Mr. Blue: Memoirs of a Renegade (7 page)

The Los Angeles County Jail was on the tenth through
fourteenth Moor in the Hall of Justice at the corner of Broadway and Temple
Streets. When the correctional lieutenant handed me over to the booking
officer, he gave him a sheet of paper. The report said that I had been arrested
under Section 4500 of the California Penal Code. Section 4500 states that any
inmate serving a life sentence who commits an assault able to cause great
bodily harm is to be sentenced to the gas chamber. There was no alternative.
The life sentence, according to California Supreme Court decisions, also
includes indeterminate sentences — one year to Life or five years to Life.
Actually I came under Section 4500, subsection B. The subsection wasn't
mentioned on the papers. The booking officer asked me how old I was. I told him
I was nineteen. With a shrug, he assigned me to 10-A-l, also known as
"high power." It was the special security tank for men facing the gas
chamber, cop killers and notorious murderers.

Most prisoners are moved in groups, or sometimes sent
places in the jail on their own, but high-power inmates are moved under escort
one at a time. Being in high power gives one a certain cachet in the
topsy-turvy world of underworld values. It usually takes from eight to twelve
hours to get through the booking process. In groups, everyone has to wait for
all the others to finish each step of the procedures before moving on. I was
moved ahead of everyone else. First the booking office, next to the Bertillion
Room where they took mug photos and several sets of fingerprints.

Copies were sent to Sacramento and to the FBI in
Washington. I was showered, sprayed with DDT (this was before
Silent Spring)
and given jail denim to dress in. A
medical technician had me "skin it back and squeeze it down," to see
if I had gonorrhea. He quickly looked at my bruises then pronounced me fit.
After gathering a blanket and a mattress cover, inside of which was an aluminum
cup and spoon, a deputy led me through the maze of the jail to the tenth floor
next to the Attorney Room, where high power was located by itself. During the
walk, we passed walls of bars, inside of which were walkways outside of cells.
The jail was crowded. Most cells had four or five occupants. Even the tank
trusty in the first cell had three. The cell gates were open and the men were
out on the runway, walking or playing cards. As I went by one tank, someone
said, "Who'd he kill? He's just a kid."

The tanks were racially segregated for the most part.
One exception was the "queens'" tank. With towels wrapped like
turbans around their heads, jail shirt tails tied at the bottom like blouses,
makeup ingeniously concocted from God knows what, jeans rolled up and skin
tight, they were all flamboyant parodies of women. Spotting me, as I walked
with the guard along the length of their tank, they hurried along beside us.
"Put him in here, deputy! We won't hurt him." The deputy snorted and
quipped: "All we'd find is his shoelaces." "What's your name,
honey?" I didn't reply. "Who'd you kill, kid?" "If you go
to the joint, I'll be your woman — and kill anybody that fucks with you."
I said nothing. It was a loser to exchange quips with queens; their tongues
were too sharp, their wit too biting. Needless to say, I had no worries about
anyone fucking me. I was no white bread white boy. If someone said something
wrong, or even looked wrong, my challenge would be quick, and if the response
was less than a swift apology, I would attack forthwith without further words.

When
we were past the queens' tank, we continued through a maze of steel stairs,
bars, past pale green tile walls, past white tanks, black tanks, Mexican tanks.
We came to a tank with a nearly empty runway. A bridge game was in progress on
the floor, a folded blanket serving as a table. The escorting deputy handed the
tank deputy my booking papers and a name tag that went into a slot on a board.
"You're in cell six," he said, beckoning me toward the gate into the
tank. First he had to unlock the steel door of a control panel beside the gate.
"Fish on the line!" he yelled. "Cell six."

He unlocked the tank gate, pulled it open and I
stepped inside.

The bridge players looked up; a few heads appeared in
open cell doors to look me over. One was black. Everyone was segregated in the
jail except fruiters and killers. That seemed to have some irony.

