Seth
Another car arrived. Another Fairlane. The agent who'd caught me shoved me in the back seat and fell in beside me.
'Hey, Rudolph, you collared Frank Zappa.' The driver was looking in the rearview and smiling.
'Lucky for me he runs like Frank Zappa. Some dick from Jersey wandered by and stopped him.'
'Hard time? You give Special Agent Rudolph a hard time, Frank? What's his name?'
'Michael.'
'Michael, you give S A Rudolph a hard time? He's not as young as he used to be. He keels over from a hard attack, then it's murder.'
'All right, Dolens. You're supposed to be busting his chops, not mine.'
We were making our way slowly down the strip. It was well past midnight by now and goodtime America was still thick along the broad walks, beneath the signs. Dolens lifted the radio microphone and told someone they had the subject on the lead out of San Francisco. The agent in back, Rudolph, pushed himself up so he faced me. There were spots of sweat visible on the front of his white rayon shirt. I hadn't run that far. I must have scared him, thinking he'd let me get away.
'You don't got as many friends as you think you do, goodbuddy. Somebody dropped a dime on you. You understand? We didn't turn up just by accident. You oughta think about that.' He watched me to see what effect the information had. 'Did you know there was a grand-jury subpoena out for you?'
'For me?'
He grimaced to show he didn't appreciate my act. 'Agents in Frisco tried to serve you today.' He looked at his watch. 'Yesterday actually.'
I vaguely recollected my instructions. Say nothing.
'See, I think you must have known that, Mike. Otherwise I have a hard time figuring why you were skedaddling through that parking lot.'
Rudolph wasn't particularly good-looking, a big guy with the close haircut that Hoover demanded – 'white sidewalls,' as they said. You could see the skin and the sweat at the sides of his head. His sideburns had crawled down past his ear, in an allowable concession to style. Assessing myself, I found I was not as fully terrified as I might have expected. The presence of the second agent relieved me a little bit. He had a sense of humor. I'd never heard of the FBI hitting. Local cops did it. Not the FBI.
'Where am I going?' I asked.
'Wait, Mike,' Rudolph said. 'Wait. Did you answer my question?'
'He answered your question, Rudolph,' said Dolens. 'You just didn't like what he said.' Dolens was a smaller guy, very happy. Either he liked driving around, or having a prisoner, or giving it to Rudolph. He wore a cheap blue sport coat and a tie. 'We're taking you to the FBI Field Office, Mike. For processing.' 'Am I under arrest?' Neither of them answered at first.
‘I told you, Mike,' said Rudolph. 'There's a subpoena out.'
None of us said anything for a while. Dolens had turned the radio down after calling in, and at this hour there was little broadcast: sleepy voices and static. Eventually, we turned into a hulking squarish structure. By now we had left the land of glitz. It was just a Western downtown, the buildings sprawling rather than rising in this region where land was cheap. From the shapes, it all looked to have been constructed in the last few years. At the bottom of a subterranean driveway, Dolens hung out the window and inserted a key card. A segmented metal door rose with much creaking. I thought of a mouth opening, of Jonah and the Whale, a story which had paralyzed me with fright as a child. They parked and walked me through a maze of concrete corridors.
'Is this the record case?' Dolens asked. 'The guy who was duping records?'
'No, no. This is a possible UFAP.' Yew Fap.
'Christ, I got it mixed up. That's why I was calling him Frank Zappa. What's the violation?'
'Nine twenty-one,' said Rudolph.
'Christ,' he said. 'Kid just looks like a hippie.'
The lights were out when we got off the elevator. We were in a small carpeted reception room, furnished with a few cheap chairs. On a wall before me, I recognized the crest of the FBI, an eagle screaming, with the banner of justice in its talons. It surprised me to find that their office closed for the night. I would have imagined this as a twenty-four-hour operation, men in grey suits and glasses who never slept. Rudolph seemed more like a gym teacher. One of them hit some lights and they pushed me through another door.
Down the corridor was a horrible government room – grey asbestos floor tile, with those grained flecks of white and black and blue so that the grime of daily use didn't show, and ranks of green metal desks topped in Formica and stewing under painful fluorescence. There was not a thing that anyone could consider beautiful, except an American flag in the remote corner. Photos of Richard Nixon and his Attorney General, John Mitchell, hung askew on one of the sheet-metal partitions. Rudolph's desk was in the middle of the room.
