Straight Life (19 page)

I used my belt to tie up, and I fixed first. As I say, the stuff was marvelous; it was all I could do to keep from falling out. I cooked up just a little more, and I'd just started to fix Penny when I happened to look up and see, on the frosted glass of the door, a black sleeve with a white insignia. It was the arm of a policeman's uniform, and he was working on the lock. They were trying to break in without making noise. As soon as I saw that, I shot the stuff in, and "Mmmmm, oooooh, that's goooood." I whispered, "Shut up! The cops are out there!" She said, "Ohhhh!" I said, "Shut up!" I looked at her. Her eyes were going back in her head and I thought, "Oh, God, this is too strong for her!" She's got a little trickle of blood running down her arm.

I put my belt back on. I grabbed her and pulled her over to the sink and washed the blood off. I threw the stuff and the outfit into the toilet. I put the spoon in my mouth to suck off the burnt part. I'm doing all this-it's incredible how fast I'm doing it. I stick the spoon in the bottom of the trash and that's when I hear, "Open up! Police!" I flush the toilet, praying everything'll go down. I'm telling Penny, "Straighten up! Put water on your face!" I yell, "I'm coming right out." I open the door and see two cops and this gas station attendant, and just as we walk out a detective's car pulls up. One of the cops grabs me and says, "Alright, what were you doing in there?"

I thought they knew we were getting loaded. I heard the attendant say, "Yeah, well, I peeked in, and she was bent down, and I'm sure she was, they were, you know." I got the impression that they thought she was giving me head and I thought, "Thank God!" And then I realized that that was why they hadn't broken the door down. They wanted to catch us in the act.

I immediately told them a story. I told them that I was play ing in a club over here and we'd had a couple of drinks and we were out looking for a place to get a sandwhich when she'd gotten sick at her stomach, so we stopped at the gas station. She was sick and wanted me to be with her, so I took her into the men's toilet. I didn't think there was anything wrong with that. And the harness bulls, I think we had them licked, but then the detectives came over.

The detectives shined their lights in our eyes. They pushed me up against the wall and shook me down. They went into the bathroom and started going through it and came up with this spoon, and they said, "Aha!" You know. They made me take my coat off and roll up my sleeves, and they saw the marks, and they said, "Were you fixing in there?" I said, "No, I wasn't fixing in there." They said, "Well, you're going to jail." I told them, "I'm working at this place. My horn's out on the stand. What's going to happen? Give me a break, man! What are you doing?" They took us to the Inglewood substation.

They separated us and interrogated us, and finally a guy came in and said, "Well, it's all over. The chick copped out." He said, "I don't know if you know it or not, but she's a minor. You're going to prison for fifteen to life." I said, "I thought she was nineteen or twenty!" He said, "Well, she's seventeen." Fortunately, I stuck to my story and she stuck to hers. They'd told her I copped out, too, but she didn't go for it.

They kept us all night. They threatened me. The next morning they took us to the old county jail downtown. They allowed me one phone call, and I called the club and asked them to put the horn away. I never saw Penny again. They cut her loose the next day. But they told me they were going to prosecute me for furnishing to a minor.

They couldn't make anything stick, see: I'd only been out of the sanitarium a few weeks and I'd fixed only a few times at varied places. It would have been very hard to get me on a marks beef. They didn't have anything to hold me on but I didn't realize that, so when they told me they'd give me a break and send me to the psychopathic ward of the General Hospital and then to a hearing before a judge who'd send me to Norwalk or Camarillo for ninety days, I figured anything would be better than fifteen to life and I said alright.

They drove me to the hospital, handed me a paper, and told me to sign. They told me it was for my property. The attendant took me upstairs, put me on a table, and wheeled me into a room. I looked around. Here's an old wino next to me. He's naked. He's strapped to a table, and he's screaming. And he's peeing. Pee's shooting up in the air. There's another guy, and he's playing with himself and growling. I stayed there for two weeks. They put me in a room with eight other people, all nuts, and they filled me with downers, all kinds of downers, millions of downers. I could hardly walk. I slept nearly all the time. That's the way they keep you cool.

