The Death of David Pickett

by G. A. Matiasz

  Jesse didn’t close in on the rally. Not right away. First he bought four Boston cream donuts. Then he circled around the rally, listening to the speeches as darkness descended. Perhaps four hundred people were standing around. A cop drone lazily wheeled above the gathering. Unlike the mob that immediately took down the encroaching PUD earlier in the day, an air of impending trouble hung over the crowd. No fan of anarchist smashy-smashy, Jesse nevertheless felt compelled to stay by the threat of sweet violence. He thought he saw Ari Moser among the rabble, but lost sight of him. A wind had started to whip up, blowing snippets of words and sentences away. Much of the rest echoed unintelligibly around the park, along with Public Enemy’s “Party for Your Right to Fight.”

  “…David Pickett was an enemy of the state, a target of every American police, security, and military agency…”

  The gathering was overwhelmingly young, about evenly male and female, and dressed principally in black. There was a pungent smell of marijuana and tobacco throughout those assembled. People kept arriving as Jesse stayed at the margin. Toby and Cynthia were in the thick of it.

  “…ickett’s legacy was to stand for the helpless, to stand with the downtrodden, to stand against the rich and powerful. David Pickett was a friend of the impoverished multitude and an enemy of the wealthy few. D…”

  The crowd had swollen to well over a thousand and many were masked up. It was fully dark now. The clinking of glass bottles accompanied the smell of gasoline. A tight knot of miscreants surrounded Toby and snickered at one of his jokes. Toby flashed something, quickly and surreptitiously, then hid it in his jacket.

  “…time to avenge our fallen friend, our murdered brother, our assassinated comrade! It’s time to wreak our havoc against the cops, against capital and state, against all the powers-that-be! It’s time to MOVE!”

  Hoodies came up, balaclavas were donned, black bandannas were tied around faces. Full black-bloc mode. And the mob surged toward 18th and Dolores, toward rows of businesses, toward the nearest police station.

  “One, two, three, four; this is fucking class war!”

  Glow sticks, flashlights, and lasers pierced the gloom. Here and there, a fiery torch burned. Jesse joined the crowd at the tail end as the crowd occupied the middle of the street. A second PUD joined the first, and both kept tabs on the march.

  “Racist, sexist, anti-gay; SFPD go away!”

  Tires popped, and car windows shattered. Car alarms howled and squealed. Bystanders watched the unruly march from upper-story windows. Gas masks appeared. Lasers lanced up from the protest onto the UAVs, the crowd hoping to keep the drones blinded.

  “What do we want?”

  “Dead cops!”

  “When do we want them?”

  “Now!”

  Jesse could see the crowd marching toward the Mission Street Police Station. He moved to the sidewalk, where he watched the police quickly reinforce the line of officers behind the standing wall of steel barricades, between the station and the mob. The black-clad rabble roared in response.

  “Whose streets?”

  “Our streets!”

  “Fuck the police!”

  The mob used paint bombs, bricks, bottles, rocks, metal hardware, and debris, primarily against the station and secondarily toward the multiplying drones. Dressed in fire-resistant riot suits, the cops raised their shields and sprayed the crowd with tear gas. Pivoting UAVs also let loose a rain of pepper bombs and flash-bang grenades. By then, Jesse had moved to the opposite sidewalk and pushed his way down Valencia, past the riot proper and out of range of the gas. The second wave involved smoke bombs to obscure the mob and people hurling Molotov cocktails, until the line of cops appeared engulfed in flames. One PUD veered away and crash-landed behind the station. But the shields and fire-retardant uniforms, plus a constant dry spray of sodium bicarbonate from nozzles in the station, rapidly contained the inferno.

  Then the police launched liquid pepper spray and high-power microwave weapons, designed to dispense excruciating pain as subcutaneous heat or intracranial sound. The HPM antennas swiveled down from the roof and powered up with subsonics. The air above the riot rippled ominously. The mini-insurrection redoubled their attack—the projectiles, the paint and smoke bombs, and the Molotovs—plus their ace: glitter bombs. Thrown high into the air, the fine metal glitter bombs exploded and holy hell broke loose. Lightning streamers, sheets of lightning, ball lightning erupted between falling glitter and the microwave weapons in violent claps and crackles until the microwave devices short-circuited and the police station roof caught fire. Two PUDs shot sparks and careened into the building.

