The Shooting Gallery

Introduction


My whole youth, and part of my early adulthood, was spent surrounded by crime, prisons, boys trying to prove they were men and men still trying to prove they were men. I showed the manuscript of my first book to my mother while she was visiting me on my boat. After reading for 2, maybe 3 minutes, she said, “This book will offend Christians, Joe.”

I remember saying, “I didn't write it for Christians, Mom.” “But you told me you were writing a book about how prayer and God kept you alive and out of prison,” she replied. I thought for a minute then said, “Most Christians aren't the ones who need to read this book. Kids on their way to jail and death might need to know a few things in this book. If I mention God, Jesus, or religion on page one, then the chances are the only ones who will get to page two are Christians.”

As it turned out I leaned towards Christians’ sensitive ears just enough to piss them off. Fifty percent of the Christians who read it believed it was filth and blasphemy. Most of these readers read maybe three or four pages, saw one swear word or even the word sex, and they were done reading. My mother wasn't going to be showing it to many people, at least not at first. It would take one of her deeper thinking friends to read it and say it’s got God’s work in it but the sensitive Christian will have to work at getting past the crime and swearing to get to those parts. The other 50% of the Christians who read the book were mostly younger, more open minded Christians, who knew their kids already knew all these words, and also knew more than some of them about sex. Of course, those in the Southern United States weren't so open-minded, they wouldn't even let it in the library.

How does a man like me, who doesn't walk into a church and who doesn’t always respect some Christians, write a story about youth crime in the U.S. and God’s classy way of handling things, that will benefit both screwed up kids and believers in God? I don't know, but I am going to try because I believe I've grown enough where I'm even going to get a little help from above myself. And I believe that this story needs to be told. If it helps just one kid turn away from taking a path to self-destruction, it will be worth it.

The Shooting Gallery

San Francisco 1969

I walked outside my ground level apartment to check on my 1950 Ford hot rod. It was about two in the morning, a time when a shooting gallery like mine got a lot of traffic. A shooting gallery is a safe place for heroin addicts to shot up. It was only a block from the now-notorious Fillmore Hotel, where most heroin addicts went to cop heroin. I supplied clean needles, and, in some cases the heroin. When a user didn't have money to pay me for the use of my gallery, they would let me scrape a portion of their heroin, which in time added up to enough to resell.

I looked up the hill and saw a weird sight; a young blond woman about 19 or 20 was standing on the corner at the top of the hill. I had never seen a person so out of place. The Fillmore district wasn't safe for anyone, especially at two in the morning. Being white made it even more dangerous. This young girl looked like she belonged at a church social. The only thing missing was a box of wilderness cookies under her arm.

Anyone who lived in San Francisco in the ‘50’s and ‘60’s is aware of the reputation of the Fillmore district, a mostly black area noted for its murder rate and drug activity. There were many old run down homes, lots of Victorian style homes, which have long since been bought up and restored and are now worth a medium fortune. It didn’t take long for the police to figure out that they had a growing problem with middle class white kids and young people getting hooked on heroin. I mean, why else would these kids risk their lives by coming into this neighborhood late at night? Whenever the police saw these kids, they would stop them and search them; even when they didn’t find anything on them, they still found needle marks on one or both of their arms.

I had a 357-magnum pistol in a shoulder rig, which gave courage I didn't have without it. I stood out in front of my gallery just staring at this beautiful innocent-looking blond girl. With her plaid dress, tan shoes and pure white sweater, she looked like a Catholic schoolgirl. I kept wondering, what in the world are you doing in this neighborhood? Out of what seemed to be nowhere appeared a large black man who had walked up to her and started talking to her. He was in his 40’s, I figured. The unsatisfied desire to be a hero came over me, as it had in the past, and I decided to go up the hill and run him off, knowing I would surely be saving this school girl from harm.

This turned out to be a lot easier than I thought it would be. The man saw this young white blond boy, who also looked out of place, walking towards him and quickly headed back down the hill. He must have figured just being white and in this area made me crazy enough to be dangerous. The fact that I was coming at him, instead of running from the sight of him, may also have contributed to his quick departure.

