Straight Life (43 page)

That's what I'd done in Terminal Island, but it was nothing to the extent that I did it in San Quentin. I went completely out of it. When I went to the shower, I would stumble like the people in Forth Worth. I'd kick my feet and go, "Grrr- rghhuuughhh!" I'd look at people and go, "Uhhhooooohhhh!" I'd get in the shower and throw the soap up in the air, and I'd put the water in my mouth and scream, "Aaaeeeeeeeee!" They'd look at me and then they'd move away so I could shower. I would bad-rap people. It's a miracle I wasn't killed. I acted like a real maniac and the most violent person imaginable. I'd go to the mess hall with John Wallach-we were in Fort Worth together; we'd go to eat and instead of sticking the food in my mouth I'd stick it in my cheek or bury my head in the plate. We'd put our arms around the plates and eat like animals, slurping and slobbering. I took every kind of pill, every single thing I could get my hands on no matter what it was. There were some pills, they called them "black-andwhites," Dilantin and Phenobarbital; they were for epileptics. Most people were afraid to take them because they really messed you up, but they gave you a nice high so I took them all the time. I'd wake up early in my cell and get my can, and I'd take some wax paper or toilet paper and make a bomb-roll it up into a ball and light it to heat the water-and make some coffee, and I'd take the pills with my coffee and be wiped out when I staggered out of my cell. You lose your equilibrium. You can't walk. So I got a reputation for being really insane. People were afraid of me. And I found that the things I thought I wouldn't be able to live with I was able to play over. I'd mumble to myself and slobber, and that's how I survived. There's nothing like being locked up.

When I went to the guidance center at Chino in '60, we went by alphabetical order, and the name right before mine was Penn, William Penn. Penn was a nice guy, kinda sweet, slender. He had pretty skin. You know how a girl looks when she's young and she goes to the beach a lot, a blonde, when her hair is kind of brownish-blonde on her arms and the sun hits it? Well, Penn had hairs on his arms like that, and he had real pretty hair, little curls, and he had beautiful blue eyes. He looked like a little sparrow, and he loved me because he loved jazz, and he'd follow me around. We were on the chain together to go to Quentin. They called, "Penn, Pepper." So we were handcuffed together. We got on the Grey Goose and we sat together; it just happened to work out that way. They took us off the bus at Soledad and they called the names for the cells, and it's "Penn, Pepper" in the same cell, which was nice because he's clean, very neat, and he adores me. I had someone to flatter me, and he's telling me the records he's got and when he saw me at soand-so, how much he loved it, how much his old lady loved it. The next morning we got back on the bus and it was the same thing: we sat together. So people see us come; we're handcuffed together; we eat together; we go through the physicals and the different things you go through when you go in and we're always together because of our names. And, evidently, a few people decided this cat was my kid, my punk, my girl friend.

You get very aware in prison. You're careful to observe things. It's a jungle; there might be a snake there or a centipede. You never walk around half conscious. When you go into a toilet you look at every person. If you're in line you look at everybody behind you. It becomes a habit. Eyes are always moving. So I noticed this one guy, kind of cold-eyed, who was watching me. He was about five, nine, and there was nothing violent looking about his build, nothing physical, but he had a scary way about him and I never saw him talk to a living soul.

I noticed him watching me. I'd be standing someplace in the upper yard, and I'd look over, and he'd be behind an iron girder looking at me. I'd look at him and he'd lower his eyes and turn around. I'd look away and back, quick, and he'd be staring at me again. He'd lower his head. I'd find myself in the canteen line, and there he'd be standing at a distance, but I'd feel his presence. And I really started getting worried.