  The battle for the station proved only a diversion, however. As soon as the glitter bombs went off, the cops had to respond to their burning building. The organized assault turned into absolute chaos as hordes of black-clad rioters ran into the heart of Valencia Street’s restaurant row. Cars, stores, windows, restaurants, pedestrians—everything was fair game. Diners, indoors and out, ran for their lives. The sound of breaking glass punctuated the night. Smoke bombs blew up, roping the night air with thick, acrid clouds. Rioters brandishing pipes and wooden clubs felled gawkers and bystanders. Gasoline bombs blossomed into conflagrations. Broken glass carpeted the streets.

  Jesse ran through the spreading anarchy hoping to escape it. He coughed, gasped, and his eyes watered. At 22nd, he froze. The plate-glass windows were broken, but the blinking neon signage—“Spencer’s”—wasn’t. A burly crew-cut man, dressed in chef’s apron, barred the door to the partially trashed, empty restaurant. The restaurateur held a pump-action shotgun across his chest. “Come one step further, assholes,” he bellowed. “And you’ll be eating this!”

  The crowd surrounded him in a half-circle, taunting him, but from a respectful distance. Suddenly, a tall, lanky, Mohawked man stepped into the space between them. He wore a black balaclava, and his black leather jacket bore a logo: The Exploited. Fuck the System. “Here’s for all those shitty wages you paid me and my fellow workers! Here’s for David Pickett!” He yanked a Glock from his jacket and fired 9mm rounds into the restaurateur. One. Two. Three. Four.

  TWO

  Bloody sunrise seeped along the eastern sky. Jesse huddled on the fire escape outside his apartment. To the northwest, the sights and sounds of the riot faded with the new day.

  He hadn’t slept all night. Terrible images burned his memory. The gun, flashing under streetlights. The four terrible shots. Each shot loud, tracing murder through the dark air. The shooter’s arm recoiling. The restaurateur collapsing. The smell of cordite. The smell of blood. Blood flowing across the sidewalk. The shotgun lying on the sidewalk.

  Jesse ran. Everybody ran. He didn’t know how or when he got back home to his apartment. He just remembered cowering in the dark. Terrified. Crying. Praying.

  The morning was painfully clear. Not a shred of overcast in the sharp blue sky, not a wisp of fog over Twin Peaks. The sun sluiced golden over East Bay’s hills. Jesse unsteadily grabbed the railing to his fire escape and pulled himself up. Trembling, he stumbled into his apartment, fumbled for the light in his kitchenette, and turned on the coffeemaker. He noticed the vaguely familiar rumpled waxy bag on the kitchen counter. Awful recollections flooded his brain as he opened the bag. It was filled with crumbled donut cake, flaked chocolate icing, and smeared vanilla custard. The stink punched him in the nose. Jesse leaned over the sink and vomited. He continued to throw up until it became uncontrolled retching, then dry heaves. He collapsed onto the linoleum and clutched his aching stomach.

  He got back onto his feet, weak and shaking. He turned on the faucet and rinsed away the puke until the fresh smell of coffee replaced the rank odor of barf.

  Time to get out into the morning and to the day’s job. Jesse showered, hosed the vomit from his mouth, put on an orange Burning Bush T-shirt and a gray sweatshirt, and hefted an empty thermos. He bought copies of the SF Chronicle and San Jose Mercury News and drank half of the coffee before settling onto a bench at t
he Mission Playground and Pool. A police UAV floated along the street. “Local Militant’s Death Triggers Mission Riot,” the Chronicle proclaimed, whereas the Mercury News’ headline was more blunt: “One Dead, 326 Injured, 144 Arrested in Anarchist Riot.” He read the reports on the Valencia Street riot, including the opinion pieces about the incompetence of the police to protect anyone or prevent damage to local businesses, then ripped out the articles on David Pickett’s death. Folding the crisp pages into his back pocket, he discarded the remainder of the newspaper. Jesse needed time to analyze the news items, with more than caffeine to fuel him. His favorite cafe, Hopwell’s, was down the block.

