Australian or country boy accent. He
would claim to be lost. Then he would confide in us that he was in LA to settle
his brother-in-law's estate for his sister. "Did pretty good for myself,
too. Got an extra eight thousand she don't know about." He would give a
long wink, and the inside man would whisper to the sucker, "That guy just
beat his sister outta eight thousand dollars."

The conversation that ensued was essentially scripted
dialogue between the inside and outside man, with an occasional nudge or
whisper to the mooch by the inside man. The outside man would be loud and gross
and often pretend to be half drunk. He would want to gamble.

"We'll match coins. Odd man wins."

To the mooch, the inside man whispers, "Let's
take this sonofabitch that stole from his sister. You take heads. I'll take
tails. One of us gotta win. We'll split what we get."

As the coin match gets ready, the inside man says:
"This is for three hundred dollars—" They all flip. "And I
win!"

The outside man says, "Goddamn . . . you sure
did." He would pull out a fat bankroll, usually a Philadelphia bankroll of
$1 bills with a $20 on the outside, and sometimes even paper. "Here you
go." He would pay the inside man, who pulls out a wallet that has a zipper
all the way around three sides. He unzips it and puts the money in.
"C'mon, let's go," he tells the mooch. "We just made a hundred
and a half apiece."

When they have gone about twenty yards, Piz the Whiz
would hurry after. "Hey, wait a minute. How do I know I woulda got paid if
I'd won. You got three hundred?"

"Hell yes. You know I got it."

"I don't know that he's got it."

"You've got it, don't you?"

The mooch nods.

"You say it, but I didn't see you pay off. Are
you guys in cahoots against me? Maybe I better call a cop." And Piz starts
looking around, as if for a police car.

"Show it to him," says Charley, playing the
inside, whispering. "Jeez, we don't wanna see no cops."

As the mooch gets out his money, Piz demands that he
pay off. If the mooch has it in a wallet, he can only open the wallet to the
money compartment by using two hands. As he does that, the inside man plucks it
out. "How much is here?"

If the mooch says an amount less than the amount of the
wager, the inside man says, "I owe him the difference and starts to hand
it back. Piz yells, "You guys are in cahoots. I want a cop."

"No, no. We're not in cahoots."

"You're givin' him his money back."

"No I'm not." He pulls out the zippered
billfold, unzips it and puts the money in. (He actually has two identical
billfolds, one of which has a zipper that won't unzip.)

"C'mon, let's go." He starts leaving with
the mooch. "Boy, we almost got in trouble with the cops. Don't worry. I
got your money. We still made a hundred and fifty apiece."

Piz chases them again, now loudly proclaiming that he
knows they are going off to split his money. "Stop! I want a policeman!"

Charley, the inside man, stirs the pot of fear in the
mooch: Jesus, if he gets a cop, we're in trouble. Stop!" He turns on Piz.
"Get away from us. We're not together."

"Then you go one way . . . and you go the other
way."

This last move is the split out. Ideally, it happens
at a corner. The inside man whispers to the mooch: "I'll see you at the bus
depot." He goes one way, the mooch goes the other, and Piz stands at the
corner looking both ways. If the mooch is going off, lie gives the standard
signal that things are all right: he rubs his stomach. In fact throughout the
con game, there are hand signals for when to make the next move in the script.
Sometimes at this last moment the mooch bucks; he won't let his money get out
of sight. If he cannot be split out, Charley says, "Here, you take the
money and meet me at the bus station." He then gives the billfold with the
fixed zipper to the mooch, who won't be able to get it open. That, however, is
a last resort. The con game unfolds in such a way that the victim never senses
danger until the trap closes. Until then he has risked nothing and believes that
he has made a couple of hundred dollars off a dirty sonofabitch who has stolen
from his own sister.

