by Michael Nava
“The cops will be looking for us,” he’d told Theo. “I heard on the news they found fingerprints on pieces of one of the bombs. Didn’t I say wear gloves?”
“What! No, you didn’t— My fingerprints? You sure?”
“They weren’t mine,” Freddy said. “I wore gloves.”
“You didn’t say anything about gloves,” Theo whined.
“The hell I didn’t,” Freddy snapped. “I gave you a fucking pair when you got out of the car and told you to put them on.”
Theo was confused now. Maybe Freddy had told him to wear gloves. The days leading up to the night of the explosion and the night itself were a blur and not only because he’d been high most of the time. When he’d realized Freddy was serious about blowing up the church, he’d freaked. But through a combination of bullying and seduction, Freddy gradually wore down his resistance. He sealed the deal when he finally took Theo to bed and gave him what he’d wanted since they’d first met, his big cock and the words “I love you.”
“If you love me,” Freddy said as Theo lay in his arms. “If you want more of this,” he grabbed Theo’s hand and rubbed it against his big cock, “you’ll help me.”
“But what if someone gets hurt?” Theo said, taking the heft of Freddy’s cock in his fingers.
“I told you, baby, I checked it out. There’s no one at the church on Thursday nights. No one to get hurt.”
Freddy slid his hand beneath Theo’s ass and drove a finger into him. Theo squirmed with pleasure. “You like that, m’ijo?”
“Yes, papi.”
“Are you going to do what Daddy tells you?”
“If you promise no one will get hurt,” he said in a small voice.
Freddy moved his finger inside him. “Baby, trust me.”
••••
He was amazed when they went to the hardware store how ordinary the stuff for the bombs was— pipes, caps, wires, alarm clocks.
“Is that all you need?” he asked Freddy as they pulled out of the Home Depot lot.
Freddy laughed. “No, babe, I still have to get the fairy dust.”
He didn’t understand what he meant until Freddy showed up at the apartment one evening while Josh was at work with a container of gunpowder. He shooed Theo out of the kitchen. Theo paced the living room anxiously. A couple of times, he peeked into the kitchen, worried that Freddy would blow them up, but Freddy worked with delicate intensity as he put the explosives together.
“When did you learn that?” Theo asked him when he’d finished.
Freddy replied in a voice that ended all further questions, “Someone taught me.”
••••
They went to the church the Sunday before to scout it out. Freddy’d brought a camera and took pictures until a couple of guys approached them. Seeing them, Freddy sent him to the car and later, when he asked why, said he didn’t want both of them to be recognized.
“One of them was security. They know my face now,” he told Theo. “You have to plant the bombs.”
“What? You said all I’d have to do is be the lookout.”
“Change of plans,” Freddy replied curtly.
On the day of the bombing, Freddy spread a group of Polaroids on the kitchen table, marked with black X’s where the bombs were to be planted. They went over them again and again until Freddy was satisfied Theo knew exactly where to place them.
But, as they were getting ready to leave, Theo said, “Can’t you wear a mask or something?”
“What did you say?” Freddy asked dangerously.
“You could wear like a ski mask to hide your face and I could stay in the car and—”
Freddy’s backhanded blow sent Theo sprawling to the floor.
“Listen, you little shit, we’re in this together. You understand? You’ll do what I say.”
Theo, blood seeping into his mouth, stared at him in shock and started to cry. Freddy pulled him to his feet, hugged him, kissed his cheek and said, “I’m sorry, m’ijo. I’m a little stressed. I just . . . I need you, Theo, you know. I need you.”
His voice was soft, vulnerable. Theo wiped his face and nodded. “Okay, papi.”
“Good boy. Look, we’ll do this, we’ll get a room tonight, and I’ll fuck your brains out. Then we’ll take off to Mexico for a while. I have friends in Puerto Vallarta. Right on the Pacific coast. We’ll sit on the beach and drink margaritas. You’ll love it there.”
Theo managed a smile and asked, “Can I smoke a pipe before we go?”
Freddy frowned, shrugged. “Okay, but just a taste. We need your hands to be steady. I don’t want you to blow yourself up.”
••••
At the church Freddy gave him the backpack with the bombs and a can of spray paint.
“Paint the slogans first to let them know who was here,” he said. “Then plant the bombs and get the hell out of there.”
Theo whispered, “Will you come with me?”
For a second he thought Freddy was going to hit him again, but instead he said gently, “You’ve come this far, m’ijo. You can do it. I’ll be waiting here for you. Think about the beach, the waves, the margaritas.”
Theo nodded. He got out of the car and crept onto the grounds of Ekklesia.
••••
They were halfway to the underpass of the 10 when the bombs went off. Freddy grabbed Theo’s leg and said, “You hear that?”
The sound was muffled by distance and the drone of traffic on the approaching freeway, but still audible. The blasts were unlike anything he had ever heard, concentrated, intense and sudden, the bellows of pure destruction. Later, he thought, if evil made a noise, it would be those explosions.
They spent the night in a motel in Boystown. Early the next morning Theo went out to get a newspaper and brought it back to the room. The bombing was on the front page with photos of the church and the man, the pastor, who had been killed in the explosion. He shook Freddy awake.
