He shrugged an apology at the uniform. The green light cut out and the door pulled open. The lock was overridden by remote control. Stuart stepped out and looked into a silver-visored crash helmet. His own face was fish-eye reflected. Other uniforms, García’s back-up, stood about. They wore no insignia, just black jump-suits and crash helmets. Stuart could tell they were cops by the gizmo-weighted belts. And the walk, the stand, the attitude. Actors couldn’t fake that.
Stuart pointed in the direction that García and Scotchman had taken off. The uniform shook his helmet and laid a gauntlet on Stuart’s shoulder, then spun him around to face the patrol car.
Something bit Stuart’s right wrist, like the jaws of a dog, and he heard a familiar rasp. He was being cuffed.
Over the top of the car he saw the black van the uniforms had come in and his knees became water. He fell down before the uniform could cuff his other wrist, and realized he was yelping.
He was a writer, not some hero. He was not going to survive. He would be one of the Disappeared.
Still squealing, he shrank and writhed under the car. He shut his eyes, but nothing changed. He saw boots. Other boots joined them. There was a buzz of communication.
They were being cautious, Stuart realized. He hadn’t been searched so no one wanted to lie down and take a shot in case he was nestling his own gun, ready to hole a visor. The patrol car weighed a few tons, so they couldn’t lift it. By accident or instinct, he had gone to ground.
Something small and white had fallen out of his pocket and lay on the gritty asphalt next to his cheek. It was Leitizia Six’s card. It recited Leitizia’s name, address, phone and fax, representation and major credits.
He raised his head and banged it against the underside of the car. Pain jammed through his skull.
Those cop bastards had set him up for this. García and Scotchman. How was that for high concept? That wri-die was right: the cop was the natural enemy of the black man, even a black man who’d been to public school and wasn’t in the least onstreet or zonkbrained or even bloody American.
Boots shifted, heels clicking on the street. He heard the car door opening. The floor was armoured, so they couldn’t shoot through it. This moment, he was turtle safe. It wouldn’t last. They could pour petrol in the street and drop a match.
Maybe his Dad would be like Jack Lemmon in Missing, and bust the LA Death Squad story in a fit of grief-stricken political outrage. It didn’t seem likely, though.
The engine engaged, loud near his head. They were going to drive a few yards and expose him to the air, like lifting a rock off a worm. He twisted to look at his feet. Moonlight fell on them as the car moved. He pulled in his hand so his fingers wouldn’t be squashed under a wheel and banged his elbow on armour-plate.
Lying like an animal, extremities tucked in, he waited for bullets. The boots stood around, in a circle, examining him. He looked up black-clad legs, past weapon-heavy belts to flak-armoured chests and expressionless silver screens.
He remembered the boy in Obregon Street, who had seemed crucified. Suddenly, he prayed for a bullet. The alternative was to be hung up and worked on.
One of the squad popped a stud in his helmet and pulled it off. He was young, of indeterminate race, with long hair tied back.
“I always like to be face to face,” he said.
XII From the Corrido of Diego
“This city grew, encompassing the village of my birth, spreading fingers across the state. Wherever I wandered, I would find myself back in Los Angeles.
“In 1919, my corrido caught up with me.
“I was fighting still, striking owners of canning factories and fruit orchards who treated my people as cruelly as any of the patrónes of old. Indeed, many were far worse: with a superfluity of labour, wastage was acceptable. If a union organizer was whipped or an overworked family starved, there were many in line for the job vacancies.
“It was the year of the Great Influenza Epidemic. In a few months, a disease cut down more of my people than the worst sweatshop tyrant could in a lifetime. And what could I do? I could not kill a disease.
“For ninety years, I killed the enemies of my people. But I was alone. The tide of death swept around me, rushing faster. I recognized how little I could do, but each moon night I fought harder, killed more.
“That year, I left my zig-zag-zig in scores of hides.”
“As grapes ripened, itinerant pickers gathered and were signed up for work. I was among their number. We moved into shanty towns near the vineyards, dormitory shacks.
“During the harvest, I found a magazine under my cot at the dormitory, left by one of the few anglos who worked the vineyards. It was All Story Weekly, and it contained the third instalment of ‘The Curse of Capistrano’, a serial by Johnston McCulley.
