====================== The Emerald Triangle [More Adventures of Doug McCool] by Miles Archer ====================== Copyright (c)2003 by Miles Archer NovelBooks, Inc. www.NovelBooks.com Mystery --------------------------------- NOTICE: This work is copyrighted. It is licensed only for use by the original purchaser. Duplication or distribution of this work by email, floppy disk, network, paper print out, or any other method is a violation of international copyright law and subjects the violator to severe fines and/or imprisonment. --------------------------------- *_As I fell onto my back, I heard another shot._* I was now walking across the face of a rocky slope, with piles of scree here and there. I could clearly hear someone ahead of me, since they occasionally dislodged a rock that rolled enthusiastically down the steep hill. I was sweating bullets in spite of the sun being down behind the trees. My back and thighs started to burn and ache. Not far ahead was another copse of trees, oaks now instead of the denser firs. The ground flattened out there and both of us would make better speed. I picked up my pace, trying to get off the tricky slope and onto the flat. I was making my way gingerly across a scree slide when something whizzed past me and I heard the shot. Startled, I dodged on the loose gravel and like ball bearings, the stones shot from under my boots. The Browning flew from my hand as I threw my arms out in an instinctive attempt to keep my balance. As I fell onto my back, I heard another shot. Then I started sliding downhill, pell-mell, with stones and rocks rolling around me. I wrapped my arms around my head and tried to roll into a ball. I did not bounce nearly as well as a ball would have. I thought that I was going to slide all the way to San Francisco. It was a good hundred yards to the bottom and somewhere on the way down, I felt a supremely agonizing shot of pain travel from my lumbar region into my legs, like being struck in the back by lightning. I rolled to the bottom, rocks and dirt half burying me, the dust so thick I was coughing and choking, each cough sending waves of pain down my legs. I tried to stand as soon as I came to a stop but couldn't seem to get my right leg motivated to do anything useful. I peered up at the top from where I had fallen and saw a figure looking down at me... -------- This is a work of fiction. While reference may be made to actual historical events or existing locations, the characters, incidents, and dialogs are products of the author's imagination. Any resemblance to actual persons, living or dead, is entirely coincidental. All rights reserved. No part of this book may be used or reproduced in any manner whatsoever without written permission of the publisher except in the case of brief quotations embodied in critical articles and review. For information, address NovelBooks, Inc., P.O. Box 661, Douglas, MA 01516 or email publisher@novelbooksinc.com *NBI* Published by *NovelBooks, Inc.* P.O. Box 661 Douglas, MA 01516 NovelBooks Inc. publishes books online and in trade paperback. For more information, check our website: www.novelbooksinc.com or email publisher@novelbooksinc.com Produced in the United States of America. Cover illustration by Frank Sipala Edited by Nancy Bishaw ISBN 1-59105-107-X for electronic version ISBN 1-59105-132-0 for trade paperback -------- To Brian Rice, an unflagging fan and a noble spirit, and generous patron of mystery writers; I miss you, man. To Steven Jones and Beth Anderson: keep sluggin', compadres. -------- *Chapter One* The Zodiac Strikes On the night of October 11, 1969, San Francisco taxi driver Paul Stine picked up a fare in Union Square and headed for the Presidio, a tree-studded military outpost occupying the northwestern tip of the city. Police found his cab stopped in front of 3898 Washington Street, where it intersects Cherry. Stine had been shot in the right side of the head. Three teenagers happened to look out a second-story apartment window across the street and saw the passenger remove the dead man's wallet and keys, then cut a large piece from the back of his shirt, which he soaked in blood and took with him. He wiped down parts of the interior and exterior, briefly leaning on the driver's side doorframe, before walking slowly north on Cherry Street. The teens called police, who logged the call at 9:58 PM. Unfortunately, an incorrect description of the killer as being a black male was originally broadcast. Consequently, when patrolmen Donald Foukes and Eric Zelms responded in their radio car and noticed a heavyset white man sauntering up Cherry Street, they made no effort to apprehend him. Although the description was quickly corrected, and despite an intensive search of the area that followed, the killer's head start allowed him to escape, probably through the Julius Kahn Playground in the Presidio, where a man was seen running shortly after the shooting. Foukes made a statement about his recollection of the incident, recorded in a SFPD memo dated November 12,1969: "The suspect observed by Officer Foukes was a WMA 35-45 yrs, about 5' 10", 180-200 lbs. Medium heavy build ... barrel-chested ... medium complexion ... light-colored hair, possibly graying in the rear. (May have been lighting that caused this effect.) (Navy or royal blue) elastic cuffs, and waistband zipped part way up. Brown wool pants, pleated type, baggy in rear (rust brown.) May have been wearing low-cut shoes. Subject at no time appeared to be in a hurry, walking with a shuffling lope, slightly bent forward, head down. The subject's general appearance, to classify him as a group, indicated he might be of Welsh ancestry. "Since we were looking for a Negro adult male, we proceeded on Jackson Street toward Arguello, continuing our search. As we arrived at Arguello Street, the description was changed to a white adult male. Believing that this suspect was possibly the one involved in the shooting, we entered the Presidio of San Francisco and conducted a search on West Pacific Avenue on the opposite side of the wall in the last direction we had observed the suspect going. We did not find the suspect." *San Francisco, 1974* The new year crept in, tail between its legs. The economy was lurching from the worst recession in forty years and gas rationing caused by the Arab Oil Embargo. Unemployment was high; there was an improbable economic situation that combined inflation with a stagnant economy, which resulted in people having less money for more expensive necessities. Everyone seemed slightly disoriented by the adoption of year-round daylight savings, another limp attempt to save energy. Every time I flipped on a light I felt I was committing treason. I met Dave Toschi, the head of the Zodiac investigation for the SFPD, during the Midland Surplus case. He was a good man, dogged in his pursuit and absolutely convinced that sooner or later the serial killer would screw up and they would catch him. The last time we'd had a drink together he didn't want to talk about it much, and I didn't blame him. Dave would have his hands full anyway, since there had been four shootings and one serious wounding the previous night, the sixth of January, in the Year of Our Lord 1974. Police were mounting one of the largest manhunts in the City's history for two black men committing drive-by shootings of whites. The pattern of murders was strikingly similar to a wave of random shootings that began in late November and accounted for six dead and two wounded in less than a month. The manhunt is named "Operation Zebra", for rather obvious reasons. The social landscape of the decade seemed to be disintegrating into a surrealistic, macabre parody of the Sixties. Strange people and strange politics abounded. I am a child of the Fifties, raised on 'Leave It to Beaver' and 'Father Knows Best.' Somehow, the America I thought I knew had vanished -- lost in a haze of jungle violence called Vietnam and the consequent battle on our cities' streets to end that fiasco, secure racial justice and tame the ravenous beast of free-market capitalism. The process-serving business was pretty good in '74, if you didn't mind serving lawsuits on bankrupted small businesses and people who couldn't pay their credit card bills. The fat labor strikes and big corporate lawsuits where we made the real money had dried up. -------- *Chapter Two* *Discretion Is the Better Part of Valor* I was really sick of my job. I'd been to this apartment four times now, trying to serve a summons on a guy named Elisha Cook. Every time I'd been here, no one answered the door, but I'd heard a big dog barking so I knew they had to come home eventually. I had tried seven-thirty in the morning and six-thirty in the evening, with no luck. The apartment was up three flights of stairs around the back side of a six-unit building, located in a maze of little streets that twist about a steep hill. A cold drizzle of rain sent chilly rivulets into the moist valleys of my body. Thoroughly disgusted with life in general, I climbed out of my VW Microbus, locked the door, marched to the back of the building and started climbing. The steep wooden staircase was slippery and none too sturdy. The building sat high on a hill with a terrific view of the city. I was not inclined to appreciate this; in fact, the height made me a little acrophobic. I kept one hand firmly on the railing and stayed to the inside of the stairs. I have reasons for not liking heights. Today I was trying a 2 PM shot at this guy. The law says that, on the third trip to the same address, I can serve anyone who answers the door, if they're a resident. They can't be a guest. Fair enough, the first son of a bitch that opens that door was getting this paper and I'd be outta here. For a lousy four bucks, I was not making out on this deal. The address was even way out of my way. After a few seconds to get my breath back, I gave the bell a ring. The dog started barking. I could tell this was a big dog, its voice was deeper than mine. No sound other than the hysterical dog. I gave the door a knock or two. No point wearing out my knuckles for nothing. The dog kept barking. I turned to leave. Then I heard a voice. The dog shut up and the deadbolt started to turn. I faced the doorway again. The door swung in and was replaced by a figure. I could only see the guy's belt buckle. I had to rotate my head back to full extension, until my neck vertebrae clicked, to see his face. The top of his head was obscured by the doorframe, his shoulders so wide he could not pass through without turning sideways. In his right hand was a leash and at the end of the leash was a Doberman. This Cerberus was almost tall enough to look me in the eye and regarded me contemptuously. "What the fuck you want?" Mr. Doorway growled. He was black, head bare of any hair except eyebrows and lashes. "Uh..." I had to clear my throat and bring my voice down an octave so I didn't sound like Mickey Mouse to his _basso profundo_. "...I have a delivery for Elisha Cook." I figured he was no relation to the actor. "What kinda delivery?" No fool he. "Just some papers, I don't really know what it's about." I ain't tellin' this guy he's being sued. I'm not stupid. "He ain't here." Now I know I'm talking to Elisha Cook, and he knows I know I'm talking to Elisha Cook. "Oh, well, in that case..." I tried to sound casual. This guy's fist was the size of my head and his arms were as big around as my thighs. "Look, I can just leave this with you. You live here too?" "I'm his brother and I'm just visiting. And you ain't leavin' one muthafuckin' thing here, you understand?" I nodded. "I understand perfectly." "And don't come back, either. He's outta town for a while." I considered flipping the papers on the porch anyway and calling his bluff. He read my mind. "If you try leavin' them papers here, I'll shove them up your ass." This was an offer I could refuse. "Look, you're not doin' yourself any good. The sheriff will come here and serve them anyway." _I ain't comin' back, that's for sure._ "You can send the mothafuckin' sheriff and I'll tell him the same damn thing. Now get the fuck outta here." I was already reversing. I contemplated some smart-ass Parthian shot but I wasn't sure I could outrun him. And running was the smart thing to do. I was definitely not getting paid enough for this. I only hoped he'd tell the deputy to shove those papers, although I wasn't sure even an armed deputy would argue. If you shot this guy, you'd only make him mad. My choice of weapon to take this monster down would be a Barrett .50cal rifle at 500 yards, but I didn't happen to have one handy. I was just hitting this address on my way home from the office. I had my pager in case Lowell Van Duzee, my boss, needed me. Business had been slow lately and I didn't want to hang around downtown. When I did that, I wound up sitting in _The Office_, drinking more than I should. My new VW van was a terrific replacement for the previous one, which had been demolished by the well-placed application of C4 explosive. This was a '72, with the new disc brakes. For the first time, I could actually bring the thing to a stop without having to plan half a block in advance. A customer of _Jerry's BugWorld_ had ordered him to put in a Corvair engine and make several improvements to the suspension, so it went like stink and handled much better than the typical breadbox on wheels. Unfortunately for the owner, he ran afoul of the narcotics laws and couldn't pay. It was roomy and comfortable, both strong qualities when you spend fourteen hours a day in your car. When I got back to the China Basin marina, I opened the locked gate and bounced down the dock to my new home. I used to live in a basement apartment under my pal Rick's house, but funds were running a little short these days. The dock rent was only fifty bucks a month, including all the electricity I could use, so I had moved onboard the _Jolly Jim,_ my forty-five foot motor sailer. The boat was a spoil of war. I had earned her fair and square from her former owner. Shipboard life suited me just fine, unless the damp and cold made my patchwork spine act up. A big plus of living at the marina was the security. No one can get onto the dock without a key, and now we have Niles, the night watchman. Niles came to the China Basin Marina after the events that delivered the boat into my hands. He was sixty or so, weighed a hundred and thirty-five soaking wet and wore a filthy yachting cap that sagged around the brim perfectly. He looked like a Bogart sidekick and functioned as my personal doorman from eight at night until seven the next day. A bottle of bourbon from time to time was more than adequate to secure the special services I might require, such as letting a lady through the gate -- or not letting a lady through the gate, whichever was appropriate. I was currently using the various means at my disposal to sidestep a lady named Jeanie. She was a nice enough person, and if it weren't for two things, I might have seen more of her. First, her sexual appetite was voracious, and frankly, she wore me out after a day or two. Second, her psychotic biker husband, Don, sometimes arrived in town unexpectedly from his welding job on the Alaskan pipeline. He did not hold the same liberal interpretation of their vows as Jeanie and consequently became easily upset over small transgressions on her part. He tended to blame the guy. Once or twice I had been required to take time away from San Francisco just to avoid crossing his path. Jeanie had taken umbrage at my recent decision to forego casual recreation and devote more time to my relationship with Barbara. Like most men, I didn't have the guts to tell her I was tired of her. That proved to be a serious character flaw. -------- *Chapter Three* *A Stranger Comes to Call* When I arrived downtown the next day, I was sour. My mind ran in ever-smaller circles, chasing itself to nowhere. I parked in my favorite alley, then saw that the city had changed the signs from four-hour parking to thirty minutes. I know they say, 'When life hands you lemons, make lemonade' but if someone had said that just then, I would have sent them straight to Hell. I got back in the bus and wandered three blocks east toward the SoMa until I could find an alley with a two-hour limit. Parking garage fees were an unacceptable overhead. The price of gas was killing my profit already. I stalked through the sidewalk crowds, the bounce gone from my step. A wet wind gusted unpredictably between the skyscrapers on the downtown side of Market Street, then gained speed when it hit the long, clear straightaway on First. In those days, downtown San Francisco was clearly demarcated by Market Street. On the north side, great slabs of marble and polished granite were piled to the sky, row after row of dark windows defying the shreds of fog sweeping past. On the south side, the SoMa (cutesy talk for SOuth of MArket) consisted of old three and four-story brick office buildings, previously elite locations. Now, having witnessed world wars, depressions, booms and busts, they had slid into a resigned neglect. Small hotels, once elegant places for San Franciscans and visitors to take their ease, now offered their marble lobbies and dusty, ornate trappings to broken wrecks destroyed by drugs, booze and their own minds. These new tenants staggered and roared, busy with their personal demons. The businesses that could coexist with such street life dozed, dreaming of the days when the city was flush and their hopes were new. If I could have seen the future, I'd have bought a building there. But then, 'If wishes were horses, beggars would ride' as my dear, old gray-haired mother used to say. AAA Legal Process occupied a rabbit-warren suite at 450 Market, one of the last brick buildings on the north side of Market. The elevator took its leisurely trip to the fifth floor. The halls were filled with the white noise of the IBM Selectrics, tap-tap-tapping away behind the rippled glass door that modestly claimed 'AAA Legal Process.' I still expected to see Harry's wrinkled face with the proud nose, tilted back in his chair, the phone cocked to his head. It was Dorothy Silver, these days, and she sat upright, the phone held securely with one hand while she made notes with the other. Harry's death had not changed her all that much on the outside, but she was a little less the Jewish grandmother and a little more the businesswoman. I was still her favorite, though. She smiled at me through the glass window in her office, and Barbara gave me her patented hero's welcome grin. Coming into the office was more like going home than going to work. I did my work out in the world; my friends were here. I radiated a false good cheer to Barbara, gave the other women a wink and a smile and followed the path worn in the tired linoleum into Van Duzee's office, where the air was already thick with smoke from his Dorals. A coffin nail smoked in the ashtray while Van listened on the phone, his pensive face lifting when I walked in. Van liked me and I liked him. He was a husk of a man. I'm sure he was never imposing even when young, and now nearly fifty years of booze, cigarettes and disappointment had burned him out. His thin hair stuck to his small, damp head. Pale blue eyes, on the verge of leaking tears, wavered in a doughy face the color of unbaked bread. His wet lips would tremble on occasion, and his twitching, hesitant hands made me nervous, never knowing if they would succeed at the goal their owner set for them. I told Van the story of the giant to amuse him. He seemed relieved that for once I hadn't tried to avenge myself by getting him served anyway. He just took the papers and threw them next to the phone. After he sorted the rest of my stuff into the system that he alone understood, he called the attorney for the client attempting to sue this Cook character. He told the lawyer flatly that Cook was evading and had threatened violence. He let him chew on that for a minute. "We'll send this back to you and you can turn it over to the sheriff for service. Sorry, but that's all you can do now." He listened to the lawyer whine about how long it would take the sheriff's office to serve it, but Van didn't care. We didn't need the money badly enough to risk a server getting killed by some maniac. I picked up the thin pile of summons and subpoenas and glanced through them. There was one I recognized from before. "What's the deal with this one? I told you I couldn't find the guy. I made nine calls on this." It was a chain of pizza places being sued by the _Examiner_ newspaper for nonpayment of an advertising bill. "The client said they would pay for a limited amount of special time on this one." "How limited?" "I told them you would put in four hours and then we'd give them a progress report." _Four hours. Forty bucks. Big deal_. "Okay, but I don't know that four hours is gonna accomplish a thing. There's five addresses for the pizza joints, a warehouse on Natoma and his house in St. Francis Wood. That's a lot of places to look." Van nodded. He recognized that four hours was probably a tenth of the time needed, but he shrugged. The client was a cheapskate. If they goofed around long enough, the guy would file bankruptcy or blow town and then where would they be? I put it in the special spot in my briefcase for this kind of thing, then sorted the rest of the paper by the mental map of San Francisco I carried in my head. There's nothing like driving around a city fourteen hours a day to get to know where things are. I could have been a cabby. Sometimes I considered it. I would probably make more money, but I liked the independence of process serving, and even looked forward to the conflict. Besides, cabbies got shot in the head sometimes. Of course, I was getting my fair share of people shooting at me, too. I hadn't quite worked out the risk-benefit ratio. I realize that people are unhappy when they're served. Who would be glad to be taken to court? Occasionally, I would serve a divorce paper and the recipient would actually thank me for bringing them tangible evidence that bondage to their spouse was ending. But normally, whatever situation was bringing them to court was one that prompted anger or frustration. Many people felt they had to direct this negative energy toward the bearer of bad tidings. In point of fact, this was why the law required that legal papers be delivered in person by someone who was _not_ a party to the action. That was supposed to prevent violent confrontations between legal adversaries. I was a nobody, just a fancy delivery boy and so should be left out of the path of their spleen. That was seldom the way it worked. The subjects of our deliveries became a boring repetition of curses, punches, lies and evasions meant to frustrate the law and vent the subjects' anger. We, on the other hand, just wanted to dump the paper and get on with it. Although prices had gone up significantly (I was making four dollars and twenty-five cents a serve now, and only a year ago it had been three-fifty), it still wasn't enough for us to waste time with emotion or too much thought. I had learned to hand over the paper and turn while they were still drawing breath. By the time their bullshit started, I was already climbing in my car, gone with the wind. My own karma is screwed up enough without adding some stranger's to it. When I walked through the front office to leave, I saw a guy in Dorothy's office, the door closed. I thought it a little unusual. Our customers were lawyers and their staff. Their time is much too valuable to waste coming to see us. Our messengers picked up the work from them, brought it to the office where the secretaries, Mary, Bernice and Layla, typed it up, then routed it to Van, who organized it by area. Then off it went to the process servers: Bill, Jan and me. There were two or three messengers who did routine filings with the San Francisco court clerk. Barbara Brown, the office manager, saw to it that every piece of paper went where it was supposed to go when it was supposed to go there. She could type, answer phones, solve the inevitable problems and flirt with the guys, simultaneously. We'd been having a hot love affair for about six months. Despite the disparity in age, we were comfortable together. She had reached a point in life where she no longer tolerated crap from men, and I found her middle-aged wisdom a refreshing change from younger women who hadn't seemed to learn who they were yet. I knew who I was. Mortal combat has a way of teaching you about yourself. I raised my eyebrows toward the stranger with Dorothy and Barbara gave a 'who knows' look back. I headed for my hangout, _The Office._ Sharon, bartender and owner, took care of me. Our clients were eternally forgetting some important deadline or needing some vital witness served and would call with emergency requests throughout the day. So the three of us servers would try to keep close to the office to handle these crises. They were the most lucrative part of the work. Ten bucks an hour and twenty-five cents a mile, usually for something simple, like a court filing or straightforward service on a corporation or another lawyer. The regular serves were a tedious chore. I spotted Jan and Bill when I walked through the door from the building lobby. They had a booth near the bar, drinks in front of them. I slid in next to Jan, facing Bill, since Jan is skinny and Bill is wide in the shoulders, like me. We exchanged desultory greetings. We didn't have much to say, since we saw each other almost every day. Like old married people, we already knew whatever we had been willing to share years ago. Jan spoke up. "I tried one of those ads in the _Bay Guardian._ You know, those kinky personal ads?" Bill and I nodded. The ads were great reading, but who believed they really worked? "Some woman called me the other night. She came over about an hour later and we went at it like you wouldn't believe." I had my doubts. "Oh come on, Jan. You mean to tell me a perfect stranger came over to your place and fucked you? What'd she look like?" "She was all right, nice looking, about thirty, I guess. Anyway, yeah, she just called up, said something like, 'I read your ad. Do you really want to?' and when I said 'Yeah, sure' she asked for my address and was there inside of an hour. Walked in, had a little, you know," he accompanied this by closing one nostril and sniffing twice, "then stripped down and screwed me until I thought I would pass out." Bill and I shook our heads at this. Getting laid used to be a challenge, once upon a time, but with birth control, abortion-on-demand and cocaine, it was like shooting the proverbial fish in a barrel. Bill asked, "What the hell did you say in the ad?" Jan looked innocent. "Blondes with big tits that like to fuck, call -- you know, my number. That was all." Bill looked at me. I remembered his latest fling, Carol the Cocksucker. "How's Carol, you still seeing her?" I had to know, since the girls had told me after they met her that she was not a _she_ but a _he._ As far as I knew, Bill hadn't known that important fact, even after having had sex with her several times. How? Don't ask me, but some guys don't look too closely and in the dark ... Well, let's just say that such impostering was not unknown. "Carol's great. You know, she's the best chick I ever knew. I mean it. She treats me great, she's easy to get along with, fun to go places with and she knows all kinds of interesting stuff." Sounded like love to me. "That's great, Bill. I'm glad. She seems nice enough. Maybe you should double with me and BB sometime, might be fun." Barbara first noticed that Carol's Adam's apple was too prominent to belong to someone born with a vagina. She would think nothing of going out on a double date with a transvestite. "Hey, there's some guy sitting in Dorothy's office talking with the boss. You guys know what's up?" I have an almost paranoid need to know what my employers are up to. Must come from having been canned so many times. Bill and Jan both shook their heads 'no.' "Do you think Dorothy will sell out, now that Harry's gone?" Bill asked, like we would know Dorothy's plans better than he did. "I bet she does," Jan guessed. "But who would buy the business, and how much would she get, do you think?" "You can figure somebody's got to pay at least three or four times the gross." This was Bill, whose knowledge of finance was limited to how the odds were running on the last race at Bay Meadows. "Hell, Bill, that would be three or four million, I bet." I was offering a WAG -- wild ass guess -- but it was as good as any other. "You think?" "I think." Jan's long, sallow face looked gloomier than ever. "I guess that lets us out." We looked at him like he was crazy. Of course, that left us out. Between the three of us we might, by selling everything we owned, raise a hundred grand. And that would leave me without a place to live or a car. What was the point in thinking about millions of dollars? -------- *Chapter Four* A Thief Who Steals From A Thief... *He is Pardoned for One Thousand Years* Steve Dodge sat across the table from me in the salon of the _Jolly Jim_. We had tequila, glasses and the fixings between us. He leaned back, took a long drag on a joint, held it for a time, then exhaled, filling the salon with a fragrant cloud. I turned on the fan that exhausted air from the cabin. It would send a stream of pot odor into the air, but with China Basin more or less devoid of life at this hour, I didn't care. The curtains were drawn and my neighbors could not have cared less anyway. Steve had left me a message at work saying that he would be down from his Garberville spread and I should keep an eye out for him. "Okay, now that we have the preliminaries out of the way, what's going on?" I was ready to hear his tale, which I anticipated would be one of woe. "You know Cindy..." he talked while trying to hold his toke. Not easy. The words came out kind of strangled. I nodded that indeed I did. "Well, she was hanging out in Ukiah a few weeks ago and joined up with some church there." He finally exhaled completely. "Church?" "Yeah..." Deep inhale. "...the People's Church, the People's ... something." He exhaled another cloud. "Something about 'the people'." "The People's _Temple_?" That name I knew. "Yeah! That's it. People's Temple. She was in Ukiah doing some business for me and met these people who were raving about how great this preacher was and how all these cool people were joining. They're into getting back to the land and working together to leave behind all the bullshit of the world; you know, capitalism and all those bullshit churches that care more about money than God." I had read about this outfit and its leader, a preacher originally from Indiana named Jim Jones. He had made a very big splash with the local politicians, apparently bringing together middle-class whites, streetwise blacks, whores, drug dealers and addicts. He preached some self-help, racial-love-end-of-times nonsense. It was the Tom Wolfe's Radical Chic thing. Being naturally cynical, I was waiting to hear how the scam worked, but so far, he got nothing but good press and his picture taken with luminaries like Mayor Joseph Alioto, Assembly Speaker Willie Brown and other New Left types. "So, I assume you weren't caught up in her religious conversion?" "You know better than that. I think the Catholic Church is a rip-off, let alone some guy living in San Francisco! But she's totally gone over this, man. She was all psyched up about the brotherhood of man, helping the poor, changing society and all that crap." His voice was rising a little, either with indignation or an excess of tequila and pot. He drained his glass, crunched his teeth into the lime, made a face, then swiped his hand across his tongue for the salt. He shook his head. "Fuck man, she cleaned me out!" He sat across from me with his eyes bugging behind his Coke-bottle-bottom glasses. I could not believe my ears for a moment. "She ripped you off for ... what..." I paused to calculate. "...three hundred and eighty grand?" Steve nodded, miserable but philosophical. "She knew where the stash was, so one day..." he trailed off. I got the picture. "I told you..." I couldn't help but rub it in. I had told him to put his loot in a safe deposit box in the bank. "Don't say it. I just hadn't gotten around to it." "Yeah, those 'round to-its' are hard to find." He gave me a quizzical look, then got it. He was an unreformed procrastinator. Steve was one of the early computer geeks, programming COBOL. He claimed it was his idea to save extra code by using only two digits instead of four to indicate the year, thus he could eventually establish fatherhood of the great Y2K problem. History turns on such tiny wheels, sometimes. In any event, Steve also realized that when the banks' software calculated things like compound interest and such for people's monthly statements, the computer calculated to four decimal places. Naturally, the final amount was expressed in two decimal places, thus requiring the computer to round the amounts up or down. It occurred to Steve that he could just as easily program the computers to round everything down when posting to people's accounts, then take the extra fractions of a cent and deposit them into several dummy accounts. So he stole from the banks and all their customers, a fraction of a cent at a time, on every transaction. Nobody missed the money. It was like it never existed. Within four months, his various fake accounts had amassed nearly one and quarter million dollars. Steve, not being a greedy man, had then changed the computer code to round everything normally. Three and half months later, the accounts liquidated one by one, he 'retired' and moved to Garberville, in the heart of Northern California redwood country, bought himself a choice chunk of forest and settled down to grow organic vegetables and play with computers. He also grew a little righteous grass for himself and a widening circle of friends. The leftover cash had been stashed in a duffel bag, then the bag had been placed into a waterproof box. Steve had assured me it was safe from discovery. "Of course, Cindy knew where it was?" He shrugged a yes. "So these Holy Rollers convinced her to make a big-time contribution to the God business?" "That's about it. They made her some mucky-muck in their church and now she's here in San Francisco. She wrote me a letter to tell me how she was meeting all these really important people. Cindy's handling the bookkeeping. I was thinking you could maybe get a hold of her and see if you could convince her to give it back." I pretended to think for a moment. I already knew the answer, I was just stalling. "Well, you're screwed. There's nothing you can do. Unless you threaten violence, you've got no way to pressure her into giving the dough back. And I don't recommend that. Shit, they could get you for extortion." I paused, giving a sign that I was seriously thinking. "No, once those guys get their hands on your dough, it's gone forever. Besides, what makes you think she'd listen to me?" Steve put up a hand, as though telling me not to be offended ahead of time by what he was going to say. "I just thought that you might be able to think of some way of pressuring them into giving some of it back." "Oh no, pal! Jim Jones, he's the head of this thing and from what I can tell, he's really well connected. If I don't watch it, he could nail _me_ for extortion. After all, you can't very well threaten to take them to court. And what're we gonna do, call the paper and tell them how the money you ripped off got ripped off?" I really didn't think there was much hope. "Well, can you just ask around a little and see what's what?" He wasn't pleading, but asking nicely. "I'll go see Cindy and see 'what's what'. But don't get your hopes up. What was she doing for you in Ukiah when she hooked up with these weirdos?" "Offing some grass for me." _The hippie drug dealer's chick gets religion._ "'Frailty thy name is woman'." Steve must have achieved a certain level of tranquilization from the tequila and grass, because he just shook his head and sighed. He was never one to bemoan his fate for long. "Look, it's not like I'm happy to lose that money, but what can I do? I've got some partners and we're going to do a major grow this year." I knew this was coming. After the Haight-Ashbury funeral in '67, there had been a steady migration of counterculture types to the region just north of San Francisco. Mendocino and southern Humboldt counties were perfect for their 'back to nature', _Whole Earth Catalog_ ways of thinking: sparsely populated, no industry, no real commercial value to the land. At first, the ranchers and lumbermen were thrilled to unload basically worthless land onto these naive idealists. But soon, when the influx became a tidal wave, there was friction. As hordes of unemployed long-hairs arrived and found few career opportunities waiting for them in the fishing, ranching and lumbering industries, they realized that they had the ability to raise impressive amounts of cash by doing what they were inclined to do anyway: grow dope. They could get the maximum reward with the minimum effort. Nixon's _War on Drugs_ was having some success, in a perverse way. The billions being spent on interdicting marijuana from Mexico and Asia had driven the price of marijuana from ten dollars an ounce in 1968 to around sixty an ounce now. Instead of trying to smuggle the stuff into the country -- it's bulky, smelly and hard to conceal -- it was easier to load up the old VW Microbus and boogie on down to the city every once in while, or let your entrepreneurial friends drive up for a little visit in the country, taking back a supply for those still trapped in bourgeois urban America. The growers could pick up a few thousand cash to buy groceries, rolling papers and beer, put in wells and pipes, build their geodesic domes and buy their four-wheel drives. "This year," Steve explained, "there are four of us and we're going to do it right. We've leased a big chunk of ground, seven hundred acres. It's got lots of water. Real rugged and hard to get to." "What happened last year?" I had been able to trade some ill-gotten cocaine from an incident last year for my six-month supply of smoke. "Well, my patch at home was okay, but several people got ripped off. I had a big garden way off in the hills and it was cleaned out two days before I was going to harvest." "What do you mean, 'ripped off'? The cops get it?" "No, the cops are clueless. They only bust growers by accident, like when they go someplace and find the dope out in the open. It's locals. Some are hippies and some of the stuff is being stolen by the rednecks. They know what it's worth, too, you know." "How much did people lose last year?" "I don't know. A lot. What pisses me off is that they wait until it's almost ready, you know, so you put all that work in and then, bam, they swoop in a week or two before you're ready, chop it down and haul it away." "Bummer." "Tell me. The four of us figure that we lost a total of a hundred thousand among us." "Are you serious?" "As a heart attack." That was a lot of grass. "Why don't you guys guard it?" "Well, this year we might. But, you know, if the cops show up, you don't want to be there. If they find the plants, they just cut them down. They find you there -- you're busted." Made sense to me. "Well, let me know if there's anything I can do for you." Steve nodded. "If you have any ideas on security, we could use some help." We talked about the dope business for the rest of the evening. Steve explained how they picked the right site for the plants, where they would get plenty of sun, but not be too easy to find. They run hundreds of feet of plastic pipe from the water sources to each plant, or water them individually by hand. Each hole has to be dug and filled with compost and quality soil, fenced to keep the deer out of it (deer love marijuana), the plants fertilized and monitored regularly. Male plants are useless and removed when they showed their sex differentiation, thus about half the plants are destroyed. The highest potency is realized by waiting until the female plants flower. The active ingredient, THC, is concentrated in the flower buds, so the plants were monitored daily at the crucial late-September, early-October period. The declining daylength triggers flowering. It's a contest between maximum quality and not losing the crop to thieves or cops. It is a fact of life that the group most preyed upon by criminals are other criminals. -------- *Chapter Five* You Never Get a Second Chance to Make a First Impression My route this late afternoon would take me to the People's Temple neighborhood so I decided to get Steve's little errand off my mind. I knew it was a lost cause, but I owed him a try. I parked in a loading zone nearby. Commercial plates were one of the best investments I ever made. Afternoon was ceding rapidly to evening, the way it does in winter. Streetlights glowed in the rain, falling without letup. In my flush period, which was only a couple months ago, I had splurged and bought a good raincoat. I had to have one like Bogart in _Casablanca_ or _The Big Sleep._ So I went into Wilkes Bashford and dropped a week's pay on a Burbury, khaki, with epaulets, belt, the whole schmeer. I felt a little theatrical. I turned up the collar to keep the water out of my neck and aimed for the storefront that had been converted into Jim Jones' Temple. No one took notice of me walking into the old building that had once been a movie theater. The lobby glared with the cold stare of cheap fluorescent fixtures. There were lots of chairs and tables scattered around, occupied by a combination of white, college-age youngsters, elderly black women and young, hip-looking street types. I saw many Afros. The walls were papered with posters, most of them exhorting the masses to some action that involved snarling faces and clenched fists. There were five desks with telephones in the back of the lobby, manned by an assortment of people, so I assumed that was the best place to start. I had to really rack my brain for a moment before I dredged up Cindy's last name from the tangled recesses of memory, but the synapses delivered just in time. "Hi. I'm looking for Cindy Sinclair. Can you help me?" _A reasonable request_, I thought. The young black woman that looked up at me did not smile. "What do you want with her?" "Oh, well, she's a friend of a friend, actually. I knew her when she lived up in Garberville. She joined up with you folks in Ukiah, but I heard she was here now, working for your..." _What?_ "...church," I finished. I thought 'church' was affording them a status that might be somewhat more glorious than they deserved. "What do you want to see her for?" She seemed to have not paid any attention to me. "It's about a donation." As soon as those words left my mouth, her whole demeanor changed. She smiled warmly and her eyes focused on my face for the first time. "Oh, well, let me call up and see if she's here. Sinclair?" I nodded, giving her a polite smile. Obviously I had said the secret word. I sort of expected a duck to drop down from the ceiling. It took her a minute to track Cindy down, but she stayed on task until successful. "She's upstairs. Come with me." I followed her up the stairs, admiring the way her butt wiggled in the stretch pants she wore. Her hair was a brown cloud of fine curls, fluffed and teased into a perfect ball. I would have liked to touch it but we were not going to be that intimate. Creaky linoleum-covered treads led up to the second floor of the four-story dump. This floor was divided into workstations. Since the half-walls didn't really fit into the space, I assumed they were donations from some corporation that had redecorated. Cindy stood inside her fabric pen, so I could steer through the maze, my mouse to her cheese. She didn't look happy to see me, but she greeted me politely enough. "Is there some place we can talk privately?" "We can talk here," she assured me. "Okay." I took a chair and drew it into the open booth. The murmur of voices floated about me like white noise. I kept my voice mild and as low as I could and still be heard. I decided to get right down to business, since Cindy would know this was not a social call. "Steve wants the money back. Not all of it, but say, three quarters. You can keep the rest." "It's too late for that, Doug. I know that you and Steve won't understand, but this is the right thing to do. That money went to a _great man_ to do wonderful things." The laid-back hippie girl I knew had been replaced by someone earnest and sincere. "That may be, but it wasn't yours to give away." "Well, it wasn't _his_ either, for that matter." She said this in a normal conversational voice that could be heard over the background. "I realize that Cindy, but come on, it's not right to leave the guy broke." I was hoping for some empathy. "If Steve fell into a pile of manure he'd come up smelling like a rose, and you know it. The Reverend is going to change the world and if that money can help save even one person, then it's the best thing. It's bad karma for Steve to keep it. I don't expect him to," she did drop her voice here, "go to jail or anything. But I gave that money to the People's Temple and you can't come around asking for it back," she finished determinedly. Her voice had gotten sharper and louder at the end. I don't think she meant for anyone to overhear, but she hadn't cared if they did. I noticed a big guy look in our direction. He hesitated, then walked slowly towards us. I stood up and could see that there were two other big guys coming from other directions. They had a serious demeanor. "Problem here, Cindy?" the first guy rumbled. He wore a black leather 'Shaft' coat, a big Afro and a thin 'dog butt' beard. He filled the opening to the cubicle, but I had already stepped into the walkway outside the box. I wasn't about to get caught with my back to a wall with these guys. "No, Carl. Mr. McCool was just leaving." She smiled to show she meant it. I chirped, "Okay, well, see you around, Cindy. Good to see you again. I'll say 'Hi' to Steve when I see him." I stepped to one side of the passageway to go. The mountain of black leather didn't move. Behind me the other two guys were standing shoulder to shoulder. They could have been made of brick, getting past them would have been like running into a wall. I half lifted my hands to show I didn't want trouble. "I'll just take off now, no problem." Just as I was starting to think I was going to have to make a break for it, the black-leather-coated goon named Carl turned sideways and let me by. The human brick-wall behind me moved along as well. Carl remained behind. The two escorted me down the creaky stairs. The treads protested the six hundred plus pounds of load the three of us imposed. When we got to the bottom, they told me to turn to the right and we walked down a hallway to another door. It was the kind they put in public buildings, with a panic bar so it will open if a crowd charges it. The door opened into an alley. They had ignored my comment about being parked in front. They had a reason for taking me this way. The first guy opened the door into the alley and number two, standing behind me, shoved me forward. I stumbled out and when I straightened up and started to turn, number one gave it to me right in the solar plexus. I folded up like an old umbrella on a windy day. The other one tapped me a good one in the ribs with the toe of his boot once I went down and then, to my relief, they slammed the door and left me to retch in the gutter. When I got up, I saw that I had a little tear in the elbow of my coat. Now I was really pissed. I hobbled back to the van, grateful I had sustained only minimal damage. At least the bouncers had spared my back, for which I was grateful. I could go without having that particular hardware adjusted again. I had learned to live with my back and I was hoping it had learned to live with me. I crawled into the driver's seat and drove slowly away. As I passed the 'temple' I saw my two escorts on either side of the front door. I turned my face so they wouldn't associate the van with me. This little affair soured my enthusiasm for process serving that night. I mean, I'm a stand-up guy, but enough is enough. I retreated to the boat for food, booze and pot, more or less in that order. My ribs were very sore where they had been blessed by the boot, and my chest and belly ached like one big bruise. A hot shower and a couple of Vicodin eased my pain. I felt they had over-reacted. I didn't think I'd been all that far out of line. I had tried to keep my voice down but Cindy had seemed to deliberately get their attention. She had hardly shown any acknowledgement of me as a former acquaintance, if not a friend. It was like we were strangers; she had even talked about Steve as though he was someone in a past life that no longer mattered to her. I wasn't surprised that Jones had a security force, muscle to back up coercion. I assumed he had a system of informants as well, since there was no way you could keep all those people in line without having everyone squealing on everyone else. As long as you passed the test and ratted out your friend, spouse, or parents, you could be trusted. For this kind of operation, you had to have a leader that demanded absolute personal loyalty. Screen out all the people who could think for themselves and co-opt the faith of the followers. Anyone who represented a threat to the interior harmony of the group had to be extirpated immediately. Leave only the follower-types. My respect for Jones' diabolical genius grew. I just couldn't figure out what his goal was. I went to bed early and slept poorly, plagued by ghosts, and woke up early the next day feeling really rotten. My ribs hurt like hell. I wasn't sure, but I thought they might be broken. So I walked up the dock to the phone in the China Basin building and called Rick. When I had lived under Rick's place in the little basement apartment, he was my private emergency room. He had been a medic in 'Nam and now worked in SF General Hospital's emergency department, so he could handle most injuries competently and, more importantly, discreetly. I didn't see him as often now that I lived on the _Jolly Jim,_ but I could still count on him. He'd been fixing people since Vietnam and I guess I was a bad habit. He wasn't home, so I left a message with his boyfriend of the moment. I went back to the boat and got dressed for work. It hurt if I took a deep breath, but I could manage. I wondered why the Temple goons had been so rough. Of course, I had no recourse with the police. It was my word against theirs. They could say I had been unruly. Jim Jones was now head of the Housing Authority and he carried a lot of weight. Word had it that he could swing five thousand votes at his whim. In a town where elections were won or lost by four thousand votes or less, he carried a big stick with City Hall. I worked through the morning, then stopped by the office and tried to convince everyone I was feeling dandy. I kicked Dixie, the skip tracer, out of her desk and called Dave Toschi. Dave had questioned me at length more than once during the Midland Surplus Affair. Once certain assurances had been provided by superiors that Mel Belli thought I was an okay guy, we had become casual friends. Still, he was a cop and I was not exactly fond of cops. A close encounter with some baton-wielding, tear-gas-spraying Tactical Squad guys had kind of soured me on the whole law enforcement profession. But Toschi was okay, for a cop. There were just certain subjects upon which we agreed to disagree. I never tested his dedication to enforcing the law, and he rarely tested my version of events, as long as it meshed more or less with his version. Besides, I had him hooked. I had found that while you could never have bought him with money or power, you could twist Dave around your finger in exchange for a sailing trip. He had the boat bug in a bad way and planned to buy one as soon as the house was paid off, the kids through college and the kitchen remodeled. Until that distant day, I shared my toy with him regularly. He sincerely loved sailing and that made it more fun for me as well. "Hey copper, it's Doug." I waited for him to greet me. "As soon as the weather gets nice, you up for a trip?" I knew the answer to that. "We'll go to Angel Island and Tiburon. But not now. Look, can I bribe you with lunch?" Dave allowed as how I could get a ticket fixed for a lunch at _Sam's Hof Brau_. We agreed to meet there at twelve-thirty. Twelve-thirty wasn't the ideal time to go to _Sam's_, because everybody else went there too, so the line was long. But you moved forward at a slow shuffle and the food was so good it was worth the ten or fifteen minutes of waiting, as long as you planned on taking a long lunch. So we tore into our hot pastramis-on-rye, pickles, fries and Cokes, not doing much more than exchanging grunts that stood for the standard questions of polite society. Thus I knew that he was okay, the kids were making him crazy and his wife hadn't decided what color to paint the kitchen: avocado or peach. I waited to ask my question until we had both leaned back from our plates, bellies bulging. "Hey, what do you know about these People's Temple types?" I had not spoken very loudly, but he shot me a warning look. "Not here," he mumbled. He followed me outside and pointed to his unmarked cruiser. We drove out of the city core and parked in front of _Red's Java House_ at the waterfront. "Okay, now we can talk." I explained the gist of what had taken me into the Temple the previous night and the end result. Dave said nothing while I recited, then he spoke, his voice containing none of its usual bantering tone. "These People's Temple guys are very well connected, Doug. You know that. Jones gets his picture in the paper with Alioto, Willie Brown, Lieutenant-Governor DeMalay, plus the Board of Supervisors and a lot of political wannabees. Hell, I saw a picture of him with Walter Mondale!" I nodded. "I'm not sayin' that we haven't looked at him hard. There are stories: dope dealing, sex orgies, rough stuff on members who might rat. It's all just rumors and hearsay. We never get a victim that comes in and wants to file a report. Command won't let us put an undercover guy in there -- too hot politically. If you're askin' me if he's up to something hinky -- definitely. But nobody knows and nobody's wantin' to know. Dig what I mean, Gene?" "Just how deep is he into city politics?" "Word is he'll swing the next election. He's gonna go with Moscone and Harvey Milk. Joe Freitas will be his man for DA." "That big?" "I shit you not, Doug. This is not some place to be fuckin' around. You think those goddamn spooks you tangled with were bad, these guys could make you disappear and nobody will even start lookin' for the body." _Swell_. "Well, I was ready to tell my friend that he had no chance of seeing his money again anyway. But I'll take your warning to heart, Dave, I promise. I don't want to know what's going on there. Scout's honor." I even held up four fingers and crossed my heart. Not that it did any good. I was even more curious than before. On the way back to my car we heard the newsflash on KCBS, the all-news radio station: Patty Hearst, granddaughter of William Randolph, had been kidnapped from her apartment in Berkeley by armed assailants. There was no information about the motive, but since Hearst was one of the heirs to the vast Hearst media fortune, it was a good bet they would ask for money sooner or later. It was only January 29th and the year was shaping up to be truly bizarre. When Dave dropped me back at my car, he said, "Thanks for not asking." "I figure when you want to talk about it, you will." _Zodiac_. When I got back to the office, it was mid-afternoon. There was a message for me to call Steve when I had time. I got the operator to give me time and charges so I could pay the office back. I told him that his money was a lost cause. He took it like a man, then wanted to have a chat about his security problems in the fields. I said I'd come up sometime for a little vacation and look things over. Barbara whispered to me on my way past that she'd meet me for a drink after the office closed. I knew she wanted to do more than just share my scintillating personality. I went out and laid paper until five-thirty then staked a claim to a booth in _The Office_ to wait for Barbara. She rolled in about six, with Bill in her wake. I always got a thrill watching her walk into a room. She wasn't a big woman; in fact, she was only five foot two. But when she entered, almost every eye followed her, certainly every male eye did. She had what men call a 'great rack' and she was not ashamed of it either. Her legs were perfectly proportioned to her body and now that she had started 'living as a blonde' with a little help from Miss Clairol, she was stunning. She had merry blue eyes. When you looked into them, you could see that the lights were on and someone was home. She may have been pushing fifty, but she was pushing it as hard as she could. I loved her. Months ago Bill had laid out a plan for the three of us to go into the process-serving business. We would break off from AAA and set up in a little office. Barbara would run the show inside, and Bill and I would serve paper. With Barbara well known by most of the big law firms, we thought we could get enough work to feed the three of us. After Harry bought it, I just couldn't bring myself to leave Dorothy in the lurch. Bill had scored five grand on a bet and was flush then, but by this time the money had gone back to the bookie. I had accumulated the _Jolly Jim_ and the Cobra, but I wasn't going to sell either one. I lived on the boat and I couldn't bring myself to part with the car. Besides, I didn't really want to treat Dorothy that way. Harry had been generous with me and I felt disloyal trying to go into business against his widow. Before we started talking, Rick paged me. I went to the pay phone on the wall in the back. "Hey Rick. How's tricks?" "Same shit, different day. What's up with you?" Rick's voice sounded tired. His shifts in the ER left him drained. "Well, I had a little run-in yesterday." "Uh oh! What did you get -- stabbed, broken or shot this time?" "Well, I took a boot in the ribs and they hurt like hell." Rick clucked his tongue. "Dougie, you're going to get killed one of these days." "As John Kenneth Galbraith said, 'In the long run, we're all dead.' Just tell me how serious the rib thing might be. It hurts every time I take a deep breath." "Okay. Are you coughing up blood?" He was in medical mode. "No." "Are you short of breath, having trouble breathing?" "No. It just hurts, that's all." "Did you get hit anywhere else?" "A punch in the solar plexus, but that's not so bad anymore." "Geez, Doug. Anything else?" "No." "Well, you probably just bruised the ribs. Even if they're broken, there's not much we can do except give you an elastic binder to help with pain and tell you to take it easy. If you start to have trouble breathing, you'll have to get into the ER. Okay?" "Thanks, Rick. I owe you again. Can you get one of those binder things at work?" "Yeah, sure. I'll bring it home tomorrow. I'm working days, so I should be home by four-thirty. You can swing by and pick it up then, and I'll take a look at you. Take it easy for a day or two, okay?" "Sure." Rick had a guilt complex concerning me and appointed himself my guardian angel. He had dragged my blood-and-guts-covered body to a Medivac chopper in 'Nam, thinking I had taken mortar shrapnel. The 'copter took off and about fifty feet up, it got hit and crashed. I screwed up my back in the crash. The blood and guts had been what was left of the guy next to me. It wasn't Rick's fault at all that I wound up getting hurt, but when we both got back to San Francisco, he had put me up for a while in his basement apartment at a real low rent until I got on my feet, literally. Since then, he had been my own personal emergency room, dealing with a couple of wounds that I wouldn't have wanted to explain in a real ER. I rejoined Barb and Bill. "Okay, sorry. What's going on?" Bill nodded at Barbara. "Something's up with Dorothy." That was Barbara's cue. "Dorothy's made a lot of calls back and forth between her lawyer and that guy who was in the other day." "Who is he?" "Name's Wally Levine. Used to be an investigator with the DA's office. Has a PI license but isn't doing PI work. My guess is he's buying the place." I couldn't think of another answer. "When do you suppose she'll break the news?" "I think they were wrapping things up today. So I bet on Monday." _Wonderful_. I had just been sold to a new master. -------- *Chapter Six* Here's to the New Boss... Monday my pager went off at eight o'clock, the moment the office opened. When I arrived about forty-five minutes later, everyone was assembled in the largest room, which was not big enough to hold all of us comfortably. Dorothy stood behind Barbara's desk as though she needed the furniture to shield her. Next to her towered this guy Levine. He had thin, curly hair that did not come close to covering his bald spot. He was tall, at least six-four or five, with that stoop-shouldered posture men who were very tall when children affect, trying not to stand out in the crowd. His brown eyes darted from one to another of us, although his gaze rested a lot longer on the women than the motley assortment of men. Bill, Jan and I were perched on the corners of the typists' desks. The women were in their chairs. The three messengers sat on the floor. Wally's eyes came to rest on the kid with a purple Mohawk and pierced nose. I could see him thinking about his image in the community when this alien creature delivered an envelope. I thought, _You're history, kid_. Then I wondered how he regarded my ponytail and earring. Dorothy introduced Levine, told us he would be the new owner and that she would be staying on for a while to show him the ropes. She allowed as how she hoped we would show him the same loyalty we had given her, blah, blah, blah. I admit it. My feelings were hurt. I don't know what I'd expected. Dorothy had earned her retirement and her kids had no desire to soil their hands with such a plebian business. It was ridiculous to think she would have sold AAA to us. None of us had enough money for that, even if we had all gone in together. But I'd have felt better is she'd offered. ~*~ The news' outlets received a 'communique' from Patty Hearts' kidnappers. They called themselves the 'Symbionese Liberation Army.' As revolutionary groups go, this sounded like something a bunch of kids made up while stoned. They left a cassette tape in a phone booth, demanding a lot of pie-in-the-sky stuff, but the bottom line was that Hearst Corporation was supposed to give out four million dollars worth of food to 'the poor' in the East Bay ghettos of Oakland and Berkeley. The media was in a feeding frenzy. Cops in ten counties were looking for these characters and it promised to be an ugly story. Nobody had ever heard of this 'army.' And who the hell are the Symbionese? ~*~ Over the next three weeks, I was on a shorter leash at work. Wally was everywhere, asking questions, watching us work and answering phones. He even insisted on going out to serve with me one night. I couldn't really take his enthusiasm. This may have been new and interesting to him but after three years, it was pretty old hat to me. I felt burned out and bored, explaining to him how I did things, why I did them that way and would it be better to do this or do that? I tried to be pleasant and helpful but resented having to train the guy that was going to be my boss. You know how that is. I was testy anyway, since my ribs hurt like hell and getting in and out of the car twenty times a night was torture. The brace that Rick provided was like wearing a corset. Not being a cross-dresser, I was only slightly more comfortable wearing it than not. On Valentine's Day, the cops got another letter from Zodiac, through the newspaper as usual. I could imagine Dave's face. He would not let on, but this case was getting to him. Who wouldn't be bugged? This guy was tweaking their noses, claiming to have killed thirty-seven people. The cops denied that there were that many victims and said that some killings the Zodiac claimed were not his MO. Even so, it was a grisly record. On February 23rd, chaos, frustration, humiliation and violence marked the opening of People In Need food banks at four Bay Area locations. The Hearst Corporation had tried to comply with Patty's kidnappers' demands by giving away truckloads of food. It had been a disaster. People had mobbed the trucks, fights broke out and the cops had to come in and disperse the crowd. Although Hearst had said they would distribute four million dollars worth of food, only a fraction had been given away, and whether the people who got it were really poor was anybody's guess. There was no indication that Patty would be released. Governor Reagan's special gas sales program went into effect in Alameda, Contra Costa and Solano counties the following day. Only motorists whose license plates were composed entirely of letters or ended in odd numbers could buy gas. Vehicles with plates ending in even numbers or zeroes could buy on alternate days. The rest of the Bay Area started the program on Monday. No exceptions. That was a big strain for people in my line of work. I could go through a tank of gas in a day, if I was really busy. I took the plates off the Cobra. They were odds and the van had evens, so all I had to do was switch plates to get gas any day I wanted. If I got stopped with the wrong plates, I would be in for a big fine, so as soon as I filled up I'd park somewhere discreet and change the plates back. I wasn't the only one doing it. I longed to take the Cobra for a spin. It sat in Rick's garage, hunkered over its fat tires under a car cover. I promised myself a nice drive as soon as the weather improved -- if I could get gas. On March 1st, Patty Hearst participated in a bank hold-up in Sacramento. Security video showed her brandishing a rifle and appearing to cooperate with her captors. Had she been brainwashed in only four weeks, or was the whole kidnapping a stunt from the beginning? After a solid six weeks of the new Wally regime, I realized I had better take some time off. I was getting more and more irritated every day. Van had called in sick one day and Wally had tried to run his desk. Of course, he couldn't figure out how Van did things and found a few items that Van had neglected to take care of promptly. We were used to covering for Van when he had forgotten something that needed to get served right away. I would run it as though it were a 'special' and get it knocked off quickly so he wouldn't get in hot water with the client. Now Wally saw that Van was a somewhat less-than-perfect employee, and when I came in the next day, Van was still out sick. Wally was muttering to himself and cursing under his breath. He had the territories all screwed up and was giving me paper that was nowhere near the areas I worked, the same for the other guys, as well. By the time we looked up the addresses on our maps and realized that they weren't close to where we worked, we had to bring them back to the office to exchange with the proper guy. That slowed the service down. It was a mess, but it was just because Wally hadn't figured out a system that worked for him. I stopped by Van's place that evening to see how he was doing. He lived on Jones Street, deep in the heart of the Tenderloin, so named, it was said, after the steak, a popular menu item when the area had been fashionable near the turn of the century. Now the hotels were the homes of immigrants from Southeast Asia, old people living on Social Security and cat food, and about three hookers for every ten citizens. In a fit of realism, or liberal social values, the SFPD had unofficially let the word out that they weren't too interested in prostitution arrests as long as the activities weren't public. It seemed they had adopted my dear, old gray-haired mother's philosophy: "Do whatever you want, just don't do it in the street and frighten the horses." Every whore and transvestite west of the Rockies had come to San Francisco when the news got out. Since the Nevada brothel business had been crippled by the gas shortage, business on the city's street corners was brisk. Hookers occupied every intersection of the Tenderloin and spilled over into the Western Addition as well. How could you tell if these sex industry workers were TV's (transvestites) or not? Well, any woman over six feet tall is a good guess. If her biceps are bigger than yours, that's probably a giveaway. The ones with faint mustaches and beards aren't even trying. For the most part, however, you couldn't tell. For that matter, since most of their customers wanted oral sex anyway, I don't think they gave the issue too much thought. As long as they got their ten bucks worth, it really didn't matter all that much to either party. I stuck the van in a white zone in front of Van's hotel. Before the modern multi-story skyscraper hotel was conceived, San Francisco offered many five to ten-story buildings. These were nice hotels in their day, catering to the many travelers the city hosted. Then time passed them by and they were no longer for travelers and tourists. The nearest tourist hotel was the Hilton, a bulwark between the downtown businesses and the Tenderloin's armpit of sex, drugs and crime that was the real odor of the city, splashed with a thin layer of civic perfume so as not to offend the innocent or hypocritical. The lobby of Van's place retained those elements of its former grandeur that had a long service life: marble walls, fake Doric columns and the deep purple-black finish on the mahogany front desk. The original lobby furnishings had been replaced with cheap plastic chairs and broken couches clustered around a snowy television. The stale air offered odors best not catalogued. Gray-faced old people and strung-out whores of either sex sat staring or snoring. A ceiling-to-desktop wire cage protected the clerk from crazed tenants. Most of these rooms were paid for by the San Francisco Housing Authority: Jim Jones, Director. When I had read how much the city paid the owners of these mausoleums for the undead, I choked. For what it cost to house people in these dumps, you could rent a decent apartment in the Mission. Somebody was making out on this deal. The elevator took me to the fourth floor and I wandered a bit until I found Van's number. I gave a knock. I thought I had the wrong room when a young black girl opened the door. We stared at each other for a shocked moment. I managed to croak out, "Van here?" She looked relieved that I knew Van and stepped back to let me enter. "I'm a friend of his, Billie LaSaint. He's awfully sick. Do you work with him?" Her voice was soft and musical. Each word fully formed and given out clearly. I wouldn't have been surprised if she had sung an aria. "Yeah, my name's Doug. Nice to meet you." The apartment was two rooms with its own bath, a luxury suite by this joint's standards. The sitting room contained a bed and a couch, a small black and white portable TV on the bureau, a couple of beige-painted nightstands and a thin carpet whose dusty rose color had long since faded to gray. There was a kitchenette to one side with a dingy bathroom next to it. The whole place smelled of stale cigarettes and exhaled booze. Van was unconscious or asleep. He was sprawled on the couch as though the effort of breathing had taken away any other strength he possessed, his arms and legs lying where he had dropped them. His head was propped up with a pillow -- Billie's doing -- and a blanket covered him, again Billie's doing. "He's been drinking since Friday, until he passes out. When he comes to, he starts drinking again. He's going to drink himself to death, I think." She sat in the other armchair, demurely crossing her legs. It didn't help, her miniskirt was so short most of her haunch was revealed. It was a pretty nice looking haunch. She was slimly built and her delicate fingers were perfectly composed in her lap. She had large brown eyes with nicely shaped brows that she obviously paid attention to, but her makeup was scant, looking as if she had taken most of it off hastily and I was seeing the remains. She would glance at Van every once in a while, as though checking a child who whines in feverish sleep. I pulled a kitchen chair near the couch. "How long has he been like this?" "Since I came to check on him, about three. I couldn't get him into bed, so I just fixed him up there." I leaned over and checked Van's pulse. I'm no medic, but I know how to check a pulse. It was slow but steady. His skin was slack and dry, dehydrated from too much booze and not enough fluid. Alcohol is a diuretic, so for all his drinking, Van was losing more fluid than he took in. I sat back down. "Look, either he goes into the hospital or somebody has to stay here and nurse him along. He needs to get fluids and slowly weaned off the booze. At least, we have to get him back to his usual amount, just a drink or two every few hours, so he doesn't get the DTs." I had seen many a fellow come off a long bender in the service, where alcohol and drug abuse were rampant in my day. Billie said she was working until late that night. She didn't specify what her work was and I didn't ask. We made plans for Van's care. She said she was afraid to have him go to the hospital. "They won't look after him there. Some doctor who ain't nothin' but a kid will get him to learn on. If he dies, nobody's going to care." I agreed that Van would probably pull through with a little food and fluid. I went out and bought two containers of chicken soup from a Chinese joint down the street, some milk, eggs and bread from the corner robbery store and some cigarettes and magazines for Billie and me. She would get the day shift and I would take nights until Billie had finished her evening's toil. She would nap during the day and I would try to nap during the night. When I returned with the supplies, Billie went back to her room. She said she'd stop by when she finished work, two or three in the morning. I settled in for a long, dull evening. Van came to around ten. He was in terrible shape, babbling and barely able to walk. I guided him into the bathroom to pee. I had to hold his elbow while he stood there or he would have fallen. He still wore the black socks he had worn on Friday. I helped him change his clothes and put on pajamas. Then I fixed him a weak rum and coke, which he polished off while I heated the soup. We had a long argument about eating but in the end, he sat down at the wobbly dinette and ate a bowlful. He even managed to keep it down, so I figured he wasn't as near death as he looked. I knew that if I cut the booze off altogether, Van would go into _delirium tremens,_ which could lead to convulsions and possibly death. So I let him have a drink every two hours, if he was awake. I mixed them and they were more Coke than rum. The price of a drink was food. No food, no booze. Van allowed himself to be bullied out of suicide. Billie knocked on the door around one forty-five. I almost didn't recognize her in her working rig. She wore a long, pale blond wig that actually looked good with her dark coloring. Her eyes were rimmed with blue and gold; the makeup sparkled. Her full lips were painted bright red and her nails were glistening talons of cobalt blue. She wore a tube top that accentuated her small breasts to full advantage, pink hot pants and fishnet stockings. Knee-high leather boots with spike heels accentuated her shapely legs. Over one shoulder, she carried a small purse with a strong clasp. The phrase, 'it pays to advertise' came to mind. She ignored my reaction to her outfit and asked, "How's he doing?" glancing past me to the couch where Van was blearily watching some late night movie. "He's okay, but I'm beat." She patted my arm with one of those long, delicate hands and told me to go on home. She was divesting herself of purse and boots when I left. And they say the whore with the heart of gold is trite. I slept a few hours and stood in the shower for twenty minutes, emptying the boat's water tank in the process. I served paper for a while. Since Wally had taken over, he was constantly asking when this or that paper would be served. Van was a 'squeaky wheel gets the grease' type manager, while Wally asked about paper he gave you the day before. None of us were used to this, and when I gathered with my fellow servers at lunch, there was general bitching about Wally. ~*~ I had been giving Steve's vague desire for security for his marijuana fields some thought. First of all, if you were thinking about securing an area, you had to know from whom you were securing it. What, in other words, was the threat? In this case, we had a valuable item that had to remain in the open, was remote, had no electricity available and could not be watched or staffed on a twenty-four hour basis. An alarm system would not work unless someone monitored it all the time and could respond promptly with force. I was running out of ideas. After some careful thought, I concluded that the possibility of actually stopping this type of theft was not very good with the limitations imposed by the nature of the business. Who, I wondered, would be the thief? It would have to be someone who was familiar with the area, wouldn't stand out if seen by residents and had access to a small crew of helpers that could move in to quickly harvest the crop. They would have to have a place to dry and process the weed and a distribution system of some type to retail the final product. I assumed that Steve and his associates would be satisfied if they could at least identify the thief. This would undoubtedly lead to some harsh words or actions. But that's the risk a thief takes, especially when he steals from criminals. I caught up with Jan one day and asked him how he would go about setting up photo surveillance of an area. He became very interested, dropping his usual air of relaxed indifference. "Oh, yeah, you can do that. It's a little complicated, but it can be done. What do you want, twenty-four hour, night-and-day type monitoring?" I paused to think about that. "I guess it would have to be from sunrise to sunset, anyway. Maybe in the dark. What could you do with infrared?" "IR will give you outlines, like a white silhouette, but you won't get features. Under those kind of conditions, it's very hard to get an individual's features." "Well, we really would need to identify these people later on." "Are they going to work at night?" "No, I don't think so." "Let's go over to my place and I'll show you some gear." We drove out California Street to Jan's, a nice apartment in a converted Victorian. He had a living room and a bedroom as well as a large kitchen and bath. Heavily sculpted dark wood moldings gave an impression of quality and substance, although the furnishings were sparse and inexpensive. Jan unlocked a solid deadbolt lock in a closet door, revealing floor to ceiling shelves, covered with camera gear. There were separate bodies and lenses stored in leather or velvet bags, various types of lights, tripods and stuff I didn't recognize. I was seeing where Jan's money went. In a few minutes, he had set up a camera. "Okay, here we go. Here's a standard 35mm camera body, in this case it's a Minolta, but the brand doesn't really matter. I have a motor drive here, on the bottom, and a tripod. You could also mount it in a tree. Anything stable." "Now, I can set this up to take a picture every so many minutes or hours. You've seen those time-lapse movies of flowers blooming or something, right?" I nodded. "Okay, what they do there is set the movie camera to take a picture every so many minutes, then they run the film at normal speed so it looks like the time is compressed. We can do something similar with this timer control attached to the motor drive on a still camera." "Now, as for the lens, we want to be able to have the whole area in focus with a really wide aperture. That will give us the greatest depth of field." I was losing him quickly now but I wasn't going to admit it. "This is a 40mm lens. It will give you a wide angle of coverage without too much distortion. Everything in the field of the lens will be in focus, and we can use fast film and a wide aperture. Unless they move quickly all the time, their faces will be sharp." He patted the camera in a loving way. "What's this whole magilla cost?" "About five hundred." "What about weather?" Jan went to the cabinet and rummaged around for few minutes, then produced a plastic hood gizmo that covered the camera but left the lens opening clear. "You have to think about noise, too. If someone hears the motor drive or the shutter click, they're gonna find the camera and just take it with them." Good point. Jan showed off other more high-tech toys that would trigger the shutter with light beams and pressure switches and all kinds of little gizmos. We decided that given the rugged nature of the assignment, simplicity and durability were of prime importance. I wrote down all the articles needed. Jan gave me a little tour of his place. In the bedroom he had an old four-poster, no canopy. I looked up and noticed a hook in the ceiling. "What's with the hook?" Jan was matter-of-fact. "Oh, one of those women who answered the ad wanted that. I tie her hands and then suspend her from that hook. Then I whip her with a belt until she's ready." "Oh." I didn't know what etiquette required at that moment. -------- *Chapter Seven* Take This Job and Shove It I made a couple of tries on the pizza guy. His name was Sean O'Toole. An Irishman selling pizza -- only in America. He had five pizza joints in various parts of the city, a warehouse address and his pad in St. Francis Wood. I had been to the house once, but it had been dark and no one answered the door. I tried each of the pizza joints as my travels took me close to them. They might be paying me by the hour on this, but they weren't paying for gas and I had to conserve as much as possible. Every time I went into a restaurant and asked for him, he wasn't there. I thought that most of the time the employees were telling the truth, although once or twice I got the impression that they wouldn't have admitted it if he had been there. I had never been to the warehouse. It wasn't on the way to anything else, and basically, I had just forgotten about it. I didn't have time to pursue him further today. I needed to check up on Van and give Billie a break from nursing so she could go out and make her living. I trekked up the stairs, since it was only four floors. I didn't have enough patience for the aging elevator. Van was reasonably sober and looked better. Billie gave him a kiss on the cheek and told him she'd come back when her evening was finished. "Hey Van, feeling better?" He slowly rotated his head to look at me. His eyes were two red coals in a gray blanket, but he was awake, so that was a start. "Thank God for Billie," he mumbled. "She seems to really like you Van, that's nice." I thought they were an odd couple, but people seem to find what they need. I guess Billie needed to have someone in her life that she could have a real relationship with, to contrast with the mechanical sex she performed all night. I tried not to speculate on whether she and Van ... No, that image I didn't want in my mind. I thought I'd better work on getting Van back into work mode. "Van, what are you doing to yourself? Wally's been filling in for you." "How's that been?" "Torture." Van nodded shakily. "He's kind of uptight, isn't he?" "Well, I understand that he wants to make everything run smoothly and he wants to impress the customers with his concern and efficiency, but holy shit, it's just process. Have we been getting more complaints than usual?" Van stirred himself slightly. "How about a drink, Doug? Want one?" "I'll make them for us." Van started to protest but didn't bother to try very hard. I made him a weak one and myself a regular one. I wasn't fond of rum and Coke, but that's what Van had, so that's what we drank. "Van, have we been getting people complaining that we aren't getting their stuff served fast enough?" He'd forgotten the question. "Huh? Oh, I don't know. Maybe. You know everybody wants their service ASAP." "Look, with this gas thing, I can't afford to run all over town. I take one area a night, work it and that's it. I have to switch plates so I can buy gas on the wrong day. All the guys are having problems getting enough gas and making any money. Are the other outfits doing any better than we are?" "I don't know, Doug, I don't know. But Wally has been on my case about my forgetting things. You know..." I knew Van forgot things. But most of the time he was on the ball. "Well, Wally will forget things too." "I think he's going to can me, Doug." Van closed his eyes, his chin sank to his chest. Then he drank the rest of his cocktail in three swallows, got up unsteadily and tottered into the kitchenette to make another. "Van, if you don't slow down and get back into your regular pattern, he's going to can you for sure. Look, get yourself back together and get into work. I told Wally you had the flu, so you should be able to take another day or two if you need it. Don't let it go too long or he'll think he can get along without you." "Yeah, I know." I went out and got us some food from _Zim's_ diner on the corner and some more Coke and ice. We sat around watching basketball and then a made-for-TV movie. I got Van to go to bed around eleven forty-five or so, with the promise that he would try to come to work the next morning. I sat in the one good chair and watched the news, then the Tonight Show, then some old movie until I must have dropped off. I woke up when Billie tried to tuck a blanket around me. I raised my head, bleary and so tired I was aching, then settled back. Billie whispered, "Van's asleep. Come with me. I'll give you a more comfortable place." I followed her like a robot across the hall to her room. She had a big, comfortable-looking bed with lots of pillows and a pink satin comforter. I was dimly aware of her helping me off with my boots and pants. I pulled my shirt off over my head. I had dispensed with the rib brace a week ago. I was asleep before my head hit the pillow. I became aware of another body next to me, but it seemed like a dream, and I only remember pulling this body to me, spoon fashion and settling back to sleep. I woke up some time in the very early morning, light from the street lamps still glowing through the window shade. I drifted in that strange dream state where you know you're dreaming but can't wake up. The theme was intensely erotic. I was aware of my erection and then an unseen figure in the dream started giving me head. Somewhere along that journey I crested consciousness and realized that I was no longer dreaming. The unseen figure was Billie, and her ministrations were what had propelled the dream's subject matter. I mentally shrugged and decided that if Billie wanted to give me a freebie, I was a poor guest to decline. The dream resolved itself satisfactorily and I fell back asleep at once, as though pole-axed. I was unconscious until daylight broke fully into the room. It was ten o'clock. I had overslept. I turned my pager off at night to save the battery. I slipped out of bed, dressed and scrambled down the hall to the phone. I felt guilty, and consequently, was angry about feeling guilty, since in the good old days of just a couple of months ago, I never got lectured by Van if I wasn't available. Sometimes, when he was really busy and I didn't answer a page, he would ask me what was up, but I never got chewed out. Van understood that process servers were unreliable, and the fact that I worked even semi-regularly was a small miracle as far as he was concerned. I called and Barbara answered. "Doug, where have you been? Wally's been trying to get you for a special for over an hour." _Shit_. "I had a late night and overslept; it happens. Put me on with him and I'll listen to him bitch." There was a full-term pregnant pause while Wally made me wait. This gave me time to stew in my own guilty juices. Wally finally picked up and pretended that everything was fine. He had given the special to Jan, but that meant Jan hadn't been able to serve some document subpoenas that were due. He ragged on about it for some time, all the while pretending that he wasn't chewing me out when in fact, he was giving me a ton of grief. So what was the point? I wasn't there when he needed me. Tough. The world wasn't coming to an end, was it? I didn't attempt to defend myself, just let him run down, then I asked him if he wanted me to come into the office or what. He just said, "Make sure your pager's on." I went back to the _Jolly Jim_ to wait. So of course, he didn't page all day, or even the next day. I was being spanked by getting none of the specials for a day or two. I spent four full hours trying to track the O'Toole guy down. I went to each restaurant in succession, wasting precious gas. I got nowhere. By now, I was convinced the guy was evading, but I had used up all the time the client had allotted. So after not appearing at the office for two days, I decided it was time to come in and show my face, make nice with Wally and report on O'Toole. I turned in a fat wad of cards for stuff I had unloaded during my exile. When Wally got the pile he said, "Now, that's more like it!" and started sorting it out. Van was sitting next to him, in a small side chair, staring at Wally like he was supposed to be learning something. I tossed the O'Toole thing on the desk and started giving Wally a report. "I've been to every place on this list twice and not hide nor hair of him." Wally took the paper up and looked through it. He saw the date on the original filing and took a deep breath. "This should have been served two weeks ago! We've had this for a month! That is unacceptable, just unacceptable." He turned to Van and waved the paper at him, like someone disciplining a dog. "I've told you we have to stop this. We should have had this served a long time ago, and if you were supervising the servers properly instead of being their buddy, you would have given this to someone who would have gone out and worked it!" I confess to having a bad temper, a character flaw that I have tried to control. I am proud to say that I didn't hit Wally. I just took my battered briefcase, opened it on my lap, then turned it upside down on his neat piles of papers on the desk. I then laid the case down and closed it, fastening the latches. Wally watched me, mouth open. I stood up, raised my middle finger into the air under his nose and walked out. Anyone standing between me and the door just then would have been tossed right out the window. I closed the door to the hallway with a bang, the glass rattling. By the time the elevator reached the ground floor, I realized that I had just quit my job, did not have another and had maybe two grand in the bank. I was going to have to pull in my horns and come up with a course of action. So I headed for Sharon and the sanctuary of _The Office_, where I told her in colorful language what had happened. Wally wasn't a customer of hers, so she gave me much sympathy, then reminded me my tab was due. Ah, trust is so fleeting -------- *Chapter Eight* Agriculture -- It Keeps America Growing! Being unemployed has its advantages. I had plenty of time to catch up on my reading and see some movies. Barbara and I saw _The Sting_. When we made love later, she called me 'Paul' at a critical moment, but I wasn't offended. At least she had good taste. It didn't take long for me to get restless, so after a week of idleness, I called Steve and told him I would come up and look things over. We could discuss my ideas when I got there. The trip was uneventful. Three hundred miles on highways that narrow to two lanes and pass through little towns where the traffic slows to twenty-five and you stop at every intersection for the lights. God help you if you speed in one of those places, they'd nail you as soon as look at you. After all, the cops could tell from your license number in which county you're registered. If you were from out of county, you weren't likely to fight the ticket, were you? I kept my speed right on the money through each burg and arrived at Steve's house in the redwood forests of Southern Humboldt around six. The sunset glinting through his private redwood cathedral was almost enough to give me religion. We spent a quiet evening and set out early the next morning for the site. This involved a trip over Third World quality roads, up and down hills, through valleys, turning at seemingly random points. Finally, we slithered down a muddy bank in his Datsun four-wheel-drive truck and stopped. Then we hiked through hills, over and down and through wooded country until I was completely lost, but Steve knew exactly where he was headed. We broke out of a steep ravine into a series of meadows, dotted with small groves of fir and oak. We walked into the shelter of a copse and there, under a camouflage net, lay piles of fencing and posts, tools for digging and weeding, dozens of sacks of compost, redwood bark soil conditioner and fertilizer. Steve showed me how they had hauled it all in with a three-wheel ATV, parked under the netting as well. Growing seems simple, but actually involves careful planning and scrupulous execution for everything to come to fruition. First, holes must be dug in suitable locations, open to the sun, but not in clear view from surrounding hills or from the air. I mentioned to Steve that they were vulnerable to helicopters but he assured me that so far the county sheriff didn't have the budget for such exotic policing. Still, they did not take the chance of an accidental sighting casually. I can tell you from previous aerial experience, it's not easy to single out one type of foliage from a tangle of green. Still, the distinctive plants, reaching fifteen to twenty feet in height, had to be at least semi-concealed. The plants were to be scattered about amongst the trees. They intended to plant one hundred and fifty this year and hoped that half would survive to maturity. This would give them a yield of roughly one hundred pounds of prime flower tops, _sin semilla_, Spanish for 'without seeds'. This is the strongest marijuana and prized as the best to be had. At the present market value, they would have somewhere around a hundred thousand dollars to share among the four partners. After the holes were dug, the soil amended and the plants protected with fencing, there was the issue of water. The partners had picked this property, and this location on it, due to three well-developed springs uphill from here. We walked up to them. I was puffing pretty hard by the time we reached them. There, Steve showed me how they had dug out spring boxes, lined the holes with wood framing and plastic, then affixed plastic irrigation pipe to the box so that the water would run down to the plants. They had designed a manifold system. Each pipe came to a central location, then three or four separate systems ran off each of those lines. They could then water each group by turning a valve at the main branching. Steve had placed a written log in a plastic bag for them to keep track of which group had been watered and when. Of course now, in early spring, water was not a problem. But when the long California summer and fall drought came, water would be critical to their success. The seeds had already been started in several small sheds and greenhouses at their homesteads. From these little seeds, mighty oaks of fortune grew. From what I gathered, the economics of the group were this: if they had a successful year, they could live well and not worry much about money. If they failed, they would have to scrape by on what could be earned in low-wage jobs, waiting tables or maybe, with luck, a part-time gig with a state or county government program. Good jobs were few and far between. One of the partners, Jason, was in a tough spot. He stood to lose his land if he couldn't raise a crop this year. He was almost in default now, so by autumn his back would be against the wall. The other three weren't quite as desperate. Steve was confident that he could bring in some cash doing his computer work on the side. There weren't a lot of computers in the area, but he could travel to Eureka or even Santa Rosa, if he had to. We met two of the partners at a bar that night. We sat outside at a picnic table in the dark, smoked dope and talked. Steve made the introductions. It struck me funny; it was like a corporate board meeting in an alternative universe. Jason was a tall, well-built guy, who looked to be about forty. He wore his blond hair long, to his waist, although it was starting to show gray. He said little, never interrupted and struck me as more of a philosopher than a man of action. The other partner, Wendy, was somewhat of a surprise. She was a big, square-built woman, with a strong grip when we shook hands. She was dressed exactly the same as the men: jeans, boots and flannel shirt. She had the shortest hair of us all. It took Wendy and Jason a little while to loosen up, but when they saw that Steve spoke freely in front of me, I was considered 'vouched for.' I was being accepted into a counterculture Mafia, only I hadn't had to kill anyone, nor mingle my blood with theirs -- yet. After a rambling discussion that I won't try to reproduce, we got down to the serious business of protecting their crop. I outlined what I saw as their available options given the limitations. It was easy for them to go with the camera idea, since anything else wasn't possible. When the impossible is eliminated, only the possible remains, isn't that what Sherlock Holmes said? I told Steve that since I had time on my hands, I would be glad to offer what services I could in the way of labor. Of course, the idea of hauling heavy loads over hills and valleys was not one my orthopedic surgeon would have liked. I possess some very expensive hardware, installed at great expense to the government and considerable discomfort to myself. I wasn't about to destroy a year of rehab by carrying heavy loads, but I would do what I could. They agreed to come up with the money for the camera gear. I told them I would go back to the city and have Jan help me pick the stuff out, bring it back and get it set up. There was plenty of time. The nasty thing about marijuana rip-offs was that you did all the hard work and the thieves got the spoils when the crop was ready for harvest. It was doubly painful. The next day was designated a work day. I would get a chance to meet the fourth partner, Carlson. That was his last name, but that was all anyone ever called him. Steve and I arrived at the site first, then drank tea from a thermos while we waited for the others. Jason and Wendy arrived within a short span of each other, then we sat around for half an hour or so waiting for the mysterious Carlson to appear. Finally, everyone decided to quit wasting time and get to work. Steve and Wendy started digging holes while Jason and I went from hole to hole constructing the fence rings to protect the plants from marauding deer. Jason used a heavy post driver while I held them in place. We determined that three was the minimum number to give the plant room to develop without wasting resources. I looked over to see Steve and Wendy, sweating like coolies, digging the virgin forest soil. After we'd worked about an hour, Carlson came tramping up. "Sorry guys," he offered. "I had to take care of something else first. I got here as fast as I could." Everyone seemed to accept this excuse. He came to a sudden halt when he saw me. Steve made the introductions. Carlson shook my hand dismissively. He walked around looking at the work done in his absence, nodding like a foreman. He was in his late twenties, tall and fashionably thin. He dressed in the requisite flannel shirt over T-shirt, jeans and boots. His hair was a fine, pale blond, long and as beautiful as a model's. You could tell he took great pride in it, flinging it back out of his way, tying it with a fancy braided piece of leather. He had a way of speaking that carried authority and a positive degree of confidence in his own opinion that made contradiction seem rude or venal. I didn't like the guy at first meeting, but the others seemed to welcome him, despite being tardy for the work detail. The afternoon grew warm and soon everyone had their shirts off. I was a little surprised when Wendy casually stripped hers too, but when the others took no notice, I ignored her as well. Still, it was strange to have a casual conversation with a bare-breasted woman. Jason took his turn digging. I declined the honor. I suppose the scar down my spine convinced them I was not a shirker. We worked on and off until about four. Then everything was covered with the camouflage netting and we trooped back, leaving singly, a few minutes apart. One had the impression of being totally alone, but that was far from true. There were logging roads and trails throughout these hills, and an isolated homestead could be just over the ridge from us. A truck or car motor could easily be heard for a mile and raised voices could echo a half mile or more. I was very aware of how anyone with an elevated position could have spotted us without our being aware of them at all. Driving back to Steve's, a sheriff's patrol car picked us up right after we turned onto the paved county road. He stayed with us long enough to run the plate. Steve drove steadily. When we turned off on the road to his place, the cop continued. I called Barbara at home that night. AAA was in chaos. Wally had been hiring servers like crazy. Jan and Bill were working night and day trying to keep up. Van had been out sick again on Monday. She hadn't seen the paper for O'Toole served yet. I hoped Wally was stewing. I called the pay phone in the hall in Van's hotel. I had copied down the number when I was there, but whoever answered said they got no response when they tried Van's door. I was worried, but short of driving five hours back to the city to check on him, I couldn't think of anything I could do about it. -------- *Chapter Nine* Dust in the Wind A half day of debate and inaction ensued among the four partners concerning the surveillance idea. Carlson had argued that this was a useless gesture, since the crop would be lost either way, but the others seemed to think that identifying the guilty party would be a service to the whole community, thus worth the expense and hassle. The debate, which at times was downright silly in its nitpicking and ranged far afield from the subject, did not involve me. I really didn't care what happened to their dope, except for the effect on my supply, but there were plenty of other sources for weed. I spent the time enjoying the woods, reading books and grooving on the freedom of having nothing to do. Finally the discussion resolved, the contributions from the partners worked out (Carlson had refused to pay up) and I left. On my way to the highway, I was pulled over by a sheriff's deputy. I handed over my license and registration automatically when he walked up. He said nothing when he took the proffered documents. "Mind telling me why you stopped me?" I kept my tone of voice polite. He wore aviator style sunglasses, a look favored by many law enforcement types. "You have a taillight out." "Really? Mind if I get out and take a look?" We walked around to the rear. Both lights glowed in the dusk. "Looks like they're both working now." The deputy walked over to the left light, drew his baton and swung it into the plastic lens. Crunch. "No sir, looks to me like the left one is broken." He looked me in the eyes. I just stood there. I noticed he wore Wing Walker boots. _Geez, a paramilitary freak._ I just nodded my assent and got back in the car. The deputy hung me up for about twenty minutes, running my plates and asking me my business in the area. He took a look inside the van, with my permission, but did not search it. He stood about five feet eleven or maybe six feet. His equipment belt rode low on his hips, a slight paunch bulging over it. He looked solid, with just a little extra meat that comes to many middle-aged men. His hair was a sandy-reddish color, shot with gray and he wore it combed back, almost a brush cut. He was one of those cops that hates their hat. He didn't wear it the whole time. I wasn't really used to being hassled by cops, the ones in the city having gotten used to seeing men with all manner of strange dress and appearance. This guy was like something out of a bad movie about the South. He asked me if I was carrying drugs, which I denied. He threatened to get a search warrant and I told him to go ahead, but that if he was going to stick with the dumb taillight story as a reason for stopping me, the case was going nowhere. The look in his eyes was not one that reassured me. He started to reach for his cuffs when a car pulled up behind us and the driver called out to him. I could hear the new arrival saying something about an accident down the road and someone in the ditch. For a moment the cop stood there, torn. Then he cast me a look that said I had been saved by the bell and peeled out in his car to respond. I had seen his name tag and his attitude guaranteed I'd remember it: T. Taylor. I drove back with no further incident, arriving at the boat after midnight. I fell into my bunk, taking a handful of pain pills for my back, which hates long periods in one position. The next morning I decided to check on Van first, then call Jan and have him help me with the camera gear. I drove over to the hotel about ten o'clock and within ten minutes, I was tapping at Van's door. He did not answer. I went to the pay phone and called the office. Layla answered the phone and greeted me warmly, lowering her voice so no one could overhear. I didn't doubt that I was _persona non grata_ as far as Wally was concerned. She told me Van had not been in since the day I had quit. I told her I would like to get together with the gang after work and we agreed to meet in _The Office_ around six. I didn't want to wake her, but Billie was my only option. I doubted that the 'desk clerk' downstairs would be helpful. I knocked and tapped progressively louder until she finally opened the door a crack. Bleary eyes peered out. When she saw it was me, she let the door swing open and stumbled back to bed. She was snoring before I had closed the door behind me. It took me several minutes to get her tuned in. She looked like she'd had a hard day's night: wig off, nappy hair sticking out every which way, eyes puffy, streaks of remaining mascara adorned her cheeks and her lips looked swollen. Once awake, her hands fluttered aimlessly about. She wound her way through the discarded clothes, shoes and other detritus to the bathroom, where I heard noisy peeing and then the flush. She collapsed in a chair and I got her a glass of water from the bathroom. That seemed to help. Now that Billie had returned to the land of the living, I asked her about Van. She said she had last seen him the previous evening before she hit the streets. He was drunk and had refused to let her tend to him, told her rudely to 'fuck off.' Her feelings had been hurt and coming home very late last night after a prolonged drug party with a couple of her fellow street workers, she passed him by in favor of passing out. Now that she was becoming more conscious, Billie was concerned as well. She did not have a key to his room, but when I raised the question, she just waved her hand and said she knew how to get in. She pulled a thin negligee around herself. Under that she wore a red snap-crotch teddy. It was somewhat the worse for wear, probably having seen service for thirty hours straight, with a couple of stains that could only be the remains of her customers' attentions. When she stood up, the robe fell open. She had neglected to fasten the crotch of the teddy and protruding from the opening was unmistakably male plumbing. For a moment my mind and eyes could not reconcile themselves. I looked at Billie's face instinctively, as though I had made a mistake and been talking to the wrong person. But it was Billie's lovely almond eyes, full lips and soft smooth skin. Her small breasts cupped by the teddy. _Oh shit! His?