Mr. Blue: Memoirs of a Renegade Read online

  The limb I held snapped with a loud crack. I fell through snapping limbs that grabbed and scratched me finally landing flat on my back.

  Every bit of air was smashed out of my lungs. I knew I was going to die. I could not breathe. But even while dying, I drew up my legs and rolled over to rise. I wanted distance from the huge mansion. I wasn't thinking. I was running on automatic fear.

  When the first tiny breath kicked in, I was limping across the parking area toward the shrubbery. There was an acre of greenery, much of it half wild, right here — and I knew every inch of it. I hit the wall of shrubbery with both hands folded over my face. I ploughed through with the branches tearing at my clothes and face.

  I veered right, behind the garage, and hit the ground in a space beneath a giant elm whose branches swept the ground. We had put a flattened cardboard box in there, as boys do. Exhaustion modified my fear. It was crazy. I knew there were no ghosts. (Years later, while I was telling this story, a listener said "I'll bet it was a cat's tail that brushed your leg." I think he was right. Mrs Bosco had a black kitchen cat that roamed the house and brushed against legs. What else could it have been? I spent the night in that space beneath the tree, sometimes shivering with the chill, sometimes dozing off" for a few minutes.

  By first light my entire body ached. My back really hurt, and would turn into the largest black and blue mark I've ever seen.

  I dozed and came alert to the sound of rattling garbage cans. Mr Hawkins was hoisting them onto the back of a pickup truck. He was working in the space beside the garage where the cans were kept.

  "Mr Hawkins," I called.

  He stopped work and peered, closing one eye to focus the other one. "Is that you?" he asked. He knew me better than the other boys. Beside the jab, he taught me how to tie a Windsor necktie knot. He may have been poor, but he dressed sharp when he had his day off.

  I stepped out of the shrubbery, but kept the edge of the garage between myself and the house. "What's going on, Mr Hawkins?"

  "You ain' seen Mizz Bosco yet?"

  "No."

  "She called your daddy Sunday afternoon. He said you'd be here last night 'bout six. She's been worried sick."

  "What happened? Where is everybody?"

  "We had a fire in the attic late Saturday . . . early Sunday 'fore it was light. Look there." He pointed at the roof. Sure enough, there was a hole about four feet across. Its edges were charred black from fire.

  "It was the wiring," he said. "They moved the beds to the school auditorium over yonder." He gestured with a finger. "It's just until she can get all the boys picked up."

  A maroon 1940 Lincoln Continental flashed into sight. It went past us around the circular drive and pulled up at the mansion's front door. The car stopped and Mrs Bosco came down the walk to greet the couple who emerged.

  "That be Billy Palmer's folks," Mr Hawkins said. "Gotta get those bags." He pulled off his work gloves and abandoned the garbage cans to head toward the house. I backed up into the bushes.

  A few minutes later, Mrs Bosco and Mr Hawkins came into view. They were heading right toward my hiding place. I backed farther into the bushes, tripping and landing on my butt. That galvanized me. I got up, turned and ran. Mr Hawkins called my name. I was rapidly adding distance between us.

  I leaped over the wrought-iron front fence and ran across the wide boulevard, then crossed a lawn and went down a driveway to a back yard the size of a baseball diamond. Several people in white — I would think of the scene years later when I read F. Scott Fitzgerald — were playing croquet. I flew past. One or two looked up; the others saw nothing.

  By noon, I got off a big red streetcar at the Pacific Electric Terminal on 6th and Main Streets in downtown Los Angeles. The sidewalks teemed. Uniforms of all the armed services were abundant. There was a long line outside the Burbank, the burlesque theater on Main Street. Two blocks away was Broadway where the marquees of the movie palaces flashed bright in the gray December light. I would have gone to a movie, for movies always let me forget my troubles for a few hours, but I knew that this was a school day and the truant officers routinely patrolled the downtown movie houses for school truants.

  On Hill Street near 5th was Pacific Electric's subway terminal. The streetcars left for the sprawling western communities and the

  San Fernando Valley to the northwest through a long tunnel in the hillside and came out on Glendale Boulevard. I took a streetcar to Hollywood where my father worked backstage at Ken Murray's Blackouts, a variety review with chorus girls and comics in a theater on a side street off Hollywood Boulevard. I was familiar with the area. I wanted to be where I knew my way around.