“The action was laid in an Old California that never was, a scramble of different times: the time of the mission, the time of Mexican rule, the time of the Gold Rush. The hero of this idiotic fiction was Don Diego de la Vega, a young noble who masked himself and rode as a renegade. This defender of maidenly virtue and justice called himself Zorro, the Fox. In this Zorro, I heard echoes of Joaquin Murieta and Salomon Pico. But in his mark, carved elegantly with the point of a blade rather than slashed with a claw, I saw myself.
“As a people, we tell stories and sing songs. Nothing happens which does not become a story or a song. I had plainly crept into these legends, and in retelling they had seeped through to this anglo writer. I do not know where McCulley heard of the zig-zag-zig.
“I was shocked for a moment, but assumed this obscure story would pass and be forgotten. It was, as even I could judge, not very good.”
* * *
“The next year, I was running. For the first time, the night-work of Fox was not written off as that of an animal. The name of Diego came up in police investigations, and my description circulated to Pinkertons in the pay of those I killed. The science of the century nipped at my heels.
“I took shelter in the centre of the growing city. In the old district around the fresh, new railroad station. Many thronged to California, looking for work in motion pictures. Cowboys and beauty queens paraded the streets, hoping to be discovered. Thousands had been employed by D.W. Griffith for Intolerance, whose sets still dominated a backlot.
“In a mission (at last, I had returned to the world of my father), I heard a film company was looking for men of my people. They paid up to fifty cents a day.
“Between moons I need to eat as anyone else, so I turned up at the United Artists studio. A crowd of red-headed Irishmen and cornfed Swedes were all shouting caramba and arriba at the tops of their voices. With many others, I was picked as an ‘extra’ in the new Douglas Fairbanks picture.
“On my first day, I was singled out as a ‘type’ by an assistant director in knickerbockers and a knit cap. A costume was found for me, a carnival parody of the dress of the ricos, and a moustache gummed to my lip. I was given a hat and a sword and sent to the set.
“These films are now called silent pictures, but the studio was noisier than a factory or battlefield. The air rang with the din of construction, the rattle of cameras, the shouting of directors, the chatter of extras and the boom of powder-puff explosions. Instrumental combos competed and clashed, supplying ‘mood music’ for scenes of love, violence, tragedy and comedy.
“The Fairbanks set represented an Old California hacienda or some such nonsense. Doug, as he was called by all, appeared – a notably diminutive hero, which explained why many taller men as qualified by looks as myself were unable to secure employment on his set. He was dressed in black, with a mask and a broad hat.
“Short and tubby as he was, Doug Fairbanks was a hero who looked like a hero. His face, I was relieved to say, did not glow unnaturally. I have never killed anyone famous, which may account for my longevity.
“In the scene being shot under the blazing arc-lights, Doug fought a villainous officer (a type I remembered too well) to a stand-still, hum
iliating his defeated opponent by leaving a sword-mark on the man’s neck.
“After the fight was filmed several times, a make-up man came on set and worked on the actor who played the dastardly officer. I stood nearby, momentarily fascinated as the make-up man drew in and elaborated a fresh scar. He stood back to admire his handiwork. Doug came over and grinned famously at the wound he was supposed to have inflicted.
“It was a zig-zag-zig. My zig-zag-zig.
“ ‘What’s the name of this picture?’ I asked another ‘extra’.
“ ‘The Mark of Zorro,’ I was told.”
XIII
The breath was forced out of Stuart’s lungs as the killer cop knelt on Stuart’s chest, padded knee coming down hard. He slipped a knife from a sheath on his utility belt. Its serrated blade shone silver in moonlight.
The knife would be the last thing Stuart ever saw.
He had published a novel. That was something. A year ago, he’d have said he could die happy after the achievement.
The cop raised the knife for a backhand slash. At the top of the arc, he paused for the briefest instant.
He would have liked to have had sex.
Stuart forced himself to look not at the blade but into the eyes of his murderer. He saw nothing.
“Any last thoughts, nigger?”
