Straight Life - Art Pepper [74]
They separated us and interrogated us, and finally a guy came in and said, "Well, it's all over. The chick copped out." He said, "I don't know if you know it or not, but she's a minor. You're going to prison for fifteen to life." I said, "I thought she was nineteen or twenty!" He said, "Well, she's seventeen." Fortunately, I stuck to my story and she stuck to hers. They'd told her I copped out, too, but she didn't go for it.
They kept us all night. They threatened me. The next morning they took us to the old county jail downtown. They allowed me one phone call, and I called the club and asked them to put the horn away. I never saw Penny again. They cut her loose the next day. But they told me they were going to prosecute me for furnishing to a minor.
They couldn't make anything stick, see: I'd only been out of the sanitarium a few weeks and I'd fixed only a few times at varied places. It would have been very hard to get me on a marks beef. They didn't have anything to hold me on but I didn't realize that, so when they told me they'd give me a break and send me to the psychopathic ward of the General Hospital and then to a hearing before a judge who'd send me to Norwalk or Camarillo for ninety days, I figured anything would be better than fifteen to life and I said alright.
They drove me to the hospital, handed me a paper, and told me to sign. They told me it was for my property. The attendant took me upstairs, put me on a table, and wheeled me into a room. I looked around. Here's an old wino next to me. He's naked. He's strapped to a table, and he's screaming. And he's peeing. Pee's shooting up in the air. There's another guy, and he's playing with himself and growling. I stayed there for two weeks. They put me in a room with eight other people, all nuts, and they filled me with downers, all kinds of downers, millions of downers. I could hardly walk. I slept nearly all the time. That's the way they keep you cool.
They wouldn't allow me to shave, so I looked awful, and one day I woke up in this corner they kept me in and there was Patti sitting on the edge of the bed. She looked at me and said, "Why did you do this?" I said, "Well, I thought everything was finished: you didn't want me to come home." She said, "I was going to have you come home right after you got out of the sanitarium, but we decided it would be better to let you have a little time on your own so you'd really appreciate coming home. And then . . . " I said, "Well, it's a bum beef." She said, "It's not that! I found out from your mother that you brought some little whore, some little tramp off the streets, into the house, and you were shooting dope and making love in the bathroom! You took this girl out to the garage at night and made love to her!" She started crying. "How could you do anything like that?" - - -- -- --- - -
I realized that I'd fallen into a trap. All I would have had to do was just be cool for a little while. I started crying, I tried to hold on to her, and I said, "Please give me another chance." She said, "It's impossible. You're hopeless." She said, "It's useless. Look at you." She said, "Your dad will be at the hearing. He'll help you." She shook her head and got up and walked out the door.
When the day came, they marched me down to the hearing in pajamas and a robe. We went to a courtroom that's right there in the building, and here's my dad and Thelma and Patti. All the other cases were for people who had done outrageous things-threatening their families with butcher knives, peeing out in the front yard. They brought up my name and the judge started talking. He said, "We're going to send you to Norwalk and try to save your