  Hollywood Boulevard was new, bright and crowded. Thirty years earlier it had been a bean field. Now servicemen were everywhere. They came from training camps and military bases all over Southern California. They were drawn to Hollywood and Vine, and especially to the Hollywood Canteen, where they might just dance with Hedy Lamarr or Joan Leslie, or stroll the boulevard and see if their feet fit the imprint of Douglas Fairbanks or Charlie Chaplin outside Grauman's Chinese Theater. Sid Grauman had built three great palaces to honor the movies. The downtown Million Dollar theater was the first, but when he realized the city's wealth was moving west he built two on Hollywood Boulevard, the Chinese and Egyptian. It had a long walk from the box office to the lobby that was lined with images of Ancient Egypt and giant kitsch statues of Rameses II and Nefertiti, or somebody with a head like an animal. That first night on my latest runaway, I went to the plush Hawaiian, farther east on the boulevard, which was showing the original Mummy with Boris Karloff and a new sequel, The Mummy Returns. That scared away my troubles for a few hours.

  When I came out, a cold wind had risen. No rain was falling, but the sidewalk and street were dark where the rain had come down while I was inside. I turned up Gower. The Hollywood Hills started a block north of the theater. Beyond Franklin Avenue was Whitley Heights. It was "old" Hollywood and looked as if it belonged in Naples or Capri. Once fashionable enough for Gloria Swanson, Ben Turpin and Ramon Novarro, in the war years it was still nice, although since then it has lost favor as Hollywood's surrounding streets became infested with poverty and poverty's handmaidens, crime, drugs and prostitution.

  Rain began to fall. I tried to find shelter from the wind. Heading for where my father worked, I walked along Franklin and turned back down Ivar. The marquee had been turned off and the box office was closed. I went down the alley beside the building to the stage entrance. I didn't know the old man on the door, but he knew my father and remembered me from an earlier visit. "We were working the Mayan downtown. It was Abie's Irish Rose . . . or maybe Song of Norway."

  I remembered Abie's Irish Rose at the Mayan, but not the old man. It was immaterial; he motioned me to come in. I shook my head.

  "When's curtain?"

  "Ten fifty-two . . . 'bout half an hour."

  "I'll be back."

  "Here's your dad now. Hey, Ed!"

  My father, wearing the white bib overalls of a stagehand, was crossing backstage. He turned his head, saw me and hardened his expression. As he walked over, his jaw muscles pulsing, I wanted to turn and run. I was sure he wouldn't show his anger here, but I knew the fury of his exasperation. He was never mean, but frustration sometimes overcame him. He looked at me: "Just like a bad penny," he said.

  What did that mean? Bad penny? I'd never heard the phrase and had no idea what it meant. Still, the tension of the situation imprinted it on my memory so that years later I remembered this moment whenever I heard the phrase.

  My father took his keys from his pocket, "Go wait in the car," he said. "It's around the corner on Franklin."

  I took the keys and went out. His car, a '37 Plymouth with the first streamlined ship as hood ornament, was easy to find. The white stood out in an era when dark colors, especially Henry Ford's black, still dominated. On the windshield was a decal "A," which meant the car was allowed the basic ration of four gallons of gas a week. Ga
s coupons were issued and handed over in the gas station. Stealing and selling them would become my first monetary crime.

  I unlocked the car and got in to wait, listening to the rain hit the roof, watching it bounce on the ground. It was hypnotic, soothing, and I must have dozed off. I hadn't really slept the night before. I closed my eyes with cars parked all around. When I opened them again, the other cars were gone and my father was knocking on the window.

  I opened the door lock and slid over to make room. I was wary, for although my father was generous and loving, once or twice he had lost his temper and cuffed me around, yelling: "What in God's name is wrong with you? You can't do what you do. You'll . . . you'll end up—" his anguish stifled his words. His torment never rose to anything near abuse, but it made me feel terrible to upset him and I invariably promised reform.