I walked down the tier. It was narrow and I had to
step across the bridge game, excusing myself as I did so. I reached cell six.
It already had two men on the two bunks. I'd known the jail was crowded, but
somehow I expected that men on trial for their lives would have a cell to
themselves. I hesitated. "Come on in," said the man on the top bunk.
He was small and muscular, in his late thirties, with gray sideburns. The man
seated on the bottom bunk wore a tank top undershirt that bulged at the gut. He
looked to be Italian.

From the front the jailer shook a lever that made all
the cell gates vibrate loudly. "Grab a hold a one! Grab a hole!"

The card game broke up. The two or three other men out
on the runway made for their cells. The tier started to clear. I stepped
inside. I had some fear. I was being locked in a cell with two grown men facing
the most serious felonies imaginable. From the front the jailer yelled
"Watch the gates! Coming closed!" All the cell gates slammed shut
with a horrendous crash of steel on steel.

Throughout the jail, gates were vibrating and slamming
shut. It was a general lockup. The heavyset man on the bottom bunk moved over.
"Sit on down. How old are you?"

"Nineteen," I lied.

He shook his head and grunted. His name, I would
learn, was Johnny Cicerone, and he was a real mob guy, or the LA version
thereof. The mob, I would learn, has little enclaves around Southern
California, but it doesn't carry the power it wields in the east. Johnny
controlled a bookmaking operation in several factories and the general
hospital, plus he was the muscle for the Sica Brothers, Jimmy the Weasel
Fratianno or Dominic Brooklier, the
capo de regime
on the west coast. Legend had it that they made their bones taking out Bugsy
Siegel.

"How'd you get in high power?" asked the
smaller man, whose name was Gordon D'Arcy. "Who'd they say you
killed?" (In jail or prison, I would learn, you never ask anyone what they
did, but rather what the authorities allege they did. That way you could answer
without admitting anything.)

"Nobody. I stabbed a bull in Lancaster." I
kept silent about how superficial it was.

"Stabbed a hack! Damn!" His surprise was
evident. He gestured toward my bruised and battered face. "Looks like they
fucked you up."

"Yeah, they danced on me a little. It's no big
thing." The stoicism valued in the underworld was already part of me.
Never snivel. Try to laugh, no matter what.

D'Arcy grinned. In the up-coming days I learned that
he was a professional armed robber facing a life sentence for "kidnap/robbery."
It was a technical kidnap: he'd moved a supermarket manager from produce to the
rear office to open the safe. Moving someone from room to room triggered the
"Little Lindbergh" law. If the victim had suffered any injury, D'Arcy
would have faced the gas chamber. As it was, he only faced life if convicted.
The victim said he could identify D'Arcy solely by his eyes. The perpetrator
had worn a ski mask over his entire face, so the defense attorney put five men
in identical clothes and ski masks and paraded them in front of the witness and
jury. The witness instantly pointed to D'Arcy. He screamed then fainted. The
jury deliberated for less than three hours before finding him guilty. Now he
was on appeal.

Cicerone rifled a deck of playing cards. "C'mon,
Gordon, lemme get my money back."

"Get your ass up here and get whipped."

Cicerone grabbed a pencil and a tablet already marked
with the scores of previous games. "Go ahead and stretch out on my
bunk," he said to me. "We don't eat for about half an hour or
so."

"Thanks. Say, where do I sleep?"

"There's a mattress under there." He pointed
under the bottom bunk. "We pull it out at night. You're lucky you're not
in some other tank where they've got five to a cell."

I pulled out the mattress. It was more of a pad than
mattress, and it was coated with a sheen from hundreds of sweating bodies. I
was too tired to put the clean mattress cover they'd given me on now. I pushed
the mattress back and stretched out on the bunk. It was like a little cave.
What a day - and it wasn't over yet. What was going to happen? No doubt they
would take me to court in a few days and rule me unfit to be tried as a
juvenile. Then I would begin the process of trial in the Superior Court. What
then? I'd personally known one young man, Bob Pate, who had tried to escape
from

Lancaster. He had been a juvenile court commitment and
they had brought him here. He was eighteen or nineteen and they had given him
six months. I would turn sixteen in four months. Would a judge send me to San
Quentin? One thing, at least I'd be an adult in the eyes of the law.

