Mr. Blue: Memoirs of a Renegade (23 page)

Isolation was always silent and gloomy, the light dim
outside the cells, the shadows angled and sliced by vertical bars, horizontal
cross-bars and grids from the wire mesh. As it got dark, by pressing my left
cheek to the bars I could peer at an angle to the front of the tier. A Death
Watch guard was visible, seated at a card table up against the gun walk bars.
He had a telephone and a radio, coffee and Camels. It was said that just before
it was time to go, the prison doctor gave you a choice of a shot of morphine or
a double shot of bourbon. I had no idea if it was true, but once when I'd seen
the pharmacological safe open in the hospital, there had been a sealed fifth of
I.W. Harper's bourbon.

After
the elevator arrived again, the outer gate opened and a cart wheeled in. It had
the meals of two doomed men. I could hear rattling pans, and soon came the powerful
odors of steak, onions and good, strong coffee. Its rarity made it more
intense. Goddamn, what I'd give for steak and onions and fresh ground coffee.
On the other hand, I wouldn't want to eat their meal. They might eat it, but
they wouldn't get to digest and shit it before they were dead meat themselves.

How did it feel to be strapped into a chair and put to
death? Nobody could answer
that,
but I did
know two youths who escaped from a juvenile camp, were caught up north, perhaps
in Portland, and when two rural county deputies were bringing them back, the
youths somehow overpowered and killed them. Sentenced to die, they had been on
the row for nearly two years before the California Supreme Court affirmed the
conviction but overturned the death sentence. Rather than re-try the whole
case, the District Attorney of the small county let the judge sentence them to
Life. When they were on the yard I asked one of them how it felt and what he
thought. It was a time when executions happened regularly. Bobby told me,
"Any time they take a guy downstairs and
top
him, you die right with him, and every night thereafter. I reached the point
when I was so accepting that I wanted them to kill me rather than play more
games." Viscerally I could feel what he was saying.

Now I was sitting the night out with men awaiting
execution. The elevator came and went, the outer doors on the tier clanged open
and shut. Words were exchanged. The priest came and was chased away. The sweep
hand turned slowly but inexorably, and the other hands moved with the same relentlessness.
Midnight came and went.

Barbara Graham was downstairs. Al Matthews had taken
her case a few weeks ago. Would he save her? Maybe. Very few women were put to
death, none so far in my sojourn, although they took a man every Friday at 10
a.m., or at least it seemed every week. As for the deterrence of it, convicts
on the yard seldom knew who was being executed or what they had done unless it
was a headline case. They did know about Jack Santo, Emmett Perkins and Barbara
Graham. Ex-cons with multiple killings and a sexy broad; that got their
attention. The fool who went before them had been executed for punching a child
molester they put in his cell in the Fresno County Jail. The victim's head hit
the edge of the bunk. His family screamed like banshees, and poor Red didn't
have a penny. The lawyer they appointed him was nicknamed "Death Row
Slim," so we know what his clients thought of him.

Even when the convicts didn't know who was being
executed, or what they had done, they did know that someone was going. It was
always at 10 a.m. on Friday. Gas chamber day. The red light was turned on atop
the North Cell House. When everything was normal, the green light was bright
against the sky.

They were late returning our mattresses. It was almost
10 p.m. when two guards and a sergeant pulled the security bar and unlocked the
isolation cells, one at a time, so we could step out and carry our mattress
back in. As I passed the Sergeant, I told him I needed some toilet paper.

"We'll bring you some at count."

Count was an hour away. I could wait that long.

The mattress was comfort manifest after fourteen hours
on the concrete. I tried to read the Bible, but the archaic English of the King
James era took more concentration than I could muster that night. I was left
with listening to the faint sounds of the radio outside the cells of the doomed
killers, and to the comings and goings of officials. Once again I was alone
with my thoughts, a situation I found myself in far more often than most. I'd
seemingly spent an inordinate amount of my life meditating in a dungeon. Nearly
everyone I knew had done some time, or was doing it, whereas the average person
had not merely never been arrested, but also didn't even
know
anyone who had been in jail, much less state
prison. Driving Mrs Hal Wallis around Beverly Hills to visit her friends and
take care of her business had let me peek into a world I'd never previously
imagined. She had come from 6
^th
Street and Central Avenue, as
scruffy as anywhere in LA. I had personally experienced the difference between
rich and poor. I conjured memory of San Simeon's Neptune pool in burning
twilight. By now I'd read
The Age of Moguls
and
Citizen Hearst
and knew that
Citizen Kane
had failed to capture the scintillating
truth of William Randolph Hearst. Good God, why wasn't I dealt that hand?
Still, if I looked from the view that all things are relative, which they are,
my cards were better than most of the world. If I lacked the advantage of
family wealth, at least I had the advantage of being white. I was an American,
not from some impoverished Banana Republic. Where would it end? I had no idea.
Maybe awaiting the executioner's summons. If someone scared me and I believed
them dangerous, I would try to strike first. I might lose my temper and ice
somebody in a half-accident, like Red. What if a crime partner went crazy and
killed someone on a caper? All that shit could happen . . .

Into the silence came the sound of the elevator. It
seemed louder because there was less background noise. The outer door opened.
Voices. Words unintelligible. The clank of the gate onto the tier. I looked up.
Sure enough, the security bar was raised, followed in a second by a key turning
a cell lock up front. One of the doomed duo was going somewhere. That would
take authorization from the Warden. Which one? Where to?
I don't think he's going to get a vaccination,
I
half muttered; then laughed loudly at my sick humor. I had a laugh that sounded
like a braying jackass or a maniac. I would hear just one like it over the
years: Joe Morgan.