“What?” Freddy said sleepily, his back to Theo.
“You said no one would be there!”
Freddy rolled over in bed and said, “What are you talking about?”
Theo shook the front page at him. “There was a guy at the church, the pastor. We killed him.”
Freddy grabbed the paper from him, scanned it, tossed it aside and said, “Accidents happen. Anyway, the guy was a fundamentalist asshole. World’s better off without him. Now come back to bed and take care of this.” He stroked his dick beneath the sheet.
“I killed someone,” Theo mumbled, still shocked. “We killed someone.”
“I said it was an accident. The place was supposed to be deserted.”
“What are we going to do?”
Freddy sat up, the sheet falling from a body plated in muscle like armor, and said coldly, “What are you talking about, what are we going to do?”
“We could turn ourselves in to the police,” Theo said, weakly. “Tell them it was an accident.”
“You think the pigs will believe it was an accident? Do you think it will matter to them? We turn ourselves in and we’ll die in prison.” He reached for Theo’s hand, gripped it. “Hey, you have to trust me. I have friends. I can get us out of this.”
Theo felt the creep of emotional paralysis, mind and body sinking into numbness. All he could think was, I need to get high.
Freddy, watching him intently, said, “Call your dealer, but stock up because this is the last time.”
••••
Now, in another motel room, with twenty dollars to his name, no car, no speed, and no way of reaching Freddy, the walls closed in.
NINE
The chief of police stood at a lectern emblazoned with LAPD’s seal— a complicated device involving the scales of justice, what looked like a family of aliens, city hall, laurel branches, and the ironic motto “To Protect and Serve”— and said grimly, “We have a suspect in the bombing and we’re closing in on him. We also believe, however, that he did not act alone. We think he was part of
a homosexual terrorist network, and we can’t be certain they won’t strike again so we are taking measures to provide extra security for the city’s churches. We will be going after all of these people very aggressively.” When a reporter asked for names Gates brushed her off. “We’ll be releasing names when our investigation is at a point where we’re ready to submit the case to the district attorney for prosecution.”
The seven o’clock installment of the local evening news went to sports. I switched it off. Although the cops had questioned Josh about QUEER, they hadn’t made any moves against the organization in the two weeks since the explosion. If they suspected Theo was part of a broader conspiracy, they weren’t pursuing those suspicions, but seemed entirely focused on finding him. In fact, the department hadn’t publicly released any information about Theo’s possible connection to QUEER or the slogans painted at the site of the explosion, which, because the site had been off-limits to the media since the bombings, had not made it into press reports.
To be on the safe side, I’d let Laura Acosta in on what the cops had connecting Theo to QUEER and asked her to let me know if they started nosing around. She swore QUEER had had nothing to do with the bombing. I told her to keep our talks to herself unless and until the cops went public. Gates just had. It was clear to me who he meant by “homosexual terrorist network.” I wondered if the police had been quietly investigating the organization after all and had discovered incriminating evidence I was unaware of. Not that I thought Laura would hold back on me, but the QUEERs were anarchists, and she wouldn’t necessarily know what other people had been up to.
I got up from the couch, went into Larry’s office, and dialed her number.
Skipping preliminaries, I asked her, “Did you see Gates’s press conference?”
She laughed. “Hello to you, too, Henry. No, I had better things to do. What did he say?”
I recounted his remarks about the terrorists. “He meant QUEER.”
“That’s crazy,” she said. “I told you we had nothing to do with that mess.”
“Are you sure?”
“What do mean, am I sure?” she asked, hackles up.
I picked up a rubber band and threaded it through my fingers.
“Are you sure you know everything that everyone was doing? Can you be certain that no one in QUEER besides Theo was involved in the bombing? Because it sure sounds like the cops have done some digging and come up with something.”
She took a nervous breath. “You know how we operate,” she said. “People do their own thing.”
The rubber band snapped.
“If anyone in QUEER knew in advance about the bombing and supported it in any way, you could all be charged with conspiracy, and from what Gates said at the press conference it sounds like that’s the plan.”
“Shit,” she muttered. “What should we do?”
“I want to meet with everyone who was involved in planning the Bash the Church action. Sooner rather than later. Tonight.”
“Okay, come to the Center at nine o’clock. I’ll round up the people who need to be there.”
••••
I arrived at the Center just after nine and found Laura in a small meeting room off the big community room where I’d bashed my head the last time I was there. Everything was industrial gray, the furniture clearly secondhand, and the walls covered with posters and flyers advertising safe sex discussion groups, Twelve Step meetings, and a lesbian book club. Around the table with her were three young men— who identified themselves as Jack, Minh, and Bunny— and a gray-haired woman, Becca. Jack and Minh were dressed in revolutionary chic, black leather jackets festooned with political pins, shredded jeans and clunky boots. Bunny wore an embroidered denim work shirt over a leather kilt. Becca was in the flowing skirt and peasant blouse of an old hippie, her gray hair piled in braids on her head, her eyes sharp and humorous. Laura was in a white guayabera shirt and khakis.
I sat down. “You’re the Bash the Church affinity group? Is this all of you?”
