End Time

by G. A. Matiasz

  “...In his effects. The tapes record telephone conversations between the Mayor of Oakland and a number of business and corporate figures. The Mayor’s office is apparently implicated in accepting favors for legislative and zoning efforts on the behalf of those economic interests. Leo Thompson found the incriminating recordings while packing up his father’s extensive station tape library, in a box marked ‘Insurance.’ We have not been able to reach Mayor Allison for comment...”

  He switched to CD, and put on a classic comp of Neighborhood Watch/Tit Wrench to pound over the basement speakers. Bob Barley, fronting the deep south Chula Vista 1980’s band Neighborhood Watch with that Geeza X/Devo/Dead Kennedys’ sound, lurched through “We Fuck Sheep,” then launched into “A Lesson.” Smoke had certainly shown him a true revolution in progress, a real liberated zone; short lived, but authentic. He refused to indulge either in beer or in smoke, even so close to bed. He slept fitfully, dreaming of New Afrika.

  Greg finished his final, grueling class next day. He walked beneath a wind swept, cloud shivered sky toward the library, trying desperately to tread academic water. Larry found him crossing Remley Plaza.

  “Greg. Got to talk to you,” Larry was drunk, his eyes red and his hair unusually disheveled. “Smoke was caught this morning, 2 a.m., robbing Conspiracy of Equals.”

  “No way,” Greg stopped and dropped his jaw.

  “Joe Curlew caught him,” Larry’s eyes, too, were disbelieving. “Seems that all the coops had been robbed. Or were being robbed regularly, only they weren’t telling anyone, not even the cops, because they wanted to catch whoever was doing it. Because the administration and the campus cops have the master keys and because the coops are Left leaning, the coops were even suspecting the authorities. But it was Smoke they caught.”

  “I can’t rucking believe it,” Greg said. Then he knew that he could. He had seen a side of Smoke through Wednesday’s SF riots, especially getting into Oakland Saturday night, that now told him this too was possible. He had seen it with more than his eyes. Smoke was an iceberg, only 1/10th visible at any given time with 9/10th’s hidden beneath the surface of a cold, murky ocean. “How’d it happen?”

  “Couple of the book coop’s core collective members started sleeping in the store. They’d gotten hit something like three nights. They were taking turns staking out the store at night. Joe caught Smoke. He woke Joe up when he used some pretty professional tools to unlock the store’s door. Joe waited until Smoke had the register’s money in his pockets before busting him.”

  “Damn,” Greg said, and shook his head. “What’s going to happen to him?”

  “They got him in an office here in the student center. He’s being watched until the coops have a general meeting, which ASP is also helping to organize. Should come down in a half hour, in the lounge. The meeting’s gonna decide what to do with Smoke.”

  Greg had intended to study. Instead, he felt irresistibly drawn into this vortex. He drifted around a chrome mesh and pipe structure in the student center plaza. Lori grabbed his arm as he stood, gazing into a sculpture of ribboned steel and glass vaguely resembling chromosomes replicating.

  “Heard?” she asked.

  “About Smoke? Yes.”

  “Lots of us wondered how Smoke made his money,” Lori drawled, then lit a clove smoke. “Now, about the riemanium. I thought you said we had a ‘blank check’ from this Peregrine? Thought you said he wanted us to design a political package for it? Why, all of a sudden, is he backing off? What’s the problem?”

  Her eyes narrowed with suspicion, smoke tracing the air from the corner of her mouth.

  “Well call a meeting to discuss it,” Greg smiled, nervous, and managed to duck away. David buttonholed him by the soft drink and candy machines.

  “Heard about Smoke?” David asked

  “Yeh, where is he?”

  “He’s in the Progressive Student Network office until the meeting decides what to do with him. Coming to the meeting?”

  “Yes,” Greg said, knowing that little study was on his evening’s schedule, realistically.

  “Look,” David pursued, “I know you’re pissed about this Solidarity Brigade stuff. I need to talk to you about it. Larry said that it was you who told Peregrine you didn’t think our direction was correct anymore. I want you to reconsider. I’ve already talked to Larry, and he’s willing, if you are.”

