“That’s an idea,” Greg said, then glanced at his watch, “Time for my next class. Let’s give this a tentative yes. And lets make it three tomorrow. I have classes solid until then.”
“Check,” Larry said.
Greg normally did not smoke in the day either. His next class, in Humanities entitled “Anglo-American Cultural Traditions,” fulfilled his breadth requirements. It was also irredeemably garbled, thanks to the grass.
“If you will, consider for a moment the difference between ‘paradise’ and ‘utopia’,” the Prof, Stewart Holmes, paced as he introduced the course. “Paradise comes from the old Persian word pairidaeza, meaning an enclosure, or park. The most famous paradise in western tradition, of course, is Eden, Hebrew for delight, and actually a garden planted by God eastward in Eden. The garden of Eden shares with the more general concept of paradise the feature of cultivation. Both a park and a garden are planned plots of land; prepared, planted, and landscaped by an intelligent agent. The Persian diz means to mold, and pairi means around. So paradise, literally, is a defined and designed area. As such, paradise can and does exist, in as much as any garden or park exists.
“Utopia is also a construct, a deliberate creation. It is the perfect social order, a sociopolitical realm without conflict or strife. But it is intended not to possess any substance. Coined by Sir Thomas More in a romance of a perfected island society with the same name, utopia comes from the Greek, ou meaning not plus topos meaning place, literally, utopia means no place. Samuel Butler wrote a Utopian novel called Erewhon, the perfect society of which is nowhere spelled backwards. William Morris continued in this vein with his News From Nowhere. The ideal state then, the just society free of internal strife, is nowhere.
“Pre-modern civilizations thought it enough to win the struggle with nature and to cultivate the perfect garden or park in order to create paradise. Remember that the Judeo-Christian ‘Fall of Man’ occurred in the Garden of Eden and that the serpent also resided there. Paradise did not prevent sin, even in the conception of pre-modern civilizations. Perhaps the modern world is just that much more cynical in that paradise has been replaced by utopia, and that utopia by definition does not and cannot exist.”
Greg had not needed the marijuana enhanced confusion. Give him a wiring diagram or circuit board and he could read it. But with Shakespeare, Plato or de Tocqueville he was lost. This was actually his toughest subject, something that Janet would have found a breeze. Trying to do homework in the library after the class, in turn, proved slow and sloppy, until the high wore off. He found he could keep his mind off Janet by hitting the books, however, and so he promised himself not to push it stoned anymore. By 6:30 he was on the road to Margaret’s apartment. By 8, four Guinnesses and a joint of kajan later back at his house, Margaret and Greg were doing their best to fuck each others’ brains out. Greg still burned with the desire to get back at Janet with his more than willing partner.
***
Oakland was quiet. Leon and Snake Boy cracked the Rexall on Telegraph that Monday night, high on PCP, Elysium and crack; the preferred 21st century street speedball. Two black-and-white’s responded to the silent alarm in time to catch the young black men taking flight down the alley. Four cops jumped, revolvers drawn, and two shouted “Halt!” Snake Boy whipped back bis own piece, squeezed and pounded the black cop. The cops’ return volley splintered concrete and plaster as the two thieves leapt into a hole in the wooden fence.
One cop went to call for backup and an ambulance. The remaining two gave chase. They caught up with Leon and Snake Boy and again yelled “Halt!”, this time from behind parked cars as the two black men ran across the street. Snake Boy tried his magic once more, got off one wild shot, and was instantly shredded into blood, bones and guts in Leon’s sight by the police response. Leon skidded to a stop, raising his hands.
“Don’t shoot,” he wailed. “I give up. Don’t kill me.”
Within seconds the two white officers stood on either side of him, guns leveled and cocked. Within the minute a black-and-white screeched to a halt blocking the street in front of this tableau. The white cop who jumped out whipped into Leon with nunchucks, and slammed him over the police car’s hood for a search. Leon freaked big time. He tried to roll off, inspiring the cop with the nunchucks to throw a choke hold on him while the other two cops beat him on his back, chest, arms, legs and groin with their nightsticks until he collapsed. Then they brutally handcuffed Leon’s wrists and ankles and tossed him into the back of the cop car.
