Straight Life (33 page)

I've had guys let me off on a corner, and the police are going by, and I've got to find a place where they won't see me vomiting, but there's nowhere to go. I'm waiting and watching every car. The guy says, "I'll be back in ten minutes." And you look at the time, and it seems like an hour, and it's only been eight, nine minutes. Pretty soon it's twenty minutes. Then it's an hour, two hours, three hours, and you panic but you can't leave the spot because if you leave the guy's got a perfect excuse to burn you. You have to stay. And you're thinking of all the things ... You could get rousted. You could get picked up for marks; in those days if you had marks on your arms they could throw you in jail. And then you'd have to go to jail sick. You're thinking of how wonderful it feels when you put the needle in. It takes all the cold away and the chills and the agony from your mind.

Finally the guy comes back. He drives up and he looks at you and shakes his head, kind of frantic, and right away you know there's some kind of game going. The guy'll drive by and pretend that the heat are behind him, and then he'll sneak back to the street and whistle at you, and you'll go over, and it'll be, "Oh, man! I almost got busted, man! Hijo!" He'll be raving on and on and you'll know, "Oh God, I'm burned." The guy'll say, "I gave him the bread, man, and he went into the house to get the stuff, and all of a sudden the narcos came, and they broke in the door, and I was hiding in the back alley. All this time! I was afraid to run. Wow, man, I'm sorry. Hijo, I'm sick, too. You got some more money, man? Maybe I know another guy." And oh, Jesus, God. You have to go out and get more money and you're sick. Sick. And even when you get the money, you don't know whether you can cop.

Other times the guy comes back with the stuff, but you're out on the street so you can't get at it to taste it. Even if you do, it might have a lot of quinine in it, which makes it bitter so it tastes like stuff. So you get to the outfit. You go into some toilet in a gas station or in a laundromat. You put the stuff in the spoon and pour the water in it, and then you see the stuff floating! It's floating on top. It's floating on the water. It's baking soda. You try to cook it up anyway, even though you know you've been burned, and it turns into a paste. It just bubbles into a -paste.

Other times you cook up, and it's the real stuff, and you've gone through all these things to score, and I've been in a shitter, and all of a sudden the needle will clog, and I can't fix, and there's nothing I can do. I've got to get out of there and find some way to get a spike. It wasn't legal to sell them anymore. They got harder and harder to get. Or the rubber on the eyedropper might break or the jeep might leak, and you go to shoot the stuff, and most of it shoots out the end of the dropper instead of through the needle.

So I'm doing this little penny-ante boosting, making enough to get a gram or two grams at a time, and then I'm out again, and I'm thinking, "What am I doing? What am I doing with my life?" My friends were telling me, "Hey, man, what are you doing out here stealing things? Why don't you straighten up? Go to work. Make an album." I'd get letters, "Want to record? Play here?" I was too fucked up to do it. I got more and more angry at myself, hated myself for what I was doing. I'd let so many people down by not taking care of business. The talent I was given, I was wasting it, throwing it away.

And I was bitter. Bitter that I had had to go to jail. Friends of mine, musicians I'd played with, roomed with, they'd been using for years and never went to jail. I know they got busted, so they must have just ratted on somebody to get out of it, you know. And here I am, because I'm trying to be a decent human being and not be a rat, I'm in jail all the time. Why? I'm not hurting anyone just getting loaded. I got bitter at people.

I was angry and bitter. I would be out hustling, trying to score, I'd be sick, and I'd see people going to work in the morning, all in their nice cars, dressed nice, clean shaven, and clearheaded. I'd see them going to work, and I'd still be standing on the corner waiting for some guy, freezing someplace, in the evening as they were coming home. Here come the same cars back, and they're all smiling and happy. Just the guys in the neighborhood in East L.A. And they go into the market, and they get a check on Friday, man, and they cash that check, and they buy their juice, and they're happy. They're not sick.

I hated them. I was envious of them. I would say, "Look at those chumps! Fuckin' assholes! Lames! Fuckin' rabble! Sheep! Animals! Following the leader! I'm not like that! I'm different! Fuck them! Fuck society!" I'd rave like I used to hear my dad rave about the rabble, the scissor-bills, the kikes, the spicks, the niggers, the tramps and floozies, on and on. Each time I got sick there was more and more fear and hate, knowing I was trapped and I couldn't stop, knowing I was going back to jail. I was full of animosity and so jealous and all I wanted was a lot of money, man, so I could lay up and really drown myself in heroin, saturate myself with it, so I wouldn't feel or see, so I wouldn't want to cry or die. All I wanted was lots of money so I could make myself totally oblivious to everything.

