77th Street Requiem

by Wendy Hornsby

  “You checked his credentials?” Kellenberger asked.

  “No. I didn’t.”

  Carlos stood aside. “Come inside. Let’s talk.”

  I followed Carlos, with Kellenberger following me, down a dark, narrow passageway that led between two bedrooms and a bath and then opened up into a huge, bright, high-ceilinged living space with floor-to-ceiling windows on three sides. The kitchen, dining area, and sitting area were all one big room without partitions to interfere with the magnificent view of San Francisco Bay and the city skyline rising from the fog on the far side. Water lapped under the redwood deck that extended beyond the room.

  “Better than a postcard,” I said.

  “Damn right,” Kellenberger agreed. He dropped his bulk onto a curved white sofa, restaking his claim on a half-eaten sandwich he had left on the coffee table. “Bureau takes care of its own—the boat’s confiscated drug property.”

  I looked at Carlos again. “You’re an FBI agent? Kellenberger told me you were part of the SLA. Which is it?”

  “Both and neither.” He went to the refrigerator and brought out a covered plate and a diet Coke. “But close enough on both counts. You like mustard, don’t you?”

  I said, “Sure,” and sat down near Kellenberger.

  Kellenberger beamed like a forty-niner squatting in the middle of a mother lode stream. Carlos, more subdued, handed me a linen napkin and set the plate, which held a salami sandwich and potato salad, next to me. I opened the soda. “What’s going on?”

  Kellenberger sat forward. “I need some promises you’ll respect Carlos’s need for anonymity.”

  Mentally, I had already calculated the light levels and set the camera angles for filming the room. The houseboat was too photogenic to just give away. So was Carlos. Out of costume he was good-looking, almost handsome.

  I said, “You haven’t told me anything yet. My guess, based on our earlier conversation, Agent Kellenberger, is that I have something you need. It isn’t your custom to hand out information to the media. Let’s make a floor offer before we start negotiating the fine points. What did I stumble into?”

  Carlos and Kellenberger exchanged glances. It was Carlos who spoke.

  “We became interested in your project when Michelle Tarbett was murdered.”

  “Who is we?” I asked.

  “Your government, who loves you,” Kellenberger offered over a mouthful, losing some lettuce out of the side of his mouth.

  Carlos rolled his eyes, but he smiled. “You asked about the SLA. Kellenberger and I worked that case from the beginning, from before there was an SLA.”

  “How could you be interested in them before there was an SLA? They were nobody.”

  “They never were anybody. That particular group of little snots sprang out of a misguided prison rights reform movement—that’s where most of the kids in the SLA hooked up with each other. They’d go into the prisons and visit hard cases, think they were going to save some old pros from the oppressor. The cons played them like a pipe organ to get sex and privileges. In the end, the two groups used each other.

  “They moved from prison reform to terrorism in the name of the oppressed. They didn’t look like the oppressed, so they capered in blackface and Afro wigs: Nancy Ling Perry, Patricia Soltysik, Angela Atwood, Camilla Hall, Bill and Emily Harris. White guilt made them do it, and they came off as phony as an old D. W. Griffith movie.”

  “As phony as a what?” Kellenberger laughed. “How old are you, anyway, Carlos?”

  “Blackface,” Carlos said. “Griffith always used white actors in blackface.”

  “Can we go back to Go, here?” I asked.

  Carlos faced me again. “Go was state prison. Donald De-Freeze escaped from Soledad, and a couple of the SLA women took him in. Hid him in their Berkeley house. Used him as a front, turned him into their figurehead, balled him till he was half dead.”

  “You’re blaming the whole thing on women?”

  “The leadership was all women. White, middle-class little dears.”

  “I’m offended by your patronizing language,” I said.

  Kellenberger laughed. “He can’t say ‘little dears’?”

  “Eat your sandwich,” I said. “And here, have mine.” I turned to Carlos. “You’re saying no one would take a bunch of suburban brats seriously when they started a revolution in the name of the oppressed. So they found a front.”

