“It was early June, a clear night. The breeze smelled of oranges. The moon was past full.
“A sailor slouched at the corner of an alley, dragging on a Lucky, looking up and down the street. I could tell he was look-out. His buddies were probably among the garbage cans with a whore.
“As the sailor saw us, he tossed his butt and looked over his shoulder. There was a faint glow on his face, which shocked me. At this time of the month, my strange sight was at its weakest.
“In the alley, someone was being beaten up. We stopped by the sailor and looked past him. Five of his comrades, caps askew, were beating and kicking a boy who wore a zoot-suit.
“The sailor called; his shipmates left off work and rushed out. We were surrounded by a white wall.
“ ‘Fuckin’ zooters,’ the smallest sailor spat.
“ ‘Zooter’ was the 1943 synonym for ‘greaser’.
“A zoot-suit was seen by anglo service-men as a challenge to uniformed manhood. Unjustifiably, zoot-suiters were reckoned draft-dodgers, seducers of left-behind sweethearts, sons of fascist Spain, black marketeers.
“ ‘Strip your drapes,’ a sailor said, shoving me hard in the chest.
“I snarled, Fox struggling inside me. The moon-time was just past.
“ ‘Fuckin’ animals. Look at the hair-oil on this nance, Costigan.’
“ ‘Strip your drapes,’ Costigan repeated.
“The sailors began to rip our clothes. We fought, but there were reinforcements. Word got into the bars that the Navy was giving zoot-suit hoodlums a lesson. More sailors, plus soldiers and marines, rushed to join in.
“Ynostrosa fought harder than I. For so long, I had relied on Fox; now, there was only Diego. Fox was a month away.
“We were stripped to our skivvies, bloodied and battered and left in the street. Then the police came and arrested us. As we were man-handled into a paddy wagon, I saw the uniformed mob roll down the boulevard, seizing another young zoot-suiter. Four were required to hold back a girl as twenty or thirty heroes trampled her beau. As she spat and kicked, hair coming loose from her high pompadour, soldiers made jokes about Mexican spitfires.
“An anglo rushed up to the wagon, protesting. He was a bar-owner, and his place had been smashed up by sailors. A zoot-suiter had been thrown through a window.
“ ‘It’s a matter for the Shore Patrol,’ a cop told him, turning away.”
* * *
“That night, and for about a week afterwards, hordes of servicemen charged into town, hired fleets of taxicabs, and cruised the streets in search of zooters. Girls were raped, boys were killed, but only pachucos were arrested. No sailor, soldier, or marine was charged with any crime. The police adopted a policy of driving meekly in the wake of the mobs and arresting their battered victims. Newspaper editorials praised servicemen who took action against ‘lawlessness’. Many openly lamented that the raids were stopped, on orders from on high, before ‘the zoot-suit problem’ was subjected to a final solution.
“Miguel Ynostrosa never went into the army; he lost the use of his legs.
“In the lock-up, I healed fast and was at least safe from further brutality. Enraged, I heard of the cripples and mothers beaten by the cops when they protested arrests. The Los Angeles City Council adopted a resolution which made the wearing of a zoot-suit a crime.
“I sweated out a long month, knowing the moon nights were approaching. The bars of my cell seemed strong, maybe strong enough to hold Fox. The faces of men around me began to glow. I knew I would have to resist the change.
“I remembered the sailors in the alley. Some faces had glowed, some hadn’t. Some believed they were doing the right thing; perhaps they were worse than the men who relished the chance to go out and beat someone up without suffering consequences.
“I was released after three weeks, no charges laid against me. During the moon-nights, I prowled the streets, searching for glowing faces and sailor suits. I found prey, but never saw any of the men who crippled Ynostrosa. I killed drunken servicemen, whom I found alone. Once, I found two Military Policemen raping a girl, and exulted in killing them. The girl saw me up close, but never told.