This was one time he wouldn’t think of the right thing to say twenty minutes after the moment passed.
Then, in a rush, the weight was off him. An animal – a big dog? – barreled out of nowhere and struck the cop in the side, wrenching him off Stuart, carrying him across the street and sidewalk. They crashed against the chain-link shutters of a pawnshop.
Under the three ball sign, the animal dropped the cop and trampled with barbed feet. There were scatters of blood.
Stuart sat up, too astonished to hurt. The Death Squad stood about, stunned. The animal moved too swiftly for the mind to develop the eye’s photographs. It wasn’t a dog, it wasn’t a man.
It picked up the cop by the throat and rammed him against the pawnshop shutter. The cop’s boots dangled inches above the sidewalk. A sharp thumb gored into his neck. Blood squirted like juice from an orange.
With its free hand – it was more hand than paw, long fingers tipped with horny razors – the animal tore its prey’s flak-jacket out through his uniform, exposing a white torso, hairless and untattooed. With three passes of its hand, it left a mark.
The animal squeezed harder, and the cop’s head popped off his spine. The creature dropped its kill.
The Death Squad brought up firearms and emptied them into the animal. It jitter-slammed against the shutter, explosions bursting against stiff, red fur. Stuart’s ears were assaulted by the intolerable blurt of close-up gunfire. Forgotten, he pulled himself to his feet.
He should run.
. . . but he needed to see what happened next.
After a continuous burst of co-ordinated fire, the Death Squad shut off the bullet-spray to examine their kill.
Hey man, should’ve seen the beast we brought down last night. Freak must’ve got loose from a zoo or something . . .
The animal still stood, scorched and smoking. Its ragged clothes were holed and afire. But it wasn’t dead, didn’t seem even to be hurt.
Stuart looked at its eyes. It was not an animal, not entirely.
“Take a head-shot,” someone ordered.
A rifle came up, and a red dot wavered against the beast-man’s forehead. There was a bone-snap as the rifle discharged.
“On the button.”
There was a blackened patch above the thatch of darker eyebrow fur, but the eyes were still alive.
“Mother . . .”
The hunter pushed away from the pawnshop, and attacked. Besides the dead killer, there were seven men in the squad. Within twenty seconds, they were all dead or dying.
Stuart couldn’t look away. The hunter was fast and sure, a graceful yet deadly dancer. Smooth muscle shifted under a thick pelt. Eyes, teeth and claws shone silver. A red veil splattered across silver.
Several cops got off more shots. Others tried to get away. It was all useless. Uniforms came apart. Screams bubbled through cracked helmets. Limbs wrenched from trunks like twigs from branches, ropy coils of gut pulled through claw-holes.
All the dead were marked with the zig-zag-zig.
It was over so quickly Stuart’s ears still ached from the gunfire. He had not got used to the fact that he was saved from the descent of the knife.
Saved, but for how long?
The beast-man who had executed the Death Squad rooted on all-fours among his kill, shutting off voices that still moaned. Satisfied, mouth stuffed with flesh, he stood erect and bipedal. Surrounded by dead, this was the ruler of the Jungle. A broad chest inflated and the hunter howled at the moon.
The howl was an animal sound, but the song of a man was mixed in. Stuart knew eyes were looking, from behind shutters, through windows, from alleys. In the Jungle, they knew about the hunter. They just hadn’t told the Man.
The hunter’s song ended. With sharp nyctalopic eyes, he glanced about the street. Somewhere above, a helicopter’s muffled blades cut through thick air. More back-up coming down.
Stuart was against the abandoned patrol car. The hunter looked at him, full mouth curving wickedly, more and more teeth exposed.
Having fought for it, the hunter was entitled to this scrap of food. This time, Stuart was calm before death.
The hunter’s mouth grew wider still. The shark-grin was a smile. The whole snouted head shook as the hunter swallowed what he was chewing. He padded towards Stuart, interest in his intelligent eyes.
The eyes were familiar.
Stuart knew the beast-man wasn’t going to kill him. This hunter bore down only on those who deserved death.