The gun bull came by, a shadow behind two sets of bars
and the mesh wire. "What's so funny, Bunker?"

"Life . . . Hey, who'd they take out?"

"Santo. To see his lawyer."

"I hope it's bad news."

"You're not rooting for your team?"

"Shit, he ain't on my fuckin' team. I'd throw the
switch on them two."

"What about Barbara?"

"I dunno about that. She's pretty fine."

"You
have
been
locked up a long time."

"Not all that long. Just over two years."

"I'd go crazy if I went two years without pussy.
You mess with those toy boys?"

I
shook my head. "Hell, no!" It was true, but it was also a lie. One or
two of the effeminate young queens really looked like pretty girls with fine
asses in tight jeans. They were "she" to everyone. For all I knew,
they really were women. But the one or two who might have stirred me were the
property of terrible killers. Until race became the main issue for prison
murder, the easiest way to get killed in San Quentin was to mess with someone's
"sissy."

Within the hour, Santo returned. As the tier gate
opened and the security bar went up, I heard Emmett Perkins. "What
happened?"

The reply was delayed by the sound of the cell being
slammed and locked. The security bar dropped. Then I heard what I doubted for a
moment: wheezing, sobbing tears. Emmet's voice came again, ice cold steel:
"You weak motherfucker! You better die like a man or I'm gonna spit in
your face from the chair next to you."

Wow!

Then I heard a third voice, but the words were too
soft to make out. It was the Death Watch bull.

The elevator came again, and the doors and gates
opened. I heard voices down by the first cells. I pressed against the cell bars
and peered down the tier as best I could. I could see shadows from figures
cutting through the bright floodlight glaring into the two cages. I had given
that up and was taking a leak when I heard someone behind me. I turned my head.
It was Warden Teets. Damn.

"How are you getting along?" he asked.
Behind him was one of his retinue. Wardens always have retinues. Nobody ever
sees one alone.

"...
Bunker," one of them said, telling him who I
was. He came up to the bars. By now I had given it a good shake and buttoned up
my pants.

"I had a letter from Mrs Wallis," he said.
"She's going to be in San Francisco next month. She wants to visit you,
but she's going to be busy during visiting hours."

I must have shrugged a certain way, or grunted in a
sound of defeat. If she was busy during visiting hours, the case was closed.

The Warden said: "Don't give up. Maybe we can
work something out."

"That sure would be great."

"Take it easy."

He went to the silent cell at the rear and a guard
opened the outer door. It was the same question: "How are you getting
along?"

The answer I could not hear. Warden Teets said,
"Take it easy."

A moment later they passed my cell. He gave a little
wave. I didn't hear them go out the gate. Now I had suspicious thoughts. What
did he mean about maybe we can work it out? Could he possibly mean that he and
I could work it out? Was it a solicitation to be a stool pigeon?

It seemed unlikely. Obviously he meant "work it
out" with
the
Mrs Hal B. Wallis;
Hollywood's
star maker
they called Hal
Wallis.

I
He sure liked making those ice blonde American beauty
roses. If it took putting them in a movie with Burt or Kirk, he'd do that, too.

I was so excited about the possibility of a visit, I
paced back and forth and forgot the two men in the first and third cells,
although on the periphery of attention I was aware that they were talking. My
focus shifted when I heard the music on the radio in front of their cells. It
was a slightly saccharine sound sponsored by American Airlines. It was on the
earphones in the cell house because it was good to sleep by. I listened to it
for its soothing qualities. But why in hell were they listening? If they liked
anything, it would he Patsy Cline or Hank Williams. Both of them were country
to the core. It was a puzzle I never pieced together, for I fell asleep.
Thinking about it later, I decided that they were waiting for the half-hourly
news bulletins. A petition for habeas corpus had been filed in a US district
court. With the petition was a motion for a stay of execution while the court
decided if the petition appeared to have merit. Because the world was waiting
for them to die, what the judge did would come by radio faster than the Warden
could walk over from his office.

I was rudely awakened by a screaming Jack Santo.
"Lemme talk to the Governor. I'll tell 'em about some unsolved murders
—
murders we didn't do. I know who iced the two
Tonys! And Bugsy! I have a lot of things I want to tell somebody. I know who
killed two kids in Urbana back in '46."

Beneath the cries, in counterpoint, were Emmett's vile
curses hurled with contempt at his crime partner. Thieves fall out. This time
it was surely true.

A giddiness overcame me. I felt the fool in a wild
carnival.
"Toilet paper!"
I yelled
at the very top of my lungs.
"Toilet paper! I
gotta wipe my ass! Help! Toilet paper!"

The first watch Sergeant appeared outside my cell.
"Bunker, what are you screaming about?"

I felt guilty. It was Sergeant Blair, one of the
kindest human beings I ever met in my life. He had worked in San Quentin for
over twenty years then, would stay nearly another twenty, and would write just
one disciplinary report in all that rime. He was not unctuous; he was no
religious fanatic. He was simply a nice guy when he was young, and would stay
nice when he got old. "Sorry, Sarge . . . but I do need some toilet paper.
Whaddya want, I should tear off my shirt tad and wipe my ass with that?"

"No. I'll get some. Hold it down, would
you."

"Sure,
Sarge. I'll do that." How could I do anything else? I was the only
prisoner on the tier. Any disturbance had to come from me, and most guards
would be less forbearing than Sergeant Blair.