Free the Onion Field (1973) by Joseph Wambaugh Page A

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    Then Douglas and Greg both left Boulder City separately for Los Angeles, Greg explaining he wanted to collect some money owed him. On February 15 Greg made two "collections" at a West Covina liquor store and another at a Santa Monica liquor store, but by then Douglas had returned to Oceanside. In late February Greg's "collections" were interrupted when his sister broke into his apartment and took his automatic. Every dollar he had stolen also disappeared, more than six hundred. It was the final ignominy.
    "I know why she did it," he raged to Maxine during the telephone call to Boulder City. "She's trying to stop me from robbing, Max. She's trying to straighten me out by stealing my gun. But goddamnit, why the hell did she take the money too? She could at least have left me the money. It'd take the whole goddamn staff at Vacaville to figure out just one goddamn move by one goddamn member of my family! They'll drive me to a little rubber room, I tell you!"
    Greg drove to Las Vegas, bought a Colt .38 revolver with a four-inch barrel, and returned to Los Angeles with Maxine, where they moved into the apartment of a black drag queen he had dated in the past. One day a knock at the door startled Greg, who ran into the kitchen, drew the revolver from his waistband, and accidentally fired a shot through the floor. The drag queen suggested that they find other lodgings.
    Then Greg met a little black man named Billy Small who helped them find an apartment in a black neighborhood on 65th Street. Billy and Greg were to keep very busy for the next few nights. After the gardener had finished the old woman 's yard, he went to his next stop, an old California home, with a line of yuccas out front They were sound healthy yuccas with long stout spiny leaves bending from massive trunks. Out near the street was a leaning Japanese black pine. In just the right place, so that the majestic plants didn 't overwhelm it, was a dwarf nectarine with droopy shiny leaves. The gardener wished he had the training and license to landscape places like this, not just maintain them. A landscape architect, that would be the thing to say when people asked what you did for a living.
    When the gardener used to do his job with an old friend it was always he, the gardener, who had the touch for slipping plants. The friend often admired the way the gardener could make things grow from cuttings.
    He has a way of making things live," the friend would say. "He cares about living things and that's something a license can't give you. I'd rather have him landscape and care for my yard than someone with more imagination. He cares about living things."
    And now the gardener knelt beside a potacarpus and wondered if perhaps this weren 't the only error the owner had made in this otherwise magnificently landscaped property. A touch of greater delicacy was needed on this side of the yard, not this evergreen with its illusion of fullness. The Italian stone pines around it were enough. You mustn't be afraid to have a little spot of bare earth with nothing growing there. You must know when you 're finished and then stop. That's the way he committed his crimes. He had a regular route. He stole from each place on his route and he didn't stop for the day unless he got something of value from each of them.
    Then he unloaded his mower from the bed of the truck and with the sun straight up and hot, rolled up the sleeves of the workshirt and took off the hat to wipe the sweat from his forehead and neck. The headache wasn't so bad now. As he stood there on the lawn he saw a mailman walk down the street carrying a leather mailbag. The mailman looked familiar, but the gardener couldn't remember. He started getting stomach cramps and hoped it wasn't another attack of diarrhea. It was so hard to remember faces anymore. Maybe the mailman was from the other life, back in those days. But how could he be? Then it struck him. The mailman looked like the man in the yellow shirt, the one who