77th Street Requiem

by Wendy Hornsby

  “You wanted a film crew, you got it.”

  “You making Gone With the Wind or something? You need that many people?”

  “All I need is a cameraman, but this is a major studio production. I don’t know half the people here or what they’re supposed to be doing—we hire according to union protocol.”

  We had hardly entered the block before I heard angry voices coming toward us and saw Brady, my gaffer—the head electrician—striding with a purpose down the sidewalk, aimed toward me. He scowled. Monica, one of the lighting technicians, followed him, scowling her own scowl. But she stopped two houses away when Brady came right up to meet me. She leaned against a scrawny tree and began to weep.

  I counted to ten before I asked Brady, “Is there a problem?”

  “No problem. Just wanted to inform you that I have to make a four o’clock flight to Sacramento.”

  “We have a full shooting schedule today. We’ll be hustling all day to finish before we lose the light. Sunset’s at six-forty.”

  “I can’t get a later flight.”

  On the cusp of overload, I smiled at him instead of decking him only because I didn’t want to be bothered with a union grievance. I said, “It’s going to be hot today. Can you rig some decent ventilation for the people stuck by the truck outtakes?”

  “If I’m gonna make my flight, I gotta leave here by three,” Brady persisted. “And that’s pushing it.”

  Try another diversion. “What’s with Monica?”

  “She’s all bent. She made reservations for us at some effing hotel cuz my wife is out of town. But my kid’s gonna be starting goalie in a tournament in Sacramento and the wife says I gotta be there.”

  At the mention of hotel plans, Ridgeway suddenly looked at Monica as if she might have potential.

  I told Brady, “If you had enough time to make airline reservations, you had enough time to notify us to get a replacement.”

  He started unfurling excuses. “I called in, they musta lost the message.”

  “Do whatever makes you happy,” I said, looking up into Brady’s flushed, bearded face. “By all means, leave the shoot in plenty of time to get your flight if that’s what you want. But I need a gaffer all day today. You’re a key man. Union rules say I can replace you permanently if you walk off the job during filming. Keep that in mind when you make your decision.”

  Brady tried again, warming up with a “But …” that got no further.

  He was a pro. He knew that I meant what I said, so the whining shouldn’t have gone even that far. But Brady was first of all a southern-bred, forty-eight-year-old hunk of Nam vet who still sometimes called me sweetheart. His persistence now and then nudged us into the no-man’s-land between his machismo and my authority. It was clear from his huffing and puffing that one wrong word from me and Brady would self-destruct.

  I did the safe thing, and wheeled on Monica. “Let’s get back to work.” Then, cooler, I challenged Brady: “So?”

  “Nice legs,” he said, leering, and shambled back toward the trucks.

  Monica, triumphant over having won back custody of Brady, at least until he got a replacement, led us up the sidewalk. Brady lagged, pouting, for maybe ten yards. Then his native resilience, or Monica’s hard young ass, won back his good humor. He caught up to her, tickled her, nuzzled her until they were both laughing and teasing. It was like being led by jesters.

  I didn’t give a damn what the two of them did on their own time as long as it didn’t affect their work. So I don’t know why all of a sudden I thought about Brady’s wife, unless it was that black hole again. The wife was nice, looked a little like Monica, but with a few more years on her and after three babies her ass wasn’t as hard. I wondered whether she knew her marriage was in the toilet. Or whether she cared.

  “Is it always like this?” Ridgeway chuckled. “You sound like the counselor at summer camp.”

  “Sometimes I feel like one, too.”

  When he laughed, I almost liked him.

  Ahead of us, Monica reached out and put a possessive hand on Brady’s sleeve, but he did not acknowledge it. He never seemed to fully acknowledge her. She just seemed to be happy breathing in whatever he exhaled.

  Ridgeway was watching them now with a sort of longing in his eyes.

  I asked him, “What makes her love a guy like that?”

  “You’re asking me?”

  “Yes, I am. What does she get from holding the short side of the eternal triangle? How can that be enough for her? She’s laughing now, but she always seems so sad.”

  “You speaking from experience?”

  “I had a husband who taught me a lot about triangles.”

