Who will devote much nervous talk to gangrene, sepsis, and blood poisoning, none of which he is fated to suffer.
It is predestined that Guy will prevail upon Trout to seek treatment for his wound at home in Canada, with its superior system of socialized medicine.
His confidence restored, Guy redoubles his effort to get the tapes. Teko stammers something about transcribing the tapes himself. Too incriminating, too risky to let them out of his possession. Plus, Yolanda adds, Tania sounds like a fucking zombie on them: bad PR. Guy smiles and agrees, his counterarguments falling away, growing small and faint. He will live. For the foreseeable future. Whatever that means.
Grateful for: the ceaseless insects. Grateful for: the gentle breeze.
Guy will use his dwindling funds to purchase a Greyhound bus ticket to that nation for Trout; on the bus Trout will sit next to a recently released ex-convict who will suffer four petit mal seizures during the trip, further rattling the academic cum freelance writer’s nerves.
After leaving Trout at the Port Authority Bus Terminal, Guy is fated to enter a Blarney Stone tavern on Fortieth Street, where he will sit moodily drinking draft Schaefer and eating pretzels while watching the Mets beat the Atlanta Braves 6-5.
It shall come to pass that Guy will return to Ninetieth Street to find Randi all packed up and ready to announce that she has unilaterally accepted an offer from a friend, an offer Guy long sat on, to move the operations of the ISSS to his spacious house in Portland, Oregon.
Yolanda barks at Tania to get inside the house and put the groceries away, then notices that neither Joan nor she carries any. Tania and Joan break up, and Yolanda flushes a deep red.
“Get inside anyway,” she says.
Tania flips her a quick finger but turns and goes in.
Yolanda draws Joan aside. “What brought you back so soon? Forget something?”
“I thought you might need me,” Joan says.
Guy consciously cedes control. It is part of the mechanism of his gratitude, that he should give up that which he most desires, other than his own life. He watches it all float away. Everything, drifting high into the blue, penetrating in the course of its lazy flight the cotton puff clouds that hang above. For which, too, he is so grateful.
They need to get across the country, Teko says. Guy feels—redundancy intended—drained, exhausted, spent. Not enough synonyms to sum up this feeling of toilworn fatigue. But grateful. And all he wants, really, is to help them get across the fucking country. A rare confluential moment, unanimity of opinion. Let him, if living is to be his compensation, undo everything he has done, restore things exactly to what they had been at the beginning of the summer. Let him, if he is to survive to see another day—or, OK, say at minimum another twenty, twenty-five years—return these people, these comrades, these trusted friends, to their fatherland (so to speak), to their familiar folkways, to their lares and penates.
But Randi will kill him if he spends another dime.
CORRECTION: Guy will emerge from the tavern to discover that his car is “missing,” though he will not report the apparent theft for a week.
After the car is discovered, wrecked and vandalized, near Seelyville, Pennsylvania, Guy and Randi are destined to realize $1,160 in insurance proceeds.
“Coincidentally,” Seelyville is only a few miles from the South Canaan farmhouse.
In the glove compartment police will find a sheet of paper seeming to detail a cross-country route.
Teko has a plan in mind. His hand is on Guy’s arm, fingertip-light, as he explains the revolution’s progress. The revolution already shows signs of going well in California. He sounds like an entrepreneur dealing in subversion, speaking of bombs going off the way he might of new franchises opening: happening all over the state. He has people in place, in key positions, doing advance work, opening up the territory. He’s been in touch with Susan Rorvik; she’s been laying the groundwork, establishing a “second team.” Teko is relaxed, enthused, happy at the prospect of returning to the West Coast. This was all it took. Just like Randi, Guy thinks. People just get hooked on the damn place. Is it the weather, the earthquakes, or the blood-drinking beach cults, or are they all basically the same thing? But he’s grateful. Grateful for: the warmth of the summer sun. Grateful for: unfettered access to a revolving charge account.
The $1,160 will turn out to be just enough money to cover the rental of a Ryder truck and the cost of separately transporting Teko, Yolanda, Joan, and Tania to the West Coast.
