Mr. Blue: Memoirs of a Renegade (35 page)

More than a year had passed
without an arrest. Of course for
nine
months I hadn't done anything
besides smoke some grass. I didn't feel the wheels that were starting to shake
under me. Life was
too
exciting. The tide started
turning against me on a typical LA
night,
which is cool no matter how hot
the day, when I went to
meet
Joe Morgan at the Club El
Sereno on Huntington Drive. It was an old-style cocktail lounge, big booths of
red leather, wood-paneled walls, soft light. It was a hangout for high-rolling
Chicano
drug
dealers of the era. On this
night it had a full house of various
kinds
of Angelenos all attracted to
Art Pepper's trio. Pepper was
perhaps
the best white alto sax man of
the time. As with his idol Char
lie
Parker, Pepper loved junk,
smack, ghow, heroin ... In the
argot
of a certain
underworld, he was a "hope to die dope fiend."
Bui
he sure could play that
saxophone.

The club was full and quiet.
Pepper was blowing "Body and Soul." He could play the soul of the
saxophone, and his audience was rapt.

Of course not entirely. The
owner was at the rear on the phone, and at the most distant booth two couples
were laughing. Not seeing Joe, I found an empty space at the bar, and when the
bartender arrived and leaned toward me, I did the same and ordered a shot
ofjack Daniel's backed with a bourbon and 7-Up. I downed the shot and sipped the
highball. It seemed a good way to drink at the time.

I knew several people in the
room. The cocktail waitress, an exotically beautiful Eurasian girl who was most
attractive. She was also quick-witted and hip. I was very interested until I
found out she had two children. I wasn't ready for that, so what had been a
pursuit of lust for a few days was now simply flirtatious banter while she
delivered drinks. Jimmy D. was there with his wife. She must have held a gun to
his head, or at least raised hell, to make him take her out. He traveled alone;
he liked new adventures and new pussy. I could understand all that. Alas, he
had two very young children. He often complained that life weighed a ton,
"... and my old lady ..." He shook his head. His pain was on his face.

At the front end of the bar
stood Billy the Bouncer and Russian Al. They were both about fifty, and neither
had done time for twenty years. They were expert safecrackers, back when the
safecracker was the most respected of thieves. It is nearly impossible to
convict anyone of burglary unless they are caught on the score, and that
happens rarely. Russian Al had gone to prison once back in the '30s. He had
been staying in a third-rate hotel across the street from a small department
store in Modesto. Between Saturday night and Sunday morning, he entered the
store, opened the safe and took almost $40,000, a fantastic score at the time.
He returned to the hotel and changed from the clothes he was wearing into an
expensive suit. When he came off the elevator, two detectives were in the lobby
investigating a report of a drug dealer in the hotel. They spotted Russian Al
in his expensive clothes, stopped him and asked what was in the suitcase he
carried. They were looking for narcotics, but they were happy with what they
found. He did nine years for "burglary with explosives," a special
category of burglary. An acetylene torch had been deemed to fall within the
statute. They hadn't touched him in twenty years.

Billy the Bouncer had served
one county jail sentence for the misdemeanor offense of possessing burglary
tools.

I felt the spreading warmth of
two drinks. That called for two more; again I threw one down and sipped the
other, watching each time the rear door opened. Joe was still a no-show when
Art Pepper's trio finished the first set and went out into the parking lot for
a cigarette or, more likely, a few tokes on a joint. I'd been waiting more than
an hour, and if it had been anyone but Joe Morgan, I would have left after half
an hour. Joe, however, was different. I gave him the utmost respect.

Pepper was halfway through his
rendition of "When Sunny Gets Blue" in his second set when the
cocktail waitress came down the bar, touched my arm and pointed to the club's
owner at the rear. He was holding a telephone, and he extended it toward me. I
had a phone call. I went to see what it was about.

It was a female voice:
"Are you Eddie B.?"

"I dunno. Who're
you?"

"Big Joe told me to call
you."

"Uh huh. What's up?"

"They came and got
him."

"Uhh . . . who . . . who
came for him?"

"FBI. They wouldn't tell
me what it was for. When they were taking him away, he said, 'Call Eddie B. at
the club and tell him.' So that's what I did."

"Thanks." I hung up.
The feds. It wasn't about his drug operation. J. Edgar Hoover didn't let the
FBI do narcotics busts; there was too much temptation for corruption. It would
be several years before I saw Joe again. Initially he was charged with the bank
robbery, but the government never took it to trial. They had no evidence.
Instead the Department of Corrections sent him back to prison as a parole
violator. The violation was for leaving the State of California; they had a
record of him renting a car in Las Vegas. Those were events that would unfold
in the months to come. That night I only knew he was busted.

Half drank from six drinks in
two hours, I went out to my car, a 1955 XK140 Jaguar, with a Dodge Red Ram V8
under the hood, instead of the stock Jaguar six-cylinder engine. The Jags of
that model were long and sleek and beautiful. But though it was less than three
years old it was already frequent trouble, including tonight. The starter
turned, but the engine refused to kick over and catch. I opened the hood and
fiddled with the wires even though I had no idea what I was looking for. I
found nothing I recognized.

The pay phone was in a short
corridor to the rest rooms. I was calling the tow track when Billy the Bouncer
passed by on his way to take a leak. Coming out, he stopped and waited until I
hung up. "You need a ride?" he asked.

