by Troy Conway
He walked to the edge of the platform and reached for a girl. She took his hand and climbed onto the platform with him.
“This is Chiquita,” he announced. “She’s a girl who’s known poverty, a girl who’s known suffering. And she’s a girl who knows love. Watch, now and you’ll see it.”
On cue, the girl walked across the front of the platform. But she wasn’t Chiquita. She was Carla. I watched her pluck a rose form the bouquet in her hand and toss it into the audience. “Flowers,” she said sweetly. “Flowers mean love.”
(Ah, yes. Business as usual. One of the players might have been changes, but the game remained the same.)
“You heard her,” rasped The Big Head. “Flowers mean love, and Chiquita knows love. Now watch and she’ll show you.”
I watched. But I was more interested in The Big Head than in his pretty assistant. He seemed nervous to the point of being distraught. His voice no longer suited for knowing that he wasn’t up to the tasks and hoping agains hope that his audience wouldn’t notice. I remembered what Chiquita had said about his having a heart condition. I wondered if it were true. He certainly looked it tonight.
My attention shifted from The Big Head to Carla. She had dropped to her knees and unbuttoned her blouse, displaying the mammoth pair of breasts which less than twenty-four hours ago had been my playthings.
I wondered, Was she really Chiquita’s sister?
And if Chiquita was an agent for the Chinese Reds, was she one also?
At my apartment, she had spoken only Spanish.
Would the Chinese send a girl who spoke only Spanish on a mission among English-speaking people?
I tried to make some sense out of it, but I couldn’t. Thanks to the LSD Chiquita had slipped me, my brain was working on only one cylinder. I’d contemplate a questions, then get so involved in my contemplations that I’d forger the questions. I refocused on to the proceedings on stage. Carla had already stretched out on the table and was writhing ecstatically while the audience chanted: “Love! Love! Love!”
The LSD made me want to join in on the chanting, but the straight side of my mind prevailed. I watched silently as The Big Head, holding his microphone aloft, positioned himself between the girl’s naked, outstretched thighs.
Then I stopped watching.
Something else, far more interesting was bidding for my interest.
Several rows in front of me, two peoplea man and a womanhad got up and made their way through the darkened loft toward the door leading backstage. As they stood beneath the exit sign, a deep red glow bathed the woman’s face.
I started hard, and my breath caught in my throat. The woman was brunette, the same brunette I had seen at the LSP party, the brunette I had thought was Corinne LaBell.
As I stared at her, I cursed myself for having let Chiquita slip me a spiked drink. If I were sober, I might have followed her. I might even have been able to snatch her away from the people she was with and spirit her off to Walrus-moustache.
But I wasn’t sober, and in the state I was in, I didn’t dare try anything funny.
Furious with frustration, I sat back and continued to watch her. Then I couldn’t watch her anymore because the lights had gone out. When they went back on, she and her companion had gonepresumably through the backstage door.
I left Te Church of the Sacred Acid and beelined for a phone booth. Aunt Matilda answered on the first ring. I filed her in on all the latest happenings. Then I hung up and headed for my apartment.
I didn’t quite make it.
Suddenly, as I ambled along the street, the effects of the LSD hit me full force. Holed materialized in the pavement, and I kept falling into them. Each hole was filled with slime. It engulfed me, and the only I could keep from suffocating was to drink it down.
I drank one holeful, then another, then another. Then I puked all over the sidewalk.
But there were more holes, and there was more slime to drink. Finally I couldn’t take it any more. I fell into a new hole and refused to open my mouth. The slime seeped up over my nostrils. I held my breath, and everything went black.
CHAPTER 10
When I came to, my watch read one fifteen. I was lying in a gutter, my face immersed in a pole of my own vomit. The hot afternoon sun was beating down on me. I felt as of I hadn’t washed for weeks.
