Read Online No Beast So Fierce by Edward Bunker - Free Book Online

giving you any money?”
    â€œHe wasn’t supporting us if that’s what you mean. He’d buy things for Joey and Lisa and they thought he was wonderful, but he wasn’t putting beans in the pot. We get more from welfare now that he’s back in prison. It’s strange to realize it’s easier to raise my children—and feed them—if my husband’s in prison.”
    She poured fresh coffee and we talked until she was stifling yawns. I chased her back to bed, promising to drop by in a few days to see the children. Dawn was only an hour away. Willy and I could stop for coffee and pastry. He could then drop me downtown and go to work. I’d look for a job until it was time to report to Rosenthal’s office.
    My first night of freedom was over. It had not been accompanied by rockets, brass bands, and flying banners.

4
    T HE classified section of the Los Angeles Times had pages of job listings. A tiny fraction might suit me, and of these only half a dozen were downtown where I could answer them before seeing Rosenthal.
    I answered four that morning. One was filled. Another was a giant firm that required employees to be bonded and I walked out without making an application. Two others needed salesmen—but needed a man with an automobile, and neither of them had a guarantee or advances while the salesman learned. I had neither car nor money to tide me over.
    I’d walked three miles from office to office. My feet, after so many years of prison brogans, were unaccustomed to low-cut shoes. Blisters the size of half dollars, puffed with fluid, had formed on each Achilles tendon. When I reached the branch parole office on West Olympic Boulevard I was limping severely. Adding to my discomfort was ferocious heat beginning to press its fist on the Los Angeles basin.
    The building housing the parole office was inconspicuous. Only the lettering on the tinted glass door—Department of Corrections, Community Services Division—set it off from being a small medical building. The waiting room had bare, hard benches, and was empty. A receptionist announced me and pressed a button. The door to the office area buzzed as the electrically operated door was freed. The sound made me wince inwardly. Beyond the door I would be in custody.
    Rosenthal stood in a short corridor beyond, framed in a doorway with a pool of sunlight spilling around his legs. He was coatless and his short-sleeved shirt exposed a carpet of coarse black hair on his forearms. “Come on in,” he said. “I was worried you’d run. You were pretty nervous last night.”
    â€œIf I’d known about your electric doors I might’ve skipped. Something like that is frightening. I feel like I’m in a police station.”
    â€œOh, those … not my idea. Have a seat.”
    â€œI can use that gate money.”
    Rosenthal shuffled through papers on his desk. “Here we are,” he said, handing over the check.
    I held it up. “Thirty dollars for eight years. Not much per annum.”
    â€œSociety doesn’t even owe you that.”
    â€œIt isn’t much to start a new life with.”
    â€œTry feeling more penitent and less the martyr.”
    â€œI’m sorry, I don’t feel anything but a little bitter … and I’m trying to suppress that.”
    â€œSo, what’d you do last night?”
    I had a lie waiting in ambush for the question. “Visited friends, saw a girl.”
    â€œYou stay with her?”
    â€œNo, in a hotel.”
    â€œThat’s pretty expensive for someone in your position.”
    â€œNot this hotel.”
    Rosenthal tilted his chair and propped his feet on the desk. He laced stubby fingers into a web behind his neck and watched me with candid intensity. He chomped gum placidly. Tension grew with the silence.
    â€œI’m less than satisfied with your attitude,” he said, “and about how you’re starting out. First you