_ I had to look again just to prove to myself that it was there, then Billie unconsciously pulled the negligee closed, unaware her secret identity had been revealed. Look, having lived in San Francisco all my adult life (not being sure exactly when adulthood had crept up on me) I certainly knew about and had seen transvestites. But Billie was the first one I had known socially, (not counting Carol) and, suddenly and guiltily, I remembered that I had known her a little more than 'socially'. Since I was more concerned with Van Duzee at the time, I decided to speculate on the nature of our relationship at a more convenient time. Billie seemed not to have noticed my expression when she (for my sake, I continued to think of him as 'she') had revealed her not-so-little secret. She turned and retrieved her purse, from which she extracted a wallet and from inside the wallet, a credit card. We went across the hall and Billie inserted the credit card between the jamb and the latch, manipulated it delicately for a few seconds and the door eased open. This is what happens when you don't deadbolt your door. I followed her into the room. The TV was on, some inane morning show with grinning, talking heads. Van was sprawled on the couch. He looked bad. Billie walked over, called his name and shook his leg. He didn't respond. She turned a surprised face to me. I jumped to Van's side; one touch on his bare arm told me he was dead. Don't believe stories about burying people alive. You can tell when someone's dead. Once we got it through our heads that Van was beyond help, we had to have a little conference. Billie didn't want anything to do with the cops, which was understandable given her profession and habits. So I called the police from the hall phone and Billie retreated to her room. I touched nothing in Van's place and sat in the armchair across from him and waited. From the odor, I would say that he had choked on his own vomit. I lit a cigarette to kill my sense of smell. I suppose it may seem macabre to sit across from a corpse, but once you've seen a few (and I had seen enough already to last a lifetime), you realize that the most harmless thing in the world is a dead body -- unless you believe in ghosts or something. I lit another cigarette, though, from tension. I looked at the husk of my friend and tried to sort out how I was feeling. I had plenty of time to think until the cops, with the desk clerk in tow, made their way up and took over officially. They did the usual cop stuff, but finding old drunks dead in their rooms was a routine event in this part of town, so within forty-five minutes they had wrapped up. I discussed the issue of Van's effects. The cops had asked me if he had any family. I said I didn't know of any, but offered to check with AAA and see what they had on file. They took a desultory look through his bureau and nightstand drawers but found no address book, letters or pictures that might give some clue as to next of kin. So it came to pass that the cops unofficially appointed me Van's executor, seeing as how I had said I was a friend of his. I took this upon myself with resignation, feeling I owed Van the courtesy of someone who gave a damn to attend to his final affairs. The cops gave me a phone number to call if I found any family. Since his rent was paid until the end of the month, I agreed that I would dispose of his things if no family was found by that time. I had thirteen days to find someone to claim the dubious right to Van's personal effects. After they all left, I closed the door to the now empty room. Already it was as though no one had ever lived here. I added the room key to my own key ring. I tapped on Billie's door to say goodbye but she didn't answer. I didn't really want to talk to her in her half-dazed state anyway and besides, what was there to say? I had the rest of the afternoon to shop for camera gear so I paged Jan. He was finishing an in-town special and we arranged to meet at his preferred equipment supplier. The three partners had pitched in the five hundred dollars for the gear and I spent it as frugally as possible. We acquired a used 35mm Pentax with motor drive and the necessary lens, filter and an assortment of mounting gear. Jan tested the motor drive and said it would do, then we bought a timer to allow us to take an image at prescribed intervals. This required that we get a bulk film back as well, to accommodate an adequate supply of film for twenty-four hours of independent operation. Spare batteries and such rounded out the bill. We bought a bulk roll of ASA 1000 high-speed black and white film, which Jan advised could be push-processed to double the sensitivity without degrading the image. The bulk film meant we had to buy a bulk loader and a lightproof bag to load the film into the bulk film back. I decided to buy a second back for the camera to speed up the film changing process. Call it my overdeveloped sense of paranoia, but I was unhappy with having only the one setup. So, while I had to part with some additional money from my own finite resources, I bought a duplicate camera setup. It just seemed to make sense to have a backup system. By now it was nearly six, so I stashed the camera gear under the back seat of the van and Jan and I went to _The Office_ to meet the others. I hadn't mentioned Van's death to Jan when we met. I knew I would have to go over it again with the rest of them and I couldn't bear to repeat the whole thing. I figured Jan wouldn't care whether I told him first or not. I was gratified that everyone in the office showed up for this impromptu reunion. We pushed two tables together in the roomiest part of the bar. I noticed that business had deteriorated for Sharon, despite having expanded the free hot hors d'oeuvres selection during happy hour. I suppose the lousy economy was forcing a lot of people to actually go home after work and face their loved ones, or their empty apartments -- a depressing thought either way. The girls (I think of them as girls, even the women who were nearly twenty years older than I) were boisterously kissing me hello and laughing while we all got settled with drinks. I had to ignore a barrage of questions about my whereabouts and held up my hands to get everyone to quiet down so I could deliver my news. When I had everyone's attention, which took a minute or two in the noisy atmosphere of greetings and post-workday bitching, I tried to figure out what to say. "Look, guys, I don't know how to tell you this gently. I stopped by Van's place this morning to check on him..." I gave this a beat to let the subject sink in, "...and anyway, well, I found him dead." The word 'dead' fell with a thud. The reaction was pretty much what you get with that kind of news: there were two or three who instinctively said "What?" ; there were three or four whose eyes started tearing; there were three or four who needed a couple of seconds to figure out what I had said. Then everyone started talking at once. Bill, tall and golden, rose to his feet with his glass held high. This shut everyone up. I was still on my feet as well. Bill looked up to the ceiling and said, voice lilting and clear: "May Van's soul have been in Heaven a half hour before the Devil knew he was dead!" He then drained his drink. The rest stood, murmuring agreement. We ceremoniously drained our glasses. With loud cries, we summoned Sharon for refills. She had not known Van, since he never drank in a bar. As far as I know, he only drank in his room, usually alone. Sharon, recognizing the potential profitability of a wake, announced that our drinks were half-price for the remainder of the evening. Two or three credit cards were produced to run the tab. We drank and ate, talked and told stories about Van and his many misadventures and proceeded to get obnoxiously loud and drunk. The gathering comprised Bill, Jan, Barbara, Mary, Layla, Bernice, Darrell and Dixie, so the opportunity for serious public drunkenness was ripe. Carol, Bills' transvestite lover, appeared at his telephonic summons to help us speed Van's shade. When I judged Bill to be sufficiently drunk, I pulled him off to a corner. There was an issue that I wanted to clear up, and I thought Bill qualified to lend an expert's advice. "Bill, can I ask you something personal?" I had to hold his shoulder and lean into his ear to be heard above the general din and not broadcast my subject to all. His slightly out-of-focus gaze came to rest on me. Satisfied that I had control of as much of his attention as would be available, I broached the subject of his relationship with Carol, known to us privately as Carol the Cocksucker. Bill had met Carol during the course of his process-serving duties and one thing had led to another. At that time Bill was not aware that Carol came with some of the wrong equipment, so to speak. "Uh, Bill, I just kind of wondered how you reacted when you found out about Carol." He looked at me with confusion on his face for a moment, then realized what I was referring to. "Oh, _that_. Well, Doug my boy, what can I say? Carol is nicer to me than any woman I've ever met and that includes my mother. She can cook, sew and has a good job. She likes country music like me, and she's from Atlanta, same as me." He became more sober as he talked seriously. "To tell you the truth, by the time I figured out that she was a he ... well, it was so fixed in my mind that Carol was a girl that I just don't think of it that way. I mean, it's not like I'm looking for someone to raise my children, you know? We get along great and the sex is terrific." He leaned closer to me and spoke in my ear. "I don't think of myself as a fag, either. I mean it's not like fucking some hairy guy with muscles or something. I don't think it makes you gay when you think of the guy as a chick." I ran this logic through my circuits for several minutes. Let's see, if I got Bill's argument correct, if you don't think you're gay, then you're not gay. If you think of it as having sex with a woman, then it's not gay sex? I wasn't sure I bought this logic but then, I hadn't quite sorted out the incident with Billie. Bill leaned back from my face and looked at me questioningly. "So, look. I'm too old and too lonely to care, how's that? I've found someone I like, whose company I enjoy. She wants to be thought of as a woman and it's not a problem for me. She said she wanted that surgery, you know, but I told her not to. Look, it's got to be painful and what's the point? Christ, Doug, I admit it: I love her." I tightened my grip on his shoulder. I've always liked Bill, for all of his unreliable behavior and his gambling jones. "Bill, love is love. I suppose the rest of it is irrelevant." I don't know if I believed that, but it's different when it's someone you know. I didn't care. They were happy. Interestingly, once the women got used to Carol, they treated her as one of the girls, even to the point of doing the _en masse_ thing that women do when they go to the bathroom. Carol went off with them and no one batted an eyelash. When I thought about it, I could see that there was certainly no way Carol could have used the men's room instead. Most of us stayed until two, closing time. By then, we were past drunk and had almost become sober again. You can reach that point, where you're just in a numb fog. I left my van to collect parking tickets, and Barbara, Bernice and I took the streetcar to Barbara's place. We got there by about three and were wide awake, if not fully competent. So we smoked grass and sat around for a while, having one more drink. Barbara reached up and pulled her panty hose off as soon as we were settled. She kicked off shoes, panty hose and panties into the middle of the floor. The three of us started laughing at that and in moments, we were all naked. Barbara and Bernice on the couch, me in a leather Eames chair nearby. According to all medical experts, I should have been incapable of rising to the occasion, but sometimes a penis can have a mind of its own in that regard. I was sitting across from two attractive, uninhibited women that I had slept with several times before, so it was hardly a question as to what was going to happen. Barbara had a sly smile on her face as she turned to Bernice and whispered in her ear. Bernice then smiled as well, caught my eye and gave me a wink. Then the two of them kissed. It didn't take more than a few minutes of this for them to become excited and they started to touch each other here and there. It was obvious that they were not strangers. I watched. Women make love differently than men. They are more focused on their entire bodies, whereas men are focused on parts. I thought of the X-rated movies I had seen. In those, the 'lesbians' made love like men. They parted, inviting me to join. There was no hiding the effect they had created. They incorporated me into their midst, folded into a wet heaven of frantic kisses and hot, pulsing flesh. They used each other to teach me things about themselves I hadn't yet discovered -- and after all our couplings, there were still things to learn. We eventually melted into sleep, our primordial fear of mortality like a dark creature that briefly surfaced, then submerged again into the opaque depths of our subconscious. The women awoke in time to call, separately, to inform Wally that they were 'sick.' Indeed, they did not feel able to work. Wally was furious. Apparently, there were several AWOLs that day. Even in death, Van was capable of wreaking havoc. -------- *Chapter Ten* *In the Land of Faerie* The three of us nursed our hangovers the next morning. When we had sufficiently recovered, I decided to float a trial balloon. "What would you guys think about starting another agency?" Barbara smiled at me and said that she was interested, but could only go for a couple of months without a paycheck. Her husband, currently confined to a mental institution, had left her broke and in debt. She was just now pulling even again. I didn't want to screw up Barbara's life just because I wanted to get away from working for someone else. Bernice's face was one of those lovely, mature African faces -- butter-smooth skin, only tiny lines revealing time's lightest caress. She assumed a thoughtful expression. "Doug, I'm fifty-two years old. If I save my pennies carefully, I'll be able to retire at sixty-two with my Social Security and a little bit more. I've been working for one son of a bitch or another all my life. I'd love to work for myself for a change." She went on before I could respond. "I used to work for a bookkeeping service in Detroit, so I know how to keep books and all that. Better yet, I've got ten grand in the bank, honey, and want in." She smiled at Barbara. "I love you two crazies like my own family. We won't starve, I promise." We talked over the details the balance of the morning and agreed that to make the idea workable, we would need to recruit either Bill or Jan, if not both. Bernice thought that Dixie might join us, since she had been fond of Van as well and disliked Wally. He had spent a day or two with her, and this learning experience made her resent his heavy-handed manner. The three of us laid plans over Chinese take-out food. Conspiracy and Cantonese. Subtrefuge with Szechuan. Barbara and Bernice would talk to Bill and Jan. Assuming that one or both were interested, we would all get together and work out a timetable. I told them I would be back in town after a few days. I gave them Steve's number if they needed me. I checked in with old Niles, handing over a fifth of bourbon and reminding him that I would be away. He allowed that he would watch the boat extra carefully. _If he wasn't dead drunk_, I thought. I slept alone on the boat that night. I needed the rest. I went over to Van's room in the morning and dug through his stuff. It was a pitiful amount of anonymous debris to represent the sum total of a man's history on this earth. His clothes went into bags for the Goodwill. His toiletries I tossed. Billie came over and took the cheap TV and a radio. I found a dusty cardboard file box full of legal papers in the closet. I paged through them quickly, trying to find family records or a will, but they seemed to be about an old legal case, back when Van had practiced law. I saw nothing relevant to the situation at hand and took them with me for later examination. Barbara had checked AAA's file. Van had listed a sister's number in Minnesota but when I called, all I got was a recording saying the number was not in service. I called the coroner's office that afternoon. They told me I could make arrangements for Van's remains. I didn't know what his preference might have been, but I figured he was beyond caring. So I called the Neptune Society, who handle inexpensive cremation arrangements, and Van's last need was attended to in that manner. They told me where and when to pick up his ashes. I had no idea what I was going to do with them, but I put off thinking about it. I went to bed early and left for Humboldt before daylight. Upon arrival, I showed Steve the equipment. We played around with it all day, shooting some film, checking the timer and fiddling with everything. We took the film to a photo lab in town where the clerk assured us we could have the prints the next day. Steve had thought the second camera was overkill, but since they hadn't paid for it, he didn't protest my backup plan. The following morning, I drove back into town and checked the prints. They came out fine, everything the lens could record was clear, except at the very edges. We replaced the batteries in the auto-winder and the camera with new ones, just to be sure, then drove up to the 'garden.' We walked around looking for the best angle to be able to capture the area as thoroughly as possible. There was a grove of trees within the range Jan had advised me would produce usable images, about forty feet from the center of the garden. We tucked the camera back into the dense part of a tree, cleared the growth from in front slightly, then set everything up. We walked around the area to see if the camera was evident. Aside from some beaten-down grass, there was little evidence of our surveillance. While Steve followed the plastic pipe trails to check for leaks or broken connections, I rigged the second camera so that it covered the opposite field of view from the first. I mounted it in a tree upslope from the garden, facing the faint trail that the partners had formed with all their trips to and fro. Changing the film and battery was going to be a regular task and I showed Steve how to attend to the both of them. "You might not mention the second camera to anyone," I suggested. "Why not?" "Well, sometimes it's best not to tell everyone everything." Steve nodded that this might be wise. The partners were facing a busy period. It was late April and the seedlings were ready for transplanting. This required all four of them to haul the potted plants up to the garden site, put the transplants into the prepared holes and then give them a shot of B-12 fortified water to get them past transplant shock. The way they took care of these plants was both science and art. Only the best organic fertilizers, kelp supplements and the like were used. Botanical health was carefully monitored and fussed over, each plant regularly checked. It took three, twelve-hour days of hauling, planting and fussing. They took heavy loads in with the ATV, but there was plenty of grunt work to do. I did not have to join this orgy of sweat and fatigue. First, my back would never have tolerated the abuse, and second, I was not one of the partners. Since I wasn't sharing in the potential profits, I certainly didn't have to share in the work. I was kind of an unpaid consultant, although I had little doubt that Steve would make it good to me with some grass, should things work out successfully. As it was, I lived off his food so I tried to be useful by cooking when he staggered through the door after dark: dirty, sweaty and aching. Steve's place had minimal comforts. Water pressure from the gravity-feed tank on a small hill was poor, so water trickled from the faucet. There was no water heater, so hot water was produced a kettleful at a time on the propane stove. Bathing was pretty much limited to sponge baths and after a couple of days, I could detect Steve's presence from several feet away. I don't suppose I smelled much better. Toilet facilities consisted of a pit toilet, familiarly known as an outhouse. You don't really appreciate flush toilets until you don't have one. I guess that's true of a lot of things. The partners finished their labors on the fourth day and decided to celebrate at the local hot springs. It was a cool, damp day. The idea of soaking in the heat and then chilling in the misty dampness sounded delicious. Steve drove the two of us there in his pickup, jouncing over hill and dale until we found ourselves deep in the redwood paradise, hillsides thick with fern, rhododendron and wild orchid. Thousands of years of accumulating needles padded the forest floor to a deep, spongy carpet with paisley whorls of brown and green. After a short hike, we reached the springs. It was like coming upon a family reunion of nudists. Men, women and children lounged and frolicked in the clearings around the small pools. The group was only lacking the elderly; no one was over fifty. But there were children of every age, from infants at their mothers' breasts to adolescents and pre-adolescents running to and fro or clustered in groups. It seemed odd to me to come upon a large group of naked people in the woods, but Steve walked into the crowd, smiling, waving and shaking hands. I was introduced all around and warmly welcomed. We shed our duds -- we would have felt stupid not to -- and plunged into the steaming water. It was hot enough to sting at first but after a few minutes, the heat sank into our bones. Steve smiled when he saw my head swiveling as my eyes followed one lovely forest nymph after another. There were naked women all around, many of them did not appear to be particularly attached. They flirted and chatted with many men. All three of Steve's partners were there, although they didn't share the same pool with us the whole time. Carlson joined us for a while, introducing his girl, Patty. She was a succulent blond of around twenty-five, tall and nicely shaped. She had a ready smile and a saucy mouth. I liked her immediately. Maybe we got along a little too well. After about twenty minutes, Carlson took her hand and they disappeared into the trees to one of the smaller pools. I looked at Steve, who shrugged. "He's a little insecure about her. Patty was a pretty free spirit until they started living together." I could understand that maybe Carlson hadn't totally evolved beyond mainstream issues like jealousy and monogamy. Wendy joined us for a while. Naked, she was very impressive. Her shoulders were wide and the muscles defined, not quite a bodybuilder but she looked damn strong. Her small breasts merged with slabs of pectoral muscle, not much more than smooth lumps of flesh over the delta of her chest. She was broad across the hips as well and her calves bulged when she walked. Her chestnut hair was cropped to her neck. Dressed and in poor lighting, you could have mistaken her for a man. Of course under these circumstances, she was obviously female, but she projected a 'one-of-the-guys' aura so clearly that I wasn't confused about her sexual orientation. Patty returned from wherever Carlson had dragged her and rejoined us, sitting with me on one side and Wendy on the other. The four of us got high and chatted idly. I saw Carlson off to one side, sitting on a rock, holding forth to a small group of guys about something I couldn't hear, but he seemed to be speaking authoritatively, his usual style. From time to time, he would glance over his shoulder, his lips would twitch, not quite a scowl but certainly not a smile. He was not appreciating Wendy's attention to Patty, that much was obvious. The little tribe drifted away in the dark, groups of voices fading into the dark, brooding trees. Driving home in the pitch dark of the country was like being in a tiny tunnel of civilization in the wild forest all around us. -------- *Chapter Eleven* I'd Rather Be Lucky Than Smart Barbara called the following evening. My fellow conspirators had met and Bill had agreed, of course. It had been his idea in the first place. My presence was now required to sign the partnership agreement. Darrell, the document subpoena manager, had caught Barbara and Bernice alone in _The Office_ and proposed the same idea, so he was easily recruited into the plot. Document subpoena work was steady income and easier than process serving. When attorneys subpoenaed records from a doctor or a business, AAA sent over a person with a portable copier to acquire the records. They made copies at the office where they served the subpoena. They almost never encountered any resistance or lack of cooperation since the court order to produce the records was impossible to resist for long. This is how the classic 'paper trail' is developed in a court case. Darrell had just dropped that plum into our laps. I was on the road at six-fifteen the next morning. If I hadn't stopped for coffee, I would not have seen him. I was just pulling back onto Highway 101 southbound when a gleaming black Dodge Challenger passed me, preventing me from merging into the right-hand lane. I was irritated and gave the driver a hard look as he passed. The elevation of the bus gave me a clear view of him as he drew parallel. I recognized the sheriff's deputy who had hassled me: T. Taylor. He was looking right at me as he went by and his face was as clear as could be. I didn't know if he recognized me or not, his expression was flat and his eyes didn't seem focused on my face. After he passed me, I pulled into the lane and settled in back of him by three or four car lengths. He was moving pretty fast, ignoring the speed limit, which didn't surprise me since he was virtually immune to traffic tickets. I just kept up with him, not pulling too close or falling so far back that I lost sight of him for more than a few minutes. I was curious about his destination. Besides, we were both headed in the same direction. He drove quickly, not unsafely, but not wasting any time either. He passed when he could. I would let him get a mile or two ahead, then slowly catch up to him. He probably wouldn't realize that this particular VW was capable of traveling a good deal faster than most. He didn't stop until we reached Ukiah. When we entered town, he pulled into a restaurant parking lot. I drove past and parked up the street. Did I want to wait for him? He may have just been stopping for a mid-morning breakfast before he continued his drive. Or perhaps he was meeting someone here. I decided I wanted to know which it was. Besides, I was hungry and if he was eating, I could use the chance to eat too. I pushed open the glass door to the diner and looked around. I didn't see him in the restaurant portion so I walked back toward the bar. He was sitting in a booth in the far rear corner, facing the doors to the outside and the passage to the dining room. I tucked my ponytail into my shirt and pulled the collar up. I wished for a hat, but one did not appear. I kept my gaze on the bartender when I walked in, keeping the deputy in my peripheral vision. I headed on a slanting course that took me near his booth, but not too close to him. Fortunately, that was where the bartender was standing, so I just appeared to be steering towards the server. I ordered a bloody beer. I could see Taylor clearly by looking into the bar mirror. He looked like he was waiting for someone, a glass of orange juice in front of him and a cigarette burning in the ashtray. A few minutes after I received my drink, two guys walked in from the outside entry, sunlight temporarily glaring into the shadowy bar. They stood for a moment while their eyes adjusted to the dimmer light, then they angled directly over to Taylor. One of the newcomers was black and the other was white, dressed in "hippie" clothes: paisley shirt and bellbottoms. When they slid into the booth on either side of the deputy, the three of them filled it up. I recognized the black guy as soon as he slid into the booth. I could see his face in the mirror in front of me. He had on the same knee-length black leather jacket and his hair and face were familiar -- Carl, the People's Temple goon. That was interesting as hell. They talked and Carl took some notes in a little notebook. They were there long enough for me to have taken most of the beer and I suddenly had to pee, from drinking on an empty stomach. But I didn't want to walk away and take the chance one of them would recognize me. Conspirators do not believe in coincidence. Jim Jones had moved from Indiana a few years previously, taking some of his core congregants with him to Ukiah. A year or so after, they opened the San Francisco branch. What they did up here was anybody's guess. That they would be meeting a Humboldt County deputy sheriff in a bar in Ukiah, which is in Mendocino County, seemed to indicate they didn't want anyone to know they were meeting. Yet the deputy didn't go to the People's Temple ranch in the Redwood Valley. I wondered why not. Taylor ordered lunch; I ordered a BLT at the bar and tried to forget my aching bladder. The two People's Temple men left after about twenty minutes and when I saw Taylor finishing, I raced to the bathroom. Then I tore out the front door and was in my van and eyeballing his car when he emerged a few minutes later. I followed discreetly as he headed out of town. I had expected him to head north, back to Humboldt, but he turned southbound again. Since that was the direction I was headed, I just tagged along. Once on the highway, he settled into a steady pace. Now that more of the highway was four-lane divided freeway, it was easier to keep him in sight without getting too close. He stayed inside the speed limit. When he stopped for gas in Santa Rosa, I went past and pulled in for fuel at the next exit. I temporarily lost him and was worried that he had pulled off into town or was now behind me, but I spotted the black Challenger ahead. It was a distinctive car. He kept it clean and the black paint gleamed in the sun. We drove on. He cut east onto Highway 37 from Marin to Vallejo, then turned south again towards Berkeley/Oakland. By now, I wished I knew why I was following him since I had no idea where he would head next. We bogged down in the afternoon traffic on the Eastshore Freeway and still he continued south. I almost missed him when he suddenly took an exit in Fremont. He pulled into a gas station and checked a phone book, but made no call. I had to go around the corner and then hang a U-turn and park across the street. I thanked the anonymous and ubiquitous appearance of the van. There were so many VW vans on the road, all looking pretty much the same, that I could be seen now and again without him realizing that it was the same vehicle. He jumped back in his car after a minute of consulting the book, took out a map and studied it for a few more minutes. I resumed following him when he pulled back into the street. Within a few blocks, he pulled into a post office parking lot and dropped something into the drive-up mailbox. He then headed back the way we had come. I was confused. It was early evening and we were about to pass the Bay Bridge where I could cut over to San Francisco and my meeting with Barbara and the gang. Taylor was still headed north. I decided that I had enough practice following him. I knew a lot more about him than I had known a few hours ago, but I didn't know the significance of that knowledge. It was a relief to get out of the car after the long drive. My back was sore and my butt was numb. I met my new business partners at Barbara's. We had many details to work out; although in general, we understood our roles well enough. Bill and I would do the serving, naturally. Barbara would run the office with Bernice, who would also help Darrell with the document subpoena work as needed. Darrell and Barbara would act as our 'marketing' people, doing their best to steal business from Wally and other competitors. With Wally's key people gone, he would be the most vulnerable and since it was his customers that Barbara and Darrell knew best, we intended to eat his lunch. We agreed that we would share the profits, if any, evenly among the five of us. Bill and I would be compensated for our automobile expenses as a business expense, instead of the way we did it for AAA, which was that we paid our own gas and car expenses out of our process-serving wages. Of course, we would now be getting all the revenue, instead of only our small cut from AAA, so there would be more money to divvy up. I was counting on my previous association with Mel Belli to bring us business from his office and I intended to ask Mel to recommend us to his lawyer pals. But we would have to prove ourselves, even to Mel. Business is business, after all, and his office would want us to be as fast and efficient as AAA had been, or better. We concluded our work with a drink. Bill had tucked a bottle of Stolichnya vodka into the freezer on his arrival, with a handful of small glasses. So we drank to our future in the Russian manner, ice cold vodka, tossed back in one gulp. "Confusion to the enemy," I toasted. No one laughed. -------- *Chapter Twelve* A Shot in the Dark It was very late when I returned to the China Basin marina. I hadn't seen the boat in a long time and I was anxious to make sure she was okay. Old Niles was at his post, in the small office inside the gate to the docks. He never varied in appearance: khaki pants and shirt, deck shoes with holes in the sides, a battered captain's hat squashed down to his ears and a dirty quilted vest that had once been tan and was now more brown. He had long, stringy gray hair that hung from under the cap and a weathered face that looked like it belonged to the sea. I had no idea if Niles had ever been a sailor or not. I had never seen him set foot aboard any boat. I tapped at the door and he roused. Niles may not have actually slept on duty, but he dozed pretty good. He shuffled over to the door and greeted me. "Well, young Mr. Doug, I believe. Haven't seen you in a long while." He always called me 'Mr. Doug', even after repeatedly being told not to. I had given up. "She still afloat or have you let my mistress sink while I've been gone?" Niles admired my boat, as did most who saw her. I understood why boats are referred to with the female pronoun as soon as I had set foot aboard her, nine months ago, when possession passed to me. You couldn't say I owned her, it was rather that she consented to allow me to take care of her during this stage of her life. I was thrilled to be blessed with her care. Every view of her and from her gave me pleasure. Even Barbara knew that her place in my heart was secondary to the _Jolly Jim_. Niles interrupted this poetic image. "Fella here lookin' fer you t'other night. Ugly feller with one of them jackets without the sleeves, you know, like a pair of Levis made into a jacket." I was pretty sure I knew who this was. "Did he leave a name?" "No ... no, he didn't leave no name, and he was pretty rude too. He wouldn't take off until I pulled old Betsy here." Niles kept a sawed-off pump twelve-gauge under the counter of the office. It went with him on rounds and would clear a swath six feet wide. He didn't need to be sober or even particularly wide awake to aim it. As long as it was pointed in the general direction, it would intimidate most interlopers. I imagined even Crazy Don, no doubt the anonymous visitor, wouldn't argue with that kind of persuasion. Apparently, Jeanie's husband was still on my trail. I had believed he was working, since it was spring and the weather in Alaska would be conducive, but perhaps he was in one of his temporary unemployed periods. Don got fired fairly regularly for one thing or another, usually involving poor anger management skills or drug use -- or both. Don had managed to become a member of the Devil's Disciples motorcycle gang, so he could present a formidable challenge in terms of bringing friends along to help him. I was not happy that he was looking for me. This could only mean that in a confessional spasm while high, Jeanie had revealed her lack of continence with me. Fueled by methamphetamine and jealousy, Don would be raging for several days until he collapsed from fatigue and forgot about me until the next time. That cycle seemed to take about ten days, give or take. I had no idea where we were in the cycle, so I told Niles that if he should appear again to call the cops at once. "Keep old Betsy handy Niles, this guy is trouble with a capital T." Niles nodded his understanding. The boat was fine, bobbing at her mooring. I would have liked to take her on a long trip to nowhere but I had to show my partners I was a responsible fellow. I sat in the salon for a long while, idly fantasizing about tropical islands. The following morning, I sat in _Ray's Cafe_ downtown, reading the _Chronicle_, a plate of eggs, potatoes and sausages in front of me. It was good to have a real breakfast after hanging around Steve's for so long. One more bowl of granola and I would choke. Yes, I know it's good for me. I had been running around in circles with the ten thousand errands required to get our partnership turned into a real business. The 'above the fold' headline blared the news about a shootout in LA yesterday. Seems the LAPD located several members of the famous Symbionese Liberation Army, abductors of Patty Hearst. With typical LAPD diplomacy, they killed them all and burned the house down. Hearst was not among the victims. You could see how she might have become a little paranoid. The SWAT teams poured in gunfire like a Sam Peckinpah western. Tear gas and concussion grenades had set the furnishings on fire but by then, it probably didn't matter -- five members of the Army of Symbia were dead. An article about the Zodiac caught my eye. Five days ago, the paper received another letter. I thought about poor Toschi and the pressure to solve the case that each one of these brought on him. I read the story from the beginning. The letter was like the others, blah blah ... Zodiac was smarter than the police ... he had so many victims ... his usual crap. Lots of clues that meant nothing. Then I saw a piece of information that brought me up short. The postmark on this letter had been Fremont. I don't believe in coincidence either. I went to the pay phone and called SFPD Homicide. Dave was out, so I left my pager number and told him it was important. I didn't want Dave to think I was just calling to invite him for a sail. I went back to the paper and started scanning the 'office for rent' ads, which was what I was supposed to be doing. This was tedious, so I decided to stroll up Market Street and see what I could find on foot. I came to a beautiful old office building at 525 Market: double, brass-bound glass doors, a security desk in the marble lobby, four elevators, two on each side. The guard directed me to the building manager's office on the fourth floor. The elevator moved quietly and quickly there. The hallway was tiled in black and white linoleum, dark wood wainscoting cloaked the walls. The doors to the offices were heavy wood and thick, rippled glass. The manager was out, but his assistant was better, I'm sure. She was about thirty, with violet eyes and lots of black curly hair that hung to her shoulders in ringlets. She might have been twenty pounds over her ideal, but the curves suited her. She was pleasant and knew her job. She took me to a vacant office on the sixth floor, a corner suite with good views north and east. The windows were large and framed with dark wood. Thick carpet of a shade called 'dusty rose' felt good under my feet. There were a lot of built-in bookcases, and Debby, the assistant manager, told me that they had excess furniture in the basement we could buy quite cheaply. The building bought furniture from relocating tenants and stored it to sell to new tenants. I suppose they bought and sold the same desks and chairs for years. While it wasn't a huge suite, there were two private offices and an area for Darrell's operation. There were two doors to enter the office: one public, the other a private door from one of the offices into the hallway. The reception area was big enough for a desk for Bernice and some minimal furniture. We wouldn't have to entertain clients, so it didn't need to be elaborate. There were plenty of phone jacks and electrical outlets, the lighting was good. The price was surprisingly low -- three-fifty a month. Ever since the newer skyscrapers had come onto the market, these older buildings weren't very popular. These offices had once been part of a larger suite occupying half the floor. When the corporate tenant had moved into more modern quarters, the owner had been forced to chop it up into smaller spaces. I called Barbara from the manager's office and arranged for her to look it over at lunch. Dave paged me right after that. Debby was kind enough to allow me to call him from the her phone as well. "Inspector Toschi." "Hi Dave, it's Doug McCool." We went through brief pleasantries. "Dave, I ran across something odd and I want to tell you about it." "What's that?" "It says in the paper you got another letter from Zodiac, around the eighth, right?" "Yeah." "Suppose I told you I saw a guy drive way out of his way to mail a letter on the sixth from Fremont?" "Tell me the whole story." "I can't tell you from here. I'll drive over to the Hall. Be there in about fifteen minutes." Debby agreed that she would show Barbara around the office and I hustled over to the Hall of Justice. You had to go through a metal detector these days, but since I rarely carried, that wasn't a concern. I still had a valid concealed weapon permit, the one Belli had so magically arranged for me, but I didn't like the idea of carrying a gun. When there are guns around, people seem to wind up getting shot. Toschi stood up when he saw me and waved me to a conference room. He grabbed two cups of coffee on the way, kicked the door closed and we sat down. I told him the whole story, from Taylor pulling me over to happening to see him on the highway and following him out of curiosity. Toschi listened without interrupting, except when I told him about the meeting in the bar in Ukiah. "You couldn't get an idea of what they were talking about?" "No, not really. It took about forty minutes and they looked like they were working out some figures or schedules or something on paper. But I don't have a clue what they were talking about." After he heard about the long trip to the post office and the turn back north, he caught my eye. "I'm going to get some stuff. Hang here for minute." He returned in about five minutes with a thick file. He set it down and opened up the front cover, then turned the file for me to see. There was a drawing on the inside cover. It was a familiar face that stared back at me. The artist's drawings of Zodiac had been in the paper many times. I looked at it for a quite a while. Then I looked back at Dave. "Could be. You know how hard it is to look at one of these things and really be sure. There's nothing about this that would rule the guy out. Size is right, body shape is close, hair color and shape of his face is similar. The eyes, nose and mouth are different, but I don't know if I could tell you how. The glasses are the same, but they're pretty common." "You didn't happen to notice his shoes, did you?" "Why?" "You know what Wing Walkers are?" "Sure. Lots of cops and military types wear 'em." I paused. "Well ... son of a bitch!" "What?" "Now that you bring it up, this guy was wearing Wing Walkers! I happened to notice them." "You said this cop's name is Taylor?" Toschi had a pen in hand and a light in his eyes. I spelled it for him. "T. Taylor, out of the Garberville sheriff's office. Drives a patrol car. Don't know anything about him." "I'll make some calls. Discreetly, of course. You know if there have been any unsolved murders up that way?" "No, I don't. But I'll check the papers the next time I'm there." Of course, I didn't specify to Dave what my business in Humboldt County involved and he didn't ask. "Ignorance is bliss," my dear old gray-haired, etc. "Doug, I'll get in touch with you if we need anything more." "You have my pager number and here's the phone where I stay when I'm up there." I gave him Steve's number. "Hey, by the way, I'm becoming a capitalist pig." "Getting an honest job? You?" "This is top secret. A bunch of us are leaving Wally and starting our own process service." Dave knew Wally from when he was an investigator for the DA. "I'm not surprised. Well, that's great. Good luck. And stay out of trouble." "You know me, Dave." "That's why I said 'stay out of trouble.' If there's anything to this lead, I promise I'll let you know." I got up. Dave took my arm to stop me before I left the conference room. "This Zodiac guy is very good. He kills with complete efficiency. You know, one shot in the back of the head. Sometimes uses a knife. He does weird stuff to the bodies after. I'm not kiddin', Doug. Don't get crossways with this guy. If he's the one, he's as dangerous as a coiled snake." "Dave, I'm a big chicken, you know that. I won't go near him." I had every intention of keeping that promise. -------- *Chapter Thirteen* Speed Kills I met Barbara in the _Palace Hotel_ bar after work. I had relocated my downtown hangout to avoid any potential run-in with Wally. We didn't want to give him any ideas by seeing us together. Besides, I couldn't guarantee that I wouldn't deck him if I saw him again. I had been sorry I hadn't cleaned his clock when I'd had the chance. But it wasn't over yet. I had picked up Van's ashes. They were in a nice wooden box under the backseat in the bus. Barbara thought the office a real find and put a deposit on it. We could move in May 1st. We celebrated the new location of Allworth Legal Process. We had toyed with the idea of naming it AAAA, the extra A would put _us_ first in the phone book. But cooler heads prevailed; we didn't want to give Wally any grounds for a lawsuit. Bernice's last name was Allworth, which put us high in the listings, and we liked the sound of Allworth Legal Process. It sounded respectable. So that's what we became. Barbara had a million things to do to get us up and running. Many of these tasks, like the stationary, the service cards that kept track of each piece of paper and the various forms that we needed, she simply ordered from the same suppliers AAA had used for years. She did the ordering when Wally was out. He had taken to running some of the specials himself, since he was having trouble finding other servers who had anything on the ball. Bill and Jan were working as hard as they could, Bill saving up money against the day he quit. Jan was doing his best for Wally but with Jan, his own interests came first. Work was just the means to his ends, which was photography. He kept trying to get a model into _Playboy_. He thought that would lever him into the photography business full time. None of his girls had made it yet, but he got laid as regular as clockwork. Barbara and I stopped by her place so she could pick up a few things, then we went to the boat. I had Van's mortal remains tucked under my arm. "What are you going to do with...?" she gestured to the box. "Well, I was thinking about scattering them at sea." Barbara shrugged. I figured I had to do something with the remains and short of flushing them down the toilet, or making them a permanent display, I couldn't think of anything else but scattering them in the Bay. It won't be the worst thing dumped into that salt-water sewer. So we cast off and motored the _Jolly Jim_ out to the middle of the Bay. I stopped the boat and while we rocked back and forth, I faced downwind and opened the container. I looked at Barbara. "Anything you want to say?" She had tears in her eyes. "Oh hell, I don't know. Have a drink for us in Heaven, Van. We'll see you sometime." That was good enough for me and I dumped the ashes overboard. The wind whipped Lowell Van Duzee's mortal remains away in a second. I tossed the box overboard and we went back to the dock. We did not speak. Barbara was uncomplicated, rarely moody, wise and loving. She liked me, which is important in a relationship. Not enough lovers like their partner. Love is a dangerous and unpredictable experience. I have been madly, passionately in love with women that I didn't like as much as Barbara, but I was not _in love_ with her. I don't believe she loved me in that way either. We were as comfortable with each other as old shoes. We neither asked for nor wished for more than the other was capable of giving in the way of commitment. I trusted her completely. If not for the sixteen years difference in our ages, we would have had a future. As it was, we did not discuss long-term plans. We had great sex together and neither one of us wanted to screw it up. We both knew how easily a good relationship can dissolve in the acid of introspection. She was asleep by eleven-thirty, her last cocktail melting condensation down the sides of the glass. I dozed for a while, but the sound of voices woke me. The clock read one thirty-five. I lay there listening for a long moment. I recognized Niles voice, after a bit. I slipped out of the bunk and into my pants. I pulled a sweatshirt off the hook and pulled it on, leaving it unzipped. Then I poked my head into the salon and peeked through the curtains that screened the glass in the boat cabin. I could see a dark figure standing at the gate to the dock, his arms wind-milling. Niles was on the other side of the gate, gesticulating pretty energetically himself. I removed my Ruger .44 Blackhawk from the drawer and checked the cylinder. I opened the salon door and eased over the side, moving up the dock quickly from pool to pool of yellow light. I could clearly hear the two of them arguing now. I wished Niles would just shut up and call the cops. I knew the other voice; it was Crazy Don. He sounded stoned and he was making no sense at all. I held the Ruger behind my back and walked up the ramp to the gate, calling to Niles as I approached. As soon as Don heard my voice, his wild black eyes looked at me with incoherent rage. I understood that Don was not in the mood to discuss things like gentlemen. Niles turned to me. "This guy keeps trying to get in and get to you, Mr. Doug. I've told him to get out of here, but he won't leave." I put my hand on Niles shoulder and bent down to his ear. "Niles, call the cops now. There's no way he's going to go on his own. Call the cops and stay in the office. I'll be right behind you." Niles walked over to the office and went in. He picked up the phone and I could hear him talking to the dispatcher. Don was a skinny guy, only five foot nine and one thirty-five at his best. Meth had stripped his body of any extra flesh and his muscles stood out like knotted cords. The abused veins on his arms were a series of switchbacks, with knots and bruises where he had blown them by shooting crap into himself again and again. I tried to get his attention. He glowered at me like a mad bull, literally drooling as he spoke. All I could hear was a steady stream of foul names and foul acts that he associated with me. "Don ... Don! Look at me, man. Don! Look here. Why don't you blow, man, before the cops get here. They'll lock you up for sure and maybe beat the crap out of you. Take off, man." I knew this was useless, but I felt honor bound to try. My speaking seemed to cause him to come completely unwrapped. He screamed something and reached behind his back. He got a shot off before I even realized he had a gun. The shot went wild. The second one was pretty close. It burst a big chunk of wood out of the gate between us. We were only about ten feet apart, yet he had fired twice and missed both times. I slowly brought the big Blackhawk from behind my back. I aimed at his chest and yelled something. I waited for him to understand that he would die if he fired again. I saw in his eyes that he understood, but his finger was faster than his brain. We seemed to fire at the same time, a bright flash. Gray smoke drifted in the streetlight's glow. He seemed to fold up slowly, his face white and amazed. Blood spurted from a hole in the left side of his chest. I saw a gout hit the wire mesh and start to drip from wire to wire. My vision had tunneled to a tiny spot-lit circle, everything else black except for Don, folding over now. His gun fired into the ground, spraying gravel. My face stung, but I ignored it. Don sank to his knees, his eyes met mine for an agonizing second, then they rolled over white and he fell like a piece of wood. I was breathing like a steam engine and I had to consciously drag my finger off the Ruger's trigger. As the gunsmoke cleared and the echoes ceased their reverberations off the buildings, a police car flew into the lot, sliding to a halt, spraying gravel. Dust rose into the glaring, floodlit night air. I laid the Blackhawk down on the planking in front of me and put my hands high in the air. The two cops were crouched behind their doors, guns drawn. One of them trained the spotlight on me. I squinted against the glare and shouted, "Don't shoot! The gun is on the ground." I didn't want them to get too excited. It took a few minutes of shouted negotiations to agree that nobody was going to shoot anybody else. They called for an ambulance, but canceled the call and asked for the morgue wagon instead. Don was quite dead. The .44 hollowpoint had done a lot of damage to his scrawny body and it wasn't pretty. That took care of the rest of the night. Barbara came stumbling up the dock after all the racket. She looked every bit her age in the unflattering, greenish floodlit glare. I assured her that everything would work out fine. Niles was giving his statement. With Barbara sitting next to me in the marina office, I gave my statement as well. The homicide inspectors showed up and guess who -- Dave Toschi. He had the bad luck to be pulling a double and caught this one. When he saw who the uniforms were interviewing, he shook his head. "Doug, Doug, what have you gotten yourself into this time?" He was not sounding amused. In fact, he sounded damn mad. "Jealous husband, Dave. I'm sorry, but he pulled first. There's three bullets in the woodwork around here and Niles saw the whole thing." They hadn't been able to find Don's gun right away in the dark, and thus were not giving me the benefit of the doubt yet. It took over an hour for someone to stumble across it, searching by flashlight. Finally, Dave took charge of the whole mess. "All right. Tape it off and we'll come back with the techs when it's light. Doug, we're impounding that damn cannon of yours. Couldn't you shoot the son of a bitch with a .22?" He waved a hand when I started to answer. "Never mind. Look, it's going to shape up the way you say, I'm sure. But until we get the techs' reports and run this by the DA, you're not to leave town on any trips. You get me?" I nodded. "And Doug..." he called after me, "...try not to kill anybody for a few days, okay?" "Very funny, Dave, very funny." I took Barbara home so she could get ready for work and then came back to the boat. It was light by then and the whole area was swarming with techs photographing and measuring and such. Niles had gone home. The various miscreants that hung around the marina were watching the whole thing like it was a scene from _Kojak_. I picked my way through the crowd and went back to the boat. The blind thrill of being alive instead of dead flooded my brain. It's a basic survival reaction and cannot be denied. Deep inside my head, however, I could feel monsters long asleep stirring. Black-clad people screaming and dying, camouflage-clad men screaming and dying as well, locked in a fatal embrace. I pushed them down. The brackish air tasted sweet in my lungs. My heart a reassuring metronome, ticking out the message that I was still alive. Alive! Then I realized that I hadn't dealt with the rest of Van's stuff and his rent was up on the first. So I hustled over to the hotel to see what was left of his junk. Sometimes action is better than reflection. I checked in with Billie, who was in a little better shape than the last time I had seen her. Uh, him. Damn! Billie had me confused. Since I had first thought of him as a woman, and he looked and acted pretty much like a woman, I had made him an unofficial woman in my mind. After all, I couldn't very well refer to her as 'it.' So I decided, like a one-man Supreme Court, that since Billie had been presented to me as a woman and that was his preference, a woman he would be. Where's Dr. S. I. Hayakawa when you really need him? Asleep in the Senate. Together, we evaluated the furniture. Billie claimed a bureau, a nightstand and a lamp. Word spread through the building and in short order, I supervised an impromptu welfare program as the various denizens of the hotel carried away the secondhand junk that was Van Duzee's legacy. I had his papers. His clothes had gone to the Goodwill. Soon all of Lowell Van Duzee would be dispersed into the world, just as his ashes had been. "All we are is dust in the wind." -------- *Chapter Fourteen* Crazy Don's Legacy I had a lot on my plate, what with being investigated for homicide and starting a new business. I felt that as soon as I put out one fire, two more sprang up. It took a week but finally Dave called. The DA had agreed to close the case as 'justifiable homicide.' He told me I could stop by and recover the Ruger. Mercifully, he didn't make any more jokes about my shooting people. I had decided that Crazy Don's death had been more like a suicide on his part than a homicide on mine. If his reflexes had matched his thought processes, he might have dropped his piece and nothing would have happened. I then found out I still had to face a jury, a jury of Don's peers. I had called Jeanie after what I thought was a suitable period for her to recover from the shock and expressed my regret at being the agent of Don's destruction. She took it pretty flat -- no screaming, but not a lot of forgiveness either. I could understand that the combination of guilt and remorse were too much to face if she gave me a pass on killing her sometimes husband. But the jury was not Jeanie and her family. It was Don's marginal membership in the Devil's Disciples. In the court of their opinion, the case needed to be discussed and evaluated. I was informed of this when I stopped by Jeanie's place to pay my respects. I hoped a personal visit might give me some clue as to what my future might hold, vis-a-vis twenty or thirty rabid bikers. Jeanie's mom and step-dad were there, 'helping' the way people do after a tragedy. Now, it wasn't that they had been all that fond of Don when he was alive, but his stature had somehow grown in death. Jeanie's step-dad, 'Stormin' Norman' (it's always 'Stormin' Norman' -- it's the only rhyme these goofballs can think of) talked to me about how things stood. Norman was a sixty-year-old biker with one leg, blurry blue tattoos, a permanent three day growth of white stubble, and missing his two upper front teeth, which gave him a lisp that was bizarrely incongruous with his hardcore biker appearance. I tried to take his well-meant information with a straight face. "Now, lookit. Thith ith where ith at." He couldn't help it. I don't know why he didn't get the teeth replaced, it's not the kind of thing you ask a guy. "You are on trial with theeth guys. And ain't no lawyer or fanthy talkin' gonna get you thraight. They gonna decide if you liveth or dieth." Think of the Lord High Justice, dressed in a Harley T-shirt and dirty jeans, with long gray hair and a beard, with a lisp. I drank half my can of beer in an effort to appear sympathetic. "Well, Norman, you'd give me a fair hearing, wouldn't you?" "Hell yeth, thure, you know me. I know if you thaid you thot last, thath what happened. But, theeth guyth have to work it out for themthelveth." I was pretty much getting it all but I was a little hazy on the details of the process, delivered as they were. By the way, after a six-pack his lisp gets worth, I mean, worse. Then Margie, pronounced with a hard G, 'Mar-'gee', Jeanie's mom, came in and helped explain the cultural niceties of the Devil's Disciples. "Look, honey..." She laid five well-finished nails across my upper thigh, a little higher than friendship called for. "Everybody knows Don was a crazy son of a bitch. Hell, we didn't call him Crazy Don for nothin'." She laughed that raspy coughing laugh people with incipient emphysema have and blew smoke out of her lungs. "All the guys knew he was gunnin' for you and the