I staggered to my feet and read the street sign on the nearest lamppost. Third Avenue and Eleventh Street. That explained why no one had bothered to rouse me. On this stretch of Third, just a few blocks from The Bowery, there usually ate more people in the gutter than walking the sidewalks.
I crawled eastward on what was left of my legs. I was only a few blocks from my apartment, and in the shape I was in, I wanted to make it on footif only to air out my mind. The effects of the LSD seemed to have worn off, but I didn’t want to take any chances.
At a newsstand on the corner of Second Avenue and St.Mark’s Place, I picked up a copy of The Tompkins Park Blast, remembering that my newfound ally, Egbert, had told me I could find him at the Tompkins Square Park smoke-in and that the smoke-in was the subject of an article in The Blast. I wanted to read up on what I was getting into before I got into it.
The article was buried deep in the paper under the headline: GRASS APPEARS IN TOMPKINS SQUARE PARK. An over line read, “Police Don’t Mow Down Smoke-In.”
Before leaving the newsstand I read the article.
“Local Grass-Rooters in Tompkins Square Park on Sunday demonstrated with another Smoke-In that if the police are sufficiently outnumbered, nobody gets busted.
“At least, that’s what happened when a group of anonymous joints. Hundreds of people scooped up the joints and turned on, smoking openly and hiding nothing from observers.
“Turning on, tuning in, and laughing, singing and dancing to a rock band were the orders of the day, and the hippies did it. Others who watched without participating did not register any disapproval.
“But uniformed policemen and plainclothesmen were among the crowd of several thousands, which was a mixture of hippies, Negroes, Puerto Ricans and other groups from the area’s ghettoes. The police watched the proceedings quietly and casually ignored them—perhaps wisely so.
“Probably the lack of arrests in spite of evidence before them stemmed from recent unrest and rioting in ghettoes throughout the city and the nation. Apparently the police had decided not to act unless there was violence.
“Whatever the situation, the hippies in Tompkins Square Park proved that they’re actively out to change present laws and make marijuana legal. And they just might do it if further smoke-ins are conducted like Sunday’s.”
So that was the story on the Tompkins Square Park smoke-in movementhippies exploiting the ghetto people for the purpose of harassing the police. It was not exactly my idea of democracy’s finest hour, but if I wanted to meet Egbertin the interests of saving democracyI’d have to join in with the crowd.
Folding the newspaper under my arm, I hobbled the remaining blocks to my pad. The dirty brick façade of the dilapidated tenement building had never looked better to me. And neither had the face of the guy standing in front of the building.
He was on the street, surrounded by barricades labeled “Dig We Must.” In his hands was a forty-pound jackhammer, with which he had ripped a two-yard-square hole in the pavement. When he spotted me, he turned off the motor, squeezed between two of the barricades and hurried to my side. “Where the hell have you been?” he hissed, tugging the ends of his walrus-like moustache. “We’ve really been worried about you.”
I led the way into my apartment and poured a drink for each of us. “It’s been quite a night,” I said.
He clucked sympathetically. “Aunt Matilda has kept me posted. I can imagine what you went through.”
I took a long, slow swallow of Scotch. It tasted good.
“But,” he added quickly. “your efforts haven’t been in vain. Thanks to you, we’ve acquired a wealth of valuable information. Last night I played the
tape that you and Egbert made down at the Federal Detention Unit. I also assigned men to interrogate the three conspirators you roughed upDevaney, Weiss and Slaitt. Combining the results of these interrogations with the material from the tape, we’ve managed to pinpoint all twelve of the hippie platoon outposts. We now have a twenty-four four stake out on the outposts. When the platoons swing into action, we’ll be ready for them.”
I gulped. “Then The Big Freak-Out had been foiledright?”