'Have a seat here, bub. Michael. Okay. Let's see what Frisco says. Biddie-bee, biddie-bum,' he said as he read to himself. 'Okay. Okay. "Expected to arrive Eden's Garden Spa, approximately 23:00 hours PST." That part was right, wasn't it?' He smiled. 'City by the Bay,' he said. 'Great place. That was my OP, Office of Preference. Only then my wife got rheumatoid arthritis. So here I am. Life can turn out strange, can't it? Where you live out there, Mike?'
He was shuffling the few papers on his desk, but I knew it wasn't an innocent question.
'Damon,' I said.
'Girls with no bras. Must get kind of distracting.' I dipped a shoulder. Us guys.
'Whatta you have to do with that bombing, Mike?' He plunged the full weight of his meaty face onto his hand as he considered me.
I wasn't speaking. Whatever little lick of terror was left in me, after the depletion of my adrenal systems, flitted across my thorax. Rudolph had light eyes, a feature that seemed somewhat disarming.
' "What bomb?" Right? That lab where you work blew up four days ago. Did you know that? Or were you out of town for that, too?'
I murmured that I knew about it.
'What?'
‘I said, "I know." '
'Oh. Just wanted to be sure. Well, here's what it is, Mike. Guys in Frisco think headquarters ought to get a look at your prints. Cause if they match anything we got on any of those little bitty pieces of what went boom, your ass is grass, and I'm not referring to anything you smoke. Follow me?' 'Yes, sir.'
'See now, my guess – I been doing this sixteen years next month, and I've gotten to be a pretty good guesser -1 think you may have taken flight when you heard about that subpoena. I think you think your fingerprints are all over that device. I think you smuggled in the pieces. That's what Frisco thinks.' He held the paper he'd read from beside his face.
'No, sir,' I said.
'Will you take a lie detector?'
I shrugged, as if I didn't care. I knew I should ask for a lawyer. That or shut up. But I had the feeling I was doing all right.
'What are you doing out here, Mike?'
I shrugged again. Rudolph sighed in manifest disgust and looked down to an open space on his desk where there was absolutely nothing to see.
'What's the subpoena for?' I asked.
'Told you. Grand jury wants to see your fingerprints, Mike.'
'You can subpoena somebody's fingerprints?' ' Yessiree, Bob. There's one with your name on it. You go back to Frisco, you'll get a chance to see it.' 'Do I have to go along with it?'
'I'm not your lawyer, Mike. Far as I know, you gotta go along with it' He let his guard down a little. 'Some Commie took it to the Supreme Court years ago and they said you gotta.' He read the paper again. We were the only people in this vast area. Across the way, there was a large interior window revealing a brightly lit room banked with radios and electrical equipment. An older blond woman was speaking disinterestedly into a microphone suspended a few feet before her. She caught me staring at her and looked me off with malevolence.
Rudolph was laughing. He had picked up another piece of paper, a yellow pulpy sheet ragged at the bottom.
'Know who finked on you? I love this. Guess.' I decided not to oblige him. I realized by now I was getting the treatment. 'Your mom.' I didn't answer.
'Yep. Good old Mom. Apparently one of your neighbors reached her after the agents came out. Mom was real upset. Agent here in his teletype says he cut a deal with her. She tells us where you are, we take your prints. You clear, you go. You don't' – he lifted a hand – 'you don't. Standard deal,' he said. The greenish eyes lingered again, trying to measure my pain. 'Don't be mad at Mom. Sounds to me like she tried to bring you up right.'
Michael's mom was buried in Idaho. I was getting the entire picture now.
'So here's the deal, Mike. You wanna do like Mom said? Gimme your prints and see if we can clear this right now? Or you wanna go back to Frisco and face the music there?'
'You mean I can just go back to San Francisco?'
'No. Not exactly. Look, here's what I'm saying. You gimme your prints right here, I'll send them to DC. See what comes out in the wash. Maybe it all straightens itself out. Otherwise, I'm gonna wake up an Assistant US Attorney and tell him how you decided to play Bob Hayes in that parking lot and that I think I oughta arrest you. Unlawful flight. Then I'll take your prints anyway. You'll probably get bail within a couple days. Clark County jail isn't too bad at all.' He scratched his cheek as he watched me, without blinking.
'You're telling me I have no choice?'
'You make your own bed, bub. Can give Mom a call if you like.'
'What if I want a lawyer?' He took a while with that.
