Mr. Blue: Memoirs of a Renegade (31 page)

On the other hand, I wasn't
against planning robberies and selling them to others to commit. I'll tell you
how this came about.

Far up North Main Street in the
Lincoln Heights District, home of the city jail, general hospital and juvenile
hall, was a beer and wine joint called Mama's. Mama Selino owned the license,
cooked the tastiest pasta and loved the hoodlums who hung out there. Her son,
Frank, an erstwhile Van Gogh, ran the place. His paintings were on every
surface.

Mama's was a great hangout, but
Frank didn't invite new business. Once a new patron wandered in on a hot
afternoon when Frank was having a bad art day. After ten or fifteen minutes the
customer coughed and tried to get his attention. Frank threw a bottle of
Heineken at him and the fool ran out the door. Needless to say, the clientele
in Mama's was very limited.

The LAPD from the Highland Park
Division knew about Mama's. They often parked in front of a hot dog stand
across the street. Its owner told the police about the comings and goings until
one late night the hot dog stand burned to the ground.

Mama Selino had come from
Salerno with her husband in 1920, prospering during Prohibition until he was
gunned down a decade later, leaving her two small sons. She loved "her
boys." Not only her sons, Frank and Rocky, "her boys" included
the hoodlums and thieves she fed pasta and ravioli on credit. They paid her
with interest when they made a score. Frank, the older son, was tough as he
could be. He and Gene "Dizzy" Davis had done one term together at San
Quentin for robbery. Her second son, Rocky, was a taxpaying, upstanding citizen
who had a small construction company. Frank now did nothing but paint. The bar
provided a meager living. The law said that bars had to quit serving at 2 a.m.
Mama's sometimes stayed open until the sun came up.

It was in Mama's that I ran into
Dizzy Davis. We had known each other's identity in San Quentin but had spoken
just once or twice. He was over average height, moderately good looking, with
wavy blond hair that lay close to his skull. His nose was aquiline and his eyes
a wet blue. He'd been out about two months after serving nine years. He had no
family, although he was one of Mama Selino's favorites. Someone had given him a
pistol and he had been sticking up small businesses for survival money, enough
for a motel room, food at a fast food counter, and enough to sit in a bar with
a drink on the plank. Worst of all, he was giving someone half of what he got
just to drive him. The driver picked him up two or three blocks away.

He knew better. "I feel
like a fool," he said, but he didn't know what else to do. He personified
something I'd noticed about criminals. Many of them knew how a crime should be
committed, but they were driven before the wind of circumstances to take risks
they knew were stupid. They could not wait, they could not plan, they needed
money
now.
Indeed,
many of them didn't commit a crime until they saw themselves in desperate
straits.

I wasn't rich, but I had enough
to rent Dizzy a furnished room by the week, one of those with a frayed carpet
and a toilet and shower down the hall. There was a sink in the room. That
caught a lot of piss. I made sure he had a few dollars for meals and
cigarettes, and promised to find him a good score. He listened to me. My confidence
gave him confidence.

Finding and planning robberies
was relatively simple. I sought out places that handled cash, and where control
of that cash was under one person's authority. It was before double-key, drop
safes that managers cannot open without the armored car guards, so supermarkets
were the best, although nightclubs and steakhouses were also possibilities. I
would simply drive around until I saw something that satisfied the preliminary
requirements. I would go in, and ask for the manager. When he was pointed out,
I might even approach him about something. All I wanted was to be able to
recognize him. I also tried to get a look at where the money was kept, often a
safe in an office. On the way out, I made note of the establishment's hours.

When the place closed, I would
watch the employees come out. Invariably the manager was last. I watched what
car he got into. Sometimes I followed him home, but usually not.

