STICKUP ARTISTS
Murray and Earl couldn't be more different. Murray is a Jewish guy from Brooklyn, a cigar-chomper, built like a fireplug. It's hard to imagine Murray standing on anything but concrete, harder still to imagine him with his mouth shut. Murray's stories are entertaining, like the great stand-up comedians of the late 50s and early 60s. All that's missing are the rim-shots.
At first sight, Murray would probably dismiss Earl as a redneck. "Just an old country boy," is the way Earl describes himself in a well-mannered deep South drawl. He's a big man, powerfully built, but as laconic in his movements as in his speech. Earl is gently good-humored, the kind of God-fearing man who calls on the name of Jesus from time to time, and means it.
In fact, these two men are very much alike. They are both about fifty years old, and they have spent their whole lives as professional criminals, bad guys of the old school. They planned a job, recruited the talent they needed, and then pulled off the robbery, with varying success, as you will see. And both, at one point, picked blue-haired old ladies as their victims.
Earl and Murray also spent much of their lives behind bars. Murray was in prison for more than fifteen years and Earl for about twenty. Prison barely beats the other occupational hazard in the stickup business, which is an early grave. Murray and Earl would both characterize themselves as convicts. Inside prison, there is a distinction between inmates and convicts. An inmate is a person just passing through, who hasn't learned to respect the strict etiquette of prison life, usually because he is too young and full of himself and hasn't been working at crime long enough to get a really stiff sentence. The distinction is expressed like this: An inmate cuts time. A convict builds time. Here is the convict code related to me by another member of the fraternity:
"The convict code is what I live by, bottom line. I am a convict. I am not an inmate. An inmate is somebody who do stupid things. A convict is a person that builds time. I build my time.
"You don't step on my toe, I won't step on yours. If you do step on my toe, and don't say excuse me, you're going to find out who the baddest. It's as simple as that. I'm not going to push my weight around. I'm not going to try and take advantage of nobody. I'm not going to disrespect no officer. If an officer disrespect me, and he make the first disrespect, that's his bad mistake, because now I'm going to disrespect him. I am always going to be in the right. A convict don't want to be aggravated, and he don't want to aggravate nobody. You do time, not cut time, whether you got five years or life."
Earl's last robbery was over ten years ago. He was sentenced to fifteen years on probation, and stayed out of trouble for nine years. "Me and the old lady was kind of going at it, so we decided to get separated, and I was pissed," according to Earl. "My probation violation was moving from my house without telling them. The judge gave me fifty years, for a technical violation, no criminal charge. I saw the parole examiner the other day, and he sets my release date at 2039. That's forty-six years away. I just laughed at him. I said, 'You ought to be ashamed of yourself.'
"'Why's that?' he said.
"'You're not intelligent,' I said. 'If you're going to set a date, set a reasonable date. Forty-six years off. If I build that forty-six years, I'll still be a young ninety-something.'
"'If you're lucky,' he said.
"'That's the way you people feel. And that's the way I feel about y'all. You don't care nothing about me, and I don't care anything about you.' An old-timer can't get no play."
Earl is right. Even though he is way beyond the years when he poses a credible threat to society, his record is liable to kill him now.
Murray is on parole, with a parole officer who drives him nuts. He's convinced she is "out to get" him. Old habits die hard. Murray's wife has stuck by him all these years, even moving from place to place sometimes to be near the prisons where he was busy building his time. When they came into a little money recently, one of the first things she bought Murray was a huge La-Z-Boy recliner. He spends most of his time in their apartment, pushed back in that chair with his feet up, reading. "In prison, I read a book a night. The first few years all I read was the great fiction, any fiction, every fiction. Then for a couple years I only read more technical books -- history, philosophy, psychology. I saved novels as a treat for myself. I have a great vocabulary, but I can't use a lot of it in conversation. Like the word 'rendezvous,' I know what it means, but it's not a word that anybody I knew used all that often. So I don't know how to pronounce it."
Murray's safeguard against his own natural impulses is a self-imposed imprisonment in the La-Z-Boy, away from the temptation to do wrong. More important, Murray is away from the impolite, the thoughtlessly aggressive, the unrepentant boors who step on his toes and don't say excuse me everywhere he goes in the straight world, who don't know the danger they are putting themselves in by ignoring the convict code. It's just not enforced on the streets.
