Police Round Up 300 Mex-Ams in
Aftermath of Zoot War!
Nation’s 5th Largest City
Paralyzed by Zoot-Suit Riots!
Servicemen by Truckload Take
Over Downtown Los Angeles!
Pachuco Hunt! Bars, Theaters,
Cafes, Clubs Invaded!
Police Chief Says Zoot
Cleanup by Sailors Not Racial Issue!
LA Declared Out of Bounds to All Naval Personnel!
Zoot Gang Leaders Vow to Fight Back!!!
Sun struck down bright and clear through the arched bell tower of the old church across from the fading green of Olivera Park, its strong light exposing fresh slashes of red paint on the old adobe walls:
¡VIVA SINARQUISTAS!
¡VIVA LA RAZA!
¡VIVA LA CAUSA!
Younger walked quickly up the church steps, pushing through thick doors into fragments of colored light streaking from high stained-glass windows. The sweet scent of incense hung in the air over veiled gray heads of old ladies dressed in black scattered about the pews, their wrinkled lips whispering intimately, expectant eyes dimly gazing heavenward as if expecting to be united with a long-lost lover.
“You’re early.”
“I have much to confess, padre.” Younger knelt before the priest lighting a bank of candles before the Virgin of Guadalupe, flames from the candles almost reaching beyond the confines of their red glass chimneys to touch the Virgin’s flowing green robe.
“It’s been a long time since you have confessed, my son.” The priest glanced over the shoulder of his black cassock at Younger, flickering flames erasing the deep lines crisscrossing his face, giving his skin the same unearthly glow as the smooth plaster face of the Virgin he tended.
“It’s been a long time since I have had anything to confess.” Younger looked anxiously behind the priest, along the aisle leading to the side altar. Next to the small, regally robed statue of a smiling Infant of Prague, the light above the confessional door was off; no one was inside.
The priest knelt next to Younger, his knees cracking, a candle held before him as he gazed upon the Virgin. “You have heard of the wars in our own streets?”
“Yes, I’ve heard.” Younger shifted his weight uneasily.
“It is terrible this thing. I was once, as a young novitiate in Oaxaca, a medical volunteer for Villa’s revolutionary army. I have seen this horror before. When soldiers are attacked by citizens in their own towns, it means only one thing: the enemy is within. Some of these children in the Barrio are doing the work of the enemy. The Fascists tell them not to fight for their country, and they do not. These Zoot suits are part of a fifth column and must be stopped.”
“You can’t believe that, padre. You know the truth. You know better.”
“I believe that.” The priest lifted his eyes higher to the Virgin’s serene face. “And the Church believes that.”
“That’s not how it is! Damn it, you of all people should know it isn’t true!”
“Do not speak profanely in our Lord’s house.” The priest held a finger to his lips and smiled over his shoulder at the old ladies who stopped their whispering prayers, rosary beads swinging silently in clasped hands as they glared at Younger. The priest turned back to Younger, speaking low under his breath as if he were addressing a demon. “Why do you think I have allowed you these meetings in a house of God? To fight Fascists and Communists. To fight the anti-Christ.” He nodded toward a sudden blinking light above the confessional. “It is time.”
Younger mumbled angrily, piercing his tongue with his teeth, trying to remain silent as he stood to go.
“My son,” the priest called softly, “ask God for His forgiveness. You have many sins to confess.”
