Throughout the nation, there was a variety of smaller demonstrations and acts of radical civil disobedience. California became a focal point for self-styled “revolutionaries” particularly in the San Francisco area, who engaged in sporadic acts of violence. A bomb was exploded at the Bank of America offices in Berkeley. A group broke into the Selective Service Headquarters in Sacramento and poured blood over files. There was a rash of bank robberies, which were seen as the preferred method of raising cash for further action. One such robbery, in Lodi, California, resulted in the deaths of two security guards and three radicals, when the robbery erupted into gunfire.
“That’s it?” Lauren asked.
Karen snorted. “I want to know more. I want to understand what they were doing.”
Her sister glanced down at one of the picture books open in front of them. She saw an unsettling photograph of a tightly packed group of students, their mouths open, as they shouted in rage. In the center of the picture, one student was making a violent, obscene gesture toward the camera.
“What’s that?” Karen asked.
Lauren read the caption. “Chicago. The Democratic National Convention.” She sighed. “I look at these pictures and it seems like ancient history, like looking at things that happened a million years ago.”
Karen shook her head. “Everything went crazy. They just went crazy along with it. That’s all.”
“Except that it’s still with them.”
“It’s probably still with a lot of people,” Karen replied. “They just hide it better.”
“I wonder,” Lauren said quietly, “if we really believed in something, I mean, really felt strongly—whether we would do the same.”
Karen started to reply, then stopped. The bell rang then, and they hurried to return the books to the stacks and get home, leaving the last question shelved alongside the words and photos that they’d inspected.
Shortly after three P.M. Duncan buzzed his secretary and said: “Doris? I’m going to run over to the pharmacy and pick up a few things. Hold down the fort here until I get back, please.”
“Oh, Mr. Richards, why don’t you just head on home? We can handle—”
Duncan cut her off. “Well, I think I will, but I’ve a few more things to do. I’ll let you know after I get back.”
He hung up the telephone and gathered his overcoat from a coat-hook in the corner. He slipped it on and wondered whether the heat he felt building within him was excitement or fear. Then he concluded the two traveled together and shrugged it off. He picked up his large briefcase, which he’d already emptied, and headed out the door.
His first act was to move his car from its assigned spot in the bank’s parking lot to a space in a public parking area about three blocks away. It was an enclosed parking garage, only partially filled. Duncan drove the car far past the first available spot, onto a level where only a pair of other cars was parked. He placed his car in the darkest corner he could find.
Taking the elevator down to the street, he spied a cigarette butt crushed on the floor. He picked it up carefully and deposited it in an envelope, which he placed inside his suit pocket.
He stopped next at a hair salon which catered to both men and women, mostly students. The receptionist looked up at him and smiled.
“Can we help you?” she asked.
He took a deep breath and smiled.
“Sure,” Duncan replied. “I’d like to get my hair spiked.”
The young woman was taken aback.
“Really? Okay,” she said, “we can—” Then she noticed Duncan’s smile and said, “Oh, come on, you’re kidding me, aren’t you?”
“Maybe some other time,” Duncan said. “Actually, I just came in for some shampoo that my daughters use. The trouble is, I can’t remember the name—”
“Redken? Natural Wave? Is it amino free? What sort of hair do they have?”
“It comes in a red and white bottle.”
“Like this?”
“Uh, maybe.”
The young lady smiled. “Why don’t you take a look back in the bath area, where we shampoo hair. Maybe you’ll see it.” She gestured toward the rear of the room. Duncan nodded. He was fingering his car keys in his pocket, waiting for the right moment. He started across the room, and as soon as he spotted what he was looking for, he brought them out and let them drop. He bent down carefully to pick them up, at the same time grabbing several strands of newly cut hair. He stuffed keys and hair in his pocket, walked back, glanced at the shelf of shampoos, then returned to the reception desk.
“I think it’s that stuff there,” he said.
“Great.” She took a container and put it in a bag. “Twelve dollars.”
Duncan looked stricken. “For eight ounces?”
“Actually, six and one-half.”
“I’m in the wrong business,” he said. “I ought to sell hair products.”
The young woman laughed and took his money. She waved as he went out the door.
Out of sight, in the street, he took the hair strands and added them to the cigarette butt in the envelope. Then he proceeded to the corner pharmacy, where he purchased two pairs of surgical gloves, a box of plastic garbage bags, some large rubber bands, and a variety of cold remedies.
It did not take him long to find a taxi which drove him to the nearest shopping mall. He paid the driver and headed inside rapidly, checking his wristwatch, making certain he wasn’t spending too much time away from the bank. The mall was an older one, enclosed, spread over dozens of acres of what Duncan remembered used to be gently rolling farmland. It had been green and beautiful once, dotted with grazing cows and horses, cornstalks rising in the warm summer sun. But now it was profitable. Eighteen years earlier this realization would have made him sad, and he was ashamed that it no longer did. The bank had written the purchase loan, and helped with the construction financing. It had been one of his first major projects. He had spent nights driving past the site, checking the number of cars in the lots. At holiday times he had walked the corridors, counting the people, allowing himself to feel a sense of relief as he was buffeted about by crowds.