“Wrong. There’s always the possibility of last-minute change of plans that will catch us off guard. Besides, even if we do stop the coup from taking place, the pollution of the Potomac can still go off as scheduled. When that happened, Washington will be immobilized. The Red Chinese extremists, aware that the coup has failed, may then prevail upon the powers-that-be take advantage of our confusion by launching a nuclear offensive. Chances are good that their advice would be heeded. Remember, the so-called moderated not because they like us but because they fear us. with our nation’s capital freaked out, they’d have no reason to feat us anymore.” He shuddered. “It could he a catastrophe, Damon. A genuine catastrophe.”
“But,” I argued, “now that we’ve got all this evidence that the coup actually is in the works, can’t we persuade the Cabinet officer in charge of the agency’s operations to alert the President and other key figures to what’s happening?”
“I’m afraid not. The head of our agency met with the Cabinet officer this morning. The Cabinet officer was given all the evidence that we have. He no longer persists in his notion that The Big Freak-Out is a figment of our imagination. But neither is he convinced that the situation is presently grave enough to warrant bringing it to the President’s attention.”
“Then what does he plan to do about it?”
“He had done something about it.”
“Namely?’
“He’s appointed a committee to investigate.” He sighed. “The wheels of bureaucracy, Damon, grind exceedingly slow.”
I sighted with him. “Then we’re right back where we stated from?’
“Just about. Unless we can come up with more evidence, incontrovertible evidence, that The Big Freak-Out is both feasible and imminent, our worst fears will have been realized. I’m counting on you to produce that evidence.” He took en envelope from the pocket of his shirt. “You told Aunt Matilda you wanted a picture of Corinne LaBelle. Here it is. I hope it accomplishes whatever you want it to. And now”he stood“I’ve got to get going Lots of luck.”
I showed him out the door. Then I showered, changed and broiled myself a thick steak. The steak was the first food I had eaten since before my ill-fated rendezvous with Chiquita. I savored every mouthful.
Feeling like a human being again, I subwayed uptown to the back issued department of the New York Daily News. I bought a copy of the issue containing the photo of James Hartley, a photo which, if luck was running with me, Egbert might be able to identify. By this time it was four p.m I subwayed back downtown to Tompkins Square Park.
The park had a long history as a scene of social protest. During the Civil War, it was the location of the nation’s first drafts riots, demonstrations against President Lincoln’s newly passed law permitting compulsory conscription of citizens to serve in the Armed Forces. During World War I, it was the platform from which opponents of intervention in European affairs vented their spleen. During the nineteen-thirties it was a rallying point for followers of Marx, Engels and Trostsky. And now it was the stage on which the hippies were strutting and fretting their part.
When I got there, they were strutting and fretting in a manner which would have made their social-protest predecessors more than proud. All of a thousand longhairs were milling around the bandshell in the center of the park. They carried signs reading “Up with pot,” “Marijuana liberated,” “We demand the freedom to smoke,” “Pot is safer than alcohol,” “Mary Jane for the massed” and “The grass is always greener when you smoke it.”
On the west side of the park were several hundred other sign-carriers, along with a platoon of young girls who were handing our pro-pot leaflets to passersby on the street. Between the two principals clusters of demonstrators was an assortment of nearly two thousand unaffiliated hippies, all wandering about aimlessly. No one was smoking marijuana just yet, but the eager looks in the eyes of most of the assembly suggested that light-up time was fast drawing near.
I ambled through the crowd looking for Egbert. When he had first mentioned the smoke-in to me, I had expected a gathering of no more than fifty or a hundred hippies and I had assumed there’d be no problem finding him among them. Now I realized that my chances were pretty slim. In that crowd of close to four thousand look-alike and dress-alike hippies, it was like looking for the proverbial needle in a haystack.
I took one turn around the part, them another.
No sing of him.
I took a third turn and a fourth.
Still no sign.
I took a fifth.
Then, not far from the northeast entrance, I stopped short.
A crowd of several hundred hippies were sitting on the grass around a large elm tree.
They were listening to someone sing and play the guitar.
The someone wasn’t Egbertit was the doll in the miniskirt whom I had made love to at The Church of the Sacred Acid the night I had gone there with Lola!
