Jesse poured himself a mug of coffee when the percolation reached its peak. He opened the apartment window, then took the Fetch in one hand, the steaming coffee mug in the other hand, and stepped out onto his fire escape. Knots of people moved continuously along the street in the foggy morning light.
“I used one of my most sophisticated trackbots, ran six separate top-of-the-line traces, and got six separate results for each of these mobility factors.” Kevin rattled on. “Each time I ran down that one voicemail, I got a different provider and a different cellphone number. Six different providers and six different phone numbers. The cell tower triangulations were similarly mixed. The cellphone broadcasts originated from the corners of Haymarket Street and Pall Mall in London; Delancey and Suffolk Streets in Manhattan; Rue Daguerre and Gassendi in Paris; Avenida Presidente Mararyk and Hegel in Mexico City; Avenida Paseo and Zapata in Havana; and Guangfu and Meiyuan Roads in Shanghai. The GPS positions were completely bizarre, avoiding densely inhabited locations altogether—the middle of the North Pacific gyre; Mount Tahat in the Sahara Desert; a half mile underwater in the mid-Indian Ocean basin; fifty miles above the earth in the mesosphere over Hudson Bay; the Amazon basin at the borders of Peru, Colombia, and Brazil; and Antarctica’s subglacial Lake Vostok.”
The small groups of people grew larger, formed crowds, then miniature parades. The people stayed on the sidewalks until they couldn’t be contained there, finally spilling into the streets. Everyone moved north.
“The data from the trace, from the six traces, is patently false. Or, more accurately, deliberately forged. Faked or not, the digital information I accessed the first time I ran the voicemail should not have changed. But it did. Five subsequent times. And that should be impossible. Someone, or more probably, something changed that digital history. A bot, or some bit of software, is out there changing, no, camouflaging history every time I attempt to read it.”
“But to what end?”
“I haven’t the faintest idea. If David’s still alive, he’s doing his very best to hide it. And if David’s dead, someone’s going to a fuck of a lot of trouble to disguise it.”
Jesse eased back in through the window, into his apartment, balancing the Skype session and an empty coffee mug. He made a decision.
“I’ve got something to do,” Jesse said. “And I’ll need your help.”
He explained the hack he wanted from Kevin as he completed paying the hacker his due. After ending the Skype session but before turning off the Fetch, he checked a local news broadcast for updates on the Occupy the Mission rally. Police departments and public transportation agencies estimated that more than two million people were likely to attend the event, a guess bolstered by aerial shots of thousands exiting from the 16th and 24th Street BART stations in peaceful, orderly crowds. People were being instructed to tune radios, smartphone apps, TVs, and computers to live transmissions of speeches from the rally once it started.
Jesse dressed in neutral deep blues, avoiding logos and graphics on his shirt, windbreaker, and cap, making sure he had nothing except essential ID and money in his pockets. He jammed a pair of cardboard PUD scanners and his cellphone into his front pockets. Then he climbed down from his apartment and exited his building, joining the throngs sweeping up the street. Drones darted above the throngs as parrots wheeled and squealed further into the overcast sky.
Along the way, Jesse tested Kevin’s flimsy PUD scanner. He was momentarily overcome by vertigo with a soaring view over the crowds massing along the street he walked. Once used to his altered perception, he used the “third eye” switch to change PUD broadcasts randomly before refolding the clever device into his front pocket. He stopped for a cup of coffee and a breakfast bagel. He wolfed the bagel down with gulps of java as he walked, thinking about what Kevin had said. Was David alive but trying to mask his whereabouts? Or was he dead and was someone or something setting up a “false flag” operation? In either case the question remained: why? Why was so much effort being expended to fake a deceased David’s identity, or why was a still living David in need of such elaborate camouflage? Why the cryptic message, and why had Jesse been targeted to receive the mysterious call? At 18th and Guerrero, it was obvious that every street in every direction was completely filled with people, all of them headed toward Dolores Park. Jesse took a detour to the Mission Street Police Station, where he was confronted by a suspicious pair of cops standing guard.
