No Beast So Fierce (18 page)

5

C
ONDITIONED
by prison, I woke early. Already the heat beat down from a cloudless sky that was fuzzy with pollution. I debated between visiting L&L Red or driving to the beach. The latter won. It would be pleasant to walk in damp sand just beyond the surf's reach, soak color into jail pallor, and watch teen-age girls as they scrambled at volleyball or lay basking, bodies shiny from oil. I'd enjoy a respite from the struggle and tension. One of the best things in being a criminal is having no schedule.

Near UCLA I passed a black girl who was quite lovely, statuesque, hair fluffed into a giant natural. She reminded me of Aaron and, more pointedly, that I'd never contacted his mother. Walking the prison yard he would never know about the three weeks in jail. He'd merely know I'd forfeited on my promise.

At a large, bright coffee shop in Santa Monica I stopped for breakfast and made the call. From the little Aaron had said of his mother, mainly a mention of her Christian fervor, I expected the stereotyped “Mammy”. She surprised me. Her voice was undoubtedly accented, but with the sibilance of culture and pride. She'd expected my call. Last week the parole board had postponed Aaron for two years and he'd sent a letter for me. She would forward it or hold it for me to pick up. The latter was best because my residence was unsettled.

I knew the letter was about the escape and I wondered how he had smuggled it out. Now I was more than willing. Aaron would be the ideal crime partner, yet I knew that it would be a few more weeks before he went to camp if he'd just gone before the parole board last week. I needed a crime partner before then.

As I walked back toward the counter, someone called my name. I turned, tense, conditioned to fear. A man was rising from a booth beside a window. He was big and he was grinning. Memory told me he was a friend, though not from where. He wore dark glasses, his hair was white and fell down his neck; he had long sideburns and a full mustache swirling down into a Mephistophelian beard. These embellishments and his loud sports clothes made me try to associate him with the Strip rather than jail.

We were shaking hands, and he was slapping me on the back, when the wheels clicked into place. Jerry Shue. We'd shared a cell in the county jail before I went to prison. He'd been acquitted on a burglary but had a warrant as a parole violator from a Rocky Mountain state. That was eight years ago. He'd been in his late thirties and had served eighteen years in one stretch, three of them on Death Row. At the age of sixteen he'd gone to prison for car theft. The next year he was one of eight convicts—all the others were older—who broke out. A guard was bludgeoned to death. After several days of a giant manhunt through blizzard and snowdrift, and after a gun battle at a farmhouse where they held a family hostage, the last four convicts were caught, Jerry Shue among them. Two had been caught within hours of the break and two others had been shot to death running a roadblock. All those taken alive were sentenced to death for the killing of the guard, Jerry among them. He sat under that shadow for three years, his hair turning prematurely white. The governor commuted five of the six sentences. Only the man who'd actually killed the guard was electrocuted. Jerry's commuted sentence was twenty years. After fifteen he was given a conditional release. He immediately fled to California. Two years later he'd been arrested on the burglaries.

At first I'd thought he was dull—“time-drunk”—but soon I realized it was the quiet stoicism of eighteen years behind bars. He occasionally said something so lucid and penetrating that it was amazing, twice so because of his placid demeanor. He was hardened to violence, too. Who wouldn't be after eighteen years in prison? We'd become close friends in the forced intimacy of the jail cell, talking sometimes until dawn and sleeping through the day. He was still waiting for a decision on the extradition when I was carted off to prison.

“It took a minute to recognize you in all that hair and sharp rags.”

“I recognized you—but there's some miles on you since last time.”

“The only miles I covered were running around the yard.”

“That long?” He was incredulous. “For checks?”

“I just raised. What about you?”

“I went back for three summers. Topped out the twenty. No parole.”

“You look successful.”

“Get the waitress to bring your stuff over. I'll tell you about it.”

While I ate, he sketched his situation. He'd “taken a couple” of scores when he first got out, but then he'd found a woman and she'd brought him the first happiness in his life. She, too, had been buffeted by life, a consort of eastern hoodlums in her youth. She was forty, “but looks ten years younger”, and she'd been a barmaid when Jerry met her. (I assumed that she'd been a hooker at one time or another; anything else was unlikely.) They managed a plush apartment complex in Burbank and he worked as a housepainter and occasionally obtained subcontracts to paint from a small subdivider and hired a crew himself.