***
My fence came back from a vacation in Antigua where he said he spotted this lady from Larchmont, owns a bunch of beauty parlors in hotels, who's got this fourteen carat diamond ring. I forget what he guaranteed me, twenty or thirty thousand dollars. No matter what it comes out to, I give him the ring and he gives me the money.
I said, "Listen, I don't have any partners. This kind of job usually requires two people. My regular partner's got a homicide beef. This other guy's retired, he's working as a sandhog."
He says, "I got a kid who lives on Park Avenue. He looks like George Hamilton. He comes from money. He's got a tan, clothes, and the whole bit. He sets up scores for a crew of guys. They got busted. He got bailed out. That's about all I can tell you about him."
"He sounds like he's perfect for helping me set up this lady from Larchmont. He'll know about rich people from Larchmont. What do I know about rich people? Listen, though, I don't even have a gun."
"Ah, I'll get you a gun."
"A .38 would be nice."
"Yeah, okay." So he gets me an old long barrel .38. One of those that breaks open, but it's got a firing pin and a hammer. I look at the bullets. Hey, I'm just taking a ring off an old lady. I don't have to test fire this thing. I'm not going into a shoot-out or anything.
So he introduces me to this kid from Park Avenue and the kid says, "Yeah, we can go up to Larchmont and look at the house." I'd meet him five in the morning, we'd drive up to Larchmont with our binoculars, see what time she leaves the house with the chauffeured limousine. We drive down and follow her to the city, see which hotels she was going to go to, what her thing was. "Do you want to take her in the house? We could be waiting in the garage. We could pull her car over and have an accident." We went into the hotels and checked out what the layout was.
He wanted to go into the house to get more than just the diamond. I said, "I remember a kid from this Italian neighborhood. He was sticking up houses in Westchester. For his first offense they gave him twenty to forty. He was a young kid. I seen him nine years later. He lost his hair and teeth, and he looked like an old man. It really shook me up, so I'm not playing around with going into rich people's houses. I'm a second offender. I'd have to do forty to forever. I think I'll pass on going into rich people's houses. They don't like it. We take the ring, they won't get too bent out of shape over that. Someone wearing a ring that could feed and clothe eight families in Biafra, you can't work up a lot of sympathy for her, if you don't hurt her. But going into the house, people can relate to that."
So we rule out the house. We rule out pulling the car over. I tell the kid, "Go into the beauty parlor and see if you can talk to somebody, make sure if she's got the ring. I want to make sure she's still wearing the ring." He does all that.
I says, "You know the hotel is nice. Why don't we drive down from Larchmont with the limousine. We can tell by which turn she takes which hotel she's going to. When we know it's the one we want, we get ahead of her, park the car and time it that we walk in as she's walking up. We get in the elevator with her. The shop is on the first floor. That time of the morning, there should only be the three of us. If it's not, we'll pass. If it's on, I'll stop the elevator between the floors. Show her the gun. We'll take the ring off her, put a pair of handcuffs on her, something over her mouth. Take her up a few floors, put her off the elevator. We'll go down and walk out of the building. Nice. No problem."
"Yeah, that sounds great."
That's what we did.
I don't drive. He's got to do it. We rent a car with a phony J.D. and wipe it clean. We got it parked so it's right on the corner when we come out. We'll bring attache cases, and we'll be dressed up, so we'll look like we belong there.
She pulls up, we're walking, timing is perfect. She comes out of the limousine, and she's got a crocheting bag. Her hand is in the bag. We get into the elevator. Push the button. Stop the elevator. Show her the gun. "I don't want to hurt you. Just give us the ring, and that's the end of it."
"I don't have the ring."
"What do you mean you don't have the ring?"
"I sold it last week."
"Rich people aren't supposed to sell rings. What the fuck, you need a new limousine?"
"I sold it."
"Let me see the hand." She takes the hand out. She doesn't have the ring. "You threw it in the bag didn't you?"
"No. I don't have the ring." She had sold it.
"You really know how to fuck up a party, you know that?" So I throw the handcuffs on her and put the tape on. Forget about this deal. I push the button to go up to like three or four floors. But the elevator won't go up because somebody in the lobby pushed the button for the elevator and it's got to go down first. I'm trying to go up, it's coming down.