  “After the meeting,” Greg waved him off, starting up the stairs to Smoke’s detainment. Jesus, he thought to himself, Larry could not get anything right. Beth watched the door.

  “Can I talk to him?” Greg asked

  “Well...” She hesitated.

  “I’m not exactly sympathetic to what he’s done,” Greg frowned, “And I mean, he’s not our prisoner. That’s kidnapping, unless we call the cops and make a citizen’s arrest.”

  “Sure,” she said. She avoided his gaze in letting him in.

  Smoke stood in a corner of the office, in leather jacket but without his mirrored glasses. His face was pale and drawn.

  “Long ways away from New Afrika,” Greg shook his head, suddenly discouraged. “Thought you said even an individual can be a liberated zone.”

  “One person can,” Smoke’s voice was tired, worn. “Obviously, I’m not.”

  “So, you robbed the Conspiracy.”

  “Joe caught me,” Smoke said, tersely.

  “Did you rob the other coops?”

  “Would you believe me if I said, ‘No?”

  “No.”

  “But you want me to say it anyway.”

  “I guess part of me does. Yeh.”

  “You’re not as surprised as the others about this,” Smoke cocked an eyebrow at Greg.

  “No. Not since last week. Not since Oakland. That started me wondering about your connections. I’m still wondering about that truck-load of stuff we brought into New Afrika. I haven’t heard word one about where that stuff came from in the media. I assume it was stolen.”

  “You probably won’t hear anything,” Smoke looked off into the ceiling. “Not the way I got it. The government’s running a little scared on that one.”

  “Yet, you’re a thief.”

  “Yes,” Smoke said. “My contradictions run deeper than even you suspect. Deeper than you’ll ever know.”

  “This is disappointing,” Greg shook his head, “I guess I’ll be at the meeting. Thanks, at least, for New Afrika.”

  “New Afrika wasn’t mine to give,” Smoke sighed, “New Afrika was its own gift.”

  The meeting was in some sort of progress by the time Greg took a seat. A back seat, on purpose. Speculation ran rampant as to the breadth of Smoke’s crime spree and criminal reach. The coop robberies were being detailed by David and Nina. Eric described Smoke’s “procurement” of various supplies from the University for the MDRG’s mushroom madness festivals and liberated zones. Lori raised the gossip of personal thefts. The smell of angry betrayal was palpable in the room. It was like sweat, Greg thought to himself. Your own, after a good workout, smells good. Even righteous. Except for the sweat worked up during lovemaking, commingled sweat, other people’s sweat just stinks.

  The whole meeting teetered on the edge of an abyss. If one part of reality can be demonstrated so suddenly and so strikingly false, what else might fall? Three basic camps emerged, as the meeting lurched forward on violent emotion and outburst.

  “Run him out of town on a rail,” Eric expressed one sentiment clearly. “No one, no matter how Smoke tries to make it up or repay people, is gonna trust him or believe him again. I sure as hell won’t. As long as he’s living in the same town, I’m gonna be watching my back and my stuff. I mean fuck, look at this meeting. We’re tearing each other up, fighting each other over whether or not Smoke can be reformed or reeducated. I say, its not worth our trouble even if it is theoretically possible. Even if Smoke can change. Fuck the man. If he ain’t working for the government to destroy us, he might as well be.”

  Eric, his girlfriend
Sara, as well as Lori who puffed her spice cigarette, clamored on this point. They were counterpoised by the position held by Joseph, Nina and Mitch.

  “Look,” Mitch summed it up. “He’s a thief. He got caught stealing. We’re not the police, nor are we the courts. And we have no right even to hold him, unless we arrest him. I say, call the police, and press charges. The police investigation might even link him definitively to the other robberies.”

  David and George, in turn, held up what they considered to be a synthesis. They did not wish theirs to be called a middle ground.