Inside the dark confessional Younger closed the door securely behind him and knelt down. The bare shadow of a face was on the other side of the sliding screen. “Listen, Senator, I know damn well what the game is now. There’s no way the government wasn’t behind last night’s attack on the Zoots, on innocent women and children. That attack was as well planned as the Japs’ strike on Pearl Harbor. The police and Shore Patrolmen stood by the whole time and watched, the only ones being arrested were the very people who were being beaten. I know there’s a war on. I know there are some Fascists in the Barrio, but there’s everything in the Barrio. You can’t condemn a single person there; you can’t go on persecuting them, denying them their right to jobs in the war industries just because you think one or two are saboteurs, spies, or part of some mythical fifth column. Most of those people are good Americans, not what the newspapers make them out to be. Most of those people are fighting this war every bit as much as you are.” Younger stopped talking. He realized the anger of his words was almost making him shout. He waited for Kinney to say something, but there was only silence. He continued, trying to control the frustration in his voice. “Something’s got to be done; this madness has to be stopped. It’s not like the problem with the American Japs. There weren’t many of them. You could just truck all the Japs off to prison camps, but you can’t keep a quarter of a million people living in terror in the Barrio, make all of east Los Angeles a concentration camp. You can’t set the Navy, Army, and Marines on good Americans like a pack of rabid dogs. I know it’s confusing with the Zoots, but my job was to learn about them, and what I learned is everybody’s been using them—the Fascists, the Communists, even us. It’s got to stop, because when this war ends those people in the Barrio are going to go on hating us, never understanding the truth. Those people have rights just like every other American, and if we destroy those rights what the hell is the whole goddamn war for anyway?”
A lightbulb flicked on over the shadow behind the screen. The screen rolled back, a black revolver held right at the level of Younger’s eyes, the tip of the barrel almost touching his forehead. “Shut your mouth.” Younger recognized the man with the gun; it was the FBI agent who shot Chiquito Banana. The agent flicked the light back off, the cold metal of the barrel touching the skin of Younger’s forehead. “Keep your mouth shut, get up slowly, walk out of the church. I’ll be right behind. Walk across the street to the bandstand in the park. I want you to do that very carefully, or you’ll be damn sorry you didn’t use your last moments here today to make a real confession.”
Younger walked out into bright sunlight. He did not turn to look behind; he knew the agent was following. He recognized immediately the other agent in the battered brown hat waiting for him next to the wood lattice circle of the bandstand; it was the other agent who had been on the mountain the night Cruz was shot. Beneath the broad brim of his hat the other agent was smiling as Younger approached, but when Younger reached the bandstand the agent’s smile dropped off like a paper mask.
“Where is the Voice, Mr. Younger?”
“I don’t know.”
The agent put his hand to his chest, but it wasn’t his heart he was feeling. It was the bulge of a gun in a shoulder holster beneath his overcoat. “You were requested several days ago to bring in that information. You were informed the matter was urgent.”
“I tried everything I could. Every lead. The girl was a dead-end street.”
“The girl is a Communist, Mr. Younger.”
“You’re crazy. She’s not.” Younger looked over his shoulder. The other agent leaned against the fat trunk of a date palm, fingering a gun beneath his coat. “Look.” Younger turned around. “The girl is innocent. She knows nothing. She’s a physically sick person who has been duped.”
“She is a dangerous Red, Mr. Younger. We know now she killed our two men in the Barrio. The Zoots are innocent.”
“She couldn’t kill anyone, I’m telling you! I almost killed her to make her talk. If she was a Communist she would have said so to save her life. She wouldn’t die like that, suffering that way. She’s just a sick, poor, pathetic dupe.”
“She’s a Red. We don’t want to scare her off. We need her information. We need her alive. We want yo
u to bring her in. All of these people involved with the Voice are threatening national security.”
“I won’t do it. She’s innocent, she’s not a killer.” Younger turned to walk away, but the agent in the shade of the date palm blocked his way. Younger knocked him in the chest and shouted, “I don’t care what you do anymore! Go get yourself another boy! Tell Kinney that too. I quit. Finito. I’m going down to the Army recruiting office and upping to fight a real war, not this stinking game you’re playing!”
“Wait a second.” The agent reached inside his coat pocket and pulled out a telegram.
“What’s this?” Something made Younger grab the telegram. He unfolded it; it was from the office of the President of the United States.
“Your brother is a dead war hero.”
Younger read the telegram in his shaking hand as the agent continued to talk.
“They say the big carrier took one of those kamikaze hits. Once the ammunition hold started to blow that was all she wrote, a regular inferno. Everyone on board is listed as missing in action, but there’s no way anyone could have survived. Eyewitnesses on other ships in the fleet say when she went down the melting steel hull was hissing like a steam kettle.”