“From that outfit you've got on you're doing pretty good.”

“I make twelve to fourteen g's a year. We got two cars, steak in the freezer, and Scotch in the liquor cabinet. I'm happy.”

While he talked, I was thinking of how to inveigle him into coming out of retirement. He was less violently inclined than what I wanted, yet it was unlikely I'd find anyone more suitable. He was unperturbed by sight or threat of violence, but he lacked viciousness. Yet he could stand pressure and knew the game. If it rained shit he'd remain composed and put on a slicker. He would never gossip, a serious failing of many otherwise professional criminals; they want recognition in a world where there is no place for it. That he might pause before shooting someone in a critical situation (though, hopefully, not when our capture was in the balance) was the solitary drawback—outweighed by certainty that my back would be safe if we were alone counting twenty thousand dollars.

Over a second cup of coffee I told him of my situation. He was attentive and sympathetic until I reached toward the heist of the crap game and my need for a confederate; then his face took on the blankness of withdrawal, lips set, eyes bland. One could almost hear his thoughts asking me not to force him to hurt my feelings. Not discarding my hopes, I said nothing directly.

“What are you doing right now?” he asked.

“I've gotta pick up a letter.”

“Come by the pad this evening for dinner. I want you to meet Carol.”

“I might do that. Let me call you first.”

“After five. She's got a doctor's appointment and we won't be back until then.”

“What's wrong?”

“Iron deficiency. Some bullshit. If you need some bread I can lay a yard or so on you.”

“Not right now—but hold on. I might take it in a day or two. You ain't got a submachine gun around the pad, do you?”

He grinned, sadly. “That heavy, huh?”

“All the way. I need money.”

“Is it the money—or is it really because you want the fame, or to strike back at them?”

The question sliced cleanly as a surgeon's scalpel. “There's things mixed in,” I said, “but if I had the money I wouldn't be doing this. What difference does the motive mean?”

“Plenty. The decisions you'll make, the way you'll do things, the risks you'll take—even the risks you'd see and not see. You might win—against bad odds—if it was just money. The other way …”

“Man, I don't need all that Freudian shit. Anybody who analyzes everything too much winds up short-circuiting himself. He gets so involved that he can't make a decisive move.”

“I'm in your corner. I hope you will pull a million-dollar sting and get yourself a villa in Rio.”

We left together. Jerry pulled from the parking lot in a European station wagon, a new economy car, waving goodbye as he went down the drive.

Aaron's mother lived in a small, yellow frame house on a quiet tree-lined street in the heart of the ghetto between Compton and Watts. As I drove down Avalon Boulevard I wished I'd brought the pistol along, for at every traffic light black faces made me aware that I was the invader of a hostile land. What really worried me was that Mary's clunker might conk out and I'd be on foot. The young blacks in knee-length jackets of imitation leather stared so malevolently (and a few yelled curses) that I knew it was risky to be white in this area.

I got the letter at the door and left quickly, conscious that several children had gathered on the sidewalk to stare at me. The only white faces they saw were social workers or police.

I'd correctly guessed the letter's contents. Written with the same spare precision as his speech, Aaron said the parole board had told him he must serve a minimum of two more years. He was being transferred from behind the walls to a road camp in the Sierras. The closest town, population fifteen thousand, was twenty miles away through mountain forest. A camping ground for tourists was a mile from the correctional camp. When I was ready to come for him, I was to send a telegram under his mother's name saying that he'd get a visit on the weekend. On the following night at 10:30, I was to be parked at the entrance to the public camp site with my parking lights on. He would arrive within half an hour and it would give us two more hours before he was missed, by which time we would be burning up U.S. Interstate 99, southbound.

