E.g., the motels across Katella Avenue. This is the epicenter of a kind of beauty, the wild optimism of transience. These postatomic permacrete structures stand in mute astonishment at their survival into the 1970s. There are the Little Boy Blue Motel, the Magic Carpet Motel, the Magic Lamp Motel, the Samoa Motel, the Space Age Inn, and a dozen others, each asserting itself through its towering sign, its brummagem modernism, its paradoxical insistence on the eternal half-life of fads.
Yolanda worked here, at Disneyland, one summer, having traveled to the Coast from Indiana. Tania tries to picture the grim revolutionary as a rube fresh from the Midwest, an eight-hour smile on her face throughout her shift, her uniform soiled and smelling of grease.
Teko pulls into the broad driveway of the Cosmic Age Lodge, which sits unobtrusively enough in the harsh light of late afternoon. Driving the Corvair slowly through the half-empty lot, he circles the structure, choosing a spot in the rear with plenty of vacant spaces on either side of it. As Yolanda and Teko instruct her to remain hidden in the backseat while they register, Tania worries for a moment that the little blue wreck will be mistaken for abandoned in its purposeful isolation. Set apart from the sturdy late-model Buicks and Mercurys that muscle up to the building, their car has that telltale bent and faded look of automotive worthlessness.
And it doesn’t escape her that now she’s the one stowed away under that blanket.
Meanwhile …
The law couldn’t believe its good fortune. Los Angeles ASAC Haff had been informed not only that the SLA vans had been located, but that someone had phoned to report that she had seen the SLA and to provide their address, while another caller had reported “white girls” sneaking around backyards—and all in the same immediate vicinity.
Now Haff leaned back in a chair and stared at the water-stained dropped ceiling in the office of the tow truck business where the field command post had been established. When the op had begun taking shape, he’d headed here from his office. Tips had continued to come in. When he arrived, he was briefed by an agent supervisor: “The switchboard’s like a Christmas tree.” Haff liked that one; it was the sort of malapropism that made his day.
But the LAPD was up his ass. They were just being outrageously aggressive. So Haff quietly made arrangements to minimize the Bureau’s role. Rather than leave the locals holding the whole bag, though, he thought he’d grant them one small favor, just for the sake of auld lang syne, their mutually beneficial relationship, and all the usual horseshit. He picked up the phone and dialed.
He said, “I’d like to speak to Commander Montag, please.” Randy Montag was the LAPD’s public relations liaison. Haff called him the Shadow because of his ability to cloud men’s minds.
Haff waited a few moments, drumming his fingers on the metal desk, and then said, “Randy. Gary Haff at the Bureau. We have an operation coming down that’ll require your fine hand. Oh, yeah. Lucy, you gotta lotta splainin to do.”
He laughed. “Oh, because it’s all yours, my friend. The federal government is just going to be pitching in and directing traffic.” He tilted his head back and laughed again. “Literally”
1466 East Fifty-fourth Street
Cinque handed Crystal another twenty; he was running low on cigarettes. Crystal took the money and headed up the alley toward Sam’s one more time. That was funny; there was cops all over the place.
The man behind the counter smiled at her. “You busy today,” he observed. “Gonna wear a groove between here and your place.”
She shrugged. She was pretty sensitive to what she perceived as criticism at her age. She handed him the twenty, and he exhaled sharply. “Y’all know I need to keep some change for other folks, don’t you?” he said, giving it back.
Sullenly she reached into her pocket and dug out a couple of singles and handed them to the man, keeping her hand extended for the change.
“Y’all want a receipt with that?” he asked sarcastically. She turned and left without answering.
As she turned down the alley she saw a white man sliding up to her sideways and she stopped and sighed. It was predictable on the level of cop bullshit. He took her aside, plunked her right out of her real life and into the realm of his convenience. Name and who you going to see, all that. Then he said she had to turn around. No one going through here. This was new. Why? Because he said so. He got a little look on his face, just this angry smile like he was going to cross that line they sometimes did where they start taking little liberties if you don’t start doing what they wanted so she dropped it and turned around. Before she entered Sam’s to return the cigarettes she remembered to put a big smile on her face.
YOLANDA RETURNS TO THE car to retrieve her purse and tersely whispers the room number to the hidden Tania. Tania waits another five minutes and enters the motel at 5:30 to join the others.
The brightly lit public areas of the Cosmic Age are unusual, with panels depicting odd geometric patterns affixed to the walls and staircases, and hanging lanterns offering a not altogether incongruous hint of tropical Orientalia. Sunlight streams blindingly through the tall windows that vertically band the building, and two clerks working the front desk squint across the counter at their guests. At this hour the lobby is becoming busy, as tired vacationers return to their rooms after an afternoon at the theme park. Blending easily with them, Tania ascends a staircase of molded cement steps mounted on an angled steel track.
