Straight Life (36 page)

When we got to the point where we could talk I whispered to David, "You holding?" He said, "Yeah." I said, "How?" He said, "I got a keester stash." He was already getting sick, and I was wigging out from waiting, but he had to wait till nighttime to get the stuff because people were walking by and looking and trying to feel it out.

Time passed, and the night came. They call salts and soda, and then the bulls come in a team and run up to all the cell blocks and rack the gates, and all the gates in all the cells are roaring and rattling and clanging. They're all shaking, and you have to get in one. They leave one cell open for the people sleeping out on the freeway so there's a toilet for them to use. The bulls holler, "Number five cell open!" It was fortunate that the place was completely filled at this time. Bad in one way-because there were so many eyes-but if it hadn't been filled, it would have been harder to get David into our cell. I'd told Rudy what was going on.

We're locked in the cell; the lights are out; David gets his stash; he makes it. He's wiped out. I say, "I'm going next. How good is it?" He says, "Well, here, I'll put it in the spoon." I say, "Put a little bit more. If I'm going to go out, I want to go out happy." David bends over and lights a match so I can see the vein. I mainline it rather than trying to hit a small vein in my hand, even though it's a dead bust. If they'd said, "You're going to die after," I would have said, "Okay, just let me do this first." I fixed, and it was so great. Rudy says, "Come on! Come on! Hora le, Art! My turn!" I feel so good. I'm grabbing David; I just want to kiss him. I'm telling him, "Oh, God, David, I love you! Thank you, thank you, thank you! Kill me, Sheriff Pitchess! Blow up the whole county jail! Who cares!" I was so happy. I once said that there's nothing like the first time, but there were a lot of good times, and that was one of them.

The next day people were looking at us. David's supposed to be kicking, but he's not. I told him, "Act sick." Our eyes were pinpointed. Rudy and I were running the tank, and we were both wasted, and the guys picked up on it. Guys came to me, "Hey, man, I thought we were tight." Guys I knew real well. I said, "Man, there ain't nothing happening." These were cats I would have loved to have turned on, but I couldn't do it. I said, "I ain't got nothin'. You know that." People got angry.

The next night comes. We go through the same thing. David gets loaded; I get loaded; and then it's time for Rudy. He's all ready and all of a sudden I hear a noise-running! I say, "Here they come! Ay viene! La jura!" (Here comes the fuzz!) Rudy doesn't know what to do. All he had to do was palm the thing and act like he was asleep, but instead he's trying to get it in his arm. I'm in the top bunk and I look down: Rudy's got the outfit in his right hand, he's got his left arm over his knee, trying to find a vein, and here's a flashlight right on this whole action! They scream, "Don't move! Don't move!" They're trying to get to the water to turn it off, but they can't get in. (The rollers have to get the key to get in; it's a security thing.) I'm telling Rudy, "Get rid of it!" David takes the spoon and cleans it. I tie the stuff up in the condom and throw it to him. He puts it in his mouth and swallows it. They're yelling, "Don't move or it's all over for you!" I tell Rudy, "They don't have a gun! They don't have guns here! Hurry, before they shut the water off! Get rid of it!" He gets up. Finally. "Don't move! Don't move!" My heart is pounding. "Get rid of it!" The bulls are running for the water, and once they reach it we're dead, outfitwise, you know. He goes to the toilet and says, "I gotta take a piss." They're hollering. Boy, are they mad. He drops the thing into the toilet and hits the button. No sooner does it go down, I swear to God, you hear the flush and then "Whoooch-clunk." They'd shut the water off. If he'd waited another second we'd have been stuck with it.

So. David has swallowed the stuff; we'd got the spoon clean; we'd flushed the outfit; and now we hear the keys clanging. The front gates are clashing, and they're telling the people, "Get in one!" They get all the people that were on the freeway into cells; they get everyone locked up; and they run into our cell and grab us: "Get outta there!" They throw us out on the freeway against the bars. They shook us down and went through the whole place, just tore the cell apart. Didn't find nothin'.