The hunter was close, now. Stuart saw a human face buried under the animal’s skin, and just failed to recognize it. The beast-man breathed heavily through his snout. He reached out to touch Stuart’s face. Stuart saw a leathery, hairless palm; short, ruffled bristles running down each finger; polished, sharp oval knife-nails.
The hunter laid his hand against Stuart’s face. Stuart tried not to flinch. They looked at each other, each seeing something.
The beast-man pulled away, almost whirling in the air. He extended a long, clawed forefinger and etched a swift zig-zag-zig into the roof of the patrol car, then bounded away.
Stuart was alone on the street with eight torn and bleeding corpses.
A wave of people appeared and swept across the street, descending on the dead squad like vultures. The black van was hot-wired and driven off. Bodies were stripped of guns, knives, radios, flak-jackets, boots, belts, everything. Stuart was manhandled away from the patrol car, and five young men with gang colours and power tools got to work on it, disassembling the vehicle like a factory team in reverse motion.
He stumbled through the carrion-stripping crowd, thinking of the eyes of the beast-man. For him, the world had changed; he shared the earth with creatures of wonder and moonlight.
A helicopter lowered, and light brighter than the sun raked across the street. Stuart’s eyes stung as if he stared into a nuclear fireball. A call-to-attention signal whined.
Someone fired single shots at the huey, which responded with a rain of strafing. Holes pocked in the asphalt, puncturing legs and vehicles, as a chaingun raked the crowd.
Stuart remembered Muldoon Pezz’s apocalypse talk. And the negro spiritual quoted by James Baldwin.
“God gave Noah the rainbow sign,
No more water, the fire next time . . .”
Things were moving too fast to keep up.
“LAPD,” announced a robocop voice from the huey. “Cease and desist . . .”
The helicopter touched down daintily between bodies. Cops hit the street, firing indiscriminately . . .
“Cease and desist . . .”
This time, Stuart ran.
XIV From the Corrido of Diego
�
�� ‘Hoy, pachuco,’ I was greeted outside the bar.
“Miguel Ynostrosa whirled down the boulevard, dancing as much as walking, pleated pants flapping. He wore ‘drapes’: high-waisted pants with loose legs and tight cuffs; wide-brimmed hat with a velvet band; jacket a yard across at the shoulders, cinched tight in the middle; a loop of watchchain; pointed-toes and highly polished shoes.
“My outfit was no less outlandish. We were both zoot-suiters. I raised my hand to receive the slap of greeting.
“ ‘Papers come through, Diego,’ he said. ‘You lookin at a private, first class.’
“Everybody was enlisting. I wondered if there was a way round my lack of birth papers. Throats in Berlin and Tokyo which would be the better for Fox’s attention. I had always been a lone predator. It was probable I could not survive unnoticed in the services.
“ ‘Maybe soon you’re lookin at a seriente,’ Ynostrosa grinned.
“He was a good kid, an epitome of pachucismo but with a streak of the political. We met collecting for the Sleepy Lagoon Defence Fund.
“To be young and have a Spanish surname in the early ’40s was to be branded a gangster by the yellow press. When a murder was committed near a swimming hole the Hearst papers tagged ‘the Sleepy Lagoon’, seventeen youths were convicted. The ‘evidence’ consisted of confessions beaten out of the defendants. The case was fought through appeal after appeal. What the Scottsboro Boys were to blacks and Sacco and Vanzetti to union men, Sleepy Lagoon was to the chicano.
“Roosevelt promised to be a ‘Good Neighbour’ to Latin Americans abroad, but his policies had no influence with the Los Angeles police, courts and city council.
“We strolled down the boulevard. The bars were full of sailors, in town on leave from the Chavez Ravine Armory. Everyone was waiting to go overseas. The city was bustling to a swing beat. Panicky citizens had been known to imagine Japanese subs in the municipal plunges and bombers over the La Brea Tar Pits.
“Ynostrosa suggested we go to the movie theatre. There was a re-release double bill: The Mark of Zorro, with Tyrone Power, and The Wolf Man, with Lon Chaney. I’d seen both, but there were always people at the theatre, zoot-suiters and their girls. Afterwards, we could get a crowd together and go to one of the night-clubs that admitted coloureds and ‘Mexicans’.
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