They wouldn't allow me to shave, so I looked awful, and one day I woke up in this corner they kept me in and there was Patti sitting on the edge of the bed. She looked at me and said, "Why did you do this?" I said, "Well, I thought everything was finished: you didn't want me to come home." She said, "I was going to have you come home right after you got out of the sanitarium, but we decided it would be better to let you have a little time on your own so you'd really appreciate coming home. And then . . . " I said, "Well, it's a bum beef." She said, "It's not that! I found out from your mother that you brought some little whore, some little tramp off the streets, into the house, and you were shooting dope and making love in the bathroom! You took this girl out to the garage at night and made love to her!" She started crying. "How could you do anything like that?" - - -- -- --- - -

I realized that I'd fallen into a trap. All I would have had to do was just be cool for a little while. I started crying, I tried to hold on to her, and I said, "Please give me another chance." She said, "It's impossible. You're hopeless." She said, "It's useless. Look at you." She said, "Your dad will be at the hearing. He'll help you." She shook her head and got up and walked out the door.

When the day came, they marched me down to the hearing in pajamas and a robe. We went to a courtroom that's right there in the building, and here's my dad and Thelma and Patti. All the other cases were for people who had done outrageous things-threatening their families with butcher knives, peeing out in the front yard. They brought up my name and the judge started talking. He said, "We're going to send you to Norwalk and try to save your life. You've tried it with a private sanitarium and you found that that didn't work, so we're going to send you to an institution." Then my father started shouting: "He's not going to go to any state institution! I've heard all about them! They're corrupt, lousy places! And you're not going to get money out of the misery of people like this! You're not going to get it out of my son! If he needs to go back to a sanitarium, I'll pay for it, but he's not going to go to a California mental institution!" The judge really got angry, but my dad kept raving about graft and corruption and the system, and the judge finally just wanted him to shut up so he yelled, "Alright! But mark my words: this boy'll be-I won't even give him a year-he'll be in a state penitentiary instead of a hospital! You mark my words! I'll stake my reputation on it! Alright! Get him out of here!"

I went to my dad and hugged and thanked him. I kissed Patti. Then I got my stuff, changed clothes, and walked downstairs, and when I got to the gate the guy said, "Here, sign this thing." I signed it, and as I signed it I read it, and I saw on the paper where it said "committed by" and it was me! I had committed myself! The police had just put a shuck on me and the funny part was I had spent two weeks in this place and if it hadn't been for my dad I would have been sent to Norwalk for six or nine months or maybe a year because I had committed myself voluntarily and didn't know it.

In 1953 I was separated from Patti. I stayed in Long Beach with my dad for a while and then I ran into a girl, Susan Douglas. She had been married to Kendell Douglas, the bass player, but before that she was married to another guy who was very wealthy and he was in some kind of asylum back east. He was giving her money and she was living up on the Strip in an apartment hotel. I saw her a couple of times while I was staying with my dad, and she told me she would like to have me live with her. She'd like to take care of me. I realized that I couldn't live in Long Beach because it was too far away from the jobs, so I moved into L.A. and got a little room in Hollywood.

Susan kept wanting me to visit her and stay with her, but she wanted to make love and I didn't want to make love to her. There was something about her; she didn't move me in that way. And she was a beautiful girl, too. Her hair was a chestnut color, and she was very seductive, a real feminine girl, and she was young and unworldly and easily led; I could have led her anywhere. But I couldn't have intercourse with her because she didn't move me, and she was so nice I couldn't act like anything was happening that wasn't happening. She was the kind of girl you wouldn't want to hurt. I wouldn't.

During the time I was going to see her, Susan would let me use her car whenever I wanted. She had a custom-made Cadillac that her husband had given her. A special paint job. The whole thing. When I stopped it at a stop sign people would walk over and say, "Wow!" A couple of times driving downtown, where there was a cop directing traffic, he'd walk over and say, "Boy, where did you get this car? What a beautiful car!" It was a greenish color, but unlike any green I've ever seen. It was a lightish green that had gold flecks in it. A greenish gold that you could see forever into. It was like looking into a lake. It had a white top, a convertible. The seats were covered with actual cowhide and the rugs were white shag. It had every device known. The aerial had a button; the trunk had a button; the hood had a button; and not only the windows but the wind-wings had a button. There was a light that went on if the doors weren't locked, and it had a button you locked all the doors with. It had a radio with four speakers, two in front and two in the back. It had an ashtray for the driver and an ashtray for the passenger ...