'Do what you want. You play your card, I'll play mine. You call your lawyer, I call mine. That's the AUSA. You'll have to go to jail overnight. I'm being straight with you, Mike. Believe it or not. This is just how it is. You're three times seven. You figure it out.'
I thought with some meager confidence about calling my parents for bail money. Then I realized everything that meant – what I'd have to tell them and maybe the FBI – and I felt my soul sink. I continued trying to deliberate, but I got nowhere. Eddgar had calculated all of this coolly, perfectly, shifting the chess pieces eight and nine moves ahead. I seemed to be able to get no further than gut instinct. All I wanted to know was what he'd been thinking. But his intentions, as ever, were unfathomable to me.
Rudolph took me to another area, a smaller room, more government issue, white walls and grey filing cabinets, to do the printing. He got a blue card and made me sign it. Michael hand-lettered his signature – he said he'd decided as a child that he didn't want to have a name he couldn't actually read, an early manifestation to my mind of the kind of pure-minded logic he always followed. I did my best imitation, then Rudolph inked my fingers with a stamp pad and rolled them across. He bore down on each digit somewhat painfully. One finger smudged and he threw the card out and started again. When we were done with that, he inked each palm and made me press them to the bottom of the card. He took me to the John, so I could wash my hands, then I followed him back to his desk, where he began to fill out papers. He spoke to me as he worked.
'Frisco says you live in the same apartment building with the chief suspect. Isn't that a funny coincidence?'
'A lot of people live in that building.'
'Didn't think anybody'd notice, I bet. Six hundred employees. Lots of names. Lots of suspects. Computers, you know. Great things. Pigs aren't always as dumb as you guys think.' He'd looked up again, the way he'd been doing, stabbing a little and hoping to see me bleed. 'Funny thing,' he said. 'All you great revolutionary heroes ain't so great or revolutionary when you see the inside of a cell.' Cleveland had rolled over. I knew what that meant. He'd rolled over and pointed at a white guy. Rudolph grinned, big as the Cheshire. This was one of the parts of his job he really liked – you could see that much.
After he finished his paperwork, he explained the next step. The pouch would go to DC on the first plane out in the morning. He would send a teletype ahead. If I was lucky, they'd do the comparison before the end of the day.
'We got a cot room, Mike, if you want to try to close your eyes.'
'You mean I have to hang around here?'
'Well, look who's surprised. If you were me, son, and we'd begun our acquaintance – let's call it that – with you chasing me through a parking lot, would you be lettin go of my tail feathers so fast? I think not.'
'You said I wasn't busted.'
'Look, Mike. We can do this your way, or we can do this my way. I thought we already had this discussion. Didn't we? Now you get some rest. And maybe if you're lucky, this'll work out.'
The cot room, so called, was really a closet. I lay there, on a coarse blanket fitted over a narrow army cot which betrayed every spring. I felt lost in my life. To my amazement, I fell into an enduring sleep, broken only by dreams of a man in a long dark coat. I thought it might be my father. Perhaps it was Eddgar. When I awoke, the vast room, formerly empty, was full. Purposeful people slipped back and forth, gossiping with each other. Phones pealed randomly, ten, twelve rings, often unanswered. A few men walked about in white shirts without their jackets. They were wearing pistols, shiny chrome most of them, peeking out from worn leather shoulder holsters. I could have gotten shot last night, I thought. That was what Rudolph had said.
A woman in her fifties was typing near where I stood. 'Coffee's over there if you like. Just feed the kitty.'
There were vending machines next to the pot. I bought cigarettes to have something to do and a package of Twinkies for food.
'You Rudolph's?' A man stood in the doorway. I'd just shoved a snack cake whole into my mouth and I could only nod. 'He said to tell you that he'd be back around 5:00 to figure out where you stand. He left some money to get you something to eat. Hamburger okay?' It was about 9:30 according to a clock I had seen.
I spent the day there in what was called the witness interview room, a small, plastered space without a window. There was a 13-inch TV, a black-and-white, with a cream-colored chassis coated in grime. One of the rabbit ears was broken and mended with a fantail of aluminum foil. I watched soaps until I finally found someone's discarded newspaper in the John. I was stupefied by the headline: 'kent state students killed by us troops. Nine Others Wounded.' National Guardsmen at Kent State University in Ohio had opened fire on unarmed student protesters. The Guardsmen claimed they had heard sniper fire. The war had come home.
