Secrets & Lies (29 page)

But as we sat in the gazebo and Maria kept talking and talking, I decided to do something about it, so I leaned in and kissed her. She responded enthusiastically. Lately, she hadn't minded when I put my hands on her breasts, so I did that and she started breathing heavier. This went on for fifteen minutes or so, and I was getting all hot and bothered. Finally she said, “Let's go to my bedroom.”

Really?

She opened the trap door in the gazebo and we climbed down to the underground tunnel that connected to the wine cellar. From there, it was easy to climb up into the house and sneak past her parents to her room. She closed and locked the door and then she took me to bed.

I hit a home run and scored.

1961

A
UGUST
28, 1961

The Black Stiletto had an exciting night. I finally came face-to-face with the Heathens. It was pretty scary, but I did all right. They're not so deadly after all. They're just a bunch of big, burly, tough, angry white men. Kind of reminded me of Neanderthals; I saw pictures of what they supposedly looked like at the Museum of Natural History, except the ones tonight wore black leather jackets, ha ha.

I met Barry in front of Boardner's, as usual, and he asked me point-blank how I felt about infiltrating a Heathens haven. I asked him to tell me more. There was an auto-repair shop on Wilton, near Santa Monica Boulevard, that the Heathens owned but didn't operate, although members had been seen there. The police were aware that the manager had served two stints in prison; otherwise, it was a garage that wouldn't normally be under scrutiny. Barry's investigation indicated the shop might be a storehouse for the weapons. All I had to do was get inside, see if I could find any guns, and get out. Sure.

So I drove to the neighborhood, parked the car on Santa Monica, walked a block, huddled in an alcove, and then slipped on my mask. I figured as long as no one saw me
as
the Black Stiletto getting in or out of my car, then my identity couldn't be traced through the license
plate. There's quite a bit of light on Hollywood streets, so my foot traveling strategy has changed a great deal since the New York days. There it was fairly easy to dart between dark areas, closed storefronts, and brownstone entries. In L.A. the streets are very different. Instead of brownstones there are houses. Instead of storefronts lining a street, they're gathered in little strip mall parking areas. So now, since I have a rather good relationship with the LAPD, I'll run down the streets in plain sight if it's necessary. Sure, I prefer to stick to the shadows when I can, but it's rarely possible. Running is more difficult because the streets, in many cases, are long and I get stopped by traffic lights. Manhattan had long blocks on the streets going east and west, too, but the north-south avenues were very short between intersections. It's very strange being stuck on a street corner here with ordinary pedestrians, all of us waiting for the light to turn green so we can walk. In some cases I get a bit mobbed if people try to follow me. That's where the autograph seekers and picture takers catch up with me and crowd around. I try to indulge them while the light is against me, but as soon as it changes, I say, “Gotta go!”

The auto-repair shop was well lit, too. The place was surrounded by a high chain-link fence with barbed wire along its top. I guess they didn't want their motorcycles and cars stolen, or they wanted to keep trespassers out, or both, but I wasn't sure how I'd get over it without being seen. The main garage and its several car bays faced Santa Monica and another building was built at an L to it, which was probably the offices and customer entrance. The large gate in the fence was locked, as the shop was closed for the night. Still, lights were on in some windows and the garage doors were open, and I saw a couple of men working on cars.

I headed for the back side of the L-shaped section, moved in between the fence and the property next door, and found a nice pool of shadows next to a pickup truck where I could crouch out of sight. I examined the fence and back of the shop and determined that my only access was from the front—which obviously would be a bad move—or through a door that stood on the back wall of the garage
section. It was ajar, propped open, so that a breeze would blow through to the open bays. The two problems with that were the mechanics inside doing a late shift. I'd performed more difficult tasks, so I figured I might as well try. At that moment, no one was outside the building. I approached the chain-link fence and climbed it as quickly as I could. When I got to the barbed wire top, I grabbed the hook off my belt and used it to pull the wires down far enough for me to swing my legs over. By the time I'd dropped to my feet on the other side, maybe ten seconds had elapsed. Not bad. No one had seen me. I darted to the side of the building near the open door and flattened myself against the wall. I faced an alley and the edge of a small lot full of wrecked cars and pieces of vehicles. A five-foot-tall stack of tires stood a few feet away like a tower of black, rubber donuts.

The sound of hammering and clanging tools drifted out from the garage, along with music on a radio. Johnny Cash was singing “Folsom Prison Blues.” That was an old one; I hadn't heard it since the days when Lucy and I played the jukebox at the East Side Diner. But the tune was somehow appropriate for the situation.

I inched toward the door; it opened away from me, so I was partly masked by the door itself. When I was directly behind it, I heard footsteps close by inside the building. A man shouted, “Byron, what are you doing in there? I gotta go, too!” A more muffled voice called, “I'll be out in a minute! It was that Mexican food, man.” I almost laughed, but then those footsteps came nearer. The man on the other side of the door muttered, “Oh, f—- it,” and then he
walked outside
and stood with his back to me, not four feet away. And what did he do? He unzipped and peed on the pavement in front of the wrecked cars. Ewww, how gross! But you know what they say about catching someone with their pants down? I crept up behind him and locked him in a choke hold before he knew what was happening. He was a big guy, too, and he struggled hard. After twenty seconds or so, he grew weaker and finally collapsed in my arms. I quickly gagged him with the cloth I keep in my backpack, and tied his feet and hands with the rope. Dragging him behind one of the junky cars
was the hardest part; he was heavy! The man was already starting to wake up, but the gag and bindings would keep him subdued. When he was safely hidden, I went inside the garage.