  “Husband, past tense?” Ridgeway asked, looking at me through his lashes.

  “Past tense.”

  “No more triangles for you?”

  “Nope.” I didn’t bother to say anything about the cupcake named Olga that I peeled off Mike’s lap one night in a cop bar. And who now and then leaves messages for Mike.

  I took out the 35-mm camera I always carry in my bag and snapped a few frames of the pair in front of us. Sometimes I need to see something on film before I can sort it out.

  Monica fell into that black hole we were talking about. Was this adoring and adorable female creature—cute from the top of her curly head to the tips of her pointy-toed boots—somehow necessary to Brady and Mike and all the rest of them?

  Guido had cameras and lights set up all over the narrow concrete-paved yard of 122 West Eighty-ninth. He acknowledged my arrival with a shout of something I could not hear but was sure was obscene. He had very little room to work in, and far too many spectators walking into his field of vision to satisfy his perfectionism.

  In 1974 when Frady was found in the backmost apartment, 122 was a burned-out shell. It had been rebuilt sometime later, a long, narrow shaft of white stucco containing three small apartments; Frady had died in 122½. Unless you count the straight bars on all the windows, there was absolutely no ornamentation, nothing beyond building code minimum in evidence.

  The house faced due west. We didn’t have very much time left to shoot the front before the sun hit that long expanse of white and concrete and washed it out with light. That’s what I was thinking about when Ridgeway spoke.

  “Neighbors call it the ghost house,” he said. “On account of Roy. Lot of people won’t come past here. Same situation uptown where the SLA went down; landlord won’t rebuild up there, says she hears screaming coming from the vacant lot.”

  “Did you ever hear the screaming?”

  “All the time. Saw snakes and spiders for a while, too.” He squinted against the hazy sun. “I’ve been sober six years.”

  “I heard you had a problem.” I turned my back on the yard and studied Ridgeway for a moment. He had been very straightforward with me, so I just plunged in, said, “You were drinking at the academy the night Frady died.”

  “That’s what they tell me.” The topic didn’t seem to bother him. “But if I was, I don’t remember. Blacked out a good portion of that time. Drown myself in Rio de Jack Daniel’s.”

  “Do you remember talking to Frady that night?”

  He shook his head. “Nothing.”

  “Could you have left with Frady, or followed Frady?”

  He looked grim. “You want to know if, drunk off my ass, did I follow Frady, ambush him, cuff him, bring him down here, shoot him, drive his car six or eight miles away, wipe it clean, walk back home? I think I would remember some of that.”

  “Where did you wake up?”

  “Backseat of a patrol car, halfway through my shift. I guess I went down to Seventy-seventh to sleep it off. My partner got me dressed and into the car, covered for me at roll call. Didn’t want me to get into trouble.”

  I knew the story, and knew who his partner was that rotation. I said, “Hector was a good friend.”

  He flinched again.

  The one good perk that came with the network contract was Fergie, my per
sonal tweenie. She came out of one of the Winnebagos waving a sheaf of notes in one hand and a Diet Coke in the other. She handed me both the notes and the Coke. “Your ex called, the main squeeze called, Lana wants you to take a follow-up meeting in her office at two. And your mom called. She sounded upset but she said no emergency.”

  “My mother?” I leafed through the messages, looking for my mother’s, while Fergie waited for instructions. Mother had called from my sister’s hospital room. “She said no emergency?”

  “No emergency.”

  “I’ll call her later. Fergie, this is Barry Ridgeway. Give him three reasons why he should sign a waiver and do an on-camera interview for us.”

  “One,” she said, taking the Coke from me and handing it to him, “if you say no, Maggie will hound you to death. You might as well just skip the fuss and agree to it.”

  He touched my arm. “Your mother didn’t teach you to say please?”

  “Please is a question,” I said. “Ask a question, you might not like the answer.”

  He laughed. Ridgeway had been looking around at all the activity and I thought he was enjoying it. I knew he would say yes just for an excuse to hang around. For something more interesting to do than counting sheets and towels.

  I asked Fergie, “Any sign of a guy from Rolling Stone?”

  “He’s over there hanging out with Guido.”

