My plumbers, my pals, my prison cellies

So I’m riding shotgun inside a heavy-duty pickup truck, an old beater that heaves and coughs like that wreck Jed Clampett and his backwoods kin rode into Beverly Hills.

The cracked-plastic upholstery cuts into my legs, a toxic coat of dust chokes the dashboard. The truck has an old-style bench seat up front and I’m in the middle with my legs contorted, straddling the drink caddy, which at noon is littered with warm Sol-brand beer bottles and crushed cigarette butts. 

On either side are two large men, both with prison records and unknown warrants waiting to be redeemed. With a few missing teeth, greasy ponytail and countless political conspiracy theories, Jack is the passenger, a onetime tweaker and illicit drugmaker whose northern Arizona meth lab got busted back when Breaking Bad’s Walter White was still in high school.

Rolando is behind the wheel. He’s a smooth-talking parolee whose personnel jacket reeks of personality snakes and racketeering raps, a social outlier who each evening after work cruises the streets for working girls and suffers from a sort of narcolepsy that can make him doze off at traffic lights without warning.

No, these men are not my kidnappers. 

They’re my plumbers.

So began my wild, cracked-windshield ride with Rolando and Jack, two bluest-of-collar, good-natured hooligans from the farthest side of the Sin City tracks.

Maybe I’m suffering from Stockholm syndrome, but I am not afraid, perched in that truck with this pair. Quite the contrary, I’m laughing as Jack describes how he’s terrified of needles, or as Rolando tells some ribald story about malfeasance and illegality, like the time two cops on a traffic stop pulled a dead body from the truck of his car.

But I’m no corpse — not yet, anyway. 

We’re on a mission to buy plumbing parts for my Las Vegas-area house. The shop is across town and since the plumbers need my credit card to make the purchase, they bring me along.

I quickly suspect an ulterior motive when Rolando swings the beast into a gas station. He needs $20 in fuel and, apparently, I’m the buyer. Over several subsequent trips to parts stores, as I pay for the required parts, Rolando will throw a few items on the counter — not for me, but for him. Like a butcher with a heavy finger on the scale or a teen tossing candy bars into his father’s grocery cart, Rolando takes advantage.

Gas cap back on, after repeated cranks of an ignition not long for this world, we’re back on the road.

Rolando’s cell phone rings, as it does often that afternoon.

All of the callers are women, including this one.

“Hey baby,” he says.

He turns on the phone’s speaker. I’m not sure whether this makes it easier to steer his truck, he wants me to hear the conversation or, thirdly and most probably, he wants to avoid any possible contact whatsoever with law enforcement.

“I need money,” a voice slurs, with a fuzziness that comes with heavy narcotics use.

“Listen,” Rolando says, “I’ll call you back later. Where you gonna be?”

I met the boys a year ago. My house had a mystery water leak and, loathe to settle for some high-priced suburban plumber, I consulted my Latino maid about anyone she knew. As it turns out, her son knew Jack. 

Call him, she said. He’s good and reasonable.

I did. 

A day later, that now-familiar Jed Clampett ride smoked up to my house, prompting stares from my Republican neighbors, which absolutely delighted me.

The powder-white-skinned Jack, in his early 40s, hopped out and introduced me to his swarthy-skinned partner Rolando, maybe ten years older.

The two got right to work looking for the leak.

“You got a nice place here,” Rolando said, his eyes casing the home like a burglar. “But it needs maintenance.”

So we drove for some parts. I didn't mind paying for gas. I figured it was my contribution to this fly-by-night team. Heck, if they solved my problem and didn’t scalp me on the final bill, I figured it was well worth this minor initial down-payment.

As the guys worked, I listened to their easy banter. Both were good plumbers. They worked independently and consulted when they needed to.

And they talked, both to each other and to me.

Here’s the thing about life in America: We’re storytellers, if given a chance. Meet some stranger at a bus stop, have a long-distance mover pack up your house, and in time they’ll be telling you their history and asking about yours.

