Sitting on a pine bench at the edge of Belvedere Park in East Los Angeles, I considered the unexpected blessing of Percy Bidwell. If he hadn’t come to me when he did I might have gone off into the world blinded by anger at things I would never control.
I had picked a fight with a man who could have easily killed me with his bare hands. I fought that man and, impossibly, I won. As a youth I might have felt victorious, but nearing fifty I knew that it was just dumb luck that saved my life.
I had been sitting in the park for nearly two hours; long enough for the feeling to return to my left arm—that and the dull ache of wisdom.
The common was filled with brownish people, most of whom had hailed from Mexico or were born to parents that came from there. They spoke Spanish and English with deep accents. From little children to old men, the park was lively. There was the smell of chlorine in the air from the public pool. Young mothers and their babies, silent men and their hefty wives, meandered through the barrio common. They were every color from red to bronze to brown; Indian and Negro mixtures of ancestors who had been raped and plundered by Spanish conquistadors and then left to work the land; the legacy of ancient empires.
I was eating a novelty ice-cream sugar cone that was first dipped in chocolate and then in crushed peanuts. Across from me was a fancy merry-go-round with yellow and brown and red horses prancing in a circle to the upbeat tune of canned calliope music. It was the only carousel of its type in L.A. that I knew of.
I was armed but didn’t need to be. After Percy, I had no intention of getting into another battle. It was late afternoon and I was happy watching the groups of pretty young girls and the boys who pretended not to be watching them.
The barrio was a good place for a crook to hide. Your color hardly mattered there and no one wanted to have undue contact with the authorities. Just pay your rent in cash, speak a few words in Spanish, and remember to keep your head down, and you could go unnoticed for years.
I saw her bandaged hand first. The dressing was white but there was a spot of red on the outside edge of the left palm. She wore a blue-gray shift that hid what little figure she had. Her shoes were yellow rubber flip-flops. Next to her was a tall sand-colored man wearing dark sunglasses and a sleek straw hat. His square-cut shirt was dark navy, his trousers black. There was a big straw purse hanging from her right shoulder and her blond hair was limp and greasy.
Rose had lost a few pounds since the photograph in my pocket was taken. But it was her. She was no longer smiling. Rose’s somber gaze seemed to be turned inward while the man next to her kept looking from side to side.
When they were half the way across the two-block-wide green I got up and wandered in their general direction. They seemed to be alone but I wasn’t taking any chances.
On the other side of the park they were accosted by a rotund honey-colored man carrying a fanciful box draped with Mexican flags and filled with pink and blue cotton candy in clear plastic pouches. He smiled and said something in Spanish. Rose suddenly came to life, chattering with the man and buying one of his flags.
I walked past the couple, considering for a moment a confrontation.
I had a gun and the element of surprise. I could have ended the whole problem with a few quick movements. I might have tried, if not for the blessing of Percy Bidwell. Delbert and Rose probably had guns too. And they were desperate, both of them dialed directly into survival mode.
I reached the pavement and turned right to walk down the crowded sidewalk. Seven steps away there was a man with a Polaroid camera offering to take photographs of babies and lovers for a dollar a shot. A smiling mustachioed man holding a crying infant was posing for the lay photographer. I stopped to watch the spectacle and saw through the corner of my eye Rose and Delbert walk across the street and up the stairs of a big wooden house that was flush up against the opposite sidewalk.
“Smile!” was the only English word the photographer spoke.
I looked up to set in my mind the house that the couple was entering.
At just that moment Most Grand took off his dark glasses and swiveled his gaze in my direction.
Our eyes met for only a moment but that was enough for him, maybe, to have marked me. I turned away and by the time I looked back the revolutionaries were walking through the door of the two-story house.
I went down to the end of the block. From there I could watch the front of the rebel hideout and make a call from a corner phone booth.
Because Delbert might have seen and suspected me I couldn’t leave the scene. If they were paranoid they might pack up and leave. If that happened, either I would have to try to stop them or, more likely, search their place for clues to their next destination.
I thought about calling the police, the FBI, and the State Department in turns. But not one of them was worried about the outcome for Bob. And Bob, after all, was the only one I really cared about.
“Goldsmith residence,” a young woman said after the Dumbarton operator connected me to the presidential suite.
“Redbird please.”
“Mr. Rawlins?” he said, coming onto the line a minute or two later.
“You got a car don’t stand out like a sore thumb?”
For the next hour or so I moved around the park and up and down 1st Street, keeping an eye on the hideout. In that time I marked eight people coming in and out, including Rose and Delbert. There were two black men, one Asian woman, and three white men all thirty years old or younger except for high-yellow Delbert. He was nearer forty but hale.
Only two, the Asian woman and one of the white guys, actually left the premises. The others sat out on the porch smoking and talking—there was no drinking that I saw.
Redbird and I had made our rendezvous point the corner phone booth at six. He wore faded jeans and a red and black shirt that was long-sleeved wool.
Walking through the park I pointed out the house and related the intelligence I’d gathered.
“We can’t tell the police,” Redbird said after I laid out the situation. “They’d probably just come in with guns blazing. Rosemary might get killed.”
“And you care about her?” I asked.
“I owe her mother.”
“Yeah,” I said, thinking about Bob. “I guess we all owe somebody something.”
“The ransom payoff is tonight.”
“Where?”
“Crispin couldn’t get the details,” Redbird said. “Goldsmith is making the drop personally. This is our best bet right here.”
“Eight armed and dangerous revolutionaries and us,” I said.
Redbird’s grin had no humor to it.
“Among my people,” he said, “before the Spanish came, if a young man wanted to be a chief he had to hunt and kill a bear armed only with two stones and a flint knife.”
“That ain’t nuthin’. In my neighborhood we got to get through worse than that just walkin’ down the street in the mornin’.”