by Jim Hallaux
Astoria was not only the first American city with Cable TV; it was the first American city with a group of citizens who thought cable should be free. In some neighborhoods, if one house had and paid for cable, the rest of the street had it for free. The small TV Bill and Pete watched was torturously wired through a couple of backyards to a cable wire on the next block.
When they grew tired of the TV, Pete turned to his favorite topic of conversation after women, booze, drugs and how to acquire more of each; politics.
A rant that went on forever.
10
“The nightlife, it ain't no good life,” Bill sang in a mumbled manner, “But it's my—"
Peter looked back at him as they walked the downtown Astoria streets. The sun had set, the river breeze crisp, and the trio of guys was half-lit and preparing to go all the way.
“What is that you’re singing?”
“Ah, it’s coming out by Willie Nelson later this year.” Bill relished knowing something that Peter did not. “I told you my brother was a DJ, right?”
At least a dozen times, the lanky Peter thought.
“Well, when Willie gets to the San Francisco area, they hang out. He gave my brother an advance promo copy.”
Peter stared at Bill as he scratched his anemic red beard. He decided to let the topic die, and the guys headed down Exchange Street in downtown Astoria and turned left on Eleventh. There, like a pit in the ground lay an open-to-the-sky parking area with a ramp leading down to it. They headed down the entrance and off to the southwest corner where a chain-link gate was the only opening in a cement wall that surrounded the lot. The padlocked gate was an entrance to the underground of the downtown. Above it hung rows of barbed wire that had long ago been snipped. Peter and Bill hopped the gate with experienced ease entering the Astoria tunnels. Joe, a stocky young man with a few excess pounds, executed the climb over with less grace than his buddies.
As they walked to their usual hangout, the darkness grew, some occasional vermin scattered about, and Joe turned on his red plastic Ray-O-Vac flashlight. Bill began to sing again, then stopped to relight and take a drag on a doobie and passed it around. “It won’t be released for a few months yet… but I like it.”
“Uh huh,” Peter, of little patience, muttered. He attended, though did not graduate, from The University of Oregon and was influenced by the anarchist preaching of his classmates in Eugene. He leaned against a cement pillar as he enjoyed a deep take on the joint. After a long, silent moment he spoke. “What are we doing, guys?”
Joe looked at Peter quizzically. “What we do every Friday night. Break into the tunnels and get screwed up.”
“Exactly, Joe.”
“I don’t get you, man.” Sometimes Peter confused Joe and now was one of those times.
“I mean,” Peter went to the depths of his philosophical mind, “What are we doing?”
The other two looked at one another in silence for a second, not sure what their friend was talking about. When they could not stand the silence any longer, they burst out in laughter.
“Maybe,” Joe said, “We need to cut you off. You’re scaring me.” He glanced Bill’s way for backup.
“Joe’s right. I’m lost.”
“I mean, I mean, what are we doing?”
Again, the two looked at one another. Again, they broke into laughter.
Peter, his back still leaning against the rough cement pillar, slid down until he was sitting on the damp ground. “We need to do something.”
“We are, Pete. We’re getting screwed up.”
“Yeah,” Peter thought, “That’s what I mean.” More silence. “I mean, what are we going to do with our lives? Johnson is in power with the military-industrial complex backing him up. He’s gonna send us all to Nam. Bob and Jack are hiding out in Canada. And here we are. But, where are we? We need to cause change, right? We need to make the world a better place.”
Bill thought about it from his clouded brain. “But, how?”
Peter pointed a finger his way as if Bill was on to something. After a moment, he had an idea. “We need to do more than sit-ins, guys. We need to really get the attention of the government. Make a statement. Not take ‘no’ for an answer.” He thought a second and stared up at the cement ceiling that supported the downtown above it. They were sitting under the sidewalk of the John Jacob Astor Hotel and a light came on in his mind. He was always more creative when he was high.
“I might still have some connections down south. You know… guns… explosives.”
