No Beast So Fierce (26 page)

Aaron and I stopped on the way to Pomona, at Willy Darin's. Aaron wanted a ten-dollar balloon of heroin and I wanted a pound of marijuana. Willy was home watching the boys when we arrived. Selma was working in a toy company. Willy had been fired from his job and had devastated his car on a telephone pole when the brakes went out. From the wreck he'd also gotten a traffic summons for driving without a license. When he went to court it would come out that his license was revoked.

Willy was unruffled by his predicament. He'd used his personal miracle drug to erase concern. I gave him a hundred dollars to buy another junk automobile so he would have transportation. It left me with less than a hundred and made me more diligent in looking for a bank to rob.

The one we decided upon was part of a colossal shopping center in Anaheim. There were two department stores, an immense drugstore, a supermarket the size of a warehouse, and many large retail businesses. The shopping center and its acres of parking covered a square mile. It was so new that construction crews were steamrolling blacktop on its fringes, and some stores had yet to open for business.

The bank was on one end, low-slung, ultra-modern. Its facade was designed to allow the maximum of light while surrendering the minimum of privacy. It had a commercial teller, isolated from the others. I got in line to ask a question and confirmed that there were stacks of hundred dollar bills in a drawer literally filled with green currency.

There were two entrances, one on the side, opening onto the wide parking lot. The side door was small, set into an alcove. Someone would have to cover that door, which was out of sight from the front door. It meant that all three of us would have to go in, leaving nobody at the wheel. One of us would step inside the front door, move to the side and wheel out the M16. All of us would have full hoods over our faces. The second man would vault the rail and start cleaning the commercial teller. If he got that done quickly he could clean the others, too. The third man would wait near the side entrance. We figured two minutes inside gave us plenty of leeway. A man can scoop a lot of money in two minutes.

The man by the side door would leave first, be in the car as we came out. We'd throw a smoke bomb for greater cover. A stolen car would carry us down a semirural road for one mile, and a private dirt road through orange groves to where we changed cars. We'd come out of the private road (which wouldn't be on street maps) on a major boulevard five hundred yards from a freeway entrance. The police would never anticipate us being in that position from the direction we'd been using.

Once we'd found the right bank, the robbery went quickly. We visited the bank for three days, drew straws for our roles—I got the M16 and Jerry was to go over the rail. Aaron would watch the second door and drive the car. On the next afternoon, at 1:55, we heisted it, using pillowslips with eyeholes for masks. Half the employees were gone for lunch, and half of those who remained weren't aware that a robbery was in progress until it was practically over—when Jerry came over the rail carrying a sack of money and someone yelled at him. Jerry pointed a pistol at the man and the yell was stifled. We were in the bank for two minutes and forty-one seconds.

At 2:45 we were squatting on the floor of the hillside apartment, hurrying to finish counting and dividing the loot before Allison came home. Piles of money and discarded bank wrappers covered the floor. The total was thirty-two thousand, which was ten thousand more than I'd expected. All of us were jubilant and relieved.

“We could've got more if we'd knocked out the alarm,” Jerry said, stating a fact rather than a complaint.

“We'll have that next time,” I said, meanwhile stacking my share in a shoebox—as good a place as any.

“This might be enough for me,” Aaron said.

“Motherfucker,” Jerry said, throwing a playful headlock around Aaron's neck, “you can't quit now. Get a few nickels and fold, huh? This is the easiest shit in the world—money from home.”

“We'll talk about it tomorrow,” I said. “We're not hurting. We can take time to decide what to do. Remember there's bait money in there, so don't spend any big chunks in one spot. Change it over first.”

“Man, I know all that,” Jerry said.

“I worry about you, fool.”

“And I love you, jive ass motherfucker.”

We were indeed very happy.

13

I
N
the weeks after the bank robbery, countless things happened, some good, some bad, some exhilarating, others depressing or infuriating. But now, distilling them, I see that it totalled the most nearly happy period of my life, tainted solely by awareness of how precarious it was. The nexus of this happiness was Allison. My enjoyments were more fulfilled because we shared them, and the unpleasant, ugly things were soothed by her presence. Love was never mentioned. The feeling was not one of fiery passion. It burned softly. We were comfortable together. It was an end to loneliness.