"Oops, handcuffs and tape aren't going to look right when this opens in the lobby. Oh, shit. All right, lady, listen. Nothing happened here. It's no big thing. Obviously, if you scream and carry on, you're going to get hurt. Just keep quiet, let us get out of the hotel, and then you can inform them that we attempted to rob you. Use your common sense."
Really I should knock her out, but I'm not one to hit an old lady, and I thought even if she did scream, I got a gun and we're just going to go out through the lobby. There's no cops in the lobby. In retrospect, I should have knocked her out. Why would she want to scream with armed guys? At least wait for people to get into the elevator and have some people between you and the bullets that might come.
Soon as the elevator opens, she starts screaming. My partner panics and goes out the door. He drops his portfolio. But he had his fingerprints on it, because it was summertime and we weren't wearing gloves. When I bent down to pick up his portfolio, I lost sight of him. He was gone now and I assumed that he went to the car.
As I'm going out of the lobby, there was like a mailman there and a doorman. The mailman trips me, he puts his foot out and he trips me, right? Somebody jumps on me. I'm thinking, this is embarrassing. I can't be taken by civilians in the lobby of the hotel. I had a three hundred bench press. I was a pretty good conditioned guy. I threw him off my back. I pulled the gun out. I went out the door.
I put the gun back in my jacket, because I didn't want to go in the street with the gun out. The doorman grabs me in a bear hug. Huh? So I bite him on the nose, and he lets go. I take out the gun and say, "Get back in the fucking lobby." He's holding his nose. Now I walk toward the corner to the car. But some of the people from the lobby are walking behind me. No problem. The car is right there, and so I walk.
I turn around, take out the gun, and they scatter. I put the gun back. I get to the corner, and there's just a locked car. Now I'm on foot in Manhattan. The embassies are up the block, and there's a million cops. Any minute the squad car's going to show up, and they're going to shoot me down.
Here I am running around New York, waving a gun, and these guys are still following me. So I point the gun at them, and they don't scatter. So what the fuck, I'll put a bullet in the air, cut through the park. So I point the gun in the air and pull the trigger. Nothing happens. What the fuck? Something's wrong. But they don't hear it, they don't know it don't work.
Across the street, there's a mail truck, and there's a mailman in there. A mail truck is open on both sides. I'll make him drive me away. I run up to the mailman. I go in one door, and he goes out the other. He's running around the truck. I don't know how to drive. How do I start a mail truck? I continue on down the block.
I can't believe this is happening to me. One thing after another is going wrong. Worse yet, next I'm going to get shot. Now, it's like a posse behind me. I've got ankle boots on. They were in style, but not really good for running, and I had a bad cold. Later on when I got busted, the guys gave me so much room, because they thought I had TB, that's how bad the cough was. They didn't want to stand next to me.
I'm trudging along in my boots with this posse of runners behind me. I got to get rid of these people. It's like I'm leader of a parade here. I put another shot in the air. That don't work. The cylinder turns and, oh, shit, there's something wrong with the ammunition. Now when I looked at it, it looked kind of green. If I was to go into a situation where I thought I might have to use the gun, I would have tested it. Fired it in a basement or drove out to Coney Island. I didn't think I'd be in any kind of problem. All the ammunition in this gun was old and green molded, and the primers were gone. I shot again, and it don't do nothing. Now, I'm not even aiming in the air. I'm getting kind of pissed off at these people. But it doesn't matter. This thing ain't working.
So I'm heading up the third block in the square block. The hotel is on the corner. There's a guy parking his car. So I run up to him. I say, "Get into the car." He faints. He goes, "Oh, my God. Ick." And he goes out. I don't know where the keys are. The keys ain't going to help me. I need a driver. "Oh, fuck. What the hell's wrong with you?" He's out. "Never seen a fucking gun before?" What's happening to me? I got people running through mail trucks, got people fainting on me, a fucking posse behind me. The gun don't work.
They haven't overrun me yet, because they don't know the gun don't work. But I knew. Get to the corner, and I said, "Maybe I'll be lucky and before they shoot me down like a dog, I'll get a cab. Because I can't run too much anymore with these boots and this cold. I'm getting really winded."
