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Vato Maldito: My Life of Crime by John "Bubbles" Gallegos, edited by Raoul Vehill

Saturday, 21 November 2009 00:00 raoul vehill
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We arrived in Colorado Springs about one am though there were blizzard conditions that night in the mountain passes. I gave Leno M. $300 and the car title for driving us. We boarded the next Greyhound to L.A.. When we got to L.A., we had a few thousand dollars each. But we had no heroin to sustain our drug habit, and didn't know where we could buy any.

 

 

We rented a hotel room for a couple of weeks, during which time we went through withdrawal. His wife and children arrived just as we were moving out. Johnny, his wife and children left for San Francisco that night. Before leaving he gave me a five and wished me the best.

 

I didn't know where to go. I had 5 bucks in my pocket. I bought a small bottle of port wine and wandered down Sunset Boulevard, trying to figure out what to do. I sat down on a porch across the street from a furniture store to get out of the rain. I watched as the manager of the furniture store across the street closed up.

 

When I finished my small bottle of wine I got a tire iron from an old trashed out car I had found earlier. I used it to open the front door. I entered as quickly as I could, searched the store and found a money box with about $8OO in it. I left before the police arrived, as the place had a burglar alarm.

 

I had met a Puerto Rican that lived a few blocks away when Johnny and I had been looking for a place to stay. He was the manager of the apartment house where he lived. I knocked on his door and he answered. "I need a place to stay for the night," I said. "Do  you have a room open that I can rent for the night?"

 

"Man, I'm sorry bro. I have nothing open now."

 

He saw that I was soaking wet from the rain. "Come on in," he said. "Where's your buddy, Johnny?"

 

"He went to San Francisco with his wife and kids."

 

"How come you didn't go with them?"

 

"I wasn't invited," I answered.

 

I knew  that the guy was a drug user, so I told him that I had hit a furniture store up the street.

 

"Did the cops come?" he asked.

 

"Not to my knowledge."

 

He had a car, so we drove to the store to check it out. The door was still open.  No cops had been there, so I figured the burglar alarm didn't work. I loaded his car with a few TVs and stereos and  went back to his apartment. He told me that his wife was in the hospital for a few days with a kidney infection. "You're welcome to stay the night if you want." I slept on the couch.

 

The next morning, we went to a fence he knew and sold our goods. With what we made, we bought an ounce of heroin and started dealing. I rented my own place and opened up a joint bank account with Joe, my new partner who let me sleep on his couch and was helping me with the heroin. Soon we had several thousand dollars in the bank.

 

One day an immigrant from Guatemala approached Joe about dealing some heroin for him. Since I could speak his language fluently, Joe let me deal with him. The Guatemalan had a quarter pound of heroin. I managed to get it on consignment from him. When he came to collect his money, I paid him what I owed him. I explained to him that Joe and I had a joint bank account, and that I had withdrawn my half of it to pay my part of what we owed him. "Joe took out the other part and bought a car with the money," I explained. "I thought he had withdrawn the money to pay you, but I guess he didn't." That night, the Guatemalan poured gasoline on Joe's new car and torched it.

 

When I first agreed to deal for Israel, the Guatemalan, I told him I would pay him when he handed over the other quarter pound. He wanted me to cover Joe's debt. I told him that if he handed over the other quarter he had promised I would cover the debt. "Until then," I said, "I have to use my money o buy from other people." Which I did.

 

During all this, I had been working for an auction company. When I first arrived in L.A., Patty Hearst had just been kidnapped by the S.L.A. in February of '74, if I remember right. It was now August, as I was  cashing my paycheck at a local bar. I watched TV as the  L.A.P.D. surrounded a house in west L.A. and burned it  to the ground, with most of the S.L.A. inside. Patty Hearst and the Harrises, two S.L.A. members, were not in the house.

 

The L.A.P.D. began a massive manhunt for the  Harrises and Patty Hearst. I happened to be going with a girl who resembled Patty Hearst. We were in my apartment a few days after the house was torched, when all of a sudden, the door came crashing off the hinges and about 12 high ranking police officers rushed in with guns drawn and ordered us to lie on the floor. The entire eight story hotel was surrounded and even the streets were blocked off as elicopters shone their bright lights around. After bout an hour the cops determined my friend was not atty Hearst and left. But not before warning me that hey knew I was dealing. In other words, "Get out of Dodge!" That same night, I moved to Echo Park and laid low for awhile. I had been trying to persuade my wife to join me in L. A., but she was waiting for our second child, Elgerine,  to be born. While she was delivering Elgie, the doctor discovered that Peggy had a tumor. Now she wanted to wait and discover how serious the tumor was. So I decided to return to Denver.


VATO MALDITO: My Life of Crime, by John "Bubbles" Gallegos

Now Available!!! from Enlightened Pyramid

A notorious Denver professional criminal tell his story in his own words. Armed robbery, addiction and hard time are just the tip of the ice berg in this career thief's autobio.

 

 

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