"Yeah . . . but you know
where I live?"

"Out near Hollywood, don't
you?"

"Near Wilshire and
LaBrea."

"We're goin' pretty near
there ... so if you don't want to pay that cab fare ..."

The cab fare would cost plenty.
Taxis are not economically viable in Southern California. The streetcar would
take a couple of hours, first to downtown; then I'd need to take a bus. I was
happy to get the ride with Billy and Russian Al.

While rolling through the city,
they told me they were going to Beverly Hills to check out a score. "We're
not doing anything," Al said. "Just gonna look at a couple
things."

In Hollywood we stopped at Tiny
Naylor's, a big and bright drive-in restaurant on the corner of Sunset and
LaBrea where I knew one of the waitresses. She was Betty by name. She got off
work in about two hours, at 1 a.m., and a musician friend told her about an
after-hours jam session down on 42
^nd
and Central Avenue. Did I want
to take her? We could use her car. It was decided that I would come back in two
hours. I would go with Russian Al and Billy the Bouncer — who weren't going to
do anything tonight — and they would drop me off on the way back. If a
littleearly, I could sit inside and eat a piece of pie.

Santa Monica Boulevard was less
gay than it is today, but the sidewalks outside the clubs were crowded.

Beverly Hills was not. Its
skyline was low, almost nothing over three floors, and it had an aura of quaint
wealth displayed in southwestern and Mediterranean architecture. Restaurants
were few, nightclubs nonexistent.

Billy was driving. He turned
into an alley behind Beverly Drive. In mid-block he found an empty parking
space and stopped. They got out and I remained in the car as they stood and
talked. The glare of a flashlight illuminated the interior of the car as its
beam highlighted the two figures. I sat up and turned to look. A policeman. Oh
shit!

Then the flash of fear
disappeared. We weren't doing anything.

"Turn around. Come
here," the officer ordered. I leaned back and closed my eyes. Whatever
happened, I would claim to be the drunk in the back seat.

The flashlight tapped on the
side window; the beam was direcdy on my face. I could see the glare through
closed eyelids. I opened one eye at a time. "Wha . . . what's
happening?"

"Step out of the
car."

I got out. "What's the
problem, officer?"

"Over there. Let's see
some ID."

As we each showed
identification, Billy wanted to know what this was about. It seemed that the
officer, walking a beat, saw us turn the wrong way into a one-way alley.
"What're you doing back here?"

"Taking a leak," they
said.

"I dunno," I said.
"I was sleeping in the back seat."

"Let's take a walk,"
the cop said.

We walked from the alley along
a street. My instinct was to run. Although I was always notoriously slow, the
policeman had a pot belly that said he wasn't a sprinter either. If I ran, he
would face a dilemma: if he chased me, they would get away. What kept me from
running was the fact that I hadn't done anything.

He unlocked a call-in box and
picked up the phone. We waited until a sergeant drove up, and then drove back
to the alley.
En route
the Sergeant asked what we were doing in the alley. I said I was asleep
in the back seat. They repeated that they were taking a leak.

The Sergeant flashed the light
around the car. "Open the trunk."

Billy unlocked the trunk. The
Sergeant trained his flashlight inside — and there we saw a portable acetylene
torch, with straps so it could be carried on the back. Inside a bag was a drill
and bit, a handsaw that could cut circles, a jimmy bar, several freshly
sharpened chisels and a small sledgehammer, plus other tools. "You're
under arrest," he said, pulling out his weapon. Now it was too late to
run.

As soon as we were being
booked, I began demanding a telephone call. The booking officer said I had to
wait for the detectives to approve it. "No I don't. I've got a right to a
phone call."

"You've got a right to an
ass kicking."

That temporarily silenced me —
but as soon as I was in the cell, I began to yell: "I want a telephone
call!" Everyone who passed outside the cell, or within earshot, heard my
cry for a phone call. I had to get out on bail before Monday morning when the
parole office would learn that I was in jail and would automatically put a
parole hold on me. The earliest I could hope for release was after the charges
were setded, whatever they might be. If I was convicted of so much as a
misdemeanor, I would likely be returned to San Quentin as a parole violator,
and the parole board could re-fix my term at the maximum. I would be in company
with "known felons" and "persons of ill repute." I had to
get a phone call. I was booked on suspicion of burglary. A lawyer could go to a
judge with a petition for habeas corpus, and the judge would issue a "show
cause" order and set a bail. A bail bondsman would take 10 percent as his
fee, plus a lien on something like a house for the whole amount. It would go
down to a misdemeanor and a lower bail on Monday, but I could not wait for
Monday. "My
mother's got thirty million dollars and I WANT A PHONE
CALL'."
I
yelled through the night.

The detectives came in on
Saturday morning, their day off. They drooled at the chance of putting the two
wily old safecrackers into prison. They called me first. They knew my story
about sleeping in the back seat was bullshit. "You're on parole, Bunker,
you can go
back
that fast." He snapped his fingers. "So?" "You know those
guys were starting to break into one of those stores. You help us and we'll
help you."

"I'd like to . . . but you
don't want any lies, do you?"

They looked at each other, and
then at me with eyes of dislike.

"Go back to the cell.
We'll talk to you later."

As they walked me back to the
holding tank where a jailer would let me in, I asked them in front of him,
"Tell this guy to let me make a phone call."