Take my pool man, James, for example.

His skin cracked by the desert sun beneath a wide-brimmed Aussie Outback hat, he’s serviced my pool for years now — letting himself in through a side gate. In that time, we have gotten to know each other. When I see his truck outside, I head back out to the pool with a bottle of water to offer him, ready to hear another Tale of James.

And he’s always interested in what story I’m working on now, where I’m going next, my opinion on this or that.

Most clients don’t talk to James, he says; they treat him merely as the pool guy.

Like he was anonymous, a one-dimensional task doer.

But not me.

I find James fascinating.

About my age, he hails from a military family — his father, uncles and grandfathers all wore the uniform. He attended the naval academy and was training to be a fighter pilot when he was bounced from the program due to floaters in his eyes.

He’s written screenplays, spent years as an actor, and once ran a pool-cleaning enterprise with hundreds of employees. Now it’s just solitary James, going about his route, day after day, listening to country music in his earphones, a man whose well-planned life somehow veered off its expected path.

He might well have been a commercial pilot today; instead he cleans swimming pools.

Go to a retirement home and hear the old residents talk about their pasts. Visit any graveyard and carefully read the history inscribed on the tombstones. In 1974, oral historian Studs Terkel wrote a book called “Working” in which he transcribed people talking about their jobs, that thing they do for a full one-third of their lives.

It’s riveting reading. Because everyone has a story, one that’s theirs to tell.

It’s the same with Rolando, who quickly began recounting funny tales about jobs he’d done. Me, journalist and yarn spinner, responded in kind.

The pair returned a second day. While Jack was quiet, Rolando and I continued to warm up. He was curious about my journalistic adventures, at first calling me “sir.” We exchanged a few dirty jokes and then Rolando told me about his near-nightly search after work, driving down the Las Vegas back alleys and bad streets in search of sex.

“Now you’re getting the good stuff,” Jack laughed.

His voice gravelly from all of those cigarettes, Rolando also told about the time he went to the house of a Mexican guy who owed him money.

The guy didn’t have it.

“OK,” Rolando told him. “I’m taking your car until you get it.”

And he did.

Then unlucky Rolando gets pulled over by two uniformed Las Vegas police officers.

They cautiously approach the car, pull him out.

The vehicle is listed as stolen, they announce. 

As Rolando tells his story, one cop takes the keys and opens the truck.

Uh-oh.

He scrambles back, handgun now drawn, and drops Rolando to his knees.

There’s a body in the trunk.

At my house, Rolando sighs as he explains how it all worked out, how the cops eventually figured out that the reeking corpse was not his doing, and that he didn’t actually steal the car.

Telling the tale, he lights another cigarette, smiling at another bullet dodged.

So what is it about Rolando and Jack? Why do I find them so humorous and engaging? Where does my curiosity come from?

I think I know.

Many people harbor a warped fascination with crooks and criminals, these bad boys and girls who challenge authority and, for awhile anyway, beat back the system. 

They’re part of a strange American crime folklore.

Some of us still revel in James Elroy-like tales of our culture’s lawless underbelly, from Frank Booth to Hannibal Lecter. Cable TV is packed with real-life penitentiary tales, many decades after middle-class America swooned over the violent antics of road robbers Bonnie and Clyde.

Sure, they were cold-blooded killers, but in a Depression-era when most average hardworking folks were suffering at the hands of the system, these two anti-heroes took it straight to The Man: the greedy bankers and Prohibition-enforcing coppers. Even if they didn’t care much about collateral damage to those average hardworking folks who might have got in the way.

As a journalist, I take things one step further. In my career, I’ve interviewed mob strongmen, anti-government militia and, decades ago, a convicted child molester who described his tactics as a concerted plot by a calculating adult against the weakening willpower of an unassuming, innocent child.

No contest.

Yuck.

Other than with that creature, I have maintained a strict approach to people I meet and profile: I withhold judgment. People are who they are. You can’t possibly understand them enough to write about them without first listening to them, hearing them.