  “We’re not vigilantes,” David said, folding his hands in front of him, “Smoke agreed to wait on the judgment of this meeting in lieu of us calling the police. I personally never trusted him. I think he should be removed from any political activity and responsibility. And I think he should make some type of ongoing restitution to the people and coops he ripped off, until he’s paid the progressive community back. We should set up some other criteria for his rehabilitation as well, like insisting that he seek out some kind of psychological counseling, or do some sort of community service.”

  “I agree with David’s last comments, but not for his reasons,” George made his ponderous points. “We claim to be a progressive community. Some of us claim that our politics are a liberating alternative way to run all of society. I think that as a progressive community offering liberating alternatives we have a right to deal with instances of antisocial behavior in our midst in collective, cooperative ways. As a community, we have power. We can refuse to deal with Smoke and ask everybody we know to ostracize him. Or, we can try to reeducate him. I certainly don’t want to turn to the cops or the administration to deal with this.”

  After much heat and not much light, during which Smoke was called agent provocateur, accused of every odd and happenstance mishap in a half dozen organizations, and even intimated to be able to walk through walls, George and David welded together a compromise. They passed it on the barest of majorities. Smoke would be asked to admit to and take responsibility for all the coop robberies. He would be asked to remove himself from all political activism, to seek counseling, to get a visible, legitimate means of support, and to repay the money he had stolen from the coops. Finally, he would be asked to do some as yet unspecified community service as restitution for the wrongs he had committed against the progressive community. Before bringing Smoke in front of their “People’s Tribunal,” the meeting authorized itself to meet again to review Smoke’s performance against these criteria.

  In hammering out the compromise, Greg realized that there was also a fourth camp present at the meeting. Larry finished off five beers during the course of the meeting, still stunned by disbelief and incredulity. He tried to anesthetize himself and prevent the truth from sinking in just yet. A young ASP recruit actually cried, totally disheartened, during part of the meeting. A star was falling from heaven. Some were eagerly making that star Lucifer thrown from heaven, personifying Smoke as Satan incarnate. But even the Devil had his charms, Greg thought. He reminded himself that Lucifer meant light bearer. He wondered whether Smoke’s fall did not share a little with that of Prometheus, another light bearer and bringer of fire to humanity. No one said that enlightenment was painless.

  It turned out that Smoke had the last laugh that evening. When the meeting contingent walked up to open the office door, the office space was empty. He had disappeared, yet another instance of smoke and mirrors. Later, David and Lori surmised that Smoke had carefully peeled up the acoustic insulating tiles in the ceiling to access a narrow crawl space, and then another set of offices to make good his escape. David was too preoccupied to even think of cornering Greg again on the Solidarity Brigade. Greg ducked out to catch several hours studying in the stacks, or more precisely in VR, a chuckle under his breath. He got home late and found a tantalizing message from Margaret on his answering machine and his father’s fax on the house machine. Andre’s plane would be in at 1 a.m.; not to wait up.

  THIRTY-SIX

  The cellular phone chimed. Groaning, Marcus hit the button.

  “I’m opening the lobby doors now,” the postal guard said, clearly liking the cloak-and-dagger of this.

  “Thanks.” The detective was not at all thankful. It was 5 to 6 in the morning, dark as his mood. The lobby closed at 10. Marcus was not going to be able to keep up this 16-hour a day vigil for much longer. He scalded down one cup of coffee and was getting his refill in a paper cup when he caught a dark figure turn the corner up the block. The furtive shape made for the post office at a brisk pace.

  “Here’s for the coffee,” Marcus handed the counter waitress two dollar bills. “I’ll be back for it later.”

  Once the man committed to climbing the post office steps, Marcus eased out of the diner door. When his target entered the post office doors, the detective sprinted for all he was worth through the first needled splinters of dawn. He arrived at the top of the steps winded, but still firing on adrenaline. He reached into his coat, and stepped into the lobby. The figure in black stood before the correct column of postal boxes in the lobby’s dim light, engrossed in sorting his mail. Marcus approached quietly, his own revolver now leveled.

  “Peregrine,” the detective said.

  The man looked up. Even under toque and turned up collar, even in that dim lobby light, Marcus recognized him from his modified police sketch. Marcus had no doubts.