The three cops stood out on the street discussing the situation, wait ing on the report of the downed officer’s status, as Leon raged into his final act. He turned with excruciating pain until he was on his back in the back seat. With one kick of his cuffed sneakered feet, he knocked out the side back window. It shattered, and showered the police outside with glass shards.
“That’s it, mutherfucker.”
The cops dragged him out of the car, the nunchuck cop once more in choke hold while the other two slammed him over and over with their batons for close to ten minutes, ensuring Leon’s respiratory collapse. The paramedics could not revive him. He was pronounced DOA at Highland General.
News traveled the streets like electricity, aided by broadcast of the story on the Afrikan Liberation Station news and the telephone work done by the New Afrika Center’s switchboard. Two of Oakland’s council of Baptist ministers were the first to arrive on the scene. An angry mob, over five hundred strong, railed against a line of nervous police blocking off the shooting site at two in the morning. Then, important members of Oakland’s Black Unity Front, Black Panther Party, New Afrika People’s Movement, All-African Peoples Socialist Party, African Peoples Revolutionary Party, African Peoples National Party, and Nation of Islam—some with offices in the New Afrika Center—arrived soon thereafter. DL made it in time to see thirty cops sweat as the crowd doubled in twenty minutes. Then, reinforcements arrived; Oakland PD and Alameda County Sheriffs. Tensions, in a word, escalated.
The community heavies arranged an impromptu street comer meeting. The meeting decided to call a rally and picket in front of the central police station on Wednesday at four to protest Leon’s and Snake Boy’s deaths, and police brutality against the community in general. DL offered the New Afrika Center as an interim meeting place. The word spread. Reluctantly, grudgingly, the crowd dispersed, leaving the smell of their anger in the air.
***
Peregrine sat on his windowsill, one foot on the sill and the other foot on the fire escape’s creaking metal. A half empty beer, his third, rested on the ledge next to him. He had a clipboard and a pen, and he pondered over the letter he was composing to his brother. Monday evening curdled into night. Gondwana was starting to jump, the usual crowd of scene makers occupying the most prominent tables. The high school crowd assembled in their cars and vans around the Loop. And, on a street corner in the waning light, a preacher tried to cut through their youthful attempts at decadence.
“It is not too late to repent!” the man in a badly fitting black suit spoke. He held up a dog-eared, hand-worn, leather-bound black Bible. “It is not too late to be cleansed by the blood of the lamb, our Savior, the Lord, Christ Jesus! Heed the Lord’s call now, because His Second Coming is near. When the suffering servant, when our glorious redeemer returns He will reign over earth for a thousand years with His Elect before the Final Judgment. You can be a part of the Lord’s Elect and you can rule with Him. It is not too late.”
As usual, he wasn’t attracting much of a crowd. The apocalypse, the traditional four horsemen, were not a big seller. Not cyberpunk enough. Not enough gore. Too predictable, and the most interesting side, the Dragon’s side, was predetermined to lose.
Peregrine no longer went out much nights. This was not due to any “low profile” strategy. In fact, he subscribed to the notion that the best place to hide was out in the open. Right under the noses of his pursuers. The idea was as old as Poe’s “Purloined Letter,” yet it continu
ed to work. If anything, he’d intensified his undisguised public presence in the wash of the media’s constant broadcast of the police’s flawed sketch and description. No, he needed to consolidate his resources, and the letter was an important part of that effort. His mini-arsenal buried in the mountains, plus the satellite hacker box but minus the ID, would collect a tidy sum from the right buyer.
I’ve recently begun working a new job, Peregrine started out his third paragraph. This paragraph they reserved for such clues as his that he’d started back with second-story work. And I’m trying to sell my car. It has LOTS of accessories, really an excellent buy, so I hope it doesn’t take long to sell.