He hurried through a small side entrance and ducked into a sporting goods store. He found a clerk, dressed in a striped referee’s shirt, and gestured to him.
“I need a pair of high-top sneakers for my nephew,” he said.
“What size?”
“Ten and one-half, with a D-width.”
“How much were you looking to spend?”
“Thirty bucks?”
The clerk shook his head.
“Canvas. Real hot on the feet. Not much support.”
“Forty bucks?”
“We’ve got some leathers on sale for fifty.”
“God. When I was playing the game, the shoes cost about ten.”
“When was that?” the clerk asked.
“Prehistoric times. Dinosaur days.”
The young man laughed and went to get the shoes. Duncan thought: They’ll be fine. They are a full size smaller than my normal shoe size. They’ll be just fine.
Duncan paid cash for the shoes, and added a gray sweatsuit to his purchases.
At a clothing store a few paces away, he purchased a blue and red knit sweater. It was cheap acrylic and polyester, the sort of thing that a student would buy, wear until it fell apart, which it would do rapidly, then buy another just like it. As with his other purchases, he paid cash.
In a large chain drugstore, he went to the wall where they kept automotive and electrical equipment and purchased several small electrical clips and wires, tape, a set of screwdrivers, and a small hammer. It will be dark inside the bank, he thought, and he grabbed a small flashlight and batteries, as well. For an instant he paused outside, looking at the flow of people, thinking how anonymous he was,
how everyone lost their identity within the mall. No matter how well-lit, everyone was invisible. He headed for the side exit.
Outside the mall, he ripped all the tags from the clothing and threw them in a wastebasket, then placed all the items in his briefcase, squeezing it shut. He looked up at the sky. The gray was slowly being overcome by the darkening night sky. It gets so dark so quickly, he thought. It is as if the light isn’t strong enough to battle the evening, and just gives up and dies. He sucked in air and blew out slowly. He could see his breath in front of him. Time to start, he thought. He could feel his muscles contract around his heart, tighten across his stomach, and for an instant his knees felt weak. He stood still and let the cold air wash across his body. He felt like a sprinter coiled at the starting line, bent to the earth, waiting to leap forward at the sound of the starter’s gun. He lifted his hand into the air, forming a pistol with his fingers. “Bang,” he said softly.
Then he pulled his coat tightly about him and flagged another taxi for the trip back to the center of town.
For once, Ramon Gutierrez did not feel the drifting late afternoon cold. He remained completely preoccupied with waiting for the twins to come through the school parking lot. He kept his collar high, though, and his hat slouched down, watching anonymously from an adjacent street as the students jumped into the typical variety of teenage vehicles, spinning tires, squealing across the black macadam surface of the high school parking lot. It wasn’t much different from his high school in the South Bronx, except that everyone there had been heading toward buses or the subway instead of sports cars and motorcycles. It had been a dangerous, exuberant moment, a time when gang members squared off or people made dates for the weekend. Now he was making his own sort of special assignation. They just didn’t know it.
He saw the twins get into the red sports car and he smiled. They managed to pull only partway out of the parking space before being stopped by a pair of gangly teenage boys, who hung on the windowsills, leaning over toward them. He did not know what they were talking about, but he let his imagination roam about freely.
He was enjoying himself for the first time in days.
Olivia had given him his orders in the angry aftermath of the attempted escape. Ramon pictured the boy, curled into a fetal position on the floor of the attic. He had never seen a child die, and he wondered if that was what it was like. Whatever happens, happens, he thought. As long as we get the money. The grandfather had struggled momentarily as well, mostly out of shock and panic, until quieted by Olivia. As the old man had yelled in protest, she had cocked the hammer back on a revolver and placed it up against the side of the judge’s head. Ramon recalled what she had said: “Do not tempt me, judge. Do not force my hand, because I will not hesitate.” After seeing the captives locked away, her anger had exploded, uncontrollably, shaking the walls of the old farmhouse. Ramon was unsettled by it. As he sat behind the wheel of the car, he pictured her, contorted by rage, as she screamed imprecations at Bill Lewis. He had remained stock still, hangdog, listening without reply.
Well, he should be ashamed, Ramon thought. He almost blew the whole show. After all the planning and preparations and finishing all the dangerous stuff. Christ!
For a moment he had been worried that Olivia would shoot Bill, then he thought she would shoot the hostages. She had paced across the living room, waving one of the weapons, her entire body twisted by fury. What had surprised him was that she seemed to take the boy’s escape attempt personally, as if he was doing something to her, instead of just trying to help himself.
Ramon had trouble with that. If I were caught, he said, I’d do the same. At least, I’d want to. He remembered trying to shinny down a drainage pipe at a youth detention center, only to fall and sprain his foot and be captured, trying to limp to freedom.
He had to admit a sort of grudging respect for the child. He hated the moments in his childhood when people had done things to him, and he’d never fought back, never run away, never battled.