Allison never knew of the bank robbery, though the sudden upswing of fortune was impossible to hide, especially when I'd bitched and grumbled about lack of money. By simply neglecting to mention the money I hid it for a few days, and this was long enough to cover its origin. One day's coverage was all a bank robbery got—on an inside page of the
Los Angeles Times
and thirty seconds on the 10:00
P.M.
television news. If Allison saw either, the information passed through one ear and out the other. She first realized that I had some money on Saturday, the morning following her last day of work. I went to buy myself clothes, and she went along to give me advice and counsel, for she knew styles better than I did. When she saw what I was spending she arched an eyebrow and made a wry comment that I must have visited a Mexican gold mine. She thought I was involved in narcotics traffic, but limited her curiosity to that single oblique comment. She'd so thoroughly and so quickly learned to ask no questions that I might have confided in her—if I'd been alone. I had no right to entrust Jerry and Aaron's well-being to her, which is what I'd have been doing if I confided.

Thereafter, we fell into a life that was a long vacation.

It was the summer's end and we spent many afternoons at the beach. She was deeply tanned, golden with flecks of freckles, especially around the shoulders. She lay soaked in oil, basking with transistor radio and book. I'd bought her
Siddhartha
and she was entranced by Herman Hesse, though some of what he said depressed her. I never understood how she could read with acid rock belching from the nearby radio. My pallor burned, peeled, and finally darkened to a respectable Southern California hue. On Allison's advice—plus looking around—I let my hair grow longer than at any time since early teens and zoot suits, and wore more colorful clothes. She talked me out of growing a beard.

Days and nights were leisured. We browsed in musty bookstores and silent museums, or sat in parks smoking grass and watching children romp on carpets of sunny lawn. My anger at life and society never went out, but it dimmed. When I thought of how fragile this interlude was, how doomed (I was still a wanted man, still committed to further crimes), it hurt. The pangs came swift and unexpected, leaping to mind at Santa Anita when my horse won with fifty on his nose and I should have been exuberant. It came while we were laughing in Disneyland, and while we were in a discotheque being bombarded with mind-swarming sound.

Despite the spasms of foreboding, life was good. A Las Vegas weekend stretched into six relaxed days because we were enjoying ourselves and nothing required that we leave. I won eight hundred dollars at the dice table the first night; it was the only night we gambled. The way I lived was enough of a gamble to satiate that craving. The town was overflowing with entertainers and floor shows we wanted to see, and during the day we went horseback riding into the desert, or speedboating on Lake Mead. Jerry and Carol joined us for the last two days. Carol was losing weight and Jerry whispered in drunken, frightened confidence that the doctors were considering slicing off her breasts. I phoned Aaron and invited him to fly over. He declined without giving a reason, but lily-white Las Vegas is hardly the safest town for an escaped Negro lifer.

When we returned to Los Angeles, I mailed half a dozen bright picture postcards of the casino-hotels to friends in prison, knowing the token of remembrance would be appreciated.

Occasionally, when I was driving alone, I resented being happy, resented having found things that I cared about. I was enjoying life too much, was making things too precious, especially when it had to end. Had I lawfully reached my situation, a nice automobile (but not new), a decent wardrobe (but not a closet of silk suits and alligator shoes), a comfortable dwelling (but not a penthouse), and a woman whom I liked, nothing in the world could have induced me to risk losing it by committing a crime. I would have worked my ass off. Of course that was wishful thinking in the face of reality. And when it came down to truth—I didn't know how to do anything but steal.

I resented thinking about such things, for the only way I could cease being a fugitive was to become a prisoner, a Hobson's choice if there ever was one. Like everyone else, I could squirm and move around the boundaries of destiny prepared for me—and by me—but I could never go beyond.

“I've got to tear off another score,” Jerry said. “Whether it's that jewel sting or another jug … with you dudes or Single O. It takes a millionaire to keep paying for blood transfusions.”