While I mused, I heard the gate at the front of the
tank rattle as metal bowls and coffee cans and other things were pushed inside.
A khaki clad trusty soon appeared outside the bars. He counted out nine slices
of bread and put them on the bars. After him came another trusty carrying a
huge water can with a long spout.

D'Arcy jumped down off the bed and grabbed several
cups that he put on the floor inside the bars. The trusty hesitated until
D'Arcy gave him a quarter. He then filled all of them and continued down the
tier. Everything was cheaper back then.

My cell mates ended their game to drink the hot
beverage.

It was a sweet tea with a taste I'll never forget. It
was served every night.

"Chow time!" bellowed a voice at the front.
I heard the click lack of a gate being opened at the rear. An obese Asian
shuffled past in slippers. "Who's that?" I asked.

"Yama shit or somethin' like that," Cicerone
said. "He's been here since forty-five ... or maybe forty-six. Sentenced
to death for being a traitor."

A traitor? What happened?"

"You tell him," Cicerone said motioning to
D'Arcy.

"He's an American citizen. He either joined the
Japanese Army in Japan, or in the Philippines. He was in on the Bataan death
march. I don't think they'll top him. He'll get a reversal or a commutation or
something."

"Motherfucker deserves a gassing," Cicerone
said. "If anybody does."

When the fat Japanese American came back, another gate
opened and another man came by. He was Lloyd Sampsell and he nodded to D'Arcy.
They knew each other from the Big Yard in San Quentin. Sampsell was one of the
"Yacht Bandits," so-named because after they took off big payroll
robberies, they would sail up and down the California coast in a yacht. He had
escaped from prison, killed either a security guard or an officer in a robbery,
and was sentenced to die. He had been brought from Death Row for some kind of
court hearing.

The next man was also headed for Death Row. He was
big, with a hawk nose that had been broken more than once. He was Caryl
Chessman, the "red light" bandit. I'd heard about him. He was
supposed to be very smart. A detective once compared me to him. He passed and
returned to his cell. Next was a small man with a sharp ferret face and scar
tissue that stretched the flesh around his right eye. I was standing at the
bars. He did a double-take and stopped when he saw me. "Goddamn! Who're
you?"

I recognized the underlying message. My face turned
fiery.

"Move it, Cook!" yelled the guard up front.

Cook winked at me and continued to the front for his
food. When he came back, I was at the rear of the cell, sitting on the toilet.
He was looking for me. When he saw me, he blew a kiss. I didn't know who he
was. I didn't care who he was. I jumped up. "Fuck you! You fuckin' punk
motherfucker."

"Aww, baby, don't be so mean."

"Get in your cell, Cook," yelled the jailer
again. "Grab a hole!"

When Cook was gone, I asked my cell partners,
"Who's that motherfucker?"

"Billy Cook," D'Arcy said. "He killed a
family in Missouri and dumped them down a well. Then he killed some other
people while he was coming west. They caught him in Mexico and threw him back
across the border. He killed some guy that picked him up here in California. He
got sentenced to death yesterday."

I vaguely remembered hearing about the case.
"He's got an eye that won't close, right?"

"Yep. When he nabbed them, they didn't know if he
was awake or asleep because of that eye."

"Front section . . . comin' open," yelled
the jailer. "Watch the gates."

The gates of all the other cells began to vibrate;
then they opened.

"Come on," D'Arcy said. I followed him and
Cicerone onto the runway where about a score of men were lining up at the front
while khaki trusties scooped spaghetti with a red sauce into a combination
plate and bowl. It had the width of a plate and had sides like a bowl.

"How come we come out together and those other
guys come out one at a time?"

"They're full-fledged monsters. We're only half
monsters."