“At the end of the full moon, I was exhausted. I had done nothing, though the press screamed at the police for failing to catch the ‘Zorro Killer’ who left the zig-zag-zig on his victims. Those who had attacked the zoot-suiters were mainly overseas, directing aggression against the Japanese; within a few years, most would probably be dead. It was not up to me which would live through Guadalcanal or Midway; just and unjust, good and bad, all would fall in this War.”
* * *
“I was tired and I knew what Hendrik had meant by my curse. No matter how I fought and killed for my people, no matter how many zig-zag-zigs I left, I could do nothing.
“I was one creature, alone and unaided. Evil was too vast, a mob with no true leaders. I couldn’t even protect friends like Ynostrosa, let alone an entire race, an entire country. But still I saw the glow in the faces of those who deserved to die, still I changed on moon-nights and left my zig-zag-zig.
“I got into the War, working in a defence plant. In October, 1944, the convictions of the Sleepy Lagoon defendants were reversed by the Court of Appeals. By then, they had served two years in jail. When released, several youths of previous good character turned in bitterness to crime and were swiftly returned to prison.
“When men with Spanish names came back from the Just War minus limbs or with medal ribbons and insisted they be served in ‘No Mexicans’ bars and restaurants, things began to change a little, on the surface.
“I began to feel old.”
XV
Firefights lit up the Jungle. The War on Zonk had just passed Def Con 4. A row of window-fronts exploded as fire raked across them. Next to tonight’s police action, the Rodney King beating was a misfiled parking ticket.
Stuart jogged through the pre-emptive riot reprisal, running with the fox as hounds made steady progress down wide streets. No arrests were being made, but instant sentences were carried out.
If he had a gun, he would shoot back.
There’d be nothing worth looting in the burning stores. People were too busy fleeing to take advantage of excellent terms offered on electrical goods.
This all couldn’t be some crazy scheme to trap the beast-man. This was way too big, way too organized. Even for a wonder like the hunter Stuart had seen, there was no need to send in an army. This had the feel of something long in the planning.
From helicopters, soothing voices assured those on the ground that they should lay down their arms and surrender.
“You will not be harmed.”
Nobody believed that. There were no innocent bystanders any more. If you got shot: sorry, but you must have been guilty.
What the hell was this all about?
Stuart made a bad decision, and took a left into a cross-street that turned out to be a blind alley. A wire-topped wall came up in front. He could never get over it.
He turned and pain caught up with him. His lungs and knees hurt. He was seven years away from his last rugby match; the only exercise he had taken since was climbing stairs.
“Shit,” he breathed.
A cop came into the alley, a flash-light fixed to his helmet like a miner’s lamp. That gave him both hands free to hold his gun.
Stuart reached into his jacket pocket and pulled out his passport.
“British citizen,” he said. “Diplomatic Immunity,” he lied. “Civis romanus sum,” he tried, desperately.
“Who ya got?” someone shouted from outside the alley.
“Nigger on zonk,” the cop said over his shoulder.
As the someone advised “waste him”, Stuart pushed himself away from the wall and at the cop.
He felt the gunbarrel slam against his shoulder, and was sure he’d been shot. The cop, surprised, collapsed backwards. His gun skittered away into garbage.
Stuart felt his wound. The barrel had just gouged at him, no
t even ripping his clothes.
Angry, he dug into the cop’s chest with his knees and wrestled off the lamp-helmet. A face appeared. Young, white, freckles. Stuart made a fist and smashed the cop’s nose, over and over.
Policemen Are Your Friends, he’d been taught in infants’ school. Cop is the natural-born enemy of the black man, he’d been told at a party.
Something animal inside made it necessary Stuart break this killer cop’s skull. He was becoming acclimatized to the Jungle.
A slim shadow fell on Stuart and the cop. Stuart looked up.
“Stop fuckin’ around and ice the pig,” a girl said.
Anger froze.
Ice, waste, kill . . .
“Pussy,” the girl said, kneeling. In the lamp-circle, Stuart recognized the half-oriental who had been with the Alcalde. She had a little silver gun, which she fired into the cop’s forehead.