The strap is virtually the same con game, except the
gimmick is not matched coins, but an ability to stick a pencil in the center of
a rolled-up belt. Laying the note is a short change hustle where you buy
something, hand over a bill; then decide to pay for it with another bill, and
then the con is in the count. I know con men who try it at every cashier. It
doesn't work with wizened cashiers, but young girls behind cash registers are
raw steak to a lion for con men.

I'd
been told about all these games in the County Jail and Honor Rancho. Also the
various signals that con men, boosters and card mechanics use. Actually, most
who play one game can play the others, too. To pat your stomach means
"Okay, everything is cool." Tugging your ear means "Get outta
here." Tugging your sleeve means, "Get me outta here." Rubbing
your nose means, "Come back in for the next step of the game."

I absorbed everything indiscriminately. The lingo,
too, the rhyming lingua franca passed down from seventeenth-century London. The
rhyme was the key. A "bottle and stopper on the hammer and tack,"
means there's a copper on your back. "Oscar Hocks" are socks. "Roses
and reds" is the bed, "plates of meat" are the feet. Mix the
rhyme with carney talk "Beazottle steazopper iazon the heazammer,"
and the statement is plain as day in the thief underworld. Only those at home
among thieves could handle it with any facility.

One night I was hanging out at the Traveler's Cafe on
Temple Street between Figueroa and Beaudry. An archway went from the cafe to
the adjacent pool hall. Most of the habitues of both were Chicano or Filipino,
with lots of dyed blonde whores coming and going. They told me they liked
Filipino tricks because they weren't mules. They were quick and they liked
head, which was the quickest and easiest for a whore. I liked watching the
action, and I never knew what adventure would happen next.

Wedo Gambos, who would later be called "Wedo
Karate" in prison, came in to the Traveler's that night wild-eyed. He was
already a junkie and sometimes dealer. He was looking frantically for someone.
Spotting me, he came down the counter. I expected him to hit on me for enough
to buy a fix, but he had other business in mind. Outside, around the corner, he
had two "wetbacks" from Mexico who had two gunnysacks full of pot.
"Damn near a hundred pounds," he said. "They want a hundred
dollars for both sacks. I only got thirty bucks, man. If you got the rest,
we'll go in partners on it."

It was worth looking at, so I went outside and around
the corner. Sure enough, waiting in Wedo's battered car (the left back door was
held shut with wire) were two non-English-speaking Mexicans in straw hats. On
the floorboards at their feet were two big gunnysacks of jute that were stuffed
like huge sausages. The smell was pot.

"Where can we go to check it out?" Wedo
asked.

"Your place," I said.

"No, no. I got an old lady and a baby. She'll go
ape shit. Let's go to your room."

That was where we went. We parked in the alley and
went up me back stairs, the Mexicans lugging the big fat sacks on their
shoulders.

In my room, I stripped the sheets off my bed and
spread them on the floor. The Mexicans dumped one of the sacks on the sheets.
It was a big pile of marijuana. It wasn't the high potency seedless buds of
fancy Humboldt County horticulture. It was "weed" in the truest
sense, full of stems and seeds, but it was the marijuana of the era, what
everyone bought for a $1 dollar a joint, three joints for $2, or a can (a
Prince Albert can at that) for $10, and there was a lot of it. It had been
crushed into bricks, but they were shedding needs and falling apart. Maybe it
was a hundred pounds, maybe it was only sixty or seventy, but it had at least a
couple hundred $10 cans. I couldn't go wrong. Mrs Wallis usually gave me $20 a
day, but on Friday she gave me $60 for the weekend, and I had about ten more.

Wedo
Gambos was half Chicano, and spoke Spanish. They wanted $100 US. He offered
them $80 and promised them mother $20 later. They took it. I was in the pot
business. I drove Mrs Wallis during weekdays, and sold pot at night and on
weekends. It was pretty good pot, too, at least for the time. In a few weeks I
would be able to buy my fondest desire: a car. Wedo and I used to look at them
in car lots with the yearning of the poor.