I tried to get what details I could from the TV. I watched intermittently. Somehow this treachery seemed more important, more apprehensible than what the Eddgars had done to me. From that I felt entirely remote. Perhaps I'd always recognized a chance this was coming. For the moment, I couldn't do any more than wait to find out what was going to happen to my life. Each hour that passed, I figured out more of it. Michael and the bomb. Michael and June. The elaborate plan June and Eddgar had made in that motel room while I was with Hobie. He'd come to tell her about the subpoena, no doubt, that the FBI was after Michael. I didn't know if they'd ever needed my father's money. But with me they had a perfect foil. Someone who was better off being Michael than himself. Jailbait now, I could never just spill to the FBI. I had no choice but to give up my fingerprints and endure this charade.
At 5:00, the first thorough news reports were broadcast. America was in turmoil, coast to coast. Congressmen were making angry speeches about killing our own children, and thirty-seven college and university presidents had called on Nixon to end the war. At Kent State, no evidence could be found of any sniper fire at the Guardsmen. Twenty-eight hundred students had congregated in what the reporters called a near-riot in Madison, Wisconsin. Nixon had responded to all of this by promising our troops would be out of Cambodia in three to seven weeks. More than eighty colleges were closed now; at least two hundred others were expected to take up the issue in the next forty-eight hours. A clip was on, showing students eagerly working phone banks and canvassing in Dorchester for signatures on antiwar petitions.
Behind me, I noticed Rudolph. He was dressed in a grey suit now, rather than blue. He watched the TV for some time with a fierce, pained look.
'You really think all this helps?'
I didn't know what I thought about that. I didn't know if it helped. I didn't know if the bomb helped either. But I thought there was a chance there might be more of them this week. If the ghettos rose up all over the country, if the students fought back, then who knew? Maybe it was going to be a revolution. Or just another civil war. I had no idea where I stood either. I felt alternate periods of remorse and relief I was leaving.
'My little brother's over there right now,' said Rudolph. 'Near Chu Lai. This kind of stuff – it isn't helping a whole hell of lot. I can tell you that. You know, they don't have a free society over there. They take this stuff at face value. Charlie sees what you guys are up to. It encourages him. What do you say to that?'
'The war is wrong,' I answered. It remained one of the few truths I knew.
He fixed his face to contain himself. Then he threw his stuff – papers, a leather folder, and a huge ring of keys – down on an old table there.
'What'd you do about the service, Mike?'
'Asthma,' I said.
'Tough luck.'
I smiled, even though I knew that was not a particularly good idea. Rudolph popped out his lips in exasperation.
'You cleared,' he said. He ripped open an envelope and handed me Michael's wallet.
I'd figured I would clear. That was the point, of course. That was why the Eddgars had needed me. At one point, I had worried about the signature. What if somebody noticed that my handwriting didn't match Michael Frain's? But Eddgar, I was certain, had mastered the details, and must have known somehow – from a book, from some radicalized vet who'd worked army intelligence – what was likely to occur. At moments, I'd felt other shifting anxieties. What if the point of all of this was to set me up, to blame the bombing on me? I could make no sense of that. But in my present state, I had been prepared to put up with virtually anything.
‘I can go?'
'With God,' he said. 'Or without. You know,' he said, 'if I was the kind of asshole you think I am, I'd bust you anyway. For running on me. You oughta think about that. But I'm gonna keep my word.' He moved out of the doorway. I pushed my cigarettes down into the pocket of my jeans. 'Why did you run?' he asked quietly as I brushed past him.
I was going to say something smart – I must not have been myself – but I finally did what I'd been told and kept my mouth shut. I shrugged as if I didn't have a clue. I started away, then looked back to tell him I hoped his brother was home soon.
It didn't occur to me until I was outside that I had no transportation. The sun was sinking but the air was still fierce with heat. I removed my denim jacket as I walked. I had no idea where I was going, but I saw the strip across a stretch of scrubby lawns and desert. When I reached Las Vegas Boulevard, I stopped in one of those dim, clanging hotel lobbies and called my parents. At this hour, I'd find my father at home. I hated to place the call with my mother around, but I knew by now he'd be in a state. He picked up on the first ring.
'I'm all right. I'm okay. It worked out just as you agreed.'
My father gave forth an intense groan. Behind him, I heard my mother at once. She questioned him intensely. What is wrong? she asked repeatedly. My father told my mother that it was me, but that did not seem to calm her. Why was I calling?