“State your business,” the one with a blond crew-cut demanded.
“I need to speak with Investigator Van Cornin,” Jesse said.
“And who are you?”
“He left a card asking for me to call. My name’s Jesse Steinfeld.”
“Wait right here.” The blond cop backed into the station.
Several minutes later, he returned.
“Come in.”
“If Van Cornin isn’t here, I can come back? I’ve got a demonstration to go to.”
“He’s here. You can see him.”
Jesse found the police station a tempest of activity, most of it frantic and harassed. After all, the building was entirely surrounded by thousands upon thousands of demonstrators, albeit all of them en route to the rally in Dolores Park. He was ushered past a reception desk to a waiting area, where he sat with the dregs of his coffee. The station’s thick walls muted the yelling, chanting, and singing from the crowd. A bank of twenty-four video screens behind the reception desk rippled with airborne image after image—no doubt shot by UAVs—of sidewalks, streets, and the park entirely congested with people. The police officer running the displays kept punching a console and cursing, and a sergeant loomed behind him, his expression dark. A vein in the sergeant’s forehead bulged. Here and there, a screen would flip off, then back on, and the picture would be replaced by a video of the police massacre of the six gang members in the BART plaza, or of the black bloc protester killing the restaurateur. The officer would switch off the errant massacre and homicide streams with a curse, then replace them with an appropriate PUD view. But the screens kept changing back. Jesse smirked. Kevin was indeed running the hack.
“Jesse Steinfeld?” A harried man in sharp civilian clothes approached and extended a hand. “Thanks for responding to my request to meet. We’re busy today, and a bit jammed. If you don’t mind, we’ll take this into one of the interview rooms.”
The man gestured for Jesse to take the hall ahead of him. The investigator was lean and graying. He held a file folder in one hand and a cellphone in the other. The windows in the interview room faced the waiting area, the reception desk with its wall of videos, and the entrance still under guard. After he settled Jesse into a chair, the investigator took the chair opposite him, across a table.
“Do you know why I asked you to come in today?” Van Cornin asked.
“I take it has something to do with the demonstration against this police station last Sunday evening.” Jesse had decided to play it cagey, though not too circumspect.
“This is related. But before I talk about my actual concerns, I’d like to point out that we did notice that you participated in that assault on our station.”
Van Cornin pulled out four photographs from his folder and slid them across the table, one at a time. All were of the Sunday evening riot in front of the Mission Street Police Station. The first two showed an indistinct white blob on the far edge of the mob, circled in red. The second two were copies of the first two, blown up, the white blob again circled in red, the resolution lost in pixilated graininess.
“Recognize these? They’re shots of you at the riot.”
“Damn if I can tell who they are.”
“Take it from me, these are photos of you. If need be, we can use some pretty sophisticated computer tools to determine that this was you at Sunday’s mob action.”
“Okay, I never said I wasn’t there. But I was clear across the street, nowhere near the fighting. I attended, but I didn’t participate, as you claim. I never shouted anything. I never threw anyth
ing. I never even heard any police warning to disperse, or any warning that failure to disperse would result in arrest.”
“That’s because we were too busy fending off a pretty serious attack on our station by armed and dangerous terrorists. We didn’t have time for niceties like warning you all to disperse.”
“I was there. You have pictures. I wasn’t doing anything illegal. I was observing the action, not taking part in it.”
“What about these?” Van Cornin pulled two more glossies from his folder. They showed a barely recognizable Jesse taking in the PUD takedown on Guerrero three days earlier from down the block.
“Where am I doing anything illegal? Or even inappropriate? I’m an innocent bystander!”
The investigator slid the pictures back into a pile, tapped them into alignment, and slid them back into the file.
“There were a dozen clandestine, violent anarchist organizations there the evening of the riot, escalating the street fighting into a full-blown insurrection. We have surveillance and intelligence on several hundred known terrorists who were involved—”
“I already told you, I wasn’t involved. I’m not a part of any violent anarchist group, and I certainly wasn’t at that demonstration as part of any terrorist attack or militant organization. I was there, sure, but all I did was watch what happened that night.”