Stuart felt the cop die, the last writhe of his body like a hobby-horse between his legs.
He stood up, shuddering, cold.
“Come on, gangsta,” the girl said, “let’s get offstreet.”
She led him out of the alley and along the sidewalk to a door. Mop-up crews were proceeding ruthlessly down the boulevard.
The girl got the door open and shoved Stuart through. They were in a hallway, lit only by searchbeam passes over a skylight.
“Esperanza,” said a weak voice. “That you?”
Stuart looked at her. She shrugged and said “Esperanza Nguyen. Some call me Warchild, but that’s kidshit.”
The girl shouted back, identifying herself.
A door was opened and Esperanza marched Stuart into a room. Computers and desk-top publishing equipment on desks, framed covers of Spanish language periodicals on the walls.
One of the boys from the Coffee Stop, side soaked with blood, jittered around.
“How is he?” Esperanza asked.
“Bad, man, muy bad.”
In a baggy leather chair slumped the Alcalde, face drained white. He looked as if he’d been beaten extensively. On a desk by him was an old-style square TV set, with news coverage. There were aerial views of the burning Jungle.
Irises showed ID photos of García and Scotchman.
“What is this about?” Stuart asked.
“You, gangsta,” Esperanza said.
The iris showed Stuart’s passport shot. He hated it; he was wearing his old school tie.
“They say you’ve been taken out by a zonk gang,” she said, translating the garble of the newscast. “Two cops are dead, you just missing. There’s an ‘orgy of cop killing’ going down, and Chief Ryu is sending in Special Tactical Groups.”
The TV cut to Mayor Jute, improbably well-groomed for someone hauled out of bed in the middle of the night.
“Genfems of the press,” she said, “the officers who’ve fallen will be honoured. The sympathies of the city are for the significant partners and offspring of the law enforcement casualties.”
“What about the ridealong?” a non-CGI journo asked.
“Every effort is being exerted to recover Stuart Finn. I have just interfaced with Prime Minister Heseltine and assured him our best non-gender specific operatives are onstreet . . .”
“I didn’t vote for him,” Stuart blurted.
“At this temporal juncture, it seems decreasingly likely that Mr Finn is still living. The Zonk Gangs have demonstrated in the past their savage ruthlessness.”
Back in the studio, the news-anchor summed up, “Following an unprovoked attack by gangs, two LAPD officers are confirmed dead . . .”
Grainy homevideo footage showed two burned bodies hanging from cuffed wrists. The camera focused on a boiled face. It was García.
“. . . and a British writer on a ridealong is missing . . .”
García and Scotchman had set Stuart up, then been set up themselves. This was a stage-managed riot.
But why?
“Chief Ryu has vowed . . .”
The Alcalde spasmed with coughing. Stuart thought the man had a couple of broken ribs, at least.
“They’re coming down like a hard rain,” the boy said. “Soon as this shit started, they got the Alcalde. It was deliberate, man. On radio, I got word others have been taken out. Not just gangstas, man. Others like the Alcalde. That commie priest, he’s dead. And a couple of women from the Committee for the Disappeared. It was a surgical strike. Shut up the trouble-makers, man.”
Esperanza was thoughtful.
“All this community spirit garbage is over,” the boy waved around. There were anti-zonk posters, schedules for educational drives, portraits of positive ethnic role models. “The Caldiarres were right, Warchild. We should just’ve fought back.”
The Alcalde died.
Esperanza thought it over. The boy hefted a machine pistol, itching to get onstreet and take out some cop butt. Finally, the girl nodded agreement.
“Gangsta,” she said, pointing at Stuart, “we dead by dawn, dead or disappeared. You, you have to live, live to show the lie. You a writer, right? Tell this story. Tell them all how it went down.”
It seemed a fair bet to say Stuart would not be working on the Shadowstalk script any more.
“You a hero, man,” the boy said. “I can see it on you.”