Aaron shook his head slowly, refuting Jerry's desperate twang. Aaron soothed without condescension. “Cool it, brother. I'll loan you a couple rather than have you run wild into something.”

Jerry looked down, abashed. He shook his head. “I don't need it right now. But if we don't crank something up in the next few weeks I'll be hurting. I'm gonna fail Carol, no matter what.”

“They're not going to quit giving her blood and let her die. Run up a bill.”

“They'll want credit references, all that bullshit. Blood we can get in the county hospital, and if I can't show them money or where it's coming from, that's where they'll wanna send her.”

“Yeah, you damn sure can't show them where it's coming from. But we'll have something, don't worry. My bankroll's getting thin too.”

It was true. Just two months ago we'd rushed from the bank with a shopping bag full of money. I had twelve hundred dollars left. Aaron probably had half his money, for being a fugitive required that he live in inconspicuous frugality. Actually, Jerry probably had more, too, but his expenditures were unavoidable and ongoing, whereas I could pull back from high living and not be forced into a caper for months. Desperation crimes, however, are bad business, for desperation blinds judgment. From my view as well as Jerry's it was best to pull a heist soon. Aaron and Jerry knew about Gregory's, and during the week we'd each looked at it separately. I'd gone in with Allison, ostensibly to price engagement rings, but really to look the place over. I'd also checked the manager out. His name was Jules Neissen. He was married, lived in Topanga Canyon, had a wife and an eight-year-old daughter.

Now we were conferring in a plush, dim steakhouse on the coast highway. A steakhouse with beamed ceilings and walls paneled in rich dark wood. I'd reserved a choice table beside a huge window that overlooked the ocean surf as it pounded jutting rocks. The restaurant had been a favorite place of mine before prison. It had changed very little. We talked over filet and lobster. Though the conversation sometimes wandered to include the recent World Series and the looming elections, our real interest was another robbery. We got serious about it over coffee and pie.

“Are you sure you can nail the alarm?” Jerry asked Aaron.

“I won't know for sure until I try, but it looks like I can, given the right equipment. Silent alarms work off telephone lines. That's how the alarm is transmitted. Somewhere in the area, on a telephone pole or, in this case, in a manhole, there's a junction box where a whole bunch of lines come together. I cut into them one at a time until I find the right line, then jump it so when the alarm is set off it doesn't go through—kind of like holding the ringer on a bell. I'll need a device to measure … Anyway, I think I can do it.”

Jerry grunted, turned to me. “You say we might get half a mil in ice. Can you dump it? If that fence goes kaput we can't take it to a pawn shop.”

“The fence says he can handle it. I haven't got any reason to doubt him.”

“If you can trust him.”

“I checked him out. If he wants to burn us, he's going to give up everything, wife, kids, business. It's a lot of dough and maybe that's what he wants. Maybe he owes a hundred thou and has a hot cock mistress and is looking for a way out. We can't run that through R&I. But I don't think he plans to tear up his whole life. He might get slick with the count, short us some money—and he might come apart like wet toilet paper if the fuzz gets him. But why should they get him? Nobody knows but us. Believe me, 60 percent of the wholesale price is george.”

“We get 20 percent apiece for risking our asses,” Jerry grumbled. “He gets 40 per cent. I wish I had that hustle.”

“You didn't have the foresight to get in his position,” Aaron said. “He took twenty years getting ready.”

“The only foresight I had was the walls in Canyon City. Okay, he gets 40 percent. What's to stop him from flying to New York and make an anonymous phone call to the heat? He could get us pinched and keep everything.”

“That would be super-Machiavellian,” Aaron said. “But even without knowing him I'd doubt that he was psychologically capable of that risk. It would take a desperate man to try threading that needle. He can't be sure we wouldn't spill our guts. Furthermore, he doesn't know anybody but Max—and doesn't even know where Max lives. He'd have to figure that if any of us was free there'd be revenge, and a fool would see that if we've got enough nerve to run into a Beverly Hills jeweler's with a machine gun we'd have no qualms about killing him.”