  “Fill ‘er up,” he said as he presented the waitress his thermos, then looked at the menu. “I want the breakfast special.”

  He switched on his smartphone while waiting for his meal. Forty-two messages, seventy-one texts. Eighteen of the voice messages were from Angie Markham, the first ten ranging from “Where the fuck are you?” to “You asshole!” Four from her were simple hang-ups. Twelve texts out of twenty were of a similar nature, including three all-caps messages: “THEY MURDERED DAVID PICKETT!” Her tone changed abruptly after he’d fled from Stumpy’s. The calls and texts that followed begged him to call her back and please forgive her, pleading, “We need to talk” and “We can work through this.” Jesse felt a pang in his heart, but he deleted them all, then switched his phone to vibrate. Best to keep a meditative state of mind, he thought, and avoid confrontation. And nasty messages.

  When breakfast arrived, he concentrated on the food, savoring each bite between each breath. Only when he’d cleaned his plate, only when he’d paid the check, only when he’d stepped back into the burnished San Francisco morning did the terrors of the night before return. He felt oddly refreshed, however, for not having slept in nearly twenty-four hours and returned to the apartment for his equipment.

  “Shit,” Jesse mumbled when he reached his door at the top of the stairs. He pulled the card from between door and jamb. Beneath the SFPD logo, the card read “Investigator Michael Van Cornin” above the usual address and telephone contact information. On the back, a cellphone number had been written, in pen. “Shit, fuck, piss,” Jesse said.

  Jesse snagged a notebook, pens, markers, label maker, and his first-generation Apple Fetch, which he stuffed into his knapsack before rushing out the door. He took the direct route over to Valencia and then north until he was surrounded by drones, idling cop cars and conferring police officers—and rolls of yellow crime tape. The sidewalk around Spencer’s Restaurant was completely sealed off for a quarter block in each direction. The Mission Street Police Station was open for business, despite obvious signs of damage. He tried to look inconspicuous even as he minutely observed his surroundings. Once past all the wreckage, he turned east at the homeless camp on 16th Street and walked to 2930 16th.

  The old, four-story, red brick building occupied much of the block. Known as the Redstone Labor Temple, or simply the Redstone Building, the structure was home to scores of labor unions, nonprofit organizations, and various and sundry artists. Jesse entered using a duplicate key and a combination to the Digilock. He had access thanks to his friendship with graphic designer and silkscreen artist Marco Loyola, who shared a fourth floor, west-facing office with an artist collective calling itself Chicanosaurus. Once in the funky, poster-and-mural-encrusted lobby, he climbed the stairs. He tread carefully down the fourth-floor hall because Marco’s fellow collective members were not very welcoming of Jesse’s white ass. The door chimed with the opening notes of Victor Jara’s “Venceremos.” Fortunately, the musty office was unoccupied.

  Jesse had studied Library and Information Science at City College, interned in Digital Archiving at UC Berkeley’s Bancroft Library, and had remained sporadically employed ever since. He’d met Marco through the William James Work Association, a worker-run temp agency operated by David Pickett’s DUI, at the onset of the Marco’s multiple sclerosis. Jesse started working for him scanning, digitizing, massaging, and cataloguing the artist’s work and papers using Photoshop software and Macintosh computers. Marco used the office space primarily for storage of his prints and files, as advanced MS now kept him confined to his tiny Inner Mission cottage.

  Jesse had spent hours taking in the contents of the office while working for Marco. The floor-to-ceiling filing system that took up most of one wall; flat file drawers and vertical hanging racks, constructed of varnished, weathered oak. The iconography in photography, silkscreening, painting, lithography, even graffiti depicted historical political, religious, and artistic figures from Spain and the Americas. He spread out the contents of his knapsack over the work table by the window, then lifted the window shades, mindful not to disturb the reflector telescope positioned with a focus on the BART plaza a block away. Pen-and-ink drawings painstakingly rendering aspects of the plaza were taped on the window jambs near the telescope.