The interior of the room is pure American Motel: beds, night tables, credenza with color television, picture of ships at sea bolted to the wall. Yolanda is keeping the heavy drapes closed. She lies faceup on one of the double beds, and when Tania enters, she informs the ceiling that Teko is checking the perimeter. Tania switches on the TV
Tania likes to adjust the color, the tint and the hue. She likes a bright, vivid picture, with unreal shades. To her, that’s the point of color television. It drove Eric Stump nuts.
She suddenly realizes that she hasn’t seen television since the night she was kidnapped. The whole country that she’s planning to take over is right here in this box, and she hasn’t even had time to notice how much she’s missed it, the detergents and the new Chevys and the powdered soups that come in an envelope, awaiting boiling water. There are Kenner nail salons, SST Smash-Up Derby cars, training schools that provide free tools upon graduation from their certificate programs. The double knits, the K-Tel records, the lonely Maytag repairman. Even Yolanda raises her head from the synthetic counterpane to watch.
And then there’s nothing more American than this, a preemption of the regularly scheduled broadcast for a special report. Uniformed men with guns outside a flimsy house. The only question is why is this so special after a television lifetime of Vietnam?
It’s the most ordinary of Southern California houses; Tania must have seen a thousand of them in just the last two days.
And they are saying, “SLA.”
And they are saying, “Kidnapped newspaper heiress Alice Galton.”
And they are saying, “Surrounded by police and FBI agents.”
Teko comes in, all excited, though for a brief instant he considers becoming pissed off that Tania and Yolanda have found the news on their own, that he was not the first to watch television. But he settles in, sitting at the foot of the bed Yolanda lies on. “It’s live,” he says.
1466 East Fifty-fourth Street
Della Hurd didn’t believe the boy’s story because his imagination was alive with bedevilment and he was a handful. But there was a look on his face like she doesn’t know what and that old fool Jimmy was standing by the fence with a waiting face. So she went in the back and checked the oven and the range and she shut her back door and turned the lock, all with profound misgivings. At her age there was less time to be wasting.
“I seen some strange things over there myself, Della,” said Jimmy. She waved her hand at him to shut him up.
“Lillian was there looking pretty sick.”
Lillian was like living with a aut
o wreck as far as Della Hurd was concerned.
“Place was a mess.”
What she just said?
“Full of white people and lots of guns.”
Della Hurd put her hand on Timmy’s shoulder and told him to stay with Mr. Reddy. Then she got on her horse and got over there.
It was worse than she expected. House looked like a army base except with beer bottles and half-eaten sandwiches all over. Ignoring the white people, she went to Sheila’s room and found her lying insensible on the bed. She went to that Lillian’s room and found her barely more responsive.
“Is everybody here drunk?” Della Hurd asked herself.
In the kitchen she found Cinque and some girl, catching the tail end of the same tired rap his daddy had laid down.
“I am ready to die,” he said, swigging from a bottle of plum wine, “but I’m gonna take a lot of motherfucking pigs with me. You got a smoke, baby?”
Della Hurd went up to the girl, a teenager she knew from around, and told her to get herself home. Then she turned on Cinque.
“What the hell you doing here? Get yourself out of this place right now and all your friends with you. This is my daughter’s home and my grandsons’. And you are not welcome to come in here and start making trouble.”
“Elder sister, your daughter has generously—”
“Don’t older sister me.”
“Don’t you think that black people need to stick together?”
She stopped talking to him and went back into Sheila’s room. She gathered between her thumb and forefinger some flesh from behind Sheila’s knee and gave it a twist. Sheila screamed.
“Get up, you. If I don’t get nobody else to listen to me I’m going to get you. We’re getting out of here right now.”
She helped Sheila off the bed.
Her daughter asked, “What about Lillian?”
“Not enough hours in the day to worry about Lillian,” said Della Hurd, and as she said it she looked at her watch. Just about 5:30.
As they walked out the door together, two of the white girls looked up.
“Oh, nice to meet you!” said one, brightly.
“Bye-bye!” said the other.
THEY THINK SHE’S IN there. Tania sits on the floor at the foot of one of the beds, staring up at the spectacle efflorescent on the television screen.
OCCUPANTS OF ONE FOUR SIX SIX EAST FIVE FOUR STREET: THIS IS THE LOS ANGELES POLICE DEPARTMENT SPEAKING. COME OUT WITH YOUR HANDS UP. COMPLY IMMEDIATELY AND YOU WILL NOT BE HARMED.
The police have made numerous surrender demands. At this point the SLA has to be aware that it is surrounded. The choice is theirs whether to surrender or engage the police in a shoot-out.
PEOPLE IN THE YELLOW FRAME HOUSE WITH THE STONE PORCH. ADDRESS ONE FOUR SIX SIX EAST FIVE FOUR STREET. THIS IS THE LOS ANGELES POLICE DEPARTMENT SPEAKING. COME OUT WITH YOUR HANDS UP. COMPLY IMMEDIATELY AND YOU WILL NOT BE HARMED.
