Trance

by Christopher Sorrentino

  “Yes?”

  “You know, it wasn’t the worst thing for her. She’s a strong person, you know that? I don’t know if anybody ever would’ve found that out. She had to come through a lot of shit. She was a basket case when I met her. Out of the closet, what? Five, six weeks? Her boyfriend had just gotten barbecued by the pigs.”

  “They were together?”

  “You heard that tape. Can’t fake that shit, Hank.”

  “What about the mind control, the brainwashing?”

  “Well, she wasn’t brainwashed in the Laurence Harvey sense. But she wasn’t thinking for herself either. She said what they said. She did what they told her to do. But”—Guy laughs—“no more.”

  “Really?” Hank smiles. Not a bad smile, Guy thinks. Happy for his kid, like she’s coming out of her shell at school.

  “But these people,” Hank says, “you’re telling me they’re all through with violence?”

  “Um,” says Guy, “notionally, yes.”

  “Notionally?”

  “Maybe some armed propaganda here and there.”

  “You’d said more or less ordinary people?”

  “Well. ‘More or less’ meaning ‘relatively,’ in this context.”

  “Damn it, relative to what?”

  “Don’t kill the messenger, Hank.”

  “But?”

  “Relative to, say, Cinque. Relative even to Drew Shepard, for Christ’s sake.”

  That seems to make an impression. Dump it all on Teko. The two-faced little bastard deserves it.

  “Does she ever talk about us?”

  “She liked you,” says Guy.

  A carriage clock tucked into a bookcase in the gap between symmetrically shelved volumes softly bongs the hour. Only one chime, and surprised, Guy looks at his watch to confirm the time. Hank is stretching, suppressing a yawn, and Guy can see that their meeting is about to come to an end. He’s done a good job of fooling himself into believing that he came here tonight out of the goodness of his heart. But while he will be delighted to facilitate communications, if not an actual meeting, between parent and child, he needs to secure some sort of quid pro quo.

  “Well,” Hank says, “I’ve kept you long enough.”

  “De nada. I was happy to help you out. You know. People just need to, you know, help each other out. When they need help.”

  “Of course.”

  “That’s the way I do things. That’s the way we did it for Alice.”

  “I appreciate that. And if there’s ever anything I can do for you, be sure and let me know.”

  Will he ever, baby. For the modern Samaritan there are scores and scores of hazards waiting on that ancient road between Jerusalem and Jericho.

  POLHAUS PACES THE FLOOR in his office. He’s been feeling jumpy lately. A pushy young woman holding a microphone caught him outside the building after lunch, stuck the mike right in his face. Startled the hell out of him. For a long long time, since RFK, since Ruby, he’s carried around a mental image of an individual emerging from a crowd, separating from it, breaking from the communion of its focus to carry forward its secret longing, to consume and destroy the object of that focus. The usual deadbeats were outside trying to get a quote from him in time to make their deadlines, and suddenly, “out of nowhere,” here comes this girl in a pantsuit. He jumped—then gave her the quote. They’re working hard every day to fulfill the hopes, dreams and aspirations of the world. Whatever. A dream is a wish your heart makes. He patted her ass; sue him. Why should he have to put up with this shit all the time?

  He has Nietfeldt’s memo reporting a meeting between Hank Galton and Guy Mock. Nietfeldt: a few bricks short but good, perceptive, and he believes Galton’s trying to contact Alice independent of the Bureau’s efforts. Polhaus can just imagine how it’ll play if he has to arrest Hank as a material witness. Nietfeldt compares Galton’s front-page advocacy on Mock’s behalf with the Examiner’s earlier support of Popeye Jackson. See what that got him. Mock’d be wise to watch his step.

  Mention of Jackson makes him think of Sara Jane Moore, who hasn’t haunted his office in a while. He sits behind his desk, pulls out her file; since just before Popeye’s death, word’s been that she’s gone back over to the other side.

  Subj. Moore observed leaving residence of known Black Panther Subj. Moore in altercation with merchant Subj. Moore evaded Agent known to her Subj. Moore observed distributing left wing handbills on Memorial Glade Subj. Moore obtained Post Office Box using forged documents

  The boundary’s always permeable for someone like Sally. She needs only to be able to say that all that screwball concentration, that single-mindedness, belongs to something, is on a side, supports a cause. Doesn’t matter what.

