the Onion Field (1973) (21 page)

After reaching Los Angeles they drove straight for the apartment of the drag queen. Greg had decided they should rent a room there for Max to rest while he and Jimmy went to work.

By now Jimmy's stomach was in knots. The changing plans. The way things suddenly shifted from one minute to the next, so suddenly they were going off a hundred miles in an opposite direction from what they had intended. He'd been a footless drifter all of his adult life, roaming was not new to him, but Jesus, these people were too much. Fuckin gypsies, that's what they are, thought Jimmy.

The queen was not home. There were no rooms for rent either, so it was decided that Max should go to a movie for a couple of hours while Greg and Jimmy did what they had to do.

"Be careful, honey," said Maxine, kissing Greg as they dropped her in front of the theater at Wilshire and Western.

"Tony'll be home by the time you're through with the movie and we're through with our work. We'll just stay at Tony's tonight and be on our way tomorrow."

"Okay." Maxine smiled. "See you later, honey. See you later, Jimmy."

You ain't gonna see me no more, you goofy little nympho, Jimmy thought, and he knew how he would do it now. The plan started working for Jimmy when Greg said, "Let's head for a gas station so I can put on my makeup and get ready."

Jimmy did not answer as they drove through the heavy traffic on this rather brisk Saturday night, heading in the general direction of Hollywood.

"There's a station. Get her gassed up," said Greg, as he wheeled into the pumps. "I'll just be a few minutes."

Jimmy nodded, and then Greg was gone with his briefcase. Jimmy slid behind the wheel but the nozzle was already in the tank and the man had the hood up.

"That's okay," said Jimmy frantically. "It's okay. The fuckin oil's okay."

But the man apparently did not hear.

"I said that's okay!" Jimmy shouted. "It's okay!"

And the man looked up, smiled, and turned to wave at a customer driving by.

"Come on, come on," Jimmy muttered, tapping on the steering wheel, and finally the hood was slammed shut.

"That's enough gas," said Jimmy. "That's enough. Just stop it there. I'll take what you got in it."

"Oh, okay. In a hurry?"

"Yeah, yeah, yeah," said Jimmy, and his heart sank as he saw Greg leaving the restroom and walking hurriedly toward the car.

Jimmy moved back over to the passenger side and thought, I'm supposed to pull one more job with him. It's just gotta be. It's just meant to be. And they drove toward Hollywood. Through the night. To their destiny.

It was good the way you could train the twisted juniper, thought the gardener. It's a living thing and yet it doesn't resist kindness and accepts your training. This one had been sculptured dramatically, and its largest branch was convoluted up and out from the balcony of the house, accepting the urging of the man who directed it.

You could guide a tree's behavior, but not a man's, thought the gardener. A tree just lived and breathed and harmed no one, least of all itself. It was for instance infinitely easier to control this juniper than it had ever been to control himself when he was committing his crimes. He thought of the day he stole his biggest thing-a sewing machine.

Until then his biggest theft had been a saber saw. The sewing machine was stolen during the last stop of that day. After that one he would be finished and could then go home. He had almost bypassed the stop. He had driven through the parking lot of the shopping center, but when he reached the exit he turned the car and went back. He had to. He hadn't made every stop of the day. He knew he could not begin to rest or sleep that night if he failed to make this stop.

In many ways the portable sewing machine had been the easiest thing of all. It was so large, looked so believable in his arms that it may as well have been invisible. When he got to the parking lot with it he felt something very much like disappointment. The heart-splitting fear and dread and excitement had vanished quickly. It had been such an easy victory it was hardly worthwhile. He had told his wife he had bought it for her birthday.

As the gardener crawled on his knees among the rosesy jerking the little weeds and tossing them off onto the driveway, he realized the headache was almost gone. His chest was hurting a little, but he could live with the chest pains and the stomachaches and diarrhea and the other things. The headaches were hardest though. Maybe he could sleep tonight despite the trial tomorrow, despite the fact that he might have to tell about that night once again. He'd told it so many times over the years in so many courtrooms, what did one more time matter? He wasn't so afraid of it anymore. He was much more afraid of the series of crimes he had committed.