fact that you got him before he got you, well, that's the breaks. The boys don't blame you fer that. Hell, if Don had pulled a gun on them, they'd have shot him like a dog. But seein' as how maybe Don had reason..." Her voice dropped a few decibles in discretion. "Seein' as that you were seein' Jeanie, and that's what set Don off, well, that whole thing has got to be hashed over." My case was going to be considered by the finest ethical minds of the Devil's Disciples, probably after they consumed large quantities of drugs and beer. That should make for a rational consideration of the facts. Margie moved her hand further up my leg. Her halter top said 'Highway Honey', the G and N stretched much wider than the H and the Y. I could see that thirty years ago Stormin' Norman had been a lucky man. The fact that he was sitting across from us seemed not to phase her in the slightest. "Doug, I'll tell you," she paused to drain her beer, "they'll listen to us, 'cause we're the family..." She started to tear up. "...the only family Don had in this world." I tried to think of some way to bring the conversation back to the living and those who would like to continue to be the living. "Can you guys...? Well, maybe I should say, _will_ you guys put them straight? Tell them it was a self-defense thing, that I didn't bear Don any ill will? I didn't dislike him. Hell, I hardly knew the guy." A couple of years ago Don and I had kind of hung out for a while, ex-service and all that, but I had not wanted to go where I could see he was headed and we had parted ways. Margie wiped her eyes with the back of her hand, removing the better part of her mascara, which now made her look like a raccoon with beehive hair and large breasts, wearing a biker outfit. "We'll put the word in for you, Doug. Jeanie and I will let them know that it weren't your fault." "Thath right, Doug. You let uth take care of it." "Thanks, Norm. Thanks, Margie." My life lay in their hands, missionaries to this strange and savage tribe. Two days later Margie called me at the office. "Doug, honey, what you doin' Saturday?" "What can I do for you?" I wanted to sound accommodating without making a commitment. "Don's funeral is Saturday and the Disciples want you to come and pay your respects." "Exactly what does that mean, Margie? Does that mean I'm gonna be sharing a hole in the dirt with Don?" Important anthropological tip: Clarify the meaning of native terms, do not assume they have the same meaning as your own. Margie snorted her cigarette smoke over the phone, a loud nasal sound in my ear. Then she coughed up a lung for two minutes. I held the phone away from my ear and tried not to gag. When she was able to speak in that gravelly voice, she assured me. "Oh, no! Really. Me'n Norm 'n Jeanie got you squared away. But the Disciples kind of think that, you know, to show that there ain't no hard feelings, you oughta go with us to plant Don in his final resting place." She sounded like a cross between a Hell's Angel and a funeral director. "Okay, sure. What's the gig?" "Well, he's getting a biker's funeral, naturally, and they are going to put him in the Disciple's graveyard. You know, that's quite an honor for Don. I didn't think he'd rate that, but they're lookin' for a reason to go up to Calaveras anyway, so..." Any excuse for a party, I guess. "You want me to meet you up there?" "Oh, no! You're gonna ride up with us." "Yeah, I can drive along with you guys." "No, honey. You're gonna take Don's bike. It's like, you know, fitting that you should ride his bike. Since you, well, you know..." Yeah, I knew. It sounded a little bizarre. "Are you serious?" "Oh, yeah. Dirty Dave said that was the right thing to do. He read about it somewhere once, how in some places the person that kills someone has to take their stuff and take care of their family." "Whoa, wait a minute. I'm supposed to take care of Jeanie and, uh..." What the hell was the kid's name? "Mercedes," she diplomatically supplied for me. "No, not that part. Don had life insurance through the union. In fact, he had a lot. He left Jeanie pretty well fixed, as matter of fact." Really? "It's an ill wind that blows no good", my dear old gray-haired mother always said. "So what's the deal, Margie? These guys seriously want me ridin' Crazy Don's hog up to Calaveras with them to plant old Don in their vacation retreat? And like I'm dumb enough to go two hundred miles away with a bunch of guys that might want me dead, to a place in the country from which I might not return? Margie, hello! Do you honestly think I'm that stupid?" "Gee, Doug, I didn't think about it that way." "Yeah, well Margie, look, I don't want to be paranoid, but I need some assurance, more than your word, that the Disciples ain't gonna turn me into their entertainment for the weekend and then I don't come back." Margie was quiet for a long minute, lighting another smoke. This time, from the way she sucked in her breath it must have been a joint. "Sure, Doug. Look, I'll talk to Dirty Dave and see what's what." "Great. I'll hear from you?" "Sure. Give me a day or two." The next day I got a message from Bernice that a 'Dirty Dave' had called and wanted me to call him back. When I got him on the line, I could hear lots of mechanical noise in the background and the roar of unmuffled Harleys. It made sophisticated communication difficult. "Can I talk to Dave, please?" I said to the voice that roared hello. "Dave?" I was afraid we were going to do the Cheech and Chong routine. "Yeah, this is Doug McCool. I want to talk to Dave!" "This is Dave." His voice was a growling roar. I suppose he talked over the motorcycles a lot. "You McCool?" We went back and forth a while over who's who and finally seemed to be on the same wavelength. I hate to have an important conversation on the phone. You can't see the other person and judging their real message from voice alone can lead to all kinds of misunderstandings. Under these circumstances, it was all but impossible to even know who we were. "I'll come by your place, that okay?" I offered. Dave agreed and I set a three o'clock time. I figured that was late enough in the day for him to take a break and early enough for there to be lots of people around to see me get killed. Dave's shop, _Hog Heaven_, was located off Mission Street in Colma. Now Colma is famous for one thing: more dead people than living ones. All the cemeteries that still take clients are there, the ones in San Francisco proper having been filled long ago. Why they couldn't just dig up the old graves and put in the new dead baffled me. After all, what the hell did they care? They were dead. All problems solved, all debts paid, all concerts canceled. In any event, Dirty Dave's shop was located on a dirt road that ran behind a cemetery and into a little group of battered buildings. It wasn't too hard to spot since there were about fifty choppers in various states of assembly and disassembly in the general vicinity. Some of them even functioned and had owners present. They were the guys with leather or denim vests, dirty jeans, black T-shirts with various witty sayings, well-worn boots and a need for a great many chains on their person. They held beer bottles to a man, and by and large, sported long hair carelessly groomed, accompanied by facial hair of all styles and lengths. I got a cool reception and appraisal when I pulled the bus to a stop and got out. I located Dave himself on the second try. He was a big, muscular guy, probably forty, with long brown hair going gray, tied in a ponytail. He had a full beard, long enough to stand in for one of the Smith Brothers or ZZ Top. I shook his greasy hand firmly and we checked each others' eyes, neither wavering or challenging, just sizing up. He actually didn't look all that threatening, despite a twelve inch Bowie hanging from his belt. I spotted a smaller, more useful dagger peeking daintily from his right, outside boot top. I had prepared myself with the Browning 35mm holstered in the small of my back, and I always kept a knife in my boot, too. Boots are handy that way. The shop was a jumble of tools, parts, bikes, beer cans and bottles, milk crates, welding equipment and much more. How anyone found anything was a mystery to me. I expect work did not flow smoothly. But the finished product of this mechanical anarchy was a poem in steel and chrome. There were three finished bikes sitting by themselves, out of range of the clutter where an accidental swing of a tool could mar them. Each one was stunning and each one reflected a different interpretation of motorcycle art. Their tanks and fenders wore delicate traceries of scallops or pinstripes and each tank, like a Viking's shield, told the story or image its owner wanted to convey. The engines were perfect in detail, everything that could be made to shine sparkled in the sunlight that fought its way through the filthy glass. Dave pointed to a back room that functioned as an office. It was just as disorganized as the shop, shelves sagging, dripping with magazines, catalogs and grease-smeared bills or envelopes. The walls were completely covered with photographs of naked women in every conceivable pose, as long as a motorcycle figured in the scene in some way. It was an industrial version of those pornographic Hindu temple reliefs. Dave swept a load of debris off a greasy upholstered chair and waved me to it. I sat. Dave plunked into a large executive's chair that had seen its glory days pass by and now resided in office-chair purgatory. He offered me the obligatory beer, which I politely declined. I proffered a neatly rolled joint, which he accepted and we shared. This kept us busy and silent, so we could do justice to the fine _sin semilla_. "That's good shit," Dave allowed, exhaling a huge cloud into the exhaust-fumed air. I acknowledged the compliment with a nod. "I talked to Margie and she told me you were a little paranoid, man." "Dave, it's not paranoia if someone's really out to get you." "Good point." He took another deep drag and held it. Then, as he exhaled, "Look, here's the deal. Crazy Don was here earlier that day, man. He was shootin' crystal and drinkin' beer and tequila. By that evening, he didn't know shit from shinola." "He was wasted when he came to my place. Totally gone." Dave nodded. "I know, man." An engine throbbed to life with a rasping roar. He paused, got up and closed the door. "A couple of guys were kind of ridin' him a little about Jeanie and that really got him goin'." He looked me right in the eyes. "Look man, you ain't exactly the first guy to be takin' care of that hot little poontang, you know what I mean?" I knew what he meant. "The Disciples require every member to buy ten grand life insurance and make the club the beneficiary. It got started back in the Fifties and it just kind of became a tradition. When a Disciple buys the farm, the club gets the dough. We have a fuckin' great party up at the Ranch and the guy gets planted. The money from the insurance goes to help out members who are hard up for some reason, like if they get hurt and can't work, we can chip in to help him and his old lady out." "One for all and all for one?" "Yeah, man, that's a good way to put it." I didn't bother to tell him it wasn't original with me. "So you're telling me that you guys and I are square." "Look, just to show you we're on the up and up, I'll make you a deal." He reached into the desk drawer in front of him. My hand slid behind me and fondled the Browning's grips. He laid a bundle of cash on top of the pile of papers. He noticed my hand had slid out of sight. "Did you think I was going to get this?" he asked, as he reached back into the drawer and laid a .45 auto on the desk. He took his hand off the gun right away. I slowly drew the Browning and laid it on the chair arm, with my hand lightly on top. Dave smiled broadly. "Okay, just so we know where we stand." I nodded and smiled thinly. "Let's not have any misunderstandings." I looked at his eyes and not his hands. Dave went on, "Here's the deal. This here is fifty thousand dollars. You walk out of here with it. Somebody holds it for you. You get back here safe and sound, you bring the money back. You don't come back, your pal's fifty grand to the good. Now, let me tell you, ain't nobody worth fifty grand to us. So you're as safe as my own child. Satisfied?" I tried to think of a flaw in this line of reasoning, but I could not. I believed Dave when he said I was not worth that much to them and that Don had not been worth that much to them. In fact, it was starting to dawn on me that quite a few people stood to benefit from Don's sudden demise. I could feel a funny tickle somewhere inside my head, like an idea that was trying to form out of vapor and suspicion. "Look here, Doug." Dave stood up and went back into the shop, with the .45 back in the drawer and the wad of cash safely dropped into my jacket pocket. The Browning was back where it belonged. We picked a circuitous path through the mine field of junk until we stood in front of one of the chopped Harleys in the shop window. "This here is your new bike, man." I looked at Dave like he had spoken in some foreign language. Then looked back at the bike and back to Dave. He could see the confusion on my face. "Look, that's Crazy Don's machine, man, and where he's goin', it ain't gonna do him no damn good. You killed him and now it's yours. Fuck, Jeanie ain't gonna ride it and why should she sell it to some fuck who didn't even know who Don was? You knew him well enough to kill him, didn't you? You knew his old lady well enough to fuck her, didn't you?" I felt guilty as hell, now. I nodded. "Yeah, I see your point. In a way, this is a pretty heavy idea. I'll never forget Don with this damn machine in my life and I doubt I'll be able to bring myself to sell it. So it's like I have to take on the burden of this bike." The chopper had become my albatross. "That's right, man, that's right! You see, this bike was Don's reflection. I built it the way he wanted, and it's the only thing on earth that was totally and truly his. It's still here and he's gone. It's like his monument, you dig?" Strangely enough, I did. Perhaps I had sold these guys short. ~*~ I drove to the bank and arrived in time to put the cash in my box. I arranged to get a ride with Bill over to _Hog Heaven_ the next day. Dave showed me Don's bike in more detail. It was a '69 soft tail with a classic knuckle-head motor, narrowed springer front end, bobbed rear fender, fat-boy tank and buckhorn handlebars. It had a sprung seat for the rider, but only a small pad and sissy bar for a passenger. Don had been a good deal smaller than I but the buckhorn handlebars were at a fairly comfortable angle and the highway pegs stuck out far enough to give me room to stretch. Dirty Dave had angled the neck to lower the bike and extended the forks to make up for the altered angle; not too far, just a mild, custom job that made the machine distinctive without rendering it a complete bitch to ride. So half an hour later, I roared out of the place with a hot, chopped Harley, bright yellow with naked women airbrushed in blues and purples on each side of the tank, their hair purple flames. I felt very conspicuous on it, although I will be the first to admit that it was a kick to ride. I thought about Crazy Don and fate all the way into the city and over to Rick's. I had the Cobra stashed in Rick's garage and now I would have to add the chopper too. Rick was nearly hysterical with laughter when I showed up with the chopper. Between bouts of laughing, he gasped, "Geez, Dougie! You're karma is stranger than anyone I know!" I shrugged a defense. "Every time you make somebody suffer you come out with a new toy. How does that work?" "Good past life?" I hazarded. "Are you kidding? The load of karma you're building up now will have you coming back as a cockroach." I thought about that for a second. "I guess I ought to change to Islam or something. I'm not going to make it as a Buddhist." "Doug, I don't think you can go around shooting people on a regular basis and be a good Buddhist. I'm no expert, but I bet people who are vegetarians probably frown on killing their fellow man." He was being sarcastic, of course. I'm sure Buddhism allowed for self-defense. Of course, I didn't really practice Buddhism anyway, but had studied it for a while with some monks in 'Nam. Interesting guys, those monks. I hadn't had time to really get into the philosophy before events overtook me, but that's another story. After Rick finished harassing me about how I had acquired the machine, he took time to admire it. People think that faggots are all sissy boys and swishes, but that's just the stereotype. There are plenty of men who are as masculine-looking as they come that are queerer than a three dollar bill. Fact is, no, you can't tell by looking. Some of Rick's swishier friends were actually bisexual and some of the hyper-masculine ones were strictly men-only. Rick liked fine machinery as much as any red-blooded American boy born in the Fifties. "Boy, oh boy, I would be a big hit at the leather bars with this baby!" He ran his hands over the chrome forks and examined the nude women painted on the tank. "Of course, if it were mine, I'd have to change the art work." "Yeah, Rick, I can well imagine. But this is only temporary. As soon as the attention dies down, I can get rid of it quietly and that will be that." Rick threw me a look that said he thought I was bullshitting him. The next morning I would be riding to Calaveras with the Devil's Disciples to give Don his final send off. I told Barbara about the 'insurance' money. She wasn't happy to hear the reason for it, but I assured her that she was unlikely to collect. I don't think she was disappointed. -------- *Chapter Fifteen* A Viking Funeral Saturday dawned foggy and cool in the city, but the thin gray covering would roll back soon enough and reveal another beautiful day in paradise. I put together what would pass for a biker outfit. Rick owned an old leather jacket from the days when he used to ride. I had dug it out of the garage and after giving it a good shaking to discourage any lingering creepy crawlies, I discovered that it fit me well enough. I roared away from Rick's and headed for the Disciples' clubhouse. They had rented a space on the waterfront in an unused pier. Over the previous twenty years, the San Francisco waterfront had faded from its early days as a shipping center, in deference to its East Bay rival, Oakland. While the Port of Oakland had modernized and grown, the Port of San Francisco didn't have room to expand to accommodate container ships and the fleets of sea/land trucks that hauled the containers away. The last passenger ship sailing from San Francisco had stopped service last year. So most of the huge covered piers were empty and their rents were cheap. Various unusual businesses had moved into them. If I'd had access to serious money in those days, I could have made millions buying waterfront property. Like my dear old gray-haired mother used to say, "It takes money to make money." The Disciples' club fronted the street. They had most of the pier area inside to park their bikes. Lofts had been built above, since the pier was actually like a warehouse, about three stories tall with clear spans from side to side and the entire length as well. You could have played touch football inside with plenty of room to spare. By the time I rumbled up, there were about thirty or more bikes already parked inside, the huge pier doors open. The chrome beasts leaned on their kickstands, metallic ticking sounds coming from the engines as they cooled. I lowered my kickstand and walked into the club. The average straight person doesn't really understand the biker culture. I realize that these guys look intimidating, violent and crude, but in most cases they aren't really all that different than any other guys. While they may commit the occasional criminal act, these are usually drug offenses related to their recreational preferences. Those 'biker gang rapes' are the product of B-movie screenwriter's fantasies. Custom motocycles are just another hobby. Granted, it's a hobby that has taken over all the other precedents in their lives. Many of the Disciples worked full-time as machinists, mechanics, construction workers and tradesmen. They had wives and kids and some owned their own homes -- paying bills, taxes and watching Johnny Carson in bed at night, just like you and me. What separated them from the mainstream was their love of motorcycles: to wit, Harleys, which were the only motorcycles regarded as authentic. Foreign machines are 'Jap crap' or 'rice burners.' While you might see an old Indian or two, and sometimes a British-made Triumph, the vast majority were the American icon -- Harley Davidson. They didn't just go out and buy one off the dealer's floor. Any idiot with money can do that. They took a machine -- sometimes how they acquired it was less than legal -- and then proceeded to completely disassemble it, modifying almost every part until a Harley engineer would fail to recognize anything except the V-twin engine configuration. They were pure reflections of personal expression and skill. The highest admiration is reserved for those men who build their own machines from the ground up. These guys are rare artists. Many of the bikers paid Dirty Dave or some other builder to perform the difficult and critical design and welding, then had their engines rebuilt by Harley engine specialists, who would coax more power and reliability from the notoriously cranky motors. Certain features are _de rigeur_: extended forks, bringing the front wheel much farther forward, extending the wheelbase dramatically; front fender removed to save weight and reduce mass in the front; handlebars could be anything but stock -- ape hangers are popular, although not very comfortable; the seats range from patches of leather with almost no padding to large seats mounted on springs that absorbed bumps; the rear suspension might be completely absent (a hard tail) or have shock absorbers and springs (a soft tail, much more pleasant to ride, but lacking the stripped down character of the former); the quantity of chrome was almost directly related to the owner's means -- the more money they had, the more chrome the bike received; the same was true of paint and graphics, which were an art form all themselves. A man with a steady hand with the airbrush and pinstripe was never short of work. Their style ranged over a wide gamut of subjects, but tended to be of the Frank Frazzeta idiom -- wild colors, hugely muscled men and fantastically buxom women dressed in fur and leather, if dressed at all. Of course, the members of this cult would have curdled the average suburban backyard barbeque. The men tended to be on the hairy, smelly side, but stories of studied grossness are greatly exaggerated. Like any other man whose diet is not restricted from fats and alcohol, they could be quite large, especially as they aged, but they weren't exactly the GQ type, anyway. They referred to cars as 'cages' and only owned one in deference to their old ladies' need to schlep groceries and kids. A true, pure biker would not need a car, would not buy groceries, would not have a house and would work only to finance improvements to his machine. Like any other creed, there are very few orthodox adherents. When I entered the bar, the Disciples and their female companions were sitting or standing around, drinking either coffee or beer, depending on how hardcore they were. The air was a thick melange of cigarette and pot smoke, punctuated by loud laughter and violent greetings among the men. I was acknowledged with a nod by the few guys who knew me. The guy handling the bar asked me what I'd have. "Got any tomato juice?" He nodded. "I'll have a bloody beer." He poured it without a word. If you've never tried it, don't wrinkle your nose; it's good in the morning, especially if hung over. I lit a pre-rolled joint and passed it around. I decided I was going to just let it all hang out this weekend, to take Dave at his word. Of course, that didn't mean I didn't have the Browning tucked inside my boot and my stiletto in a sheath parallel to my belt, convenient for a quick draw and thrust as needed. The Ruger was rolled up inside my sleeping bag. Anytime you combine booze, drugs and testosterone, things can get out of hand quickly. These were men who were physical, beat on each others' backs in greeting and punched when angered. They had a high sense of their own honor and could be quick to react to a perceived insult, especially after a little crank and booze. Crank, speed, crystal, meth -- the slang names for it are legion and it seemed to be the drug of choice with many bikers. Marijuana was not really considered a drug; as common as beer and about as strong in their view. When the partying got serious, it was hard booze like Jack Daniels or tequila and hard drugs, like crank. Speedballs were popular among the more serious druggers, a combination of heroin and speed. Deadly if done slightly wrong, but I've heard it's an incomparable high. It's not an experience I feel I need to delve into personally. Bikers would also use various hallucinogens: LSD, psylocibin mushrooms and peyote. A short time after I settled down with my drink, Margie, Norman and Jeanie appeared in Norm's pickup, a hot-rodded '29 T-bucket. Margie and Norm rode in front and Crazy Don's mortal remains shared the truck bed with Jeanie. The deceased was decorously encased in an expensive teak coffin. I've always admired well-finished teak. The decks on the _Jolly Jim_ are teak. Don's coffin sported gold handles -- not brass, mind you. Well, gold-plated, anyway. The box was secured firmly to the pickup bed and was somewhat too long, so Norm, in law-abiding fashion, had attached a red bandana to the back of the coffin, a rather incongruous but not inappropriate flag. Norm sidled up to me and grabbed my left wrist. He yanked my watch off and dropped it on the pavement. Then he ground it under his boot. "No wathes." I got the point. I was glad it was only a Timex. It took about an hour to get everyone organized and loaded with various intoxicants. Eventually, a general plan formed. We were to ride in formation, two abreast according to the California Vehicle Code. Ranking was as follows: the 'hearse' would lead, followed by Dirty Dave, as club president, with me beside him in the place of honor for the day. The other members were to follow as inclination led. We would cruise as fast as traffic and the law would permit. ETA at the club's country hangout: four hours, not counting stops for beer and peeing. Breakfast was to be in a cafe in Fairfield that catered to the biker crowd, about forty-five minutes away. We pulled out onto the Marina Parkway with the flathead Ford growling and the thunder of forty unmuffled Harleys revving and roaring, their owners leaping forward in sudden bursts of acceleration then slowing down, coming within inches of each other at times. There was the sound of a crash behind us but I couldn't see what happened. I was concentrating on not embarrassing myself in front of these veteran riders. A chopper does not ride like a stock motorcycle, although it shares the same obedience to the laws of physics that even these rebels couldn't disobey with impunity. At speed, these machines are wonderful, the extended wheelbase allowing them to track steadily. At low speed and in tight turns, they have to be handled gingerly, with subtle movements. They are capable of tolerating the sometimes impaired management of their owners without betrayal, but too much inattention, as with any inherently unstable two-wheeled vehicle, leads to disaster. So I paid attention to what I was doing and did not show off. After all, I didn't really think of the bike as mine and did not want to wreck Don's legacy in front of all his friends. We were a pretty impressive sight, sweeping up the on-ramp onto the elevated portion of the freeway and then onto the Bay Bridge. Norm maintained a steady sixty or so. It was still early, around ten, I guess, and weekend traffic was beginning to thicken; the drones packing up wife and kids for some innocent weekend trip to the country. Those families, in their sedans and station wagons, would react predictably each time our column passed: the man would look straight ahead, avoiding any eye contact and possible challenge; the wife would steal a glance as we passed, not daring to look directly but unable to resist a peek at the barbarians at the gate, so to speak; the little kids would stare, unabashed and open-mouthed, some of the braver ones waving and laughing. We passed a station wagon with two bored teenage boys facing backwards in the rear seat. Dirty Dave's old lady, Deedee, popped a breast out of her halter and flashed them. The smiles on their faces were priceless and they could be seen animatedly poking each other and laughing. Deedee laughed too and we roared by, the parents in the front still wondering what had possessed their two hormone-intoxicated offspring. The air became warmer as we headed up the Eastshore Freeway, north and then west, toward Sacramento. At sixty, the wind chill factor on a motorcycle can be fierce, and hypothermia is a common cause of crashes in underdressed riders. By the time we arrived at Butch's Cafe in Fairfield, however, I was ready to lose the leather jacket. I had tied my hair back in a tight braid to keep it from flapping in my face and had adopted a common biker headdress, a bandana tied like a macho version of a babushka. This was before helmet laws were enacted and as chopper riders, 'brainbuckets' were treated with disdain. Death or permanent coma was simply the will of Allah (the Most Compassionate, the Most Merciful) or something akin to it in biker mythos. The women who accompanied their men were as varied as any group of women might be, although they all tended to be perhaps a little more earthy than your typical suburban wife. Physically, they were as different as any other group of women. Their dress, however, was uniform: tight, tight jeans that showed, in some cases, the cleavage of their labia through the fabric; black boots, generally rising high on the leg, with chains or spurs; t-shirts, tank tops or tube tops that left nothing to the imagination and leather jackets in white, red or black, frequently with fringe. Some wore their 'colors' over that, a denim vest (made by cutting the sleeves off a jacket) with the club's applique sewn to the back. This decoration, an award really, was the figure of Satan astride a black chopped hog, his hair red and yellow flames and his eyes yellow and bulging. Quite impressive, really. The ceremony necessary for a woman to receive this trophy was pretty interesting. I would describe it as based in the ancient fertility ceremonies of many people -- in other words, a gang-bang. Anthropological notes aside, we ate, then rode on into the warmth of the California Central Valley. Once we started up into the Sierra Nevada, the Gold Country, the scenery changed from flat and rolling yellow-green to jagged and rocky green and brown. The air was cool and pleasant; the sensation of flying was enhanced by the mountains. The smell of hot steel and oil mingled with pine and new cut hay. On a motorcycle, you are much more a part of the world through which you travel. Whereas the steel and glass of a car isolates and protects, the cycle is simply an engine, wheels, a frame to hold them together and a seat for your ass. The nature of the machine makes its operation more visceral than a car. A bike has to be banked into corners, like a plane turning, and every sense is employed as you push against the air. The best bikes are designed and mated to your anatomy so that you didn't have to fight the slipstream and could lean back comfortably. It was evident that Crazy Don had been a man who had believed in comfort: the springer front end, soft tail rear and sprung seat testified to a taste for the finer things in motorcycling. I could relax into the machine, prop my feet up on the highway pegs and just enjoy the trip. Since I didn't have a passenger, I could 'fly' the bike without having to allow for someone else's weight on the back. We made a gas stop in South Lake Tahoe. For some reason, the waiting cars waved us to the head of the line. The Disciples took the opportunity to do what they needed most: smoke, toke, drink or pee. My patchwork spine creaked only mildly when I parked and swung my leg over. After attending to the gas myself (no attendant in his right mind would take a chance on spilling gas, or God forbid! scratching the paint), I walked over and chatted with Jeanie and Margie while Norm took a leak and shared a snort of Jack Daniels with his pals. "So what's the deal when we get there?" I asked Jeanie. She leaned against the hood of the truck and thrust her chest forward for my contemplation. "Well, tonight we're gonna just camp out and take it easy. Some of the guys are gonna dig a pit and tomorrow we'll roast a pig. Then we'll get Don planted and have a wake and drive back Monday afternoon." Monday was July Fourth, so we had a long weekend to party. "You're gonna see what it's like, aren't you?" "Yeah, I guess so. Just fill me in on what's happening, will you?" Jeanie gave me a slow wink. "I'll take care of you, if you take care of me." I was afraid I knew what that meant. Not that I had any particular objection, I just didn't want to break any tribal taboos. Great White Hunter winds up in pot if he offends the gods, you know. After two more hours of riding, we arrived at the Disciple's property, just up a narrow side road about five miles from the highway, around two-thirty that afternoon. A fence surrounded most of the property, with a gate and a heavy padlocked chain. Dirty Dave unlocked the gate and Norm drove through, bumping slowly over the rutted drive to a cabin in the trees. The rest of us parked in various flat spots. I chose a shady place under a large group of firs. This property had an unusual history. One of the Disciples' parents owned this nice little getaway cabin in the Gold Country for years. When they passed on, the title settled upon their only child, whose loyalty to his biker family caused him to will it to the organization upon his demise. Being a rough-living crowd, death was not a rare event. The intervening years had resulted in minor improvements -- a few outhouses dug and simple facilities for storage installed. Most of the living was outdoors anyway and cooking was pretty much confined to barbecued burgers, hotdogs and the occasional pit-roasted pig for big occasions. July Fourth and Don's wake required a serious blowout. The actual property consisted of ten acres but only this two-acre section around the house was fenced. The rest was unspoiled Sierra Nevada mountains, which is to say pines, dry grass, manzanita and rocks. Electricity powered the well pump and allowed for one flush toilet in the house, but this was inadequate for the large group, hence the outhouses. The first order of business was to get Don offloaded and set aside. Six husky men haphazardly dragged his coffin out of the truck, making room in the small bed for life's essentials: kegs of beer. Norm and Margie drove off to the closest liquor store where they had already reserved ten kegs for the weekend. Hell, forty or fifty people, all thirsty drinkers in a partying mood -- I worried that ten kegs wouldn't be enough. After everyone had stretched and walked around, the crowd broke up into three or four groups, sharing stories of the ride up, performance comparisons and critiques of various bikes and other mundane topics. They sounded like a group of middle-class tourists getting off a cruise ship and discussing the service and food. In some ways this crowd, for all their defiance of middle-American consumer society, was still rather tradition-bound when it came to sex roles. While the men smoked, snorted, shot up, drank and generally proceeded to get wrecked, the women got out the barbecues, lit the charcoal, unpacked supplies from saddle bags and otherwise did what women the world over have done since we first dropped onto that wide African plain -- they made a home. At the far end of the property was a flat area, which was nothing but dirt and a few struggling weeds, used for various motorcycle games and stunts, short drag races and obstacle courses. It wasn't long before some of the more stimulated riders were tearing up their bikes in the dirt, treating their expensive machines hard, pushing their mechanical limits. I watched from a point that promised not to get me run over when one of the riders lost control. There were a couple of spectacular wipe-outs but no broken bones. The return of the beer truck with the kegs and even some food (no doubt Margie's consideration) was cause for a general milling about the vicinity of the cabin. The plain little house wasn't much to look at, just faded wood siding in serious need of paint with broken steps that led into a front room furnished with cast-offs. A small kitchen was used for making coffee and frying eggs and not much else. The bath, with a shower and hot water tank, didn't get a lot of use except by those few to whom cleanliness was not tarnished by being next to godliness. One bedroom was covered with mattresses from wall to wall, with just enough clear floor space for the door to open. There were piles of sleeping bags, blankets and pillows, looking like they had just been abandoned by their occupants moments ago. The front room had an expensive stereo with four large speakers, looking rather out of place. Two speakers were set in front of the open windows, facing outside. It wasn't long before the mountains shook with the sound of Creedence Clearwater, the Rolling Stones (especially _Sympathy for the Devil_, which appeared to be their anthem) and of course, the Allman Brothers and ZZ Top. No soft-rock-loving librarians need apply here. If we had some Barry Manilow or James Taylor records, we could have shot skeet. Speaking of shooting, there was a pistol range of sorts set up on one side of the house with the backstop being a low hill. The target holders were a collection of sawhorses, most of which were nearly collapsing from the damage of hundreds of hits. A small group was there, demonstrating their prowess. I, a firm believer that drugs, alcohol, testosterone and gunpowder mixed together are imminently fatal, stayed away, and the Browning remained safely hidden from view. I avoided the hardcore druggers and drinkers and contented myself with hanging around the fringes of the more serious-minded discussions, those concerning motorcycles or pussy, two subjects about which I knew enough to make rational comments. I shared joints, sipped beer when others chugged and waved away anything contained in a syringe. I couldn't avoid Dirty Dave and a couple of his lieutenants who insisted I snort some blow. I shrugged mentally and dug in, not wanting to offend the natives needlessly. Soon I was participating in the cycle technical discussion enthusiastically and learning more about the ins-and-outs of chopper construction and riding than I knew before -- not that I would remember any of it the next day. Jeanie brought me food. Like in that movie, _One Million BC_, where the cave women served what looked like rice pilaf on giant leaves to the grunting men around the carcass of the dinosaur. We had the grunting men part, anyway. As it got dark, there was a general enthusiasm for a bonfire and being something dangerous and destructive, the men pitched in willingly. Over the years an area had been reserved for this purpose, sufficiently clear of undergrowth to prevent general ignition of the Sierra Nevada. Gasoline was splashed over a huge stack of broken branches and dead tree trunks. It ignited with a satisfactory _whoosh_ that caused most of those capable of backing up to do so, while those who were a little slow had some hair singed. This barely controlled conflagration entertained the troops for a time while they got down to serious partying. Between the blaring rock music, the semi-naked figures capering in the firelight and the freely flowing booze and drugs, the night became one long surreal movie. I retreated to my quiet corner under the pines with a bedroll and Jack Daniels, a good friend of mine. I found a couple of other quiet drinkers in the area and the three of us passed around the bottle and the joints, chatting about our lives and what meanderings had brought us to this juncture of time and space. It actually got pretty heavy, one dude named Talkin' John laying out a kind of hip-biker cosmology that made sense, at least with enough mind-altering substances onboard. But Talkin' John had heard of the I Ching and Zoroastrianism, so whether what he said had any philosophical validity or not, he was several steps above 'that's a bitchin' hog, man,' and 'I'm gonna have her ass tonight, lookit those tits, man.' I lost track of any of the Disciples I knew in the dark and while sleep was not possible, relaxation was, so I just settled back and let the music wash over me. I thought of how peculiar events could be, so that one thing seemed somehow to inevitably lead to the next until the chain of happenstance was brought to a particular point in the space-time continuum -- I must have listened to Talkin' John too long. I woke up once in the middle of the night to pee. The music had stopped, not for any concern for neighbors, but simply because all the listeners had passed out. I stumbled off into the bushes and took my relief, then took off my boots and pants and rolled them into a bundle to make a more acceptable pillow. Amazingly enough, I was able to sleep on this rough bed. I figured I'd pay the price in the morning and I was not wrong, waking up after daybreak with a screaming backache. I staggered into the cabin and looked inside the wall-to-wall bedroom. It was full of men and women mostly undressed, looking like they had died in their sleep. I found an unoccupied chair in the living room that seemed to offer some comfort. I appropriated that, consumed a handful of Vicodin and Valium, washing them down with Jack Daniels. I slept well until around eleven or so when the zombies started stirring. Dirty Dave rounded up a work party and after the workers had been resuscitated with coffee, a hair of the dog and some threats of violence, they went to dig a hole for Don. I stayed inconspicuously out of sight. After the hole was done, I walked over. From a slight rise in the back of the house, there was a pretty view of the green valley below. Several markers were already there, inscribed with names and dates. I had wondered if the Disciples had actually gotten permission for this private graveyard. Dave assured me, "That's bullshit, man. We bury 'em where they belong and deep enough for anyone. It's not the government's business what we do with our dead." I decided not to argue the government's case. Another pit was dug near the bonfire site and into this went hot coals and a layer of alder chips and hot rocks, then a whole pig that had been fetched from the butcher in town that morning by the ever-handy Norman and his truck. This was surrounded by more hot rocks and coals, covered with a tarp, then dirt was heaped on top of that. This pit was then ignored for the rest of the day, the men having 'done the cooking.' As soon as the sun dipped behind the trees and the air took a nice breath of coolness, the troop started stirring again. One of the bikers had found a large rattlesnake and promptly shot it. He intended to make a belt. I felt a little sorry for the snake but it had made the mistake of crossing paths with the wrong predator that day. Around sunset, Dave and five others seized the coffin and lugged it to the grave site. The rest of the group wandered over, holding their beer or smoking joints. When the crowd had settled into position, Dave stepped to the head of the grave. "Well, you all know why we're here. Crazy Don has rode his last ride and it's time to say adios. Don wasn't a bad guy and hell, sometimes he could be damn fun. He worked for the dough to pay for his ride; he'd buy a beer for a friend and wasn't above sharin' a needle with a pal who was hurtin'. He had a temper but hell, don't we all? It ain't his fault, and what happened to him wasn't nobody's fault. He just got crazy one time too many." Quite a requiem. One of the Disciple lieutenants, a guy called Little John, stepped into Dave's place. He rasped out, "See you in hell, Crazy Don! And don't shoot all the dope and drink all the beer before I get there, goddamn it!" Then one after the other the group stepped into position and said something to or about Don, a memory of a wild ride, a drunken or drugged-up spree. A couple of the women stepped forward to allow as how they had shared their bodies with him and that he wasn't any worse than any other man they'd known. Stormin' Norman took his place before the assemblage, who were neither quiet nor solemn. With his incisor-less lisp, Norm bid his son-in-law "a fath, smooth ride. He could weld like a thon of a bith when he wath thober and he could ride like a thon of a bith when he wath drunk. He never hit Jeanie or the kid and he wath generouth with me'n' Margie." Norman swallowed a long draft of beer and threw the empty paper cup into the grave. Then he cried out, "Pith on death and pith on you, Don." He yanked open his fly and without another word, let fly a long stream right onto the coffin. I admit to being shocked. I didn't know if this was some biker-tradition baptism or if Norm had lost his mind, or his bladder control. But my questions were answered when the next member stood at the edge of the grave and did the same. Soon there was a general pissing contest going on, with guys trying to squirt each other over the width of the open grave. The fluid thudded on the wood lid. The red clay turned a dark ocher. I waited at the outskirts of the crowd, not knowing exactly what was expected of me and fearing that I might not be able to summon a worthy stream if expected to do so. Apparently that would not be required, for after the pissing contest ended, the supply of piss having, you'll excuse the expression, dried up, the group just drifted away. I stood there alone for a moment, thinking about how one thing led to another. If I hadn't met Jeanie one evening in a bar where she was stripping, Crazy Don might be alive today. Of course, upon reflection, it's actually likely that he would have gotten himself killed sooner or later. I thought about the Arabic saying, "When Allah calls a creature, he causeth that creature to desire to go to the place of its death" -- something like that. The women went about setting up the accompanying side dishes, mostly salads and baked beans acquired from the local store, along with bread and various condiments. The morning crew of pig cookers uncovered the creature from the pit with great speculation and discussion about how long it had cooked. The pit opened in a vast cloud of smoke. The odor of cooked meat wafted into the darkening sky. It didn't smell all that great: gamey, with a slightly putrid back taste that caused me to seek a beer. But the beast was hauled up with enthusiasm and carried to a picnic table where the blackened carcass lay steaming. One of the chefs drew a huge Bowie and whacked into the corpse. The skin cracked with a snap and even more steam and pig smell burst forth. With grease flying, the cooks each drew their various weapons and proceeded to hack the thing up into manageable chunks, the act accompanied by much laughter and several tasteless jokes. I joined the line, took up a paper plate, forked a chunk of meat onto it and proceeded down the line. The meat did not have a good color. It was either rather pink or somewhat gray, and there were certain portions of it that did not appear to be cooked at all. I had speared a piece that looked as well done as possible, but I was having my doubts. I took what seemed to be an adequate amount of potato salad and beans and found a spot to eat. One sniff of the meat told me I had become a vegetarian for the day. I saw others forking the stuff into themselves, covering the meat with barbecue or hot sauce, but I decided that there was no point. I didn't really want to get ptomaine and if the pig killed the whole group, I resolved to steal away as quietly as possible. As dark descended through the trees and the last mountain top faded from pink and purple to gray and then black, merging with the sky, the booze and drugs came out, the music was turned up and the party began, or rather, resumed. There was dancing and screaming and hysterical laughter. The bonfire was built up until the flames leaped high into the air, sparks popped and snapped down into the dry grass. I was waiting for the whole damn place to burst into flame, but the one or two small grass fires that started were stamped out with booted feet and much laughter. Women seemed to lose their clothing as the evening progressed, their tops soon after dinner and as the marijuana burned and the beer and tequila flowed, many of them lost everything and capered about with the men, who were also gradually losing their clothes as well. The only weird thing was that everyone kept their boots on, due to the rough ground. It was quite a sight to see a woman, breasts bobbing, firelight glowing on her bare skin, wearing boots up to her knees. I thought of the William Gold book, _Lord of the Flies_. This is what the lost boys would have grown up to be, if they had access to motorcycles and beer. I straddled Don's bike -- although I guess it was time to consider it mine -- leaned against the sissy bar and got my back at an acceptable angle. I had a pint of tequila in one hand and a half a lime on the seat in front of me. The back of my left hand was nicely rimed with salt. I took a solid swig, made the proper novena with the lime and salt and let the fiery cactus distillate burn into me. I had splurged for the occasion and bought a bottle of Herradura, the favorite drink of Bing Crosby and Phil Harris. They had grown so fond of it during their boozing trips into Mexico that they formed their own import company just to bring the stuff into the country. It was a highly refined distillation, one hundred percent blue agave, the best source of fine tequila. It made Jose Cuervo taste like rotgut. It was expensive and I reserved such splurges for only the most important occasions. The last time I had treated myself to a pint I had walked out of the rehab hospital instead of riding in a wheelchair. I felt I was honoring Don in my own small way. A great cheer and whistles coming from the house drew my attention. I ambled over to see what might be going on. I wasn't crazy or comfortable enough to join in the pagan celebration around the bonfire and there's nothing more boring than a party where you don't know anybody and everyone's stoned and drunk. The main room of the little cabin was overflowing, with men standing on the steps and filling the doorway. The stereo speakers occupied the window openings on either side of the main glass. I walked up, just to see what all the excitement was about. The window was blocked by people standing or sitting inside the cabin but through the gaps I thought I could make out a general space in the middle of the crowd. I couldn't see what seemed to be holding everyone's interest. Just as I was thinking about turning away and going back to sit on the bike, a naked biker, again with just boots on, staggered in my direction and lurched into me, tripping on some obstacle in the dark. I caught him, more or less, and steadied his swaying body until he appeared able to stand on his own. "Thanks, man." He breathed beer fumes toward my face, but I had quickly averted my head when I saw the toxic cloud aimed in my direction, so I was spared a direct onslaught. His eyes focused on the window and the noise of the crowd inside. "Wha's goin' on in there?" he slurred to me as he took a step or two and pressed his face to the glass, like a two-year-old in the proverbial candy store. He seemed not to have my Peeping Tom inhibitions. "Oh, fuckin' A! It's a new color girl! Hot fuckin' damn, man!" He pushed himself away from the glass and staggered into line at the stairs. I was pretty sure I now knew what to expect and I turned peeper myself. By finding the best gap through the bodies on the other side of the glass, I could peer through them and identify the action inside. The slice of view revealed two naked bodies, their heads and feet not visible due to my limited field of vision. They were obviously having sex, that much was clear from the position and rhythm of their hips. After a moment, I saw the male body rise from the female one beneath. As soon as he left my view, another pair of male legs knelt onto the mattress and took his precursor's place. It was the legendary biker gang-bang that so many have talked about but so few have actually witnessed. I don't know where the legend began. I had always thought it was merely a fable of Hollywood B-movie producers, an excuse to have buxom starlets show their breasts. But wherever its origins in popular culture, the macabre ceremonies ascribed to people who happened to like to ride fast, noisy machinery were more the stuff of legend than fact. Jeanie had explained to me that those women who sported the denim vest with the horned death's head symbol had come by it one way: to wit, they had taken on all who were willing one night. I hadn't quite believed her, especially after I had seen Margie wearing one -- Margie, who looked like my grandmother, if my grandmother dyed her hair red, wore lots of mascara and eyeliner, had boobs held out to the world like Cadillac bumper guards, wore tight jeans and swore like a sailor. I had assumed, or perhaps the right word is hoped, that Margie's trophy had been acquired long ago. But communities the world over have, from time to time in history, engaged in this sort of behaviour -- whether as a fertility ritual or as a method of generating social cohesion. It certainly made sense as a fertility ritual. After all, if the male partner was infertile, an orgy allowed for increased birthrates. And as for social cohesion -- perhaps this sort of thing defused inevitable 'covet thy neighbor' tensions. Now that my curiosity was satisfied, I left my peeping spot and wandered away, avoiding people and admiring the stars. A full moon lit the scene with its pale, unblinking stare. The bonfire had subsided into a smaller pile of heat and light, no longer threatening to destroy the Sierra Nevada forests. I saw only a few people vomiting in the trees, so I guess the pork had been more or less edible; I was thankful for my prudence anyway. I found myself standing next to Don's grave. I planted myself on a pile of dirt next to the open hole, black and unfathomable in the moonlight. The noise in the background seemed to fade away. My own thoughts were loud and clear. I stared into the black hole, the Herradura and pot allowing my mind to roll gently over, not spin frantically. Alas, poor Don. I did not know him well. Were we just food for the worms after we had walked this earth? Hell, if Shakespeare couldn't come up with an answer, what do you expect from me? I reflected on the idea that somehow each of us was destined to act out what our circumstances brought to us. You were who you were by accident of genetics and circumstance. You could have been someone completely different if the sperm that penetrated your mother's ovum had not been _that_ one but another in the stream of millions released, each one carrying a slightly different set of ancestral dice. I once knew three sisters who had blue eyes. Both parents had brown eyes. What the hell were the odds of that? Each attribute you carry is as random. Then, this string of base pairs creates a being and that being is born into the world. You could have been born in, say, Ethiopia, where you might have lived a year or two in hunger and pain and died miserably in some refugee camp, your frail corpse tossed into the bone-dry ground, another fragment of organic matter added to the Earth's crust. Or you might have been born a genius but your parents were poor, and you spent your days digging coal. You might have been born to privilege and wealth and died at sixteen cracking up the new Corvette you got for your birthday. Who the hell knows what life holds for them? In