  He glances at the memo. Nietfeldt’s saying, Keep watching Mock. That’s dandy, but if someone fucks up, the guy’s perfectly capable of vanishing. Then they’d have zip. An empty farmhouse. There has to be something beyond Mock and Shimada, though. There has to be another link.

  TEKO is LIVING IN a state of bachelor squalor in the dumpy apartment on W Street, a condition that mirrors his mood. Only Jeff is willing to stay with him there, and only occasionally, and only for a night or two at a time, tops, so while Capitol Avenue is always noisy and cheerful, W Street is sullen, made more so by the shrill cheer that emanates from the black-and-white portable that seems constantly to be on, the liveliness of miracle deodorants and mouthwashes.

  “Two!—two!—two mints in one!”

  The money goes fast. Seven people, two safe houses, some spendthrift overindulgence, and abruptly they’re needy again. No one questions the revolutionary impetus behind the next bakery scheme; it’s all but irrelevant. They need the money, and that’s simply that. Tania sees this very clearly. She’s happy to have Joan nearby, but Joan’s stories of the last several months in San Francisco, her naked contempt for Sacramento, for Teko and Yolanda, make Tania impatient to leave. They drive over to W Street one day to receive their marching orders.

  Teko has been scouting large banks in regional centers, looking for a bigger score. As well be hanged for a sheep as a lamb, goes the thinking. Tania herself has been dispatched to Citrus Heights, Davis, and Auburn to check out branches there, returning to read aloud the found poetry of her notes: 5 women + two menl One is young + nervousl Manager is fat + Blackl Guardl Camera/ Peds + traffic. She drives around, from B of A to Wells Fargo, dropping her ashes into a beanbag ashtray on the dashboard. The beanbag has a tendency to slide from one end of the dashboard to the other, depending on whether she’s turning left or right.

  Teko announces that their target is a Crocker Bank branch in Carmichael, another unincorporated area. It has no guards or cameras, and the place abuts a vacant lot on one side and has no windows facing the street. Yolanda has observed employees from nearby businesses showing up to cash their paychecks, probably drawn on Crocker payroll accounts, so the branch likely keeps a decent amount of money on hand. Teko also informs them that Yolanda will lead the assault team. Going in with her will be Jeff, Susan, and Roger. Tania and Joan will drive the two switch cars, taking assault team members back to the two safe houses. Teko will observe the operation from across the street, timing the response and providing backup.

  After the meeting Teko asks Joan to stay behind. He goes into the bedroom, and warily, Joan follows. She finds him rooting through a footlocker, from which he extracts a stack of familiar-looking cassette tapes and a file folder full of notes. It’s the old SLA book. Teko tells Joan that he wants to revive the book project, as a hedge. So it all comes to money, Joan thinks. Due to Guy Mock’s “very favorable deportment” lately, Teko would like to offer Guy the opportunity to sell the book. Deportment is like a word from your report card if memory serves.

  How well Joan remembers the Summer of the Book, the big spiel from Guy about how publishers would be hammering on his door with fistfuls of thousand-dollar bills, how John and Yoko wanted to write and star in a musical about them, all the razzle-daz
zle horse-shit that made her realize that there isn’t one single radical in the USA who hasn’t spent a minute or two wondering who’d play him in the movie.

  “We have to get in touch with Guy,” Teko says.

  “I’ll try,” says Joan.

  It turns out that Guy is the only revolutionary fugitive in recorded history who files a change of address with the PO when he goes underground. It takes Joan about a day to find him. She thinks

  Teko is disappointed, like he wanted mail drops, coded messages, smoke signals for all she knows. Guy is raring to go. Tells her that he’s all ready to fly to New York and set up meetings, though he’s bugged that he hasn’t got a copy of the manuscript.

  “Count your blessings,” she tells him.

  They begin the grim work of rehearsal, pretending daily to rob, threaten, and assault one another. It goes poorly from the beginning. Jeff Wolfritz shakily levels a revolver at Tania that has bullets in the cylinder. Working with an automatic, Susan similarly chambers a live round and points the gun at Joan’s head. Yolanda insists on using the same fluky Remington 870 that Jeff carried into Guild Savings. It keeps dry-firing accidentally. The rasping click stops them all dead, every time.

