Mr. Blue: Memoirs of a Renegade (34 page)

Back on Valley Boulevard, I
used a gas station pay phone to call Sandy. She answered in her mellifluous
call girl voice, but with bemused challenge: "It's your dime," she
said.

"It's me," I said,
rightfully confident that she would recognize my voice. I quickly told her of
the situation. When I finished she said, "Oh my God! That's crazy!"

"Do me a favor. Call Flip
and find out what happened. Don't tell her you talked to me. Tell her you read
it in the paper. I'll call you back in half an hour."

When I called back, Sandy had
the story. Early in the morning, when Flip and Michael woke up with hangovers,
he began to slap her because she was a whore and he was in love with her. She
told him, Michael, Michael, after what I went through to protect you. She then
showed him the broken window and told him a story of being raped. He reached
for the telephone. Now I was a suspected serial rapist and murderer.

For two days I hid out in El Monte, wondering what I
should do. Actually I was less concerned with the possibility of being charged
with murder than with the matter getting to my parole officer. I had a good
parole officer (that would change soon enough), but something like this could
arouse too much heat. After the one headline there were no more newspaper
stories. Sandy convinced me to talk to a sleazeball shyster lawyer who was one
of her special johns. He called the homicide detectives. All my concern was for
nothing. By the afternoon of the first day they knew it was a hoax. Yvonne
Renee Dillon had several arrests under a law called "vag addict." It
was then a misdemeanor simply to be an addict in California, a law the Supreme
Court would soon declare unconstitutional. She also had some prostitution
arrests and had been in Camarillo. They didn't even want to talk to me, and
nobody had notified the parole department. So the desperate drama
had ended not with a bang but
a fizzle.

Other underworld adventures
came my way in the next seven or eight months. I recall standing outside the
Broadway Department Store at the intersection of Vine Street and Hollywood
Boulevard, looking in the display window at several TV sets, all of them tuned
to a news broadcast, behind which pulsed a dinging sound as the Soviet Union's
Sputnik orbited earth, the first man-made object to reach space.

My friend, Denis, once called
me and said he needed help; "and bring a pistol," he added. Unlike
most of my friends, he was someone I'd met since getting out. Of Greek descent,
he was classically handsome. He was a couple inches shorter than my bare six
feet. He had dark hair, aquiline nose, excellent teeth and skin with the hint
of an olive tint. In Denver, where his father owned a restaurant, the police
had given him a "floater." They told him to permanently vacate Denver
or they were going to bury him in prison or a grave, and if they couldn't get
him right, they would frame him. He followed Horace Greeley's advice, came
west, and set himself up as a drug dealer, which he would remain all the days
of his life except when he was in prison.

So here I was, a .38 in the hip
pocket of my Levi's, its butt hidden by the tail of a charcoal tweed sport
coat. It had the abundant buttons of Ivy League garments.

His red (with white trim)
two-seat Ford Thunderbird appeared. A car waiting to park kept him from
jockeying into the curb lane. I made sure the pistol was snug — I didn't want
it to fall onto Hollywood Boulevard at eight in the evening - and slipped
between cars onto the street. He leaned over and opened the passenger door, and
we were already moving when I slammed it shut. "What's up, brother?"
I asked. "You don't have me in a killing squabble, do you?"

"I dunno. We gotta go
see."

He drove south on Vine and east
on Fountain past Cedars of Lebanon, where I was born. He parked on Fountain and
we walked down an alley and up an exterior stairway to the door of a small
apartment over a garage. The door was covered with sheet metal and had a lock
like the ones usually found on the back doors of liquor stores endangered by
burglars. A small black man of undetermined years, a pinched face and
exaggerated femininity let us in. The left side of his face was grossly swollen
and discolored. "Oh, man, I'm so glad to see you. That fiickin' nigger
Pinky," he began; then sniffled as if ready to cry.

"Awww, man," Denis
said, "freeze on that shit and tell me what happened."

