“Speaking of the park. How’s it doing?”
“Good. I go just about every day. Debbie usually comes with me. Kathy sometimes, but she’s busy with school. We’ve been working on the vegetable garden. You’d be amazed at how many people haven’t the slightest idea how food grows. I suppose I wouldn’t either if I hadn’t spent so much time with Greta and Merlin. It’s great for the kids to see the seeds sprouting. Just about everything’s up now. We’re eating radishes.”
“Is David going to put in his pool?”
Marcie laughed, her voice filled with mock seriousness. “When he finds time for it. You know he’s very busy.”
Richard smiled, too, but quickly looked away from the eye-catching sparkle in her face, a light like before the coke run when he would feel the life of her, be mesmerized, magnetized, and find a moment to slip into her and lose himself in her magic. Now he looked away.
“What’s wrong?” Marcie asked, leaning closer.
Frightened, he turned his body away, pretending to fix his boot. Suddenly, it struck her that his reaction to her closeness was very personal. Something about her body. For several seconds, the thought bounced between them. He not saying, she slowly realizing, he aware of her realization, she aware of his.
“Don’t you want me?” she blurted.
Stung, Richard responded loudly and quickly, “Of course.”
A few more minutes and Marcie understood. The last few times they’d made love, Richard had been impotent. And before that, abusive. “Come on,” she took his hand.
“But my food.”
“It’s cold.”
“So am I. I … can’t.”
“Let’s see.”
Marcie led him into the bedroom and started undressing. The room was so still she could hear their breathing. It was enormously important that she and Richard make love together. The act would remarry them. The separate shells they had developed needed to be burst. The tight turning inward had to be shifted. They had to reach out and bond together in the sacred way—mind and body, soul and heart.
Richard slumped glumly on the bed, watching her undress. She was so beautiful, her roundness so very womanly. She slowly removed her bra, posturing, rubbing the creases with her hands, pinching her nipples. She slipped out of her panties, bent to give him a good view of what awaited him between her legs. Slowly, she crawled over the bed and kissed his ear. She pulled the T-shirt over his head, yanked off his jeans, and smiled into his bewildered eyes. Then, slowly, methodically, began to suck his flaccid penis. After several minutes, she stopped and looked up at him. “You’ve got to want it,” she persuaded softly. “Think about it.”
Somewhere in his imagination, he began to feel a tingling, a sense of feeling. Yes, what she was doing felt good. He liked it and reached down to touch her head.
Marcie moved as his body responded to her, felt him grow, shiver, pushed his legs together and straddled him, knowing that once hard enough to slip inside, he’d go all the way. She desperately wanted him to come, to know the spark was still there. He needed to believe in both of them. Atop him, she heard him moan, and his voice triggered her own desire, small, slow, but there. She shifted to nurture it, squeezed, heard him moan softly again.
They played back and forth, sending ripples of thought through each other, focusing themselves on the building fire. Finally, Marcie came, not anything spectacular, almost missing it. But Richard kept on, grabbing at thoughts through an exhausted and confused mind, Marcie trying to help, grabbing his ass, fingering his anus, kissing his nipples, flicking her tongue against his lips. And still he kept on, harder and harder, cocaine cold, trying to find a break in the armor to send his love. Finally, with a great final thrust, he delivered inside her.
Over. All of it. Tomorrow we will face a new day together.
“Why are you crying?” he asked, brushing away a tear. “Did I hurt you?”
“No,” she sobbed, chest heaving. “It’s just that … I love you …”
“I love you, too. Can’t you tell?”
She rolled away from him and got up to use the toilet. The floor was cold on her bare feet and she shivered, but nothing could take away her sense of elation. Then, from the open window, she heard loud noises and shouting.
“Richard, what time is it?” she called.
He glanced at the clock. “Almost 3:00 a.m. Why?”
“There’s a lot of noise on the street.”
He walked into the bathroom. “Thanks Marcie. Thanks for this evening.”
“You’re welcome, my love.”