Once again Guy will squire Tania, to Las Vegas, where Guy will install Tania in a vacant room in his parents’ motel (Thinking: Touch of Evil. Thinking: Psycho) until Jeff Wolfritz arrives to transport her to the new safe house, the origin spot for the New SLA, in Sacramento.
Everybody’s happy! Skoal! Cheers! To health, prosperity, and long life, and let Guy’s generosity flow and flow.
At the outset of his journey, Guy is destined to order a hamburger at an A&W stand. Opening the burger to administer salt and pepper, he will discover a foreign object, a small, jagged piece of plastic amid the pickle relish and ketchup.
INTERLUDE 3
Dateline: Hillsborough
All the signs point to a breakthrough!
A breakthrough in the case!
Here is Thomas Polhaus¬ agent in charge, special agent¬ ah¬ in charge, San Francisco office. Of the FBI.
With no comment at the present time.
He has no comment.
He is playing it close to the vest.
Tight-lipped.
Whatever the feds have¬ they aren’t spilling it.
He is entering the Galton home. The Galton mansion.
Special Agent in Charge Thomas Polhaus¬ a veteran of many investigations, is entering stately Galton Mansion here in exclusive Hillsborough¬ with few words for the the members of the press assembled outside.
Tommy to his friends, his many friends.
Could it be that there’s been a breakthrough?
The Galton case has baffled law enforcement authorities for just about a year now.
There’s been speculation
some speculation. That the trail is growing cold.
The arrival here, today of Thomas Polhaus¬ in charge of the investigation from the beginning¬ raises speculation that there may have been a breakthrough.
The press is here¬ outside stately Galton Mansion in the exclusive enclave of Hillsborough¬ California.
It’s hard to imagine tragedy touching a town such as this. But it has.
The press has been here every day. The Galtons the gracious Galtons have been very accommodating of the needs of the press.
They understand as perhaps few others can that the press has a job to do. Just as they just as the FBI has its job.
The first family of journalism. Henry Galton is publisher of the San Francisco Examiner. Handsome¬ amiable fellow.
Under strain¬ though under visible strain visibly under strain. This ordeal. The ordeal of his daughter¬ kidnapped just a little under a year ago¬ by the radical the radical left-wing Symbionese Liberation Army.
And there is Thomas Polhaus¬ entering this well-appointed home. Under the eyes of the press.
Also visibly under strain. Though not as much not as much, of course, as the heartbroken parents of the young heiress, who now calls them pigs.
Just gotten engaged to be married when tragedy struck.
Full-faced¬ beautiful girl. Calls herself Tania and is photographed carrying a gun¬ a machine gun¬ wearing the baggy combat clothing of the left-wing revolutionary.
Could this mean a breakthrough?
The press has been waiting patiently.
Keeping a vigil. Doing their best not to disturb the family.
Eating doughnuts¬ over nine thousand doughnuts. About two dozen a day¬ I’d say. From the look from the looks of things. And drinking coffee. The Galtons have been kind enough to set up an urn the urn you see before me here. This silver urn has been kept f
illed with coffee. Day in and day out. Rain or shine. Inge and Maria have kept that urn filled with hot¬ fresh coffee for the members of the press keeping their grim vigil the grim yet hopeful vigil outside stately Galton Manor.
They are members of the staff here. Inge and Maria.
Both as hardworking and friendly a pair of of servants as you’d ever hope to meet.
Impossible to estimate how much coffee just how much coffee has been consumed by the press. Tens of thousands of cups. Or more. Also¬ neighbors concerned and sympathetic neighbors have donated food. Not so much lately but at first there was quite an outpouring of support from neighbors¬ all understandably sympathetic. And it came in the form of food. They supplied fried chicken and macaroni salads, all of which were devoured all of which were much appreciated by the members of the press. Though lately the press has sent out for sandwiches¬ now that the outpouring has subsided. Though you may be assured that the sympathy has not.
Letters and cards arrive daily sacks of correspondence expressing condolences wishing the family well.