  The Winnebago door flew open and Fergie ducked in front of us, groaning, “Oh God. Thea.”

  I had met Thea D’Angelo, certified public accountant, only the week before and already wanted to ditch her. She saw me as she bounced down the steps, squealed a greeting, and headed straight for me. Thea’s mass of graying hair was a crown worthy of Medusa.

  “Maggie’s here,” Thea sang out, as if any of the crew, A, hadn’t already noticed, or, B, gave a damn. Thea had to be forty-something, but there was a childish dopiness about her that made her seem much younger. Like a lunkish adolescent, she towered over me.

  Thea said, “Hi!” to Ridgeway with too much familiarity to someone she hadn’t met as she presented me with a stiff brown balance-sheet binder. And then she waited for me to maybe pat her unruly head or otherwise gush in appreciation. I had told her twice already that account sheets should be delivered directly to Lana, but she insisted on showing them to me first—no matter where I was.

  Thea was bright, competent, and didn’t smell bad. The quality that repelled us all was, I believe, her endless neediness. I wished, like Fergie, that I had someone to duck behind every time I saw her.

  I thumbed through the pages of figures while Thea waited, expectant. “Thanks, Thea. Looks great. Now, I’d really appreciate it if you’d get them right up to Lana.”

  “Now?” Thea seemed crestfallen. “But we’re still shooting.”

  I put my hand on her shoulder. “Lana needs them right away.”

  “All right, you’re the boss.” She winked at Ridgeway and then, ever chipper, she jogged off toward her ancient VW and folded her bulk inside.

  “Thanks,” Fergie said, watching Thea to make sure she was going. “She drives me crazy. Underfoot all the time.”

  Guido called out my name and I started toward him.

  Somewhere behind me there was a pop and a fizzle, then instantly the low, cumulative hum of the generators, the air-conditioning running in the film trucks and crew trailers, the buzzing of lights and recorders and fans, and all the conversation disappeared. I had not been aware how much noise there was around us until it all stopped. Pop! then silence.

  I yelled, “Brady!” just as he came out of the electrical truck at a run with Monica right behind him. He grabbed a fire extinguisher from among the black equipment cases stowed in the side yard, with me and Fergie close on his heels as he sped toward the source of the sound.

  A slender gray plume of smoke rose from a big diesel generator built into the back of the electrical truck. Brady got there first, yanked open a service hatch, and aimed the extinguisher on the insides. There was no fire, only bad-smelling smoke.

  “Overload,” he said. “She blew.”

  “Can you fix it, or is there a backup?” I asked. The others crushed in behind us, breathing hard. Fergie leaned against me.

  Brady poked around. “We can get a replacement. But the problem’s gonna be if there was a surge, coulda messed up a lot of things, especially anything with computer components. We can’t just turn the power back on until we get everything that’s vulnerable checked out. Gonna take time. Maybe a day or two.”

  “When is that flight?” I caught his eye, stared him down until he looked away. “Any replacements we need—equipment or personnel—I can get within the hour. We better order an autopsy on this baby, find out what happened so it doesn’t happen again.”

  Guido swore. “In an hour the light’s fucked. Lost. A whole day shot.”

  Fergie pulled my arm. I looked down to see her rubbing her left leg. She said, “I think I sprained something.”

  I knelt, peeled down her sock, and saw a purple, golf ball-size lump rising over the slender ankle. Ridgeway saw it, too, and offered his substantial bulk as support. He said, “Should be looked at.”

  Fergie was in pain. I was in extremis. Brady was sweating more than I thought the heat of the day warranted. He said, focus somewhere beyond my left ear, “Overloads happen all the time.”

  CHAPTER

  5

  While Fergie was getting her ankle wrapped and iced so that Guido could take her to the emergency room, Barry Ridgeway wandered off to talk with Monica. I wanted to set up an interview appointment before he got away, but Jack Newquist, the Rolling Stone man, attached himself to me.

  “I want to follow you around,” he said. “I want to be the fly on your wall. You okay with it?”

  “As long as you don’t follow me home, I’m okay with it,” I said. “Do you know what we’re working on?”

  “Lana Howard gave me background, and Guido pretty much filled me in.”