"He bought a gram, man. A
couple hours later he come back with some other gutter ass black motherfucker
an' say the stuff was no good and wanted his money back. I told him if it was
bunk why in Mary's name did he shoot it all. He said he wasn't gonna argue
...
he wanted his money. I told
him no and he started punchin' on me. He put a knife on my throat an' said he
was takin' everything . . . money . . . smack . . . everything ..."

"What'd he get?"

"Shit ... he got it all .
. . everything."

Denis shook his head.
"Goddamn it's hard to make any dough. Do you know how to find him?"

"I don't know where he
hves, but he's got a white girl works as a cocktail waitress in that. . . uh .
. . hotel. . . Roosevelt Hotel right on Hollywood Boulevard. One night we had
to wait for her to get off work so he could get money to score. I'll bet you
can nail him through her."

"Do you know her
name?"

"I think it was Elaine ...
a littlebitty blonde with a country accent."

"Let's go check it
out," Denis said to me.

"Hey, D., can you do
something for me? I don't have anything for a getup. I'm gonna be sick in the
morning."

From Denis's pocket came a
bankroll that would choke a horse. It was before the age of credit cards when
cash was still king. Denis tore off a couple of $20 bills and handed them over.
"You know where to score, don't you?"

"I gotta go down to the
ghetto."

"Better'n bein' sick. Get
outta this place first thing in the morning."

"Can you front me an o.z.
so I can get back on my feet."

"Call me when you get
moved. Let's go."

We went to the Roosevelt Hotel
on Hollywood Boulevard across the street from the Chinese Theater. The club off
the Roosevelt's lobby was the site of the first Academy Awards, but in the
subsequent decades the hotel had gone downhill. So had its club.

Denis was a step ahead of me as
we crossed the lobby toward the club's open door. As we reached it, he stopped
and I bumped into him. "Get back," he ordered. He pushed me away from
the open door.

"What's up?"

"He's in there with
her."

"The guy we want?"

"Yeah, Pinky."

"You know him, huh?"

"Not really. I've seen him
coming down from Dixie's when I was makin' a delivery."

"Does he know you?"

"I don't think so."

"Would he recognize
you?"

He shook his head, but it was
less than emphatic.

"Let me check him
out," I said.

"I'll wait out front."

He went out and I entered the
cocktail lounge. It was dim and nearly empty. Two men were together at a table,
two more, each by himself, were perched on bar stools. I took an empty table
near the entrance and thought to myself that Denis had made a mistake. There
was no black man in here.

The cocktail waitress delivered
drinks to the pair at the table then came to me. Her name tag said
"Ellie." That was close enough. "Gimme a shot of bourbon and mix
another one in 7-Up for a chaser."

She nodded and went to tell the
bartender. She stood beside one of the men at the bar while waiting for the
drink. The seated man put a possessive arm around her waist. I got up and went
over to the bar. I handed the waitress some money. "Here. I'm going to the
john. I'll be right back." The seated man turned to look at me. His skin
was at least as white as mine, and only in America would he have been
considered black. Yet his features, especially the wide flat nose, declared
that some of his ancestors had taken the Middle Passage to America. He swung
his gaze past the girl onto me. I winked, but his reaction was coldly blank.

I walked out, but instead of
crossing the lobby to the rest room, I headed down the short hall to the door
onto Hollywood Boulevard. Pedestrians were moving back and forth, a tour bus
was disgorging tourists in front of the Landmark theater across the street. I
looked around. Denis came out of a doorway.

"That's him all
right." The sidewalk was full of pedestrians, the street with cars - and a
black and white went slowly past. "We can't do anything here. Too many
witnesses. We'll wait for him to come out and see where he goes. Maybe come
back later."

"Like 6.30 in the
morning." I liked early morning jackups. The suckers often staggered to
the door rubbing their glazed eyes.

"Right," Denis said;
then: "There! Freeze!" It was soft but sharp. I froze.

A figure passed us from my
rear. The scent of men's cologne. Denis had seen him coming. He grinned at me.
"Sometimes even a blind dog gets lucky. Come on."