'Later, Dena,' he finally told her sternly, then returned to me. 'I am very relieved. Very relieved. You are unharmed?'
'I'm just fine. I'm tired and I don't have enough change for the pay phone. So I'll call you again in a few hours. But I wanted you to know I'm okay.'
The electrical sounds of the filaments and wires that connected us popped along for an instant. My father did not ask any of the questions someone else might have. What was it like? What did they do? Because he was a survivor, I realized. He knew better than that.
'I'm really, really sorry,' I said. My father did not answer. He may have been crying or gathering himself or concerning himself with my mother. Before replacing the phone, I repeated that I would call again soon.
It was Happy Hour here and the hotel habitues seemed just that, happy. They gabbled over the noise of a band playing country music. I walked up to the buffet and speared eight little wieners out of the oily water with the same toothpick, gulping them down before anyone could say anything. It dawned on me that I should call the motel and I went back to the phone. I asked for Seth Weissman or Lucy McMartin. Amazingly, she was registered. They rang the room, but there was no answer and I thought better than to leave a message.
The last stretch to Eden's Spa took me across military land, an open alley of desert scrub. The sun, even this late, had some intensity, and I felt parched. Approaching the motel, I had no idea how to find Lucy. I figured I'd wait in the Bug if it was there. Instead, as I prowled the lot, I saw her. She was at the pool, in a loose-waisted granny gown of some greenish floral print. Her shoes were off, her small freckled face toward the waning sun. I knelt next to her.
'Don't say my name,' I said when she opened her eyes. I asked where the room was. She picked up a book – a manual on the I Ching- and showed me inside. Neither of us spoke as we padded through the motel corridors. Inside the room, the air conditioning had been turned up too high, so that there was a shock in coming in out of the heat. I was briefly light-headed. My skin prickled and my ears seemed to ring from suddenly escaping the noise of the traffic. The air-conditioner fan and a newspaper rattling on the register were the only sounds. There was a sense of the silence of the desert, the heat of struggle, the passing of time.
When I sat down on the bed next to Lucy, I knew my childhood was over. I had stopped thinking of my life as something my parents had done to me. My horror with myself, which had finally, fully settled – and which has never really left me since – had taught me that much. In that moment, I thought, for no reason I could understand, of Sonny. I wondered, as I long would, if I might have done better with her knowing what I did now.
'Is he gone?' I asked.
'Michael? He left when I got here.'
'What did he tell you?'
'Just-' She shrugged. 'Nothing. He said you can keep his wallet.'
'Great,' I said, 'thanks a lot.' I shook my head in wonder, then told Lucy that I believed Michael had set the bomb at the ARC.
Lucy's eyes are tiny and dark, with the occasional glassy look of a babydoll's, but within I saw something fast, immobile disks of light planted on her contacts. I encountered no enlarging look of amazement, just a stoical settled straightforward stare, a depth of knowledge I'd only begun to recognize recently.
'Am I that dumb?' I asked.
'He didn't say anything,' she answered. It was merely apparent to those less oblivious than I. Michael's grief, his loss, was not over his colleague or June but himself.
'She talked him into it?'
‘I suppose,' Lucy said. It was some test of love, we both imagined. But Lucy had no better idea than I did. Only that June had required it and Michael had complied. 'Shit,' I said.
'Where were you? Michael just told me if you weren't here by tomorrow, I should call this number.' She went to her pocketbook. The phone number, written on an Eden's Spa notepad, was in the Bay Area. I didn't recognize it otherwise. I told her about being held at the FBI, about Rudolph and the fingerprint switch.
'I get the scare of my life and he leaves his wallet.' I took it out and together we peered into the long pocket of the billfold. There were three worn singles and a five. I laughed out loud as I counted them, but Lucy took the wallet from me and wormed a finger behind the windowed card section. Michael's driver's licence, social security card, and draft card were there along with his university ID.
'I think what he means by his wallet,' she said, 'is his name. You know? You get his lottery number. You can keep on being him. You don't have to go to Canada.'
The notion took hold slowly. I realized he really had no choice about abandoning his name. He didn't want to be Michael Frain in case the FBI ever came back for more prints. After an initial hopeful spurt, I saw that the advantages of this arrangement were limited. I still could not go where I was known, or any place Michael was present. I would be more or less living the life the Eddgars had promised my father on the telephone.