  He seemed innocuous enough, an average-size, middle-aged man with a three-day growth on his chin and the freelancer’s uniform: cowboy boots, faded Levi’s, blue work shirt with sleeves rolled up to the elbow, battered backpack. My first thought when Lana told me he would be hanging around was that he would be a pain in the butt. My second thought was that I would palm him off on Guido. But then Fergie got hurt, and I reconsidered the man’s potentially leechlike presence. I needed to cover Fergie’s afternoon agenda, and that meant going into some places where it wasn’t real smart to go alone. And Guido, every woman’s favorite rent-a-guy, was otherwise engaged.

  Thinking Newquist would do as a surrogate ride-along, I held the door of Guido’s Jeep and invited Jack to climb into the backseat with me. Guido dropped us off at Jimmy’s Smokey Pit, where I had left my car, then sped away to the emergency room with Fergie.

  I was happy to get out of the Jeep and be spared Guido fuming anymore about Brady’s screwup and how it had ruined his window of perfect light—“Shooting in black and white, there’s no margin. The light is everything.” I wasn’t in the mood to stroke him.

  Fergie didn’t seem to mind. Truth is, everything Guido said sounded to her like God talking.

  I transferred Jack to my car. As he buckled his seat belt, he said, “Fergie doesn’t seem to be in a lot of pain.”

  “Going to the emergency room spares her from making a nasty follow-up visit to a hard case named Sal Ypolito, proprietor, Hot-Cha Club.” I started the car. “You’ll like the place.”

  “Hot-Cha Club?” Jack said, sounding dubious.

  “Girls! Girls! Beautiful All Topless Girls!” I said, quoting Sal’s billboards. “Sweet little dive over on Florence.”

  He smirked. “I was afraid this assignment would be a snore. Guess I was wrong.”

  “Could be.” I found an opening in traffic and eased away from the curb. “We have some time before the appointment with Sal, thanks to Brady. Want a neighborhood tour?”

  “Anything you wa
nt to do, I’m your slave.” He popped a fresh cassette into his recorder.

  I turned onto Manchester and began to narrate. “If you drew a circle from Jimmy’s Smokey Pit, a half-mile radius would encompass the Seventy-seventh Street police station, the Frady murder house, the Symbionese Liberation Army safe house, and Frady’s favorite liquor store. I want the film to convey the geographical relationship among those four sites. That feat is as crucial to the discussion of Frady’s last night as it is tricky to pull off on a TV screen. We’re going to try using a helicopter, see if an aerial overview works.”

  “You’re all business, aren’t you?” Jack said, grinning at me.

  “When I’m at work I am.”

  He chuckled a little. “Where are we going?”

  “Scouting,” I said. “I want another look at the house where the SLA hid out before they moved uptown.”

  Jack patted his shirt pocket. “Mind if I smoke?”

  “Actually, I do. It’s tough enough to breathe in this city.”

  He didn’t say anything. He just dropped his hand from his pocket and stared out the window.

  From Jimmy’s Manchester corner, I drove four blocks over to Eighty-fourth Street and parked in front of the little freestanding house at 833 West. Cramped quarters for nine people, I thought.

  Sometime after the SLA moved across town and met their fiery deaths in another borrowed shack, and after the FBI raid and the press blitz, the little house on Eighty-fourth Street changed hands. The original wood siding had been crudely stuccoed over, so the place now looked like a badly frosted lemon cake. None of the corners seemed quite square and the tiny enclosed porch sagged so precariously that it looked as if, on a very hot day, it just might melt right off.

  I rolled down my window. “This is where the SLA lived the night Roy Frady was shot.”

  He studied the house, then he studied me. “The SLA killed Roy Frady? Don’t you think that’s a stretch?”

  “I think it’s a real possibility,” I said. “From the beginning of my research, the SLA angle to the death of Roy Frady intrigued me because of its dramatic potential. Much wilder than a jealous lover story or a gang banger beef or an obsessed cop-hater or a jilted wife with insurance-dollar plums dancing in her head. Besides, the SLA is a topic near and dear to me. And has been from the day Patty Hearst was kidnapped in January of 1974.”