I went to the corner, and I see a cab. The hotel is on the next corner. I waved the cab. I get in. It's a red light. His window is down, but he's got the bullet proof thing between us. I say, "Make a right at the corner." Now the people are yelling at him. I can see the doorman is coming across the street. I know that he's not going to run the light. So I roll down my window and put the gun out and into his window. I put the gun to his head. I said, "Make the fucking right, or I'll blow your brains out." Now out of the corner of my eye, I see the doorman coming at me. He's almost there. I took my eyes off the cab driver, expecting him to make the right. He don't know the gun's not working. As soon as I take my eye off him to see how close the doorman is, the cabby grabs the gun. I'm hanging out my window. He's breaking my finger in the gun that don't work. The doorman gets to me, hits me in the face. So I let the cabby have the gun that don't work, because I don't want my finger broken. I get my finger back and get back into the cab and go out the other door. All these civilians, the mob, descends on me. I don't have the gun anymore. The cabby's got the gun. He's trying to shoot me with the gun, but it still don't work. This is really embarrassing. I've been apprehended by a bunch of ribbon clerks. It wasn't because I was inadequate as a thief. It's just that I had bad luck. I found it funny. But I didn't get shot, so who cares.
I tried robbing banks, too. I didn't like it. We went to a carnival, and I proved I was the better shot in the shooting gallery. And these guys know that my whole life I've never overreacted. I never panic in the heat of the moment. I never had to shoot anybody unnecessarily. I wouldn't whip around at the first loud noise and begin capping. I've always preached about don't use an elephant gun on a fly or a fly swatter on an elephant. The appropriate tool for the appropriate job, and not one iota more or less.
So my job had always been to hold down the bank. I would direct the robbery. I would watch everybody. "You just take care of the drawers, and I'll make the decisions about what's happening. I keep track of the time. Come out when I say."
My coconspirators were behind me at the counters, cleaning out the cash drawers. One guy screwed up. He took all the ones, because he was nervous and wasn't on top of it. When he seen they were ones, he threw them out. But it's taking longer now to collect the big bills. I said, "Come on, let's go, let's go! What the fuck you doing?"
The place was full of people. I turned to them and said, "Good help is so hard to get these days. What are you guys doing? Let's get the fuck out of here?"
People kept coming in the bank. I'm standing there watching them. You could see on their faces how many microseconds it took them to realize that something isn't right, the vibes aren't right. But they couldn't see what was happening there. I'm not standing there with a gun. I'm near the door with the gun down by my side. I can see them, of course, and I'm watching as they come past me through the door, but I don't let them see the mask. They walk in, and they start looking around. Why isn't anybody moving? There are these frozen looks on people's faces. You can almost hear the prayers being silently said. I don't know whether to reassure them or just stand there. They might see me and get frozen in the doorway. People outside might see them and notice.
There is a competent-looking guy in the bank. He just stood out from the other men in there. I found out later from the newspaper clipping that he was a professional hockey player. I says, "You!"
"Yeah? What, what?"
"You, when somebody comes in the door, meet them halfway and seat them for me, please. An old lady comes in, I don't want her scared. It's a funny position for them to be in. You're all standing there, told not to move, and she's already in that far. You just seat them for me, all right?"
"Okay." He was taking people off to the side and saying, "Everything is all right. Don't be upset. Sit down here, now. They're just holding up the bank."
That was a time when there had been a rash of bank robberies. Everybody and their mother was robbing banks. There were two or three in the newspapers every day. Banks are being robbed right now, but they don't write it up. At that particular time, the newspapers were yelling, so they started staking out banks. They had mine staked out. Major case squad, FBI. I would have gotten five years instead of fifteen, but it happened to be right in that time when there was all that publicity on the front page. One of the papers had a scoreboard -- Good Guys: 0, Bad Guys: 5. My luck I was doing banks at the exact time this was going on.
We spent too much time in there, and when we came out, they were all over us. Luckily, there were no shots fired. The only thing that bothered me about it later on when I had time to reflect was that, if a cop shot at me, I would have shot back at him. That's his job to shoot at me. It's not my job to kill cops really. But in that situation, I would have shot back, although I don't think I would have initiated the fire -- not to avoid a jail sentence. I certainly wouldn't have wanted to take a life for that. It's not that big a deal for me to do time. There's a point where they got you, and they got you.