Vietnam, I saw things happen to people that they never could have imagined would happen. I saw people do things that they never would have thought they could do, both good and bad. I knew men who moaned in the dark from nightmares of napalmed villages, children turned into flaming torches that screamed for a few seconds before turning into silent, black figures that tottered and fell into the dirt. You think they expected to end that way? There is some shit you do not forget. There is some shit you do not forgive. So Don was born Don and was fated to die by my hand, just as I was fated to be the instrument of his death. It could have been the other way around. And that would have been the way it was, instead of my sitting here at his grave. I thought about the people I'd killed in my young life. Quite a few, I am sorry to say. Some I never knew or saw. I killed them by the tens or hundreds when I circled an area on a map, wrote a report or inserted a pin in a map. I marked them for death, then men went out to kill them or be killed by them. I pulled together the information, correlated the reports, flew out to survey the situation then came back and recommended death to my bosses, who then assented to my sentence. I thought about the other men I had killed, directly, face-to-face, or in the dark, hearing their screams or hearing nothing, just the explosion of firearms firing into the jungle, blasting back at someone who was blasting at you. I tell you this, you don't know jack-shit about shooting until someone's shooting back. Targets ain't trying to kill you. It's a whole different song when the target just might get you first. I tried to think if I had killed casually. Was I becoming a murderer, a taker of life for the sake of taking life? I excluded combat, which is generally not murder but could certainly be a good cover for it, as many a cocky lieutenant fragged by his reluctant troops found out the hard way. Ask the civilians if it was their fault they were in the way. It was only an accident of birth that I was not in black pajamas instead of BDUs. After my military education in death, I had thought that my days of killing were over. But circumstances had brought me to kill, and kill again. Many idle hours had gone into turning those events over and over, looking under the rock of my conscience and seeing what guilty bugs scurried into the dark. I had done what I had done and there was no going back. In each case, I thought I had done the only thing possible to preserve life -- that is to say, my life. I thought about the man with platform shoes. If he had worn regular shoes, hadn't been stoned on coke, hadn't stuck a knife into me, he might be alive today. Of course, if you live violently, sooner or later someone was going to come along who is faster, stronger and deadlier than you are and then -- 'game over.' From what I know of murder, it is rarely a calculated act, but more a boiling over of the reptile brain, a flooding of adrenaline into the bloodstream -- fear and anger. It is the unfortunate combination of drugs, sex and weapons. In some cases, murder is akin to combat, the result of orders and motives of faceless men protecting other faceless men and large sums of money. What was worth killing for? Well, there was kin and country, passion of one kind or another and money. I thought about Zodiac. There was some flaw, some malfunction in his neurochemistry that brought pleasure, or release, to that killer -- some twisted litany to pain and blood that must be hearkened to, that the mind couldn't refuse. Thus, in that way, it was as inevitable and uncaring as an avalanche or car accident. And what of the victims? They wanted to live as much as their killer wanted them to die. They struggled, or didn't, as circumstance decreed. They suffered in ways that we, their lovers or family, reject from our imaginations, hoping that by denial we can undo what has been done. Were they born to come to this end as surely as the little Ethiopian starvling? Or were they simply in the wrong place at the wrong time, like the Vietnamese child, torched unthinkingly from a thousand feet up? I felt a need to finish the bottle and did so, quickly. The additional dose of alcohol did little to help my speculations, but it did throw sand in mental gears threatening to fly apart. Making my way gingerly back toward my sleeping area, I was full of a profound melancholy that seemed existential, but may have only been too much tequila and pot. As I passed the cabin, I saw that the line had disappeared and the crowd dispersed. The moon was a fill light above; the fire was a blood-red gel spot from one side, while the cabin light provided a cinematic key from the other, highlighting a woman clad only in vest and boots. She was strutting to and fro, holding a bottle of Jack Daniels that she tipped up to her lips and sampled from time to time. When she rotated into the window light, I saw that it was Jeanie. She was performing obscenely with the bottle and laughing. I realized then that she had been the one who had earned her colors that night. Perhaps Don would have been proud. ~*~ I made myself a pot of coffee the next morning and waited until my hosts were astir. As soon as I spotted Margie staggering into the kitchen, I went over to her and indicated my desire to get on the highway. "Ain't you gonna ride back with us tomorrow?" She seemed disappointed. "I thought I'd take a longer ride back and just enjoy a nice cruise, you know?" She looked at my face shrewdly. "Sure, whatever. Just be careful you don't get hassled by some cop." I nodded my thanks for her concern and made my way over to the bike. I rolled up my gear, tied it to the sissy bar and started the bike to let it warm up before I took off. I was mounted and about to put the bike in gear when Jeanie came trotting over. The long night of partying had exacted a toll on her face, lines were more visible and circles that looked like too much eye shadow ringed the orbits of her eyes. "Doug! Takin' off?" she asked, unnecessarily, I thought. I nodded that indeed that's what this meant, being astride an idling motorcycle. She stopped next to me, close to my right arm. She wore jeans and boots but only the vest on top. Her breasts pushed the unbuttoned front outward away from her stomach. She looked at me with an incongruously shy expression. "I had hoped you'd stay and we'd get together." I shrugged, noncommittally. "You didn't take your turn last night, either. What's the matter, don't like sharing me?" She said this last with a small, malicious grin, like I was taking Don's place in the jealousy department. "Not at all. That's your thing, go for it. I just want to ride for while and get my head straight, you know?" I couldn't see any reason to get into a deep conversation that Jeanie was incapable of following and I was incapable of explaining. "Well, okay, sure. Hey, see you around. Right?" I may have nodded or it might have been the force of the bike as I let out the clutch and spun the rear tire in the dirt. I banked to the left and rumbled down the driveway. When I got to the paved road, I wound the bike out in each gear until the engine screamed, the rear tire chirping with each shift. In a few seconds, I was flying along the pavement at sixty or seventy, leaving the whole thing behind me, just more scenery passed on the long, strange trip of life. -------- *Chapter Sixteen* The Pebbles That Start Landslides The month of June flew past in a blur of activity. Barbara and Bernice quit AAA, amid much angst from Wally, and started getting the office together. There were many details to arrange but in their usual efficient manner, we were open for business by the middle of the month. We celebrated the grand opening of Allworth Legal Process with Domaine Chandon, mailing flyers to every law firm listed in San Francisco and the surrounding counties. Free champagne seemed to motivate the office managers and legal secretaries upon whom we lavished our attentions. On June 20th Vice-President Ford came to town and declared that President Nixon "had no intention of resigning." My birthday had passed quietly, just a quiet dinner with Barbara at _Le Trianon_ in Sausalito, concluding the evening in bed. Not a bad way to spend the anniversary of my 28th year on Earth. We actually had too much business within a week, and Bill left Wally at that point as well. Both Layla and Mary slipped over to our new offices and asked us to call them as soon as we had a need for more staff. Jan met Bill and me for lunch. He said Wally was beside himself with what he had characterized as a 'raid' on his staff. He was threatening legal action. I called in any favors that Mel Belli might feel he owed me. I met with him at his ornate office, with windows that let every passerby on Montgomery Street see the King of Torts in action. I was glad to see he had installed a special layer of polycarbonate inside the double layer of glass to prevent the type of electronic eavesdropping that had cost both of us so dearly in the Midland affair. Mel was cordial and more helpful than I had hoped. Not only did he assure me that all the process business from his office would go to us but also offered to write a letter to Wally on his stationary that would forestall any ideas about legal steps against us. I had no doubt that a letter on Belli and Associates stationary, signed by the Great One himself, would give any other San Francisco lawyer pause. Steve checked in once or twice to tell me the surveillance cameras were both working fine and that he had obtained usable images of the partners working there. He felt sure any interlopers would be revealed, should they appear. I reminded him that he would want to destroy the prints and negatives that showed them working, since that would be the kind of evidence that would guarantee them a felony cultivation arrest should they fall into the wrong hands. I managed to get in a couple of weekends sailing, taking Dave with me. He was a great sailing companion. We didn't talk much. I was still learning my blue-water sailing skills, and he was a big help when I practiced maneuvers that I thought I might need for the future, like learning how to heave-to with a sea anchor or reef sail in a hard blow; necessary skills, but not always exciting. We sailed to Half Moon Bay a couple of times, anchoring in the harbor overnight and returning the next day. With no phones, newspapers or television, we felt like we were a thousand miles away from our respective cares. Dave told me in passing that they had no further letters from Zodiac and that my information about Deputy Taylor (the T stood for Thomas) had led them to add him to the list of possibles. The dates for the various mailings and crimes seemed to correspond to dates when he had been off-duty. He was reluctant to show his hand to investigators in Humboldt. Toschi was concerned that word would get to Taylor. "If he's Zodiac, he can't help himself. Sooner or later he has to kill. The psychotic killer has to release the pressure that builds up and the only way he can release it is to kill. I believe that the letters provide some sort of safety valve for him. When he can't kill, he can get some satisfaction by tweaking our noses. But every time the pressure becomes too great, he snaps and has to kill to quiet the urges that overwhelm him." Dave had worked with and studied the psychology of serial killers for so long he sounded like a shrink. "What are the chances he would kill in the course of his professional duties? Would that bring this release you're talking about?" "I don't think so. First of all, you know there's little opportunity for peace officers to actually use their weapons. I've been with the department for fifteen years and I've only drawn my service revolver twice in that time. I've never fired it in the line of duty. That's not uncommon. So that's number one. "Number two, any discharge of a firearm by an officer is investigated by the department very thoroughly. He would be subjecting himself to intense scrutiny. No, he kills as a civilian, although if he _is_ Zodiac, he uses his knowledge of police procedure to help him conceal his crimes. "It's almost as though he presents us with too many clues. We have all kinds of physical evidence that would tie someone directly to the crime. We have handwriting samples, slugs from the gun, he takes souvenirs from some of the victims -- there's loads of physical evidence that we could use to prove the case, once we can identify him. But we've looked at over twenty-five individuals and none of them have been right. I don't have enough for a search warrant on Taylor, but I'm working on a plan." He did not tell me the plan he was considering. The luxury of DNA testing was twenty years in the future. We speculated on the People's Temple connection but couldn't figure out why or how Taylor and the Jones' people fit together. Dave told me he had been given a flat 'no' when he had suggested putting an undercover officer into the Temple membership. Jones' connections to City Hall were much too potent to risk a police investigation being revealed, especially since they didn't have much to go on. The Narcotics Division had reports that linked Temple members to drug dealing, but since many of the members were supposedly reformed drug addicts or dealers, any leads they had followed had been denounced by Jones as harassment and had quickly been squelched by their commanders. As Dave put it, "I know Jones is dirty, but he's smart. He's got the mayor and the DA right where he wants them, and he's using his political muscle to keep the heat off himself. Unless we catch him red-handed, we're going nowhere." Little did Dave or I know that Jones would one day be as red-handed as they come. On August ninth, I joined in the general celebration. Nixon had resigned. I went out to San Francisco State, site of my ill-conceived attempt at higher education, where I knew I could find many like-minded people. We chanted 'Jail to the Chief' and celebratory joints passed freely among the crowd. Some of my opposition and anger with the Establishment were being recompensed. Personally, I favored having him shot for treason. ~*~ Barbara handed me a message from Cindy and teased me about it. "Another married woman, Doug? Haven't you learned your lesson?" "What makes you think she's married?" "She wouldn't leave a number for you to call back and she sounded like she was in a hurry to get off the phone." I assured Barbara that I had sworn off married women. She reminded me that technically, she was still married to that crazy husband of hers, Ralph. "Oh, well, I guess I'll just have to quit seeing you too." She protested that Ralph didn't count, so we agreed to keep the relationship as it was. I told Barbara to give Cindy my pager number if she called again. She could have me to call her at a pay phone, if she liked. It took two days but finally we hooked up. Cindy had little to say. "I need to see you, in private. I can get away tomorrow for a couple of hours." "Come to my office." I gave her the address. She said she would try to be there between eleven and two. She appeared promptly at eleven the next day. The woman who entered looked stressed-out, replacing the mellow girl I remembered. I sat her in an armchair. She accepted some tea and I poured myself a fresh cup of coffee. She assented to my smoking but I opened one of the windows wide to expel the fumes. It was a lovely summer day with a pleasant breeze blowing through. I love these old buildings with windows that actually open. I took my chair behind the desk and pulled out a legal pad and pen, now the professional listener. "Cindy, I'm happy to see you. Tell me what's wrong. You look unhappy." She exhaled a long breath and sipped her tea. "I still think the Reverend is a great man, but there's something wrong. The people around him! Doug, he's surrounded by people who are not true believers at all." _Big surprise_, I thought. Poor Cindy, ever faithful to her belief in the goodness of mankind. She then proceeded to weave a confusing and contradictory story that I spent two hours sorting out. She had to go back and forth, explaining who people were and what the routine at the Temple was for various activities. In the end, I knew more than I needed, but not enough to do anything about it. Cindy had become one of the bookkeepers for the organization. Naturally, there was a lot of money coming and going, and Jones needed people to keep track of it somehow. Many of Jones' middle-class or elderly members (or victims, if you saw it my way) had signed over property and assets to the Temple. Jones and his lieutenants were busy disposing of hard assets and then acquiring other things that the Temple needed. There were many operations, legitimate ones, that were funded by the Temple and all of those had to have cash disbursed, purchases approved and paid for, salaries paid -- in short, all the operations of a large complex organization that took in and dispersed millions of dollars. Temple members were required to pool their earnings, then were granted a stipend to support their various communal groups. Most of the cash stayed with the Temple. One day, when the head of her department was out sick, Cindy, looking for something or other in the safe, came across several account books. They caught her eye because they were foreign banks, most notably in Panama and Switzerland. Even innocent little Cindy knew that these were not the kind of accounts a church needed. She photocopied the information quickly and then replaced the logs in the desk. So this is what had her concerned and upset. The total amount on deposit in these accounts: eight million and some odd thousands of dollars. There was something else that had bothered her. It took quite a while to get this out of her, but finally I got the idea. It seemed that Jones had some rather bizarre ideas about race and sex. He claimed that the answer to all the racial problems of the day was interbreeding between all the races. He didn't believe that marriage was a proper institution, but rather a tool of society to prevent man's proper relationship with nature. It was also rumored that he used sex to abuse and humiliate Temple members, including some of the men. In furtherance of this philosophy, there were Temple-organized programs -- I guess the rest of us would have just called them orgies. It seemed that only a select few of the members were allowed this honor. Cindy had thought this was okay (a measure of how far gone she was), but she had been bothered when she witnessed some very young girls participating in these 'celebrations.' She had even heard rumors that Jones and some of his comrades were inclined to have young boys entertain them as well, which certainly shot a hole in the 'selective breeding' idea. By now there were several hundred Temple faithful living in the jungles of Guyana, a tiny country, formerly a British colony, located near Venezuela. Jones and the other leaders regularly flew there. They owned a private plane that provided air service from Venezuela, the closest international airport to the Mathews Ridge area, where the 'new world order' that Jones professed would survive the inevitable nuclear war; rising from the ashes to take over a ruined world. They also owned a forty foot boat that regularly ferried supplies and members to and from the remote village nearby. Along with this obscure location in the South American rain forest, Ukiah, California was also going to survive this nuclear holocaust. I thought that if I had to live in either Ukiah or Guyana in order to survive, I'd rather just die and get it over with. Except for trying to sort out inconsistencies and confusing points, I didn't challenge any of what she told me, although an unconscious snort or two of disbelief no doubt escaped me. When I suggested Cindy get the hell out of there and go back to Humboldt or somewhere else, she protested that she could not and would not -- that Jones "needed people like her more than ever." She would stay and do what she could to "bring the Heaven that the Reverend envisioned into being." She actually used words like "envisioned." She did leave copies of the bank statements and ledgers with me. I told her that if anyone at the Temple threatened to hurt her, she could always use them to bargain for her escape. She seemed to be comforted by this. I couldn't understand her combination of paranoia and faith, but then I couldn't understand how any of the thousands of people that followed Jones could do what they were doing, so why should I understand a lonely and confused hippie girl? When she left, I stared out the window at the streets below for a long while, smoking and sipping cold coffee. Barbara came in and warmed up the coffee once, saw I was somewhere else mentally and left without speaking. I had evidence of fraud in my hot little hands. I was sure that a thorough audit by financial forensic experts would reveal an enormous fraud that no doubt extended into local governments all over California. There was no way Jones could be getting away with this without a certain amount of help from people in official positions. Who could I take this to? I called for my mentor, Mel Belli, but he was out of town, vacationing in some tropical place with his latest wife. Number three, I think. So I finally decided that I would call Dan Hagarty, SFPD Intelligence Unit commander. I hadn't had occasion to see him since January, but I thought he would give me time to talk with him privately and unofficially. But when I called and asked for Hagarty, I was told he had been transferred to a precinct command out in the Avenues. I called him there and got a reluctant appointment for the next day. I drove out to the precinct station as he said he was much too busy to get away. I spent twenty minutes laying out what I knew, trying to keep it to just the barest of facts. Hagarty was not very helpful. "Okay, well I understand what you're saying, Doug, but it's not that simple." He had closed the door to his office as soon as I had mentioned People's Temple. "You understand that Jones is..." I interrupted him with a palm up. "I've already heard about his connections, Dan. I'm not saying that this is going to be a popular case. I realize that this could lead places people would rather it did not go." "This will be an enormous load of fresh shit hitting the fan." He was trying to get the idea through my head that this was serious. "We're talking about election fraud and financial fraud perpetrated on thousands of people, not to mention an investigation into the Housing Authority and that kind of leads you to City Hall. You think anybody on the force wants to be the guy that blows up City Hall?" The question was rhetorical. "You have two choices here, if you're asking for my advice, which I assume is why you're here. One, go to the DA. See that ADA, what's his name? Lutz? You can tell him what you've got and see where that goes. Two, you can go to the Feds. But you know how they are. Getting into an FBI investigation is like falling into a cement mixer. You know you're going to come out eventually. The question is, in how many pieces?" "I'm hip." I had my previous experience to inform me that boys who play in the big leagues can get hurt. "I'll see Lutz and see what happens." Hagarty shook my hand. "If you get into a jam with this one, Doug, don't look to us to save your ass. You could wind up with very few friends in this city." I left with an empty feeling in my stomach that lunch did not completely displace. It took me two days to finally decide to see the Assistant District Attorney, Bob Lutz, and another two days to get an appointment. I would not tell his secretary what it concerned, and this did not endear me to her, or Lutz. So it was a rather distant greeting I received when I went into City Hall and was shown to his office. He shook hands with me in a dismissive way, as though saying that since I was a member of the public, he was obligated to give me some of his valuable time, but I should not waste any of it. When we were alone and he invited me to speak, I laid it on the line at once. "I might be in possession of information that shows a large and widespread conspiracy to commit fraud on the part of certain members of the People's Temple." Lutz reacted by becoming significantly more interested in me than a moment before. "What do you mean 'might be in possession'? You have evidence or don't you?" I had learned that when dealing with attorneys, especially ones that could put you in jail, you want to say as little as possible while appearing to be cooperating fully -- not an easy sword edge to walk. "Let's say this, to be totally accurate. I have knowledge of the location of this information. I am unable to tell you if this information provides a -- how do you say it? -- _prima fascia_ case for criminal activity, but it certainly could be evidence of that. I am also given to understand, from a witness or witnesses, that other illegal activities have been occurring in the Temple itself, acts of a criminal nature against adults and minors." I was trying to make it sound serious but general. Lutz got a little hot. "Why do I feel you are fencing with me, Mr. McCool?" "Because Mother McCool always said not to trust strangers, even ones with candy. And so far, I haven't been offered anything from you but questions." He sat back in his chair and played 'here's the church, here's the steeple' with his hands while he looked like he was thinking. He was, for he soon spoke with a different tone. "Yes, I understand your concern, Mr. McCool." I interrupted to ask him to call me Doug. He did not offer that I call him Bob. "I can only assure you that this office would proceed on any type of inquiry in exactly the same way concerning these people as it would against any other citizen who was suspected of committing a crime. Mr. Jones and his people would have every right to respond to any criminal inquiry with their counsel. Whether this would hamper our investigation or not is impossible to predict. I'm sure that you can understand that anything like this could take years to pursue and conclude." In other words, 'Don't hold your breath waiting for us.' I remembered that Jim Jones' counsel was Charles Garry, the radical lawyer. I began to understand Lutz' reluctance. I stood up. "I have to think about what you've said, Mr. Lutz. I wouldn't want to cause innocent people problems." Not exactly an enthusiastic commitment, was it? -------- *Chapter Seventeen* Many's the Slip, Twixt the Cup and the Lip I put the papers that Cindy gave me into one of those 'zipper' style plastic bags, weighted it with some fishing weights, then double bagged it. I tucked it into the bilge, under the engine where it was greasy and wet. Allworth's business was building nicely and I had all I could do to keep up. We weren't frantic yet but the work was steady, and we were making our nut every week. Barbara had calculated how much we needed to take in every month to match our previous incomes. If business kept growing, we were looking good. So I was in somewhat of a bind when Steve called me at the office. It was late and we were having our Friday wrap-up meeting, with all five of us sitting around the reception area, the only space that would accommodate us all at once. Darrell was getting more document business and we were in negotiations with Jan to see if we could bring him onboard. He would have to take a pay cut at first, though, and that was holding him back. Bernice and Bill were bubbling with optimism and I was feeling pretty confident as well. So when Steve called, I was anxious to get back to the meeting. "Doug, how're you doing? I have a picture that is kind of strange." "Picture? Oh, you mean you got something on the camera?" "Yeah, the one you set up, the one only you and I know about. And it's got two people on the images. One I can make out the face, but the second I can't. If I get it down to you, can you do something to enhance it?" "I don't know, Steve. I'll have to take it to my photographer guy and ask him." I really didn't want to ask Jan for a favor right now but I didn't know who else I could ask. "Send it down in the mail and I'll see what I can do. How're things?" We never mentioned the crop specifically. "Oh great, just great. It's coming along well. We've got about three months to go." Meaning harvest was three months from now. I got the negatives and prints four days later by registered mail. I examined them with a magnifying glass. I could see two figures, one of which looked like Carlson, judging from the hair. There were two pictures, which demonstrated that they had stayed over an hour. One print showed the two figures coming in from the other side of the garden, avoiding the camera that they knew about. The other print showed them much closer, examining one of the plants. The marijuana was now getting to be six or seven feet tall. Soon, as the days started to get shorter, it would flower. The partners would then rush up there, identify the males and pull them out. This would leave the females to flower, but not being fertilized by pollen, they would not form seed. The growers in California had learned that unfertilized flower buds produced the greatest concentrations of resin from the plant. It is this resin that carries the active ingredient in cannabis, THC. The lack of seeds in the buds had gained the northern California region a reputation for producing marijuana without seeds, thus the name _sin semilla_, 'without seed' in Spanish. A little of this potent smoke went a long way, which was just as well, since the price for this popular drug was going up along with everything else. Inflation was destroying everyone's quality of life, even the stoners. Pot had been no more than ten dollars an ounce in the Sixties. Now it was at least sixty an ounce, and for those who bought in small quantities, it was closer to one hundred. Buyers expected to get the best quality at those prices. A single plant could produce a thousand dollars worth. I couldn't quite make out the face of the other person in the photograph, although it was temptingly close to being clear. I called Jan at home. "Hey, Jan. How're things?" "Fine, fine Doug. Look, I told Bill...." "I know, I'm not calling about that. I have a photographic question." "Oh, sure. What?" "I have an image that needs to be blown up so I can see it better." "Shit, Doug, that's not hard." "Well, maybe not hard for you, but it's hard for me." "Bring it over tonight and I'll take a look at it. But you have to come over right away. I'm expecting company later." I knew that his company would be female and interested in something other than Jan's darkroom technique. I showed him the negative. He scowled for a moment. I followed him into the darkroom. He had taken up most of his bathroom space with darkroom gear. He covered the bathtub with a work top and the small bathroom window was sealed with foil and duct tape. Perhaps that explained why Jan could get a little ripe, if you stood downwind. He put the negative into an enlarger and then fiddled with it for a while. I leaned against the counter and watched. I like to have people shut up when I'm working, so I didn't bother him with chatter or questions. I didn't even want to know that much about it. After all, I had Jan. After he exposed the new, enlarged image, I could see the face of the second man quite clearly: Deputy Thomas Taylor, of the Humboldt County Sheriff's Office. Hello. I thanked Jan profusely and made a brief pitch to him to link up with us. I asked him if he had ever thought about using his photographic knowledge for something like private investigating. Having a guy that was good with cameras would be a big advantage. Jan looked at me as though I were crazy. ~*~ I sat in the salon of the boat with Taylor staring back at me from the tabletop. I made a mental list. 1. The hippie-dippies are getting some of their crops busted -- either by poachers or the cops. 2. Either way, there's not much the dope growers can do, is there? I mean, they can't hardly file a complaint with the police. 3. If the deputy wants to find gardens, he drives around and eventually he gets the goods on somebody, finds them at the grow perhaps, and gets them to roll over. 4. If the crop gets taken but no report gets filed, it would be hijackers; if the crop gets taken and a report filed, it's the cops. So, if this crop gets popped, we have to look for a report in the sheriff's office. It would certainly generate a report. 5. Now, what about Taylor and Zodiac? It seemed pretty implausible that this could be true, but the idea that he mailed a letter from Fremont, had driven all the way there and then turned around after mailing it, seemed to be pretty damned curious. 6. And what the hell did Taylor have to do with the People's Temple? Or were they into something on the side? Questions. For some reason, I thought of Van Duzee just then. That made me angry as well as frustrated. Not my best mood. I stopped by the office and dropped off what paper I had left to serve. Bill would have to take up the slack. We were even advertising to hire servers; business was that good. My partners wouldn't be happy, but I needed to see Steve right away. I packed the bus with my usual needs, plus the Ruger .44, my shoulder rig and the seven-shot Browning 9mm. I had my tiny Walther 9mm PPK tucked into my boot. I always carry a round in the chamber. They say it's not safe to do that. It's also unsafe not to be able to snap off a quick shot when someone's shooting at you. All kinds of values change when you're facing someone who intends to kill you. A hideout gun is better than life insurance. Life insurance can only be collected after you're dead. Two hideouts is like double indemnity. Just for the hell of it, I strapped the four-inch stiletto at my waist, riding parallel to the belt, in the small of my back. Zodiac used two different knives at various times, so I guess that's what put the knife idea into my head. Overkill? When it's my ass on the line, nothing's overkill. Two hours after Jan enlarged the photo, I was already across the Golden Gate Bridge and zooming north. With no traffic to speak of, I could cruise at sixty-five. I cursed the fifty-five mile per hour limit. That led to cursing the oil companies and that led to cursing the Arabs. Pretty soon I was pissed off at pretty much everybody and everything. I arrived at Steve's late -- or early, depending on how you looked at it. He was surprised to hear my engine in his driveway in the middle of the night, but when I told him we needed to talk right away, he put up some coffee and led me into his study/office. We couldn't commence without a joint, however. Although Steve had foresworn cigarettes years ago, he smoked grass like it was tobacco. Only a grower could afford to smoke that much. I laid out the photos but didn't mention the Zodiac angle at the time. It seemed irrelevant to the situation at hand. Steve thought that this matter would have to be brought to the rest of the partners. I could see that was unavoidable; after all, it was their labor and investment at risk. As soon as the day was advanced enough, he started rounding them up. Urgency was communicated and in rapid time, for Humboldt anyway, the three partners, less Carlson of course, met. There wasn't much to discuss as far as the facts went, they were self-explanatory. But what to do about it? That discussion went on for quite a while, the scale dipping in favor of a confrontation. I explained that being confronted by all of them would only lead to argument and confusion. Carlson would try to play them off against each other and nothing would be accomplished. I wanted Carlson to talk about Taylor, of course, and I needed to be able to bring pressure on him. It took a while but I managed to convince them that I would be more inclined to lean on him, as he was no friend of mine, where they might not want to be quite so confrontational. So, with a map drawn by Steve, I set out for Carlson's place that evening, intending to brace him about the betrayal and see what he knew. He lived deep in the hills, one-lane blacktop turning into gravel and gravel turning into dirt. It was high summer, the dry season, so instead of slogging through mud up to my axles, it was only dust. The night insects flocked to the beams of my headlights. I drove slowly, stopping to consult Steve's map at the various turns. Finally, I found his driveway and rolled up to the house in low gear. The house was an A-frame cabin nestled in the trees. There were lights on. I couldn't really see much of the homestead in the dark, but what I could see looked orderly. I stopped the bus but left the lights on. With the engine off, it was perfectly quiet. I had left the Ruger behind at Steve's. I wanted to scare Carlson, not vaporize him. Carlson met me at the door, producing a surprised expression when he saw it was me. He invited me in, and Patty said hello when I walked into the living room. I asked her to excuse us. Carlson led me onto a covered porch in the back and even offered me a beer. I accepted his hospitality. When we were alone and seated and had tasted our beer, I took the photo out of my pocket and laid it on the table under a lamp. I looked at his face as I did it. He was a time-lapse movie of emotion: curiosity, confusion, recognition, anger, fear, suspicion, then calculation. I said nothing, waiting to see what his first statement might be. "Do you know who that is?" So his first tactic was to ask for more information. "Carlson, I'm going to put it to you this way. You can tell the story now, without a lot of pain and hassle, or you can tell me later. I know who that is. And I know a lot about him. But that's not my picture, it's yours. So you are going to talk, not me. If you think I'm fucking with you, you are making a serious mistake." Carlson was cool, I have to hand it to him. He bummed a cigarette off me and said nothing while he lit it and drew smoke into him. He exhaled slowly, relishing the nicotine. Then his face fell into its naturally confident pose. "Okay, let's not waste a lot of time with this. As you apparently know, that is Deputy Taylor. He's got me by the balls and I work for him, sometimes. You know how it is, they pop you and then lean on you. He had me cold for possession with intent to distribute. That's five years hard time, and I'm damned if I'm gonna have some big San Quentin nigger fucking my ass for five years." That was certainly an understandable motive, if rather crudely termed. "I've showed him a few gardens, and I give him ideas of where to look. Of course, I didn't want to tell him about this grow, but how could I keep it secret? He knew I would be growing and he's got me." "He can't hold that over you forever. He's got to charge you with the crime sooner or later. He can't drag it up a year from now." "He can do damn near anything he wants. He's a cop, ain't he?" "So what's the deal? You tell him about the patches, he takes them down and he's a big hero with his boss?" "Well, no, it's a little more complicated than that." Carlson seemed to be talking in spite of himself. "He doesn't turn it in. He's dealing it." Drug-dealing cops were not without precedent. How do you think the bootleggers stayed in business? "Who does he sell to?" Carlson looked me in the eye, a good sign. "Honest to God, McCool, I have no idea. You don't think he would tell me, do you?" _Probably not_. "Did you get any impression about where he was unloading it? He couldn't very well be selling it back to the growers, could he?" "I got the impression he had one big customer that took as much as he could get." "Why did you get that impression?" "Just the way he referred to the whole thing. I don't really know. I'm in no position to ask questions." That was true. "What else was he up to, that you know or suspected?" "Nothing. I guess he had other people by the balls too, but I wouldn't know who. He would call me and tell me to drive somewhere and meet him, then he would pull me over like it was a traffic stop and we would talk. Then sometimes, he would take me up in the hills and have me show him where a garden was. He was..." He faded away. "He was what?" "Nothing." "No, that won't do. You were about to say something, I want to hear what it was." "It's nothing really, I was just going to say that Taylor is a strange dude, that's all. Sometimes he said stuff that sounded weird, like you would tell him something and he would say, like, 'Of course, that fits the pattern' or something weird like that. I never understood that part." I shrugged to show I didn't understand it either. "How exactly did he take down a crop?" "He'd have me tell him when it was close to being ready to harvest and then he'd just show up a few days before it was ready and chop it down. Look, there were three of us who used to go out and do the work for him. I know who they are, but I'm not going to say. It wasn't our fault. What could we do?" "You could have stood for the rap and not busted your friends." Carlson didn't answer that. "So, you're gonna know about when Taylor plans to rip off your partners' garden, aren't you?" "Yeah, I suppose." "Suppose you call Steve and tell him so they can get there first." "Taylor might know I told." "That's just the chance you'll have to take." I got up and headed out. I didn't know where Patty went but she wasn't in sight when I left. I returned to Steve's and filled him in on the conversation. The next day he passed the word to Wendy and Jason that if Carlson called, they would all have to go into high gear and harvest that same day. They agreed. The following day, we got a call from Carlson. "Taylor wants a meeting. I'm going to see him now. I'll call you when I know what's up." Carlson was giving every impression of being the cooperative double agent. But we heard nothing from him again that day, so about seven, Steve and I decided to go over to his place and see what was going on. I drove us over and pulled into his driveway again. We called to the house as we walked up. It was silent, but that's the country for you. The door was ajar when we approached. Steve stuck his head through the open door and called Carlson's name a couple of times. There was no reply. Carlson's car was in the driveway, along with Patty's, so we figured they were around somewhere. Steve was calling for them inside the house. I went back outside and stood gazing at the forest around me. They could be anywhere. I was walking back to the car to honk the horn when I saw a flash of color in the grass to my left. It looked like laundry lying in the dirt. When I got closer, I could see it wasn't laundry, it was Patty, crumpled like she had just dropped as she was standing or running. I looked closer and could see four small holes, no more than half an inch apart, still oozing blood from her back. Yes, the flies were already there. I went back to the house at a run, stopping just outside to puke. Steve came out when he heard me on the steps, surprised to see me heaving my guts out over the railing. "Get a blanket, quick." He went back in the house and came out with a tie-dyed afghan. I took it from him and headed back to the body. "Call the cops," I told him, but he followed me anyway. I threw the afghan over her. Steve had stopped about twenty feet away. All he had said was, "Oh, shit. Patty?" I nodded, finished with the afghan. "She's been shot. Not that long ago, I don't think. Go back to the house and call the cops. I'm going into the woods for a ways and see what's what." I drew the Browning from behind my back, to show him I meant business. I followed a trail that led from the house compound into the woods. I'm not exactly Daniel Boone but my eyes and ears work okay. I made as little noise as possible and stopped from time to time to listen. This was almost like the jungle, where your ears would tell you things before your eyes. Of course, if there was an armed man lying in ambush for me, I was a proverbial sitting duck. I thought I heard something in front of me, bearing toward the left. I was lost, anyway, so it didn't matter which direction someone headed, I was following them. I had no idea where the roads or other trails would be in this unfamiliar territory. I listened, staying behind a tree so as to not make a perfect target. I could hear an almost rhythmical crunching from time to time. There was someone making their way through the trees, their feet unavoidably breaking some of the dry litter that lay everywhere. I stuck to the trail where the ground was a little clearer. Could he hear me over his own sound? Unfortunately, the clear trail led off to the right, while the sounds were coming from my left. I walked carefully, looking for evidence of where someone might have left a trail of snapped branches or disturbed the dry surface. It sounds easier than it was, but I headed in a vaguely inspired direction. I was now walking across the face of a rocky slope, with piles of scree here and there. I could clearly hear someone ahead of me, since they occasionally dislodged a rock that rolled enthusiastically down the steep hill. I was sweating bullets in spite of the sun being down behind the trees. My back and thighs started to burn and ache. Not far ahead was another copse of trees, oaks now instead of the denser firs. The ground flattened out there and both of us would make better speed. I picked up my pace, trying to get off the tricky slope and onto the flat. I was making my way gingerly across a scree slide when something whizzed past me and I heard the shot. Startled, I dodged on the loose gravel and like ball bearings, the stones shot from under my boots. The Browning flew from my hand as I threw my arms out in an instinctive attempt to keep my balance. As I fell onto my back, I heard another shot. Then I started sliding downhill, pell-mell, with stones and rocks rolling around me. I wrapped my arms around my head and tried to roll into a ball. I did not bounce nearly as well as a ball would have. I thought that I was going to slide all the way to San Francisco. It was a good hundred yards to the bottom and somewhere on the way down, I felt a supremely agonizing shot of pain travel from my lumbar region into my legs, like being struck in the back by lightning. I rolled to the bottom, rocks and dirt half burying me, the dust so thick I was coughing and choking, each cough sending waves of pain down my legs. I tried to stand as soon as I came to a stop but couldn't seem to get my right leg motivated to do anything useful. I peered up at the top from where I had fallen and saw a figure looking down at me. Then I heard sirens not far away. The figure hesitated, then turned and disappeared toward the oak wood. You can hear clearly in the quiet of the country. The sirens stopped in a moment and I could hear car doors opening and closing. I could also hear the sound of a car starting up ahead of me, in the direction of the oaks. It fired up with a raucous rasp of exhaust, then I heard it fade into the distance. With tremendous effort, I managed to reach into my left boot and pull out the Walther. I fired three times, aiming into a tree nearby. I heard shouts and noises in the woods. They came along the same path I had taken and in only a minute or two, there were two deputies standing on the slope, guns drawn. I waved my arm and called to them. I threw the Walther clearly away from me. "I need some help here. I'm hurt." There was a primitive interview conducted for a minute or two while I got them straightened out as to who was whom. At first they thought that I might be their suspect, so there were a couple of tense moments, but Steve came along and got everyone on the same page. It took an agonizingly long time to organize a rescue, four of them having to come in from around the other way. I discovered that I was only about a hundred yards from the county road. I also discovered that any movement or attempt to stand caused me tremendous pain. It took an hour to get an ambulance out there. The EMTs put me in a back immobilizer on the scene. I had told them that there was some chance that I had screwed up a really fine spinal surgery of four years ago, and they took no chances. Another forty minutes was consumed when the crew carried me out on a stretcher, with two deputies helping. I apologized to them for weighing as much as I did, but they were gracious. By the time they got me loaded, it was dark. The closest hospital was Eureka, an hour and half away, but there was a local clinic in Garberville that had an X-ray machine, so they took me there. The doc in the clinic was a shaggy young guy, but he knew his stuff, for he got me comfortable with some Demerol and Valium, then shot pictures of my back. "Well, Mr. McCool, I've got good news. And bad news." Oh great, a comedian. "What's the bad news?" "You've sprained your back quite badly and it's going to hurt like hell for a while. And that's the good news, as well, since I don't think you damaged the Harrington rods." Harrington rods are little stainless steel gizmos that work like a turnbuckle. They hook over the pedicles of my second through fourth lumbar vertebrae, holding the whole mess nicely together. Of course, that cuts down on my yoga abilities, but it beats being crippled. "That's swell. What's the plan?" "Oh, we'll get you up to Eureka and get you admitted for observation and tests. But I'll see that you're comfortable." Oh goodie, legal drugs, the best of the best. I don't remember the trip. It was a lovely dream of flying painlessly and weightlessly over the ocean, like I was a sailboat or a sea bird. Stoned again. The only way I can tolerate being in a hospital is to be drugged into oblivion. Otherwise, the false note of the impersonal routine clashing with the good cheer and neutrally pleasant affect of the staff drives me nuts. And the boredom! Steve interrupted a perfectly good segment of _As the World Turns_ just to visit. He filled me in on the events I had missed, which was basically routine criminal investigation stuff. Patty had been murdered. Yes, I more or less got that part. Four shots, grouped very close. The supposition -- she was fleeing from someone when brought down by a very expert shooter. Steve had overheard one of the techs estimating the distance at about thirty yards. That was good shooting, to place four shots in a tight group at thirty yards before she even fell. I considered myself to have lucked out. Carlson was nowhere to be found. Steve was admiring my hardware. I was in a kind of bondage device called traction, to take the pressure off my poor spine. I admit it relieved most of the pain, although it was a helpless feeling that grated on me every minute. I called into the office and told Barbara about the accident. She expressed rather little sympathy, indicating that this left the partnership shorthanded. Thank God my VA coverage would take care of the hospitalization, since my original injury was service connected. According to the government, I was fifty percent disabled and entitled to disability pay. I had told them to keep the money. Unless I was permanently unable to work, I didn't want it. But I did need the medical care. I could never have paid for that myself. No insurance company would touch me. I spent three days tied up, with nurses doing things to me that I would be ashamed to let anyone else do. You don't know what intimacy is until you've had to relieve yourself in a pan and have someone else wipe your butt. I was not to put weight on my legs at all. I know they say that paraplegics and quadriplegics learn to live with their disabilities. I could not imagine being dependent in that way, but then I had never really had to face it. I had stared disability in the face but it had blinked first. So far, I had lucked out more than once. But when you're dependent, even for a few days, it does awful things to your head. The status of Patty's homicide was that Carlson was missing and presumably the perpetrator, although the person that fled through the woods and drove away didn't really fit with that scenario. So Carlson was wanted 'for questioning.' The fact that his car was missing pointed to something, but what? Hasty flight? Why park on the road and run through the woods? If this wasn't a classic domestic homicide, what was up? I had plenty of time to think, since soap operas and _The Mike Douglas Show_ didn't really consume a lot of brain power. I let the information I possessed about murder and mayhem from previous experience float through my brain. I could feel connections being made but not yet bubbling up to my consciousness. I started backing off the drugs since I couldn't get my mind to work right on narcotics and muscle relaxants. On the fourth day, they took me out of traction and the physical therapist came in to get me up. I don't like physical therapists. It comes from having been intimately acquainted with them. PT stands for pain and torture. Be that as it may, soon I was walking with a walker, which beat being in a wheelchair. It hurt like the dickens and my legs acted like they belonged to the other guy and not me, but I could at least drag my ass to the bathroom. You come to appreciate the little things in life. Anyway, the next day Steve drove up in the bus to haul me back to Garberville. It was up in the air where I was going from there. Rest and gradual exercise, thank you, Dr. Jones. And lots of Valium and Percocet. Thank _you_, Dr. Smith. On the way home, Steve told me Dave Toschi had called. Steve gave him the gist of things and I was to call him when I got back. I called the next morning, left a message. He called me back at noon. "Doug, Dave. Jesus Christ! What happened?" "If I told you there was a homicide here where the victim was shot in the back at thirty or forty yards with a tight group of four shots, would you be interested?" "Fuck, yes. Tell me from the beginning." I told Dave the whole story, leaving out the parts that would have indicated participation in felonious activities. Dave asked me many questions about the scene but I didn't know much. I told him what I had seen, but the cops had not shared any of their findings with me, of course. Dave said he would call the sheriff's office and get filled in from them. "You staying up there for a while?" "I thought I'd hang around for a couple of days, given the situation." "Good," he said, then hung up. It seemed that my clumsiness had somehow made me a local celebrity. That evening we met Jason and Wendy at a bar just outside of town. I gimped along with the aid of a cane. I spurned the walker, despite vociferous arguments from the physical therapist. These people just don't appreciate how undignified a walker looks. It was Saturday night, so the place was full. Wendy looked a little haggard and pale but apparently the two men had told her she should get out with people. I was generally greeted with some fanfare, the consensus apparently being that even though I had spectacularly failed to catch the killer, the effort expended was worthy of recognition. Steve drifted off and I talked to Jason, which was like pulling teeth, since he was not a talkative guy. "Hey, Jason." I thought I needed to get his attention. "Do you have any thoughts about who would have killed Patty?" He put on a thinking face for a minute, then shook his head. I realized that the only information I would get out of him would be small snippets of fact. "How long had Carlson and Patty been together?" " 'Bout a year, year and half, I guess." "Were they really tight? Were they married?" "Oh, no way. I don't think Carlson or Patty were the marrying kind, know what I mean?" I nodded that I did indeed. "You know, Patty kind of got around. Before she hooked up with Carlson, she was with this other guy, a big speed freak. You know how they are. So when he went to the joint, she kind of got taken up by Carlson." A veritable torrent of words from him. He leaned close to my ear. "You know, Wendy kind of had a thing for her, too." No, but I knew it now. "Did Carlson know about that?" "I don't know, man. They were kind of careful about getting caught, but one time I was late going up to the garden and I found the two of them there, making it." "Carlson have a gun?" "Probably, most everyone does around here. At least a shotgun or something." Whoever had fired that group was more proficient than that. "Could there have been some three-way lovers' quarrel?" Jason shrugged. "You know people, man. Could be any