The next night I brought Dizzy
and pointed it all out to him. The night after that he simply waited in the
parking lot, grabbed the manager at the car and walked him back to open the
safe. On the first score, a market in Burbank, I parked across the street and
watched him march the manager across the parking lot and back inside through a
side door. I took 20 percent. Dizzy and his driver split the remaining 80
percent. It was pretty good money and I was far in the background. Of evidence
against me there was none at all.

This plan was good for three
good scores and a misfire. Dizzy grabbed the butcher instead of the manager.
Everything went downhill from there. Still, three out of four successes is a
good percentage for a predator. I lost him late one afternoon in Lincoln
Heights. Several of the fellas were in the parking lot of Le Blanc's, on the
corner of Griffin Avenue and North Broadway. Most were known ex-cons, the
others were Italian and liked to gamble, so were presumed to be affiliated with
East Coast or Middle Western mobsters. One or two might be "made"
men; Dizzy was in the group. A pair of young uniformed officers out of Highland
Park division, driving a black and white, passed by the parking lot and saw the
nefarious group. The officers continued around the block and appeared without
warning. "Hold it! All of you!"

After a few minutes of checking
identification to make sure nobody had outstanding warrants or
"wants," and writing down all the names, most of which they knew, the
officers were ready to leave. But an incident of a month earlier in El Segundo
caused a ripple that changed a lot of lives. Two police officers had stopped a
man, and suddenly he killed them both. No weapon was found, they had not taken
a license number immediately on deciding to stop the vehicle, so there was no
way to trace the car. For many years there would be a composite drawing in
every precinct and jail of the suspected cop killer. All the hundreds of
thousands of those arrested were compared to that drawing. This parking lot
scene with Dizzy was soon after the double homicide. It was also before the
California Supreme Court case,
In re Cahan,
and the decision by the Supreme Court of the United
States,
Mapp v. Ohio,
both of which held that all remedies had been tried to make police comply with
the Fourth Amendment, the right of the people to be free of "unreasonable
searches and seizures," including the application of civil and criminal
penalties, which juries would not enforce. After a century of futility it was
time to take from them the motive of their unconstitutional behavior, i.e. the
evidence they seized, plus evidence that the primary illegality led them too.
That was "fruit of the poisoned tree"
(Wong Sun v. US).

Mapp v. Ohio
was still a couple of years
away. The uniformed officers decided to pat Dizzy down. The gun they found was
lawful evidence. They put him in lineups. Before I had taken him under my wing,
in addition to the liquor stores and neighborhood markets, he had robbed the
teller of a Wells Fargo bank. The teller pointed a finger from the witness
stand and said, "That's him." The jury said "Guilty." The
judge said "Eighteen years."
Sic transit gloria,
Dizzy Davis.

Although I kept a few capers on
file and sold them from time to time, my days as a planner of robberies were
essentially over. It was just as well because I had another thing going. A
friend of the Hernandez Brothers in Tijuana would supply three sets of
identification, mainly a California driver's license backed up with other
things, and a hundred payroll checks for $1,000, would get the identification
in common Mexican names, Gonzales, Cruz, Martinez, and the description
5'8", black hair and brown eyes. My first batch of checks was on Southern
Pacific. Lots of Chicanos worked for the railroad. A fellow I knew named Sonny
Ballesteros found three willing youngsters from the neighborhood and we gave
them three checks apiece. When those were cashed and the money handed over, I
gave Sonny the remaining ninety-one checks. I don't know what deal he made with
them, but I was happy with what I made — and again I was out of harm's way. The
check scheme worked three times; then my connection in Tijuana was shot and
paralyzed. I had enough money for several months and another plan.