Brothers, they’d worked out intimate signs and codes to get by first, their parents, and now his brother’s keepers. His bro would know that he had a modest cache of sophisticated technologies and armaments for sale. From jail, he would manage to connect up with both prison and street grapevines for Peregrine; put the word out and screen most of the inquiries. The Hawk was very well connected. He would watch out for his younger brother, for a healthy percentage. One that Peregrine was glad to cut in order not to have to do it himself. A scene from childhood, him and his brother building forts out of the furniture in the living room to his family’s poor, tidy Flatbush brownstone, wandered through his thoughts.
He played with his ring, the clipboard in his lap and his eyes on the bright, vibrant cafe kitty corner across the street. Peregrine knew the Gondwana’s owners. They had often contributed to the political work he maintained in his surface identity. That he contemplated making the cafe his next job sent a spike of regret through him. He flashed on the memory of a roommate he once had, a girl first time away from home to whom he’d rented a room. She’d kept all her money tied up in her socks in a clothes drawer. In stealing her savings, Peregrine had dashed all of her hopes and plans, forcing her back to a bad family situation.
Immediately, he squelched the guilt now turning in his mind. She’d been stupid to leave her money in so obvious a place. And the Gondwana’s owners would not be badly hurt by his theft. They did a brisk business, and he needed the money. This would be just another contribution to one of Peregrine’s causes, this time himself. He yawned, then wrote a closing paragraph. He signed the letter. He folded it and slipped it into an envelope which he addressed, sealed and stamped. No job tonight. He intended to get a full eight hours sleep.
***
Sumner did not like independents. Nor did he like running down loose cannons. The local police, Sampson in particular, would be brought into line, given time and attention. Now there was this PI that Emerson had hired and so far refused to fire. Edward cleared the Stack’s gloomy pre-dawn mass, cruising up 880 from home base in San Jose in his Dihatsu Chrysler Royale. He had checked out Marcus Ira Dimapopulos. Impeccable. All the more reason to bring him into line, if not onto the team.
Sumner was Nebraska born and raised, a USMC veteran of the first Gulf War, and a University of San Diego law school graduate. He had joined the Bureau after completing school, distinguishing himself as a regular field agent in LA’s smog-bound sprawl. The Bureau’s anti-terrorism work had been his first choice, having trained in counter-insurgency warfare while a Marine at Quantico. So, after taking several additional FBI training courses, he applied for and received a transfer to the West Coast Anti-Terrorist Command Headquarters. Brilliant performance and several promotions later, he was in charge of Headquarters. The Bureau’s reorganization in the wake of the Heidelberg scandal, in turn, handed him his present position, a mixed blessing at best.
Seared golds played behind industrial landscapes to his east. The entire western bay, peninsulas north and south, were enshrouded with fog. He enjoyed the time to think given him by the drive, his cellular, lap top, car fax and scrambler at his fingertips. He still needed to get used to his appointment, meaning he was still hard wired with the instincts and habits of a field agent. Witness the visit to Sampson yesterday and now his intention to meet Dimapopulos. He needed to delegate more, even though he preferred handling things one-on-one. The confrontation with Sampson in particular had been a mistake, and entirely unnecessary. Edward had new powers and greater authority. He had to learn to wield both effectively.
Before the promotion to West Coast Director, he had been one of the Bureau’s more prominent internal gadflies as well. His sense of patriotism had motivated his scathing off-the-record criticisms of the FBI and some of its policies, not to mention of the Justice Department’s use of the Bureau. Fighting Saddam Hussein, Round One, as a Marine had opened Edward’s eyes. Most of the world did not like the United States. Part of the multi-national coalition organized to protect Saudi Arabia and liberate Kuwait, Edward had been stationed in Saudi Arabia; a country that did not permit his Christian worship, refused to let him get drunk on a Saturday night leave, and privately considered him an agent of imperialism and Zionism. His patriotism had only grown stronger. He had wholeheartedly supported the U.S reassertion of its global power. America was a country worth defending from attack, foreign or domestic. After his tour of duty the FBI had seemed the best place from which to protect it.