When I was in jail I heard a lot of stories. Guys gather in little groups. You walk down the freeway and look in a cell and there'll be four or five guys talking about shooting this stuff and that stuff. Or someone will come up to you and say, "Hey, Art, take me on a trip." And so you tell about something you did, something that happened to you, the whole thing, you paint a picture. On the street nobody will listen to anyone else for more than a minute, a couple minutes at most, but in jail people will listen, if a guy can talk, for two or three hours straight without ever saying a word. Some are better than others at it and they'll paint some beautiful things, sometimes about women but mostly about different junk they've had, how good it was, and about big scores they've made. They'd pull a robbery and instead of buying a gram or a quarter they'd buy a piece or two or three or four pieces and sell a little bit and lay up and just fix and not have to go out on the street. So now, what I wanted was to find somebody to help me pull an armed robbery. I wanted to go in with a gun, get the money, score, get away from the scene, and cool it.

I went to person after person looking for someone to do it with. Every now and then I'd run into somebody who in the joint had talked about what a big man he was and how many armed robberies he'd pulled-which I'd believed. I'd see him and now it was, "Oh, man, I just got married and my old lady ... " Or, "I just had a kid." Or, "Man, the heat is so hot. It's too hot around here. I'm afraid that the man has got the pad staked out." What it boiled down to was that the guys were just chicken. They were just bullshitting in the joint, and they were really nothing but street hypes running around stealing the easiest things they could find.

I kept looking, and I kept asking Ruben. I told him, "Man, let's do something, or are you just a bullshitter, too?" He finally said, "Okay, but we're not going to do it like a couple of idiots, like these guys that run into these little markets and get shot for twenty or thirty dollars. Let's take our time and look around and find someplace where we can get something worthwhile."

There was a bar in East L.A. All the gangsters and the big dope peddlers hung out there. Ruben said that we could really get a haul. It was a hands-off place. An in place. You just don't rob a place like that because if those gangsters found out who it was, they would kill us.

We cased it. Ruben found out where the bread was. We staked it out for three weeks. We were going to do it in the morning when the cleaning guy, the mayate, the spook, cleaned it. We figured they might have twenty, thirty grand, which was a lot of bread, a lot of dope. But it wasn't only the bread or the dope. It was the idea of having the balls and the heart to do it. Everybody would be out to kill us. Me. Art Pepper. And I wanted to have a gun because I wanted to be able to kill somebody so I could be the cat that was the violent one-from prison, from the movies, you know. I wanted to shoot two or three people because I thought it would prove my strength.

The time comes, and we meet, and Ruben gives me the strips of wire to tie up the spook, thick wire like baling wire. I fold it up and put it in my pocket. He gives me a crowbar and I say, "Where's my gun?" And he says, "I'm not going to give you a gun, man. You're too crazy." You see, they all thought I was insane. It kind of knocked me out. These were violent, killergangster type cats. Guys that had stabbed people in prison and killed them, and they thought I was too violent. Me. A musician. Real lovable, a loner, a real melancholy type person. They were afraid to give me a gun, and that flattered me.

We went to a gas station across the street from this bar and fixed one last time, in case we were killed, so we'd be straight. I had the wire in my back pocket and the crowbar and Ruben had the gun. We parked the car the way we planned it, and we watched, and all of a sudden two mayates come out and start cleaning the windows in front. There's two spooks instead of one. It's the first time there's been two. I said, "I told you you should have let me have a gun! What's going to happen now? If I go in the back or in the front or wherever you go, I'm going to be without a gun!" He said, "It's too late now. Do you want to forget it?" I said, "I just want the money, man. Let me have the gun, man. Let me do it by myself. Let me just go in and kill them." I'd lost interest in seeing if I had the balls or not. I knew I had the heart. I could have killed anyone, twenty people if I had to, just to get the money to get the dope.

Ruben said, "I'll go in the back. I'll subdue them. You stand by the front, by the door. You wait, count to a hundred, and then walk in." I said, "I walk in! What if they got a gun? They'll just kill me!" He said, "You want to do it or not?" I said, "Alright. Fuck it. Go ahead then."

