FOUR

“Look,” Burt Desmond ran after the attractive woman rapidly exiting the Cafe Vandee. Fleeing him. “I’m a reporter, not a rapist. All I need is a little bit of a story here. Something of human interest. This Security Pacific thing is hot, and you DO work for them.”

“Sorry. No comment.” Rosanne Casey avoided his eyes and flicked her purse at him as if trying to swat some pesky insect.

Burt jumped in front of her on the sidewalk and Rosanne jostled around him. She glanced around for a cop among the upscale boutiques, bistros and coffee shops, but could not find one in the heart of San Francisco’s downtown business district.

All about them shoals of suits—execs and junior execs, businessmen and lawyers from around the Pacific Rim as well as from India, Africa and Europe—thronged the luncheon waters among corporate towers with Japanese, Taiwanese, Korean, Australian, European and American logos. Secretarial schools in bright colors also swam among the corporate reefs and kelp beds. This arm of the international corporate sea invariably found its cultures diluted with California casual-ness and eccentricity, yet squint up the eyes and it could be any major city in the developed world. A scraggly, long-haired and bearded man in greasy, tattered clothes mumbled to himself incoherently and wrapped himself in old newspapers in a nearby doorway. Creature from the black lagoon.

South somewhere, above the noise of cars, buses, pedestrians and street stand hawkers, but out of sight, she could hear something in progress, as if through shallow water. Massed voices shouted together, chanted slogans too distorted to understand, yet powerful enough to travel distance. Other sounds—loud bangs and pops, breaking glass, police sirens—accompanied the chanting. A plume of dark smoke rose from the direction of the tumult.

“Anti-war demo,” Burt spoke up next to her, and she became aware of him again. Rosanne grimaced and headed off walking full tilt toward the Security Pacific offices. Security Pacific Services was a Pacific Rim operation. The media now besieged her downtown office building, which housed the Security Pacific corporate headquarters as well as its Bay Area offices.

“Come on, you at least have an opinion,” Burt matched her pace and craned his head into her space, What’s your take on the robbery? Corporate negligence? Inside job?”

“It’s almost 1 o’clock.” Rosanne growled and kept walking. “You’re making me late for work.”

“This will only take a minute,” Burt pleaded, “I need an angle, something different on this story for my station. Come on, give me a break.”

“I can’t tell you anything,” Rosanne was firm, “I’ve been forbidden by my boss to talk about the robbery. The Piccoli gems. The riemanium. Anything.”

“There was riemanium in that armored car?” Burt blurted. “Bomb-grade riemanium was stolen?”

They stood now, stock-still, on a sidewalk fluid with pedestrians. Smoke from a burning downtown laced the early afternoon. Rosanne was pale. Fear in her eyes, she bolted from the reporter on a run. Burt knew he had a scoop. Once back at her desk, Rosanne tried calling her boyfriend, Mike, but his phone did not answer.

***

DL hammered another nail into the 2x4 with strong, sure blows. The wooden frame, intended eventually to be a room divider, was taking shape. Jack’o’Hearts, DL’s co-worker on this project, carried in eight more lengths of board and dumped them onto the concrete first floor of their New Afrika Center in Oakland.

That’s the last of ‘em,” Jack’o’Hearts checked his callused hands for splinters. “Looks like we’ll need to do another buy at the lumber yard to finish up.”

“Gettin’ low on cash,” DL shook his head, “And we still ain’t bought no dry wall.”

“Maybe I can get my uncle to ‘donate’ some,” Jack’o’Hearts picked up another hammer and scooped up a handful of nails, “He’s a general contractor, down San Leandro.”

The space they worked in had once been a warehouse with second story offices. Their diligent efforts, which now flavored the air with their sweat, had reduced the storehouse area considerably. The remainder was consigned to a Caribbean import/export business that intended to move in as soon as they put up the final wall. Jack’o’Hearts had set up the Center’s speakers in the work area, and DJ Elijah’s Liberation News Service on Liberation Station Afrika blared out over them.

“...Anti-war protesters and self-styled Hooligans continue to battle police along the eastern end of Market in downtown San Francisco’s financial district. So far, the SFPD has managed to confine the street fighting to the area immediately around the Embarcadero peace rally.

“In other news, the Southern Poverty Law Center has filed a class action suit today against six midwest family planning clinics for sterilizing 484 welfare mothers under false pretences after providing the women abortions. Sylvester Carmichael, who became Director of the SPLC after Victor Jackson was assassinated by the Aryan Revolutionary Movement two years ago, is scheduled to speak at a New Orleans press conference at 5...”

“How you think you’ll go out?” Jack’o’Hearts asked, pounding in his own nail.

DL straightened up, wiped his forehead with the back of his left hand, and balanced his hammer over his fingers. His body did not show his prison conditioning, the muscles strong but unobtrusive. This, plus the fact that he was an inch shorter than average in height, and many people underestimated him in a fight. He looked upon the world through lively light brown eyes. His skin was dark brown, his hair was cut short and his smile was engaging despite a missing front tooth. A scar ran down his left cheek, reminder of a knife fight he had almost lost. DL had been born in Harlem, winding up in Oakland at five when his family moved to the west coast looking for work. Both mom and dad worked, so he had been raised by his black Cuban grandmother with a brother fifteen years older destined to die a soldier in Lebanon, and a sister six years older destined to marry up and disown her family of origin. Granny had taught him Spanish, a handy skill he had used often in dealing with the vatos on his turf. He wore construction boots, faded black jeans and white t-shirt; a striking symbol— black, green, and gold stars on a blood red background—silk-screened on the shirt’s back.

“When the Afrikan Lords be gangbangin’, figured I’d go out with a bullet in the heart,” DL smiled, “Pig bullet, bangin’ bullet, it didn’t matter. Now, with us doin’ the Center, well, I don’t know.”

“Maybe we’ll both die o’ ol’ age,” Jack’o’Hearts laughed, doing a stooped over, arthritic caricature of an old man as he shambled over to pick up another 2x4, his voice changing from rich tenor to that of a toothless oldster.

“We should be so lucky,” DL laughed along. He had never heard of Alprentice “Bunchy” Carter, Jeff Fort or the Black P. Stone Nation, the Young Lords Party or the Almighty Latin King Nation, and only recently had he learned of Fred Hampton. Ghosts walking the same road.