Younger dropped the telegram; he didn’t hear the last of the agent’s words. He looked back past the bandstand in the cool green of the park, a cold sweat breaking out on the hot flush of his face. He felt himself falling and grabbed hold of the agent and bent over.
“Hey, buddy, you’re not going to puke, are you?” The agent held Younger’s coat to keep him from falling. “What the hell, go ahead and puke if you want to.” He slapped Younger on the back. “You earned it.”
Younger forced himself to stand straight. He watched as the wind flipped up the thin yellow telegram, twisting it into a crazy flight high through the air, out across the browning park grass. He did not go after the telegram. His anguished face stared up at the agent. “The girl is innocent, I’m telling you, innocent, But some way or another, I’ll get the Voice for you.”
“Not some way or another, Mr. Younger. Do it.” The agent’s words were flat and simple.
Younger turned back to the telegram. It was way out over the lawn, beneath the feet of small running boys cheering a snaking kite into the powerful wind that blew in from the desert. It was hard for Younger to see the boys through his tears. “I’ll get him.”
34
The phone was ringing in his apartment as Younger jammed the key into the lock of the door, twisting it frantically, pushing the door open and grabbing the ringing phone off the hook.
“Hello!”
“Nathan?” Kathleen’s voice came across to him distant and weak, as if she were calling down to him from some very high place.
“Where are you? Kathleen, are you all right?”
“Fine. I have a monstrous headache, but that’s not important.”
“Where are you calling from?”
“Home. I’m safe at home. But someone has been calling for you here all morning. Someone named Ignacio Gasset. Do you know him?”
“Wino Boy.”
“Well, he sounded very drunk. He said he had to talk to you. He has information. He said it was a life-or-death matter and you must go to him.”
“Where?”
“He said it wouldn’t be safe for you, to be very careful.”
“Where?”
“In the Barrio. On Flores Street in a boardinghouse above Butch Mendoza’s poolhall. Do you know the place? It sounds like a flophouse.”
“I know the place.”
“Nathan?”
“I’ve got to go.”
“Please be careful. If something happens to you, I’ll never forgive myself for giving you this man’s message.”
“You did the right thing, Kathleen. And I’m always careful.” Younger hung up the phone, pulled his suitcase from beneath the bed, snapped it open, and took out the gun, tucking it under his belt as he ran from the room. He didn’t stop outside to get a cab; he kept running, sprinting up long blocks and across to deserted Flores Street. All the stores were closed; there were no people to be seen anywhere. Even Mendoza’s poolhall was closed, the shades pulled down over the green windows. Younger tried the door next to the poolhall. It swung open before him. A sleepy-looking woman with huge looped plastic earrings dangling from her ears sat behind a battered counter.
“Ignacio Gasset! Does he live here? What room is he in?”
The woman quietly set her movie magazine on the countertop and smiled shyly at Younger. “Yo no sé.”
“El viejo. El borracho”
“Ahh, sí. Señor Ignacio.” She pointed up the staircase behind her. “Número cincuenta y tres.”
Younger ran up the stairs, checking the numbers on the doors down the length of a narrow hallway. He found the number. He slipped the gun from beneath his belt and pulled back the hammer, then placed his hand carefully on the doorknob, pushing the door back slowly until he saw the trail of blood glistening across the floor. He shoved the door all the way open. “Wino Boy?”
Wino Boy’s eyes stared straight up and dead at Younger from the floor alongside the bed, a broken wine bottle next to him, its jagged glass covered with blood. Wino Boy had not brutally slashed his own throat from ear to ear with the jagged bottle. The word scrawled clumsily across the wall in Wino Boy’s blood gave testimony to that:
DIALGOD.
Younger ran back down the stairs, shouting at the woman, “¡El teléfono! ¡El teléfono!”