“Why do you want to know?” Becca asked neutrally.
“Didn’t Laura explain?”
“I thought I’d leave it to you,” Laura said.
“This is about the Ekklesia bombing,” I said. “The police have a suspect, and though they haven’t named him publicly I can tell you it’s Theo Latour.”
The shocked expressions all seemed genuine.
“His fingerprints were found on a fragment of one of the bombs,” I continued. “There’s also another detail the police haven’t released to the public. The words ‘Bash the Church’ and ‘Queer Revolt’ were spray-painted at the site of the bombing.”
Becca looked at Laura. “You knew this and didn’t tell us?”
Laura shifted in her seat but before she could answer, I said, “I asked her not to tell anyone.”
“Why?” Becca demanded.
“Because until today, I wasn’t sure what the police were going to do with that information. If they didn’t think they had enough to implicate the group, I didn’t see the point of putting it out in public where it could be used to discredit you.”
“Why are you telling us now, dude?” Minh asked suspiciously.
“Gates had a press conference this afternoon and said he was going after a homosexual terrorist network. That’s you. If he’s saying that publicly now, it makes me think the cops have evidence that implicates someone in the organization, other than Theo, in the bombing.”
Minh tapped a clove cigarette out of a pack he extracted from his pocket, lit it and pronounced, “That’s whack.”
“Let me explain something to you,” I replied, waving away the cloying smoke. “Under the law of conspiracy, one person can be liable for a crime another person commits if the first person conspired to commit that crime, and also for any other crime that was the foreseeable consequence of the crime that was the subject of the conspiracy.”
Bunny said, “Uh, translation?”
“If Theo bombed the church and anyone else in QUEER knew about the plan in advance and supported it in any way, then they and maybe everyone else in the organization could be charged as co-conspirators with the bombing and the killing even if the killing wasn’t originally part of the plan.”
After a stunned moment, Becca said, “QUEER is committed to acts of peaceful civil disobedience.”
“But was Theo part of this group? Did any of you know about the bombing in advance? Did any of you or anyone else in QUEER assist in the construction or the planting of the bombs? Even if you didn’t, did you provide money to them or in any other way offer them assistance?” I looked around the table for the tiniest hint of guilt in anyone’s expression, but all were stony-faced. “The cops will be asking you these same questions and your answers to them, unlike to me, won’t be privileged.”
“We have the right to remain silent,” Jack said.
“Not to your lawyer,” I replied. “Not if I’m going to defend you.”
“Defend us?” Minh snapped. “We didn’t do anything.”
“Then answer my questions.”
Minh took a drag of his cigarette, blew smoke across the table into my face, and said, “Theo came to some of our meetings. Freddy, too, sometimes.”
“Were they involved in planning the action?” I asked.
Bunny said, “Minh, darling, put out that noxious cigarette before I jump over the table and shove it down your throat.” Then to me, “Theo came to vent, like he always did. He told us how evil Christians are. Like that was news to us.”
Becca broke in. “I’ve been an activist for a long time, and in my experience social justice movements attract two kinds of people. People ready to do the work and people who need a place to be angry. The angry people have been so wounded, so twisted by injustice they can’t get past the trauma to take action. Theo was one of those broken people. Yes, he could be disruptive, but part of our work is to give people like him a safe space to be angry.”
Minh rolled his eyes and mutte
red, “Hippie.”
“You said Freddy came sometimes. Was he involved in the planning?”
Bunny laughed. “Freddy? No. I think Theo dragged him to our meetings. All he ever did was sit and spread his legs so we could all admire the size of his dick.” He grinned. “A solid nine inches, I’d say.”
Minh said, “At least. I stood next to him in the john when he was taking a leak. Uncut, too.”
Laura rolled her eyes. “Boys.”
“Don’t forget he’s a con,” Jack said.
“Excuse me?” I said.
“Last year we zapped Barney’s Beanery— that place on Santa Monica that had a sign that said ‘Fagots Keep Out’— it wasn’t spelled right— and a bunch of us were arrested for trespassing. The cops cited us and let us go except for Freddy. They said he had an arrest warrant, so they took him downtown.”
“Do you know what the warrant was for?”
Becca said, “I overheard the officer who arrested him say it was for ADW, but I don’t know what that is.”
“Assault with a deadly weapon,” I said.
“Deadly weapon,” Bunny exclaimed in mock horror. “You think they mean his dick?”
“He can assault me with it any time he wants,” Minh said.
“What’s Freddy’s last name?”
“Saavedra,” Laura said.
I jotted down his name. “If we’re done discussing Freddy’s penis, can we get back to my questions? Did any of you know anything about the bombing in advance?”
“No way, dude,” Minh said, the crushed cigarette smoldering in an ashtray on the table in front of him.
“But,” I said, “Ekklesia was on your list of churches for the Bash the Church action?”
“Sure,” Bunny said, “along with the Catholic cathedral and the Mormon temple and some other places. We were planning to dress up in our Sunday best, sneak into the services and then, on the same day, at the same time, stand up and call out the church while other QUEER people ran in and staged a die-in in the aisles. That was the action. Not blowing up buildings and killing people.”