I was scuffling. I wasn't working too much, but I'd done a lot of recording and I was well known, so the Martin Company had given me a horn for advertising. I woke up one morning, sick, and I took this horn down and asked Susan if I could borrow the car. I took the Cadillac and drove down to Main Street and pawned my alto. I went from there to East L.A. and got a gram of heroin. I was very sick and wanted to fix where I'd got the stuff, but the guy lived with his wife and mother and there was no place we could go, so I had to drive all the way back to the Strip. I had this gram rolled up in cellophane, ten numberfive caps in a row, wrapped in cellophane. I didn't want to hold them in my mouth, but after I got off the freeway and I'd gotten almost to the Strip I decided I'd better put them somewhere, so I put them in my sock, the ten caps, down in my right sock, thinking that that would be cool, which it always had been before.

I stopped the car out on the street near Susan's. I got out and looked around. Everything looked alright so I walked through the parking lot. I always went through the back because I wasn't registered in the apartment. I had stashed my outfit outside in a hedge by the side of the building. Before I went in I reached down in this bush to get the outfit, and as I reached down I felt something cold on my head, I heard a click, and I heard this voice, "Federal narcotics agent. One move and you're dead." I heard a holler or a whistle and a door opened, and I looked out of the corner of my eye and there was another one, and they both had guns pointed right at my head. The first guy said, "Lean against the building." They frisked me for a weapon, found the outfit, and then they said, "Come on."

They walked me to the back stairway, walked me in, marched me right to the door of Susan's apartment, and they said, "Knock on the door. Don't say anything or you're dead." There was nothing I could do. I knocked, and the door opened, and there she was. They ran into the apartment. They told Susan and a friend of mine, Joe Martin, who was there, "Don't move!" Susan is an innocent little girl; Joe had never been in trouble or done anything wrong except fix a couple of times with me. They were bewildered. Susan said, "What's happening? What's going on?" And one of the guys said, "Well, we got your boyfriend. One of our snitches told us he was a big dealer." She said, "A big dealer of what?" He said, "Don't play coy with us, sister. We know what's happening." He took the outfit and threw it down on the coffee table. He said, "Where's it at?" I told her, "Susan, don't say anything to these fuckin' guys." I said, "She doesn't have anything to do with what you're talking about. Leave her alone." They said, "Oh, yeah, yeah, that's a likely story." They looked at Joe and said to me, "Tell Tonto here not to get any wild ideas or we'll break his fuckin' jaw!" Joe was Italian but he looked Mexican, I guess. They told us, "Sit down!"

The feds started searching the apartment. I said, "You can't go through this place! I don't live here!" I turned to Susan: "They can't go through your place! Ask them if they've got a search warrant!" She said, "They can go through my place. I have nothing to hide!" I said, "I don't live here!" One detective turned around and said, "We know what's happening, man. We were told the whole story. You were picked up here for your last job." And so right away I had a pretty good idea who informed on me. I think it was Sammy Curtis, but I was never able to find out for sure.

I kept talking to them. They kept searching the pad. Susan had been modeling; she had posed for a lot of shots-not nudes but semi. One of the guys said, "Ohhhh, look at this! Is this what you show your tricks?" I said, "What the fuck are you guys talking about?" He said, "Well, isn't she your whore?" I said, "You motherfuckers!" He said, "Watch out, boy, we'll break your head open."

They went through everything and then they said, "Alright, little girl, close your eyes. You've probably seen everything, and if you want to watch you can, but we're going to strip these two assholes." Joe took his clothes off. He was clean. Then they told him. "Alright, bend over and spread 'em." Joe said, "What?" The guy said, "You know what I mean, asshole. I'll beat your fuckin' brains out if you don't do it! Spread your ass open, punk!"