Free Mr. Blue: Memoirs of a Renegade by Edward Bunker

deck of playing cards. "C'mon,
Gordon, lemme get my money back."
    "Get your ass up here and get whipped."
    Cicerone grabbed a pencil and a tablet already marked
with the scores of previous games. "Go ahead and stretch out on my
bunk," he said to me. "We don't eat for about half an hour or
so."
    "Thanks. Say, where do I sleep?"
    "There's a mattress under there." He pointed
under the bottom bunk. "We pull it out at night. You're lucky you're not
in some other tank where they've got five to a cell."
    I pulled out the mattress. It was more of a pad than
mattress, and it was coated with a sheen from hundreds of sweating bodies. I
was too tired to put the clean mattress cover they'd given me on now. I pushed
the mattress back and stretched out on the bunk. It was like a little cave.
What a day - and it wasn't over yet. What was going to happen? No doubt they
would take me to court in a few days and rule me unfit to be tried as a
juvenile. Then I would begin the process of trial in the Superior Court. What
then? I'd personally known one young man, Bob Pate, who had tried to escape
from
    Lancaster. He had been a juvenile court commitment and
they had brought him here. He was eighteen or nineteen and they had given him
six months. I would turn sixteen in four months. Would a judge send me to San
Quentin? One thing, at least I'd be an adult in the eyes of the law.
    While I mused, I heard the gate at the front of the
tank rattle as metal bowls and coffee cans and other things were pushed inside.
A khaki clad trusty soon appeared outside the bars. He counted out nine slices
of bread and put them on the bars. After him came another trusty carrying a
huge water can with a long spout.
    D'Arcy jumped down off the bed and grabbed several
cups that he put on the floor inside the bars. The trusty hesitated until
D'Arcy gave him a quarter. He then filled all of them and continued down the
tier. Everything was cheaper back then.
    My cell mates ended their game to drink the hot
beverage.
    It was a sweet tea with a taste I'll never forget. It
was served every night.
    "Chow time!" bellowed a voice at the front.
I heard the click lack of a gate being opened at the rear. An obese Asian
shuffled past in slippers. "Who's that?" I asked.
    "Yama shit or somethin' like that," Cicerone
said. "He's been here since forty-five ... or maybe forty-six. Sentenced
to death for being a traitor."
    A traitor? What happened?"
    "You tell him," Cicerone said motioning to
D'Arcy.
    "He's an American citizen. He either joined the
Japanese Army in Japan, or in the Philippines. He was in on the Bataan death
march. I don't think they'll top him. He'll get a reversal or a commutation or
something."
    "Motherfucker deserves a gassing," Cicerone
said. "If anybody does."
    When the fat Japanese American came back, another gate
opened and another man came by. He was Lloyd Sampsell and he nodded to D'Arcy.
They knew each other from the Big Yard in San Quentin. Sampsell was one of the
"Yacht Bandits," so-named because after they took off big payroll
robberies, they would sail up and down the California coast in a yacht. He had
escaped from prison, killed either a security guard or an officer in a robbery,
and was sentenced to die. He had been brought from Death Row for some kind of
court hearing.
    The next man was also headed for Death Row. He was
big, with a hawk nose that had been broken more than once. He was Caryl
Chessman, the "red light" bandit. I'd heard about him. He was
supposed to be very smart. A detective once compared me to him. He passed and
returned to his cell. Next was a small man with a sharp ferret face and scar
tissue that stretched the flesh around his right eye. I was standing at the
bars. He did a double-take and stopped when he saw me. "Goddamn! Who're
you?"
    I recognized the underlying message. My face turned
fiery.
    "Move it, Cook!" yelled the guard up front.
    Cook winked at me and continued to the front for his
food. When he came back, I was at the rear of