  “That’s getting worse,” says Jeff.

  “I know how to handle a gun,” she insists.

  CURIOUS DOINGS, ACCORDING TO the lights of any respectable California homeowner. A certain Janet White rents a garage to store her mother’s car, so she says. And then asks if the place has an electrical outlet. Well, it does. That is what is known as a modern convenience. But how curious that Miss Janet White should make such an inquiry. What else is a California homeowner to do but to contact his acquaintances in law enforcement?

  Acquaintances in law enforcement agree with a California homeowner: It is a curious inquiry. Curious and suspicious (if those aren’t really and truly the same thing). Acquaintances in law enforcement affirm that such an inquiry suggests the possibility that the garage will be used for some nefarious purpose. The stripping of stolen cars, for example. The setting up of a buzz saw to divide innocent damsels in twain. Not that a California homeowner should get his hopes up or anything.

  Still, a California homeowner does tend to get his hopes up. That’s a portion of what leads him to enter the fraternal bonds of homeownership to begin with: optimism, of a kind. Fortunately a homeowner’s suspicions are substantiated when the woman turns up five days later, accompanied by a long-haired male friend (!), who drives a second vehicle, to park “Mother’s” car. And how many kind, patient, applecheeked mothers drive Pontiac Firebirds? a California homeowner might ask, rhetorically, though appositely, from behind the curtains where he watches. Where he has been watching—a California homeowner has kept his eyes open since the day Janet White first appeared, April 9. A California homeowner who is on top of things writes down license numbers. Time to make another call.

  Acquaintances in law enforcement are apologetic, but there is very little to be done at the moment, even if it does turn out that the license number matches that of a Firebird stolen recently while its owner attended a party in Berkeley (!). A California homeowner should himself do nothing. Acquaintances in law enforcement are discouragingly firm on this point. The thing to do is to wait for law enforcement to handle it. Law enforcement, due to problems of resource allocation, can only put the location involved in the Strange Case of the Stolen Firebird under what is termed periodic, or loose, surveillance. This is indeed disappointing, but fortunately a California homeowner can see to it himself that the garage is under constant, fixed surveillance! A California homeowner has a thermos full of coffee, some salty snacks, a book of crossword puzzles, a transistor radio, a working telephone. All the necessary tools.

  And yet. Even a California homeowner is obliged, at times, to leave his post. Salty snacks and plenty of coffee can do that to you. That such an event is foreseeable does not make it any less necessary when it occurs. And in that necessary and foreseeable event, a California homeowner may happen to miss a suspicious person or persons entering the garage and driving away in the Firebird, removing the suspicious vehicle to another, unknown location. This is precisely what occurs on April 20.

  Now a California homeowner’s thoughts turn to the next act in this drama. A California homeowner may wish to inquire of acquaintances in law enforcement as to whether a California homeowner should preserve the scene for any investigation law enforcement chooses to conduct. A California homeowner is always more than happy to see to it that nothing is disturbed. A California homeowner may also choose to poll friends and neighbors who are members of the real estate or legal communities: Does a California homeowner have an obligation to assume that there exists a binding contract with Janet White, or can the garage be made available for rent again? A California homeowner doesn’t rent out a garage for fun, you know.

  FEW CLUES TO BANK ROBBER I.D.’S

  by Dylan Mantini

  BEE STAFF WRITER

  (April 22) Sheriff’s deputies are no closer to identifying the members of a gang which killed a female customer during yesterday’s $15,000 robbery of a Crocker Bank branch in suburban Carmichael.

  Mrs. Myrna Lee Opsahl, 42, was fatally wounded by a blast from a shotgun wielded by one of the robbers. Witnesses stated that Mrs. Opsahl, who had come to the bank with two other women to deposit collection receipts from the Carmichael Seventh Day Adventist Church, had provided her assailant with no provocation. She died later at American River Hospital. Her husband, Dr. Trygve Opsahl, a physician there, was at her side. In addition to Dr. Opsahl, Mrs. Opsahl is survived by four children ages 13 to 19.