fuckin' thing." Not eloquent, but truthful. "You think that people up here would kill someone who was ratting them out?" "Look man, I did three years once already for possession, I sure don't want to get busted again. That's why we kept the majority of the grow off our own land. But if Carlson told that cop about the garden, he could have told him about all the other operations going on around here." I could see that somebody could get angry enough to kill, although Carlson would have been the target, not Patty. Unless someone had a very devious and diabolical mind. "So I guess it will be pretty hard for the cops to figure out who did this." "Well, you know cops. First they decide who did it, then they fix the facts to fit. I don't know what they're gonna make of this." "Where were you that day?" I asked casually. "Oh, I was up at the garden. It was my turn to check on things." Well, the cameras would prove if that was true. There were little knots of people all over the bar, talking among themselves, and the main topic was the murder, something entirely foreign to their philosophy. I learned a few things by being rude and eavesdropping. I gathered right away that Carlson had been a cocksman in the area, taking up with several women, some of whom were in relationships with other men at the time. This tended to not endear Carlson among the men. It seemed Patty was known for pretty much sleeping with anyone she took a fancy to and had been the leg of more than one triangle; until most of the men had come to understand that she was not the kind of woman you took home to help with cooking and gardening. I was able to get Wendy alone for a little while and despite her bereavement, shamelessly pumped her for local information. From what she said, it was common knowledge, among the women anyway, that Patty was fixing to switch partners yet again and take up with her. Carlson's pride had been seriously injured. And Jason, who used to work for the post office (so his sanity was already in question) was considered by some to be 'not too tightly wrapped,' which I took to mean emotionally unstable. By the time we returned home that night, my mind was spinning with information without any structure. At that point, I wondered if I even cared who had done it. Except that somehow, I was vaguely insulted, as though someone had challenged me personally. Soon I was to receive more motivation. -------- *Chapter Eighteen* Much Ado About Something One of the blessings of being a local hero was that I got a lovely invitation to come by and use Wendy's hot tub at my convenience. The water was so hot that I felt like I'd melted. I hung out there for a couple of hours every day. Wendy educated me in counterculture values. "Look, people here, they pretty much feel like everyone should be able to do their own thing. But it has to be a cool thing. I mean, if your thing is to cut down all the trees or strip mine coal, that's not cool. But if your thing is solar energy or art or something that benefits people, that's great. "You know, everybody's different. There're some freaks here that are just like the straights. I mean, they do their grow up in the hills, maybe on public land, and they leave their shit there when the garden is done, like all their pipe and fencing and stuff. And some of them are really into guns and guarding their crop. And there are some people who are into ripping off other people's work. I don't think that all these so-called rednecks are so much against dope as they are just wishing that they could get in on it." She tended to lecture, but I was so whacked on heat, pot and painkillers I just let her rap. "So who decides what's cool and what's not?" I thought I knew the answer to this, but thought I'd show some interest by asking a question now and then. "Well, like, everybody. You know, like in a village, it's decision by consensus." _Or trial by popularity_. "So what's the consensus on Carlson and Patty?" Wendy winced at the mention of Patty, but she took it like a man. "I don't know. That's still pretty much undecided. I think that fuck Carlson did it, but other people don't think he would do something that out-there, like killing. He was more the sneaky type, you know, so I'm not surprised he was ratting out peoples' grow." I was depressed to see that in spite of the best intentions, people were still unredeemable. It was a little strange to sit naked in a tub with a woman with whom I had absolutely no physical chemistry. Wendy was completely uninterested and so was I. It was kind of neat, though, to not have the sex thing there between us, like it usually is between men and women. I flashed on Billie just then. Wow, life is weirder than anything you could make up. "Could Carlson be hiding out around here with somebody local?" Shrug. "Who would know and who would tell?" Shrug, with eyebrows raised. "Think somebody's old lady might not be too happy if that were happening? Or could a lady be putting him up?" "Anything's possible." _Well, not anything, honey. I'm never going to be an Olympic sprinter, for example_. "Will you ask around, you know, quietly, and tell me if you hear something interesting?" Shrug. It looked like a 'yes' shrug, not a 'no' shrug. Toschi called me a couple of days later. He was sounding weird, very tense. He skipped any but the most rudimentary pleasantries and spoke cryptically. "I'm having a little, uh, inter-jurisdictional difficulty. So there may be some delay in my finding out all the facts." "Uh huh." I couldn't quite figure out what he was trying to say. "Well, I like this guy very much and want to take a closer look, but given the circumstances, that's not the kind of investigation that goes over real well in someone else's department, if you know what I mean?" "Uh huh." "It would be very interesting to take a look at someone's home, but of course, I would have to have a search warrant for a legal search." "I believe that clause is contained in the Bill of Rights." "Well, yes. But if I had some anonymous tip...." "Can you get a warrant on the basis of an anonymous tip?" "From a judge down here? Like taking candy from a baby." "I see." "Now, Doug, don't do anything stupid. But if you need the address...." I wrote a little note on the pad on Steve's desk. "I can get some help. Discreet help." "I want to wrap this up before anyone else..." He was speaking completely in ellipses now. "I understand. Are you concerned about phone security?" I wondered why he wasn't finishing sentences. "No, not exactly. But I'm not going to sit here and tell you to do something that is illegal and dangerous -- especially when you're barely mobile." "Oh, hell, Dave. I'm fine. Fit as a fiddle." "That's not what Steve said." "He exaggerates. I can walk just great." _For about twenty feet_. "Don't be stupid. This guy is someone you do not fuck with." "That's a dangling preposition." "What?" "Don't worry, mommy." He hung up. ~*~ Steve was overdue for an inspection trip to the garden. Naturally, I was not interested in joining him. "I'll be back by noon." "Write if you get work." I took my time choosing a book from his vast science fiction collection. They all seemed about the same, so I grabbed one at random and was just getting everything adjusted comfortably when Steve returned. He'd only been gone about an hour. He crashed through the door and into his office, where a tall armchair was keeping me and my back happy. "Back already?" "Yeah. I found Carlson." "Oh?" "He's up at the garden." "What's he doing up there?" "He's dead." So he's not doing much of anything, except decomposing. "I see. I assume I am the first to be honored with this knowledge, beside yourself?" "Exactly. What the fuck do I do?" "I suggest you call up your troops and harvest your crop lickety-split. You have about twelve hours, maybe, before you could be said to have concealed the knowledge of a felony, which would make you an accessory after the fact. So I would say that you should not waste any time." He didn't. They worked all that afternoon and were blessed with a partial full moon that allowed the three of them to work into darkness. Hauling the load down to their vehicles in the dark was an adventure, but it was a story they could tell their grandkids. They were all three armed with various weapons, since the idea that there was a killer lurking around was paranoia-inducing. They would not want to be caught with guns by the cops, though. All in all, it was a pretty creepy scene, with Carlson's corpse lying in the weeds under a tree. I had cautioned them to stay far away from him and to sacrifice any plants whose harvest would have required them to approach the scene. I also reminded Steve to remove the cameras first, since we certainly didn't want those left behind. Besides, they might show something useful. Of course, exactly how we would relay that information to the police was problematical. Steve returned about 3 AM, looking about the way you would expect. He took a long shower and was in bed with minimal conversation. I was sleeping sitting up a lot these days, so I took his mumbled report and let him sleep. Plenty of time for questions in the morning. Carlson wasn't going to be any deader then than he was now. In the morning, Steve called the sheriff's office anonymously. He was so shaky he even drank a cup of coffee. For the next few days Steve, Wendy and Jason were busy being pot farmers. The plants had been harvested and there was now much work to do to prepare the product. Any tobacco farmer would be familiar with the process. This was a massive haul, nearly one hundred plants, which would generate over one hundred pounds of prime Humboldt _sin semilla_. The plants were suspended upside down wherever they would be out of the sun and out of sight. This meant that the house, shed, garage and a small barn were filled with the fragrance of marijuana. As the plants dried, the flower buds were cut from the coarse stalks and leaves. These were discarded by being chopped in a chipper and added to the compost pile. The process for preparing the buds was relatively simple: the 'cleaner,' the person doing this task, would take a small thread cutter, rather like a pair of spring-loaded scissors, and snip off the large leaves. This would leave tight buds of plant material oozing the cannabinoid-containing resin. The atmosphere was a combination old world harvest festival and new age jamboree. Naturally, everyone smoked pot continuously. Since the work was repetitive and not technically or intellectually demanding, this presented no problems. You might not want your surgeon to be high, but these inoffensive agrarian types couldn't do a lot of harm. There was an almost constant flow of workers. At the peak, nearly twenty people, some of whom stayed in Steve's house or camped around the place. The workers' fingers became brown and sticky, stained with resin, and woe to the unthinking cleaner who rubbed his or her eyes. The burning would help them remember the next time. Orange-oil cleaner removed the resin at the end of the day. While this bucolic scene was playing itself out, I had other fish to fry. I trimmed buds for a while but that kind of mindless industrial work made me crazy, so I did a little cooking to keep the troops fed and generally stayed out of the way, considering my next step. Carlson's death could probably remove him from the list of suspects, although I couldn't rule out the chance that he had been killed by someone out to avenge Patty. Somehow, that didn't seem likely. And I didn't think that Carlson's body had just happened to show up at the garden. From what I could learn from Steve, Carlson was face down, a little out of the way but by no means concealed. He had appeared to have been shot in the back of the head. An execution? Steve was no expert and I had to work with his observations. There was a large bloodstain on the ground and the body did not appear to have been dragged. Transporting a corpse all the way to the garden through that rugged country would be a major project, not very likely. The supposition on my part was that Carlson had walked there, with or without his killer, and been shot at the site. One would guess he had known the killer, to have turned away from him willingly, with no signs of struggle or flight. Or he was ambushed. More questions than answers. The films were tantalizing but inconclusive. There was a shot of Carlson, timed and dated automatically by the camera. This would have put him up at the garden before the approximate time Patty was killed. So that eliminated him as Patty's killer. There were two images of someone else, but they were both shots with the face turned away or obscured by vegetation. I lay in the hammock on the third day of the massive marijuana grooming party, gently swaying in the evening coolness. My mind was chewing on a plan, rather like mental gum. I knew that Dave wanted me to take a peek at Taylor's house. The source of his information would be his problem; he'd have to make something up -- assuming I saw something that would justify securing a warrant. My only problem was that I needed someone to help me. I knew exactly what I wanted to do, but I didn't dare try it myself. Steve was busy and would be for days. He was everywhere -- supervising, scheduling, refereeing, arranging for food, drinks, entertainment, putting on the stereo, attending to questions and the minor disputes any gathering of twenty or twenty-five people extending over five days would require. I needed somebody who was tough, smart and fast on their feet. I was going to commit at least one felony and I couldn't fool around with somebody whose mind wasn't toughened to the real world. I racked my brain for people I knew, but there was only one name that kept coming up, and I kept rejecting it for one reason: my own hang-ups. Billie. She, or he, if you prefer, was streetwise, as loyal as a Labrador, could cut your heart out with a spoon and best of all, available. I couldn't very well call in the Marines, now could I? I had to call the hall phone in the hotel six times before I got anyone to answer the damn thing, then I convinced some old duffer that if he'd put a note on Billie's door telling her to call me, she'd give him a five. It was three-thirty in the morning when the phone rang. I had made sure it was close by when I went to bed, so I could grab it before anyone else woke up. "Doug, that you?" "Yeah, Billie, it's me. How're you doin'?" "Oh, I'm feelin' no pain, darlin', no pain at all." Oh Christ, she was high as a kite. "Billie, how stoned are you right now?" "Just medium, Dougie, medium. I could get higher. Why, you want to party?" "No, Billie. Look, I'm up in Garberville, that's up north in the country. I need somebody who's a stand-up kind of person, you understand?" "Doug, baby, this is me. We got Van Duzee between us." "I'm hip. You care if we commit a small crime together?" "Depends on the crime." Her tone became serious. "I have to take a look inside a house. The person whose house this is, they're possibly very bad. And we will be inside that house without any right to be there. If we're caught, we're on our own. If the owner catches us, we're in more trouble than just getting arrested." "I'm the best you got to back you up?" "Yeah. You're the best I got." "Baby, you in big trouble!" She started laughing. "How you want me to get there?" "I can't drive all the way down and pick you up. I racked up my back a few days ago and I'm not getting around so great." "That's okay, Doug. I don't need a lot of action out of your back, honey." She had a nice laugh. "Look, take the Greyhound up. I can pay you back when you get here." "Don't worry about that. I been workin' hard lately, I'm flush." "Well, when you get into Garberville, call me at this number." "Will do." Click. Early the next afternoon, Billie called. I hadn't expected to hear from her until late, since it was an all-day bus ride. I drove down in the van and picked her up at the bus stop. "How'd you get up here so fast?" She pointed to the sky with her thumb. "I got a couple of good rides. And gave a couple of truck drivers a freebie." She was wearing a short leather skirt, tight knit top with fishnet stockings and boots. Her blond wig was combed out neatly and her makeup was restrained, for her. She was the most exotic creature to stop in this hick town in years, maybe ever. We huddled in Steve's office and made plans. Billie had brought more practical clothes for burglary: black jeans, running shoes, a black sweatshirt and turtleneck. I offered her a choice of the Browning or the PPK, and she chose the bigger Browning. She snapped the slide back smartly, checked the round in the chamber, verified the safety and tucked it into her waistband in back. I moved the PPK into my pocket and hung the Ruger with the shoulder holster around me, covering the rig with a lightweight windbreaker. I had on high-top shoes with good soles and also wore dark clothes. I tucked the dagger into the sheath at my back. We outlined a simple plan. Billie and I would hang out in the woods and watch for Taylor to leave. She would fetch the bus from up the road, pick me up and we'd just drive right up to the house. Billie would be the lookout and help me jimmy the door. I would scope the place quickly and we'd blast off inside of half an hour after we rolled up. If he came back, well, we'd have to try to talk our way out -- or shoot our way out, assuming talking didn't work. We walked off into the woods and blew up some cans. Billie was proficient enough to satisfy me that she would not kill me accidentally or shoot herself, so we were ready to rock and roll. We headed out at 4 AM, both of us not particularly happy with the hour or the cool, damp weather. I could walk to the car with only a few nasty pains that caused me to wince. I couldn't move faster than a kind of robot walk, but I was mobile. Billie watched me with a quizzical look. "You gonna do this walkin' like that?" "It's as good as I can manage right now." "Shit, Doug, you crazier than me." I couldn't argue with that. Billie could drive a stick, sort of, although I feared my transmission would never be the same. She was shocked with how much power the Corvair-powered bus produced and killed it once or twice, burning the clutch unmercifully. She dropped me at the edge of Taylor's property, parked up the road in a turnout and walked back, saving me a hundred yards of pain. Gingerly, I worked my way into a position where I could see his driveway easily. Billie joined me after a few minutes. We had some coffee but were careful with cigarettes so the odor wouldn't drift on the wind to the house. We hunkered down to wait. Lights came on around five-thirty, a hopeful sign. At six-fifteen sharp, he was rolling down the driveway in that black Challenger, the exhaust rumbling. I noted he wore his uniform and assumed he was going on duty. "Nice wheels," Billie commented. She ran to get the bus as soon as he was around the bend. We lurched down his long driveway and parked, facing out, naturally. Billie and I went up to the door to see what we were facing. Of course, he had a deadbolt. We weren't going to pop this door with a credit card. Billie fetched a tire iron out of the bus and with scientific precision placed it against the jamb. She put a shoulder into it and the wood popped with a crack. Billie swept her arm down, bidding me enter. I took the PPK out, just in case, and Billie got into the bus. If Taylor came back, a honk on the horn would bring me running. Billie would have the bus started and we would try to just race out past him. Like all plans, it had its flaws. -------- *Chapter Nineteen* Dude Looks Like a Lady I hobbled around his place, looking for anything obvious. I didn't have time to do a thorough toss; I was counting on luck and carelessness on Taylor's part. Souvenirs, maybe photos. A lot of psychos like to have photos of their victims, so they can relive their thrills. The living room, kitchen and bedroom were ordinary. There were drawers, cupboards and closets, but quick checks revealed nothing remarkable. It was a small house, really a cabin with one floor, an open beam ceiling, no attic and no basement. After I had looked in the obvious places, I had to just stand and look around, turning a complete circle. I went outside and looked around the outside of the house. There were a couple of outbuildings and I didn't want to have to look in those. I was about to head back into the house when I saw what I was thinking I should see -- something wrong. If you lined up the windows and walls, there appeared to be a thick wall between the bedroom and the living room. There was a closet in that wall but it wasn't big enough to account for all the space. I returned inside, opened the closet door and poked around in the back. Sure enough, there was a panel in the back wall that slid to one side. A closet in back of the closet. I fumbled around and found a switch just inside the sliding panel. When I flicked it on, the scene was revealed. A large table covered with papers and books was built into the wall. There were photographs of men or women, most of them with two versions: one alive, the other dead. Some were just corpses. The living subjects had their eyes closed -- except for one, a woman who stared with a defiant expression on her face. There was no photo of her corpse, however. I remembered that one of his victims had escaped alive. This must have been her. Did her photo enrage him? There were also many newspaper clippings thumb-tacked to the wall, all of them referring to Zodiac. A map of California lay on the desk. There were dark lines drawn on it, seeming to converge near the East Bay city of Concord. They created a "Z" pattern between Riverside and Eureka. I had seen more than enough and backed out of the secret room. I briefly contemplated taking something as evidence but realized it would never be used in court. I left everything intact, turned off the light and closed the secret panel. How could I deal with the broken door jamb? There was no way Taylor would not see it. I saw a nice compact stereo on a shelf in the living room and yanked the wires to it free, tucking it under my arm. I moved around the place, pulling open drawers and dumping the contents haphazardly. I pocketed a couple of small items that a burglar might take and did my painful robot-walk back to the bus, dumping the stereo in the back. I climbed into the passenger seat, settling down with a sigh of relief. I fastened my seatbelt and before it clicked, Billie had the bus started and rolling down the driveway. They say football is a game of inches. My college fencing days had taught me that the difference between winning and losing could be microseconds and millimeters. Here, we were only wrong by about fifteen seconds. It might as well have been a hour or a day. As we turned right onto the county road, the black Challenger rounded the curve and passed us going the other way. I flashed on the thought that he might have been in court on his day off or something, since he was returning home way too early to be off shift. Whatever, he saw us completing the turn out of his driveway and he reacted immediately. As we passed, he skidded, cranked the wheel and pulled a one-eighty in the middle of the road. He must have taken one of those Highway Patrol performance driving classes. Billie saw the maneuver and floored the bus, which leaped forward in response. She jammed the shifter into third with a fierce grinding and popped the clutch. The bus almost did a wheel stand, it accelerated so hard. I had not picked a VW bus for its performance car qualities. The fact that Jerry, my mechanic, had fixed up this one to do things far beyond that of mortal Volkswagens was a fluke. We flew into the corner, Billie trying to keep the beast between the ditches. The rear end slid as we hit the apex, but the bus righted itself. We exited the corner into the oncoming lane, but at least we were still on asphalt. The Challenger sprang out of the corner behind us like a feral beast. Billie did the best she could to stay in front but as another curve came rushing up, she had to slow and then brake frantically, for the bus threatened to tip onto its side as we screamed into the corner, tires shrieking in protest. Just as we started to come out the other side, the bus wobbling back and forth like an elephant looking to kneel, Taylor tapped the rear corner with his bumper. The combination of the superior weight of his car and the lateral acceleration of the bus overcame the hold gravity had on us and the bus tipped, seemed to totter for a long second, then gave up with a scream and landed on the driver's side. We slid for a horrifying moment, sparks flying, the noise an unreal cacophony of glass and metal being destroyed. I watched the whole thing in a kind of slow motion kaleidoscope of scenery, road, glass and sparks. Billie was hanging in midair from her seatbelt, knuckles white, gripping the steering wheel. With a climactic explosion of sound and debris, we flew off the road, airborne for a few feet, until a tree arrested our progress. Neither Billie nor I could move for a long moment, our bearings thoroughly confused. Both of us fumbled at our seatbelts until they released, which resulted in me falling on top of Billie. I was in enough shock to not feel any pain. We floundered around inside the crumpled box for another minute until we were able to get into the rear passenger area, and I figured out how to open the sliding side door, which was now overhead. The fact that it opened at all was a tribute to German engineering. Billie pulled herself out first and then reached down to help me. Her biceps bulged with the effort. We half-fell, half-rolled to the ground. When we staggered to our feet, our heads spinning, Taylor was there, pistol casually in his hand. As soon as he saw that he had our undivided attention, he motioned with the gun for us to precede him further into the woods. The bus had come to rest against a tree, about six feet down the embankment from the road. I looked back at it once, just to see the extent of the wreck. It was pretty impressive, the front caved in and the glass totally gone, except in the back and on the good side. The side that had slid along the road resembled a can chewed by a bear. I looked at Billie and she looked back at me. "You're supposed to keep the shiny side up, darlin'." "No shit," Billie growled. "Keep alert to any opening," I mumbled, as we turned at Taylor's repeated motion with the gun. We stumbled over rocks and branches and general forest crap about fifty yards or so into the trees, each jolt of a misstep sending a nasty message from leg to back. Finally, I couldn't go on and sank to my knees. "What's the matter with you?" Taylor snarled. "Bad back. I hurt it when you shot at me the first time and I was just in a major accident. You should be able to figure out that I'm not feeling the best." I didn't see any point in trying to humor him. I was coming to realize that our situation was not that good. I had the Ruger under my windbreaker, which was zipped up, so Taylor hadn't realized I was armed. Billie had lost the Browning in the confusion; it was probably still in the bus somewhere. I had the PPK poking into my leg in my pocket. Neither gun was where I was going to be able to get to it while being watched. Taylor would plug me before I'd get either one in hand. I was waiting for something to distract him. He pointed his nine millimeter automatic at Billie. "You, nigger bitch, stand over there." He indicated a spot a couple of feet away from me. Then he walked over to where I was kneeling, keeping the gun trained on Billie, who was standing more or less in front of me. He could have shot both of us in the blink of an eye. I recalled his excellent marksmanship and rejected any idea of running through the trees. I wouldn't have made it. "Billie, just go along with him. And don't try to run. I've seen his shooting ability. He'll drop you for sure." "That's right, asshole. You know who you're dealing with?" "Yes. Yes, I do. And may I say, before you do whatever you're going to do, that you deserve some credit. You've outsmarted every cop in Northern California." "Don't try to butter me up, you hippie faggot asshole. You two are going to be thirty-eight and thirty-nine." He meant his thirty-eighth and thirty-ninth victims. Zodiac claimed thirty-seven kills, to date. The police could only confirm six or seven of them, but who knew how many missing persons were buried God-knows-where? He put the muzzle of the pistol against the back of my head and for a second, I thought that this was the way the world would end, but he just wanted my absolute cooperation while he patted me down, finding the Ruger and the PPK. He snorted when he removed the guns and tossed them far into the woods. He then took his cuffs and fastened one end to my right wrist and the other end around a sapling. I wasn't going to be running anywhere now. Once he was satisfied that I was going to stick around for whatever show he intended to put on, he turned to Billie. From what I knew of the Zodiac case, he had a fairly consistent MO, although there were small variations as the evolution of his psychosis progressed. Initially, just the killing had been enough, for his first victims were shot or stabbed. He had let two of his male victims survive. Various theories had been presented for this. He had stabbed them both, but not fatally. Had he wanted them to survive? Headshrinkers had written fascinating theoretical speculations about this but frankly, I was not interested in them at the moment. I had no idea what form his madness might take. He muttered to himself as he stood there. I have heard that you want a potential murderer or rapist to come to see you as a person, as opposed to an object for his violence. Somehow, I wasn't sure how that was going to work, but I thought I would give it a try. Under the circumstances, I couldn't make things much worse. "Uh, Deputy Taylor, I would like to understand just a couple of things I can't figure out." "You can call me by my proper name. I am Zodiac. I am the only one who can understand my genius, so of course, there are things you can't figure out." His tone had taken on an even more aggressive swagger than previously. He was a domination freak, taken to the point of insanity. "Well, yes, I realize that mere mortals like us can never truly appreciate your mind, but I would be gratified for any insight you might be able to give." _Oh yeah, let's try to start talking the same language._ I was working real hard on keeping 'that tone,' as my dear, old gray-haired mother used to call it, out of my voice. He was looking Billie up and down while he talked to me. He didn't look at me, just kept eying Billie, who stood there, trembling slightly, clothing torn in places, cuts and bruises on her face, arms and hands. I saw her flick her gaze to me from time to time, showing me that she was paying attention to what my play might be and making sure that I was watching her play as well. "Well, can I ask you something that I can't figure out?" He waved the gun at Billie. "You, bitch. Start stripping. And take your time, I like to watch." This was more like it. Zodiac hadn't raped his victims, but their clothing had been disturbed in various ways. The speculation was that he might be impotent, at least in the presence of another, but that the power he relished over his victims brought him to climax, either at the scene or later, when he could relive the pleasure alone, in private. Judging by his souvenir shop, I judged it to be the latter. He said to me, "What can't you figure out?" His sneering tone was to show me his sense of superiority. Billie was, at that moment, perhaps the greatest actor on Earth. She actually produced tears that welled up and ran down her cheeks, smearing her already ruined makeup. Her hands kind of fluttered to her throat. Then with beautiful control, she started to remove her sweatshirt. It was a zipper-front, hooded shirt, and she pulled the zipper down, inch by inch, giving him exactly what he hoped for, a prolonged strip show by a terrified woman, completely under his power. He edged a little closer to her, with me a short arc away from the barrel of his gun. "What was with the dope rip-offs? You didn't bust the crops, you took them." "Yeah," he grunted, not taking his eyes off Billie. "What the hell, why should you freaks make all the money?" _We were freaks? What did he think he was, a model citizen?_ I like a good strip as well as the next guy but this one was, under the circumstances, the most memorable of my life. Billie didn't overdo it, but she slowly, hesitatingly, removed first the sweatshirt, then her shoes. She had to kind of lose the rhythm to pull off her socks, but then she started to pull her T-shirt up, bit by bit. Zodiac was riveted, using the gun to gesture her to hurry up, but Billie drew it out. The shirt revealed first her flat belly and navel, then as she drew it higher, one breast and then the other. I noticed that she had missed shaving a tiny patch of hair surrounding her navel and prayed that Zodiac didn't wonder about it. Of course, I knew something he did not. "What was with the People's Temple guys in Ukiah that day?" I decided to go for broke and try to get all the answers before I died. For a man, Billie had pretty nice breasts. I really don't know whether they were the result of hormones or what, but they were definitely breasts, not large, but rather pert little things. As first one and then the other was revealed, I could see the psycho deputy almost drooling. Literally, he had to lick the saliva from a corner of his mouth. All his attention was on Billie and although the gun was at the ready, the barrel had drifted downward and was pointing at the ground. I had to repeat my question, Zodiac's attention was so riveted on the show that Billie put on. His gaze jerked over to me and then back, an irritated expression crossing his face. "Who do you think can move that amount of grass, you idiot? What am I going to do, sell it a pound at a time from the back of the patrol car? They have the cash to take as much as I can get my hands on." Well, that made sense. It occurred to me that he was making a confession. I assumed he didn't care, since in his mind we were already corpses. Her jeans came next. If there had been a band playing, she couldn't have done this any better. She gazed directly into his eyes, then popped the button at the waistband with a quick motion. Billie was taking a chance that she would overdo it, and perhaps break the spell, when she momentarily ran both her hands over her breasts, stroking her own nipples lightly. But Taylor was having too much fun to pay attention to what was, to any sane person, a ridiculous performance. Any man who thought that a woman was going to put on a strip show at gunpoint was so nuts he might as well have thought he was a Martian. But in this case, we knew he was crazy, so Billie played to his own warped fantasy. "Come on, come on," he moaned, when she tugged at the zipper and let the pants fall open. His right hand held the gun, forgotten, while his left reached to his crotch and he started idly stroking himself through his pants. Billie continued to pour tears down her cheeks while she stripped to her panties. I was so impressed I almost forgot to take advantage of Taylor's lack of attention. But I did remember the stiletto that he had missed, carried in the horizontal sheath in the small of my back. I had to use my left hand to draw it, which was awkward, since I carried it to draw with my right. But millimeter by millimeter I slid it out, then held it against the back of my thigh. Now all I needed was for Taylor to step within range, and not shoot either one of us first. When Billie's jeans fell to her ankles, I thought that the theories about the Zodiac being impotent were going to be proved false. She stepped out of the jeans, her delicate black panties the only article remaining. She turned her hips, as though to conceal herself from his gaze. With his hands shaking visibly, Taylor reached with his free hand to tug at his fly. "The panties!" he cried out. "Get those fucking panties off right now, you cunt!" Billie hooked her thumbs into the panties and with a quick (no doubt much practiced) motion, flipped them down and kicked them off. She stood there for a heartbeat, revealed clearly as the man he was. Zodiac's reaction was predictable. He stared at Billie, uncomprehendingly, and stepped backwards instinctively, confused at the sight of his gorgeous, vulnerable female victim having suddenly become a well-hung black man with breasts. Billie didn't give him another second. She covered the space between them in a bound and flung one foot out in a karate kick that flashed toward the killer's head. She connected with a loud snap that spun him halfway around. I jumped to the maximum length the handcuffs would allow. He and I met halfway. I felt the satisfying feeling of the blade slicing into the meat of his right thigh and with a 'thunk,' hitting the femur. He screamed and tore away from me, pulling the knife from my weaker left-handed grip. Billie kicked him again, a blow that surely would have disabled or killed him had it landed on target, but instead, it glanced off his shoulder. He spun out of range and with the rapidity of a gazelle, bounded into the trees. His pistol had flown into the air with the first kick and I doubted if any of us had seen where it landed. I looked around for a rock and found a fist-sized stone with which I could smash the lock on the half of the cuffs that was fastened around the tree. It sprang open after about three or four blows. Billie had pulled on his shoes while I was getting free and we both ran back toward the road like deer, leaping over fallen trees and rocks. We had to get away while Zodiac was still surprised. If he recovered his poise, or found his gun, we were cooked. Adrenaline gave me wings, but only for a minute. I fell hard after about twenty feet. Billie grabbed a fistful of jacket and half-dragged me along as we ran the best we could back the way we had been brought. Billie was buck naked except for his shoes. It would have been a bizarre sight, if there had been anyone to witness it. But Zodiac was off in the trees somewhere with a four-inch knife sticking out of his leg and perhaps a concussion to go with it, so we made it to the road without any sound of pursuit. We didn't need any more motivation, we were both using everything we had. We passed the wrecked hulk of the bus and scrambled up the bank, blackberries ripping us both, although Billie certainly got the worst of it, seeing as how his delicate parts were exposed. But it was over in seconds and we were both on the road: bleeding, scratched, bruised and gasping with pain and fatigue. Billie was covered with a thousand cuts and scrapes so that she appeared to be bleeding almost from head to toe. The Challenger was parked on the shoulder with the keys in it, so I guess the luck of the Irish was still holding. I got behind the wheel, unlocked the passenger door for Billie and was burning rubber before she closed the door. I sped down the road, fear making me drive too fast, banging the pistol grip shifter into each gear, the tires chirping with each up-shift. After a minute, realizing that we were more or less safe, I glanced over at my companion. If you are confused as to why I keep referring to Billie in the feminine and masculine, trust me, I was and am as confused. Billie did not look like the same person. Although some makeup still streaked down her face, most of it was gone. Her wig had flown off at some point, leaving her short, nappy hair sticking out every which way. Her arms and shoulders revealed corded muscles. The breasts were incongruous and her (his) penis completed the rather surreal experience. Dressed and made up, with her feminine persona in place, Billie was as much a woman as any other I knew. But naked and battered, having just fought for both her life and mine, she looked every bit the tough street kid that she was. He was. You see what I mean? Neither one of us spoke as I drove back to Steve's. We pulled into his parking area and I shut the motor off. Both of us sat there for a moment. I handed Billie a cigarette and lit them for us. She looked at me and I looked at her. "Where did you...?" Billie reached out and we shook hands firmly. "Brown belt, Police Athletic League karate." She batted her eyes at me broadly and patted her hair with the other hand. "A girl's got to know how to take care of herself, doesn't she?" "Right now, you're the most beautiful girl I ever saw," I said, earnestly, then looked down. "Except for that thing." Billie gave me a big smile and we both started laughing so hard we rolled out of the car doubled over. Then I put my arm around her shoulders and we staggered to the house, stunned hippies staring at the two of us. When we looked at their faces, we laughed even harder. We continued laughing all the way into the house and down the hall. There is no high comparable to what you get from surviving death. -------- *Chapter Twenty* You Always Hurt the One You Love Billie, Steve and I sat in Steve's office. Billie and I had showered (separately, if you must know) and dressed a few of the more compelling cuts and scrapes. Poor Billie had a couple that were in tender places -- the penalty for running through the brush with your dick swinging in the breeze. We had both helped ourselves liberally to my pain pills, beer and a joint. Now I was about to call Dave Toschi and probably really piss him off. I wanted to get as mellow as possible before the blast. I got Dave on the line and explained things to him, trying to cut to the chase, so to speak, and tell him that I had located Zodiac. I explained my reluctance to go to the sheriff's office with this story, seeing as how it was one of their own that stood accused and having to explain why I had burglarized him in the company of a black transvestite would be awkward. I somehow thought that Billie, as a witness, was as much a liability in this area as an asset. He had restored his previous glamour, and except for the damage to his usually immaculate skin, he once again was she. (Just shift gears and stay with me.) It didn't take long to work out a strategy that, although indirect, was more feasible than a straight out report to the local law enforcement would be. Toschi said, "Look, just call in a fire report and give his house as the location. Maybe when they get there and find him wounded, they'll look into things. I'm gonna call the county DA's office and tell them what we know, but I'm gonna make out like I found out through our own investigation. You won't come up at all. I'll figure out something to put in the file. You had better get back here quick as a bunny so we can sort things out, but I think you've done enough." He didn't indicate if he thought I had done enough damage or assistance. I called the sheriff's office to report the wrecked bus, since they would hear about it sooner or later. I found out that someone had already found the wreck and reported it. I made up a story about a stuck throttle, running off the road and being taken care of by a friend, blah, blah. The bus was in a storage facility and they took my word for it that no one had been hurt. I called my insurance company and reported the accident. They weren't happy, since this was the second vehicle I had totaled in less than a year. The one that been blown up wasn't my fault, but they held it against me anyway. When I finished with Dave, Steve just sat and looked at Billie and me like we were men from another planet. Of course, in Billie's case, that might be sort of true. Steve looked at Billie, then at me, then back to Billie. He opened his mouth once or twice to speak, but then closed it again. "You're a ... I mean I saw a..." He didn't want to say the word in front of a lady. "...that means..." He gave up. Billie stood up, smoothing the leather mini skirt down on her hips. "The best you ever seen, baby." She swayed out of the room. I looked at Steve's face and giggled. "Hey man, don't worry about it. But if you ever get into a jam, that girl is a stand-up guy." Steve nodded. "It's not what you are that's important, it's what you want to be that counts. She's a blood brother now and my friend. I don't care what equipment she was born with." I stood up slowly and hobbled to the door after her. "I'm going to go lie down. Don't let me die in my sleep, okay?" I lay down in Steve's bed and remembered nothing until late that evening. ~*~ Having no other wheels, Billie and I drove back to the city in Taylor's Challenger. I didn't think he'd have the guts to report it stolen. It was a nice car and Taylor had obviously been obsessive about it. It was perfectly clean inside and ran very well. I heard the whine of a supercharger and checked under the hood. Sure enough, there was a small supercharger. When we got on the highway and well away from Garberville, I brought the speed up to see what the car would do. At ninety and still pulling strongly, I backed off. I didn't want to get pulled over in a car that wasn't registered to me. We had an uneventful trip back to San Francisco. We spent the time exchanging stories of our lives and getting a little more personally acquainted. Although Billie and I had shared Van Duzee's friendship and terminal care, we really hadn't known much about each other. But sharing the kind of intensely emotional experiences that we had in the past few weeks, we felt like old friends who just needed to be reminded of our histories. Billie had grown up in the Fillmore District, raised by a grandmother, like many African-Americans. She had been 'the baby' so was rather pampered and spoiled. They had been poor people who survived by a mixture of welfare, work under the table for cash, petty outlawry and cunning. If you think it's easy to be poor in America, you're an idiot. She had always been, (her words) 'a sissy boy' and used to sneak into an older sister's clothes closet and dress as a girl before she was eight. Even when she was discovered, the family seemed not to be particularly upset about it. I don't know, not having met these people, but they seemed to be uncommonly sensible and sophisticated. I guess that, given the fact that many of them had rather unconventional lives themselves, Billie's predilection didn't seem that bizarre. The grandmother ran a fortune-telling racket that she always maintained was legitimate New Orleans voodoo, although when Billie became older, she could see that the profit potential outweighed the faith. Two of her cousins were pimps and their 'workers' included a sister and an aunt. If you think this wasn't a healthy childhood, well, she wasn't beaten or verbally abused, everyone looked after her and the other young ones and they ate well and often. Billie played basketball and participated in the Police Athletic League karate program for five years, in tournaments and all that. She claimed to have trophies at her grandmother's. I believed her. Why not? By the time she was a teenager, she had come to understand what and who she was. Despite being picked on by some of the boys in high school, she had a more or less normal adolescence. She was so obviously gay that it seemed pointless to beat her up. In fact, most of the tough guys left her alone, or even defended her. It was not going to prove anyone's machismo to beat up Billie. That would be like beating a woman to show how much of man you were. Guys who pick on women are pussies anyway. I'll kick a wife-beater's ass myself, just for fun. She found out in short order that men would pay her for favors of the sexual kind and since it beat working for a living, she just slid into tricking. She met other people of her own kind and learned the techniques of making herself appear to be a woman. Being black helped, in that she had a light beard and little body hair. A little depilatory here and makeup there and she was 'pretty, oh so pretty.' She could feel normal when she was in the company of her friends, who were either transvestites themselves or men and women who moved in that milieu. So her friends were mostly whores and junkies. If you think that folks like that are beneath you, you're kidding yourself. I dropped her off at her hotel and went back to the _Jolly Jim_. ~*~ I was quite a sensation when I showed up at the office the next morning. I went in early, to allow time for stories before the phones started ringing, but still had to repeat myself two or three times that day as my partners made themselves available. I was sore as hell and left early, needing to get horizontal after being up for half a day. Barbara stayed the night and attended to my other needs, which had been neglected as of late. She did an admirable job of relieving both our tensions without unduly straining my limited mobility. I had a long debriefing with Dave the next day and found out there was lots of news from up north. The fire department had responded to our call but there was no answer at the house and no fire, so they left. When they received another call about a fire in the same area later that night, they had thought it a hoax and hadn't rushed to get there. Thus, by the time they actually found out there was a fire, Taylor's place had burned to ground. Daylight revealed the severely charred remains of a skeleton, which forensic evidence indicated was that of an adult male. There was no indication of a wound to the right femur. Dave had asked the coroner that specifically, but the general size had convinced the Humboldt investigators that this was the earthly remains of their deputy. They realized his car was missing and they were assuming some sort of foul play, but the cause of death was undetermined due to the almost complete destruction of the remains. The fire had burned extraordinarily hot and the destruction was thorough. So far, no dentist could be located who had worked on Taylor, so dental records were not immediately available for comparison. Taylor had not been seen or heard from since the fire. The DA and the county sheriff were still investigating. When I told Dave in detail what I had seen, excitement lit up his eyes. He reached out and grabbed my arm tightly. "You had him! By God, you had him!" I shook my head. "I blew it, Dave. Now who knows where the hell he is? He'll recover and set up somewhere else. Damn it!" Dave consoled me, generously, considering I had ruined his six year investigation. "Maybe, maybe not. You may have freaked him so badly, he'll retire, or get help. Anyway, we have a picture; we have prints; we know who we're looking for. It's just a matter of finding him. He'll have the wounded leg for now and a scar there forever." Dave knew that the skeleton they had found couldn't be Zodiac, not without a mark on that right femur. "It's too bad, though, that you won't get any credit for stopping him. There's a reward but it's for arrest and conviction, of course. I've got three guys looking around in Ukiah and hanging around the People's Temple area in case he goes to them. Maybe they'll hide him out. He seems to have had a relationship there. Now that he's no longer their source for pot, he might not be so interesting to them, but they will want him quiet. They might think he's useful to them still." Other than waiting for him to surface, I couldn't think of any way to track him down. The usual police stuff had yielded nothing: no emergency room visits and no missing person reports that would perhaps explain the corpse. The DA and the sheriff in Humboldt weren't interested in Toschi's theories and had said so plainly but politely. "I talked with some ADA named Stoen, but he told me that they were conducting 'their own investigation' and would 'take my observations into consideration'. That's bullshit lawyer crap for 'fuck off'." Toschi was philosophical, the veteran of many turf wars. I had a lot to catch up on. I was able to work for a few hours a day serving process, keeping us ahead of the workload. Bill hired a couple of young guys that seemed to be okay, although three more that he hired had already quit. That was about par. When guys hard up for a job came in, Bill would not only try find out upfront how flaky they were, but would also make it clear to them what the job entailed. But nobody understood process serving until they'd done it for a while, and then they either loved it, hated it or did it until they could find a better job. Barbara admonished me not to go tearing off on any other adventures for a while, though, since they had no intention of paying me my share unless I was around to earn it. My cash situation was close to desperate, so I buckled down and earned my keep. I had appropriated the Challenger for my own, since Taylor was in no position to complain. I bought an identical wrecked model from a private party and switched the plates. One night my ever loyal mechanic, Dave, assisted me in taking the wreck on a flatbed to a convenient location where we deposited it over the side of a cliff and into the Pacific ocean. There are so many illicit cars dumped along the coast that one day you'll be able to walk to Hawaii. I even got three grand from the insurance company for my Microbus -- and a big raise in my rate. I had to drive up to Garberville one weekend to recover my personal belongings from the mangled bus. I didn't find the Browning inside the van and a brief reconnoiter around the area of the accident and battle did not find any of the guns. That proved to be an expensive loss, since I would have to buy new ones, sooner or later. I kind of missed the big Ruger, as it was a memento of previous adventures. But at least it wasn't me lying there in the ferns and trees. ~*~ The papers were full of some kid who had run through the last game of the World Series buck naked. 