The place smelled of grease, oil, and sweat. The radio was louder and echoed in the space. I didn't see the other guy—he was still in the bathroom, which was behind worktables, tools, parts shelves, and a sink. An old Studebaker was up on one rack, and a pickup truck sat on the floor of the second bay. Three motorcycles stood in another one, and the fourth bay was empty. Access to the other part of the building appeared to be through double doors on the wall perpendicular to the tool shelves. I spied a spindle of chain on a worktable, so I pulled the end of the strand, unrolled it long enough to reach the bathroom, and tied it around the doorknob. Then I tied the slack around the pickup truck's front bumper. Now there was no way the guy was going to open that door. My last act in the garage was turning up the radio much louder so no one could hear Mr. Toilet calling for help.

The guns couldn't have been in the garage. There weren't any secret storerooms that I could see, and there was no place to hide them. They had to be in the other section, so I went through the double doors and found myself catty-cornered from a large room where customers could sit and drink coffee while they waited for their vehicles to be fixed. No one was in there. The counter window was unmanned as well. A door reading “Employees Only” stood next to that. There was another men's bathroom door along with a women's. A glass door opened to the front of the lot, a small customer parking area, and the spacious drive to the gate. I moved to the employee door and listened. Two voices in the back. One guy was heading toward me, saying, “I'm gonna open the gate. They'll be here any minute.”

Oh, my gosh,
who
would be there any minute?

I heard his steps just behind the door, so I scooted behind it as it opened. A man with gray hair and overalls walked out and went straight to the double doors without looking back. He hadn't seen
me. I quickly slipped through the door and into a hallway. I saw a couple of offices, the doors to which were open, and another closed door. Again, I thought I'd hit a dead end. The guns
couldn't
be hidden back there. There simply wasn't enough room. Was Barry wrong?

Outside, the noise of motorcycle engines rumbled onto the lot. I went back to the employee door and peered out to see what was going on. The gray-haired man had opened the front gate, and four motorcycles had rolled in. The headlights brightened the front of the shop like daylight.

Heathens.

The smart thing would've been for me to get out of there fast, but I was too curious to see what the motorcyclists were up to. I watched as they pulled their bikes near the front of the building and stopped. I heard them greet the old man, but I couldn't understand what they were saying.

Then a bullet nearly took my ear off.

A Heathen, wearing a black, sleeveless leather jacket and sporting tattoos on his bare arms, stood at the other end of the hall behind me. He held a pistol pointed in my direction, and he fired again. Luckily, I was already jerking my body to the side, and the round splintered the door just a few inches away from my chest. Nothing else to do but run! I burst out the employee door and into the waiting room, only to run in to the gray-haired man, who in turn was followed by the Heathens! They had heard the two shots.

I was surprised. They were surprised. Everyone was surprised. And then it was chaos. I tried to run for the double doors to the garage, but one of the Heathens grabbed me. I made short change of him, first by easily breaking out of his bear hug, and then by using one of my invented
wushu
moves to jab him hard in the solar plexus. Throwing him over my hip was then child's play. By then, the others were drawing weapons. I had maybe two seconds at the most to do something, so I lashed out at the closest guy with a
Mikazuki-geri
“crescent moon”
karate
kick. It's similar to a roundhouse kick, only
the motion of the foot is in a flatter arc, like the flat crescent of a new moon. The pistol flew from the Heathen's hand before he could squeeze the trigger. Then they all ganged up on me, but Soichiro's training saved my life once again. With a combination of
karate
punches and kicks, and my
wushu
fluid-movement offensive and defensive tactics, I became a whirling dervish and hurt them badly enough to give me the opening I needed to rush through the double doors.

As I ran by the bathroom door, I heard the poor fellow inside screaming, “Get me out of here! Help! Somebody!” I would have laughed as I shot toward the back exit, but I knew I wouldn't have time to scale the chain-link fence and round over the barbed wire before my pursuers caught up with me and put several bullets into my skin. Frantic for a hiding place, I wasted three precious seconds considering whether or not to try and hide inside the pickup truck, but rejected that idea. I heard the Heathens coming through the double doors, so I ran out the entrance from whence I came. I figured I could hide with my tied-up friend behind the wrecks—that was a tempting possibility—but then I noticed the stacked tires again. Without thinking about it, I leaped for the pile, scrambled onto the top, wormed inside the column, and ducked down. I squatted in the middle of the tires—a very tight fit—but as long as no one looked in them, they wouldn't see me.

A second later the men poured outside. “Where is she?” “Where'd she go?” “Danny?” “Danny, where are you?” “Hey, Sam's chained in the bathroom!”

Over the next five minutes, I heard them release Sam, but they couldn't find Danny, presumably the guy I tied up. Police sirens soon approached the lot; the Heathens cursed and started telling everyone to get rid of their weapons. They went back to the front of the shop, giving me the opportunity to climb out of the tires. I stopped briefly to check on my buddy behind the junk car. He grunted and mumbled at me through the gag. I patted his head—then happened to look inside the decrepit vehicle next to me. The seats had been taken
out and a wooden crate sat within the body—the same kind of crate I'd seen at the Port warehouses. I quickly moved to some of the other wrecks and discovered similar crates.

The guns were hidden right out in the open, inside the junky cars.

I got over the fence and crouched in the same shadowy spot beside the pickup truck where I'd been before. I could hear a little of what was happening in front. The cops had arrived and were asking about reports of gunshots. The gray-haired man said something about an “intruder.” After a few minutes of arguing, it was apparent that the cops found one of the men's weapons. “That's an illegal firearm,” I heard a policeman say. About five minutes later, more police cars arrived. The raid was on. That was my cue to appear and tell the cops about the guns in the wrecks behind the shop. Because they were out in the open, the police didn't need a search warrant.