  The robbery began shortly after the bank opened its doors at 9:00 a.m. Three heavily armed men and a woman, wearing winter clothing and ski masks, entered and announced the robbery, ordering patrons and employees to the floor. It was at this point that Mrs. Opsahl was shot, and investigators speculate that she may have moved too slowly when ordered to lie down. The robbery then continued while Mrs. Opsahl lay dying. Witnesses reported that the female robber monitored her wristwatch throughout the operation, calling out the time to the others as they removed money from the teller’s drawers. After approximately five minutes she announced that it was time to flee, and the robbers exited through a rear door, escaping through a fence to a Pontiac Firebird parked behind the bank.

  A spokesman for Crocker Bank, Darren Cumberbatch, described the bank’s losses as slightly over $15,000. He added, “Our financial losses, of course, are inconsequential compared with the loss of life suffered in this tragic situation. Our heart goes out to the family of Mrs. Opsahl during this difficult time, and we are cooperating fully with law enforcement authorities in their efforts to apprehend and bring these killers to justice.”

  MYRNA HAS ABOUT THIRTY–EIGHT seconds before someone’s clock radio goes off, and then there they’ll all be, standing around the kitchen together, a spill of containers and packages, dirty knives and smears of butter, spread across the countertops, the happy clamor of up and at ’em. This is all well and good; ordinarily she is pleased to help her husband and her four children get into the swing of things, feeding them and such, handing them multivitamins and clean socks, until they are of a mind to consider for themselves the day gathering around them. Today, though, she has to lend a hand with the collection receipts from Saturday services. Usually this takes place on Sunday; she and Rochelle and Mary gather in the low-ceilinged church office to prepare the weekly deposit. But yesterday Rochelle visited her mother, and Mary said that since she is finally seeing something of her husband with tax season over and done with, she’d like to take advantage of it, if that’s OK with everybody, so they postponed it until today.

  It probably is not a three-person job, but they have a good time. They spend an hour or two working, with coffee cake or strudel. Only Mary actually drinks coffee, though not in the church office. They talk: husbands and children, television and radio. Who is trying to grow rockrose and wild lilac because they can
withstand drought. What is the name of, can anyone remember what that chicken casserole is called, the one with cream of mushroom soup and green chiles?

  It is always interesting. They add up the cash and checks. They roll the coins. Some people leave postage stamps in the plate, despite Pastor Robert’s veiled entreaties against the practice, and for this what they do is they take money out of petty cash and swap it for the stamps. Probably an auditor would raise issues, but Mary’s Jim is a CPA, and she generally just shrugs. One time Myrna found an old Liberty Head dime among the coins, and they spent a little while discussing do they simply deposit it or hold it back and find out how much it was worth. And in that event, should they try to find out who contributed it? Finally they called Larry Darling, who is something of a numismatist, which is a coin collector, and asked him did he think it was worth anything. Without missing a beat, he said, “About seven cents.” Then he’d laughed. Another time she found an old ten-dollar silver certificate. This Myrna just went ahead and replaced with a regular ten-dollar bill from her pocketbook. She figured it had educational value.

  Myrna opens the front door and steps over the threshold. This is the time-tested way of assessing the weather. The weathermen get it wrong a lot, but the front step is right every time: a warm and cloudy day, absolutely. She goes back inside the house, heads for her bedroom at the end of the hall, listening for stirrings within the children’s rooms as she passes them. She selects a light blouse, off white with a red and black check, perfect for the warm day.

  “It was funny the way the girl didn’t do it in a nasty way. She says, ‘The ones with the frosting? What you mean is the Cream Su— preme.’” Mary chuckles, reaching into a white pastry box to cut a pair of bloated doughnuts in two. One actually seems to burst when it is punctured by the knife, sighing and settling as it deflates, bleeding custard-colored filling. Around the two wounded doughnuts sits a selection of crullers and old-fashioneds. “I mean I didn’t know they had names, even. And I’ll tell you, it is so bad there on a Monday morning. Everybody in a hurry. Line going back to here. It has got to be easier for them if you refer to the pastries by their proper name rather than just pointing, this and this and one of this.”