This was Monday morning. They were going to take the money to the bank at ten o'clock. It was starting to get daylight. The people were waiting at the bus stop to go to work. Here I was. I was just going to walk in dead through the front door. Ruben went to the back. I waited and waited. I counted. Then I went in. Ruben had one guy down, lying on the floor; the other one had his hands in the air, and Ruben had the gun on him, a violent, old-looking gun. The guy was just praying, "Don't kill me! Don't kill me! Please don't kill me!" I walked in and he saw me and just flipped out. He was shaking all over and Ruben said, "Tie him up." I started walking toward him. I reached in my back pocket to get the wire, and he thought I was reaching for a gun and he went completely crazy. He broke and ran. He started running toward me, toward the door. He was a great big mayate. I grabbed at him and tried to hold him, but he pulled away. I yelled at Ruben "Kill him! Shoot him!" And Ruben had the gun on him, but he didn't fire, and the guy just ran right through me and out the door screaming, "Help! Help! They're going to kill me! Help!" I ran to the door to try to stop him, and then I ran back. I said, "What are we going to do now? Why didn't you shoot him? Boy, what a fucking asshole you are! Talk about having balls-you haven't got any heart at all! Where's the money?" And I ran around behind the counter and started ripping out cabinets and tearing things apart to try to find the money. Ruben ran out the back door. The other guy was still lying on the ground. I couldn't find the money. I ran out, thinking that any minute a bullet was going to hit me. I could hear noise and people screaming, and I ran around the corner, and Ruben had started the car. He was making a U-turn. I ran to the car, grabbed the door, jumped in, and we drove away, and I kept yelling, "You lousy motherfucker! Boy, what a yellow cocksucker you are!"

Ruben stopped at Rachel's house, where I was staying. He said, "I'm going to let you off." I said, "What do you mean? We haven't got any money! Let's go rob some place! Let me have the gun!" He said, "No, man, I'll see you later." I said, "What a yellow motherfucker you are." All these people that were supposed to have so much nerve! I felt that I had way more balls than they did, and I didn't think I had any heart at all. I thought, "Who am I supposed to look up to? Who am I supposed to follow? Who am I supposed to like? And what am I supposed to pattern myself after?"

It's morning. I'm sick. No money. No dope. And at any minute I might be picked up by the police or killed by the Chicanos if they find out who tried to rob this place, and it's all for nothing. I went to Rudy's. I said, "Oh, man, let's do something." I didn't tell him who I went with, but I told him what had happened, and I said, "Here I am sick, man, and I don't know what to do."

We went out. We went to a gas station. He turned the guy, and I took a battery charger. We went to a fence. I think we got sixty dollars for this beautiful battery charger. We bought a quarter of stuff, and I was so drug and unhappy, we just shot it and shot it.

14

The Los Angeles
County Jail: The Hole

19601961

DIANE had left me. The thought of Diane made me ill. She didn't have any heart at all, no spirit. She was always sniveling, whining, crying. She was using, but she never earned any money. I didn't want her to be a whore! I would never want a chick that would be a whore. We were living with some people, and she just laid up and waited while I went out and burglarized some place or boosted and came back with the dope. Finally she couldn't stand it anymore-I don't know what she couldn't stand. She wasn't doing nothing, and this guy Boy, that we'd been staying with, moved to Orange, and he'd always had eyes for her, and I guess he must have told her to come on up there and he'd take care of her. So she split.

I had had two occasions at this period when two different Mexican hustling broads hit on me and told me that they wanted to take care of me. All I would have had to do is, if somebody messed with them, go pistol-whip the guy; you know, just be behind them so they'd have a man. The girl would go out and hustle and get the money, and I would go out and get the dope and fix her and keep everything straight. They liked me because I was a famous musician, and I was kinda handsome, and they'd heard I had a lot of heart. They said, "Man, what are you doing with that stupid broad? She's just laying up on her fucking ass not doing nothing, and you're such a groovy cat. Why don't you come with me?" This happened twice, and these were chicks that made a bill (a hundred) a day at least. I didn't put them down, but I couldn't get involved with them. I knew I'd get hung up on the chick. They were both beautiful girls. I knew I'd start having a feeling for the girl, and if she was balling different guys it would eat me up. I've always been moral. I couldn't change it. Old-fashioned. And I felt sorry for Diane. If I left her she'd just die. She was such a weakling. So I came back to this place one day, and there was a note from Diane that she'd left, and I thought, "Thank God, she's gone. She's made the move. Maybe now I can get myself together and be cool, support my habit."

When I robbed the doctor's office in Studio City, I had got one huge bottle filled with phenobarbital. I didn't know this, but Diane had taken the bottle with her when she left. I heard from Rachel, Boy's sister, that when Diane went to Orange, all of a sudden she realized ... well, I don't know what she real- ized,but I imagine she saw how disgusting, how weak she was, and so she took I don't know how many of these pills, and Boy found her, and he didn't know what to do. He and some friends carried her out to his car. They figured they'd dump her on me. They were driving along, and the rollers stopped them, and Boy told them Diane had taken an overdose of sleeping medicine, and they were trying to take her some place where she could be helped.