But the same noise suddenly had Richard leaning out the window. “Hey, you know,” he mumbled, “that’s not just noise. Something’s happening down there.”
“What could be happening at three in the morning?”
“I don’t know. But I’m going to find out.”
Richard pulled on his jeans and rushed down the open corridor of the apartment complex to overlook the street. Marcie followed, wearing his T-shirt.
“See anything?” she asked.
“It’s coming from over there,” he pointed. “By the park.”
At that moment, a lone man ran down College Avenue from the direction of Dwight Way, shouting at the top of his lungs. “The pigs are coming! The pigs are coming! …”
“What do you suppose he means?” she asked.
“I don’t know,” Richard answered, watching the man disappear down the street. He put his arm around her shoulders and started walking back toward the apartment. “Come on. Let’s go to bed. We’ll probably hear all about it tomorrow.”
KEVIN AND JOE
BERKELEY, CALIFORNIA
MAY 1969
At first, Kevin was amused at Richard’s embarrassment.
Imagine, he thought, taking another snort, Marcie thinking Richard a nark!
He and Debbie were still laughing about it as they walked toward People’s Park, their arms wrapped around each other, taking wide strides. Kevin was feeling particularly outrageous, had all his freak colors flying—tie-dye shirt, pants wide and breezy and covered with the paint colors of his new canvas, beads around his neck, his special piece of opal bouncing against his chest, bracelets around his wrists, his long dark hair blowin’ in the breeze, enough energy to fly to the restaurant. Beside him, Debbie wore one of her embroidered denim jackets, recounting the story of the new contract she’d just gotten with a store that promised to take all she sewed.
At the corner of the park, Kevin saw David and Dove, wide-eyed and spaced, sitting on a rough-hewn bench that had been erected under a tree. Kevin laughed aloud. From the agitated look on David’s face, he knew he was waiting for someone, and David didn’t like to wait.
“Hey,” he called to David. “Did you hear the latest with Richard and Marcie? Get this—Marcie freaked and came over to tell me that Richard was a nark!”
“Well, you never can tell. I mean the guy’s so straight sometimes.”
“Hey, man. Richard’s no nark. Marcie’s just been tooting too much coke. She should quit. She can’t handle it.”
“I don’t know, man. That guy gives me the creeps sometimes. So self-righteous. Dove, hand me that vial, will you? You want a toot?”
Kevin filled a tiny spoon and part of its handle, snorting three times in each nostril, powder flying in the air.
What the fuck? If you’re going to do it, you might as well do a dose that gets you off.
He passed the vial to Debbie. “We’re going to eat,” he told David, sniffing hard. “Want to come?”
“No. I’m waiting for someone.”
The meal didn’t go well. Kevin and Debbie left most of the food on the table. They needed to move, wanted to talk and hang out together.
“Let’s go home,” Kevin told her.
Sitting in the living room, Debbie’s needle moving quickly over a shirt, they talked and Kevin painted, working in reds, until the late night hours. But by two o’clock in the morning, Marcie’s painful face began to haunt Ke
vin.
Jesus, how many times have I sold to Richard? No. Impossible. Not Richard.
Then David’s voice echoed, “You can never tell.”
Kevin paced, beginning to verbalize his fears.
“Come on, Kevin,” Debbie laughed hoarsely. “Be serious!”
At 4:00 a.m., Kevin suddenly remembered who had turned him on to Richard.
Debbie.
Debbie had brought him over one morning after breakfast at the Drogstore on Haight Street. He grew strangely silent, cold, and frightened. He barely chanced to move his eyes, for fear of precipitating some action that would harm him.
And just where had Debbie come from? How long had she been watching his movements, meeting people, knowing what he was doing?
By 7:00 a.m., he was sitting on the doorstep of Joe O’Brian’s office, waiting for a respectable time to barge in. Luckily, his secretary and old lady, Jennifer, was an early riser.
“Kevin!” she exclaimed, reaching for the morning paper on the front step. “What are you doing out here? You’d better come in!”
Agitated, striding the room with the same wide gait that had told everyone the afternoon before that he felt good, Kevin loudly demanded to see Joe.