While we were standing out on the freeway I said to David and Rudy, "Lookit man, lookit. This is what we're going to tell them. We found an oooold outfit that was made out of a toothbrush and a lightbulb." I'd never tried it but I'd heard about it and the police believe it. They've found things like that. I said, "We got ahold of some aspirin, and we were goofing around. We crushed it up. We were trying to shoot it." We had to cover for the marks. "That's our story, and just stick to it. We gotta have a story, and that's it." I was very proud of myself that I'd made it up like that.

They took us before the doctor. We closed our eyes and made our fingers meet in front of us. Touched our noses. He looked at our eyes, looked at our arms. The doctor said, "These men are loaded." We denied it. They interrogated us and we all told the same story. They said, "Who do you think you're kidding? How do you think we came there? We were told. We were told that you had stuff and that you've been getting loaded for the last three or four days." I said "Oh, that's great."

They took us to the hole. I'd never been there but I'd heard about it. They opened the door and took Rudy away. They made me and David go through a gate, and they took all our clothes off and gave us each a pair of longjohns. I couldn't button mine. They came to my knees and barely fit over my shoulders. David's were just as bad. They took David to his cell. They opened the door, a solid steel door, smashed it open, and I looked in and saw a pitchblack cell. They told him, "Whenever you hear us coming just crouch in that corner, and if you're anyplace else we'll kick your teeth out when we come in." They threw him in and threw an old, dirty blanket after him. No shoes. Nothing. They opened mine. They told me, "Whenever you hear this door open you be crouched in that far corner or we'll kick your teeth out!" They slammed the door and the reverberation was so loud it went through my head and through it and through it. I had half a blanket and that was it, that and the cold cement floor and a toilet. And there was a grating in the wall. You could hear water dripping. You could talk through the grating. I heard Rudy hollering for us. I thought, "Well, if I can hear him, and David can hear him, then the police must be listening." I said, "Rudy, cool it, man. We told them the truth. There's no use making up any false stories. They're listening to us now."

Time passed. The next day came. I could tell by the sound of the racking of the gates, and then I heard keys rattling and doors banging, and I crouched in the corner. A guard came to the door and slammed it open as hard as he could. I put my hands over my ears. The guard had a trustee with him who shoved in a little paper plate and a paper cup with a top on it. The cup had water in it, and the plate had some food slopped over it. He slammed the door shut again. I tried to eat a little of the food. They'd warned us, "Don't put the food down the toilet. If you stop up the toilet you'll be sorry."

The next day came. I heard the noise, and here they are. The door slams open. I'm crouched in the corner. The trustee reaches in, and he's got a board. He's pounding around the plate with it. I look and see hundreds of cockroaches running off the plate. He pulls it out, throws it into a pail, and puts in another water cup and another plate of food. I see the cockroaches running away and then, in the light from the open door, I see them turn around and head back to the new plate. The door slams shut again.

If I was scared before, when I saw that I was terrified. There's nothing more scary than cockroaches when you can't see them. I felt that they were crawling in my nose and in my asshole and in my ears and eyes and mouth. I didn't touch the food at all. I opened the cup a little bit and drank the water. During this time I heard David. He's talking to me through the grating. He's kicking. He's saying, "I'm really sick. I feel awful, man. I don't know what to do, Art." He said, "I saw the cockroaches and I'm scared." I said, "Don't put your food in the toilet, man." He said, "I already did and it's stopped up and water's pouring out in my cell." I heard his cell open. Evidently, water had run out through the door and they'd seen it. I heard them raving at him. They made him wipe the floor with his blanket. They hit him. They smashed him against the wall. They slammed the door and left him in the wet longjohns. I was curled up in my little blanket trying to keep any part of my body from touching the floor. I imagined that big spiders and bugs were coming out of the grating. David was crying.

The guards came twice a day with food and water. They asked us, "Well, are you guys ready to change your story?" We told them there was nothing to change. It seemed they were just going to keep us there. There was no way we could get out; we couldn't get a lawyer. There was no help we could get. David was deathly ill. He told me, "If there was any way I could kill myself, I'd do it. I just don't know how to do it." I said, "Oh, man, just hold on. Hold on."