When I got up to the girl and got a closer look, I found she was even more beautiful than I had first thought. She looked a lot like a shorter version of Fay Dunaway, the way she looked in “Bonnie and Clyde”. “Are you all right?” I asked, completely awestruck by her all around beauty, her creamy skin and striking light blue eyes. She had a look of strength and intelligence. She gave me a look of obvious irritation. “What the hell do you think you’re doing?” she said in an angry voice. “Well, I thought you needed help with that guy.” “Help? I'm working, you just ran off a trick.” “Sorry, I'll be a customer then, how much?” “20 dollars for straight sex.” “O.K., my place is right down the block.” “No I don't go to men's rooms, I have a room at the Fillmore number 12, first floor. Don't follow me, wait until I get inside, then come down.” This was before the AIDS epidemic, but I don't think even that would have slowed me down with this woman.

She made short work of me. I'm sure she just wanted this over with as quickly as possible. Maybe she couldn't do this with all men but she sure could with me-that school uniform was out of place but helped make things happen quickly.

The next day, all I could think about was how good that was. I looked for her every night for a week but didn't spot her. Then, out of nowhere, she showed up at the front door of my shooting gallery with Doug Lindt, one of my closest friends. It was about 3 in the afternoon when I answered the door. “Hey Joe,” Doug said, “this is Nan.” “Hello, Nan.” I said, hoping to see recognition in her eyes, but she showed none. “We just copped and we need to use your place.” I never charged Doug, he was too close a friend. It was no big surprise to me that Nan was a heroin addict. It was a surprise to find out she knew Doug. Doug was a tall good-looking man of about 24. He looked a little like a young Robert Mitchum. Doug was a very dangerous street fighter; unlike today's thugs, Doug never carried or used a weapon of any kind. He didn’t need to.

After they shot their heroin, Doug just nodded off in the corner. Nan got up to leave. I wanted to stop her but didn't. I think she was trying to hide her embarrassment about our first meeting. It wouldn't be until she got arrested that I would get another chance to get to know her. Doug had told her that I was a very close friend of Charles Henry the Bail Bondsman, and that I could get almost anyone out of jail with just my signature. She called Doug and asked him to ask me if I would get her out. She must have known how seriously she had affected me. I did get her out, which started the strongest love affair I would ever experience, also the craziest and most dangerous. It didn't take long to figure out that falling in love with a heroin addict was a big mistake. Thinking you would ever really be her man was plan stupid. You see heroin was her man, and would always be put
first. I would end up beating my head against the wall, trying many times to put her out of my life, but just became deeper in love. If only I could get her off heroin.

One afternoon Mia, a big blond heroin addict, came to my gallery. Turned out she was one of Nan's closest friends. I found out that day what brought Nan to heroin to begin with. I found out by asking Mia after getting her suitably loaded on heroin and brandy.
“She came to me the night of her father's death,” Mia said in a low voice, her eyelids almost closing as she continually scratched her check. “He shot himself in the head the morning after it happened.” “After what happened?” I asked. Mia hesitated. “Well, the night before, her father had come into her bedroom, he was very drunk, and she said he drinks a lot. Nan was crazy about her father. She told me he started crying while telling her that her mother never gave him sex, and that he didn't think he could handle it much longer, that it had been over two years since he had gotten any. That asshole was able to convince her, if he didn't get sex that very night, that he would kill himself. So when he climbed on top of her, she didn't stop him. Nan thought her mother was a cold bitch, which I guess made it easier for her to understand her father's frustration.

“The next morning, Nan felt guilty, but was managing to handle it by telling herself she had saved her father’s life. But when the father woke up with a hangover, he didn't fare so well with the memory of the previous events. I'm sure it hit him hard what he had actually done to his own daughter. He went straight to the basement, got a pistol and shot himself in the head. This Nan couldn't handle, she found me that very day and talked me into taking her to the Fillmore to cop heroin, she's been using ever since.”

“How long ago was that, Mia”, I asked? It was 8 or 9 months ago. She was never the same after that, this was a girl who went to a good high school in Daly City, was a cheerleader, dated clean cut all-American boys and, if I remember correctly she didn’t even drink. As a matter of fact, she stopped hanging with me because she found out I smoked weed, she was a real square, an A student who actually studied at night. Heroin was something she would think of is terrible, it took something like this to bring her to me.”

This answered a lot of questions for me, one of which was why Nan only had sex with me when she was loaded on heroin, which later resulted in me helping her get heroin, because I knew it was the only way I was getting any. This would get old and very frustrating until I backed away from her, but I knew I would come back. I was too much in love not to, but for now I headed for the comfort of another woman to try to forget.