His years in the Bureau had given him insight into the politics true patriotism was up against. It had made him cynical. Congressional investigations and oversight committees, internal Justice Department probes and reorganizations after contentious Presidential elections, citizen class actions, traditional rivalries with the CIA and other security agencies, NSC “coordination;” Edward could understand in the abstract why some special agents, even some field office directors, had felt the need to go solo, literally to conspire to protect the nation out-side of this straitjacket of political restrictions. Independent of all the political bullshit.
Highway 880 became 580 amidst WWII vintage military base and industrial neighborhoods. The old Bureau structure, DC headquarters and subordinate field offices, as well as the old Bureau policy of routing promoted field agents through a grueling tour-of-duty in the national bureaucracy before assigning them to head local field offices, had not prevented rogue activity. The Puerto Rican field office cabal around Frank Heidelburg was only the most obvious example.
Heidelburg’s conspiracy had amounted to a death squad operation against PR nationalist elements, in particular the Movemiento Liberación National Puertorriqueño—MLNP. Two of his operatives had even employed the white hand symbol, painted on public walls after each of their jobs. And because Heidelburg had been a brilliant Washington man, knowledgeable of the ropes, he had managed to keep his clandestine Justice Teams operational for close to two years, running San Juan’s streets red with MLNP blood. Yes, Edward intellectually understood the actions taken by Heidelburg and others even while he could not condone them. The whole scandal had wrought havoc with the Bureau’s operations across the board. He could not help thinking that FBI disorganization had also allowed the riemanium theft to occur, if not worse things to come.
He would be the first to admit that the Bureau was America’s political police. What is more, he often argued that, in a world with a substantial communist bloc residue, plus ever more numerous out-and-out maddog states like Peru and Myanmar, a strong, effective political police apparatus was even more necessary than during the good old Cold War days. The model could no longer be based on polarization between two global superpowers. The points of conflict around the planet, as well as the sources of terrorism had fractured, multiplied and become far less predictable. The new reality was now solidly center versus periphery, and the center must hold as his friend, David Burns, liked to say. The Bureau needed to adapt strategies to deal with the sheer chaos internationally that continually spilled into domestic affairs.
He supported the proposal, so far privately circulated in the Bureau, to consolidate a wing of the FBI with that of the CIA as a prototype interface intelligence agency. Edward was a Bonapartist, however. The Bureau needed a strong, innovative director, on the lines of J. Edgar himself, to take command; push through an
FBI-CIA experimental merger; reassert FBI counterintelligence work against the peace and anti-war movements; and rebridle the nation to the task of keeping America Number One.
Until now he had been satisfied with bitching about the Bureau while remaining a top ranking loyal agent. He had looked forward to devoting his skills and talent in service to his ideal Director, if one could ever be appointed by the politicians. The council of regional directors he belonged to, and other reforms, had come out of a committee appointed by the current Director; not the type of leadership Edward respected. He reserved his judgment on the restructuring, even as he participated in it. The Bureau was in deep trouble, better make that out-and-out crisis. Sumner would do what he could to help restore the FBI’s credibility and performance.
The West Coast Directorship promotion, in turn, gave him pause. Perhaps he could be his own ideal FBI Director, the first to be appointed from within the Bureau since Hoover’s death. Both the Bureau and the country needed a good, immediate sweeping-out. If no appointee capable of strong leadership was forthcoming, perhaps Edward could prove himself yet again, using the riemanium theft this time. This case was a set up for further promotion, if he ran things right. In private fantasies, Edward anticipated the coming political purges, to make Palmer and McCarthy look like Boy Scouts. He briefly played out his own potential roles in them, adding this one to the list.
He remained on 580 when it split with 80. The depressed, dingy industrial skyline of Richmond stained the morning around him. One thing he knew, many of his field office directors were having a hard time accepting Sumner’s upstart command, themselves the product of years of duty in the Washington bureaucracy. He had gone from critic to The Boss” of some of those he had criticized, responsible now for keeping them in line where once they had run point on him and his sometimes cavalier behavior. This switch, this turn of the tables also made him uncomfortable. He hoped it was only a matter of time and on-the-job experience before he became adept at using his new position. However, to face his first crisis, so soon in office...
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