'If I'm him, who's he going to be? Me?'
'He can't be you.'
'No,' I said. 'That's true.' The FBI would be looking for Seth Weissman, the draft dodger. 'So where's he going?'
Neither of us could figure that out either.
'These fucking people,' I said. A TV went on too loudly in an adjoining room. 'And you were just sitting here all this time?' I asked. 'You must have been scared to death.'
She shrugged, with her usual indifference to herself. At long last, I focused on Lucy. If you asked either of us, we would say many months passed before we recognized the slightest prospect of falling in love. We had been living together in Seattle for nearly six months before we became lovers, and even at that we weren't sure at first how seriously to take it. But constancy, friendship -the high virtues Lucy has always embodied for me – were marked in those moments in that motel room as perhaps the most important in the world. Looking at her tiny, pretty, earnest face, I was overwhelmed to think I knew anyone still worth believing in.
'Do you know how brave you are?'
‘I didn't do anything. I just stayed.'
'You know how many other people would have run away? You know how many people would never have driven across the desert all night? You're fabulous. Do you know that?'
She blushed. The crimson reached every point on her face but her nose. She took my hand as we sat there and closed her eyes, trying to fight off the pure pleasure of my – of anyone's -admiration.
My parents never knew. Nor did they ever ask for details, even my mother, who for years could not stop thanking God for my survival. Occasionally, by allusion, I suggested to my father that things might not have been as he thought, but he clearly preferred not to pursue the subject, since neither that, nor anything else, seemed likely to alter our discontent with one another. To this day, I remain horrified that I tested him so cruelly. But I have also come to accept that I had my reasons. And God knows, I received my comeuppance. In 1978, a year after Jimmy Carter's draft amnesty, when I was able to reclaim the name I was born with and which I no longer fully thought of as my own, I gave my father a check for $32,659, my debt plus interest at prevailing rates. He took the money with a grave nod, so I knew it had never left his mind, all these years.
For the first few months in Seattle, after I had taken Michael's name, I lived as June had provided. I called my parents twice a week from a pay phone to assure them I was fine and did not disclose my location. We chose Seattle because it was close to the border. If something went bad, we could be in B C in an hour. Those initial months, of course, were ravaged by fear. I went over a number of times to look at Vancouver. But I was soon established in Seattle and everything seemed to fall into place. So far as I could tell, the FBI search for Seth Weissman lasted no longer than one week in August. My parents – and surely everyone who knew me in Damon – reported I had gone to Canada. A warrant was issued, but no indictment was ever returned. I often feared that the FBI would somehow retrace their steps with Michael Frain, realize they'd been fooled in Las Vegas, but the Bay Area papers, which I read whenever I could, always referred to the ARC bombing as unsolved, and still do to this day.
Within the first months in Seattle, I was hired at Seattle Weekly, an alternative paper, full of ads for paraphernalia shops and macrame makers and of course every record store in town. I was the janitor. It was a blow that I couldn't submit my 'movies' for publication, but I was too fearful that kind of signature detail would tie me to Seth Weissman. Instead, when the opportunity opened up, as I'd been promised when I was hired, I began to do lightweight reportage and little opinion items. I seemed to have a talent for mixing sly insights with whimsy and a number of Michael Frain's pieces were syndicated by the Liberation News Service.
The following March, as I grew more confident in the foolproof nature of my false identity, I allowed my mother to visit. My father, as I'd imagined, remained at home. By then, I wanted my mom to meet Lucy.
'This girl?' she asked me the first night. 'Her last name?'
'Goy, Ma. Her name is goy.' On the whole, my mother behaved with greater aplomb than I would have guessed.
When I remembered many months along that the V W was still titled to Seth Weissman, I arranged for someone heading East to drive it back to Kindle. She left it with Sonny's Aunt Hen, to await Sonny's return from the Philippines. My only message was that Sonny would know what it was for, referring to the money I'd borrowed. I was never certain if I was evincing mettle or loyalty to Lucy or caution of the authorities by leaving no other word or any way to get in touch. But at the age of twenty-three I had begun to think of myself as a realist. Like many other Americans, I had become one in Las Vegas.
Surprisingly, Lucy and I saw a lot of Hobie. We first spent an evening with him in early September 1970 in a cabin in Humboldt, California, halfway between Seattle and the Bay Area. He told us repeatedly he was happy Lucy and I were together and predicted great things for our relationship. He had passed the summer working for a well-known criminal defense lawyer in Kindle County, Jackson Aires, who at the time was representing a number of Black Muslims. Hobie was now going by the name of Tariq and was considering joining the Muslims himself.