  The Fetch picked up a Wi-Fi signal immediately and Marco’s password worked. The office boombox had a mixtape of corridos and norteños he played low. He put in a solid two hours on Marco’s archiving project. In the process of scrupulously labeling and alphabetizing a cardboard box full of document CDs, he discovered a cryptic item. One CD in a worn white sleeve bore a dingy Post-it that read: “HOOLIGAN-X = D PICKETT?” CDs were antiquated technology and electronic players were ancient history, so he was at a loss. He put the sleeve and its contents into the knapsack before turning his attention to Pickett and the riot. He looked up a number of local news websites, laid out the pages ripped from the Chronicle and Mercury News, opened the notebook, uncapped the pen, and started to write. The sun claimed more and more of the table as it edged into late afternoon. An hour and ten minutes later, Jesse had three paragraphs written in the notebook and a new mixtape of Latinx resistance music in the boombox.

  Notwithstanding some intriguing aspects to Pickett’s biography, it was how he died—whether it was an accident or murder—that mattered to Jesse now. Pickett died Saturday, July 15, at approximately 5:20 pm, after the Ford station wagon he was driving overturned on Highway 1, ten kilometers north of Mulegé. According to the Chronicle, Pickett and his four companions were returning from a scuba expedition at Bahia de Concepcion when the car and the dirt bike trailer it was towing flipped shortly after noon. Except for minor scrapes, none of the other passengers were seriously injured. Pickett’s injuries were far more serious—his abdomen cut open and his intestines perforated. The Mercury News claimed that a sixth person, a local fisherman and guide named Arnulfo Cassias, had also been present but uninjured.

  Pickett’s injury warranted, first, transportation by helicopter to Hospital Angeles Tijuana, and then to UC San Diego Medical Center, where he was pronounced DOA. First on the scene, the Federales conveyed David to the hospital and arrested his diving buddies before ultimately transferring custody of Pickett to the California Highway Patrol. The CHP rushed him to San Diego. Somewhere in the midst of all of this, the FBI got involved.

  The reporting was incomplete, inconsistent, and secondhand. So far, no evidence had surfaced for or against the involvement of these law enforcement agencies in Pickett’s death. There was also no information as to whether the diving excursion was business or pleasure. The Chronicle cast doubt on the FBI’s contention that Pickett’s expedition had been innocuous. The Mercury News had little to say for or against the FBI, but pointed out that David’s diving companions were still in jail. Their diving equipment, three motocross bikes, and two duffle bags of undisclosed contraband from their dives at Bahia de Concepcion had been confiscated.

  Jesse shook his head over the mounting contradictions between official news accounts and between the news and the rumors he’d heard. When David Pickett’s death became known to San Francisco’s locals, last night’s riot had erupted. The Bay Area media was heavily criticizing the SFPD for failing to anticipate the mayhem at the police station, the wholesale destruction to the Valencia Street business district, and the murder of
Spencer’s restaurateur, Samuel Barbier. Grainy videos of the murder from a PUD were in continuous rotation on every TV outlet. The SFPD had a BOLO out for the murderer as well as a call for witnesses and any information related to the murder.

  Jesse reviewed the information he’d written up and remembered the CD when persistent noise from the waning afternoon outside intervened. Seven cop drones converged on the airspace over the BART plaza with a growing clatter. He popped the lens covers off the telescope and looked through the pre-positioned instrument. Six Mission District Latinos stood, clustered, in the middle of the plaza, as scores of cops, in plain clothes and in uniform, carefully approached. The cops had their guns leveled. Two more PUDs whirred over. Four of the youngsters started to raise their arms. Was that a bottle of water or a gun in an upraised hand? Suddenly, shooting rang from the plaza. “Holy shit,” Jesse breathed, but didn’t take his eye from the lens. Volley after volley shattered the sunlit day. When the gunshots stopped, all six young men were lying motionless on the square. There was blood everywhere.

  He shoveled everything into the knapsack, dropped the window shade, turned off the music, and made sure the office door was shut and locked before sprinting down the stairs. He was at the BART station within five minutes, but by then there was a full-on police cordon in place, cops and police cars holding the line, with more men and vehicles arriving every moment. The early evening sky was jammed with UAVs.