  “That’s it. They made a house pet out of DeFreeze. They kept him in Akadama plum wine and screwed his brains out to keep him in line. They stole his life history to use in their manifestos, called him General Field Marshall Cinque, called themselves followers. But, trust me, they were in charge from the get-go. He cooked for them. They planned a revolution.”

  “This isn’t all new information to me,” I said.

  Carlos shrugged. “There was a year, the lost year, between the shoot-out in L.A. and the day the FBI finally brought in Patty Hearst. Patty and the Harrises and a handful of wannabes spent part of that year bombing the shit out of the Bay Area. They hit General Motors and police cars, took out the power lines, left a bomb in the mayor’s office.” Something crossed his mind that made him smile. “Did you know that Joe Remiro, the asshole convicted in the Marcus Foster shooting, was a relative of the San Francisco mayor?”

  I didn’t bother to answer.

  Kellenberger picked up the story. “There have been rumors for the last seventeen, eighteen years that the SLA didn’t disappear. The name has changed, but some of the old gang is still hanging in. Still making trouble.”

  “You think the SLA killed Michelle Tarbett?” I asked, skeptical. When no one answered, I said, “Carlos, I would love to have you on camera. But I won’t sneak pictures of you or credit you as a source without your permission. So, why don’t you tell me whatever it was you brought me here to learn.”

  “Michelle Tarbett was our mole in the SLA while they were in L.A.”

  “She was a topless dancer.”

  “What line of work was Nancy Ling Perry in before she went underground?” Carlos asked, watching me closely, like a professor during an especially tough exam.

  “She danced topless,” I said. “Clubs in North Beach, San Francisco.”

  “Got it now?”

  I should have made the connection by myself. “Michelle told me an old friend of hers from the city dropped into the Hot-Cha when Frady was there. The night before he died. She introduced them.” I watched their faces. “Was the friend Nancy Ling Perry?”

  “Give the lady a prize,” Carlos exulted. “Michelle knew Nancy was hot—she watched TV. Nancy was an old friend. She needed help. She needed a place to hide out. She needed some weed. Michelle helped her on all counts. And then she snitched her off.”

  “Nancy was a friend, and she snitched her off?” I asked.

  “Frady was her friend, too. They had a deal: he was nice to her and she gave him solid information.”

  “She told me she was in love with Frady,” I said. “She expected the two of them to be a couple.”

  “She knew better,” Kellenberger said.

  I felt a little ill, thinking about Michelle. “He used her.”

  “They used each other. He got information, she got off with someone who wasn’t a sleazeball.” Kellenberger pushed his plate away. “That’s the way it works.”

  “Did she tell Frady about the SLA?” I asked.

  “We don’t know what she told Frady, but she called us.”

  “Why would she call you?”

  “We had her on retainer.” Kellenberger seemed to be enjoying himself. I wondered how long it had been since he’d done fieldwork. “We got the police to lay off her solicitation charges, and she fed us information about drug movement. The owner of the Hot-Cha was a major distributor.”

  “Did you know where the SLA was before the big shoot-out?”

  Again, they looked at each other. I saw Kellenberger shake his head, one small movement to the side.

  “Can
’t say or won’t say?” I asked.

  “Comes to the same thing,” Kellenberger said. “No comment on that.”

  I looked at Carlos. “You’re a narc.”

  “When I need to be.” He peered at my plate. “You want some more potato salad?”

  I hadn’t eaten anything. With the talk of drugs and the situation, I had no interest in food.

  “We want to see your videotape of Michelle,” Kellenberger said.

  “There isn’t one.”

  “According to Michelle, there is.”

  I thought about that. It was possible that Hector had made an interview on his own. If it was on the tapes I had taken from his apartment, Guido would find it. Or, Michelle had misrepresented our conversation with a microcassette running. The other possibility was that Michelle had lied—fibbed—“I was filmed” rather than “I will be filmed.”

  I said, “I am not aware of a Michelle videotape. But I don’t work alone. I’ll check with my staff.” I got up and walked over to see the water. “You could have called me and asked to see anything I have, Mr. Kellenberger. One woman is dead, and another was attacked. I worry that I may be in some way responsible. I have fully cooperated with the LAPD. And you know it. So, I’ll ask you one more time. What do you want from me?”

