Mr. Blue: Memoirs of a Renegade (43 page)

In the morning, a uniformed
officer unlocked my cell gate. A detective waited to interrogate me in the
standard windowless room with a table and three hard-backed chairs. He looked
at me with cold, hostde eyes. "Sit down, Bunker."

They knew my name already.
Damn!
They
had pulled out all the stops, or so I thought for a moment. "He's
dead," I said. "I am number five. Who are you?" As I spoke, I
leaned to the left and looked at the ceding, slowly moving my head as if
watching something crawl across.

The detective's face maintained
a studied impassivity, but his eyes narrowed ever so slightly, and he did
glance at the ceiling.

"You know who they are,
don't you?" I asked.

"What?"

"Catholics. They've been
trying to put a radio in my brain, you know."

"What I want to know about
are these burglaries. We found those checks in your hotel room."

Hotel room! How did they . . . ? The hotel key. Damn.
It was in the car.

"I don't know about a
hotel. It's the church . . . it's all of them ... all of it. Don't you
see?" My words had a stridency that stopped him. He'd assumed I was high
on angel dust or some other hallucinogen. He was a handsome man, well tadored.
He also had a cold demeanor. Most wizened old detectives have seen so many
human foibles that they are bemused most of the time. An old cop and an old
thief will often have
more in common than either has with a newcomer of
either persuasion.

He broke off the interrogation
and sent me to the cell. I had to walk in front of half a dozen cells, each
containing four or five young blacks. It was the age of the Afro hairstyle,
which is created by using a hair pick to fluff the hair into an upstanding
bush, the bigger the better. Alas, the booking officers took away their hair
picks, so after a night in jad their hair looked like wild explosions of
countless watch springs. As I went by a cell one of them said in disbelief:
"Hey, man, they got a white dude in the back."

"White dudes break the
law," said another.

"I ain' ne'er seen one in
77
^th
."

The uniformed officer escorting
me said: "He's no white man. He's a white nigger."

Back in my cage with graffiti on
the walls and a striped mattress shiny with the sweat and smell of previous
occupants, I sank into the pit of despond. What a life. What had I done to
deserve this? The question had an obvious answer, and I laughed at my moment of
self-pity. One thing was certain: I would give them one helluva fight before
San Quentin's gates slammed shut behind me again.

In late afternoon, when the
light coming through the small, barred windows across from the cell turned
gray, the outer door opened and two sets of feet sounded out, coming down the
runway. "Hey, man . . . hey . . . hey . . .
hey motherfucker!"
screamed a brother down the
tier. The jailer faded to acknowledge their summons.

The jailer, a beefy black man in
a dark LAPD uniform, still had exasperation on his face when he reached my cell
and opened it. Behind him was an older white man. We'll call him Pollock,
because his name was Eastern European, I think. He was seamed and rumpled; he
had been around.

I was led back to the
interrogation room. The handsome detective waited for me with some files in
front of him. I sat down.

"Your parole officer says
you're faking," the detective said.

"Man . . . he's part of the
Church. Don't you see that?"

It sent his eyes rolling, and
there was a barely audible: "Shiiit..."

"Look, Bunker," said
Pollock, pulling forth his wallet anil extracting a card. "I'm not a
Catholic. I'm a Lutheran. Look ..." He extended a church membership card.

I leaned forward and peered at
the card with great seriousness, then sniffed. "Forged," I said.

So it went. They asked about Gordo.
Where'd they get thai name?
Many months later, reading a
police report during a court room proceeding, I learned that he had called the
hotel and left his name.

One dark night, bright with
lights, they took me out to the scene of a safe burglary. A woman living next
door to the bar had seen a car drive up beside the back door. A man stepped
out, she said, crossed the sidewalk and entered the car. She was about thirty
yards away and saw him at an angle partly from the rear. Could she identify me?

I had to get out of the car I
was in and stand beside it. One detective stood beside me, whde the other
brought the witness to the curb fifteen feet away. We exchanged no words, but I
saw her shake her head and toss her shoulder. No identification. It hadn't been
me anyway. I had been driving the car in that heist.

The next morning the detective
and his partner took me from the cell of the 77
^th
to the Municipal
Court in Inglewood for arraignment. There I would be served with the complaint.
They locked me in a bullpen next to the courtroom. It held several others
scooped from the streets in the last day or so. All of them were going before
the judge for the first time.