While I was longing for Nan, I also spent a lot of time with Doug. Doug was another thorn in my side. I felt like I was always getting him or us out of jail or watching him continuously overdose, many times almost dying. I don't know how that man stayed alive. Like my mother, his mother was always praying that he would stay alive, which I was starting to believe worked.

One of the scariest times in my friendship with Doug was when I got a call from a donut shop on Haight Street near Ashbury in San Francisco. The Haight-Ashbury district at that time was crowded with hippies (flower children). Day and night, both sides of the street were bustling with people walking up and down, looking for and finding drugs, sex and fun. You could sit on a door stoop and entertain yourself for hours just checking out the different outfits, bell bottom jeans with different colored flower patches, real flowers in the girls’ hair and hats, a lot of crazy looking hats too, ones you may think came from Alice In Wonderland . There were girls as young as 12 and 13, most of whom had run away from states all across the country so they could be apart of this sexual revolution. It was as if San Francisco had been chosen to host the biggest, longest 24 hour a day party ever thrown. Doug took full advantage of these hippies, he robbed them and sold them phony drugs on a regular basis.

This day, he had run into one of the male hippies he had sold phony acid to. When the boy angrily confronted Doug, Doug handled it the way he handled most of the spots he found himself in-he punched him hard enough to send him into the street and knocked him out. Doug was accompanied by another of my very close friends, Ricky Estrin, another hopeless junkie, but, in Ricky's case, he would some years later get completely out of the lifestyle and away from heroin all together. Some of you who like the blues may know of Ricky. He is now the very successful lead singer and harp player with Little Charlie and the Night Cats, which originated in the Sacramento area. But today, Ricky was in the wrong place with the wrong person, and Doug’s punch had outraged the hippies who witnessed it so much that they had formed a larger crowd and had started down the street after both Doug and Ricky.

I was at my brother Ron's house when I got the call. It was Ricky and he sounded scared. “Joe, man, you got to come get us, there are about 40 hippies outside Mary's Donut shop in the Haight and they are trying to get in but Doug's got the door blocked. Doug punched one of them real hard, may have killed him, they’re acting like they want to lynch us, get down here man... get us outta here!” “All right, Ricky, I'm on the way.” Brother Ron threw me the keys to his car, somehow he knew I needed it but he didn't really want to know why.

As I drove up Haight Street, I could see the crowd overflowing out into the street. Back then hardly anyone, including shopkeepers, called the police because they were pigs, the enemy. I had grabbed Ron's shotgun, which I had sawed off for robberies. I pulled way over to the left of the mob, got out of the car with the shotgun, and yelled “clear the door!” No one heard me. Caught up in the excitement, I guess. I quickly figured there was only one way to get their attention. I leveled the shotgun at the front window and fired, shattering the glass and making a hell of a noise. The hippies scattered, but turned back after going only a few feet. I played the role: “Anyone who touches me gets blasted.” I lowered the gun in their direction. Here came Ricky in a hurry, heading for this little MGB of Ron's with no back seat, a small sports car but they would make themselves fit. Then I saw Doug walk out in no hurry, all proud of himself and the that fact he had a friend stupid enough to blast him out of there and get him out of a serious ass whipping, which he rightfully deserved.

“Stop strutting and get the fuck in the car Doug!” I yelled. Rick was already in the car and I ducked in also. Doug, still strutting, finally got in and I hit the accelerator. This had definitely been a day where we should have all gone to jail but we didn't.

My problem with Nan was eventually solved by getting sent away for quite awhile.

Doug and I had broken into a house late one night. We hadn’t been in there three minutes when I heard something outside. I went to the window and peeked out. There were two, or maybe it was three, police cars outside with their lights flashing. One of the policemen was heading for the back with a flashlight in his hand and two or three others were heading for the front door, which I quietly made sure was locked. We had broken a window, and I had gotten in by breaking it while I was on Doug’s shoulders. He was 6-5 and I was 5-10. I had just barely reached it. Apparently there were either no 6 footers outside or they just didn’t want to stand on another cop’s shoulders. I heard one say to another when he spotted the open window, “We’re going to have to call the fire department to get a ladder out here, to get in.”