The girl who one year ago on February 4 was taken violently from her home the home she shared with her fiancé.
Now she stands accused she has been accused of participating in numerous unlawful activities with these same captors the same people who violently wrenched her from her home she shared with her fiancè. Who would have predicted these this turn of events a year a long year ago.
She was to have been married in June.
And we can only speculate as to the reason why Mr. Thomas Polhaus has arrived here in the beautiful town of Hillsborough¬ at Galton Manor¬ as he has countless times before¬ since this tragedy began to unfold, a little under a year ago¬ special agent of the Federal Bureau of Investigation¬ which has devoted countless man-hours to investigating this one single case. Special Agent Polhaus heading up this case, the investigation of this case, he himself has put in countless hours sifting through leads and whatever this breaking news is that he may be bringing he is keeping to himself, now entering the elegant home that few of few members of the press have seen the inside of¬ despite our grim vigil here on the lawn the green lawn¬ so well groomed it would seem nigh impossible that such a lawn¬ not to mention the elegant manor house it surrounds, could be touched by terrible tragedy¬ tragedy that goes to the heart of the fears of the parents of every youngster in these confusing times, keeping the news to himself at this time, until he shares it with the anxious parents¬ Mr. and Mrs. Galton Lydia Galton quite a beauty in her day¬ but now under visible visibly under strain.
Gracious folks¬ very gracious¬ tolerating the presence of the members of the press here on the great lawn before Galton Castle, as they keep we keep our vigil a job to do and we do it as Mr. and Mrs. Galton well understand what with given their historic connection to the newspaper business among other among vast among many other holdings, including television and radio stations¬ magazines¬ mines, real estate including working farms and ranches, and stock in many of our nation’s largest corporations. One of the wealthiest families among the wealthiest one of the first families of the United States. And Mr. and Mrs. Galton will as they always have share whatever news Mr. Thomas Polhaus brings in their own at whatever time they deem appropriate which is the least which is the most which is all we can ask of them at this difficult and tragic time.
PART FOUR
Phantoms of the Coming Emptiness
Somewhere between the Yolo causeway and Vallejo it occurred to me that during the course of any given week I met too many people who spoke favorably about bombing power stations.
—JOAN DIDION
A CHILLY GRAY MORNING, not much sunlight at all, and the young woman fumbles as she affixes a flashbar to the bulky Polaroid camera she holds in her left hand. She is here, alone, outside a coffee shop at the Arden Plaza shopping center, in an unincorporated area of North Sacramento, preparing to photograph the Guild Savings and Loan Association, which sits bland and blameless across a painted grid of empty parking spaces. A sheriff’s department cruiser glides slowly through the lot. A good time to put the camera away and study the newspaper headlines framed in the vending machines lined up outside the coffee shop.
Lies come to her, arrive smoothly and without delay, and she selects one about waiting to meet a girlfriend here, about not wanting to go inside and start eating without her. It strikes her as the most unverifiably credible. But the cruiser, one of a total of five on patrol at any given time, exits the shopping center without stopping and drives away. She pulls a memo pad and pen out of her shoulder bag and notes the time.
Several newspapers mention her name in their headlines. It seems it’s been a year to the day since she was kidnapped. She gazes at a picture of herself in blank astonishment. Like, she can’t relate. In it, she is captured midstride as she approaches the photographer, feathered hair bouncing and haloed bright in the sun. She wears a clingy knit wraparound dress—the sort of thing her mother would have bought her—that hangs funny on her and makes her look fat, she thinks. Her full face is creased in a phony smile that makes her cringe now. The picture has been cropped so that her left arm extends, unseen, beyond its right margin, and she remembers that in the vanished portion of the photograph Eric Stump had walked at her side, gripping her hand, looking goofy and uncomfortable in blazer and loud patterned tie. The newspaper has apparently decided that he is of no importance; on that point she and it are in agreement.