The cops took her to the Orange County Hospital. All she had left at that time was what she had with her, a blouse, a skirt, a little blue sweater, a pair of flats, and a purse. Everything else was gone, the furs, the dog. She nearly died. It's too bad she didn't die. It's too bad she didn't die the first time she tried to commit suicide instead of the way she finally did die. She would have been better off.

Diane never contributed anything ever. She was totally inept at everything. She couldn't even keep house. The first time I went to Diane's pad when she was still married to her husband, it was just like a pigpen. It was a beautiful house with a pool and everything, but it was unbelievably dirty-junk and clothes. There was one thing Diane could do; she used to work crossword puzzles. Every day she'd go buy the New York Times. Later on I learned that that was the epitome of crossword puzzles. She'd go to magazine stands and buy ten or twelve of the most difficult puzzle books and sit and work them all. She was very good at that, but she did nothing at all to help me in any way, shape, or form. All the time I was supporting my own habit I was able to do it. When I had to support hers, too, it just got too much for me. It got to be too much.

Later on, when I was no longer with her, Diane stayed in Manhattan Beach with some friends of mine, Ann Christos and her old man, John James. She lived with them and was stealing money out of John's pockets, going through the house stealing their dope. Finally they told her, "No good. Either you're going to have to do something or get out. You're just too heavy. It's all we can do to carry our own weight. Do something or hook it up." See, when she was with me she was never forced into anything. They told her, "The only thing you got is your ass; go peddle it. Want some dope? Go sell your ass." So she finally got up off her lazy ass and went out to turn a trick. She went into Manhattan Beach. There's millions of clubs down there. It's the easiest place in the world to turn a trick if you want to. She wanders around, looks around, has a few drinks at a few different bars, and finally she hits on a guy and he's a ... He's a vice officer! Hahahaha! And she got busted for offering! The story of Diane-The Great Zeeeero.

(Hersh Hamel) I know Diane very well, or did. Diane was a waitress at jazz City, 1956, '57. It was a big club during the fifties. They struck up a relationship. Diane had a couple of children, so I understand. She claimed she gave her children up for Art. It seemed more like she wanted to give her children up. Art was the excuse.

Diane started out very pretty. She's Filipino and had those island features although she wasn't real small. But she smoked incessantly, cigarettes, which later on deformed her lip. She had to have a lot of teeth taken out, and she had a little groove in her lip from the cigarettes. She had a very pretty body when I first saw her. Of course, later on ... She didn't use anything when Art met her, and she was determined to straighten him out. Of course she became a huge junkie, worse than Art. She lost her looks.

Diane wasn't terribly bright, terribly intelligent. She was a waitress. She was very lazy. She used to just like to lay in bed. They used to, like, get stoned on horse and lay in bed a lot. I remember she got this thing from the Akron-one of those pillows with arms on them so you can eat breakfast in bed, sit up and read. And she was just thrilled over that. Just thrilled. She was trying to help Art, but she gave up somewhere along the line. She didn't know how to help him. She was really a good person; she just lost herself to dope like a lot of people do. It's very easy.

I DIDN'T know Diane had taken these pills. I'm running around East L.A. pulling burglaries and boosting and trying to get ahold of a gun, and they're going to give Diane ninety days or something like that. So what she does, in order to get out early, in order to make them like her and help her, she says, "Well, I'm Art Pepper's old lady." All the narcs had heard of me and they said, "Oh? Where is he?" She said, "He's in East L.A. robbing and stealing, just strung out like a dog."

The police can't arbitrarily stop someone and search them without a reason. If they do, their case isn't any good. But when Diane told them about me, that was the "show cause," and they went to their files and gave pictures out to the heat in East L.A., my pictures. And when I got busted, the show cause was Diane's statement. She had informed on me.

At this time I was so hung up I had no one to go with me anymore. I was just walking the streets, burglarizing houses, going into stores, no car or nothing, just carrying stuff down the street-televisions, clothes, power tools-carrying them to the connection, hiding in alleys and parks. But then I did an album for Les Koenig, Smack Up, and I got some bread, and the next day I went to Stone Street in East L.A. I went to Frank and Lupe Ortiz's house to cop, and I bought a half a piece of stuff; the house was under surveillance; and the police had my picture in their car.

I got two condoms of stuff. I had had a student of mine drive me; he was parked three blocks down, on Wabash, a busy street. I turned the corner onto Wabash; there's a Bank of America and a lot of people going and coming. I'm walking by the bank, and the car is just a few feet away, and two guys are walking toward me, I'm trying to pass them, and all of a sudden somebody grabs me from behind, around the neck, and starts strangling me, and one of the guys drops a badge and says, "Sergeant Sanchez, L.A. Narcotics."