I hit on a guy I knew. I said, "Man, don't look now. I don't want this cat to know I'm pinning him. But this cat standing over by So-and-so.. . " And I said real low, "Do you know that cat?" And my friend said, "I sure do, man! That guy is murder three. Everybody's terrified of him. Nobody messes with him, and he doesn't have anything to do with anybody. He's a real death-shank type cat. He does everything single-O." I hit on another guy. Same response. I hit on another guy and he said, "Man, don't have any dealings with him and don't ever do anything he doesn't like or you're dead." I thought, "What is this cat looking at me for?" I hit on another guy and I copped out. I asked him, "Well, why do you think the cat's watching me?" The guy said, "Well, there's only one reason I can think of. He's a lifer. He's gonna be here for life. He's looking at you. That means he has eyes for you." He wasn't a fruiter. See, the guys that are doing life, rather than just playing with themselves, with books, they learn to make it with a man and think of the man as a woman. They're not fruiters in that sense of the word. Maybe if I was there for life I'd do the same thing. I doubt it though.

Finally, one day a guy that was a friend of Penn's, Bob, came up to me and said, "Wait a minute. Don't look now but-now look! See that guy standing over there by the third girder?" I looked and said, "Oh, man, are you kidding? That cat's been looking at me for weeks now. I'm terrified." Bob said, "Well, he approached me the other day, and he wants to make a meet with you." Bob said, "I don't know what he wants, man, but you gotta see him. You gotta make a meet with him and find out." I said, "Okay. Tell him I'll see him downstairs in the lower yard."

I go down to the handball court. The guy walks up to me. He says, "Art Pepper?" I say, "Yeah." He says, "Man, I hear you're a great musician." And right away I think, "Uh-oh, that's what the cat wants. He's intrigued with me." I say, "Yeah, why?" He says, "I been watching you." I say, "I know that, man. I could tell you were watching me. What's your story?" I was trying to act tough. I was scared to death. He says, "Well, I been watching you, man, and, uh, you, you got a lotta friends. A lot of friends. A lot of friends. I've been asking about you. Quietly. I noticed that a lot of people like you. You talk to Chicanos. You talk to suedes. You talk to everybody. Everybody seems to like you. You have a lot of friends. I'm not like that. I'm here for murder. You've probably heard that. I'm here for murder-a couple of times. And I've killed a couple people in jail since I been here. I don't think I'm ever going to get out. I don't like people. People don't like me." Then he says, "I'm lonesome." And I think, "Oh God, here it is. The cat's lonesome." I say, "Yeah, well, I'm lonesome, too. God! I'll say I'm lonesome, man! I'd give anything in the world if I wasn't here and I had my old lady or some chick that really dug me." He looked at me and he gave me the funniest look. He says, "Chick? That's a thing from another world." And I think, "That's it! That's what the guy wants! He wants me! What am I going to say to him? What am I going to do?"

I'm looking in his eyes, and they're a dead, pale blue. There's nothing there. I say, "Yeah, man, yeah. We're all lonely, man. I feel for you. At least I'm going to get out one of these days." He says, "Well, I just want you to understand my position, man. I'm lonely, and I can't stand it anymore, and I've got to have someone." I say, "Yeah?" He says, "I've got to have someone." I think, "What am I going to do?" He says, "I've got to have someone. You know that little cat that you got?" I didn't understand what he'd said. It didn't sink in, I was so scared. I thought he was going to hit on me. I said, "What do you mean?" He says, "You know. You know. Penn. Your little friend." I say, "Penn? Oh, you mean, oh, you mean Penn." He says, "Yeah, yeah. Penn, your little friend." I say, "Well, what about him, man?" He says, "Well, man, you're popular, like I told you. Here I am all alone." And then he says, "I've got things to offer. A lot to offer. I'm clean...."

He started telling me his good points. He says, "I've killed a few people, but that was just circumstances. They got in my way and there was no way out. I had to do it. And," he says, "maybe I'm a little crazy." And I thought, "A little!" It was a cold day. Northern California. Wind's blowing. It must have been thirty degrees, and I was sweating. He says, "You could have anybody you want. I've seen Mandy, like, looking at you. She'd give you anything you wanted, man. I've been looking and looking. That little guy, Penn, just turns me on. I really love him." And then the whole thing was clear to me! I said, "Well. Great, man, great!"

