Straight Life - Art Pepper [178]
Diane came to see me and she asked about Christmas, and I made the mistake of telling her about the list. I told her I was going to send it to my dad. It would give him something to do. I didn't tell her I was doing it that way because I trusted him and not her. She said, "Oh, you've got to let me do it! I'm your wife! I love you!" I told her if anything happened and she couldn't send it, it would really hang me up. You have to have been in prison yourself to realize what getting these little extra things means. It's blown all out of proportion by the circumstances.
Diane said, "Please, please, please! I would never hang you up. Of course I'll send the stuff. I'll get everything on the list. The most expensive things that there are!" She took the paper. I signed it over. This was three months before Christmas. She said goodbye. After that visit I never once heard. Never got a letter. Never got a visit. Nothing. Christmas came. I never got a package. I never heard a word, except every now and then somebody would come in and I'd pick up these vibes. People would look at me. Little things would be dropped. Finally some friends came to me and told me that some black guy that had just come in had told them about Diane, Art Pepper's wife, in Frisco. She was strung out on this stuff that was famous there in those days-Percodan and yellow jackets and meth (methadrine) mixed-and she was really a derelict. She was making it with these black guys, and they were laughing at me and talking about me behind my back. That's why I'd wanted her to divorce me in the first place-because I didn't want to go through anything like that. People are really cruel in prison. And I heard nothing from her.
Me and Jerry Maher worked in the paymaster's office together, and we used to get loaded together on weekends, and he had the same situation with his old lady. He'd given her his sheet for Christmas and hadn't heard from her since, but he'd get word that she was balling this guy and that guy, friends of his, and that his kid was left someplace, squalling and dirty. I'm half German and half Italian. He's full German and violent. We would spend hours and hours together: "Here's another Diane story." We would get together and talk about what we were going to do to our wives when we got out. We devised tortures. Our favorite plan was to rent a house with a cellar. I'd get Diane and he'd get his old lady and we'd put them in this cellar and chain them up. Then we'd get a real powerful stereo set and put speakers all over the walls; we'd have sounds of trains and airplanes and war sounds and people screaming; we'd turn the speakers on at all different times of the day and night; and they would never know what time it was. They would never see daylight. We would come in with black hoods over us and beat them with whips. We'd make them give each other head, and then, just before they'd come, we'd beat their cunts with whips. We'd pour ice water on them. We would go on for hours, and there was nothing we didn't envision: water tortures, lighted sticks under their toenails.
I was in San Quentin for three years. Then I was sent to Tehachapi, and that's when I went to the parole board and got a release date. I don't know how she found out about it, but after I got my date, they called my name one day and said, "You have a visitor." It had been two years since I'd seen Diane. When I saw her, my immediate reaction was I wanted to kill her. I wanted to beat her to death. But I wanted to contain myself until I could get at her, so by an unbelievable strengthening of my will and the greatest acting job I've ever done I acted cool.
She looked at me and burst out crying. She said, "Oh, I'm sorry!" She said she had flipped out, and she was sorry, and how can I ever forgive