We were there for five days; it seemed like eternity. Finally they took us back to our cell block. They figured if they put us back in the same tank the guys would beat us up. We weren't trustees anymore. We were shot back in the second section and treated very bad. David told the guys in the tank, "Come on! If you're going to do anything to us, do it and get it over with, and we'll get some of you as we're going out!" But they let it go. I told my friends, "It wasn't my stuff. There was nothing I could do. If it had been my stuff I would have given you a taste." So it blew over.

At my arraignment my bail had been set at one hundred thousand dollars. The DA's office gave a speech. They said I was involved in a huge network of dope dealers and I was dealing to Hollywood and the near valley. I was reputed to be a big gangster in a narcotics ring. The people I was scoring from were big people, but I was just buying from them. I wasn't dealing at all at the time. The judge finally said, "Well, what was found on the suspect?" They said, "Oh, that's inconsequential. That has no bearing on the case." The judge said, "How much was it?" And the guy said, "Two quarter ounces, a half ounce total." They recommended that bail be set at a hundred thousand because they didn't want me to get out and inform the rest of the "gang." They said they had things in the works; everything was set up; they had people under surveillance. The judge went along with them, and they put me back in jail.

When I went to my preliminary hearing the judge said to the DA, "Well, where's this gang and all the things you were going to tie in?" He realized that it was all bullshit but he wouldn't lower the bail to fifteen hundred dollars, which is what the public defender asked for. He put it to five thousand, and I still couldn't get out.

I got ahold of Les Koenig. I think I had my dad go see him. Les was interested in having me make an album, and for that I usually got about five hundred dollars in front. Ann Christos and this chick from the Lighthouse put up a couple of hundred as a deposit, and Les called the bondsman and assured him of the rest, and I got out on bail. I went down to the studio with a horn I borrowed from a student, a Martin with a good sound. That was Intensity with Dolo Coker and Jimmy Bond, and that was the last album Les had that I did, so he kept it. This was in 1960, and he didn't release it until 1963.

My dad wanted me to have a lawyer. I said no. I told him, "I don't have a chance in the world." He said, "I still want you to have a good lawyer." He had already paid out all the money he'd saved, so the only way he could get a lawyer was to put another mortgage on his home in Long Beach, and he did that.

The lawyer came and talked to me. He told my folks that he'd talked to the police, and if I'd get on the stand and sign a paper against Frank Ortiz they'd cut me loose. They'd drop the charges. My dad had gone through all this-I had told him it was useless-and then the lawyer presented us with this solution! My stepmother and my mother just wanted me to be safe. They didn't know anything so I didn't care, didn't even want to know, what they thought. Diane said, "Oh, man, those guys wouldn't do anything for you! They don't care about you! Turn over on them! Later for them!" She'd gotten out of this nuthouse, Norwalk, where she'd been. My dad didn't say a word. He was waiting to see what I'd do. I looked at this lawyer and I said, "Man, are you kidding? We're paying you all this fuckin' money for advice like that? I could have done that in the beginning if I'd wanted to! I'm not a rat!" I cussed him out and ranked him, and my dad was sitting there, and I glanced at him, and he was just beaming. He was so proud of me. The lawyer said, "Well, if that's the way you want to be, there's nothing I can do. Maybe I can get you on the N number program." (They had just started a special program for people who were convicted of using drugs or of possession. Rather than give them an A number, an adult prison number, and send them to a regular state prison, they'd give them an N number, a narcotics number, and send them to a special narcotics prison.)

David Arbedian and I had the same background, the same kind of record. We were in Fort Worth together. He'd gotten busted recently on possession, just like me, and he got out on bail, like I did. He got busted again on possession while he was out; I didn't. And David didn't have a work record. He worked for his dad occasionally. I had a good work record, for years, with my music, so I figured that if anybody would be acceptable to the N number program it would be me. I had no crimes on my record. David had been picked up for burglaries, suspicions of robberies, but he got on the program. He didn't turn over on anybody; he was just accepted as an N number. I wasn't because they said I was a hardened criminal. I was beyond rehabilitation. There was no hope for me, and the program was only for young people that could be saved. So I wound up doing four and a half years. David did eight months. That's justice.