“Jesus, Pete, what do you have in mind?” Bill wanted to know where in the hell this was going.
“We’re going national, my friend, we’re going national. Get the media’s attention.”
“Now that’s what I’m talking about,” Joe declared, “I’m in!” Joe admired Peter and easily followed him.
Bill looked at him a second. “I’m all for shaking things up, Pete, but explosives?”
“Don’t worry. You’re going to like it. I’ll get hold of my friends. It’ll go from there.”
“Let’s rock this world!”
Peter cocked his finger at Bill and the doobie he held and demanded he pass it to him. The stage was set. Their purpose decided. They would write history. Later, it would evolve into the People’s Army… if they remembered it in the morning.
PART THREE
Evil Moves North
11
September 13, 1969
The plan was simple; three into the bank, two in the get-away car and one in the backup car. Two AK-15s and a shotgun into the bank. Another AK and a sawed-off shotgun in the getaway. Andre had his two semi-auto pistols and a ridiculously big over/under shotgun as a backup. The pistols less than needed and the shotgun way more.
Andre was the mastermind and self-proclaimed leader. Older with jet-black hair and a Fu Manchu mustache; he found the jobs, did the planning, didn’t do drugs. He knew the three guys going into the bank from Lodi High School in California that they all had attended, although none had graduated. They had been in and out of small-time crime, some jail time, and, except for Andre, a lot of drugs. This was to be their first big score.
The two in the getaway car were from a hippie/anarchist commune, Sunshine, in Eugene, Oregon. Andre had fallen into the collective the previous summer. Andre involved them in his plans based on their fast car, access to their parent’s money, and a safe place to run to after the score. It worked that Eugene was out of state and the commune in the middle of nowhere. These two had big plans to use the money for large-scale terrorist attacks across the US. It would be the first actions of a plan to “set fire to the ruling class of ‘Amerikka.’”
Andre didn’t plan on them getting a cut, didn’t plan on them getting back to Eugene at all, and couldn’t have cared less about their terrorist pipe dreams. Once they robbed the bank and the money was safe, the two from Eugene would disappear along with their never-ending, mind-numbing political rants.
Andre had only one driving force; money. The best way to get money was to steal it. He’d tried working but hated it. Before that, he tried getting a high school diploma, only to fail. Joined the Army. Lasted three years of a four-year hitch.
In an Artillery Brigade at Fort Lewis, Andre received a Dishonorable Discharge for theft of Army ordinance. Andre’s life vision now, if he had one, was to be a career criminal.
Andre had done his due diligence. The bank was old, in a downtown location, with an ornate interior with bad angles for surveillance cameras. The area had several restaurants, fast food joints and coffee shops. Heavy auto and pedestrian traffic made it better to blend into after the robbery.
At exactly noon, Andre drove Gabe, Leonard, and Smithy, the three going into the bank, down Main Avenue. The getaway car already in position.
Andre slowed down and stopped in front of the bank.
“OK now!”
The three put on black ski masks. Guns loaded, rounds racked, safeties off. Adrenaline running high.
The three out of the car and into the bank.
Smithy by the bank door, shotgun raised.
“This is a robbery. Get on the floor. Do not move. No one gets hurt.”
Gabe in front of the teller’s row. AK pointed head high at the first teller.
“Put all your money on the counter. Now.”
Leonard, his AK pointed at the back of the bank manager’s head.
“Open the vault. Now.”
Andre had driven his car around the block and into the parking garage, up to the open top floor. His car running, Andre leaned over the railing to see the front of the bank on the opposite side of the street. The getaway car parked a block away, motor running.
Andre hoped the two in the getaway car would not screw this up. Benny and his girlfriend, Moonbeam or Asteroid or whatever her name, had been there for an hour in place, waiting. Motor running. They could be the weak link.
Andre was wrong, he was the weak link.