During the wait, I got into
costume. I tied Bull Durham sacks to my shirt like a row of medals. I put a
towel over my head and tied it with a shoelace. I had my shirt tad out and my
pants rolled up above my knees. To the court, I looked like the craziest fool
they'd ever seen, although the deputies paid no attention. They had seen many
crazy fools pass through.

Before court convened, we fded
into the courtroom and sat in the jury box. The arraignment court buzzed with
activity, with lawyers and bondsmen, clerks and arresting offices, and abundant
spectators.

The clerk entered and announced
that the Municipal Court of the City of Inglewood, County of Los Angeles, was
now in session, the Honorable James Shanrahan, judge presiding.

When the judge came through the
door, I came out of my chair, screaming at the top of my lungs: "J
know him! He's a bishop!
Lookit the robes! Help! Help!"

Bailiffs came running, their
keys jangling. Chairs crashed. Spectators jumped up, some to see, some to
flee. Chaos reigned in the court.

I was carried out, screaming
maledictions, feet waving. I even lost a shoe that never got returned.

In an adjacent office, a young
district attorney asked me a few questions, such as how long I'd been in jail.
A hundred and six years seemed appropriate. After a few more questions and
similar answers, they took me back into the courtroom before the judge. I was
flanked by burly deputies. The young District Attorney made a motion under
Section 1367 California Penal Code. With vacant expression, I paid no attention
and looked around the courtroom. Actually, Section 1367 CPC stops the
proceedings and refers the matter to a department of the Superior Court for a
sanity hearing to determine if the prisoner is competent to stand trial.
Although it does not deal with guilt or innocence, this can be considered with
other evidence.

As they led me from the courtroom, I looked at the handsome
detective who had conducted the investigation. He was seated in the row inside
the rading, and displeasure was written large across his face. I wanted to
wink, but that would have been too much of an insult, and somewhere down the
line he would have to testify. Besides, what did I have to wink about? I was
caged and he was free. All my machinations might, at best, slice a tiny
fraction from how long I would be imprisoned.

After court, I was among those
called for the first bus back to the jail. It was a new jad, having opened
while I was away, and it was already notorious as a place where the deputies
busted heads and had killed more than one prisoner. I remembered a friend,
Ebie, telling me that some drunk Mexican being booked in had thrown a trash can
through an interior window. They had dragged him away. It was when they were in
a room without witnesses that the guy slipped on a banana peel and broke his
skull on the bars. In some places a little mouth could bring the goon squad
down on you. All places of incarceration have a goon squad, although it may be
called something more politically correct than "goon squad." Like
"Reaction Team."

In the Los Angeles central jad
it took nothing to get jumped and stomped, maybe tear-gassed and thrown in the
hole — and maybe charged with a new crime, for the best way they had of getting
away with administering a savage beating was to charge the inmate with
attacking them. It was their collective word against his individual word.

The module where they placed me
happened to have single cells. When the gates opened for chow, I saw many
familiar faces on the serving line or seated at the tables. The food was barely
edible; I could force down a few bites, and eat the bread and drink the hot,
sweet tea at night. I lived on oranges.

A few days later they called me
out to court at 5 a.m. We were fed eggs in the mess hall and sent downstairs to
the "court line." Our civilian clothes were given to us if we wanted
them for court. It mattered not to me. I was in costume and the jail blues
helped.

The sanity court was held over
at the general hospital. A deputy public defender came to interview me. I made
no sense to him. The court appearance lasted about thirty seconds. The clerk
called the case. The judge peered at the poor, demented creature with strips of
todet paper stuck in his ears, shirt worn inside out with Bull Durham sacks
attached like medals. The judge had seen many crazies in his time and the
figure facing him was a classic. He appointed two psychiatrists to conduct an
examination and submit a report.

When the deputy public defender
tried to talk to me, I babbled nonsensically. He gave it up and wished me good
luck. Riding the bus back to the jad, I visually devoured the city at night, as
I always did on such journeys. So today I remember as if it was yesterday a
sight thirty years in the past: an open door of a
cantina
with the sounds of
mariachis
pouring onto the sidewalk.
Incarceration at least has the beneficial aspect of letting a prisoner see the
world with fresh eyes, the way an artist does.