  Kellenberger deferred to Carlos, who rose and walked across the room toward me. “The media and law enforcement don’t always get along. I don’t know why not, when all we both want is the truth.”

  “Problem is, the truth has many sides, and all you people want is one answer.”

  He bowed his head in acknowledgment. “This is the truth: we don’t know what’s going on. We’ve picked up rumors over the years that the SLA survivors moved from robbing banks to running drugs to money laundering—a natural evolution; getting rid of cash is always a problem for the drug trade. Most of our information comes from jailhouse snitches who want favors in exchange for talk. They aren’t reliable.” He cocked his head to the side, smiled at me. “Do you know why Cinque escaped from prison?”

  “Because opportunity presented?”

  “He went out and made an opportunity,” Carlos said. “Cinque was a snitch. The asshole of the main line. For a candy bar, he’d snitch off his mother. Brought down his partner, sent up his cellmate. Everyone knew it. It got to the point he wasn’t safe inside anymore.”

  “Half of the jail population is snitches,” I said. “So what?”

  Carlos turned to Kellenberger, who sat forward to say, “It’s okay. Tell her.”

  “Cinque was our mole in the SLA up to the point Patty Hearst was kidnapped. He’d let us know where they were buying their weed, hooked us into the campus drug line. He told us when radicals were stockpiling explosives or arms, and when they were planning to make a move.”

  I said, “He was an escaped con, and you didn’t bring him in?”

  “Why would we?” Carlos held up his hands, shrugged. “He was nothing but a petty crook, held up ma ‘n’ pa and stiffed hookers. He was far more useful to us on the outside.”

  “More useful? He shot the Oakland superintendent of schools, kidnapped an heiress, robbed a bank, and shot a couple of bystanders,” I said, exaggerating outrage. “What did you write on that report? ‘Oops’?”

  Kellenberger laughed. “More like ‘Oh shit’ than ‘Oops.’”

  “I told you,” Carlos said, reaching toward me, “Cinque was a pawn. He didn’t shoot Marcus Foster. He might have been there, but Nancy Ling Perry was the shooter. Cinque was along for the kidnapping and the bank robbery, for the same reason Patty was, for the cameras. He didn’t plan anything. The guy just wasn’t that bright.”

  I said, “If you know so much about him, what kind of underwear did he wear?”

  “Boxers. Size thirty-six.” Kellenberger stretched, grinned lazily at me. “Willy Wolfe and Bill Harris wore boxers, too. Thirty-fours and thirty-twos. They were skinny little guys, didn’t eat very well on the run.”

  “You couldn’t just tell me that when I came to your office?”

  Kellenberger frowned. “I didn’t know who you were.”

  “Sure you did.” I felt angry enough with Kellenberger to give a share of my ire to Carlos. I walked back to the sofa to get my bag. “I need to catch the five o’clock ferry. The LAPD has access to my research. If you need anything, call them.”

  “I’ll drive you to the ferry,” Carlos said.

  “I’d rather walk.” I glanced at my untouched plate. “Thanks for lunch.”

  Carlos came out with me, walked down the gangway with me. “You aren’t really angry. You know how this works.”

  “I know how it works. Doesn’t mean I have to like it.”

  “It isn’t over, Maggie.” We were past the end of the gangway and out on the sidewalk, walking toward the ferry terminal around the point. “We can’t spill our guts just because it’s been twenty years and you really, really want to know something. There would be a lot more Michelle Tarbetts if we did.”

  “You think I’m responsible for her?” I asked. “And JoAnn Chin?”

  “I don’t know about Chin. Or about Detective Melendez, either.” He took my arm and moved me into the parking lot when passengers from a newly arrived ferry glutted the walk. “Michelle gave information both ways. I don’t think you’re responsible. You may have stirred up some old trouble, but don’t beat yourself up about it. Just be careful.”

  “I try.” I fished in my bag for my return ticket. “Someone just brought up Sara Jane Moore to me. Where does she fit in?”

  He shook his head. “Community punching bag. Everyone wanted something from her. No one gave her what she wanted.”