In all his planning, he neglected to notice that the Sacramento Chief of Police had lunch every weekday at the Lunch Counter across the street from the bank. The Chief didn’t eat at the counter. He and his crew–the City Manager, the Sacramento State College football coach, and his parish Priest–all sat at the four-top table by the window.
Now Gabe had all the teller money stuffed into an over-sized duffle. All the tellers now on the floor with everyone else. Heads down. Gabe went to the vault area to check on the Manager and Leonard.
“Let’s go!” Gabe shouted. “We need to get the hell out of here. What’s taking you so long?”
“The bastard needed convincing.”
The bank Manager sled down the doorway, bleeding from a bashing to his head, leaving a bloody trail down the side of the wall.
“Jesus.”
“Here, take one of the bags,” Leonard said. “I can’t carry both.”
Gabe set down the duffle full of teller money and picked up both vault money bags leaving the duffle behind. Gabe realized he had left it just as he ran out the bank’s front door. By then it was too late.
The Assistant Manager didn’t try to get up or even roll over. It was the sweat from the left side of his forehead streaming into his eye. He wanted to move his head off the floor enough to turn to the other side.
Smithy saw the movement. Jumpy, he turned his body and somehow the shotgun fired. The blast hit the Assistant Manager in the face. He died instantly. No one lives through that.
At the sound of the shot, the security guard got to his feet. The blast from the other barrel of Smithy’s shotgun tore into the guard’s legs. He didn’t die but wouldn’t walk again either.
Gabe ran into the main area of the bank carrying the two bags of vault money and his AK, Leonard behind him.
“Stay down, dammit. Stay down.”
But one of the tellers had lost it. She stood up, screaming. Gabe, dropping the money bags, let loose with his AK.
20 rounds traced high into the bank's walls and windows, above the teller’s stations.
30 rounds waist high.
3 rounds caught the teller.
Smithy, screaming “Guys, let’s go. Let’s go.”
Gabe, picking up the bags again, started to the front. Leonard stayed behind. He sensed something bad starting to happen. As Gabe and Smithy got to the door, they passed the security guard, bleeding badly but alive, and mad as hell. Adrenaline pumping, he reached for his gun. Not the service revolver the robbers had taken from his holster. That was the bank’s. The guard reached for his own gun, known when he was on the Sacramento P.D. as a ‘throw away’ gun; what you used when you really needed it. He really needed it now.
Reaching for the Smith & Wesson 38 strapped to his ankle, the Guard thought he would up and die right there. The pain was unbelievable, indescribable. He took a long moment to gain his composure.
As Smithy and Gabe reached the front door of the bank, the getaway car slammed to a stop in front. Smithy down the first step outside. Gabe almost out the open door. The guard took his pistol in both hands, held a deep breath, and shut his right eye. He aimed and fired. The shot hit the back of Gabe’s head, ending Gabe’s life right then and there.
Across the street at the Lunch Counter, the Chief heard shotgun blasts and seconds later, a pistol shot. He jumped up, spilling everybody’s lunch and coffee, and used his walkie to call in the alarm.
“Shots fired. Shots fired. Sacramento Savings and Loan, main branch. All units respond.”
With that, the Chief was out the door, gun drawn, surveying the scene as he ran. A Dodge Charger slammed to a stop at the base of the bank’s steps. A masked man, with a shotgun, two steps down the stairs. Another halfway out the bank’s door.
As the first man on the stairs raised his shotgun at the Chief, the man behind him fell out of the doorway and down the stone steps. The Chief fought to process what he saw but it appeared the man was missing part of his head. The two black plastic bags the man carried burst open. Money flew around the stairs. A sudden burst of wind carried the money down the block like dry leaves in the wind.
It was all going wrong for Smithy. As the getaway car pulled up, a cop appeared out of nowhere. Gun drawn, raising it to shoot the hell out of Smithy. Smithy raised his shotgun, but he was too slow.