  “Sorry, wrong,” the man’s mouth tightened.

  “Eugene Wisdom then,” Marcus said, not wavering, “You’re under arrest.”

  ***

  Rosanne watched TV as she worked. The morning news program cast bleached light into her dim apartment, enveloping the amused dance of a candle on her kitchen table with cathode ray ghosts. She did not need the sound.

  “Shouldn’t have run away,” she said in a pinched, high sing song, her cheeks stained with shiny tears. The broadcast cut to a grainy video of her Michael’s arrest. “Nope, shouldn’t have run from me.”

  The video played out two burly CHP officers walking Michael Baumann past the camera. The nice detective who had interviewed her two weeks ago, and who woke her with news of the arrest, was among the entourage that followed. He had told her when they planned to arraign Michael. She finished polishing the long plastic comb handle into a point with a nail file. She was seated at the table, dressed in a dingy bath robe, and surrounded by stacks of dirty dishes a week high. Rosanne rotated the sharpened handle over the candle flame, letting the plastic soften and harden repeatedly into the desired brittleness. She hummed low to herself, a tune she did not even know.

  ***

  Greg woke early to catch more study. Consuello made him a breakfast; eggs over easy and leftover sliced steak, fried and garnished with light salsa and toast. He ate it with lots of coffee over open books and notes. He had heard his father come in very early that morning. When it was time for the campus library to open, he stacked up his studies, and wrote Andre a note.

  I’ve got a busy schedule today, but all is well. How about a late dinner at 7:30 tonight?

  The maid kept her small, portable TV on in the kitchen as she worked. Snippets of the morning news brought Greg into the kitchen with his dishes.

  “California Highway Patrol officers took Eugene Michael Wisdom into custody at 6:45 a.m. this morning, in the downtown San Francisco post office. Wisdom, aka Michael Baumann and Peregrine, is suspected of being the fifth man in the Piccoli jewelry robbery of January 27. Peregrine has managed to elude police and authorities these past two and a half weeks.”

  The picture on screen was Smoke’s. A booking mug shot revealed no emotion.

  “Eugene Wisdom is scheduled for arraignment at 3:30 today in the Civic Center Courthouse. A Security Pacific guard was killed during the robbery, and as you might remember, two pounds of bomb-grade riemanium were also taken during the holdup. The riemanium has not been recovered. Wisdom has made no statement to the media or the authorities about the riemanium...”

/>   Greg could not help himself. He spent the morning in the library, ate a quick lunch between his two light day classes, then hit the road, 101 and the Golden Gate, into the city. All of the insurrection’s damage opened, plain to the sight, on the final curves of the North Bay highway. The torched Pleiades, blackened Transam Pyramid and twisted Bay Bridge scarred the day with reminders of New Afrika’s struggle. That he had the potential power to do immeasurably more damage with his buried secret still dug fingernails into his mental blackboard. Gulls swung around him as he crossed the bridge. Finding parking was hell, but he made it in time for one of the last seats in the back. It was a packed house; the media and the public, a fair amount of gawkers and the usual court owls. He recognized several present. The man from Temptations Cafe, the middle-aged Fed who had pivoted that disastrous sting, sat in a roped off section near the front. And, on the other side of the room, also close to the front, sat David, Beth, Lori, Eric, Joseph and Nina. A hanging jury.

  Smoke was more a frustration than anything else. He was lead in handcuffed, but he refused to say a word. He refused to acknowledge the judge or her questions. He refused to give his name or acknowledge that it was Eugene Wisdom. He refused to acknowledge any of the court’s proceedings so that the court had to assign him a lawyer and enter a plea of not guilty for him. As he watched the drama unfold, Greg realized he still wanted a word, some kind of explanation to make sense out of all of this. Smoke/Eugene was lead away from where he had stood, defiant and speechless before the court. Greg recognized yet another party to this play, the woman he and Larry had encountered with Smoke the night of San Francisco’s anti-war riots. She jumped up also from near the front and dashed past the startled bailiffs at the gate to pound at Smoke/Eugene with what looked like a comb.