Pinky walked along in front of
the hotel and turned right at the corner, going along its east side. We
followed at some distance, far enough where he was unlikely to look back and
get suspicious. I was going along with this, but my heart wasn't in it. It
wasn't my trouble; I wasn't angry. Pinky was big, too, probably 6'3" and a
couple hundred rangy pounds. No doubt Denis and I in tandem would kick his ass
pretty quick, but it was also probable that he was tougher
mano a mano
than either of us. In short, I
guess, my adrenalin wasn't pumping enough yet.

I expected him to continue to
the parking lot behind the hotel. Instead he stepped between cars at the curb
and crossed the street at an angle; then turned into an alley running parallel
to the boulevard.

Denis was ahead of me. I
expected him to stop and wait for me. Instead he speeded up and entered the
alley. When I made the turn, Denis was calling, "Hey, Pinky! Wait
up!"

Pinky looked back and stopped.
Although his face was shadowed, his body was ready to run. Before he could
decide, Denis had closed the distance to him. I stopped a few feet away.

"Yeah, what?" Pinky
asked.

"I'm not lookin' for
trouble . . . but you owe me some dough."

"Some
dough? Who the fuck are
you?"

"I'm the motherfucker that
owned that shit you took off littleDixie."

"I don't know you ... an'
I ain't got shit to say to you."

Pinky's hostile scorn now had
my anger rising. Who'd he think he was fucking with? I stepped forward.
"You sure have a . . . bad attitude, man." I had to catch my breath
in mid-sentence. My temper used to interfere with my conversation, a half
stutter I lost when I was a little older and somewhat calmer. I moved around so
we had him boxed between us.

Pinky's head turned to look
deeper into the dark alley. It made me glance that way. A figure was getting
out of a car parked thirty yards away and started walking quickly toward us.
"What's happenin', man?" he wanted to know.

I was closest to him. He was
the size of an NFL linebacker and outweighed me by about eighty pounds, or more.
I eased the pistol out of my back pocket with my left hand, using my body as a
shield so neither black man could see it.

"These peckerwood
motherfuckers be tryin' to muscle—"

The big man was upon me,
sticking his finger in my chest. I could see he was older, with a shiny bald
head except for gray around the ears. He still looked like a grizzly to me. The
alley was dark and neither of them saw the small black pistol in my hand.
"Litde white motherfucker," he said.

I said nothing. This was no
time for me to talk. I raised the pistol close to my body and shot across my
stomach. I could feel the heat of the muzzle (and later found powder burns on
my shirt) as the barrel spit fire. I deliberately aimed downward (I didn't
intend to kill him) and the bullet hit him just above the knee. It went through
and kicked up sparks on the concrete. He yelped in pain, grabbed his leg and
went down to a kneeling position. I stepped back. I wanted to be clear enough
to shoot him good if he lunged for me. He didn't. I turned to Pinky. "You
want some?" He was waving his hands, shaking his head and backing away.

"I want my dough,
asshole," Denis said.

I didn't want anything but to
get away from the scene. It was a block from Hollywood Boulevard. To me the
shot sounded like a howitzer going off. "C'mon . . . c'mon," I said.
"Let's get outta here."

We turned and ran. When we got
to the car, Denis started laughing. "I thought we were in big trouble with
those bucks. I forgot you had that piece."

Denis never got his money back.
Pinky left the area. Ten years later, in 1967,1 was in Folsom and the big
black'man came in on the Department of Corrections bus. I recognized him
immediately, a recognition confirmed by his limp. While he was still locked up
on fish row, on the fifth tier of #2 building, I sneaked up to his cell and
talked to him. I told him who I was and that I didn't want any trouble . . .
but I would try to kill him if I got the idea that he wanted any revenge. He
said it was forgotten; he had a parole date seven months away — and Pinky was a
stool pigeon anyway. It was a mistake to back a stool pigeon no matter what his
color. It made me grin; his was the attitude all outlaws should have.