The next day I was called for
the busload being transferred to the old countyjad above the Hall ofjustice. We
were herded like cattle into a bullpen. Who was assigned to a particular jail
was determined by where they went to court. Those kept in the new central jail
were going to outlying courtrooms in Santa Monica, Van Nuys, Pasadena and
elsewhere around the vast county. Those going to court in the Hall of Justice
were those arrested in the central city; hence blacks were the majority being
transferred.

The deputies yelled and bullied
the prisoners. We were jammed together — and I smoldered. A couple of trembling
old winos were on the bus.

On arrival at the Hall of
Justice we were taken to the shower area. It was the same place I had cut up
mass murderer Billy Cook more than a decade earlier. "Listen up!"
yelled a deputy. "Strip to your underwear and throw your clothes in
here." He indicated a wheeled laundry basket.

As outer clothes came off, the
stench of unwashed bodies rose up. I breathed softly through my mouth, thinking
that mankind must have really smelt untd recently.

Everyone was hurrying except me
and an old wino shaking from age and booze who was having a hard time
maintaining his balance while stripping down. He stumbled and reflexively
reached out to steady himself, inadvertently bumping a black youth.
"Fucking old grape," the youth said to the trembling old man.
"Get the fuck away from me." Using both hands, he shoved the old man,
who slipped on the floor and went down hard. Nobody moved to help him. They
walked past him to throw their clothes in the laundry hamper and stand naked in
line. The little display of racial hatred grated on me, but it was none of my
business, according to the prison code.

I hung back. Let everyone else
go first. I wasn't in a hurry to get into another set of jad denim. There was
plenty to go around.

"Move it, man, move
it." Pressing behind me was another young black. He was taller than me but
slender.

"Take it easy. We'll get
there."

He said something. The words I
didn't decipher, but the sound was hostde. It has been my experience that young
ghetto blacks huff and puff and bump chests together before getting it on, a
sort of male dance of intimidation. Whde he was huffing, I put a short left
hook into his solar plexus. His grunt was of surprise and pain. A white man
fighting? That wasn't what he'd been taught. I swung another left hook and
missed, wrapping my arm around his neck. Down we went on the tile floor. He was
on the bottom.

Within seconds the deputies were
there, dragging us apart. Off to Siberia we went. Siberia was a tank of regular
cells stripped
of
amenities,
including mattresses, and devoid of all privdeges.

It was time to add to the record
of insanity an old fashioned sin cide attempt, for later use, if it became
necessary. It always helped

The light fixture was recessed
in the ceding and covered with mesh so the prisoner could not reach the bulb.
When they brought the meal, I kept the Styrofoam cup. I filled it with water
and threw it onto the hot bulb. Pop! It broke and I had shards of sharp glass.
Using a shirt sleeve as a tourniquet around my upper arm. I chopped at the
swollen vein at the inner aspect of my elbow At first I was tentative. It may
be physically easy but mentally it is not easy to cut yourself. The skin
parted, exposing white meat and the vein. It took several chops. Then it opened
and blood shot up about three feet. Quickly I grabbed the paper cup and let the
blood run in there untd it was about an inch high. I added two inches of water.
Then I poured that slowly over my naked shoulders and chest untd it covered my
torso. I began spinning and swinging my arm. The blood splattered around all
the walls and dripped from the cell bars. It made for a gory mess. Finally, I
partially filled tin- cup with blood and water and poured it outside the cell,
so it ran along the floor on the runway. "Hey, next door," I called.
"Look over here . . . through the door."

"Goddamn! Oh shit!"

"Call the bull."

The bar-shaking and screaming
began.
"Poo-leese! Officer!
Help' Help! Man down! Man down!

In seconds, it was a chorus from
all the cells.

It took several minutes before I
heard the outer gates opening. At that point I stretched out in the pool of
blood on the floor. The cell looked like a slaughterhouse.

The jangling keys; then the
startled voice: "Jesus Christ! Call the clinic. Get a gurney!"

The gurney rattled loudly as
they came on the run. As they wheeled me past prisoners looking through their
bars, I heard voices: "Aw, man, that dude's dead." "Shit, man,
that's fiickin' messy." "Chump killed hisself." Someone passed
judgement: "Sucker gotta be weak to do that ..."

Down the elevator, into an
ambulance and out the tunnel for a siren-screaming ride to the general hospital
several miles away. They sewed me up, washed me off and took me to the jail
ward on the thirteenth floor. When the doctor asked why I'd done it, I said the
Catholic Church had a radio in my brain and told me to. He wrote it down. Thank
you, doctor.