But he still dreamed of it, could feel the cold night wind in his face, could smell the onions in the field.

Chapter
6

"A typical Hollywood Saturday night," said Jimmy Smith, the tension festering in his guts, as he looked at rows of cars jammed up for blocks. "And everybody's too law abidin or too scared of cops or too fuckin lackadaisical to even toot their horns or swear at the guy in front."

Jimmy thought of the Spanish automatic in his belt and what if the miserable thing went off by itself and shot his dick off? And yeah, that was somethin else to worry about. What if I killed myself with my own goddamn gun by squirmin around the wrong way in the seat? Bang! Off goes the cock and there I am, sprawled there dyin in the street. Bleedin to death! And he considered putting the gun in the glove compartment to get it out of his belt.

"Goddamnit," Greg said. "I'm getting out of this traffic. We'll head back toward downtown until we spot a liquor store to knock off."

"But I thought you wanted to take off this market out here in Hollywood?"

"Too goddamn much traffic, Jim. We made the wrong turn off the freeway. We'll find something on the way downtown."

As Ian Campbell drove the Plymouth into the alley near Gower Avenue on this ninth night with Karl, March 9th, 1963, he spotted some mauve-colored flowers in a window box, and rolling up his window against the night chill said, "The sweet peas and azaleas are starting to bloom. That must mean spring is here. I keep warning mine of the Ides of March."

Karl Hettinger grinned in the dark at his big-shouldered improbable partner who talked quaintly of flowers and bagpipes. Then Karl realized he had never heard a set of pipes firsthand.

"I'd like to hear you play those bagpipes sometime, Ian," he said as the little maroon Ford passed by the alley westbound on Carlos.

Gregory Powell was heading north on Gower when he decided to circle the block to the west. He turned on Carlos Avenue, saw the short street called Vista Del Mar straight ahead, and mistakenly thought Carlos Avenue dead-ended there.

"Hearing me play the pipes can definitely be arranged." Ian chuckled. "No one else wants to listen to me. My wife and kids and friends run away screaming when they just see me blow up the bag. I wait for unsuspecting people like you to ask me."

Ian slowed in the alley, flashing his two-cell light toward some shadows in an apartment house doorway, but it was just two bony cats slinking through the alleys, prowlmg hungrily.

The little maroon Ford made a turn and was coming back their way.

It was now 10:00 p. M. and the unmarked Plymouth police car known as Six-Z-Four was emerging from the alley onto Carlos when the coupe crossed their headlight beam and they saw the two gaunt young men with their leather jackets and snap-brim leather caps in their little car with Nevada plates.

They would have aroused the suspicions of almost any policeman in Hollywood that night. It was patently obvious that they were not ordinary out-of-town tourists cruising the boulevard. The caps were rare enough, but with matching leather jackets, they were almost absurdly suspicious, even contrived. It was as though they'd just driven off the Columbia Pictures lot farther south on Gower, two extras from a Depression era gangster film, caricatures, Katzenjam- mer Kids.

But still, Ian and Karl had to look for something more tangible, something to tell the court for probable cause in case they came up with an arrest. They could not, or would not, depend upon their own ability to articulate a well grounded suspicion, nor the court's ability to understand the several intangibles which go into the decision to stop and frisk and interrogate. So they looked for and immediately found something else: the tried and true "rear plate illumination."

Even if the Ford's license plate lights had not been out, it is doubtful that Ian Campbell and Karl Hettinger would have let this car go its way. The little Ford looked "too good," which in police jargon means it looked too bad, too suspicious, a "good shake." It had to be stopped and a reason found to search.

The little Ford had but to turn left on Vista Del Mar and it could have proceeded south to Hollywood Boulevard and never have been stopped by Six-Z-Four that night, but Greg decided on a U-turn, and on their ninth night together, the partners made their last wrong turn on Los Angeles streets.