There were four of them: MacCarville, Salazar, and this guy who had me around the neck, Solagi, and Sanchez, who's a total illiterate madman. I'm trying to get my hand to my mouth. There was no way I could have swallowed the stuff because the guy had me so I could hardly breathe, but Sanchez saw me and grabbed my arm. I fought as much as I could and screamed, "Help! Help! Robbery!" hoping some citizens would jump in and give me just enough time to get it into my mouth and swallow it, but I was dead. They had me. They were too strong. Sanchez opened my hand, and there were the two quarters.

They got me in the car and drove about three blocks. I'm handcuffed with my hands behind my back, and this ape Solagi, he's sitting on my right; Sanchez is driving; and MacCarville is sitting next to Sanchez. All of a sudden we stop; I fall forward; and Solagi smashes me in the stomach with his elbow. Sanchez whips out his gun and hits me in the head with it. He clicks it and says, "I'm going to kill you, you motherfucker! You stinking bastard! Open the door!" Then he yells, "Open the door! Throw him out! Run, you bastard! If you don't, I'm going to kill you right here!" I said, "Ohhhh, man, what are you doing?" He'd cut my head with the gun. I said, "Just take me to jail and book me, man!" He said, "We know where you got the stuff. You got it from Frank and Lupe Ortiz, and you're going to tell us that or we'll kill you!" I said, "I didn't get it from anyone. I had it. I had it before I went to the pad."

They drove me to the Hollenbeck Station. They parked in the lot and Solagi said, "Get out!" I went to get out, and he kicked me in the legs so I fell. I would have busted my teeth out because I fell on cement, but I turned and hit my head. They grabbed me and dragged me in.

They had two holding tanks in the Hollenbeck Station. They took everyone out of one of them and threw me in it. Then Sanchez pulls my belt out and hits me in the stomach and the back, and he knocks me down again. They said, "You're going to cop out on these people or we're going to kill you." I had about a hundred and eighty dollars on me. They took my money. They knocked me out and left.

When I came to, I crawled to the bars and hollered at the two bulls on the cells, "Please undo the handcuffs!" They're not supposed to put you in a cell with cuffs on. They wouldn't even answer me. I said, "You motherfuckers!" The guys in the other cell said, "Hey, putos gavachos, you motherfuckers! Why don't you help this guy?" They screamed at the bulls, but they wouldn't do anything.

This was in the afternoon. At about eleven o'clock that night two detectives came to the door. They said, "What is this?" The bulls on the cells said, "Well," and they started whispering. These were guys from downtown, from robbery detail. One of them took out his handcuff keys and undid me. I was cut. Blood was running down my wrists. My hands were swollen. There was no feeling in them. They said, "You won't try to get away, will you?" I said, "No, I can't do nothin'." They said, "We don't want to handcuff you." They put me in a car and drove me down to the Glass House, which is the jail downtown. They booked me in. They no sooner book me in than I'm dragged out of the cell, and here I am in an office with Sanchez. He put me through all kinds of shit again. He said, "You'll talk eventually."

They took me to the old county jail, and this booking in took eighteen to twenty hours. I get into the hype tank, and in the morning I'm vomiting bile, and all of a sudden here come all the dope fiends to the cell door and one of them throws a newspaper at me: "JAZZ MUSICIAN BUSTED. .. Art Pepper, renowned jazz saxophone player, was arrested by So-and-so at such-and-such place .... Pepper said he bought the heroin from Frank and Lupe Ortiz." Then I realized what Sanchez meant when he said, "You'll talk. We'll get you." They just put it in the paper that I had ratted on Frank and Lupe.

So now I'm laying there. I'm so sick I can't move. I've been in jail a lot of times. I've seen people killed. I've seen them beat to death, with thick blood running out of their ears and eyes, every bone broken. That was what was waiting for me. I looked at these guys. I said, "Man, there's nothing I can say. Sanchez told me he was going to get me. I didn't say a word. Didn't say nothing, and this is what he did. If you're going to kill me, kill me. I did not rat on them. I've never talked, ever." I laid there, and I thought I was dead. They went outside and had a conference. Then they came back. They said, "We're going to wait and find out from Frank for sure."

When Frank got busted they put him in the tank that I was in. Maybe they thought he would be so unthinking he'd believe the newspaper story and have me beat up real bad, and then, before I died, they thought I would cop out on him. But he came by the cell, and he said, "You didn't say anything, did you, Art?" I said, "No, you know that." I told him what had happened. He put the word out. "Don't let anything happen to Art Pepper." He was an intelligent guy, and we had a good friendship.