In the 1990s, I wrote a newspaper story about a Venice Beach poet named John Thomas, who every Wednesday evening drove his beat-up Volkswagen van east to Norco prison, miles inland from downtown LA, to teach a writing class for murderers.

Every single inmate in that class had once taken someone’s life. But Thomas didn’t judge. He said it was impossible to truly determine the depth of a man’s character by a singular event in his life — either good or bad, be it a murderer or a missionary.

Or can you?

Maybe I have a lingering affinity for people like Rolando and Jack because I, too, had my early-life brushes with the law. They involved relatively simple stuff — drug possession and petty theft. I was probably one arrest away from real time.

So what then separates me from them? 

Perhaps I’m just savvy enough to know how far to push things and when to help back.

But maybe not.

My path correction came with finding a legitimate calling, a passion. Journalism is a craft I eventually became good at, one that, for the most part, has not only kept me out of legal trouble but has rendered my passport well-stamped.

The boys weren’t so lucky. Rolando’s father was a hard-nosed contractor with whom he often clashed, so he branched out on his own — which meant doing legal construction work along with other, more un-legal pursuits.

For his part, Jack said he learned his plumbing and water-heater repair trade in prison.

So I have watched these two survivors at work, doing the job they are good at. And I have come to this conclusion:

They’re honest men, mostly. 

They have treated me as fairly as any college-educated plumber who inherited Daddy’s business. Even if Jack too often bends over, his blue-jeans hanging low, brandishing that horrible plumber’s crack.

I can deal.

Still, there’s always a bit of larceny, a hi jink or two, in the hearts of men, and so is the case with Rolando and Jack.

Their world is rough-hewn. They shy away from no task — working as plumbers, electricians and sometime contractors, keeping a small garage in North Las Vegas to repair cars. They work a side-job helping frustrated Las Vegas homeowners rid themselves of illegal squatters.

Rolando and Jack visit the property and, acting as the owner’s agents, squat on the squatters, so to speak, refusing to leave until the house is vacated.

They’ll sit on the couch, tell a few jokes, maybe ask the temporary Lady of the House to fetch them a beer. No worries, they’ll wait. It’s a brazen test of wills they usually win.

Rolando spreads the wealth among down-and-outers he encounters in his backstreet life. He recently hired a street guy nicknamed “Mule” to help in their evictions.

Last summer, I stopped by a home-renovation job Rolando had taken on in some sketchy Vegas neighborhood, the kind without trees any kind, security bars on all the windows and pickups parked on dirt-and-dust lawns. Tool belts hanging from their hips, his team included a few hard-looking street hookers he’d put to work.

I recognized one: She’d called Rolando once when I was in his truck, asking to be picked up outside Sunset Station casino, where she’d just finished with a john. She looked haggard, and asked Rolando for a few more bucks to score.

He gave it to her.

But hookers have other talents, Rolando insists. On the house rehab, the girls knew their shit and took instructions well, he explained, unlike many men he’d supervised.

A savvy operator, that Rolando.

That day at the sketchy neighborhood renovation job, Rolando borrowed my phone to call the owner, handing it back after a few tense minutes in which the boss accused him of padding his hours or making off with materials, both of which he denied.

Later, when I was back home, greeting a guest who planned to stay on a few days, my cell phone rang: It was the site owner. And he wanted Rolando.

As my friend listened, I explained that the phone was mine, that I’d lent it to Rolando.

“What’s up with this guy?” the owner asked. “Is he a crook?”

“No,” I answered, “Rolando don’t roll that way.”

When I hung up, my friend jokingly wanted to know if I’d joined the mob.

No way, I said. What are you talking about? 

It’s just Rolando. 

Still, he shook his head.

One day on the job at my place, Rolando’s phone rang. This time it wasn’t any woman.

A guy who got his number from another guy was calling with an offer: He had a bunch of  generators he was willing to part with cheap.

Rolando listened, and he knew: The equipment was probably hot, a load that had fallen, or was spirited, off some industrial-sized truck.