  This time he avoided looking at me as he pulled out and headed for the Cahuenga Pass. The Hollywood Freeway was almost a decade in the future. As he drove, he grunted and shook his head, reacting to the turmoil in his mind. I thought we were going to the residential hotel where he lived, but he drove past that intersection and went up into the hills. The clouds were breaking up, allowing a little moonlight to come through. Soon we were at the summit, looking down on Lake Hollywood, which was really a water reservoir. It overlooked the western half of the City of Angels, a sprawl of glittering lights with patches of darkness in between. In another ten years, the lights would fill all the LA Basin to the sea — and deep into the desert going the other way.

  My father shut off the engine and gave a long, agonized sigh. He visibly sagged. "What do I do now? Mrs Bosco is closed down. She didn't have a permit for those two crazies upstairs."

  Mrs Bosco had kept two truly demented boys, or young men up there. No doubt she had been handsomely paid to keep them out of sight. One I remember was just slightly gaunt and freckled. The other, named Max, had thick black hair and heavy black facial hair. Max used to come down to unload the station wagon when Mrs Bosco returned from buying provisions. He was strong. He was obsessed with rending his clothes: they hung in rags across his torso, and in strips down his legs. He would rip up a new pair of Levi's if he was goaded. All you had to do was stare at him and tell him, "Max, bad boy! Bad boy, Max!" and he would start passionately rending his clothes.

  She had no permit for these two. And the fire had illuminated their presence to the authorities. Even if she managed to finance roof repair, she was closed down. It was the only place I'd gotten along, even marginally.

  I wanted to say, "Let me stay with you," but the words were choked back. What I wanted was impossible and only agitated him when I brought it up. His standard reply was that he had to work nights; there was nobody to look after me and I was too young to look after myself.

  He turned and looked at me closely. "Are you crazy?" he asked.

  "I don't think so."

  "You sure act crazy sometimes. I thought everything was great with Mrs Bosco—"

  "It is great, Pop."

  "No it isn't . . . not when I find you've been roaming the city all night. You're nine years old, for Christ's sake."

  "I'm sorry, Pop." It was true; my sorrow for his anguish was painful.

  "You say that, but... it only gets worse . . . Sometimes I think about starting the car with the garage door closed."

  I knew what that meant, and from some source within me came a Catholic canon: "If you do that, you'll go to hell, won't you?"

  Even in his despair, he swelled with scorn. "No, I won't. There's no hell. . . and no heaven either. Life is here. Reward is here. Pain is here. I don't know very much . . . but that much I know for sure." He paused, then added: "You'll remember this won't you?" He held my arm above the elbow and stared at me.

  I nodded. "I'll remember, Pop."

  I have remembered, and although I've searched everywhere for a refutation, the facts of existence affirm the dismal truth of his declaration. The only way to deny it is to make a leap of faith across the chasm of reality. That I cannot do. Whatever else I've done, flagrantly and repeatedly and without apology, violating every rule that blocked whatever it was I wanted, I have tried to sift kernels of truth from tons of chaff bullshit. Truth is the distilled meaning of facts, for any truth refuted by a fact becomes a fallacy.

  I am an apostle of Francis Bacon, the messiah of scientific objectivity, which leads inexorably to secular humanism and relativism, and contradicts the notions of kneeling in prayer before one totem or another, be it a cross, golden calf, totem pole or African fertility god with a giant phallus.

  Chapter 2

  State Raised in California

  Eva Schwartz, nee Bunker, was my father's only sibling. Two years older than her brother, she married Charles Schwartz, who wasn't Jewish despite the name. He owned a small movie theater in Toledo, beside Lake Erie, where my fur trading ancestors settled in the eighteenth century. "Bunker" is Anglicized French from the original Bon Couer, or "Good Heart." Childless herself, she had raised a cousin's daughter. When her husband died, Aunt Eva moved west to take care of her brother's son. For the first time I could remember, I had a home. It was a tiny bungalow they rented in Atwater Village, an area between Glendale and the LA River. I had a dog, a small tricolor bitch of mongrel pedigree, and a girlfriend, a blonde named Dorothy who lived next door. I showed her mine and she showed me hers. Her father owned a cocktail lounge on Fletcher Drive near the gigantic Van de Kamp bakery. The dog, named Babe, was my best friend and constant companion. Every day in the fierce summer of '43, we trudged a mile or so along the concrete-lined riverbank, and crossed a footbridge into Griffith Park where there was a huge public swimming pool. Nearby were several stables where a horse could be rented and ridden though the miles of trails in the park. Off Riverside Drive was a big steakhouse owned by Victor McLaglen, the only actor who both won an Academy Award (as best actor, in The Informer) and fought Jack Dempsey.

