There was only one sure way I could get money and get it
quickly robbery it became my means of livelihood. I don’t know what turns other
men into crooks and robbers. I know only what it took to make me a thief. A
combination of being at my wit’s end, a thirst for excitement and bull courage.
Of course, I wasn’t alone in my jobs. I ran with a couple of guys and we egged
on each other. There’s always a touch of mob bravado in group robbery, as there
is in any form of mob violence.
Each robbery had its own pattern. All of them risky I
remember when a buddy and I robbed the DuBois garage out on DuBois Street in San Francisco. The attendant must have had an
inkling of what we planned to do, because without our noticing him, he managed
to turn off the petcock on our gas down underneath the gas tank.
We got the money and started driving down the street, but
soon the motor sputtered and stopped. While we were wondering what the matter
was, we heard the siren on the police car coming our way. We jumped out of the
car, abandoning it, hopped across back fences, and caught a streetcar downtown,
where we were safe.
Life was nothing but drunken parties and robberies. Once the
police picked me up on suspicion, but I had managed to throw my gun into the
weeds before they got me. I was taken to jail and held for several days, but
they had nothing on me and had to turn me loose. Did that make me feel cocky?
You answer that one!
By this time I was running with the guys and dolls of the
Turk, Eddy, Ellis district. I had ideas of bigger and better robberies all the
time. I hadn’t served any time for a couple of years and if I was going to be a
crook, I was going to be a big-shot crook.
And there was a girl who was just as foolish as I was. She
was ambitious for me to be a big-shot as a wife of a hard-working husband is
for him to get ahead. Maybe more so, because we were both the kind to whom
excitement had a strong appeal, and liked throwing money around. We decided to
rob a drug store, at closing time, where the take would be big. She and I cased
the joint. That is we looked it over and studied all the angles and set the
time. Only, like many another girl before her, she got cold feet and turned me
in. I didn’t know it at the time, but the police were staked out with orders to
shoot first and ask questions afterwards.
But the guy selling newspapers on the corner was one of the
boys from preston
State Reform School. He
spotted the police cars, and as I started into the store, he brushed by me and
whispered, don’t do it, Phil. Cops!
I sat at the counter, drinking a strawberry soda, wondering
what to do. The man locked the front door, waiting for me to finish my drink. I
ached to take a chance but knew that newsboy knew something I didn’t. While I
was waiting, my girl apparently got curious for she came to the door and looked
in. I said to the clerk, let my wife in will you?
Why, yes, he said and unlocked the door. She came in,
wide-eyed wondering what happened. I looked at her with hatred in my heart. It
had to be she who turned me in I grabbed her, and using her as a shield, I went
out the side door to my car. I half-pushed, half-pulled her into my car, and
glanced around. I could spot cars that looked like cops to me any way I looked.
Behind me was a dead-end street, so I gave the car the gas and sped down the
street, hoping they wouldn’t dare shoot because of the girl. They didn’t or I
wouldn’t be telling this story.
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