I inched my way through the crowd and tried to get a better look at her.
She was sitting on the grass with her back against the elm tree and her long, sexy legs folded beneath her. Her chestnut brown hair toppled to her shoulders. One of her bra-less breast was draped over the body of her guitar while the other peeked out from under the nest of the instrument.
“The ravages of war take their toll on our people,” she sang. “The farmboy goes fighting’ and never comes back . . . “
I listened closely and tried to place the voice. I was sure that I’d heard it beforejust as I’d been sure when I saw her in the Church of the sacred Acid that I’d seen her before. But I still couldn’t figure out when or where.
“The Man in the White House says he’s not for evil,” she went on. “but killing’ is evil and killing’s his bag.”
I nudges the hippie alongside me. “Who is she, man?” I asked.
He looked at me s though I were a visitor from another planet.” You’re kidding, man. You’ve got to be kidding.”
“No, seriously. Who is she?”
“She’s Dina Grey, man!” contributed a pimply-faced chick on my opposite side. “Can’t you tell? Where you been hiding out all these years?”
So that’s who she was! Dina Grey, the well known folksinger, social protester and leftist agitator. And that’s why she has seemed so familiar to me. I’d heard her voice on the radio hundreds of times, and I’d seen her picture in dozens of magazines. Now she was also my ex-sexmate. So much for the finger benefits of being a spy!
I’d’ve liked to hang around the renew our friendship. But I had more important things to occupy my timelike finding Egbert. I turned a quick about-face and vacated the scene. Her voice followed me: “ And the metal-torn face that rips up the child and bites out this heart is crying. . . . “
I did another turn around the park.
Then another.
Then, as I made my way through the ever-thickening crowd of hippies in front of the bandshell, I felt a hand at my elbow.
“Hi, chief,” said Egbert. “What’s shaking?”
We eased our way out of the handshell mob and through the considerably less dense congregation on the north side of the park. I handed him the photo of Corinne LaBelle.
“Wow!” he said, his eyes threatening to pop out of his head. “What as set of jugs!”
“Do you recognize her?”
He brought the photo to within a few inches of his nose. “Hey, Damon, what’s this thing here on her left breast right next to the nipple!’
“A tattoo,” I said impatiently. “Do you reco
gnize her or not?”
He gave the picture another look. “Yeah, I think I do.”
“Was she one of the chicks at the party that night we turned on with LSP?”
“I think she was. Yeah, she was! She was the broad in the gray dress, the one who wouldn’t take off the clothes. I tried to get something going with her, but she wouldn’t give me the time of day.”
“Have you ever seen her anywhere besides at the party?”
He shook his head. “No. That was the only place”
“You’re positive?”
“Yeah. With boobs like that, if I saw her before, I’d remember it.”
I took the photo back and handed him the one of James Hartley which I’d clipped the Daily News. “What about this guy? Did you ever see him?”
His eyes widened. “Was this the guy you were telling me about? The guy they killed with piano wire?”
“Right, Do you know him?”
“Sure I know him. He’s Jimmy from Philadelphia. One of the first guys in the group. I told you about him yesterday.
My stomach tightened.
My mouth went dry.
Jimmy from Philadelphia. One of the first guys in the group.
James Hartley, the boyfriend of Corinne LaBelle.
My mind was racing a mile a minute.
But it was racing in a million different directions.
When Hartley popped up in New York two weeks ago, his appearance had fit very nicely into the theory that Corinne was in town as a prisoner of the Red Chinese agents who were backing The Big Freak-Out. Conceivable she had managed to leak word to him of her plight and he had come looking for her.
Then he was garroted. That fit the theory too. If Corinne’s captors had caught him snooping around, they might very well have decided to kill him.
But an envelope containing fifteen LSD tablets had been found near his body. And I couldn’t believe that the killer had dropped them. I had a sneaking suspicion that they belonged to Hartley himself. Suddenly the theory didn’t seem so solid anymore.