'Streaking' caught on. I wanted to call and tell them that Billie predated this guy. The Oakland A's won the Series again, by the way, for the third consecutive time. The best team money could buy. Steve announced by telephone that he was coming down to see me. He didn't explain the reason, but I figured he was down on business and taking the opportunity for a visit. He met me in the office. "Got somewhere we can talk?" I took him into one of the private offices. "What's up?" He tossed a package wrapped in brown paper, about the size of a hard cover book, onto the desk. "We decided that you've earned this." "A book?" "Open it." I started to tear the paper. "Carefully." I tore the wrapping off the end. I saw green paper peeking out. I peeled the wrapper back a little further. It was fifties. I looked at him, my eyebrows doing the talking. "Twenty," he said, laconically. "Thousand?" "Yeah." I looked at the package in my hand. I was holding about a year's income in one hand. In cash. "Okay, what gives?" It wasn't like Steve was a Mafia don or something. He didn't just go around paying people thousands out of the goodness of his heart. "Well, there were four of us partners, before Carlson was killed, right?" "Yeah." "So we've offed the dope and that's his share. We decided that you had more than earned it. It didn't seem right for us to take his cut for ourselves. And we didn't know if he had any family, at least, any around here. So you were the logical person." "Okay, I accept. Believe me, I could use it. We're still growing here and I'm not making as much as I used to with AAA. And now we have payroll and overhead...." Steve started laughing. "Yeah, yeah, times are tough all over. Look," he said, standing up, "I've got to get going. You know about Taylor's place burning down, right? Oh yeah, that's right. And Patty's an' Carlson's murders are still unsolved. Anyway, things are quiet now, for the winter. Next year we're going for twice as many plants in three gardens." He turned to go. "Oh, by the way. Here's something for later." He took a paper bag out of his backpack. "Enjoy. It's Jason's newest shit. It's dynamite." He tossed me the bag. I put it into my old briefcase. "Thanks, I'll think of you guys every time I smoke it." "Later." I locked the cash in the desk. I wanted to have a drink while I thought things through. Sharon, my trusty bartender at _The Office_ fixed me an icy vodka gimlet. I sipped the frigid nectar and let my mind work over the issues at hand. First of all, I owed Billie half the dough. While she'd had nothing to do with the marijuana project, she'd risked her ass and deserved a windfall. But I was worried about just laying that much on her, in one lump. That much cash all at once could lead to disaster for someone of Billie's habits. I had a vision of her, sprawled in her bed, an overdose -- or killed by some running buddy who got greedy. Ten grand wasn't enough to set up a trust fund, but it could be a life-changing sum. I also puzzled over my half. I felt I had earned it. But I felt that I owed Barbara, Bernice and Bill something also, since I hadn't been there working. Of course, this was 'drug money', so they might not want it on the books. I decided to run that part past Barbara. I meandered back to the office at closing time. After the phones quieted down, we talked about my 'fee.' Barbara thought that my chipping it into the general revenue of the partnership was generous and she didn't say no. Bill had been miffed about having to run night and day serving paper without knowing what I was up to. The three of them had been worried when I got hurt. If I hadn't been able to work again, they would have been up a creek. We only had two reliable and experienced servers, Bill and myself, and without me pulling my share, things could have gotten sticky. Clients didn't like it when it took too long to get their paper served. One of our saving graces was that at the moment, AAA was in disarray and losing a lot of business. Some of that business was coming our way, but if we wanted to keep those accounts, we had to keep grinding out the paper. Ten grand definitely improved our cash flow, two words whose importance I had learned from Barbara and Bernice. That's all Bill and I heard some weeks -- 'cash flow.' I was going to need a favor. I had worked under Harry's license as a PI. In that role, I could simply show Steve as a client and my fee would be for 'security consulting.' Barring a full-blown audit, we would be fine. But the California statute required PIs to have worked as investigators for two years under a licensed PI. I had only worked as a PI for Harry for a few weeks, or a couple months at most. I was deficient to be licensed on my own. I called Dave. I kind of figured that maybe my credit with him was back up to snuff. He had been disappointed that events had not resulted in an arrest, but success had been close. "Hey Dave, it's Doug. How's my standing with you these days? Am I in your good graces again?" "Your credit might be okay. Who'd you kill this time?" _Very funny_. "No, no nothing like that. I've sworn off guns forever. Every time I have a gun, somebody gets shot." "Yeah, the other guy, usually. I don't want you armed either." He sounded like he was joking, but it was hard to tell over the phone. "Look, it's not about me killing somebody! I have a favor to ask." Dave was enjoying yanking my chain. "Oh. What do you need?" I explained my situation with the license. I hadn't gone to school and I had no law enforcement experience. Harry had been doing me a favor. "Well shit, Doug. Doesn't somebody have to just sign a statement on the application?" "That's my understanding. The supervising investigator has to sign that I have worked under his license for a total of twenty-four months." "I can get that done." "Really?" "Jerry Moscowitz owes me a favor. He'll accept my recommendation to sign for you." Jerry was a legend in San Francisco. The kind of PI who gets back stolen art treasures and solves big jewelry heists. My heart beat faster. "No questions will be asked. Just one thing." "Sure, what?" "If you don't stay out of trouble for at least one year, I will personally see to it that you lose that license, and we'll prosecute you as soon as look at you." "Dave, you know, it's just been a wild year." "Yes, Doug, it has. It's been a wild six years and maybe now, thanks to you, they're over. Send the application to me and I'll take care of it." His tone was kind but serious. "You'd be well served if you listened to some of what Jerry has to say." I could understand the Homicide Division was tired of having my name come up quite so frequently. So far I had either been clearly acting in self-defense, or there had been no witnesses (willing to testify) to what might or might not have been a crime. So those investigations had been suspended, not closed. I would have to be very meek for the foreseeable future. I stopped by Billie's corner that night. She worked Jones and Ellis most of the time, strolling from mid-block to mid-block when necessary; that is, when a patrol car cruised by. I found Billie on her corner and pulled over, tooting the horn. She recognized the hot rod car and jumped in with a shout. "Hey baby, how're you?" Billie was in her high drag-queen role. She looked fine, the scratches and bruises almost gone. I pulled into traffic. "Hey, baby," I said. "Wanna date?" I winked at her. "That's supposed to be my line." She giggled. "Well, I mean a real date. I'll take you out to eat and we'll go dancing or something. Just remember, if we dance, I ain't too graceful, even at my best." "Honey, I seen how you walk. I don't even want to think about seein' you dance." So first we drove to Union Square and went to Macy's. Billie looked at me, surprised. I told her I had scored a big fee and wanted to go shopping. "I have no taste, myself, so I need you to consult on my wardrobe. And I'd like to buy my best girl an outfit, too. Okay?" She shrugged. "Sure, I like to shop as well as the next girl." Soon we were having a good time, as only spending money when you have a lot to spend can be. Billie insisted on shopping for me first. I bought a pale, washed-denim suit that was very fashionable. I found a silky shirt made of soft polyester in navy blue. I had given up my boots, since they were hard on my poor abused back, so I bought a new, flashy pair of navy blue running shoes with white stripes. There's nothing like new clothes top to bottom to make you feel good. Then we cruised through the women's department. Billie did not draw even one questioning look from the clerks. Her persona was so deeply a part of her that it wasn't so much that she acted like a woman as it was that she thought of herself as one so completely most observers never gave her a second look. She found a slinky little dress that I had to admit looked just dandy. She splurged on some new undies and bras as well. I was vaguely amused to be shopping for women's delicate things with a guy who had kicked the Zodiac killer in the head. We took the Powell St. cable car down to the wharf where we had a fine seafood meal at _A. Sabella's No. Nine_. It broke my heart to go down there, since I remembered the area before the Chamber of Commerce took it over and made it into as big a zone of prostitution as the Tenderloin. It was just a different kind of whoring, the kind that cities did to vital, real parts of themselves -- someone pronounced the area picturesque or quaint and that was like _il beso di morta_ from the Godfather. The tourist traps moved in, the area got 'cleaned up' and the next thing you knew, rents went up. All the real businesses that gave it flavor in the first place couldn't afford to stay and the schlock merchants moved in. At least during the years I'm talking about, you could still get a decent seafood dinner. These days it's frozen crap from Japan. We took the cable car back downtown after eating and drove over to the _Both/And_, where we could hear some real jazz, drink in a dark, smoky bar and groove. Billie danced with some of the guys. I refused to humiliate myself by dancing in public. I took her back to the hotel late. We walked up to her room. She fixed me a drink and we smoked a joint. I took a fat envelope out of my jacket pocket. Billie looked at the long white packet. "This is a powerful bunch of money, Billie. It's your share of the pot money from up north." She looked frightened, or confused. "How much?" She almost whispered it. "Ten thousand." "Shit!" She jumped up and stood there. "Shit," she repeated, softly. "You kiddin'?" "Not a bit." I held it out to her. "What's the catch?" She was reaching for the envelope. "Billie, this is enough money to kill you." Her hand dropped to her side. "I mean it. You get all excited and run out and buy a shitload of party drugs and you'll wake up dead. They'll find your sweet little ass stone dead and that will be that. I'm gonna feel really shitty if that happens." She sat back down. I could see her eyes, focused behind me, on nothing, on the future, on the image of her sprawled in the bed, dead from a cocaine overdose. "Give me five hundred bucks. Keep the rest. I don't want it. It'll just get me in trouble or like you said, it will kill me. I'll blow it all." "Look, Billie. You need to think about your future. You can't hustle forever. You've seen what happens. You want to wind up like that?" Billie was not a junkie, just a young, careless transvestite with little education and not much thought about the future. "Why don't you let me put it away for you for a while, until you have a chance to think about things? If you need any, just holler and I'll deliver. If you can think of something you want to use it for, it'll be there for you." "Cool. That's really cool. And thanks for the night out. I haven't had a real date for a long time." She gave me a funny look. "Doug?" "Yeah?" "It doesn't freak you out that I'm ... well, what I am, a drag queen?" "Well, yeah, a little. It did, when I first realized it." "Was that before or after...?" "After." "Would it make a difference now?" I sat there, thinking about that. Yes, I wanted to say, it would. But I felt silly, like why should it? I'd had sex with women who hadn't shared the kind of danger and closeness that Billie and I had shared. I hadn't intended that she would wind up in that position, but at the same time, I had counted on her street toughness and generally liberal attitude toward the law. I had expected her to be a stand-up guy and she had come through with flying colors. "You don't have to answer that. Your silence is enough." I felt badly. "Billie, I know it really doesn't make any difference. But I don't think of myself that way, you know what I mean?" "Sure. You don't think you're a fag, like me." "Billie, if you're a fag, then being a fag is the best thing in the world. I don't think you being gay or a cross-dresser is terrible or wrong. I admit, it's not exactly mainstream, but that's nobody's business but yours." "But now that you know it's a man sucking your hard-on...." That hurt my feelings. "Look, that's perfectly true. That felt just as good as any time I've ever gotten head. But, well, I'm not exactly ready for a sexual relationship with a man." "Suppose I wasn't a man anymore?" She turned and looked away. I thought I saw tears glistening in her eyes. It took me a minute to understand what she meant. "Oh Billie, no! That's not the point." But I knew that was not true. That was exactly the point. The fact that she had a penis and not a vagina was almost the whole point. I'm not saying that we had the basis for eternal love, but if she had been a woman, we would be having a hot fling. "It would probably be enough." She was thinking about the money. "In Sweden, there are good doctors who do that. I could go." The thought hit my belly like a cold punch. "Billie, I couldn't live with the responsibility. I would feel guilty forever. How could I be the reason for you to undergo something that difficult?" I now saw tears roll down her soft brown cheeks, the mascara running in black streaks. She got up and dabbed at her eyes with a tissue. She shook her head slowly. "I'm sorry. I've been handling this badly." She looked at me and walked to the chair where I sat, knelt next to me and looked into my eyes. "Look, I understand, Doug. Part of me is a man, that's true. And not just this," she clutched her crotch through the dress. "I am a man and I don't even know if I would change that. I'm comfortable with who I am. Look, it's no picnic, but I ain't complaining. I hustle some dough, party with my friends and we have a lot of fun." She sighed. "I would like someone special in my life, too. But I'm not going to find a wife, now am I? And I prefer men, anyway, that's just the way I am. But most everybody just wants their cock sucked by a black whore. They don't want to know me or hang with me. I like you, you're a cool guy and I know you mean well." She took deep breath. "Can we just forget this? Can we be friends? I don't need sex, if you don't want it. I get all the sex I can stand, tell you the truth." I tried not to look away from her. "Okay. Let's just let things ride, huh? After all," I smiled, gently, I hoped, "you're my first, you'll have to go slow." She slapped my arm. "Shit, baby, you already had your cock sucked by a drag queen, you ain't no virgin anymore!" I got up and we walked to the door. I turned back to her after I opened the door. She leaned against the doorframe, her head tilted. I bent down and kissed her full on the lips, with my hand on her neck. I kissed her the way I would have kissed any woman I was attracted to and fond of. She gasped when we parted, her cheeks were warm and her eyes were glowing. "Oh, baby. Don't do that again unless you're gonna follow up." She patted my butt as I turned to go. I looked straight ahead as I walked down the four flights to the dismal lobby. I don't think I saw the derelict old men or the whores at the curb. My mind was far away and fully occupied with many perplexing thoughts. Chapter Twenty One *Looking for a Few Good Men* The days sped by. I was up early laying paper before the clients started calling for special runs to San Jose, Oakland, Martinez or the other county courthouses and out most evenings until 10PM hitting people at home. My pager was always beeping. Then I'd have to find a pay phone and pull over, call in, find out that from wherever I was headed I had to go somewhere else, pick up something else and run to the other end of the Bay Area. We had raised our rates already, since gasoline was expensive and we were driving all over creation. Bill and I were both training guys as fast as we could, but most of them did not last. The Zodiac's hot rod Challenger was killing me in gas, but I didn't have the time to find a more economical car. Besides, I liked driving it. Another trophy, I suppose. Of course, the car would remind me of Taylor, and I frequently found myself wondering what had happened to him. Thinking about Zodiac naturally led to thinking about Billie, and then I thought about how we needed more people and ... bang, the idea hit me to offer Billie a job serving process. Nobody would care if she was a man or woman, they weren't going to see her long enough to matter. And being a man, she could take care of herself if someone got rough. Perfect. So that evening I stopped by her corner and hung out for a while. Eventually, a car dropped her off just up the block and she swayed her way back to the corner. She looked a little stoned but not completely whacked. "Hi, Billie." "Hey, baby! How's my man?" "Just great. You takin' the night off to run with me?" "You payin' my rent?" "I'll pay your rent, honey. Come on, I want to talk to you." "And all you want to do is talk?" "I'm serious." "Me too, baby." She got in the Challenger. She ran her hands over the leather seat. "I sure do like this car. I'm glad we ripped it from that honky psycho." I told Billie my inspiration. At first she wasn't that enthusiastic, but I told her that Bill was living with Carol, and she was no more a woman than Billie was. Bernice and Barbara would hold no prejudice. Anyone else who didn't like it would just have to lump it. Darrel didn't care what the process serving side of things did, frankly. He had all he could do to keep the document operation going smoothly without worrying about the sexual orientation of our process servers. I told Billie that she would probably make less money at first, but that I would show her the ropes, as we sailors say. In the end, we agreed that she would come down in the morning and check it out . ~*~ "She ... uh ... he has the hots for you." Barbara and I were in one of the offices. "Billie prefers to think of herself as a female, so it's appropriate to use the feminine pronoun." There hadn't been a problem with Billie's odd sexual identity, but I didn't want people in the office to stumble around the issue. "Whatever. Bernice and I don't care about that. Can she do the job?" "Hell, Barbara, I don't know. You know how it is, you need a certain twisted talent to be a good process server. You either have it or you don't." I sent Billie out with Bill, since it's never a good idea to try to be a supervisor and a friend. Bill could teach her as well as I, without any emotional complications. Our little family was growing. We had two messengers that walked or rode public transportation from our office to the clients', took whatever work they had either to our office for preparation or directly to the Court Clerk's office in City Hall for filing. They did not do the serving. The messengers were not the types to seek confrontation, but they gave our clients' the impression that we were concerned for their time and convenience. We could have used an independent service but we had enough to keep the messengers busy, and they were ours at all times. Besides Bill and I, and now Billie, we hired two young guys, Eddy and Scott. They were guys who seemed not to like honest, or perhaps the word is routine, work. Just the type we needed. They preferred the odd hours and hit-and-run nature of the job. We didn't expect miracles from them but they were turning out to be steady producers. The lack of closure with Tom Taylor irritated my unconscious like an itch in the middle of my back. I had turned various ideas over in my mind but nothing seemed to lead anywhere. I thought the People's Temple was the only thread that I could follow. How? The elements of an idea took form. It couldn't be called a plan, exactly, more like a scenario that would lead me somewhere close to the path I sought. I decided to get religion. Chapter Twenty Two Me and My Llama Before I could execute this plan, or act out this scenario, I needed to acquire a new equalizer. You know the saying, "God may have created man, but Samuel Colt made them equal." So I went to see the cutest little gun dealer I knew, Naomi Posner of the San Francisco Gun Exchange. I don't know how many gun dealers are Jewish; I didn't think of it as a particularly common business among my people, but I certainly admired Nate for doing it. Maybe if the Jews in Germany had all had guns, things would have turned out a little differently. I knew how I would go out if they came for me. So I went to the two story, square building on First Street and found Naomi at the counter. I reminded her who I was and was gratified that she remembered me. "I'm afraid I've lost all that expensive hardware Harry paid for." "That was rather careless of you." "Well, I used to lose my homework all the time, too." "I suppose the dog ate it." "Exactly." Since the cost was coming out of my pocket this time, I was not going to go overboard. I wanted another PPK but the price was pretty steep. I swallowed my pride and asked Naomi for something a little more 'economical.' "Okay, sure. I understand. How about a Llama?" "The camel-like animal from South America?" "No, the gun from Spain." "Okay, sure." The Llama Model VIII was a generic, nine millimeter auto pistol, rather like a Colt, flat and compact with a four-inch barrel and a nine-shot clip. With a round in the chamber, it gave me ten chances to get out of trouble. I hoped I would never have more trouble than ten shots would solve, but I bought a spare clip -- just my basic pessimism, I guess. I called Barbara at home. "I'm going to get religion." "Oh?" "I'm going to check out the People's Temple scene." "Doug!" I heard the note of warning. She sounded a little like my mother when I would announce some hair-brained scheme. "Yeah, yeah, I know." "Don't give me that. What are you going to do?" "I just want a look around, get the feel, smell things out. You know, be nosey but discreet." "Why are you telling me?" "Well, if you don't hear from me by morning, I'm in trouble and you need to call Dave." "Dave?" "Toschi, you know, SFPD homicide." "Oh, Doug!" "It's going to be fine! Honest, I'm just going to hang out in the back of the place and see what's what. In and out." That was my plan. Let's see, how does that go? _The best laid plans/ o' mice and men/ aft gang aglee_. I parked the Challenger down from the side door, in the alley I had been so unceremoniously dumped into months before. They would not remember me. I had certainly not distinguished myself with heroism that time so I should not be pegged as a troublemaker, just a curious person checking out the famous Jim Jones. I left the driver's door unlocked. I was taking a chance the desirable car would be ripped-off by some enterprising punks, of which this area had more than its share, but should I need to beat a hasty, tactical withdrawal, I didn't want to be fumbling with the key. The area of the People's Temple was a run-down neighborhood known as the Fillmore District for the main arterial street that denoted its business heart, Fillmore Street. The famous Fillmore Auditorium, home to the acid-rock bands during the Summer of Love, was located a couple blocks up. Like many metropolitan areas, the Fillmore had been solidly middle-class between the world wars but slowly fell in socioeconomic status, first to the white blue-collars, then to prosperous African-Americans, then to public housing, and finally, into a kind of American version of the Third World. The Fillmore operated on a totally unique economy that prospered, if you could call it that, on a level that touched the mainstream economy, fed off it, but never reaped the true power and success that the white American corporate machine achieved. People did not starve, but every day was a struggle to cling to the economic ledge. Any chance event could crack that ledge and plunge them into homelessness and desperation. These people didn't worry about their retirement, they worried about living to retirement. Was it a tough place? No doubt it was. Were there drugs sold on the street and were there ladies who would go out on a 'date' if you assured them you would spend $20? Indeed. But the Fillmore also had children playing in the streets, parking lots and even in the rare park, old people sitting on the benches, bragging to each other about their grandchildren. There were stores and businesses of all the types that any thriving community required and patronized. Into this fertile, and low rent, area the Rev. Jim Jones brought a core of devoted and efficient staff three years ago. With astonishing rapidity, he attracted followers and supporters. The man must have been a fountain of charisma for he had quickly become both spiritually and politically powerful. He ran public housing for the city. That meant he hired and fired a staff of over a thousand, and he doled out those jobs to the loyalists that he recruited from the streets. Even when it became apparent that many jobs were being held by 'no shows' there was little done about it, except the usual 'investigations' and 'reports.' In political talk, that meant 'we don't give a shit.' In three years Jim Jones had built a power base, established by giving a voice to many thousands of people who lived at the fringes of our society and had no voice until then. You could hardly fault him if some of the money didn't get spent so efficiently. That's charity in action. The store-front building that served as headquarters here in San Francisco was an old, run-down theater with the marquee still intact. This made a great sign for the Temple and the basic theatricality of church was certainly enhanced by the design. They had branched out into buildings next door and other locations in other neighborhoods, but this was ground zero for the true believers. There were lots of people milling around both inside and out, so I was hardly noticeable as I mixed with the fringes and then sauntered my way into the lobby. There were desks occupied by people who could direct visitors to various programs or answer questions of a general nature. There were lots and lots of flyers, posters, pamphlets, newspapers -- the volume of writing the New Left is capable of churning out indicates a serious lack of a sense of humor and an overabundance of time on their hands. Some of the programs, or protests, actually sounded like jokes, 'The Lesbian Women's Alliance March Against Corporate Phallic Worship' -- or something, but most of the stuff was about workers' rallies, protests, or places to get help with housing, food or public health care. If you needed help to survive, you could find it here, and many did. But you also got a large dose of late-Twentieth Century left-wing politics and mysticism. The main floor was basically just like an old movie theater with two sets of double swinging doors on either side, two aisles with a side section of seats flanking the main center section, plus balcony seating above. The place was clean, painted and orderly. Seats were being occupied in preparation for the service. I chose one in the front row of the balcony, off to one side, so I could see well but wouldn't be in the middle of what was doubtless going to be throngs of enraptured congregants. I waited for the show to start and amused myself by categorizing the crowd. They offered a catalog of awe-inspiring diversity -- the wondrous variety that is mankind. Middle-class suburban matrons, well turned out, mingled sociably with ex-junkies, ex-whores, welfare mothers, hippies, gays and street hustlers. Democracy at its finest. I really didn't know what to expect since I hadn't paid a great deal of attention to news articles about the services, and I knew no members personally, except Cindy, who I had not heard from in weeks. My mind was open to any possibility, although I expected a mixture of Southern Baptist Revival and Radical Chic. When the houselights came down, the stage below was lit with a single spotlight, revealing a single microphone on a stand. A choir composed of a dozen men and women formed a half circle behind the center stage mike. Into the light strode the _man_, with no fanfare. He looked a bit like Elvis Presley, perhaps a bit thinner, dressed in a loose-fitting, safari-style, short sleeve shirt and simple dark trousers. He wore tinted glasses which obscured his eyes; whether for medical necessity or psychological effect, I did not know. He slowly reached for the microphone, took it from the stand and stood for a moment, looking directly out into the crowd, which was holding its breath. "God welcomes you to his home, my children," he breathed into the mike, a deep, passionate voice tinged with a Midwestern accent. This church included many adherents from the Bible-Belt, participatory-prayer style of worship. Jones' oratorical offerings built in both volume and pace until the crowd became one with him, a full-tilt, boogie-rockin' tent revival, with singing, praying and so many calls to the Lord that God would have had to put the rest of the universe on hold to handle the volume of pleas made in His name, to His mercy and for His intervention. It was rather foreign to this boy, who could never get too passionate about religion after the age of seventeen, when I substituted sex for prayer. He did the whole bit -- calling up people by name, with a recitation of their afflictions and trials, a laying on of hands and the whole 'Spirit of the Lord will heal you' bit. Of course, even God had to use the caveat, 'believe in Me to be healed.' If He was so all powerful, what the hell did he need me to believe for? But that let God and Jim Jones off the hook; if you didn't get healed, it was your lack of faith at fault. 'Blame the patient', it's called, and doctors as well as preachers use it all the time. I had heard how this kind of thing was done. Jones would be wearing an earpiece connected to a radio. His assistants sat in a control room, probably the projection room behind us, and read 'prayer cards' to him with the pertinent info. Hell, I saw him 'cure' the deafness of a man in both ears, even though the guy only had one hearing aid. Oops, well, both ears were fixed now. No one seemed to notice that Jones, and God, had failed to identify the sufferer as having only one bad ear. But what amazed me most was when Jones offered to perform 'salvation surgery.' He called up five people who had been seated in the front row for this purpose. They mounted the stage, one at a time, passed behind a curtain where they donned a white gown, then lay upon a table that had been brought out for that purpose. While the patients were being prepared, Jones performed a long, silent 'meditation' with the audience ... I mean, congregation. He then stood behind the table, facing the crowd, folded the sheet down, exposing only a small area of skin. He them performed 'surgery' -- barehanded. I will tell it the way it appeared, then I will tell you how it was done. He draped the area with towels, then washed the abdomen. Irrespective of where the person's clinical illness manifested itself, the abdomen is the only site he used. He took one hand and rubbed and kneaded the area, then inserted his right hand into the patient's abdominal cavity. After a moment of concentration and apparent manipulation, he withdrew pieces of tissue, with some small amount of blood covering his hand and appearing on the towel. He put the tissue into a stainless steel bowl, held for him by one of his assistants. After the 'tumor' was removed, he briskly cleaned the area with towels and water. Then the patient stood ... no wound, no pain. Cured. I had seen this done in the Philippines, where it had its adherents. All I can say is, you better not have anything really wrong with you -- else you gonna die, baby. The whole thing was an illusion, of course. In the Philippines, the 'psychic surgeons' hold a small sea creature native to the area in their hand. I have also heard fertile chicken eggs can be used, containing the tiny, partially developed chick . When crushed, this then becomes the 'tumor' that the 'surgeon' withdraws from the abdomen with their hand, the towels obscuring the onlookers' vision. The blood and tissue is quite convincing; it's just not human blood or a tumor. All the poking and kneading confuses the sensations for the patient, who isn't supposed to feel much pain. If you push hard enough, it feels like someone is poking around inside you anyway. I was astonished by the reaction of the crowd, who all seemed to be absolutely enthralled by this rather mundane piece of stage magic. I have always felt that people who got ripped-off by fake preachers and psychics had actually received something for their money -- the warm feeling of having your faith validated. After the ceremonies reached this crescendo of divine intervention, they wound down with a final plea for money and labor -- not subtle at all -- then the Reverend stalked from the stage and we filed out with the choir singing us on our way. In the general milling about afterward, I wandered the public areas of the building. There were two stairways leading to the second floor: one in the front of the building, and the set that I had been shown the first time. There were two attendants at each stairway, men in those knee-length, black leather jackets -- 'Shaft' coats -- looking stern and alert. No one seemed to try to pass them to go up the stairs. When I walked toward one of them and made as though to go up, he assured me the area was closed at this hour, except to staff. There was no point in debating the issue. I thought how convenient it would be to show up with a squad of cops and a handful of search warrants instead of having to rely on luck, stealth and observation. For a moment, the image of stern, upright law enforcement types marching in to reveal what lay behind this cloak of showmanship, faith and quiet muscle had me wishing I had a badge. But that wasn't going to happen, so the fantasy faded. I would have to rely on being in the right place at the right time, which isn't a very efficient way to investigate. My PI license and a quarter would buy me a cup of coffee. I had no authority to do anything, except be one with the crowd and carry my new Llama nine millimeter in a holster tucked in the small of my back. I recognized one of the leather coats: Carl, one of the pair that had met Taylor in that bar in Ukiah. He looked straight at me with no sign of recognition. I couldn't go up to him and greet him, could I? Then I was struck with an inspiration. The Lord works in mysterious ways. I turned back and walked purposefully up to the guy, stuck out my hand and said, "Tom Taylor told me to say 'Hi'." My ears were burning with the magnitude of the lie, but I looked him right in the eye and smiled a bit. He was startled when I spoke to him and hesitated, but when he saw my hand outstretched, he instinctively took it and we shook. He looked at me for a long moment, then said, "Do I know you?" "We've never met but you may have seen me before. I've seen you before." "Where was that?" He didn't sound too happy that I had the advantage on him. "Ukiah. In the bar. I was watching Tom's back that day. I sat at the bar." His eyes didn't show that he remembered me but he faked remembering, just not to seem dumb, I suppose. You know how it is when someone claims to know you and you don't know who the hell they are but you pretend you do so you don't insult them in case they're somebody you don't want to offend? Just like that. "Anyway," I went on as soon as he looked like he was going along with the program for the moment. "Tom told me to come down here and see if we can get things back on track, you know what I mean?" I didn't know what I meant, exactly, but I hoped someone would fill us both in as we went along. "Like how?" "Well, I don't intend to talk to you about it here in the middle of a herd of these idiots." "Hey, don't talk about the people that way!" _Oops, too cynical_. I forgot that we were dealing with the faithful, as well as the crooked. "I'm sorry. Sometimes I just lose the light of the Lord." There, that ought to fly. "Sure man, it's hard for all of us," he agreed sincerely. "Look, come on up and you can talk to Dean." Okay. Whoever the hell Dean is, I was going to talk with him. So, with a nod to his companion at the other banister, we marched up the stairs. In minutes, we were knocking on an office door and a voice invited us in. Dean was the other guy from the Ukiah meeting, a youngish forty with long, curly hair, mostly brown but going gray fast, full long beard, John Lennon granny glasses and a faded paisley shirt. When he stood up and walked around his desk to greet us, I saw the homemade bellbottoms. Wow! I hadn't seen those in years. They were all the rage in, say, '69 or '70. He was perfectly out of step, caught in a time warp. It was all I could do to keep from putting my fingers up in a 'V' and saying, "Peace, man." We chatted briefly. I expressed my admiration for the 'aura' that the Reverend had inspired. (I didn't specify the nature of the 'aura' so we were all left to imagine my ecstasy in our own ways.) Fairly quickly, the black guy, Carl, explained the nature of my association and the questioning became somewhat more focused -- on me. Dean looked at me after hearing Carl's version of what I had said. Apparently, Carl had decided that he did remember me and verified that I had been there observing the meeting that day, apparently Tom's backup. Dean looked at me critically. "That wasn't the arrangement. Tom was supposed to trust us and we agreed that no one else was to be in on it." "Well, perhaps he just didn't like being outnumbered." They thought about that for a minute. Made sense to me. "So what are you telling us now? You've talked to Tom?" "A few weeks ago. Tom had to blow. I have no idea where he is right now." I was improvising on the fly, never a good way to lie. "I can keep things going in his ... uh ... absence ... until he can return or you want to make another arrangement. Right now, I'm prepared to take up where he left off." I didn't know what the deal was but I hoped I would get a cheat sheet somehow. "And what deal is that?" _Oh damn! Me first._ "You want me to come out and say it, here?" Dean nodded. "You'll be dealing with us, so obviously you are going to have to trust us." I could see the logic of that. "Well, to restore your supply of grass, of course." I braced myself to leap for the door and run like hell if they reacted the wrong way. Their eyes met. Carl nodded and went out without saying anything. I didn't like the way that felt, but it would only seem ominous to a guilty conscience like mine. Maybe he was going to take a leak and was too shy to say so. After the door to the office closed, Dean flicked his spectacles my way. I think they were rose-colored. "You can just take over from Tom like that?" "I know his contacts. I know how he was getting it, and the people who have been getting ripped-off would be just as happy to negotiate a more satisfactory and, shall we say, equitable arrangement." "How much?" Dean did not beat around the bush. "Eight hundred a pound." "How much can you supply?" "How much do you want?" "We can handle five or six hundred, easy. We'd like to do less importing and more local business." You weren't as likely to have a truck or a car stopped on the way back from Ukiah as you would a ship or an airplane from Mexico, Columbia or Thailand. "I can see what I can do. Still eight per, though." Dean nodded that price was not an issue. Carl came back just then and sat down, nodding to Dean, a positive sign. Dean nodded in my direction and Carl looked at me. "Stand up." He didn't ask, he ordered. I stood. Carl ran his hands over me with practiced thoroughness, finding the Llama right off. He continued his pat down, dwelling particularly on my upper torso. It dawned on me that he was looking for a wire. They didn't seem too upset about the gun. Carl just dropped it into his pocket and said, "You can have it back when you go." Dean stood up then and motioned for us to go into the hallway. I led the way out, my guts coiled up, trying to anticipate danger. Carl indicated that we walk down the hall a bit and, when we came to a nondescript door, like all the others but with a guard outside, we walked through. The room that lay within looked like a cross between Superfly and the Arabian Nights. The lighting was low pools, with black lights and lava lamps and all that hippy stuff. There were enormous bean bag chairs and cushions, plus large overstuffed couches and chairs. It looked like a comfortable place, if a bit overdone. In the half-light, there were maybe twenty men and women, more women than men by a third, at least. In the center of the room, sitting on a dais, was the Man himself. Like some monarch of the East, he was attended by three young women. And I do mean young, teens at best. They were dressed simply in white shifts. They appeared to be bare underneath. As I looked around, I saw that many of the females were dressed this way, though not all, and that by and large they represented the fairer flower of womanhood -- not a sagging breast or cellulite hip among them. Somehow, this did not surprise me. God's chosen might as well not offend the eye, after all. The three of us seated ourselves to one side and waited. Jones seemed to be in the middle of something and we waited until he finished. He was addressing a middle-aged black woman, who knelt before him. "You know that you are guilty, God knows that you are guilty and I know that you are guilty. You have sinned against Father and hurt me, child." She was hardly a child, but he addressed his followers as children, and many of them used the term 'Father' in reference to Jones. His voice dropped from a scream to a whisper that only the closest could hear. No doubt he was imparting some valuable lesson to the transgressor. Then one of the young girls handed him a short, riding-crop, designed to inflict pain but not much damage. The thin leather whistled as he swung it, presaging the suffering to follow. I saw the woman's body stiffen in anticipation of the blow. The whip landed with a sharp, crisp smack. She flinched and cried out softly, trying to suppress her outcry. Again the crop came down, and again ... and again. I hear tell that there are those who get sexual gratification from the beating of another, but it's not comfortable to witness. When she stood afterwards and kissed his cheek and thanked him, I thought I was seeing things. Such was his hold on this inner circle that the crowd was gratified as well. Maybe the more he beat you, the holier you got. His attention turned to the girls that sat next to him on either side. And indeed, his attentions were pretty personal. No one seemed to notice, for I gathered that the crowd was actually waiting for this; there seemed to be a general withdrawal to the more ample and cushioned furnishings. Dean and Carl did not retire with the others, but walked up to the dais and stood waiting until Jones focused on their presence. It took a minute or so for him to leave off his attention from an experienced-looking girl of maybe sixteen. He waved them up and they huddled in conference for a moment. Jones then shooed the youngsters away with a gesture and the three of them sat in chairs and talked for a good ten minutes. Jones refrained from looking in my direction, although he was obviously being briefed on my tale. I could see that there seemed to be general agreement and then Dean turned to me and waved for me to come up. I didn't really like being summoned to Mount Olympus with a wave of the hand, but couldn't see that I had much choice, so I went. Carl gave up a chair at Jones' dismissal and I sat. He turned his gaze, behind those tinted lenses, to look into my eyes. Up close you could see his pupils, black and burning with unnatural intensity. He possessed the ability to look unwaveringly into another person's eyes without embarrassment or fear. I returned his gaze benignly. He continued to examine me silently and I wondered if we were going to have a staring contest. Without diverting his gaze, he said, "Have you come to destroy me?" I admit to looking away. I thought the question both bizarre and penetrating at the same time. I answered him directly, though. "Not to my knowledge, Reverend. But when Allah requires the death of a creature, he causeth that creature to desire to go to the place of its death." A wide and varied diet of reading has survival value. Jones seemed to recognize, or at least appreciate, the quote. He relaxed his gaze and looked at Dean. "He is all right, Dean. You may deal with this man in good faith." He looked at me and held out his hand, placing it gently on my arm. "A little knowledge is a dangerous thing, young man. Even the Devil may quote scripture." He then motioned to his little acolytes and we were dismissed. Carl led me to the door. "You come by here tomorrow and we'll talk again." We agreed on six o'clock. Carl returned my gun and shut the door firmly behind him. I suspected that some reward for faithful service lay in store for him, which would explain why he left me on my own. It was late, there wasn't anyone around and I am a terrible snoop. I walked quietly back down the hall, listening for any sound, but the area was quiet. So I chose an office at random and slid inside, closing the door behind me without a sound. The offices were partitions that only went about eight feet high, made of cheap plasterboard and two by fours. This one was furnished with a desk and chair, some locked filing cabinets and a small bookcase overflowing with papers, files and bound notebooks. It wasn't that I couldn't find information, but rather there was just too much stuff to even begin to wade through it. I could have sat there and read all night without finding anything interesting. The chance that I'd find something useful in a random selection from the pile was a hundred to one. I checked the next office, which belonged to a neat freak who had everything put away, the drawers locked and pencils and pens lined up in a row. The next one was identical to the first, except the disorder was greater. I turned to go when something on the top of the 'In' box caught my eye. It was a US passport. In fact, a whole bunch of them, maybe fifteen. I picked up half the stack and looked through them. Names and pictures of people of all kinds: men, women and children of every age and race. I sorted through the other half. There I saw a name that rang a big bell: Taylor, Thomas. But when I looked at the picture, it wasn't the deputy sheriff's face, the Zodiac killer's pale, nondescript stare, but an elderly black man. The description matched the picture. Coincidence? Had the Temple supplied Taylor with another passport? More importantly, did Carl and Dean know? If so, they were stringing me along and I was in big trouble. I put the passport in my pocket and replaced the rest. I opened the door to the hallway as silently as before and started to walk softly away, not tiptoeing but not exactly doing the Monster Stomp, either. Even though I kept to the sides of the treads, the stairs creaked a lot on the way down. I ignored the noise and pretended that I belonged there. I saw the hallway that led to the side door to the alley and made for the exit. I passed a guard, who turned and looked at me as I passed him but said nothing. I eased the door open and entered the alley. I walked toward the Challenger without dawdling, relieved it was parked where I'd left it. I heard the door open behind me and turned to look. It was the guard from the hall. "Hey, you. Wait a minute." I couldn't blow my cover now by running away from him, so I stopped. He took three quick steps to where I stood. He came up to within spitting distance and looked at my face, which was clearly, if not flatteringly, lit by a streetlight opposite us. I saw the certainty in his eyes. "It's you!" "Who? What do you mean?" I tried to sound innocent and unjustly accused. He grabbed my shirt as an answer and pulled me to him with one huge arm. He was a thick, hairy, solid guy, and his one arm dragged me forward with ease. "If you don't remember my face," he smiled, "you'll remember this." And he swung his other fist toward my midsection. _Oh, yeah, the solar plexus guy_. I remembered him well. Too bad he had remembered me, too. He could have hurt me again but I twisted away from his fist. He struck me a glancing blow to the belly that smarted and made me grunt. Since he was still holding my shirt with his other hand, I raised my left forearm and drove it into his throat, pushing him with my entire body weight toward the wall. I bulldozed him backwards in three steps and slammed him into the wall. He hit the brick hard, grunting. I reached up with my right hand and smacked his forehead backwards, bouncing the back of his head off the wall. His eyes rolled up and he fell. I stepped back from him as he crashed to the asphalt, bent down and felt his chest, which was rising and falling raggedly. I decided I'd call for an ambulance after I left the area. No doubt I had fractured his skull, and I would just as soon not have his soul on my conscience. I was in the car and rolling in one motion, around the corner and out of sight of the alley in seconds. Ten blocks away, I stopped at a pay phone outside a corner grocery and called the police. Then I bought a pack of cigarettes and smoked four on the drive back to the _Jolly Jim_. Chapter Twenty Three Dulce Et Decorum Est Pro Patria Mori I laid paper Sunday morning and evening. The middle of the day was devoted to those constant chores boat owners have, dabbing paint here and there, checking the various ropes and lines for wear and airing out the sails. Next week's Thanksgiving holiday would give me a little respite. The weather promised to hold and I was planning to sail up the coast, put into whatever port I came to for the night and then go on the next day. Two days up and two days back. But first I had to discuss the passport I found in the People's Temple office with Dave. We arranged to meet for lunch at Sam's Hofbrau at the end of his shift. We huddled over our drinks in the bar so we could talk with some degree of privacy. I slid the passport across the table to Dave. "You'll find this interesting." He flipped it open, scanned the picture and information. "I'd like to keep this and check it with the passport office, see if it's valid. Do I want to know how you got it?" "You may not want to know, but I lifted it from a People's Temple office." "Did you now? That's very interesting." "You may find this interesting as well. I have a deal to provide them with as much grass as I can get." Dave's expression was my reward. His eyes shot up and he swallowed a gulp of his drink carefully, trying not to choke. "You what?" I told him how things had come down. I mentioned that there was some obviously underage sex going on there as well. "Drug dealing, orgies, statutory rape, passport irregularities..." Dave leaned forward. "The department's intelligence boys have heard all kinds of weird stories about these guys, but we've been told that unless we have proof, we're supposed to keep our hands off. He's wired into the powers-that-be too solidly to go after him on rumor or innuendo." Dave licked his lips with obvious eagerness. "If we could put a righteous dope bust on him, or at least some of his key people..." He didn't have to finish the sentence. A lot of politicians would run for cover in that kind of scandal. We finished lunch and then sat in Dave's Ford. He was excited about putting together a sting. So we kicked around various scenarios and tactics to set up a buy that would bust as many of Jones' people as possible. It was tricky, since the issue of entrapment had to be taken into consideration. And I would either have to wear a wire or try to introduce an undercover cop. "Dave, I don't think I'm in solid enough to start dragging strangers into the deal. I know that in the past I've been able to do that with rather thin setups, but these guys are a lot smarter than that jerk in the bar." I had once helped Dave and a couple of Internal Affairs guys set up and bust a cop dealing speed out of a bar. That had been easier than any of us had thought and they were thrilled to pop one of their own who had gone bad. My reputation as a cool and reliable op had inflated with that adventure, so my stock with the SFPD was at an all time high. Some of that goodwill had been used up when I killed Crazy Don, but I was still on the plus side of the cop's ledger. So we decided to just play it as it lays, with me taking a wire to wear as the occasion would demand. We stopped back at the Hall of Justice and went in the rear, avoiding the public entrance. We didn't want some lowlife seeing me in the company of a police detective. Dave got me equipped with a wire. It was just a little microphone and broadcast device that strapped to my chest. There was a box that sat in the car, receiving and recording whatever the mike picked up. I didn't like the idea of wearing it, since if it was discovered, my goose was cooked. But without it, there would be no chain of evidence to convict them on conspiracy or possession for distribution. I told Dave that I had no intention of wearing it every time but would try to use it at key meetings. We had no real plan, since things were so fluid at the moment. I would let Dave know if there was a definite buy set up, and he would then let the Narcotics guys know. I was uncomfortable working with the narcs, since I basically thought their job a waste of time, especially where the marijuana laws were concerned, but there was no point in discussing the sociology of mind-altering substances with the police. They had their cigarettes and booze, we had our pot and coke, LSD, psylocibine, mescaline and speed. As George Carlin said, "We're a drug-oriented society." I could justify this on the basis that I was trying to get leverage on these guys so we could track down Taylor, maybe even trade off a plea bargain for his capture. Without this incentive, I don't think I would ever have agreed to Dave's proposal. It would be too hypocritical of me otherwise, and if there's one thing I hate, it's a hypocrite. But when it came to hypocrisy, Jones had me beat by a country mile. So I wound up talking with Dean and Carl in the same office as the day before. Now we were going to get down to business, it seemed. Carl escorted me to the office. Apparently, the rule here was that people who were not 'authorized' were escorted into the private areas. As I said, the offices were open at the top, so conversations were restrained in tone. I guessed that Carl had broken the rules by leaving me off at the top of the stairs last night. Dean rose and shook my hand when I came in, just like a salesman greeting an old customer. "How're ya doin'?" he asked, casually. "Same shit, different day." He nodded as though agreeing with me. Then he gestured to Carl, who laid a hand on my arm, then showed me that he wanted me to raise my arms for a frisk. I complied. I had left the wire off and the Llama was in my boot. Carl looked at Dean and shook his head negatively. "Did you find your way out okay last night?" "Sure. Just down the stairs and through the lobby." "Nobody seems to remember seeing you leave." I shrugged. "I know I passed by somebody." "Well, one of our people was attacked in the alley about the time you left." I raised my eyebrows. "I parked down the street on Fillmore, so if you're asking me if I saw anything, I'm afraid not. Was he hurt?" "He's in a coma in the hospital. The docs don't know how it's going to come out." I made a sympathetic face. "That's too bad. Robbed?" "No, no he wasn't. We don't know what happened. Of course, he's not talking, and there weren't any witnesses. Somebody called it in to the police from a phone booth." I made a gesture that was intended to signify that the conversation did not hold my interest. "When did this happen?" "The police were called about twelve forty-five and got here right after that. So they guess the fight occurred around twelve-thirty." "Well, I think I was outta here about twelve. It was such an interesting night, I didn't really watch the time." Dean looked concerned. "Yeah, about that. You know you wouldn't want to go around talking about that sort of thing, don't you?" I shook my head for emphasis. "Mother McCool didn't raise no boys dumb enough to tell tales out of school." He just nodded his approval. "Okay, well, let's get down to it. How much can you deliver and when?" I sat back and looked like I was thinking. "I don't really know without checking. This is the dry time of the year. You already got this fall's crop offed and we're talking about next fall, that's nine or ten months away." "What about stuff now?" "You know as well as I do that the price goes up from here until next September when people start harvesting again. If you can get it from Thailand or Mexico, that's your only bet for a reasonable price." "See what you can get, will you? There are people who hold onto some for sale later in the year. We'll pay twelve a pound now and take all you can get." _Shit!