To anyone morally outraged by my
schemes and lack of apparent remorse, let me say that I only had to justify
myself to myself, which is all that anyone has to do. No man does evd in his
own mind. I thought, and still think, that if God weighed all I have done
against all that has been done to me in society's name, it would be hard to
call which way the scales would tilt. I only stole money, and stopped doing
that as soon as I sold a novel. I refused to accept the position to which
society relegates the ex-offender. I would rather risk going back to prison
than accept a job in a car wash or a career as a fry cook. Nothing is wrong
with either for someone who doesn't care, but not for me. I'd read too many
heroic tales and raged to live. I had no family to constrain me with shame,
and, as far as I could determine, I owed society nothing and considered most of
its members to deserve whatever happened to them. They were classic hypocrites,
proclaiming Christian virtue, but at best living by older, meaner ideas, and
violating even those if to do so was expedient and if they could suck up their
courage. They do not live in good faith with the values and virtues that they
profess, explicidy or implicidy. I had no misgivings about stealing their
money. They might have gotten it legally, but not by creating anything, doing
anything constructive or otherwise contributing to the commonwealth or to human
freedom or anything else save, perhaps, their immediate family. The Salvation
Army and Franciscans were real Christians. They didn't domicile in the greatest
palace on the planet, amidst riches and art greater than any two museums on earth;
they were out on the street trying to help. There are others who do live in
good faith, but they are a minority. One thing that gave me unique freedom was
my lack of concern about what they thought of me, or what they could do to me.
I was more concerned with the truth — and having as much fun and as many
adventures as I could find. What I liked I would do until it became boring.

Every morning (actually closer
to noon), I sallied forth in search of adventure. Schwab's drugstore on Sunset
where Crescent Heights ends and Laurel Canyon begins (and Lana Turner was
discovered) had a counter with a great breakfast. Next door was Sherry's, a
cocktail lounge frequented by bookmakers, gamblers, fringe gangsters,
high-powered call girls and their pimps, although they took umbrage at the term
"pimp." They called themselves "players." Outside of
Sherry's, somebody ambushed LA's famous gangster, Mickey Cohen. He was
unscatched; his bodyguard was slain.

I was brought to Sherry's by Ann
J., who used the name of Sandy Winters. Raised in a Los Angeles suburb, as an
adolescent she had been big and shapeless. Her friends in high school were the
dope smokers and delinquents, a few of whom went on to serious crime. Her
boyfriend went to a reform school for car theft. While he was gone, she lost
the baby fat, revealing the body of a Las Vegas showgirl, full breasts, narrow
waist, big hips and thighs, closer to Jayne Mansfield than Jane Fonda. She'd
"turned out," become a high-priced call girl for a pimp (excuse me,
"a player"), but she was his "second store," and she
disliked giving him all her money, even though he bought her clothes from
Bullock's, and
gave her a Coupe de
Ville - but kept the ownership certificate. The pimp/player was the kind that
rules by terror, although he was carefid not to bruise her where it showed.
After a few months Sandy packed up and went home to the San Gabriel Valley. She
took a copy of her "book," several hundred names and phono numbers in
a green ledger. Coded marks after each name indicated what each paid, what they
liked, when last seen - and sometimes notations ran down the margin. Among the
names were movie moguls and movie stars. Why would Mitchum frequent a call
girl? Because there would be no repercussions, although recently some hookers had
been feeding things to the notorious scandal rag of the hour,
Confidential.

Ann J. stopped turning tricks and started work as a
secretary, but she was not averse to playing weekend courtesan if someone she
liked wanted to buy her diamonds and drape her on his arm. Although not the
most beautiful of women, she had the sexiest walk I've ever seen, and she did
turn men's heads wherever she went. After a weekend in Vegas or New York, she
invariably had another piece of jewelry and what amounted to a month's wages to
deposit with her stockbroker.

Sandy and I were introduced by Jimmy D., whom I mentioned
earlier. He had been awaiting sentence to prison when I paroled. Now he was
gone. Although we were the same age, Jimmy had a fraction of my knowledge,
academic or street. At twenty-two I'd graduated with honors after a nickel in
San Quentin. Jimmy did know young women who liked to get high and party, and
where to do it. I had the money and the Jaguar sports car, which was rapidly
accumulating dings and dents and a headlight that threw a skewed beam toward
the sky.