Did Rolando care?

No, he did not.

He made an appointment to meet with the guy after he left my house for the evening.

The next day, I asked him how it went.

The load, he said, was not stolen after all; the guy just wanted it gone.

His price started at $17,000, then dropped to just under $8,000.

Would Rolando pay even that much?

What do you think?

He’d bided for more time. He expressed interest, but held the guy off for another meet.

That night, he would show up hours late, well after dark.

Why?

Rolando was offering greenbacks, he said, and “$5,000 cash at 10:30 at night is like $15,000 in the middle of the day.”

That day on the hunt for parts, we tried four different stores to find the right shower valves. At one crowded intersection near the Strip, Jack called over to his partner as the light changed.

“Rolando, wake up!” as the truck lurched forward. Rolando attributes his naps to some physical ailment, but Jack says he’s too tired from chasing hookers at night.

We stopped for more gas, courtesy of me, of course. Rolando suggested that we grab some lunch and pulled into a McDonald’s parking lot.

Luckily I spotted a Chipotle burrito shop next door and suggested that. Later, Rolando dug into his beef burrito bowl and whistled, “Wow, this is good food!” like a man used to filling his gut with cheap grub.

The ride’s highlight (or lowlight) came after we’d left our last parts store, headed for homed. At a typically busy mid-city Vegas intersection, we made a left turn right in front of a motorcycle cop waiting at the light.

“Cop!” Jack, always the bird-dog, had announced moments earlier.

With no seatbelt, I looked directly into the cop’s eyes and he into mine.

“Uh-oh,” I said aloud. “He spotted me.”

Rolando watched the rearview mirror: Fuck. The motorcycle cop was on our tail.

“He’s following us,” Rolando announced coolly.

My wild ride had just crashed. 

After all, what did I really know about these two characters anyway? I’d just met them. Were they wanted by the authorities? Are there any more bodies in the trunk someplace? Would I become one of them? 

What a weenie I was!

“I’ve got an outstanding warrant,” Jack announced.

Here was a guy who’d suffered his narcotics bust all those years ago because he’d gotten sloppy, getting high on his own supply.

What other miscalculations had he made? Hell, what miscalculation had I made?

“A warrant?” I asked.

“It’s just for jaywalking,” Jack said.

Still, for an already-suspicious cop, a warrant is a warrant.

Rolando said nothing about his own possible red flags, but he looked a little worried.

“Here,” he said, tossing a pack of cigarettes across at Jack. “Smoke these.”

I was afraid to look, worried the pack contained crack, heroin, or worse.

“Here he comes,” Rolando said, his eyes still on that rearview mirror.

The motorcycle cop pulled up on our right, looked briefly over at us, and passed on.

We breathed a collective sigh of relief. My two plumbers both sensed what hell-on-earth we had just avoided, while I of course had absolutely no idea.

“That was lucky,” Jack said finally, good-naturedly.

He continued: “That would have been bad. We all would have been knees on the pavement, hands over our heads.”

He looked at me smiling.

“You would have wished you’d never taken this ride.”

I sort of already did.

After they dropped me off and rumbled away for their illicit cash-for-goods exchange, I thought about my relationship with Rolando and Jack.

I was a fool, a poser, a patsy, a vulnerable white-collar Joe briefly locked up with real blue-collar lawbreakers. I had no business there, other than being an easy mark.

My critics will agree.

Take a look at the movie “Casino” and closely watch the hilarious-but ever-so-dangerous Joe Pesci character.

One minute, he’s laughing uproariously, slapping your back. Then, just like that, the tables turn: The cackler goes cranky, the sociopath reverts to his true perilous colors.

But it’s too late for you: You’re in the trunk with a gun to your head, or a ballpoint pen sticking out of your juggler.

I believe all of that, to a point.

Rolando and Jack are still my pals. In fact, they’re coming by next week to deliver new shower heads for my house, free of charge.

Did they fall off some truck? 

I didn’t ask.

Nixon had his plumbers and, I guess, so do I.