I went to the back bedroom were my junkie friend was still busy going through drawers. He had not heard the commotion outside. “Psst, hey, Doug, cops are all around the house, oh, shit, what do we do?” I looked in the bathroom, which I was standing next to. Maybe we could break out this skylight, get on the roof, and jump from house to house. This house was right across and down a little ways from Juvenile Hall, where Doug and I had spent many a day together. It was on one of the streets in San Francisco where the houses weren’t built side by side, like my block on Middlefield Drive.

No policeman was there so far, and then an idea hit me about how one of us might get out of this. It came to me while I was looking at the large bed next to Doug. I remembered an incident when I was caught in a house, hiding after an escape. I remembered hiding in the closet and watching a cop look for me. He looked under the bed but not between the mattress and the box springs. Had there been a lump in the middle I am sure he would have.

“Look, Doug, if one of us were to get between the mattress and box springs right in the middle of this bed, then the other one could cram towels, sheets, extra pillows, clothes from the closet, whatever it takes to level out the bed, cram the stuff on both sides of the man in between the mattress and box springs and, when it’s good and level, make sure the bed is made back up real neat. Then, the guy who did the stuffing could go to the door, give himself up, and say he is alone.”

“Yeah, Joe, but who gets to go in the bed?”

“We flip for it.”

Doug thought for a minute, then said, “No, I don't want to do that.”

“Why the hell not, at least it gives one of us a chance.” I might lose, so might Doug. “No.” Doug said. Then he went over to the big window which looked out over the back yard, grabbed the shade cord, and lifted the blinds. Knowing the police were out there, he just stood in front of the window and let them shine their lights on him. I knew what he was doing, he wanted this to end before I had a chance to convince him to flip for it. You see, Doug would rather pass on a chance for freedom than risk having to help me and then go to jail alone.

I shook my head. “You’re one weak, selfish man, Doug.” I walked to the front door, and yelled out, “We’re coming out.” A policeman yelled back to come out one at a time with our hands all the way up. I felt even stupider when I noticed an ADT alarm system sign on the garage door. I had not seen it before, something any amateur would look for. I had until then thought I was a professional, so much for that illusion. It was back to that very familiar back seat of the police car for another ride to the pokey.

When I got out, I asked someone, Mia I think, what had happened with Nan. She told me something that made me sad and happy at the same time. “You knew Shirley Sanchez, didn't you Joe?” “Yeah, Jim Schlickman's wife.” “Yeah, well, Shirley and Nan were real close, shot a lot of dope together and suckered a lot of men. Shirley got tied up with this crazy black man and started sticking up dealers. One night they staged a robbery where Shirley pretended to not know her black friend. She had told these two hippies that this man was bringing over drugs to sell them, so they let him into their little dump in the Haight. He told everybody, including Shirley, to get on their knees after he drew his pistol. He got behind them, shot one in back of the head, quickly shot the other the same way, they were in a line in front of him. When he got to Shirley, she had turned her head to look, I'm sure wandering ‘what the hell are you doing, we’re supposed to be robbing them, not killing them’, but she probably wasn't able to finish that thought because he shot her in the temple.

“Joe, when Nan found out how and why Shirley was dead, she put the blame where it belonged, on heroin. I’ve quit since then also, I talked to her about it before she split outta town, it’s the most powerful addiction a person will ever experience, it causes people to even steal from their own family and sell their bodies like Nan and I did. There is almost nothing a person will not do when they’re hooked on heroin, and people die, Joe, every day, young people who otherwise would have most likely had long full lives. Nan actually moved to a small Kansas City town and settled down, dropped the heroin spoon completely. I would tell you how to reach her but I don't know. Probably wouldn't talk to you anyway, you’re not an addict, but you're a heroin memory.”

I'm sixty now, and if Nan looks like Fay Dunaway does now, I'd probably fall in love with her all over again. Nan, with her beauty and intellect, should have never been on Fillmore Street. I blame more than Nan’s father and her friend Mia, I blame a modern society that can’t find a way to keep drugs, especially ones like heroin, out of the U.S. I think about Nan often and wonder did she stay in that small town, and if she did, did heroin move to that small town also? I don’t think it had in the sixties, but I’m fairly sure there aren’t many small towns out there that it hasn’t reached. Yea, I wonder about Nan. You out there, Nan?