"I fought the law and the law won," goes the refrain. Bunker reversed that, beating authority at its own game -- subverting the status quo by crafting art from the penalties imposed upon him. As Bunker puts it in his memoir, "A lotus definitely grows from the mud."

"My relationship with the world changed," Bunker says. "When I got out of prison, I had not found God or anything. I had been in and out so many times and failed so many times and had [negative] attitudes about making it. Being a published writer changed all that."

If it hadn't been for his talent and drive, things might have been different.

"At one time in prison, I wrote over 200 letters for a job and didn't get an answer," he says. "I don't mean 'kiss my ass' or 'suck my dick' or 'fuck you, convict.' I didn't get a reply -- from nobody. I mean, the social contract has to work two ways."

The hardships and brutalities Bunker underwent in the pen fed right into the gritty realism he's known for. Unlike his great friend James Ellroy who "makes everything up," Bunker says he makes nothing up: "It's all taken from memory or experience or someone else's stories."

Even the bit parts he gets in movies not drawn from his life or fiction overlap his own history with an eerie irony. It was his cameo as Mr. Blue in the 1992 Quentin Tarantino film "Reservoir Dogs" that brought Bunker to the attention of Gen-Xers. In the film, he was part of a gang of hardened jewel thieves -- once again, a role for which Bunker had ample real-world preparation.

Would Bunker have become a writer, much less a celebrity, if he hadn't been in prison?

"Who knows?" wonders Bunker. "I loved to read. I read as an escape from the misery of my existence. But you don't know what you would have been. You go back and say, 'If I hadn't done that, I wouldn't have been this.' Well, I wouldn't have been me. There are other things I have an inclination for -- I have a natural affinity for the law, for the logic of it. I learned it easier than anything in the world."

However, being an ex-con still carries a stigma, even for a renowned novelist. Bunker points to the controversy surrounding convict Jack Henry Abbott, author of "In the Belly of the Beast." Abbott became notorious in 1981 for stabbing a waiter to death in New York's Greenwich Village after Norman Mailer had worked to secure his release from prison.

"That maniac-rat!" Bunker exclaims. "After that, every schlock TV series in the country had an episode with a convict-writer. I'm the only other one. Who else is there? It really did me a lot of damage. It still does. A lot of people can hide the fact they've been in prison. How can I hide it? It's part of my reputation."

Does Bunker still have problems with authority? Does he miss the adrenaline rush of breaking the law?

"Sometimes," he smiles. "But I can't punch people. They'll sue me and take money from me. If I ever start to miss the rush, I immediately remember the courtroom and the joint on top of that. No persons over 40 are heavy thieves. You burn out. The guy may have done things wild when he was young, and he may be a habitual criminal. But he doesn't do the same things. He becomes a shoplifter or a petty thief. Hard crime is a young man's game ... Once you're locked up, you're locked out. It's almost impossible to do what I did."

About this time, Bunker's young son appears in the doorway of the office, ball in hand, to ask his dad to play. Bunker's eyes light up as he tells him he'll be there in a minute.

No, Bunker will never return to the transgressions of his past. The social contract has finally worked, for him at least. Now he has far too much to lose.

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