Something in the Chief’s mind clicked. Everything slowed down. He could see the money blowing away, could see the man at the bottom of the bank stairs raise his shotgun. Firing over the hood of the Charger in front of him, the Chief hit the man twice, center mass. The man went down.
The two in the getaway got to the bank in time to hear the shot and see Gabe tumbling out of the bank. Saw Smithy raise his gun at the cop across the street. Smithy going down. The cop aiming at them now.
The girl in the passenger seat of the Charger, whose given name was Samantha Kettle, squirmed to aim the double-barreled shotgun out the driver’s side window at the cop. She couldn’t pull both triggers. Samantha chose the left one. The gun kicked back at her. Its blast hit Benny in the side of his face. The inside of the driver’s side window turned red for an instant and crumbled away. Through the now open car window, Samantha saw the policeman and his gun pointed directly at her. Samantha’s brain stopped. She froze, the shotgun still held level.
The Chief knew that both men on the stairs at the bank were down and out. His mind clicked that recognition. Next, his eyes and mind went to the Dodge Charger. Still running. Through the driver side window, he saw the male driver, beside him a female passenger and the double-barreled shotgun aimed directly at his head. As the Chief calculated all of this, he got calmer still. Almost peaceful. In the very back of his brain, the thought that he might die ticked away softly and slowly.
The driver’s side window turned crimson, like a bucket of paint thrown at it, then the window shattered. The Chief saw the female, a child in his eyes, and her shotgun aimed at his head. Chief fired once. The bullet entered Samantha’s left temple and exited through her right temple. Her shotgun clattered to the floor of the car, knocking the dead driver’s foot off the brake. The car, still running, moved slowly forward, gently nudging the sides of a couple of parked cars and then coming to rest against a fire hydrant down the block.
The three shots the Chief fired were the first and last bullets he ever shot in his career.
Andre, on the top floor of the parking garage, leaning over the railing, saw a bad dream, a nightmare. Everything going wrong. All the planning down the drain. All chances of the perfect score, gone. The two in the getaway car, most likely dead. Smithy and Gabe on the bank steps, surely dead as well.
Then, in an instant, Andre’s thoughts shifted back to his own self-preservation. His survival. The cops didn’t know anything about him. He hadn’t gone into the bank during the robbery. When he did go into the bank for planning, he wore a disguise. All he had to do was keep calm and slip away.
Getting into the car, driving down the steep ramp, another thought came to Andre.
&nb
sp; Where was Leonard and the rest of the money?
Andre had seen the two garbage bags full of money burst open on the Bank’s steps. But he hadn’t seen the duffle bag with the teller’s cash. Left in the bank? Leonard hadn’t come out yet. Was he alive? Dead?
And most importantly, did he have the money?
As Andre reached street level and turned onto the avenue, he thought of the alley behind the bank. If Leonard was alive, if he had the money, why couldn’t he walk out the back door of the bank? Duffle bag under his arm, stuffed with cash, looking like another office worker on his way to the gym for his noon work out.
With this in his head, Andre slowed the car as he pulled past the mouth of the alley and saw Leonard, a block ahead, not running, but walking with a purpose.
Andre and Leonard drove through downtown Sacramento, got on Highway 99, and headed north.
Trading off driving, Andre and Leonard made it to Yreka in the late afternoon. In a cheap motel room straight out of the movie ‘Psycho,’ on one of the twin beds, they dumped out the money from the duffle bag; the ‘teller money.’ At first, the money made a nice, if somewhat small, pile. But as they counted it and recounted it, reality set in. The total - $27,500. Not much for a four-way split and now even with a two-way split, it was at best disappointing. Not the score of a lifetime; not the game changer they wanted. What it was… was measly. Only enough to get the 2 of them through a few months.
The arguing started immediately.
Andre - “All of the hard work and planning I did… all for 27K… what a—”
Leonard – “Maybe if we had another guy inside. Instead of a pussy, hanging over the railing across the street, like he was watching a stage play. Maybe if we had someone who wasn’t afraid to get their hands a little dir—”