  “Which was?”

  “Love.”

  I looked off across the water. “Can’t blame her for that, can we?”

  He was quiet for a moment, then said, “I’m sorry about your sister. I remember Emily. I ran a file on her.”

  “She had nothing to do with drugs.”

  “But she had a lot to do with radical politics. There was a connection, you know. Swapping drugs for guns.”

  “Emily wasn’t involved with guns, either.”

  “Her friends were.”

  I found my dock and took a place at the end of the line of waiting passengers. Uninvited, Carlos waited with me. He said, “Until I saw the news, I didn’t realize Emily was still alive.” He looked at me out of the corner of his dark eyes, smiled a very appealing smile. “When I saw that picket line, I thought someone must be slipping something funny into the water over at the Cal Faculty Club. You don’t often see a Nobel laureate claiming the aliens are among us.”

  “Friend of the family,” I said.

  He nodded, smiling wider. “I saw Emily’s influence on that caper, the way they turned it around. That sense of humor. She’d tweak us, make us look like fools now and then in her speeches and demonstrations. A sense of humor is what set her apart from the rest of the radical fringe. Made the public like her. Hell, even I liked her. I wanted her in jail, but I liked her.”

  “I love her very much.”

  He seemed contemplative, took a deep breath as he turned away. The sun was low, just resting on the middle supports of the Golden Gate Bridge, a bright red gum ball suspended in the hovering fogbank.

  “I remember you.” Carlos turned and looked directly at me. “You’ve changed. Last time I saw you, you were a scaggy little tomboy with braces on your teeth.”

  “Did you do surveillance on my sister?”

  “No,” he said. “On your father. He had government research grants. We kept close tabs on him because of your sister’s subversive activities.”

  “Gives me the chills,” I said. “I don’t like to be spied on.”

  “That routine at the park today was an attempt to see whether you recognized me.”

  I looked at him more closely. “Should I?”

  “Not if I did my job right.”

  “You watched me, too?”

  “Your boarding sc
hool uniform was a blue plaid jumper and a white blouse.” Then he blushed furiously. “I know when and to whom you lost your virginity.”

  I punched his shoulder with a tight fist. “Jesus Christ.”

  He laughed, rubbed his shoulder. “You snoop doing your job. I snoop doing mine.”

  “I don’t look into little girls’ windows.”

  “You would if you needed to. And I didn’t look in your window. Your parents were out of town and you snuck home in the middle of the week, met one of your father’s graduate students, stayed inside for two hours, then you locked up and went back to school. It wasn’t hard to figure that one out.”

  It was my turn to laugh. “You misread the evidence, Agent O’Leary. I remember that day. The boy was my father’s teaching assistant. Dad, the absentminded professor, went to a conference and left his speech behind. He had me come home to let the TA in so he could read the speech over the phone to a hotel stenographer. That’s all that happened.”

  “Ohhh. Then it must have been that other time.”

  I pulled back my fist again and he flinched.

  “You plan to help us?” he asked.

  “I’ll help you,” I said. “If I find anything useful, I’ll get it to you. But I need some information in return.”

  “I wondered when you’d get around to it.” He looked deep into my eyes, took my hand that was still balled into a fist. “Want to talk about Roy Frady?”

  “Yes,” I said, and pulled my hand free. “What did your moles say about him?”

  “Everyone in L.A. with a favor to ask tried to barter with information on Roy Frady.”

  “What did Michelle say happened that night in the Hot-Cha?”

  He shrugged. “Michelle was working. Nancy came by. She was telling Michelle she needed a place to live when Frady dropped by for a drink. Michelle asked him if he knew of any places that were available.”

  “You’re not going to tell me that Frady sent her over to the house on Eighty-fourth Street.”

  “Don’t know what Frady said. Michelle’s boss told her to go do her bumps and grinds, so she left the two of them talking and went back to work. Nancy was a good-looking woman, so Michelle watched them to make sure they didn’t go off together. Frady had one drink and left. Nancy waited for Michelle to finish her set, and the two of them went out for breakfast. And that was the last time Michelle saw Nancy.”