“You want some coffee?” Jennifer asked, trying to settle him down.
“No. No coffee. I don’t drink stimulants. Just tell Joe I’m here.”
“Kevin,” Joe said in the next moment, walking in, buttoning his shirt. “I can hear you all the way in the back, man. What’s happening? Some emergency?”
“Emergency, ha! You bet it’s some emergency,” he snorted sarcastically, running his hands through his hair, grinding his teeth, still pacing the room. “I just discovered that Richard’s a nark! Jesus, can you goddamn believe it? How many times have I sold to fuckin’ Richard?”
“Now wait a second. Slow down. Jennifer, I’ll take some coffee. Okay, let’s get this straight. You think Richard’s an undercover narcotics agent?”
“You bet I do. Marcie told me. She discovered it.”
“Richard’s lady? Marcie? Kevin, this doesn’t make any sense. I know Richard. Why don’t you sit down and start at the beginning.”
As Kevin told all the details of the story, he occasionally took a seat on a chair, only to bounce up in the next minute. Joe knew Kevin was really loaded from the first glance, but he listened patiently, letting Kevin blow the wind out of his own sails.
“I’ve been tryin’ to call the fuckin’ dude for two days, man. He’s gone. The phone just rings and rings. Like he’s disappeared. Like maybe he knows we’re on to him.”
Jennifer brought in a cup, handed the coffee to Joe, and asked, “Kevin, why did you laugh when Marcie said Richard was a nark? I mean, that’s my first reaction, too.”
“Well, cause I thought I knew Richard … and Marcie had been tooting …”
Joe looked at his watch. 7:15. His first appointment was at 8:30. He had the time. He knew it would take the next hour to talk Kevin down.
“How long have you had your nose in the bag?” he asked Kevin.
PHILLIPS AND BREMER
BERKELEY, CALIFORNIA
MAY 1969
Three days earlier, Agent Wilson had called Phillips with the idea of putting in a few extra hours on Joe O’Brian. The Old Man had been a little down in the mouth lately, and no one could figure out why. Things were goin’ pretty good around the office. Even that smart-ass kid, Corbet, had been calling with bimonthly reports, behaving himself. Maybe getting something on O’Brian would pick Dolph up. He and Phillips had been sitting in front of Joe’s office for only two mornings when they’d hit a totally unexpected jackpot.
“That’s him!” Philips cried. “I swear to God that’s him! Almost two years ago. From the Haight. His hair’s longer. And the beard’s new. But I swear, that’s him!”
“You mean the time that guy disappeared from your car?”
“Not the guy from the car. That was, oh, what was his name … Wade Tillich. No, I mean the guy inside the apartment. Kevin something or other, wasn’t it? Get the Old Man on the radio. Tell him to get a tail down here. On the double.”
The slightly overweight woman wore glasses and carried a textbook and a notebook, someone Kevin would never have noticed. Unobtrusively, she followed him from Joe’s, down Telegraph Avenue, up Dwight Way, past the park, and finally to his apartment building, just past College Avenue. As she slowly strolled by, she noticed the ring of keys he used to open the door.
Got him, she thought. This is where he lives.
Late in the afternoon on the same day that Richard flushed three quarters of an ounce of coke down the toilet, Agent Bremer had his agents in front of a chalkboard explaining the upcoming mission. An undercurrent of excitement traveled through the room.
“Do we have any info on who might be in the apartment with him?” one of the agents asked.
“We’ve contacted the landlord,” Wilson told the group. “It looks like there’s only this guy Kevin and his girlfriend living there. Deborah Marner. She rented the apartment.”
“Same girl as in the Haight,” Phillips nodded.
“Anything else?” Bremer asked, looking from one face to another. “Wilson, do you have the search warrant? I want absolutely no mistakes. I don’t want Bormann finding this punk a way out.”
When Wilson held up the paper, Bremer nodded, meeting over. The men began to scatter, talking among themselves as they left the room.