_ Twelve hundred a pound was fifty percent more than the going price. They must have beaucoup customers. Of course, if all the street people and hippies they attracted were distributors and customers, they had a built-in marketing and distribution system already in place. "I'll see what I can find." "You do that." "Can I call you here?" "Here's a number where you can get Carl or leave a message." He handed me a scrap of paper. Removal is the reverse of assembly. In other words, I left the way I came. Those of you who have a high level of ethics may leave the room. I'm afraid that mine have been colored by the fact that I have to work for a living. And you know, I haven't exactly noticed a high level of ethical behavior among the wealthy classes, for that matter. I had a customer that would take all the dope I could get my hands on, at a premium price. I had a supplier that could provide as much dope as I could want -- namely, the police. The police wanted to catch these guys with a huge bust that would mean a big felony conviction and big headlines. So what's the problem? I sat and thought while the _Jolly Jim_ rocked me gently. Since I wasn't going to have a cop with me to do the deal, the amount that the People's Temple boys were paying was open to interpretation. And if they later said that they had paid more than I said, well, they would just be thought to be trying to muddy the water with bogus corruption charges. Who was going to listen to them? So I told the cops they were paying a grand a pound. I intended to pocket the difference. I think it's called situational ethics. I hadn't yet figured out how to get around the damn wire, but I can improvise pretty well when motivated. I laid the thing out to Dave, who had to drag in one of the Narc guys, a lieutenant named Al DeTomaso, a curly haired, graying thirty-year man, looking at retirement in April. This would be a huge, high profile bust to cap off his career. Maybe he'd stay on and get promoted into high command. I could hear his wheels turning. He didn't like the Lone Ranger way I was working, but Dave pointed out that it was a take-it-or-leave-it situation. I suggested that we try them out with a small buy first that I would pull off completely straight, no wire, no backups. The next deal would be bigger and then a third would be the climax, with a big roundup, if possible. There were all kinds of procedures and signing for this and that, since I was basically becoming a dealer with police-owned dope. There was even a proposal by DeTomaso that I get sworn in as a special deputy sheriff, but I demurred and he let it go. A week later I was sitting in that same restaurant bar in Ukiah, waiting for Carl and Dean. I had five pounds of first-rate pot in a small gym bag, sitting on the seat next to me in the booth. I also had the Llama tucked into my waistband, under my denim sport coat where I could draw in a confined space. I had a gin and tonic, tall, that I was working on slowly. They appeared on time and we chatted for a bit. They had a gym bag identical to mine. They slid theirs over to me on the floor and I opened it discreetly. I counted six bundles of ten hundreds and slid my bag over to them the same way. Carl checked it briefly, closed the bag and they walked out. I followed after a few minutes. None of the bar patrons paid us any attention and the bartender had been fairly busy with customers, so it was a smooth exchange. I got back in my car and headed south. We had arranged to meet in Ukiah, since my story was that I was coming down from Humboldt and that would be a convenient location. They didn't know where I lived and I was inclined to let them think I lived in the redwood country. Before I reached the Hall of Justice building, I pulled over and counted the money again, then removed a thousand dollars. Now, one could argue that this was not worth the risk. But I felt that since I was taking time away from my real business, process serving, I deserved compensation. Since the money was coming from the crooks, I didn't see it as being unfair to the public interest. Why should the cops make all the profit? I dropped off the money and it was duly noted and recorded. I did sign some paper or other that probably represented perjury, in a technical sense. I scrawled 'Mickey Mouse' sloppily and no one bothered to check my signature. "Never commit a felony in writing, if you can help it," my dear, old gray-haired mother used to say. We decided to go for a bigger score next week. I had to give up on my Thanksgiving plans and put this bigger deal together. There was considerable resistance to letting me walk away with twenty-five pounds of dope from the police station impound locker, but after a few days of internal discussion, the decision was made. I again had to sign things and generally agree to the seriousness of what would happen should the dope leave and an inadequate amount of money replace it. I was firmly instructed to tape this deal, 'come hell or high water.' I assured them that it would be do or die. (Not literally, I hoped.) I wanted to draw Jones into the deal, but that was not going to happen. Dean absolutely refused to involve Jones in any way, despite my protests that the deal was getting so big that I wanted reassurance that it would be carried out by dealing with the boss. "No way." Dean was emphatic. But I did win one concession from him. I had said that as the amounts of money we were dealing with was getting higher, I didn't like the idea that there were two of them and one of me. I offered them the choice of letting me come with a companion or them doing a solo meet. They chose to come solo. The other change was the location. I wanted them to be in the car when we talked. That would let me bug the car, instead of my person. Carl had discreetly patted me down in the bar in Ukiah. That was three times, all occasions when we were talking about incriminating subjects. So I told them I would meet them somewhere else, in public, but not the same bar. I chose the parking garage under the TransAmerica Pyramid, for sentimental reasons. I borrowed Barbara's Toyota, not wanting to take a chance that one of them would know Taylor's car. Dean pulled into the garage and when he passed me, I bumped the horn. He parked, walked over to me and got in the passenger seat. He handed over the gym bag he carried and I pulled mine from the backseat. We made our respective inspections. I looked at him. "Okay?" He nodded. I needed him to speak, for the sake of the mike. I tried again. "Yours right?" Dean didn't look up from his inspection of the bundles of pot. "Yeah, right. When you gonna have some more?" "What do you want?" "Are you fuckin' with me? What do you mean, 'What do I want?' I want more fuckin' grass, that's what!" I got the feeling that Dean and I weren't going to be close. But I had needled him into giving us a rather nice quote. "A hundred pounds?" "Yeah." I hoped he wouldn't mention the price. He didn't. When I brought in the tape, Al was so excited I was afraid he was going to hug me. "Jesus, that's perfect." "If you're happy, I'm happy." I wasn't proud of being a snitch, frankly. "God, if you could just get him to implicate Jones, that would be lovely." Al was dreaming out loud. "Gee Al, I'll give him a script if you like." "I'm just saying, bring up Jones' name during the exchange and see what you get on tape." "Sure." DeTomaso leaned into my face, his voice a hoarse whisper. "The election's comin' up next year." "Really? I'll have to remember to register." "What I'm tryin' to tell you, smart guy, is that certain command personnel have a personal interest in the Mayor's office, you dig me?" "Helping to supply the law-and-order vote?" "Exactly. They ain't gettin' shit from Jones, anyway, seeing as how they don't share the same politics, so a big scandal and bust would be extremely convenient." _I see._ I struggled to remember the old saying about religion and politics riding the same chariot. Something about a cliff? Now it was time for the big score. If the other two buys were pre-season, this was the Super Bowl. The loser of this game would be in jail or dead. Dean and Carl were looking at twenty years. They would not be happy to get popped. Chapter Twenty Four "Always Wear Clean Underwear" * -- my dear, old gray-haired mother*. I seriously doubted there would be any way to implicate Jones in this little conspiracy, since I didn't think these guys would burn the great man for any reason. In fact, I was scheming to arrange that things would work out in such a way that I would be off the hook for testifying in court in the future. I chose the Gate Six parking lot in Sausalito for the transfer. One of them was supposed to meet me there. I would have four gym bags with twenty-five pounds of grass in each; he would have a gym bag with a hundred and twenty grand. My profit for this little excercise would be twenty Gs. We set the time for just after dark, about six. It was mid-December and while Christmas was on everyone else's mind, it was absent from Gate Six. This was the area of the Red Legs, 'seagoing hippies', I suppose you could call them, although most of the vessels they inhabited would never see open water. While the rest of the marinas in this former fishing village were now populated by beautiful yachts, Gate Six had been taken over by people who wanted a more alternative lifestyle. The owner had gone broke and deeded the area over to them a few years prior. The county of Marin had engaged in a protracted struggle to evict the Red Legs ever since. I had picked Gate Six for its proximity to the freeway, combined with a certain isolation that its location afforded. The junkyard/parking lot in front had lots of places for the narcs to hide out and listen to the deal going down. I worried about showing up with the Challenger, but I was not going to trust my life to a Toyota Corolla. I figured I'd wing it, as usual, if they mentioned the car. It was supposed to be a quick, simple exchange. The plan, such as it was, called for me to transfer the dope to Carl or Dean, and take the payoff. When I got back in my car and started to leave, the cops would move in. They would grab Carl or Dean, whichever appeared. I would have 'lucked out' and gotten away. It was hoped that this would at least delay their suspicions of my being what I was -- that is, a rat -- until the cops got an opportunity to cut a deal with them. If you could get a guy talking in that first hour or two of custody, before he screamed for a lawyer, you had the best chance of getting him to roll over. Anyway, that was the theory. If this sounds less than military in its precision, you were never in the military. If police work seems hit-and-miss, or haphazard, remember the only reason the cops win more often is because crooks are incredibly stupid. I was satisfied with this scenario because I would not be in the area when the shit hit the fan. I would meet the cops at the Hall of Justice two hours afterward, having had the opportunity to deduct my 'commission'. Here I was in the familiar position of sitting in a car waiting for something to happen. If I had a buck for every hour I've spent sitting in a car, waiting, I would be retired by now. Carl, or Dean, was late. The two narcs who were to take this down, Randy and Dave, were in a beat-up Ford van parked in a corner. They were in the back with the receiving gear and tape recorder. One of them would listen and the other would watch. Discreetly, I hoped. It was about twelve minutes after six when the Chevy Malibu Carl drove pulled off the frontage road and into the lot. He swung around and parked facing out, as I had done, about six feet to my left. I was unhappy to see Dean riding shotgun. We had supposedly agreed that it was to be strictly a one-man-each exchange. That limited the cops' haul, but they felt they had enough on tape to charge Dean with conspiracy, even if Carl didn't give him up. Carl got out of the Malibu, smiling and being friendly, which was a little out of character. He walked over to me. I was standing next to my Challenger, with the driver's door open. I played with my car keys with my left hand. My right hand was casually in position to yank the Llama at a wrong twitch. With this much money on the line, I was taking nothing for granted. "Hey, Doug. How're ya?" "Fine. Let's get this over with and get out of here." I didn't want to drag things out. "Got the shit?" "Got the money?" Dean had his window down and at the question, raised a gym bag from his lap so I could see it. I walked to the back of the car and popped the trunk. I left Carl there to inspect his merchandise while I walked over to Dean and reached for the bag. Out of the corner of my eye, I saw Carl grab the bags, two in each hand. He was making a run for his car. I turned toward him, reacting to his motion, but turned back to Dean when the prodding of a shotgun against my middle drew my undivided attention. Dean smiled, "Move and I'll cut you in half." Point-blank from a sawed-off shotgun? It would have made a huge mess. I raised my hands halfway, to show that cooperation was my only interest, while Carl threw the four bags into the backseat and jumped behind the wheel. With a hail of gravel, they peeled out of the lot and onto the frontage road. As soon as they were no longer a threat, that is, about one second after they pulled away, I jumped into the Challenger, fastened my seatbelt snugly and tore out after them. In the dust behind me, I saw the Ford van following. I was furious and the thud of my heart pumped the wonder drug, adrenaline, into me, giving me the ability to drive like a complete idiot. As soon as I hit the pavement, I floored the accelerator and the supercharged Hemi screamed. The car leapt forward in a cloud of blue smoke. I banged the shifter into second, burned more rubber and was in third gear in five seconds. I was traveling ninety by the time I shifted into fourth and hit the freeway on-ramp, only three car lengths behind the two assholes who had not only screwed up the bust, but had also ripped me off. Okay, in retrospect, I over-reacted, but I hate being made a fool of, especially with witnesses. Six-thirty PM on the northbound freeway is no place for a high-speed chase. The traffic was thick, there was no way they could open a lead if they stayed on this conveyor belt to the suburbs. So I wasn't at all surprised when they pulled onto the shoulder and took the first exit, which led to the Coast Highway, State Route 1. They drove in and out of cars, horns screaming their indignation. I stayed right behind them, making the same horns scream again, fruitlessly protesting our antics. Carl managed a nice four-wheel drift around the curve that took us under the freeway and into Mill Valley. I was two cars back as we entered the slightly congested area that would either take us to the center of the quaint little town or left, to the coast. As I suspected, Carl took the left, running a yellow to try to lose me. I ran the red, laying on my horn and sliding around the turn, all four tires smoking and the engine roaring. We zigzagged in and out of the cars loaded with Moms taking the little darlings home from soccer or piano. I'm sure a lot of groceries were scattered in trunks as the panicked, upper middle-class matrons at the wheels of their BMWs and Mercedes desperately tried to avoid the caress of our steel against theirs. The Malibu must have had a big motor, judging from the way Carl accelerated, and the car had been improved with heavy-duty sway bars and fat tires. He swung to the left or right, taking any extra pavement to pass cars as he overtook them. In a way, he helped me follow him, since the cars that jerked to the side to get out of his way were also out of my way as I followed a few feet back. I was driving beyond the limits of my natural ability, on instinct, trusting the car to do what I needed when I needed it. I wondered how long and how far we could get before one of us would screw up and crash. He took fantastic chances on the curving road that wound through the hills, up and over the spine of Marin and down to the sea. As the traffic thinned, it became more of a race and less of a destruction derby. We had both kissed a car or two by now, but they had been glancing blows. An insurance adjuster would not have thought them minor, but our cars would still function. The owners of the cars we hit were going to have a hell of story to tell their spouses. Maybe they would think we were filming a movie. The van with the narcs was long gone. I had no idea how far back. I assumed they would inform the local law and expected to see flashing lights somewhere, soon. We wound through the switchbacks with the hills on our right and a drop-off on our left of a few feet in some places and a few hundred feet in others. I just let the spinal cord do its work unhampered by the cerebrum. No need to think right now, just drive like hell. We were starting down the back side of the hills, toward the Pacific. There was a black drop-off on our left. The highway hugged the hillside on the right. It was full dark and the only lights were our headlights, sweeping wildly back and forth as we swept through curve after curve. The Malibu swept around a right-hander and in a flash, it was in a spin. The car seemed to make a lazy arc around the apex of the turn, slide into the gravel on the left-hand side and with no sound at all, fly away into the dark. Gone. I slid to halt, careful not to spin myself into the same void, and stopped in a turnout on the right side, about twenty feet past where they left the road. I ran across and looked over the edge in time to see the car come to rest at the foot of the embankment with one last roll. I could see dust in the glare of the headlights as the Malibu lay on its roof about fifty feet down in a clearing among the eucalyptus. I started slowly down the gravelly slope, mindful that the last time I tried to walk on gravel I wound up in the hospital. About halfway down, I found Carl. He had apparently neglected to fasten his seatbelt and in this case, it was an important safety tip to have neglected. He had been thrown out of the car, only to have the damn thing roll over him on the way down. He looked pretty much the way you'd expect, like a road-killed 'possum. I didn't tarry to get a good look. I saw enough to answer the only question worth asking. He was as dead as he could be. I reached the car, which lay hissing and clinking as the engine cooled. The smell of burning oil as it dripped on the hot engine plumbing filled the air. The roof was crushed. I got down on my hands and knees and looked in the driver's side. The door was gone and that afforded the wider opening. Dean was no longer going to be concerned with the things of this world either. Even though he had taken the time to fasten his belt, it hadn't saved him. I doubt that anything short of a tank would have allowed an occupant to survive. Lying on the ground, right at my feet, was a gym bag. And there were the other four, lying on the roof of the car, which, you understand, was now its floor. I was actually surprised at how easily I could get to them. So I pulled them out and took the five bags up the hill with me. I was strong enough to drag a hundred pounds fifty feet uphill. At least I was when flooded with fear, anger and greed. I threw the five bags into the trunk and jumped in my car, took a good look behind me to make sure I wouldn't cut someone off who was coming around the corner, pulled slowly and carefully onto the highway and continued on. I know what you're thinking. Honest, I do. I was thinking that too. I should turn around, flag down the narcs, tell them everything, show them the wreck and hand over the money and the dope. I kept thinking that all the way up the Coast Highway, to the turnoff to San Rafael and all the way back to the freeway, about an hour's drive all together. I kept thinking it all the way to the _Jolly Jim_ and even while I was stashing the loot in the main locker. I even thought about it as I drove over to the Hall of Justice. I would admit to having given in to temptation and confess that I had the stuff. Except that I just couldn't bring myself to do that. I had Jim Jones' hundred and twenty grand and the cops' hundred pounds of grass. If I turned it in, what would happen? The grass would eventually be incinerated and the money would go into the coffers of the city or the state or somebody. So by the time I was parked and in the Hall, I had pretty well convinced myself that it was all in the best place it could be. Needless to say, so I say it anyway, there was hell to pay when I hooked up with DeTomaso and Randy/Dave. After everyone had settled down, I gave them a version of the events that suited the facts, although deficient in candor. Carl and Dean had disappeared. I had lost them in the dark on the coast road. I just didn't mention that I had found them, also. The Marin sheriff's office, being apprised of the whole affair, located the Malibu and the two bad guys. There wasn't much for me to do. Al and his guys drove over to Marin to survey the scene and fill in their compatriots. There were all kinds of reports for them to write. But I, being a civilian as it were, had to account to no one once I had told them the tale they needed to hear. I went back to my boat and consumed the better part of a bottle of tequila and burned a large joint halfway down, to salve my guilty conscience. Chapter Twenty Five Will That Be For Here, Or To Go? I wasn't really surprised when Barbara handed me this special. It was my old buddy, Sean O'Toole, the Irish pizza man. Seems that this poor attorney was still trying to get the bastard served. Barry Schect was getting desperate and his client, the _Examiner_ newspaper, was maybe thinking that they needed a new counsel, according to the scuttlebutt Barbara had picked up from his secretary (they were drinking buddies.) We had finally convinced him that the only way to fly was to give us an open-ended time and miles contract. Barbara, ever confident of our abilities, had told Barry personally that between Bill and I, the guy would be a fly in amber. I wish. We had to divvy up the addresses, since there were too many places to go and it would be kind of goofy to hit them all three times and then substitute serve it. It was a suit against the corporation and thus the summons had to be laid on a corporate officer anyway. We couldn't just drop it on some pimply teenaged pizza baker and have done with it. The only corporate officer we had any lead on was O'Toole. Bill took the house in St. Francis Woods and the outer pizza joints. I took the warehouse and two places closer in. If either one of us thought we were getting warm, we would page the other guy as a backup. We gave each address a number value. If we got that number as a page, we were to get our ass to the referenced address in a New York minute. Since I hadn't really scoped out the warehouse on Natoma Street, I decided to go there first. I chose four-thirty as a good time, since if I were stonewalled, I could stake it until after business hours and try to catch him coming out. Who the hell wants to be stuck in their warehouse all night? The building was about as nondescript as a four-story brick building can be. It was generic in every way, with steel-framed windows that began on the second floor, a double loading dock on the Third Street frontage and steps on the Natoma side that led to an office door. The lettering on the building was old -- '...usig..Rig...& Co., Inc.' It didn't seem to have anything to do with pizza. The gray burglar alarm box outside the building on the second floor level was faded, but the conduit to it was new. I parked across Third Street and suicidally ran across the middle of the block, three lanes of motorists gunning for me all the way. I swear the guy in the last lane sped up. The loading dock doors were the steel rollup kind, both down. I walked around the corner to the Natoma side, letting my heart and lungs recover from their work of saving my life from mad city drivers. I looked around but there wasn't anything to see, just cars parked on one side of the alley and cars roaring up Third Street with each opening of the traffic light valve at Folsom. One pedestrian on the other side of Third. I figured that the direct approach was the obvious move and climbed the stairs to the entry door. There was lettering on the door but it was as cryptic as the painted sign out front. The door was unlocked. I found myself in a blank hallway, with a staircase leading up. Feeling like the proverbial rat in the maze, I figured that when only one direction was available, the intelligent thing to do was go that way. There was a landing at the third floor with a blank wooden door that was a little ajar. Opportunity had not only knocked, but she left the door open. I peeked in carefully. Momma McCool didn't raise no boys dumb enough to just walk into a strange place uninvited without taking a look around first. My initial cursory glance indicated a rather under-utilized space, some crates stacked here and there but by no means filling the space on this floor. The high intensity lights were off and just a few industrial fluorescents lit the dark areas. The ambient light from the row of windows across the front spilled their contribution to about the first third of the space and after that, natural light gave up the ghost. There was no sound except the faint noise of traffic coming through the glass. Ah, the insulating qualities of brick. I walked softly towards the darker rear of the space, avoiding the pools of white artificial light. I figured that since I was technically trespassing, it would be better for me to see somebody before they saw me, if possible. A tactical retreat in the face of hostile intentions is a good strategy. Nevertheless, there was no one about. I reached the first pile of crates and looked at them closely. They were wooden crates, kind of old-fashioned looking. I expected stuff to be shipped in cardboard boxes most of the time. I couldn't figure out what type of pizza supplies would require high-quality, sturdy wood packing. They were stenciled on the sides with numbers and letters. I saw the abbreviation 'ord' and wondered if it was short for ordnance, the only 'ord' word that came to mind. But I supposed it could have stood for 'order' or not been an abbreviation at all, but just some sort of coding. I looked at a couple of other stacks, some of the crates were almost as tall as I was and equally wide and deep. That seemed to indicate rather large bulky contents. Since my purpose was not to conduct an inventory of O'Toole's warehouse, I retreated all the way back to the landing. One more flight of stairs remained. Rather careless to leave the alley door open with no one around, but they hadn't hired me for their security consultant, so it wasn't my business. When I got to the fourth floor, the door was closed but unlocked. I opened it softly and slipped in. This floor had crates too, but a lot more of them. The back half was closed off from the front by a partition with a hallway down the side -- offices. The front was filled with stacks of wooden crates about man-high -- smaller boxes in general and quite a few steel ammunition cans on pallets. I could hear voices, just murmurs, coming from inside the canyons of boxes. I slipped behind a row of crates for a minute, just to scope things out. I couldn't ascertain a thing from that position, except that there were two people, both men, and they weren't arguing or singing. Beyond that, it was anybody's guess as to what they were doing. I eased my way in the direction of the sound until I was just on the other side of their row. I walked down that row until I was on the other side of the crates. I could hear them clearly now. They seemed to be counting. "Okay, then that's twenty in a box, times thirty boxes," he paused to do the math. I was ahead of him on that. It's six hundred, mate, I wanted to call out, but didn't. They moved down to the next pallet. I stayed where I was. "Okay, this is lot ord-718-34-AS-2. Got that?" The partner replied by repeating the numbers and letters. "Yeah, that's part of invoice number G-25694." "Right then, we've got," he counted half under his breath, while his partner did the same, "forty cases. How many in a case, Davy?" Davy answered. "Ten." Tomato paste, chopped olives? "We've bloody well got to get this lot done, it's leaving tonight. How much is left?" "Ah, Sean, we've only got another page or two left. Can we take a wee bit of a break?" It didn't take a Henry Doolittle to figure out their country of origin was the Old Sod, now did it, love? _And would I be right in thinkin' you might be that very same Sean O'Toole that I've been seekin' lo these many weeks?_ I walked quietly to the end of my row and went back to the door. I walked back down the stairs one flight and then turned around and came back up, letting my clodhoppers pound the stairs firmly and whistling _When Irish Eyes Are Smiling_ -- just for a joke, you know. I banged the door open and called out in a rather obnoxiously loud voice, "Hello. Hey, anybody here? You left your door open." I could hear surprised-sounding noises coming from the stacks. I walked into the maze and waited in a wide aisle as two men hurriedly walked into view, one of them with a clipboard. Sean had no way to disguise himself. A wiry man about five foot seven with coppery hair, freckles and blue eyes -- if you called central casting for an Irishman, they'd have sent his picture . His partner was taller, thin to the point of being gaunt, with brown hair and dark eyes. O'Toole spoke first. "And how can we be helpin' ya then?" I couldn't believe he talked like somebody doing a Pat O'Brian imitation. I will never complain about stereotyping again. The bloke was a Guinness ad. He appeared to be around the far side of forty, but short of fifty by a bit. That awkward age for a man, no longer young but without the dignity of years. "I have a delivery for a Mr. Sean O'Toole." I just let it go at that, warehouse equals delivery. "And what would it be that you're deliverin'?" I pulled the summons from my back pocket. His eyes showed his understanding of the situation and he smiled. "I suppose you'd not believe me if I told you I wasn't he?" I smiled and looked him in the eye. "You're kidding, right?" He shook his head resignedly and took the papers. "It's the curse of me damned Irish mug. Give the bloody thing over." The skinny guy stayed quiet, his hand in his coat pocket. Not the place I liked to see a stranger keep his hand, frankly. But he didn't draw down on me and I gave him no reason to. "Have a nice day," I called over my shoulder, automatically, like a true innocent, and left. On the way down, however, my damnable curiosity got the better of me. Too vivid an imagination, I guess. But when I took another look at the third floor crates, I knew why I was curious. I had suddenly remembered where I had seen crates just like these -- at docks and airbases in a "place down yonder called Vietnam." I poked around the third floor, looking for a crate that might have been opened. Usually people open one crate on each pallet, just to make sure what it says is what it is. It took me quite a bit of looking, but I found a crate where the lid had been left open along one edge, enough for me to get my fingertips under it. I lifted up carefully, trying not to make the nails squeak. I didn't need to get it all the way up to see what was in it. Have you ever wanted to blow something up, really blast the shit out of it? There's one thing that will do that most satisfactorily: a rocket-propelled grenade. When one of those babies hits a car or a truck, or a water buffalo for that matter, it makes the most soul-satisfying explosion you could ever hope to see. This case, according to the stencil, held twenty shoulder-fired rocket launchers. Hot damn, we're gonna party tonight if someone gets their mitts on these toys! I wouldn't have minded having one myself, just in case I ever really wanted to blow something to hell. It didn't take a whole lot of figuring to put together arms and Irishman and the IRA. They just kind of went together like corned beef and cabbage, like Astaire and Rogers, like Laural and Hardy ... well, you get the idea. This thought led to the inescapable conclusion that it was time for old Dougie-boy to put her in 'R' and get the fuck out of Dodge. I was careful to keep real quiet now. Sean and Davy weren't quiet at all, so I heard them coming down the stairs before I opened the door to the landing. I hid behind a stack of boxes but they didn't even look. They just went on down the stairs. I listened as they walked down the rest of the way, talking about this and that, their voices fading into murmurs. I did hear the sound of a pretty stout deadbolt, though. After a few minutes to convince my cowardly brain that there was no one else around, I went down the stairs and checked out the door. It was locked, a deadbolt that required a key for both sides. Christ on a broken crutch! I stood there and cursed for a full minute but the door wasn't going to open with any of the words I was using, so I decided to explore things first. Maybe another exit? I found the door that led to the first floor space, which was a double high area of loading docks, freight elevator in one corner. The dock doors were chained and padlocked. I didn't see anything that would let me batter my way out and besides, I didn't want to be that obvious, if I could help it. Didn't really want the IRA as enemies. Know what I mean, Jean? I went all the way back up to the top floor and into the office area. I found the offices open and chose one with a comfortable chair. I sat, put my feet up on the desk and started thinking. I suppose I could have just called the cops, but this kind of bust was too sweet to just give to the first patrol car on the scene. Besides, if you call the emergency number with something like this, you could screw the whole thing up. If the dispatcher doesn't understand what's going down, you could wind up with the cops calling O'Toole to come down with the keys or some stupid thing like that. You know -- Situation Normal, All Fucked Up. Since I was pretty sure that a warehouse full of military hardware wasn't a legitimate business, I felt comfortable assuming that O'Toole was wanted by somebody somewhere. But who was I going to call at five-fifteen on a Friday? I picked up the phone on the desk and called Toschi's number. I called Dave for two reasons: I had his number memorized, and he knew me and wouldn't think I was some flake. Unfortunately, Dave wasn't there. I couldn't very well ask for the 'arms smuggling unit,' since that isn't a real common problem for city cops. So I hung up and looked for a phone book. I found the twenty-four hour number for the FBI and gave it a call. Naturally, I reached some junior agent who was stuck with the weekend evening shift. After I went through the story twice, the idiot said, "I'll call you back," and hung up. I sat there, feeling like it was a miracle the Feds could find their dicks with both hands. I examined the Federal Government listings. I gave ATF a call and actually got an agent who sounded like he could follow the story. "You're telling me that you're locked in a warehouse on Natoma that's full of weapons?" His name was Bookbinder. I didn't have to guess what his ancestor's work had been. "Bingo." "You think these guys are coming back soon?" "I don't know, but they said they were taking a break and had to finish tonight, so offhand I'd say that if you get your shit together and roll, you'll be able to sit on this place and nail them in the act of transferring the goodies." I could hear his wheels turning. "Okay. Look, you sit tight...." "Uh, I don't really have much choice." "Yeah, right. Guess not. Anyway, I'll get a team over there in half an hour." "Bring a locksmith. If you pop the door, they're gonna be hip to you being here." "Right." So I sat in the office waiting for the cavalry to arrive. I walked to the front windows to see if I could spot the ATF when they rolled up. I didn't hear the door downstairs, but I heard Sean and Davey climbing the stairs, chatting in their musical lilt. I just love an Irish accent. I looked for an out of the way corner and slid into it, sitting on the floor to wait for the suspense-filled conclusion of this episode. I could hear the two gun runners finishing their inventory work. I worried about what would happen when the ATF guys showed up. If they just cruised on in, it was going to be exciting as hell. I kept my ears open for the slightest irregular sound but nothing unusual came to me. The light in the warehouse faded as the day ended and one of them turned on the high intensity overhead lights, which cast a sickly yellow wash over everything. There was no indication if the ATF guys were outside or not. I sat in that corner so long my butt was numb, until I was so uncomfortable I had to stand up for a while. They had finished their inventory shortly after their return and walked away. I heard the freight elevator move up and then down. I couldn't think of any better place to wait. I briefly toyed with the idea of sneaking out but thought that was pushing my already fabulous good luck in not being found. When in doubt, do nothing. Of course, doing nothing was doing something, but at least it was a passive screw-up instead of a spectacular flame-out, like my last couple of situations. It was seven forty-five. I had been stuck in here for over three hours and I was getting antsy. I had to pee so bad my bladder was aching, and finally, with no other option, I relieved myself behind a stack of boxes. I was hungry too, but there wasn't anything I could do about that. I heard one of the roll-up doors rattling as it was raised. Was it transfer time? I heard the sound of a fork lift driving onto the elevator and then coming off on the top floor. I saw a pallet raise up higher than the rest and then disappear into the elevator ... and another, and another. When the elevator was full, it descended. I heard another forklift operating downstairs. I wondered when the bust would go down and how. I planned to just hide quietly and wait until it was over. The second load of pallets was descending when I heard shouts and the splintering of the door on the alley side. So much for a stealthy entry. I peeked around the row of boxes to see what I could see. Suddenly, I heard gunfire breakout downstairs, lots of it. Only fully automatic weapons can make that much noise. It sounded like a pitched battle. The forklift driver had stopped at the first sound and ran toward the back of the warehouse. It was O'Toole, and he returned in a moment with a Kalashnikov in his arms. He took up a position that allowed him to command the door. He could ambush anyone who entered and slaughter them easily. The Klash would shred the wall, let alone the door and a human body. The Cong had loved their Russian auto rifles for their firepower and reliability. I looked at the cases around me and saw a partially opened one. I ripped the hell out of two fingernails prying the cover up. _Shit, grenade launchers_. Not exactly my weapon of choice in close quarters. The ammo boxes on the next pallet were metal cases sealed closed with metal seals and I had to bend the wire on the seal back and forth about a hundred times before the metal fatigued and broke. I took a grenade rocket and popped it into the launcher. Then I braced myself against a crate with O'Toole's back to me. I could hear shouts and the sound of heavy feet on the stairs. O'Toole tightened his grip and brought the muzzle up to bear on the door. I was fifty feet away from him and he didn't know I was even on the planet. I thought it would be only seconds until the ATF guys hit the door. I took a deep breath and yelled at O'Toole's back, "Drop the gun, O'Toole. You're covered back and front!" He spun around at the sound of my voice and was spraying lead instantly. Bullets blew wood splinters into a cloud of vicious shrapnel from the floor and the cases. I fell back behind the case just as the door burst open. O'Toole spun around and sprayed the whole wall. I lifted my head above the cases and could only see plaster-dust flying as bullets penetrated the plasterboard and door; men screamed and yelled to fall back. I didn't hesitate another second but lifted the launcher, cocked it and fired. I didn't see exactly what happened to O'Toole, but the explosion that followed was so big that he must have been nearly vaporized. As luck would have it, the shell hit an ammo box. The explosion blew me twenty feet back, the launcher flying from my hands. I hit something with my back, felt the hot blast on my face and chest and smelled hair burning. I was down, but not out. The wooden cases were burning all around the area where I had blasted the IRA gun runner. It dawned on me that it would be only a few more seconds before another box of rockets or grenades went up. I staggered in the direction of the ruined door and wall, screaming "Don't shoot" at the top of my voice. I plunged out of the smoke and flames and into the stairwell. Three ATF agents in their blue battle dress were down amidst the shattered wall and door. I heard shouts from the floor below and called down again, identifying myself over and over. When I reached the third floor landing, I faced three more ATF agents, weapons pointed at me. I knelt down and then spread-eagled at their command. In short order, I found myself cuffed tightly, hauled to my feet and frog-marched down the stairs and into the alley where there were police cars, ATF cars and trucks, two ambulances with their doors open, three fire trucks and all manner of spotlights and red and blue flashing lights. In the swirling kaleidoscope, I could make out nothing except a kind of jittery composite of men and equipment. I was shoved, none too gently, into the back of a van where I sat on the hard bench, my ears still ringing from the explosions, my eyes watering and burning from the smoke. I had to crane my neck to wipe my nose on my sleeve. My face seemed to be pouring fluid from every possible orifice and I could do nothing about it. About fifteen minutes may have passed before the van door opened. A man climbed inside and sat on the bench across from me. He had the look of a hard man who was dealing with too many things at once; a guy who was in no mood for a long story. "You McCool?" "Yup." "Got some ID?" "In my pocket." He reached into my hip pocket, removed my wallet and flipped through the little pieces of paper that represent everything officials want to know about you. He then took a key and unlocked the cuffs. My hands tingled as the blood supply returned. I pulled a bandana from my pocket and could finally mop my face. "What the fuck happened up there?" I ignored his question and blew my nose, loudly. "O'Toole was waiting to ambush your guys with a Klash. I didn't have anything else, so I blasted him with a grenade launcher." The agent chuckled bitterly and held out his hand to shake mine. "Bookbinder." "Doug McCool. Nice to meet you." I smiled that this was a joke. "Well, it's been a royal ass-fuck, that's for sure. Sorry if my guys treated you a little rough. You understand." "How many did you lose?" "One dead, four wounded. The IRA guys are all wasted, near as we can tell. I don't think any of them got away. Jesus, it looks like they were getting ready to ship enough gear to outfit a small invasion force." Bookbinder shook his head. He wore a crew cut, mostly gray, and his eyes and manner said ex-military. "You want to give it to me from the beginning?" "Sure. You think somebody could scrounge up some coffee or water? My throat feels like I've been sucking on an exhaust pipe." "Oh, hey, sure. I'm sorry. Must have been pretty hairy in there." "Well, let's just say that I won't be in the mood for barbeque for a while." After a couple of cups of coffee from a thermos and with a cigarette in hand, I ran down the whole dopey situation. "I can't figure out how they could have been so careless about the door. I guess these things happen. Anyway, I just seem to get lucky." "Yeah, well, you're even luckier than that. Aside from being alive when by all rights you should be smoked, there's a reward for the interdiction of arms shipments." I raised my eyebrows in the way of query. "Ten percent of the value of the arms seized." I didn't need a calculator to realize that this had turned out to be a profitable evening for Allworth Legal Process and Investigations. Chapter Twenty Six There's No Such Thing As Bad Publicity After a short stay in the ER to get my various singed parts attended to, I paged Bill to let him know that serving the O'Toole papers was now moot. By the time I got back to the boat, morning was full light and I was completely wiped out. I turned off the pager and crashed. When I got into the office later that day, there were messages papering my desk, from both local papers, the wire services, the SFPD, the ATF and Herb Caen. I swept them all into the wastebasket and waited for the phone to ring. The first caller to find me was DeTomaso. It seemed we had to have a post mortem on the blown bust. At the Hall of Justice, I met Al and a deputy chief who was quite rude about the whole thing. I took the abuse he dealt out stoically since I figured out that I was getting about two hundred thousand an hour to listen to him berate and accuse Al, Randy, Dave and me of various and sundry stupidities and gross violations of department policy. I suffered silently, then calmly pointed out that this kind of thing happens and that we could hardly have planned for the outcome. "If any one of us had intended to steal the money or the dope, do you honestly think this is how we would have gone about it?" He acknowledged that these things could not have been planned. "Where the fuck did the stuff go?" I shrugged. "You believe that the first people on the scene didn't bag it?" "The wreck was called in by a elderly couple driving home. I don't think they were the type to steal from an accident scene." "Well, I can think of several possibilities that include the sheriff's deputies, the bad guys throwing it out or it flying out of the car when it rolled, in which case it is still hidden in the brush...." It wasn't my job to solve his problems. "Well, I'm seriously thinking about requiring a lie detector test from all of you." "Yeah, sure, just as soon as my attorney says okay." I was losing patience. "Look, I agreed to this whole cluster-fuck just because I was pissed with that Taylor guy and thought I could help Dave clear the Zodiac case. I wrecked my back chasing the guy. I went undercover and risked my nuts to help out and this is the thanks I get? 'Take a lie detector test'?" I stood up. I tried not too sound too angry, but I wanted this jerk to get the message. "I did my good citizen bit and it didn't work out. I'm sorry you lost the dope but what the hell, you were just going to burn it anyway, so wherever it is, who gives a shit? You can't bust the People's Temple guys since they very inconsiderately went and got themselves killed first. I know that it looks bad for everyone, but hey, shit happens!" They all sat there and looked embarrassed. "The next time I get a line on the most wanted serial killer in California history, I'll just mind my own fucking business, okay?" I walked calmly out of the office and out of the building, feeling somewhat sanctimonious and self-righteous. Well, I had let the reward I had appropriated slip my conscience for the moment. When I returned to the office, there was the same pile of messages, less the one from Al. I repeated my efficient filing method of that morning and busied myself looking over the process work we had going for the weekend. Barbara had things under control as far as the routine stuff went. Bill and the new kids were taking care of the specials without too much hassle. Billie had turned into an absolute crackerjack server, working the Fillmore, Western Addition and Hunter's Point areas, all tough, black neighborhoods. She had used five grand to buy herself one of those Japanese compacts that got good gas mileage. So far, she was laying more paper on a weekly basis than any of the other guys, more than I used to at my best. I was proud of her. When Barbara told me Herb Caen himself was on the line, I took his call. He was kind a hero to a San Francisco kid like me, and I couldn't turn him down. "You're the famous Doug McCool?" he started off. "I don't know about famous, but I'm me. What can I do for you?" "How about lunch at the _Old Poodle Dog_? I'd like to meet you in person." Who could turn down lunch with Mr. San Francisco? Dining with a local celebrity like Caen was a new experience for me, and since I don't generally go to snazzy places like the _Old Poodle Dog_, the whole lunch was like a dream. Caen was charming, entertaining, intelligent and full of gossip. We were treated like royalty by the staff, the food was beyond anything I had eaten previously and before I knew it, I was telling him stories about process serving and how Allworth had started. I was not so swept away by his urbanity or the food and drink to say things I shouldn't say, but Caen in person came across as a down-to-earth guy, and when he swore he wouldn't print something, I believed him. A couple of days later, he wrote a nice little blurb about me and Allworth Legal Process and Investigations (we added the 'Investigations' when I received my license, duly framed) and told a modified version of the O'Toole pizza and guns business that was very flattering. If we hadn't been set before, this really seemed to do it, as after that appeared in the paper, the biggest law firms in the city were calling and giving us business. Barbara put an ad in the paper for more servers and Jan called, offering to come join us immediately. I could only imagine Wally's feelings. I had to get a bigger safe deposit box to hold the cash from the drug bust. I decided that this was rainy day money and would be kept where it was for the time being. Who knew what need would arise in the future? The dope was another matter. I had disposed of large quantities of ill-gotten drugs in the past and I figured I could do it again. I don't like selling the stuff myself. I don't have anything against it; after all, if people are going to use drugs they have to get them somewhere, but I don't like dealing -- just not my bag. So I called up good old Steve. He had once disposed of most of the cocaine I had come across and I knew that the grass represented no strain for him at all. I stored away a nice little stash for myself, generously gave to friends and sold seventy pounds for fifty-six thousand dollars to Steve. He agreed to come down and get it. ~*~ Shortly after New Years, I called Dave Toshci to find out what had developed with the passport. It took two days to hear back and even then, he was not what I would call warm. "Doug, you have to know that you're not considered to be a lucky charm around the department." "Dave, I understand how some people might feel, but any honest evaluation of that night would show that I rose to the occasion. I chased those guys for miles. I drove all the way up the coast trying to figure out where they had disappeared to. You can't tell me that this is the first time evidence was taken from a crime scene. I understand that things didn't fall the way we hoped, but it's grossly unfair to hang the blame on me." "I agree. Even if you did make off with the dough and the dope, it's irrelevant anyway. The two possible hooks we had into the Temple are dead and that's that. But it's left a bad taste in some people's mouths. You understand." "I have been as low profile around there as I can be." In fact, I had no reason to go to the Hall of Justice and so had not been seen in the company of any police or anywhere near headquarters. "That little blurb in Herb Caen didn't do anyone any good, either." "Well, what can I say? It pays to advertise." Finally Dave finished explaining to me just how unpopular I was and how it was bad for his career to be seen with me, or even for me to call him, then he finally got around to telling me what I needed to know. "The passport was a valid issue to Tom Taylor. It had been altered, obviously, for use by others. What we don't know is if Taylor left the country on someone else's passport." "You have a hunch?" "If I had to guess, I'd say Mr. Zodiac is currently enjoying the balmy climate of Guyana, far from our reach." Swell. The "New Jerusalem" or whatever Jones was calling it -- the papers just called it "Jonestown" -- was a colony of around five hundred or so, carving paradise out of the South American jungle. Wounded and on the run, could Taylor have used a connection with the Temple to flee? Toschi had asked departments all over northern California, southern Oregon and western Nevada to check emergency room records and interview doctors. There were wanted posters and descriptions on every law enforcement bulletin board. _Nada_. The guy had just vanished off the face of the earth. No arrest was ever made nor any solution offered, officially, to the Zodiac killings. He was not heard from again nor were any more of his victims identified. The lives of those he affected were changed forever. Although they were questioned by writers and other investigators for years afterward, they could shed no additional light on the mystery. Like a dark force of nature he surfaced, swallowed the lives and peace of his victims, and sank again into the depths from which he came. His face still haunts my dreams. -------- *Epilogue* The elections of that year, 1975, brought sweeping change to the government of San Francisco. George Moscone squeaked into office by a narrow margin, based on a coalition of white urban professionals, gays, leftist factions that claimed to represent the poor and cocktail party radicals of Pacific Heights, replacing the urbane Joseph Alioto, attorney and consummate insider. The margin of victory was less than five thousand votes. It was later claimed that more than five thousand people had been bussed into San Francisco from all the various People's Temple operations, provided with identifications and duly registered at false addresses. They were again brought in on election day and voted as their leader directed. I can only say that Bernice's examination of those voter registration lists showed a lot of people who weren't at the addresses where they were supposed to be. The investigation into the accusation of election fraud was turned over to the new Assistant District Attorney, hired by the newly elected DA, Joseph Freitas. His name was Tim Stoen, and he was a member of People's Temple. No charges were ever brought for voting irregularities. Zodiac was heard from only once more, in 1978. Another letter, undeniably his writing and style, a rather rambling and confused document, postmarked in the Bay Area. Why this last message? Why after all those years? No one knows, but I have a theory: the letter was mailed about the same time as the others that arrived that Spring and Summer of '74. It just got delivered four years late. You know the post office. *~The End~* -------- *Note to my readers* Much of the information in this story regarding the Zodiac killer and People's Temple is true. While some details, locations and characters are products of my imagination, the bulk of the information presented is based on documented facts. Keep in mind that this is a work of fiction; it's purpose is to entertain. I strive to preserve the tone of the times and a degree of versimilitude, but I am as unreliable as any other novelist as a source for history. The author recognizes that the events surrounding both of these notorious cases are painful experiences to real people and apologizes for disturbing memories that are best left to history. At the same time, I could hardly write about San Francisco in '70s without both of these stories figuring prominently in the narrative. Inspector David Toschi was the lead investigator for the Zodiac case and pursued it until his retirement. Many suspects were considered, but sufficient evidence has never been presented to name an individual. Given Zodiac's age at the time of his activity, he is probably dead by now. Good riddance. I derived most of the factual information about Jim Jones and the People's Temple from a fine book -- Raven: The Untold Story of The Reverend Jim Jones and His People, by Tim Reiterman, with John Jacobs, published by Dutton. The fictional changes are my own and in no way reflect theories or ideas contained in that work. I encourage readers who wish to learn more about the strange and tragic events of that period to read it. You may contact Miles Archer with your comments at:*marcher@bctonline.com* -------- *About the author of The Emerald Triangle...* Miles Archer is the pen name of a prolific, multi-genre writer. He has published over a dozen short stories in such venues as _Plots With Guns, Hardluck Stories, Blue Murder, Judas_ (now _3rd Degree_), _Mysterical E, Malone's White Fedora, Detective Mystery Stories_ and others. This is his second McCool 'adventure'. More are planned, assuming the readers' interest continues. He also writes short stories and novels in other genres, under other names, but has not officially been diagnosed with multiple personality disorder. He and his voices live on five acres in the Pacific Northwest with other people, a very large dog and an assassin cat. ----------------------- Visit www.NovelBooks.com for information on additional titles by this and other authors.