I was so relieved. I said, "Oh, wonderful!" I almost broke into some insane laughter. I was so scared I almost peed in my pants. I thought he was going to stab me right there because there's some strange people, man, and all the stories I'd heard about this guy! I said, "Well, that's great, man, why don't you talk to him?" And he says, "I can't talk to him. That's your, that's your old lady, man." I say, "No! No he's not!" He says, "Alright, now, lookit . . . " You know, he wouldn't believe me. I tried to explain, but he thought I was trying to get out of making a deal. He says, "Alright, I'll tell you what. You decide what you want for him. I'm appeaLng to you now. I'm appealing to your good nature. You can have anything you want. With me, I'm hung here. I saw him. I like him. I want him. I need him. I have to have him. I know maybe you care for him, too, but you could find somebody else. Please. Could you do me a favor? Please. You tell me how many cigarettes you want for him, and whatever I can give you outside of that. If any dope comes in-you're a dopefiend, right?-I'll kill somebody and get some dope for you. You make a price, moneywise," meaning cigarettes, "and I'll get it and pay it to you." I say, "It isn't that way!" He says, "Think it over, decide what you want, and I'll talk to you again." I said, "But. . ." And he was gone.

I'd read books about prison life and seen movies, but I'd never, ever heard of selling somebody for cigarettes. If I hadn't been involved I would have laughed and laughed. It would have been a great story to tell. But I was involved, and it wasn't funny. I went to Bob and ran down the conversation. I said, "What am I going to do?" He said, "Sell him!" I said, "He isn't mine!" He said, "Any death play, any shank play involved, we're in it fifty-fifty, if you want to do it that way, and we'll split the bread." I said, "I can't do that. I cannot do that." He said, "The guy believes that you and Penn are making it. Nothing's going to change his mind. What else you gonna do?" I said, "I don't know what to do?" He said, "Sell him! Sell him! If you don't sell him I will. I'll go to him and tell him I got control over the cat, and he'll listen to me, and then you'll be out the bread." I saw that the guy was serious. This guy was a friend of Penn's, not of mine. He was a friend of Penn's from the streets, this guy.

I went to Penn and told him the story. He said, "Oh, God! Oh, Art! God! What am I going to do? Don't sell me! What am I going to do?" I said, "Are you a sissy?" He said, "No!" I said, "Why does this guy think you're a sissy?" He said, "I don't know!" And then I looked at Penn for the first time in that way. He had full, pretty lips like a woman, blue eyes, blonde hair; he was really beautiful. I looked at his arms and I saw the hairs. He said, "Oh, help me, man, please! Don't sell me!" I said, "How could I sell you? You don't belong to me!" He said, "You're my friend. Help me!" I said, "Well, you better talk to this guy who says he's a friend of yours." And I told him what Bob had said.

We both went to Bob. We told him, "Man, you can't do that." Bob said to Penn, "Lookit, lookit, I'll tell you what we'll do. We'll sell you to the guy; we'll get the bread; and then ... we'll kill the guy!" Penn looked at me, and I looked at him, and we both looked at this other cat. I told Penn, "Come here, man. Come here." We left Bob. I took Penn to the lifer. I told him, "Man, this guy's name is Penn. My name is Pepper." I ran down the whole trip. "He's married. We're like, next to each other in our names. We were chained together. We were celled together. We became friends. He likes jazz. I play jazz. We became friends. He's not a fruiter. I don't make it with fruiters." I talked and I talked and I talked so well, and we were so open and honest with the cat that he finally realized what was happening. Then we told him about this other cat, Bob, and he got mad. We found out later that Bob was the guy that had developed this thing. He said to me, "I'm sorry. I was told that that was what was going on. Bob is going to hear about this."

Three days later Bob was transferred to Vacaville. He had asked for a transfer. The guy had drove on him with a shank. From then on the guy became a good friend of Penn's and a good friend of mine. He started coming around, listening to jazz. This was a guy that had never had anything going for him. We started eating with him sometimes. And so, he acquired a couple of friends, like, out of the whole thing.