We had gotten together not so much to make amends as to discuss something we preferred not to talk about over the phone – the death of Cleveland Marsh the previous June. Less than a month after he had been released on bail, Cleveland had been found dead one morning in a private 'sleeping room' at Ciardi's, a gay bathhouse on Castro Street. He was unclothed, and beside him was a pocket mirror on which rested a scalpel, traces of white powder, and a gram of rock cocaine which the medical examiner determined had been cured in strychnine. Cleveland's fame, the lurid circumstances, and the prospect of bad coke on the street all combined to keep the case in the Bay Area papers for days. The medical examiner had found the cause of death to be accidental self-poisoning.
'Murder, man, straight up,' Hobie said. 'Ain no question.' A summer in a criminal-law firm had imbued him with his usual authoritative voice concerning matters about which I'd heretofore assumed he knew next to nothing. Hobie had even been to the medical examiner's office to look at the records. 'You know, lividity got Cleveland dyin face-down but po-lice find him layin face-up. Body temperature, digestive enzymes, they say man's dead no more'n two hours and Ciardi's close up at 4 a.m. And you tell me how they coulda shut down in the first place with him layin in there? None of this makes any damn sense anyway. Every fool on the street knows somebody just dumped that body in there. But thing is, man, po-lice figure, why sweat it? They're all bent out of shape about Cleveland to begin with, man, cause they think when they busted his ass back in May, he handed them a whole long line of shit bout that bomb and how they had just got to be this white boy's fingerprints on the pieces of the thing. They done their nationwide manhunt and come up with diddly-squat, then Eddgar and his lawyers went truckin in there laughin and scratchin and bail Cleveland out. Po-lice figure Cleveland was just mind-fucking them all along. So hell with his dead ass. That's what the coppers are thinkin. Uppity nigger anyway.'
With the reference to Michael and the fingerprints, a sober moment passed between us. Hobie had heard my story by then and we both seemed to feel bound together by fortune and the sheer glee of undeserved escape. I finally asked if he knew who it was. He remained at the perimeters of Panther circles and was likely to have asked the question himself.
'Who what?' Hobie demanded.
'Who offed Cleveland?'
'You know same as I do. Feature this: Cleveland snitched out Michael, then Eddgar bails his ass anyway? Only one reason to do that. Eddgar wanted him back on the street so he could deal with him. What white dude you think it was Cleveland was tryin to give the pigs anyway when he dimed Michael? Think Eddgar didn't figure that? Oh, they all made like Cleveland was a hero of the revolution when he come out. And Cleveland, poor motherfucker, he'd believe just about anything so long as somebody was standing there applaudin. But I rapped to Josita, Cleveland's old lady? She told me after they found Cleveland, Huey and them did all kinda head-trips on her, "Don't say nothin," party discipline, that shit, and she's a stone sister anyway. But here's what she was puttin down, dude: was Eddgar what called Cleveland in the middle of the night, was Eddgar Cleveland was leavin out to see last time he left their pad. This was Eddgar's thing all the way, man. Makin it look like it some kind of accident went down with a dude who was scorin? You know, Eddgar's done that ten times before, man, this here's his m.o.'
When we returned to Seattle, I called the Eddgars. I'd had notions of doing it before, but there was nothing for me to say then, other than to demand explanations that would never be made. Now this news, the dark mess of guilt about this death and my role in it, left me anguished. I wanted to do to Eddgar something of what he had done to me. I would not give my name, would speak only a few words: ‘I know about Cleveland. I know why you wanted the bail money.' A declaration that would paralyze him with fright.
Instead, Nile answered the phone. His wee voice united me at once with the suggestion of perilous loss he always waked in me. When I finally spoke, he knew immediately who it was, even though I'd merely asked for Eddgar.
'Hi,' he said. He sounded certain I'd called for him. 'Are you someplace?' he asked.
I tried to say everything I would have wanted said to me. I miss you, Nile. Be a good boy. We all love you. I'm far away but I think about you and I'm going to write. Nearby, I heard June repeatedly asking who it was.
'Is Michael there?' Nile asked.
'Michael? No, not right now.'
'Oh.' He deliberated only an instant and then, without a further word, put down the phone.