"Fuckin dead ends," Jimmy grumbled when they turned around. "We always seem to be runnin into dead ends."

"We should check these two," said Ian as the little Ford stopped for the red light at Gower.

"All right. When do you wanna take them?"

"Right now," said Ian, who pulled up behind the coupe, turned on his red light, and tooted the horn.

Gregory Powell glanced into the rear view mirror, tightened his grip on the steering wheel, and said: "Cops!"

As the coupe turned the corner onto Gower and stopped, Karl saw the heads move a^it closer.

"Let's be careful," said Karl.

Jimmy felt the red light before seeing it, felt the heat from the red light searing the back of his neck, and he was whispering, "I knew it. I knew it," even as he unzipped the brown leather jacket Greg had bought him, removed the .32 automatic Greg had bought him, and gingerly dropped it on the floor, kicking it across the car with his new thirty-five dollar shoes. Greg's eyes were glued to the mirror and the kick was subtle but sharp enough so that the gun ended up very close to Greg's left foot where Jimmy wanted it. It was far enough from Jimmy so that he could swear that Greg had just picked him up hitchhiking and that he knew nothing of the two guns in Greg's possession. Weren't they in Greg's name? And in case that story didn't work he was sure he could come up with others.

"Just take it easy, it may just be a ticket. Just sit tight," Greg said, looking at Jimmy for an instant, and Jimmy tried to answer, wanted to say something sarcastic, but found himself unable to speak.

He could not take it easy, was in fact frantic, wanting as much distance as possible between himself and Gregory Powell when the cops found the gun on the floor at Greg's feet, and the one in Greg's belt. Who knows, this maniac might just try shooting his way out! Jimmy wouldn't put that past him, and he just wanted to show the cops he was only riding along with this guy, a hitchhiker, that's all.

I got nothin to hide, and I just gotta be cool, gotta be cool, he told himself. But he was all the way to the right, as far as he could sit in the little coupe, and still felt too close to Greg, felt at that moment like they were Siamese twins. And then he leaped out of the car and looked into the eyes of Karl Hettinger, who was flashing his light, advancing slowly on the sidewalk.

Jimmy came forward, fear bursting all over him, and Karl reached inside his sport coat, placed his right hand on the gun butt in the cross-draw holster, and said what he knew was obvious enough despite the unmarked car: "Police."

Jimmy Smith froze at the sound of the word and threw his hands in the air.

Karl's pulse bucked. He glanced inside the car at Greg and quickly back at Jimmy standing stock still on the sidewalk, hands high in the air, though Karl had neither drawn his gun nor told Jimmy to raise his hands, and Karl knew for certain. Any policeman would have known. Something. There was something. Narcotics perhaps. They looked like hypes, but Ian was on the street side of the car and couldn't see Jimmy's panic signals.

Jesus, what if he sees the gun? thought Jimmy. What if Greg starts shootin? Christ, I gotta get away from this maniac!

Karl's eyes were not close set, nor did the irises bleed into the pupil, but Jimmy was to f ore vej% remember Karl's eyes as being close set and glittering behind his plastic-rimmed glasses. Jimmy bore it as long as he could, about five seconds. Then he said, "What's the trouble, officer?"

"Police officers," said Ian to Greg, coming up on the driver's side, not bothering to show a badge, because it went without saying that these two would certainly know they were police. He wanted one hand free since the other held the flashlight.

"Oh, Lord, I know what I'm getting a ticket for this time," said Greg, with only a faint hope that he could bluff the cop, knowing that plainclothes police don't write traffic tickets. Knowing that when you get stopped by them it's usually a frisk and questioning. He knew it the first instant he looked up at the big policeman, seeing his dark sport shirt buttoned at the throat, and his old gray flannel slacks, and his well worn sport jacket, knowing they were on something other than normal uniform patrol or traffic detail. He knew there would be no traffic ticket.

"Would you mind taking your license out of your wallet?" asked Ian.