Van Cornin glared. Jesse refused to be cowed. Their staring match was interrupted when a fellow cop entered and whispered in the investigator’s ear. Through the interview room windows, Jesse glimpsed the frenetic pace of the police in the rest of the station. Massacre and homicide videos now dominated the screens behind the reception desk.
“I’ll get back to your role in the riot. Now, let’s talk about what you did after the assault on the police station. After that mob of yours rampaged up and down Valencia, laying waste to everything on the street. After you and your crew killed Sam Barbier, the Spencer’s Restaurant owner.”
“What the fuck do you mean, my mob, my crew? I didn’t riot. I didn’t kill anybody.”
“The video’s been all over the media. Showing the whole damned murder. In digital detail.”
“Do you mean that video?” Jesse jammed a finger at the twenty-four videos at the reception desk. A quarter of them showed the Valencia Street homicide. And not the abbreviated video shown by the media, but the full version that Kevin had sent him. “Go ahead, bring in a screen if you want. Magnify the video to your heart’s content. You know damn well what it will show. That I ran up to that confrontation in front of that restaurant when it was in progress, when that fucker stepped out and blasted the restaurant owner. There was nothing premeditated about that, not on my part. That fucking video proves it.”
“I find it difficult to accept that you were around for the assault on the UAV and in the crowd during the riot and then wound up in front of that Valencia restaurant when the homicide occurred—and it was all a coincidence. I don’t believe in coincidence. If I were writing fiction, all these ‘coincidences’ would come off as extremely contrived.”
“Look, I did nothing wrong. And nothing illegal. If you want to charge me with a crime, do so. If not, I’m getting fed up with this so-called interview. I’ve got a demonstration to go to.”
“You’re telling me you don’t have any connection with Tobias Barnabas?”
The investigator stopped for effect. They waited each other out in silence. The wall of videos was settling back to covering the demonstration outside.
“Is Toby Barnabas wanted?” Jesse finally asked, cautiously.
“We haven’t charged this Tobias Barnabas with anything,” Van Cornin said, now equally cautious. “Let alone with the shooting of Spencer restaurateur Samuel Barbier. However, we consider him a person of interest in the homicide of Barbier and would like to talk to him. Unfortunately, he seems to have gone to ground.”
“Off the record,” Jesse said, after a pause. “I know Toby Barnabas only in passing. He’s not a friend, and barely an acquaintance. For the record, the man in the video may or may not be Toby Barnabas, but I don’t know who shot the restaurant owner on Valencia last Sunday.”
The pause was even longer this time.
“We’d be grateful for your help,” Van Cornin finally said. “Any help you could give us, in catching whoever murdered Sam Barbier.”
Jesse left the police station and walked into streets crammed with now hushed demonstrators. Someone had managed to scrawl He Lives! in dripping red spray-paint on the station’s facade. He noticed Ari Moser across the jammed space, and they exchanged salutes. No one moved, and a glimpse through the PUD scanner revealed that Dolores Park was packed solid with demonstrators who spilled into the surrounding neighborhoods in every direction, occupying everything for blocks around. The rally had started. Speeches echoed from nearby cellphones and the far-off park.
“They are gunning down our young men in the streets. ¡Como perros!”
There was no mass movement possible, but people could still move individually as long as they did so carefully. He eased his way gradually up 18th toward the park, beneath spirals of parakeets in flight, using the PUD scanner to scope out his surroundings from drone height. It appeared that the antifascist black bloc, tens of thousands strong and growing, had positioned itself on the northern edge of the massive demonstration, occupying the streets from 16th to the old Armory.
“¡Basta! It’s time to say ‘enough!’ No more!”
