Straight Life - Art Pepper [128]
Frank and Ruben saw that I was really strung out again so they asked me if I would be interested in making a little bread. Frank said, "There's a nightclub out in the valley I've been casing. We'd like to burglarize it. You're in if you'd like to do it." I said alright. I was broke by this time. I'd gone through just about everything and was already owing rent. I said, "Where's this place at?" Frank said, "That's one of the problems. It's right next to your house." The club he was referring to was one of these great big places on Ventura Boulevard, next door to where I was living. I realized that if I did this job I'd probably have to move, but I said okay. I wanted to see if I had the nerve to do something like that. When I was in jail I'd heard guys talk, and I wanted to see if I could do a righteous burglary like that, with weapons, so I said alright.
About a week before the job, Diane and I left the house. We didn't tell the landlady. We went and stayed with Frank in East L.A. We took everything out of the house, but we moved our stuff just a little at a time so the neighbors wouldn't know we were leaving and notify the landlady. We had to have access to the house to burglarize the nightclub.
They decided to do it on a Saturday night, actually Sunday morning. We drove out there in the Thunderbird. Frank had a black leather jacket on and a pair of black slacks. And he was wearing a hat, a stingy-brim hat. He was a dapper cat. There were two guns, and I wasn't allowed to have one. They were afraid with my inexperience I might get nervous and fire when there was no need to, which was a drag for me. I felt I should have one just in case. I was voted out of having a gun.
We parked in back and entered the house through the back door. We didn't turn on any lights. We used candles. When it got to be about 2:30 Frank went down the street to a pay phone and called the club. Somebody answered. He asked about reservations and came back. At 3:15 he called again, and there was no answer. He waited and called again. No answer. He let it ring and ring. Then he walked by the club and looked at it from all sides. There were no lights, no cars in the lot. He came back to the house and said, "Everything is ready. There's no one there."
The plan was to cut a hole in the wall. The hole would come out in the kitchen area. They would go from there into the club itself, search that, take whatever was stashed, and then go upstairs into the manager's office, where the safe was, with the money. Ruben was one of the best safe men in East L.A. Guys would pull burglaries; they would have the hole already drilled and cut; and then they'd go get Ruben to open the safe.
Frank said to me, "You're going to be the lookout. That means I want you to look out the front windows and the side windows and keep circulating, keep your ears open. If you hear anything take this flashlight and signal us." I saw them getting the tools out and I said, "Why do you have to go through the wall?" They said, "You can't go through the doors because there's alarms on the doors. You have to go through the roof or a hole in the wall."
They went out and started the hole. I could see them from the bedroom window. Their manner was very businesslike. They didn't waste any time. It was almost like surgeons working, you know: "Chisel. Wire cutters." The side of the building was stucco, but every so often as they went through the wall they'd find a big piece of wire mesh (I think there were about three of them, to make the wall strong), and each time they came to the mesh they had to cut-they had to make a hole large enough for a body to get through. It was hard work, and every now and then I'd hear an "owwwww!" when they'd cut themselves