The woman reached beneath the counter and brought out a telephone. Younger grabbed it from her and dialed frantically. He dialed God. The line was not busy; it clicked in Younger’s ear. Younger heard steady breathing, then a voice familiar and unmistakable, the words measured and lilting, sweet and pure as if pouring from the heavens themselves.
“Is that you?” Younger shouted into the phone. “Answer me! Is that you?”
The words of the Voice were so intimate, so close, his very breath was in Younger’s ear. “We are waiting for you, Mr. Younger. Don’t be too long in coming.”
“Where are you? I’ll come right over. I’ll be right there!”
“We cannot wait forever, Mr. Younger.”
“Tell me!”
“At Miss La Rue’s.”
Younger threw the receiver down and ran out the door. As the taxi he flagged down sped through empty streets, he knew why the Voice had tricked him into going to Wino Boy’s. The reason had to be Kathleen. Younger knew she was in love with him and the Voice just discovered it. She could no longer be trusted; she was too dangerous. The Voice had to have time to kill Kathleen, and then kill him. Younger jumped from the cab as it screeched to a stop outside Kathleen’s apartment. He couldn’t think of anything but getting to Kathleen before the Voice did. He had to save her.
The orange cat darted down the stairs past Younger, meowing loudly like an obsessed spirit. Younger ran to the top of the steps, the gun out and ready to fire. Kathleen’s door was open. He saw her down the narrow hallway, content and serene, calmly sitting in one of the fat chairs, a small blue Mankind Incorporated book open on her lap. Younger walked down the hall, carefully, expecting at any moment that someone would jump out at him. He stepped into the living room. In the other fat chair he saw the Voice.
The Voice smiled up at Younger, his words gliding, as if borne on a silver platter. “Ah, dear Mr. Younger. We were beginning to lose hope. We thought your journey would never end.”
Younger was astonished, standing so close to the Voice; the man was far older than the vigor of his voice implied, old enough to be Kathleen’s father. The wrinkles of his face were smoothed over evenly by a deep tan. Stamped across his lips was the indulgent expression of one patiently awaiting the world to serve his superior motivations.
Younger aimed the gun above the slender bridge of the Voice’s nose, between the gaze of his piercing eyes.
“That’s not the appropriate action to take, Mr. Younger. A very un-Amer
ican activity, shooting an unarmed man, a defenseless man.”
“A man who just killed Ignacio Gasset.”
“Comrade.” The Voice’s benign gaze did not leave Younger for a moment as he spoke to Kathleen. “I want you to shoot Mr. Younger.”
Younger was afraid to take the gun off the Voice. He turned his head slightly toward Kathleen. He saw her lift the book off her lap, a gun held steadily in her hand as she raised it before her, pointing it straight at Younger.
“Comrade, I want you to send a telegram to our American patriot who thinks he’s going to win this war.”
Younger felt the sweat in his hand around the gun. Outside in the distance a siren wailed. He couldn’t distinguish if it was an air-raid siren or a police siren.
The gun wavered in Kathleen’s hand, as if she had it pointed at the wrong person. She brought her other hand up to support it, then shifted the direction of the barrel slightly so it was trained on the Voice.
“Do your duty, comrade. Shoot him now.”
Younger pulled the trigger, the explosion kicking his hand back, the force of the bullet ripping open the Voice’s forehead in a shattering sound of bone and metal. The gun was heavy in Younger’s hand, an awesome weight with a fearful gravity of its own, as he turned it on Kathleen. Outside the wail of the siren grew louder.
Around the red rims of Kathleen’s eyes a watery film glistened, like heavy moisture on a windowpane, threatening to break and streak down sheer glass. She held her gun in trembling hands, pointed straight at him. “Don’t make me shoot you, Nathan. Don’t make me choose again. Leave!”
Younger took a hesitant step toward her. “I’m sick of the ideologies. What good are they if they destroy people? Both sides have made us killers. Now we’re going to kill each other. We can’t let them kill us, Kathleen.” He started to kneel down before her and she fired into his heart.
Zoot-Suit Murders Page 20