The bank is in a silk stocking area. They pick cops for this neighborhood who are articulate and good-looking. A cop had been alerted by a lady who came to the bank, but did not come in the door. I don't know exactly what she told him, but he was coming across the street, talking into his radio. He was in the middle of the gutter when we came out of the bank.
He sees me, and I see him. He's got his hand on his radio, and he's deciding what he's supposed to do. Bank robbers are exiting the bank, there's no car to duck behind. So with body language, he makes his decision. He puts his other hand up on the radio, too. Now both hands are on the radio, which says, "I'm not going to start shooting at you in the street. Don't kill me." He looked like a male model. This was all flashing through my mind. Good-looking cop, young, hip boy. Doesn't want to get killed today, or have to kill us. Or have something almost as bad happen, which would be by firing at me, get return fire that might kill some rich old lady on the other side of the street. We were thinking exactly alike at this time. He makes the body language signals, and I said, "Cool."
I check him, now that I'm going away. I don't want him to change his mind, but he stays true to the deal. He got good marks for that from me, and not just because I got a little farther away. We're not posing a threat to anyone. We're talking about money out of a federally insured bank. Put everything into perspective, man, you know?
We start going down the block. Squad cars are coming up on us, so I make a dash around the corner. There's an apartment building with a service entrance where the maintenance people go in and out. The squad car is coming, and I know this cop is going to shoot me, or I'm going to have to shoot him. I see the door, and I say, "That's a shot. Maybe there's a back door or a window that will put me out into the courtyard where I can lose them."
I went down the stairs, and now I'm in this whole maze of basement. I'm running all around there, looking for an exit. I can hear the footsteps of all these cops, running after me down the stairs, coming down into this maze with me, and running around in it.
There's no windows. There's no back doors. I'm running around, running around. I passed a laundry room. I get in there. I take off my leather jacket, and I hide it with my hat. I had already gotten rid of the stocking mask. I can hear them running, they're going to be coming by. So let me try and bluff my way through. I'm an innocent bystander. They're cops looking for a robber. My hands are empty. I'll just act like I was down here doing my laundry, and I seen the guy run by. But I don't know what's going on. So I had my motivation -- to escape -- and my lines. So Boom! Let's see how the act goes over. It's time for the audition.
They turn the corner. I'm standing there. I go, "He went that way. He's got a gun! Oh, my God!" It must have been right on the mark, because they didn't even hesitate. They just turned their backs on me and continued on out the door and to the left. I went out the door and turned to the right.
More cops. "My God! They're chasing him! He's got a gun!" I did it perfect, because they bought it. I thought to myself, "Look at this. Opening night, and I'm getting good reviews." Maybe I'll work my way up with this, change it a little bit, try some new material. The "Oh, my God!" may have been a little severe. It was perfect for the laundry room, but now "Oh, my God!" might be a little too dramatic. It might strike a false note. "He went that way. They're chasing him. Be careful, I saw he's got a gun." It sounds weak now, but at the moment I was on the money. They're hopped up, and I said it so it sold. They passed me.
"Look, they're all turning their backs on me. Oh, wow! I'm in character here. I have a vision. Maybe I can get to the steps and out. Damn, if I only had a badge, I could put the badge on, I could bust out the door with the phony badge on, barking orders like a detective. In the confusion, I could get away."
I knew that was the way to do it, but I didn't have the badge, and I didn't really get out into the street. I worked all the way through six or eight cops. At least three sets of two cops turned their backs on me and went on. I got up the steps, and I couldn't figure out how to continue this, because cops are still coming in.
"Who are you?" this one cop said.
"He ran by with a gun! I saw him. They're chasing him, with the gun. I saw it."
"Yeah, but who are you?"
I hesitated. I didn't have the badge, and it wouldn't have worked anyway. I had the impulse to try and take them with me. I said, "No, I was downstairs doing my laundry."
"Yeah, but who are you? Let's see some J.D. Any of you know this guy?" I lost my momentum. I could have been creative. I don't know. Maybe I should have ducked into the workroom and waited.
"I think he's one of them. Hold onto him. Bring someone over from the bank, see if they recognize him."
They bring the guy over. "Yeah, I guess that could be him." Even with the stocking mask over your face they see the nose, the glasses.