That was the day they’d had their engagement photos taken, suffering through eight or ten rolls of film as the photographer, a fussy little man who’d driven up the hill from Burlingame, bitchily exhorted her to stop slumping and hunching. Their dead eyes above those castor-oil smiles. Eric laid his hands on her tentatively, and even now she could feel herself pulling away, caving into herself at his unsure touch. In the library she posed sitting on a straight chair while he stood behind her, his crotch, unfamiliarly sleek in pressed gray flannels, pushing hotly into her upper arm. But his hand gripped her shoulder as if it were a dirty diaper. And his face, don’t even ask. Sit up straight, honey. And smile.
Her dad holding the toothbrush to his upper lip. Her mother peering up from the books of silverware patterns she studied at the dining table. “Knock it off, Hank. You’re not a bit funny.” As far as her mother was concerned, she literally could not be bothered. If this unfortunate union had any chance of being transformed into something plausible, it would require her fullest attention to these crucial details.
Through the plate glass window, she sees the same cropped photo repeated inside the coffee shop, where several patrons gaze at copies of the paper as they eat breakfast, but she feels little concern that she will be recognized. She is well disguised today, in a red wig and blue-framed eyeglasses, with freckles dotted carefully on her nose and cheeks. In her purse is a valid driver’s license in the name of Sue Louise Gold and a Sacramento City College ID in the name of Sue Louise Hendricks, her “married name,” though Teko had urged her to select the name Anderson. For the initials, ha. Also, there’s a Colt Python, a weapon she disfavors because of its uncomfortably flared wooden grips. She feels loose-limbed, springy, ready for work. She moves out from under the overhang that shelters the shopping center walkway, standing beneath a decorative Tudor arch of tan stucco as she removes the Polaroid from the shoulder bag and lifts it to her face to snap photos of the bank, GUILD SAVINGS / G/S / INSURED SAVINGS, can’t miss it. Then she strolls over to have a look through the windows. It’s dark inside, a little over an hour to go before the place opens.
In the dimness, she sees the usual long wooden counter with several open tellers’ stations, the usual freestanding metal posts, velour ropes suspended between them, set at intervals on the carpet, the usual desks off to the side, and the usual carrels, or whatever you call them, with chained ballpoints and pigeonholes for deposit and withdrawal slips and a little placard indicating the date, which she notices has already been set to February 4, 1975. In the memo pad she m
akes a rough sketch of the bank’s interior: a rectangle, three circles, and a squiggly line.
Also, there’s an arrowed sign in the rear, softly glowing red in the darkness high up on the wall. Somewhere back thataway is the exit Yolanda spoke of, the “perfect” exit letting out into an alley behind the shopping center, from which a pedestrian walkway doglegs over to Venus Drive. She notes the location of the sign on her crude floor plan and the direction in which the arrow points. She walks around the periphery of the center, taking her time, trying to look as if she were just the sort of person who might want to take pictures of the ass end of a shopping center, for artistic purposes.
The alley curves in a series of stair steps around the rear of the center, with its back entrances and loading docks. Yellowjackets hover irritably near sealed Dumpsters. A chain-link fence runs along the other side of the alley, beyond which she can see glimpses of houses between closely spaced trees and thick undergrowth.
The back door of the bank is marked with the number, 4375, and the bank’s name. She stands before the back door, noting the terrain. Exiting, you’d bear left down the alley and then take the sharp right onto the walkway. She walks the route. The bank’s neighbor, the Arden Plaza Dry Cleaners, has its back door propped open with a cinder block, and she catches a whiff of the heavy fumes. The man inside, busy before a pile of clothes, ignores her.
About fifteen seconds, she figures, from the bank to the walkway, which is itself shielded from view by high stockade fencing on either side. She pays careful attention to these details, mindful of Marighella’s reflections on the prepared urban guerrilla: “Because he knows the terrain the guerrilla can go through it on foot, on bicycle, in automobile, jeep, truck, and never be trapped. Acting in small groups with only a few people, the guerrillas can reunite at an hour and place determined beforehand, following up the attack with new guerrilla operations, or evading the police circle and disorientating the enemy with their unprecedented audacity.” That’s the idea. Plus they’re low on cash right now.
Trance Page 38