16

San Quentin:
Learning the Ropes

1961-1964

WHEN I BEGAN to learn the ins and outs, and I started loosening my cap, life became a little more bearable. Finally I got a job. You fill out a card. They ask you to put down your skills and qualifications, so I said I knew how to type. I'd learned in junior high school and thank God because it really came in handy at this time in my life. They saw my IQ, and I had neat handwriting, and that impressed them. They needed someone to work in the paymaster's office.

In San Quentin they had maximum, close, medium A, medium B, and minimum custody. There were people that were locked up all the time, and there were others that were allowed out in the yard but who had to report to the little police shack there every hour. For this job I wanted in the paymaster's office I had to be a medium B or minimum, and I was a medium A when I arrived there, but they saw I had the ability to do the job so I had an interview with the head of the office, and they put me up for reclassification. This got me out of the jobs I had been doing-cleaning jobs, dirty jobs that were really a drag-and hanging out in the yard, and that's where you get into trouble.

When I got the job I had to get up at the 4:30 unlock; the only people in the South Block that were unlocked at that time were the kitchen people. I didn't live in their section. This time the bureacracy worked to my advantage. They moved me to the North Block, a semihonor block, though I wasn't eligible yet: I didn't have enough time clean with no beefs.

In the South Block you were locked up from 4 P.M. on, period, but in the North Block, after supper, at different times, they'd have unlocks and you could go down and take a shower. This meant a totally different life from the one I'd been leading. I'd spend less time in my cell, and I'd be able to go to movies in the evenings instead of only on the weekends-when I'd be able to borrow a horn and play.

I'd wake up at 4:30, wash my face with freezing cold water, throw my clothes on, and then they would rack the gate. I'd go to the mess hall and eat at the early line. Then I'd go through the gate, and it would be dark, pitch-black out, and I'd walk all alone through this prison. There'd be no one there but the guards; at different points you could see them flapping their hands together, huddled around these little towers, where they'd have a stove, and you could see the steam coming out of their mouths. I'd walk to the between-gates. I'd go through a little passageway and there would be Fourposts, the police shack, to my right; to my left was the clothing room and the gym. Further on there were the chapels: a Catholic chapel and a Protestant chapel right next to each other. They were very pretty; they had built them new. At that time they didn't recognize the Muslim religion, but any other faith could take a room and have their little services. I think they had AA meetings in the chapels, too. In Fort Worth and in Terminal Island I had gone to AA meetings and I'd even sung in the church choirs, but in San Quentin you were locked up so much you only had time for a few activities. I worked ten hours a day during the week, so my weekends were spent playing music, reading, and trying to get loaded.

I'd walk to the gate. The guy would open it and say hello. I'd go into a place and sit, and then they'd open another gate for me. They'd pull my card. It was really elaborate. Then I'd be outside the inner prison. In front of me was the gun tower. And then there was another gate and a machine that checked to see if you had any metal on you. There was another gate, the firehouse, the officer's club, some of the guard's homes, a library for the guards, and then the final gate. Beyond that there's a parklike area for the guards' families and the warden's home, a big place. To my left was a large building where the free people worked.

The paymaster's office was just a cement building set on the outside of the South Block. It was right next to the walkway going into the gas chamber. I'd walk to the door all alone. I was the first one there. It would be foggy, and the fog horns would be going. I'd open the place and put the lights on and go to my desk. The paymaster's office had a dual purpose: we kept the hours for all the people that worked in the prison and all the state employees and we doubled as a cleaner and laundry service for the guards and the free personnel. I'd start work at 5:30, and people coming to work would bring their clothes in. I had a little book. I'd go to the counter and write up a ticket, whatever it was, two pants, one jacket, and charge them so many ducats. They bought books and used ducats so the convicts wouldn't deal in money.