Now they take me out. They got my coconspirators. I left them when I ran around a corner and a squad car cut them off. So now the cops are saying, "I think this guy had the money, more guns." I'd hidden my gun when I hid my jacket. This had nothing to do with guns. I ain't shooting my way out of this thing. I'm bluffing my way out, or I'm getting busted. So I left the gun. I didn't have the money.
There's this young cop. My hands are handcuffed behind my back. I had my glasses on. This guy is starting to get tough with me, "Tell us where the money is! Tell us where the guns are!"
"I don't know what you're talking about. I was just walking by. I went in that building for a job, and all of a sudden there were guns and people and cops. I don't know anything about anything, you know?"
"That's a ridiculous story! You were one of the bank robbers!" He was right, but he was going a little overboard. He says, "Take this guy downstairs," like they're going to work me over.
"Listen," I said to the guy, "do me a favor. Take my glasses off. You want to give me a beating, I don't care. But just don't break my glasses, okay?" What I was saying was, "This doesn't mean anything to me. You want to beat up a guy in handcuffs, okay, just take my glasses off so I don't have to try to get them replaced." He looked at me, and I could see his recognition that this was a gratuitous act on his part. I didn't say it, but I'm thinking, "You're not going to break my nose. It's already broken. You can punch me around, but you're not going to kill me. I'm handcuffed, and people see I'm handcuffed. It's not going to work. Nice try, but you kind of misread the person you're working on." He looked sheepish, because as a cop he should have known if there is some technique that might have worked. But this really wasn't appropriate, considering my age and experience. He should have known that the physical thing wasn't really going to happen with me. It was a funny moment when his whole demeanor changed.
When I was in the squad car, the two cops said, "We really got you pretty good."
"Did you see the way the 49ers played last night?" I said. "Do you believe that play in the fourth quarter?" Which says, "Don't even be silly with that stuff. We can talk. We can talk sports. You were doing your job, and I was doing mine -- not as well as you did yours, obviously -- but we can shoot the shit." So we started talking sports, as though the guy never said the other thing. He knew I wasn't going to tell him anything. It was professional courtesy among professionals at work.
There was a lot of stuff in the news at the time about corrupt cops like there is now, so I'm thinking maybe cops are dishonest. I got money at home, six or seven thousand dollars. So I said to the cop who arrested me, "Listen, is there any way we can straighten this out?"
"Like what?" the guy says.
"Let me put it this way, if you were to lose a person, if he were to escape from you, how many days pay would you miss, what would the suspension be like?" I was trying to say, "What's it worth to you to let me make a break and get out of the car?"
"Nah," he says. "Don't even waste your time. I couldn't do it, wouldn't do it." But he didn't say it nasty, and he wasn't insulted or offended.
"You guys are really disillusioning me," I said to him. "I read in the paper how you're supposed to all be on the take, what's happening?"
"Nah, we're not all like that."
"Man, my luck, right? I got to meet the only honest cops in the city." And we're laughing about it. They understand, you know?
All my life, I wanted to be a good thief, and I wanted to gain the acceptance of the other thieves. The money was secondary really. If I'd wanted money, I could have been a slum lord, send people to bed crying at night. It's easy to be successful in this country: You can just be a scumbag. You are guaranteed to become a monetary success if you just fuck all the people. You can't miss.
I found being a thief was easy, and it was getting easier as I was gaining acceptance. At the very end of my career, I had finally gained entrance to all the top echelons of safecrackers, drug dealers, hitmen, top stickup guys -- the armored car really big stickup guys. I finally gained that level of acceptance at age forty-five. I paid my dues, and I'd been recognized by my peers. I was invited to join all these different criminal enterprises that made big money. But it was kind of anticlimactic. I liked the romanticism of it. It was a passage of manhood. But it was misguided. I feel it was.
I stepped out of the life when I finally reached that level. Luckily so, because everybody who I would have thrown in my lot with all came to no good. They got big sentences -- fifty, seventy-five years -- or they got killed, the top guys in all these different trades I aspired to. I said to myself, "You were right to step away from it. There's not that much life left for you." I'm almost fifty, halfway to one hundred. There's enough time left to have a great life, but in the overall context of the world, I have different feelings about what I'd like to leave if I could. Just being a top thief doesn't seem to be that important anymore. It seems pretentious.