Additional police cars raced from the surrounding city to join the cops who’d taken up a northern perimeter around the black bloc, sirens wailing, anticipating what was to come. “They say there are four million of us at this demonstration,” a woman with earbuds marveled next to him, “occupying these streets.” The antifascists, now numbering in the hundreds of thousands, had decided not to wait. Jesse reached the intersection of 18th and Dolores and noticed a tall female Goth, her leather jacket emblazoned with a “Tank Girl” graphic, walking casually up Dolores beneath cawing ravens and strings of papel picado. Cynthia.
“The police and FBI are stormtroopers for state and capital. ¡Ellos son asesinos!”
Figures all in black rushed the police lines, thousands of them, wave after wave overrunning the police cars, overturning them, setting them ablaze, ignoring the paltry clouds of tear-gas wafting around the battle. Dancers plumed in ostrich-feather headdresses paraded by. He followed Cynthia at a cautious distance. She would stop, look around surreptitiously, then start walking again when she gauged the coast was clear. He kept tailing Cynthia, ignoring Angie Markham across the street as she gesticulated plaintively with one hand while holding up one corner of her An Injury to One Is an Injury to All banner with the other hand.
“¿Quién se beneficia? Comrade Pickett’s murder is political, but so are the murders of our young hombres.”
Jesse played coy following Cynthia, who pretended to wander even as she kept to an obvious direction. She dissembled once again at the corner of 19th, feigning interest in a peddler’s handmade beaded jewelry and cempasúchil bouquets. Not-so-distant explosions accompanied columns of smoke and flame racing into the sky amid fleeing flocks of frightened parrots. Glimpses through the PUD scanner showed the rioting black bloc now rampaging up the 101 off-ramp and on-ramp. Storming heaven.
“To our compañeros de correrías in the Bloque Negro, we salute your bravery even as we disagree with your tactics and politics. ¡Tu lucha es nuestra lucha!”
The antifascists quickly overran the eastern freeway, surging toward the intersection with 101 running north and south. Trapped cars honked ineffectually. “The governor has just declared martial law,” someone nearby said while listening to a smartphone. “The National Guard is mobilizing from Treasure Island.” Children waved copal incense sticks as they passed. Cynthia glanced stealthily around, then ducked into a bank of hedges.
“¡Solidaridad con el pueblo Mexicano! These are not just our streets, this our land. Without our land, there can be no freedom. ¡Es mej
or morir de pie que vivir de rodillas!”
Olive-green motorcycles, jeeps, armored personnel vehicles, anti-riot trucks, and tanks full of troops wearing urban camouflage rumbled across the Bay Bridge and down 101 toward a confrontation with the expanding riot. Crows gathered on wing for the battle. Cynthia hugged a smirking Toby amid the shrubbery. Jesse’s smartphone rang with the incessant guitar thrum of Leonard Cohen’s “Partisan.” When had he turned the ringer back on? He answered. “Jesse, this is David Pickett.”
About The Author
Born in 1952, I was a late hippie and an early punk. I began self-publishing at 17 with a high school underground newpaper, and burned my draft card at age 18. Essays from my publication Point-Blank/San Diego’s Daily Impulse have been reprinted in Semiotext[e] USA, the Utne Reader, and War Resisters’ League’s short-lived youth publication SPEW! I have also published essays in Against The Wall, the New Indicator, Draft NOtices, and the San Diego Newsline. My first science fiction novel End Time: Notes on the Apocalypse was published in 1994 by AK Press and was reprinted in Portuguese by a Brazilian publisher, Conrad Livros. I live in San Francisco, where I write a monthly column of news analysis and political commentary for Maximum Rocknroll under the name “Lefty” Hooligan. The 2018 speculative mystery “The Death of David Pickett” is a prequel to my 2016 near-future science fiction thriller 1% Free, which are published through my business 62 Mile Press.
Author Links:
Personal blog: http://gamatiasz.wordpress.com
Political blog: http://leftyhooligan.wordpress.com
Website aggregator: http://gamatiasz.com
Publishing website: http://62milepress.com
The Death of David Pickett Page 4