The guy I worked for, I'll call him Mr. Williams. He was a black guy, dark. He was very neat, a studious-looking guy. He loved jazz, and if we were alone he'd ask me about when I was with Benny Carter's band or when I was with Stan Kenton's band and how it was being a traveling jazz musician. And he asked me how I could use drugs to the extent that I gave up my music, how I could allow that to happen to me. He was very nice, but he was a free person. He could go out and ball a chick that night. He had money. He had a car. And he'd tell me that he went to North Beach and saw some jazz player or other. I almost got the feeling he was lording it over me at times; I'd get angry at times and find myself hating him. But then I'd realize that whatever I had done, I had done it and it would do me no good to have those feelings. I only hurt myself.

Mr. Williams was a good person. A lot of times the six of us, the convicts that worked in the paymaster's office, we'd do little things that were illegal. We'd steal a steak from the ODR, the officers' dining room, or we'd take the food out of the trash cans from the gas chamber or get a cheeseburger or a chocolate malt illicitly from the snack bar. We'd hide this stuff in the toilet in the back of the office. We'd eat in there or cook the steak in there, and sometimes Mr. Williams would catch us; he wouldn't come all the way in but I'd know he smelled the food. And he'd give us a pass. We knew that he knew, but he never busted us for any of these things-and these were beefs that go against you as far as getting in an honor block, or they can take away your movie privileges. If you get too many they can cancel your board appearance.

Sometimes I'd be playing music in the yard on a weekend, and I'd look over, and there would be Mr. Williams, standing unobtrusively against the wall listening. I'd catch his eye, and he'd nod at me, and then the next day at work he'd say, "Yeah, I heard you yesterday. You were smokin', man." Every now and then he'd give me a message from somebody. "Sonny Stitt says to say hello." Mr. Williams had mentioned that I worked for him in San Quentin, and Sonny had said, "Give him my best and tell him to get out here and start blowin'!" He'd boost my spirits like that, so I knew he was for me, but he was cool enough to know that you can't be a righteous convict and make it in San Quentin if you have any association with a guard, which is what he was. It wouldn't be good for your reputation. He realized that, and I think that's why he was so aloof. I think he would have liked to have really been friends.

There was a guy that came into the paymaster's office all the time, Sergeant Metzger or Metzler, a big, square-headed guy. He had a Will Rogers air and he was real kindly looking, but I had strange feelings about him. I got weird vibes. One day after he left I mentioned it to this cat that worked in the office. "Who is that guy, man? I just can't figure him out, that Sergeant Metzger." He said, "Oh, man, you've never heard of him?" He went over to the pay book, where there was a printout with all the guards' names, and he said, "Look at this." By Metzger's name there were all these extra figures-"$175.00; $175.00." I looked under the code and it said, "death house duty." That was the gas chamber. He told me, "He's the guy that has worked every execution for the last twenty years, him and another guard that they pick at random."

They had two slots leading into the gas chamber and they had two guards, Sergeant Metzger and another guy. Each guard had a pellet of cyanide like a large jelly bean. On a nod from the deathwatch lieutenant, when the victim was all strapped in with the hood on and ready, at that nod they both dropped their pellets. The pellets go down little ramps and fall into pots which are out of the guards' eyesight. One contains water and one contains acid. In the pot that has the water nothing happens, but in the other pot the acid eats away the coating on the pellet and the gas is released and kills the person. The guards don't know which of them is responsible, but this guy had been doing it for twenty years or so. There's no telling how many people he'd killed. He got one hundred and seventy-five dollars for each one. He had requested the job, and he had seniority, so they just allowed him to do it all the time. Some of the guards wouldn't do it, which is a great thing to be said about guards. I wanted to ask him about it, but I would have been completely out of line.

When Baldonado, Moya, and Ma Duncan were to be executed they took her from the women's prison at Corona and brought her to San Quentin to be killed. I saw them when they drove up. The next morning, when Metzger came in, I said, "Uh, yesterday I saw Ma Duncan drive in." He said, "Oh, did you see 'em? Yeah." I said, "Wow, it's sure far-out, huh? She looked like a little of mother." He looked at me. When he saw I was trying to draw him out, he gave me a straaaaange look. It wasn't a scary look. It was a haunting look. He wasn't threatening me. It was a cold, detached, penetrating look, and I tried to read it, and we looked at each other for a long time. I was writing up his ticket, and he was waiting for me to finish, and I found myself shaking. I would have given anything in the world if I could have met him on the streets as a free man and gone into a bar with him and talked to him and tried to pick his mind and find out what he felt, what he thought, if it bothered him that he'd killed all those people, if he had a reason for wanting to do it, if he felt a moral duty to rid the world of evil, if he was so desirous of money that he didn't care how he got it, if it was sadistic. I just wanted to know. It fascinated me.