She thinks, Stone porch?
ALL PEOPLE IN ONE FOUR SIX SIX EAST FIVE FOUR STREET: COME OUT WITH YOUR HANDS UP.
She watches as an entire family, a woman carrying one child and pushing two others ahead while a third child and an adult man bring up the rear, heads for safety, skirting a SWAT cop in a gas mask who is assuming an awkward combat stance, covering someone with his M-16.
YOU WILL NOT BE HARMED.
A window covered up with a flattened cardboard box that says VIVA. As in paper towels.
Is she in there?
COMPLY IMMEDIATELY AND YOU WILL NOT BE HARMED.
From inside the house there come heavy bumping sounds, like furniture being pushed against the doors.
We are not sure but Alice Galton, the kidnapped newspaper heiress who is wanted for questioning in a San Francisco bank robbery, may be in there with her SLA comrades, repeat may.
She knows that they think she’s in there. The surrender demands continue to come; she waits for her name to be called. Her name uttered through a bullhorn, what an idea.
There’s a whoosh as the Flite-Rites are launched. The front windows shatter. The first sounds of automatic rifle fire come from the house. The police response is immediate.
“That’s Cin’s weapon!” says Teko, with dubious accuracy.
WE NEED ALL THE GAS THAT YOU CAN ROUND UP FROM PARKER CENTER OR ANY GEOGRAPHICAL DIVISION AND WE NEED IT DOWN HERE CODE, AH, THREE, FAST AS YOU CAN GET IT DOWN. IN ADDITION TO THAT WE NEED ALL THE AMMO THAT WE’VE GOT IN THE SAFE. WE’RE TAKING AUTOMATIC FIRE FRONT AND BACK FROM THIS LOCATION; THEY’RE MUCH BETTER ARMED THAN WE ARE.
Police are saying the fugitives are better armed than they are.
holding the Negro residents of the house hostage.
Teko: “Bullshit! Fascist bullshit!”
here in the newsroom we have a noted expert
We have been informed that more than three hundred police and FBI agents are participating in this operation, an awesome amount of firepower marshaled against the radical sect the SLA.
who is here to tell us about the SLA and their strange beliefs.
Reporters and police both fall back, fall back in a wave broadcast in a series of shaky images by the MiniCam Unit of KNXT-TV
The dry wind sends the CS gas coming back. Searing and choking.
FALL BACK, GET BACK.
Doughnuts and crushed paper cups on the street from the reporters, down there where their feet had been.
The police have made more than a dozen surrender announcements, folks. They have given the radical members of the Symbionese Liberation Army ample chance to drop their weapons and surrender.
have brought this fusillade of death upon themselves.
unsubstantiated reports that there are hostages inside.
“Bullshit! Damn it!”
A SWAT cop on a neighboring roof edges over to peer into the kitchen window at 1466 and is fired upon. He throws himself backward and rests, breathing heavily, on the shake roof.
THIS IS SKY ONE WE HAVE POSSIBLE WOUNDED TEAM MEMBER ON ADJACENT ROOFTOP REPEAT POSSIBLE WOUNDED REQUEST IDENTIFY AND STATUS TEAM TWO MEMBER OVER.
The camera jumps and turns. It pans past the long, low fieldstone wall surrounding this bungalow.
speculated the SLA may have picked this house because of its natural defensive barrier in anticipation of just such a siege as this.
Then with the sound of sustained gunfire the camera lens is suddenly pointed at the pavement; it jogs wildly before someone turns it upright to aim it again toward the horizon. Teko reaches forward and changes the channel.
tells us that groups such as the SLA often have a strongly suicidal bent.
MOVE ’EM BACK. MOVE ’EM BACK.
I’m told the gas is launched through the window in canisters where it explodes, a nonlethal explosion inside that’s of sufficient force to release the gas and, hopefully, to subdue
Unknown whether the SLA is equipped with gas masks. They are, in any case, very heavily armed.
Three cops slam a group of boys to the ground when, curious, they stray within an unstated “inner perimeter.” The boys have come from one of the neighboring houses, maybe. One, who complains about the rough treatment, gets his lumps right away, an indiscreet knee to the kidney. There is a boo from the surrounding crowd, and the cops redouble their zealous effort to push its members back.
The cops are interested in mopping this up fast. They don’t want to be here after dark.
—Is this Watts? says one reporter. Watts, damn it? Someone said Compton and I want to know is it Watts?
—The fuck do you care? You need a dateline for TV?
—What’s a dateline?
The SLA’s trail was picked up by the police department and the Federal Bureau of Investigation after the robbery yesterday of a Los Angeles sporting goods store. A member of the SLA is reported to have stolen a pair of sweat socks and when store employees confronted him with the theft they were fired upon by a young woman who may have been missing heiress Alice Galton.
Trance Page 10