I certainly wouldn't sell bonds in thievery, or recommend it to anybody to try and lead a life like this. The dues are horrendous. But there are a lot of other aspects involved: the outlaw thing, being your own boss, calling your own shots, and not having to pay lip service to anything. Even as an entrepreneur, you often have to bite your tongue, because you have an objective of making the sale. But I had no goal. I could say anything I wanted to whoever I want to say it, within reason. I didn't have to be a hypocrite. I didn't have to suffer any fools. The guy was a schmuck, I'd say, "Why are you a schmuck, in ten words or less? What, in your life, made you so schmucky?" I don't care if the guy likes me, doesn't like me. I say whatever I feel. In the straight life, when money comes into it, you often have to bite your tongue for the financial effect, so that you don't lose the sale. If you're going to stick them up, you just stick them up. And you can also talk to them while you stick them up. "Atrocious outfit. Who told you that you could wear blue and green together? Boy, that color thing really hurts."
***
Stealing. I made as much money over the years in what I done as if somebody went and robbed a bank. There's no money in robbing banks. That is, they get ten thousand dollars, but they're facing all this prison time. It's not worth it. What I done may sound sissified, but I made a pile of money. To my way of thinking, why take the chance of making ten thousand dollars, if you have to take a great chance, when you can risk a little bit of chance -- almost no chance at all -- and make five thousand dollars. I'd rather take the five grand and not have to worry about having my butt busted.
I robbed beauty parlors. Me and another guy just come up with it. If you just get aggravated enough, and you want to make the money, you figure these things out. It may sound silly, but all them women get their hair done on Friday, sure. You may make a few thousand in cash, it depends on how many people you rob. But diamonds never lose their value, you know? You get a handful of jewelry, diamonds, especially off them little old ladies, I mean carat, carat and a half, some of them two carats, and that's some money.
We was all over doing this. There never was no cops involved really. It was just smooth, like going in and taking candy from a baby. I used to be real big, because I worked out. The guy with me was short and stocky. He was kind of grumpy, you know, a smart-ass. I was always real polite. In one incident, I did hold a gun on about fifteen people. I had a ski mask on -- that's part of the thing. This one lady, she was trying to get me to talk. She told me, "You don't look like the kind of boy who'd do something like this."
"Well, ma'am," I told her, "you don't know what I look like."
"I bet your mother don't know you're out doing this."
"No, ma'am, if she did, she'd whip my ass. Now, please hush. I don't want no more talking."
After it was over with, before we left, one lady was crying. She come up to me and said, "Just leave my purse. Take everything else, but leave my purse."
"Which one is your purse?" And she showed me. "No, I'm afraid I can't leave that." Later, the only-est thing I could figure out, she was a golfer, and she'd won a large sum of money, but it was in a check, and I had the check. She was crying real tears, you know. I felt sorry for her. But if you make up your mind to do something, you have to go through with it, and to hell with the rest.
I generally stuck to jewelry. I set up another score on a jewelry store one time. My ex-old lady used to go in there and have her jewelry fixed, and I decided to follow the owner, just to see what the hell he done. This guy carried everything home with him at night in a black box, all the jewelry people bring in to have fixed, plus what belonged to the store, everything. He put it in the trunk of his car every day, took it with him to the grocery store, and then on home. I found out he did this just by watching. I watched him tote the damn thing in his house. And there's nobody there but him and his wife.
I got with this other guy to plan this job. I showed the guy where the store was at, and set it all up. Something happened where for a couple of weeks I didn't see the guy that was going to do it with me. I went by the jewelry store one day, and it had a CLOSED sign on it. I asked somebody, "What the shit happened? What happened?"
"He was robbed," they said.
"Robbed? Shit!" I made a beeline for my "partner's" house. What he done is, he done my score by hisself -- well, come to find out, his wife drove the car for him.
When I got to his house, I had a Miller Lite beer in my hand. I kept a pistol in my pocket. And I was pissed off. Another guy had come with me. They had all the lights off in his house. I kicked his back door down and went in there. Nobody there. I was drinking the beer. I told the guy that was with me, "There ain't nobody here." I pushed open the bedroom door, and this bastard was standing in the corner with a .38 looked like about two feet long, fixing to shoot me in the head. I just reached and got him so damn fast. I grabbed him and throwed my hand over the gun. My thumb went in between the hammer and the pin, and I clamped down on it. I still had the beer in my other hand, and I said to him, "I got you."