The letter took for granted that I'd come through, rightfully so. There was no need of a maudlin plea for loyalty. For a moment I thought of sending the telegram and going tomorrow. Mary's car wouldn't be trustworthy enough for an eight-hundred-mile journey, but stealing one was easy. What decided me against the impulse was that Aaron needed more than a ride. That was all he asked for, but he would require lodging, clothes, other help. His escape could wait—not long, but for a while.

I mailed him a greeting card saying that I'd gotten his letter and would send a telegram before the visit. I signed his mother's name and return address.

It was too late for the beach and too early to get in touch with Jerry Shue. I drove to L&L Red's pool hall and found him there. He said Willy Darin had come by and said his sister-in-law wanted her car back. And Johnny Taormina wanted me to call him. Red had the number.

“How's it look?” Johnny asked. “Are you ready?”

“When're they gonna play?”

“They played the same night I talked to you, but I knew you weren't ready. In a couple days …”

“Give me your number and I'll check with you every afternoon.”

“So you're ready.”

“Man, I don't fuck around.”

“Good, good. I didn't think you were a bullshitter. Where do we meet afterward?”

“Up on Red's hill. How's that?”

“That's okay with me.”

When I hung up, Red asked, “Are you ready?”

“Fuck no! But if worst comes to worst I'll try to get the motherfucker by myself. Nobody's got a gun so the worst I can do is shoot somebody getting out. Help me find a fuckin' crime partner, Red.”

“I'll look around.”

I next dialed Abe's club and talked to Manny.

“I've been expecting you in,” he said.

“I've been hung up on business. Maybe I'll drop in with a couple friends later tonight. Any word on that business we talked about?”

“Yeah, pretty good. I'll tell you tonight.”

“Yeah, okay. Later.”

“Later.”

6

J
ERRY
was setting a sprinkler on the front lawn when I walked down the sidewalk, having parked Mary's car out of sight around the corner. Jerry wore plaid walking shorts, short-sleeved turtleneck shirt, sandals and dark glasses—strange garb for gardening. His long white hair accented his suntan. He looked more like an executive fighting a waistline and trying to maintain the styles of youth than a man who'd spent two decades in prison. He looked at me incredulously; anyone arriving on foot in Los Angeles is a curiosity. “Where's your wheels?”

“Around the corner. It's one I borrowed—so old and raggedy I'd be ashamed for anyone to see it.”

“Man, you didn't have to do that. I know how it is getting out of prison.”

“Yeah, but your tenants might think it's odd for a bum to be visiting you.”

“Man,” he laughed, “fuck 'em. C'mon, let's have a drink. I've got a little pot, too. Good for the appetite. Carol's anxious to meet you, too.”

“What'd the croaker say?”

“Prescribed some vitamins. Took some tests. She's just run down.”

Jerry led me along a brick walk between high, solid hedges. We entered a plaza surrounded by several two-storey buildings of yellow brick. Huge, leaded bay windows (one above the other, indicating that each building had two apartments) overlooked the plaza where paths fanned from a fish pond and fountain. The paths created borders for beds of roses, pansies, and dahlias—a riot of purple and yellow and orange and white. A patch of lawn beneath a wide shade tree had a picnic table, barbecue and benches. A bucolic scene, peaceful as a cloister. Someone gave it tender care.

“This is too much. Who keeps it up?”

“Me, mostly. Carol does some. I've got a green thumb … and I like it.”

“What's the rent here?”

“Six hundred furnished. There's a waiting list. Most apartment houses in the valley are running 60 percent occupancy.”

“I can see why you've got a waiting list. I wish I could afford it.”

We went up the few steps to his bottom-floor apartment. I noticed that his face was marred with preoccupation; the look of someone who's worried over something besides what they're doing, the worry surfacing at every lapse of concentration.

Carol did look younger than her years. She was tall and slender and wore her blonde hair straight down. She had high cheekbones that chisel the face and hide age. She extended both hands to grasp mine, smiling warmly. “Jerry's been talking about you all afternoon.” The trace of Brooklyn in her voice didn't match her gracious mannerisms and dress, and the good taste of the furnishings. I warmed toward her instantly, though there was a wry thought that all Jerry could have told her was that I was a jailhouse friend planning a one-man crime wave—a less than ideal recommendation.