It takes a while to learn the ropes of being in prison. It's like anything else-being in the army or being at a new job on the outside. If you work at a factory you have to learn what you can and can't get away with and who are the people to know. It took a little while to learn what was happening, how to do my time, and how to get little benefits and to use situations to my advantage.

I found out after being there for a while and working in the paymaster's office that that gave me a lot of advantages I wouldn't have ordinarily. A lot of people just stay out in the big yard and play dominoes. They loan money and are collectors, and they do all kinds of things that are very dangerous, and they don't have any juice, any status as far as the guards go. But I had a responsible job that set me above most of the people in the prison. I dealt with people's pay. I dealt with their clothes. I dealt with things that were valuable to the people that worked there.

After you shower, you line up to get your whites. The guys that work in the white room handle the towels and socks and shorts and T-shirts. If you have a friend in the white room, if you've got a contract, you do something for him, he does something for you. I knew a guy, Spider Barrucho, an evil-looking cat with blonde hair and a Zapata moustache. A great cat. We'd been friends on the streets. I'd come up to the white room and say, "Hey, Spider!" He'd say, "Hey, Art! What's goin' on?" And if he wasn't handing out the particular item I wanted he'd nod to the guy that was. They had the new stuff stashed. Now, you could get twenty dollars a month, which was your allowable draw, plus getting money on someone else's name. You'd get somebody on the outside to put money on another guy's books. He would draw the twenty in ducats and give you fifteen in cigarettes and other commissary and keep five. That's the standard rate. So, some guys, if they had a lot, they'd pay so many packs of cigarettes a week to the guy in the white room and get brand-new shorts, socks, T-shirts. The guy in the white room had a hell of a job. He made a lot of bread-until he got busted. He'd work so long, and then the heat would bust him. The guards knew everything that was going on because of informers, and they were very sharp. But if you had juice, that's what I'm saying, they'd say, "Well, that's Art Pepper. He works out of the paymaster's office. Let's give him a pass." And they wouldn't come down on me for my starched clothes or my new underwear even though those things are against the law. That's how you get the goodies.

And that's how you don't get rousted a lot of times for things. Sometimes we'd be out on the yard and the guards would walk up to a group standing against one of the blocks and grab everybody and shake them down for contraband. They'd find shanks, narcotics, outfits, gasoline for bombs. They would find stolen items and dirty books that were smuggled in by the guards. (The convicts pay the guards and then rent out the books, two to five packs a night.) They would find glue that people sniff, in hand lotion bottles, white glue from the shoe factory. You might have contraband shoes on. Your shoes have your number on them. My number was 64807. I might be wearing shoes that didn't carry that number. You've paid four cartons of cigarettes for those shoes, or you've stolen them from someone, or someone in the shoe factory might have made them. Sometimes a guard will bring shoes in to a certain convict. He'll wear shoes that will fit this convict and take them off and put on the convict's old ones. And if you were wearing starched clothes-say it's a weekend, you're expecting a visitor, you can't get back to your cell, you're locked out, and you've got these clothes on that you paid two or four packs of cigarettes to get. You've been saving them for this day to look sharp. The guards will roust you and strip your clothes off right there in the yard and march you to Fourposts and interrogate you. They'll try to get you to cop out on who you got the stuff from. And they'll take your starched clothes and throw them in a big tub of water. They have a pile there of the oldest, beatest clothes in outlandish sizes, with tears in them, and they'll just throw you a pair of pants and a shirt, and that will be what you wear until you can get into your cell again.