His train of thought was interrupted. The twins were maneuvering their car into the street.
He remembered Olivia’s command, after she had regained the slightest control of her anger: “Go pay the twins a little visit. Megan’s at work. The house is empty. Give them a little something to be scared of. Fuck them up a bit.”
“How?”
“Just any damn way you want!”
The memory of his momentary discomfort at twisting the strands of rope around the thin arms of the captive child dissipated. He put the car in gear and accelerated.
Karen and Lauren did not notice the late-model sedan that cruised past them on Pleasant Street, nor did they notice the occupant’s quick, leering glance in their direction.
They were on the verge of an argument.
“I still think we should be doing something,” Lauren insisted, while her sister continually shook her head.
“We are doing something. We’re doing what they said to do.”
“I don’t know if it’s enough.”
“Well, we can’t tell, can we?”
“No, and that’s what’s bothering me. I can’t believe you can just sit there and not want to do anything.”
“Well, I sure don’t want to do something that’s going to make things worse.”
“But you don’t know!” insisted Lauren. “You can’t tell that what they’re doing is right. And what do Mom and Dad know about dealing with these people, anyway? It could all be wrong!”
“Yeah, but it could all be right, too,” answered Karen, sliding easily into her most practical tones.
“I hate it when you sound like that. You’re trying to sound grown-up and we’re not.”
“So what do you want to do?”
Lauren remained silent.
“It just all seems so crazy,” she said after a momentary hesitation.
“So, what’s important is for us not to act crazy, too.”
“Remember when Jimmy Harris spotted that guy breaking into the cars in the school lot? Remember what he did? He got the guy’s license and called the cops and they came right away.”
“I can’t believe what you’re saying. Yesterday it was me that wanted to call the police and you were saying the opposite.”
“I was not.”
“You were.”
Lauren nodded. “You’re right. All right. I’ll be quiet. I just wish we could do something.” She sighed. “I miss Tommy.”
“So do I.”
“No, I mean different than what we’re supposed to. This morning I woke up and I couldn’t believe the little creep wasn’t there beating us to the bathroom.”
Karen laughed. “And leaving the cap off the toothpaste.”
“And leaving his socks and underwear on the floor.”
Karen shook her head. “We’ve got to believe he’s coming back. Tomorrow. That’s what Dad said.”
“Do you believe that?”
“I’m not letting myself believe or not believe anything. I’m just waiting.”
“I felt like I wanted to cry all day.”
“Me too, except for a couple of moments when everything seemed normal, and I realized I’d forgotten everything and then it would hit me.”
“I saw you talking with Will again.”
“He wants to go out.”
“What did you say?”
“I told him to call me next week.”
Lauren smiled. “He’s neat.”
“Yeah.” Her sister gave in to a giggle. “I like him.”
“He’s sexy, too. I heard that he and Lucinda Smithson were a real item last year.”
“I heard that, too. But it doesn’t bother me. And what about Teddy Leonard, huh? He went to Paris last summer on that exchange trip and I heard they went to a real whorehouse.”
�
�I don’t believe that story.”
Karen laughed. “They’d probably be too scared.”
Both twins smiled.
“You know why I like Teddy?” Lauren asked, then continued without waiting for her sister’s reply. “Because when he came over, he took the time to play with Tommy for a while. I worry sometimes that Tommy doesn’t get to see how older guys act. He just sees us. Remember, Teddy took him out and they threw the football around for a half-hour? Tommy was just glowing. Did I ever tell you what he told me later that night? I went in to give him a glass of water, just after lights out, and he said, ‘Lauren, I like that guy. You can marry him if you want.’ Can you beat that?”
Karen laughed out loud, joining her sister’s giggle. But within a few seconds their mirth had slipped from the car, as if it had flooded through an open window, replaced by an iciness that cracked and shifted about within them.
“If they hurt him, even a little—” Karen started.
“We’ll kill them,” her sister completed. Neither thought for an instant how they might accomplish it.
Instead, they drove on in determined silence.
As Karen rounded the corner and cruised down their street, she said, “I can’t believe it—Mom’s not home yet.”
“Do you think—” started Lauren, but her sister cut her off.
“No, she’s probably on the way.”
Karen parked the car in the driveway, but neither got out. They looked up at the house uncomfortably. It was dark on the inside. “I wish Dad had installed that automatic light system,” Karen complained.
“I never thought I’d think the house looked creepy,” Lauren said quietly.
“Stop it!” Karen snapped. “Don’t make it seem any worse than it is. I hate it when you get into these gloomy, scary moods, like you’re some sort of fragile flower or something. Come on, let’s go.”
She slammed the car door shut, and Lauren half-skipped to keep up with her. Karen thrust the front door key into the lock and threw the door open. She stepped inside and flipped on a light switch, which broke apart the deepening gray of the house’s interior. Both girls shed their coats and hung them in the hall closet. Karen turned to her sister and said, “See? No big deal. Let’s make a cup of tea and wait for Mom. She should be home soon.”
Day of Reckoning Page 26
