sent a guy back to Earl’s place for another look-around and there was Sandra’s river house address on the icebox exactly where I’d left it.
They took me back to Indytown for the night, then drove me to Kokomo the next day and booked me into the Howard County jail. When they took me downstairs to the central lockup, we passed by Skeers in his isolated cell. I pointed my finger at him like a gun and said Your days are numbered, Thaddeus, you sorry son of a bitch. He wouldn’t even look at me.
Earl was stretched out on a bunk, his face bloated and black-and-blue. His ears looked like clusters of purple grapes. He said he’d been about to take the address off the icebox and put it in his pocket when the cops busted in. I told him he was a backbone guy and I was proud to know him. He said I shouldn’t talk too soon, that if they’d given him the business another five minutes he would’ve caved in.
We’d been in the clink two weeks when Pearl showed up for a visit. She signed in as my sister Gladys and showed a birth certificate to prove that’s who she was. She told me she’d arranged for a lawyer for us but it wouldn’t do much good, not with Skeers’s turning state’s evidence. She said Skeers hadn’t finked her too because he knew she was friends with Sonny Sheetz, the Indiana mob boss up in East Chicago, and nobody with an ounce of brains wanted trouble with Sonny. I said she didn’t have to worry about me and Earl keeping our mouths shut, but it wasn’t because we were scared of Sheetz or anybody else. I’d heard of Sonny Sheetz, but to tell the truth I was still ignorant of how much clout he really had. Pearl said she knew Earl and I were backbone guys and she appreciated it and that we could always count on her to help in any way she could.
Earl’s jury was moved by the testimony of his mother and his sister Mary and refrained from recommending the habitual criminal sentence. Instead, he got twenty years at the state penitentiary at Michigan City. As for me, the prosecutor insisted that I was a hardened criminal who deserved the state pen no less than my partner. But Mom again came through with a good attorney. He made an eloquent argument that I was a young victim of bad company, that I never would’ve broken my parole or become involved in a bank robbery if it hadn’t been for the nefarious influence of Earl Northern, and that, given a chance at rehabilitation, I would yet prove a lawful and productive citizen.
Let’s hope so, the judge said—and packed me off to the new reformatory at Pendleton, saying I could be out in three years if I walked the straight and narrow while I was there.
It took a few hours for it to fully hit me that I was headed back behind bars, and then I was in such a rage I was afraid to open my mouth for fear I’d start howling and never be able to stop.
T he Pendleton superintendent was a bigmouth named Miles. He liked for everybody to call him Boss. He was at the reception building to look me over when I arrived. He made a little speech about having read my Jeffersonville file and how he was convinced the court had made a mistake putting me back in a reformatory when my crime warranted the penitentiary and that I better not think I could get away with any monkey business at Pendleton and blah-blah-blah. When the processing clerk at the desk asked my name—as if he didn’t know—I said Millard Fillmore. I refused to sit in front of the mug-shot camera, so Miles ordered the hacks to force me into the chair and hold me there. Each time the guy was ready to take my picture, I shut my eyes or turned my head or stuck out my tongue and he’d have to take another one. After more than a half-dozen tries, Miles said the hell with it and told the clerk to use the best of the lot.
A pair of hacks yanked me up out of the mug chair and one of them said Real hardcock, ain’t you?
I said That’s exactly what your mother told me, only she was smiling.
I dodged his wild
They took me back to Indytown for the night, then drove me to Kokomo the next day and booked me into the Howard County jail. When they took me downstairs to the central lockup, we passed by Skeers in his isolated cell. I pointed my finger at him like a gun and said Your days are numbered, Thaddeus, you sorry son of a bitch. He wouldn’t even look at me.
Earl was stretched out on a bunk, his face bloated and black-and-blue. His ears looked like clusters of purple grapes. He said he’d been about to take the address off the icebox and put it in his pocket when the cops busted in. I told him he was a backbone guy and I was proud to know him. He said I shouldn’t talk too soon, that if they’d given him the business another five minutes he would’ve caved in.
We’d been in the clink two weeks when Pearl showed up for a visit. She signed in as my sister Gladys and showed a birth certificate to prove that’s who she was. She told me she’d arranged for a lawyer for us but it wouldn’t do much good, not with Skeers’s turning state’s evidence. She said Skeers hadn’t finked her too because he knew she was friends with Sonny Sheetz, the Indiana mob boss up in East Chicago, and nobody with an ounce of brains wanted trouble with Sonny. I said she didn’t have to worry about me and Earl keeping our mouths shut, but it wasn’t because we were scared of Sheetz or anybody else. I’d heard of Sonny Sheetz, but to tell the truth I was still ignorant of how much clout he really had. Pearl said she knew Earl and I were backbone guys and she appreciated it and that we could always count on her to help in any way she could.
Earl’s jury was moved by the testimony of his mother and his sister Mary and refrained from recommending the habitual criminal sentence. Instead, he got twenty years at the state penitentiary at Michigan City. As for me, the prosecutor insisted that I was a hardened criminal who deserved the state pen no less than my partner. But Mom again came through with a good attorney. He made an eloquent argument that I was a young victim of bad company, that I never would’ve broken my parole or become involved in a bank robbery if it hadn’t been for the nefarious influence of Earl Northern, and that, given a chance at rehabilitation, I would yet prove a lawful and productive citizen.
Let’s hope so, the judge said—and packed me off to the new reformatory at Pendleton, saying I could be out in three years if I walked the straight and narrow while I was there.
It took a few hours for it to fully hit me that I was headed back behind bars, and then I was in such a rage I was afraid to open my mouth for fear I’d start howling and never be able to stop.
T he Pendleton superintendent was a bigmouth named Miles. He liked for everybody to call him Boss. He was at the reception building to look me over when I arrived. He made a little speech about having read my Jeffersonville file and how he was convinced the court had made a mistake putting me back in a reformatory when my crime warranted the penitentiary and that I better not think I could get away with any monkey business at Pendleton and blah-blah-blah. When the processing clerk at the desk asked my name—as if he didn’t know—I said Millard Fillmore. I refused to sit in front of the mug-shot camera, so Miles ordered the hacks to force me into the chair and hold me there. Each time the guy was ready to take my picture, I shut my eyes or turned my head or stuck out my tongue and he’d have to take another one. After more than a half-dozen tries, Miles said the hell with it and told the clerk to use the best of the lot.
A pair of hacks yanked me up out of the mug chair and one of them said Real hardcock, ain’t you?
I said That’s exactly what your mother told me, only she was smiling.
I dodged his wild
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