“By the way, Ed,” Bremer called, “that was a good piece of work—sitting on O’Brian like that. Damn good work. It’s going to mean a gold star on your record.”
“Thanks, Boss,” Wilson smiled.
Bremer was convinced, once again, of the value of patience. He knew he’d get that fucker sooner or later. He sat down at his desk, opened the top drawer, and took out the pearl handled magnum covered in its polishing cloth.
God, I can’t wait to get into court, he thought, unwrapping his baby and running the cloth over it.
Almost as an afterthought, he buzzed the front desk. “Alice, you still got Jacobs covering that apartment on Dwight near College?”
“Right, sir. He’s out front.”
Bremer leaned back in his chair, smirking.
Wait until O’Brian learns this Kevin was tailed from his office. And if O’Brian shows up in court again, I’ll spill it all out—about how he consorts with known dealers of narcotics. I’ll make his underground friends part of the public record. Boy, I’d like to see the look on his face when he learns that his business—his very presence—can send someone to jail.
Chuckling aloud, Bremer wrapped the pistol, and put it back into the drawer, thinking that he’d use it tomorrow. At the office door, he turned off the light, then glanced back into the darkened room to be sure that things really were in order.
Outside in the hallway, scores of armed men in uniform were passing the time, gearing up for something.
“Hey, Dolph.”
“Bill,” Bremer nodded. “What’s going on?”
“Getting ready to move on that park. You know. By Telegraph Avenue.”
“Oh,” Dolph answered, then left the building.
KEVIN
BERKELEY, CALIFORNIA
MAY 1969
Kevin returned home after his visit to Joe feeling very foolish, making his way through large crowds on the street, and only vaguely registering renewed activity around the park. Slowly, Joe had reminded him of the associations he’d had with Richard over the past two years. Eventually, it had registered.
Now, he timidly put his hand to the elevator button knowing he would have to face Debbie. After everything he’d said.
At the moment, all he could remember was her confused face.
Worse, she’d probably be crashed, and he wouldn’t be able to get straight with her until later. Never mind. He’d wake her up.
Opening the apartment door, he gratefully found the rooms quiet. For once, the stereo was off, and no one was sit
ting around waiting to see him. Only the art on the walls was loud, color filling the space. Enjoying the silence, preparing himself for the long conversation he’d have to have, he unplugged the phone before it could ring.
“Debbie,” he called softly into the bedroom.
She wasn’t there.
“Debbie!” he called, searching, scared now.
On the counter was a note.
Dear Kevin,
I love you, but how can we live together if you don’t trust me?
Not just me, but my judgment. I’m going out to stay with Michelle in Inverness for a few days until the air clears.
“God damn fuckin’ shit,” he hissed, pounding the counter and destroying the note in his clenched fist. He was tired, and all he wanted was to lay his head against his old lady’s breast, and where the fuck was she? Out in Inverness. Or on her way there. He’d have to call Richard for Michelle’s phone number.
Richard?
For a moment, he was confused, then he began to laugh, laugh at the stupidity of it all, laugh until he cried. “Richard,” he mumbled aloud between a crazy shifting of tears and giggles.
In his pocket was a vial of coke. It would be so easy to take another snort. But, no, he needed sleep. He needed to get straight with Debbie. With a flick of his wrist, he tossed the tiny glass jar into a basket on the counter and walked back to the living room, collapsing onto the sofa. He lay back against a cushion. He couldn’t breathe through his nose, and his teeth and jaw ached miserably.
Sleep, he told himself. Sleep. You’ve got to clear your head.
Then removing all his clothes, he lay down naked on the couch, fitfully, forcing himself into slumber.
KATHY, CHRISTIAN, AND MARCIE
BERKELEY, CALIFORNIA
MAY 1969
The people who were in the park on that evening in May 1969 weren’t sure what was happening when it all began. Some were sleeping. Some still sitting around campfires having a toke or sharing a bottle. Later, all anyone could remember was the fact that it was very late, two or three o’clock in the morning, and that the raid was well coordinated, starting at each side of the square.
A Nation of Mystics - Book II: The Tribe Page 35