I done cocked the gun and put it to his head, and he went to crying, "Please don't kill me." His wife and two little kids is there, or I would have killed him.
"You motherfucker," I said. "I set this whole thing up and tried to include you in it, then you done took it all." I throwed the gun down, and I took him by the hair on the head, he's got long hair -- I drug him in his kitchen and beat his ass. I made his wife sit there. I beat his ass. I hurt him pretty bad. His little kids was there. I hated to do that in front of those young 'uns, but I was just mad. She said, "I'll call the cops!"
"Go call the cops," I said. "You stupid bitch, what you going to tell them? That you robbed this jewelry store, and ripped me off?" I said, "You better shut your mouth, or I'll give you some of what I give your old man here." I made him sit down at the table. I made her look at him, and I said, "Look at what you're married to. He's more pussy than you are. Look at him, he's nothing. Nothing."
If his kids hadn't been there, I'd have really done something to him. I'm looking at $100,000 it was worth, and a little piece of shit like that takes it off me. I don't know if he'd go tell on me or not. If you have any fall partners, and you done a hell of a score or somebody got killed in it, you might as well take them on out there and kill them, too, because some of them is going to tell on you. That's just the way you look at it.
I got involved in a killing on the streets. It was an accident, which I'll tell you about it. The guy who got killed was named Kramer, and he owned a tile company. I'd been selling him the gold and other jewelry that I was stealing. He owed me four thousand dollars. I'd done business with him for a pretty good while, and he keeps putting me off, putting me off, and I know he's got the money. So me and two other guys, we going to do this robbery on him. I'll just take his, too. I knew he had a little floor safe in his closet, and that's where he kept the goodies.
He knew me, so the other two guys went up there and knocked on his door. He come to the door. My guy puts the pistol on him. Now, if somebody puts the pistol on me, I'm going to give him what the hell I got. When he puts the pistol on him, Kramer attacks him. The gun goes off and shoots Kramer through the left arm. The bullet goes up and hits him in the brain. They come on out of there. So we left.
"Well, what happened?" I said.
"We just killed the guy."
"Lord, have mercy. You killed the guy?"
"But it was an accident." He didn't just go up and shoot the man.
I dropped the guy off who had the pistol. I was talking with the other guy, and I was drinking now. I said, "You sure the man is dead?"
"God damn, he looked dead to me."
"I'm going to go back."
"Go back?"
"Yeah, and you're going to drive the fucking car. I want to see if he's dead." If he wasn't dead, I was going to call an ambulance and leave.
When I'd picked them up, the front door was cracked, probably less than a foot wide. I said, "If the door's closed, we'll just go on." We drove by the house, and the door was just like they'd left it. Nobody there or nothing, so I drove around the block and got out. I went in, and I shut the door. He was laying on the floor on his back. He was dead. I found the safe, but I couldn't get it open. So I just took what he had and left.
It come out later, and the other two tried to put the killing on me. The guy who did the killing was kin to me. That's what family is. You can't trust your family either. The only family I trust is my mama. That's all. It's bad when you got family trying to put you away for just bullshit.
You hear people say crime don't pay. It all depends. If the score is big enough, it pays, as long as you can do it long enough and put you some money back. You can't be driving these Cadillacs and wearing all this shit in gold, and not have any money in the bank. You're going to get caught sooner or later. When you get busted, and they set you $100,000 bond, if you ain't got a dime to get out of there, your ass is going to set in jail. You hear people crying that crime don't pay, but sometimes it does.
This is nothing today. A man in them days, you appreciated his art. A man would plan a job, go do it, not hurt anybody, and make him fifty thousand dollars. Now -- hell! -- they don't plan nothing. They kick your door down, run in there, and rob you. Or go rob a 7- Eleven. What do they get, twenty dollars? That's nothing, and they get a life sentence for it. You ain't even safe to ride the roads. You go through a project, if you have to go that way, and you stop at a red light, if your door isn't locked-shit!-they try and tear the doors off your car to get in there to rob you. It's just bad. And it's going to get worse.
Every time you turn on the television, you see kids out shooting people. It disgusts me. Rob somebody. That's one thing. But to have people begging for their life, and they turn around and just shoot anyway, that makes me want to do something to those kids there.