  I was an habitual wanderer by then. I always wanted to see what was over the next hill or down the road around the next corner. Sometimes I went north beside the river into Burbank, sometimes south beside the railroad tracks. In Burbank I climbed the fence into Warner Brothers' back lot and played among permanent sets of island lagoons and jungle villages. My dog always waited outside the fence until hell froze or I returned. We also explored Lockheed, easily bypassing the ring of antiaircraft gun emplacements. Once the Army bivouacked several thousand soldiers in part of Griffith Park. Rows of tents, lines of olive green trucks. They disappeared as magically as they appeared.

  The railroad tracks ran between the factories, shops and Van de Kamp. A pottery factory there was later declared a major environmental hazard and fenced off for years. Several times I climbed over the sagging fence to see if I could find adventure on the other side. I played in a mound of white powder that might have been asbestos. It never seemed to bother me; it would be decades before anyone declared asbestos dangerous.

  Along the street nearest the railroad tracks were little houses. About a mile from there the single lane of tracks entered the main railroad freight yards and became dozens of tracks. This area was across the tracks in terms of status, and bohemian in lifestyle. The impish and precocious little Irish girl named Dorothy lived there with her hard drinking, heavy-smoking mother. Whenever I arrived Dorothy's mom had a cigarette in her mouth and a glass of beer close by. At least she wasn't drinking from the bottle. It was far different from my aunt's stern Calvinistic demeanor and demands. Dorothy's mom once mentioned how rationing made it hard to get gas. After she had said that I remembered a cigar box full of clipped gas coupons in a Texaco gas station close to the Gateway Theater on San Fernando road. The Gateway was where I saw Citizen Kane. Walking home the following Saturday afternoon I stopped at the Texaco for a Coke. I watched the attendant clip the coupons from a customer's ration book, carry them past me and put them in a cigar box on the desk in the office. The Irish girl's mother would pay a dollar apiece for gas coupons. A dollar would
buy a cheeseburger, milkshake and a ticket into a first run movie theater downtown. The following Saturday afternoon, I delivered far more coupons than she could pay for. She gave me $10 and, during the next few days, sold the rest to her friends. I made $40, which is what a unionized stagehand earned for a week's work. It was my first successful money caper.

  This period of my life was happy for me. Alas, it was disillusioning for my aunt. She was totally unable to rein me in. I was the neighborhood hellion, but I was a well-spoken hellion. In quick succession I was caught shoplifting from the local Woolworth, then seen throwing a rock through a window (to impress Dorothy). Although we got away, they caught my dog and traced me through his collar, and I was eventually caught by a gas station attendant stealing from the cigar box of gas ration coupons. I was spanked and put to bed, and I promised my father and God that I would change my ways and be a good boy. I was sincere.

  Of course I always felt different the next day, or forgot my promise. I woke up in a new world every morning. When summer ended, I went to school for the first time - the Atwater Avenue Elementary school. Because they had no transcripts and because I'd been in three military schools and half a dozen boarding homes in five years, they tested me. Despite the chaos of my childhood, I scored two full years ahead of my age group in reading skill, although I was below average in mathematics. I don't know any more about math now than I did then. I think my weakness in math was because it must be taught in sequence: one thing laid a foundation for the next. My peripatetic life had not been conducive to that.

  The principal split the difference and put me two semesters ahead of my age. I would go to middle school the next semester, a couple of weeks after I turned eleven.

  A month after school started, however, my aunt and father sat me down and solemnly told me that the house we were renting was being sold. We had to move, but because of the war they could find nothing. I would have to go to another foster home or military school. I was devastated, but I agreed to go if my father promised to remove me if I disliked it. Dislike was a certainty, decided even before he delivered me to the Southern California Military Academy on Signal Hill in Long Beach. The rules forbade visits for a month. The commandant wanted newcomers to get over homesickness before they could go home for weekends.