* * *
He was alone. The explosions had died down, though there were still bursts of gunfire. The TV chattered quiet lies, and repeated shock footage of edited truth. There was talk of arrested zonk gangstas, but not of slain community leaders.
The Alcalde was under a dust-sheet. Stuart gathered he had tried to give his people an example, tried to keep them out of the gangs, off the drugs. Something about the waste of effort chilled Stuart to despair.
There were kids out onstreet who had hung with the Alcalde, studied hard and tried their best; they were just as dead as the zonkbrains and gangstas.
He wondered where the beast-man was in this fight. Lost, probably. In a city-wide battle, one small impossible wonder counted for little.
The office door opened.
“Fuck shit death,” Stuart said.
A young man staggered in. It was Vega, one of the Alcalde’s boys. His clothes were a ruin. He had been in a fight.
“Black man,” he said, looking at Stuart. “I’m spent.”
His eyes shone. Stuart recognized them and staggered back against a desk.
Vega smiled; the smile became a snarl. The hunter’s snout surfaced in Vega’s face and receded again.
Now Stuart knew Vega’s secret, could the beast-man let him live? The whole of Los Angeles had reasons for finding it more convenient if Stuart Finn were dead.
“What did I do?” he said. “I wrote a book? Hollywood called, I took the money. Do I deserve to die for it?”
“Depends on the movie,” Vega said, grinning.
XVI From the Corrido of Diego
“So, black man, that is what I am, what I have done, what I have been, what I have learned.
“Some call me monster, some call me hero. They will call you the same things. I know truly I am neither. I am merely a fool. I know I can make no difference, can change nothing but myself, but I have been compelled to try. Many are deservedly dead by my hand, but many more equally as deserving never crossed my path. I have felled tiny trees in an ever-expanding jungle.
“That poor dead man, the Alcalde, was better than I. He was a man of peace, of learning, of love. His way was best. And yet he has been killed. Others, men and women of good will, are slaughtered. This is as bad a time as I have known and it wearies me more than I can tell. I am near the end of my days and I am not sorry.
“At first, I understood that I killed for my people. I was wrong, I killed for my kind. Chicano, black, white, whatever. My kind is all colours. I am of the pobres, the poor, the oppressed, the neglected, the inconvenient. I am the cry of the sad, the true grito de dolores. My task has been futile, but I have not abandoned it until now.
“You are different from me. You will under
stand the curse. You will tilt at windmills, for you have no choice. You will stand knee-deep in the sea and cry ‘go back, waves.’ I am truly sorry for you, but I have no choice, as I have never had a choice. Your face shines, not as the faces of those I kill shine, but with a rainbow brilliance. The viejo must have seen that rainbow in my own face.
“Live long with your legend, black man . . .”
XVII
“What do you mean?” Stuart asked.
“This,” Diego Vega said, holding out a frail hand. Pain passed across his face. His eyes were ancient.
Diego struck out, and touched Stuart’s face.
It was an electric jolt. Stuart convulsed and fell, banging his head against a deskleg. His body throbbed as something coursed through his flesh.
After a time, his mind came back together. He did not know how long he had been space-voyaging inside his skull. The corrido Diego Vega had told him was imprinted in his brain, as if the man’s memories had passed from his mind to Stuart’s at the moment of the jolt.
Scrambling across the floor, he found a body. Diego Vega was dead; an old man, withered to a husk. There was no particular expression of peace on his face. Nobody was home.
Stuart stood, wondering how he was changed.
* * *
As Diego had spoken, the noise from the Jungle had changed. Fewer shots and explosions, more sirens and helicopters. They had ignored the TV as the flickering images of violence became pacified. Onstreet, the Tactical Squads were taking control.
Stuart knew he should get out of the office. People were looking for him. He had to find the right way of coming out of the Jungle. It had to be public, preferably televised. Mayor Jute had said he was probably dead, and many of her subordinates wouldn’t hesitate to turn her supposition into a statement of fact.
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