The jail ward in the hospital
was so overcrowded that beds overflowed the rooms and lined the big main
corridor. Late that night they discharged me back to the Central Jail. I was
put in a room with three beds in the jail infirmary, left ankle and right hand
chained to the bed. The middle bed was occupied by an old diabetic. Next to him
was a husky young Chicano who had one foot cuffed to the bed frame. He sat up,
rocking back and forth while saying his rosary over and over, sometimes mixing
in Acts of Contrition. The nurse who passed out medication said he was having a
reaction to angel dust. She gave me two brown pills that I recognized as
Thorazine. I feigned taking them.

It was in this hospital room
that I saw something so grotesque that it remains etched in my mind as if
burned by acid. "Jesus Christ!" exclaimed the old diabetic, then
jumped up and began pounding and kicking the door. For a moment I looked at
him, and then turned my gaze to the Chicano on the other bunk. He was sitting
up, still rocking and muttering prayers. His right eye socket opened and shut —
but it held no eyeball. It stared up from the white bed sheet. His left eye
dangled back and forth below his chin, held by some kind of tendon. He had used
his thumbs to reach into both eyes and pluck them from his head. My heart
bounced and my hair stood up. It was horrifying. More than a year later, I came
back to the Central Jad and saw him being led to court. He was totally blind,
but they didn't drop the charges. Oh no, he wasn't going to get off that easy.
I don't know if they sent him to prison. It wouldn't surprise me. After all, he
had stolen something.

When the jail doctor came to
talk to me, I told him that the Pope had assassins waiting to murder me in the
Hall of Justice, and that I couldn't be in a cell with anybody else because I
could see lights floating over their heads. I hoped to be put in the
"ding" tank here in the Central Jad. I wanted to avoid the Hall of
Justice, mainly because they would immediately put me back in Siberia when I
returned. He wrote it down on the chart and told me not to worry, I wasn't
going back to the Hall of Justice.

The next morning, needing the
space, another doctor discharged me. I was put in a section of one man cells in
the Central Jail. That suited me fine.

Two days later, the deputy
called out, "Bunker, roll 'em up." It was for transfer to the Hall of
Justice. The transfer was determined by the numbers; nobody looked at any fdes.
When the deputy opened my cell and called for me to step out, I went to the
front. He was at the control panel, in a cage behind bars, busdy throwing
levers and calling names. Other prisoners were being transferred, or called out
to see their lawyer or parole officer. He was a fresh-faced kid, and he had
been told at the Academy that all prisoners were liars and con men, scum
wanting to take advantage of him. So when I approached the bars and said,
"Hey, boss," which according to my education was a sign of respect,
he responded with suspicious hostility. He wasn't receptive when I told him
that I wasn't supposed to go to the Hall of Justice, according to the jad
doctor. "Don't tell me," he said. "Tell the deputy in the
control booth in the hallway." He pushed the button that buzzed open the
lock to the second-floor hallway. It was long and wide. Prisoners had to walk
along the right-hand wall. Next to the doorway to the escalator was the control
booth where the deputy sat up high behind reinforced glass, so he had a clear
sight of everything in the corridor.

I walked up to the window.
"They called me to roll up to HOJJ, but I'm not supposed to go."

"You're not? Why not?"

"The doctor said—"

"Tell the deputy running
the court line downstairs." He cut me off.

I went down the escalator and
followed the painted line on the floor to the doorway into the large room
filled with cages, each about fifteen feet square and with a sign over its gate
designating an oudying courtroom. In the morning, long before daylight, the
cages were packed with prisoners waiting to take bus rides. It was less humane
than the stock pens in radroad yards.

It was late morning now. The
buses had gone and would not begin returning until late afternoon, continuing
through the evening. The cages had been swept and held prisoners being
transferred to other facilities, including the Hall of Justice.

A deputy sat behind a table that
had lists of names Scotch-taped to its top. As prisoners gave their name, he
directed them to a cage. Even before I stepped up and started my story, I knew
that the deputy at the module, who had sent me to the booth, and the deputy at
the booth, who had sent me here, had been playing a game: to move me another
step closer to the bus.

"I'm not supposed to go to
the Hall ofjustice."

"What's your name?"

"The doctor wrote it in the
medical records."