46- Springing the trap
Life percolated at
Hollywood and Vermont with an almost air of normality, shucking the head shops
and haberdasheries of the hip part of the Boulevard for more conventional
stores. Health food and sidewalk cafes made Lance think of Greenwich Village.
There were even students wandering around from the college farther down on
Vermont. Live music curled out of several small club doorways with imitations
of Dylan and acoustic Beatles. There were few tourists, Jesus freaks or bikers,
but plenty of hippies-- strangely settled hippies with babies slung on their
backs, and Chicanos standing beside them waiting for the buses to East L.A.
Ice cream shops
seemed popular here, and even this late, many remained open. The glow of
Woolworths window and other similar stores gave the neighborhood a lived-in
look that Lance envied. He wondered why he and Sarah hadn't discovered this
part of L.A. earlier, and if it wasn't too late to find a small apartment here.
And a job. And maybe a sense of place which neither seemed to have. A few
Eastern European food shops remained open as well, bins of fresh vegetables
spilling out onto the sidewalk like Korean shops in New York, the smell of
cheese and sausage drawing his attention away Lance's reason for being here.
Now and then a grey
bus pulled to the curb, emptying its load of tourists into the thinning crowds.
But they dissipated quickly, with cameras and unfolding maps of Hollywood, and
headed West to the glitter and stars, or sharply east towards ABC studies
tucked neatly in the back streets like some insignificant dive.
Gays moved along the
opposite side of the street in what appeared to be a less flamboyant gay
district of poster shops and Victorian clothing stores. Many floated along the
sidewalk in bright blue or yellow jackets trimmed in red or green, with brass
buttons and flowered patches, feathered hats on their heads.
Dan stayed on the
east side of the street, working his way slowly from store front to store
front, eyeing passing strangers as if any one of them would be his ex-friend.
Macrobiotic restaurants replaced the delicatessens, with mystic books stores
and tarot readers in between. Visions of the old life. The fun and romance of
the Summer of Love clinging to the doorways and people.
And yet, Lance could
feel doom hanging over it all-- the sense that it might all evaporate tomorrow.
It showed in their eyes and in their wavering smiles. It showed in the lazy
step which kept them lingering before each institution, as if they needed to
memorize the details.
It was 9:30.
One by one the
remaining shops closed their doors, extinguishing their lights. Only the cafes
farther down remained, music and other activities fed by a more lively crowd of
gays and students. The back drop of music made for an eerie air among the
darkening stores, ghostly voice echoing from the Greek face of the bank near
the corner.
Dan dragged Lance up
the dozen steps to the seclusion of columns around which a deep shadow had
settled. Wine bottles and the smell of urine hinted of a seedier night life.
But Lance saw no hobos sleeping there.
Dan crouched behind
one of the columns and stared down at the street. The crowds shrank more
quickly, as the proprietors of the shops made for parked automobiles.
Finally, when the
cars had driven off and the buses had picked up the workers for other parts of
L.A., silence came-- filled only with the distant chatter of the cafes and the
low hum of cars moving along the freeway up and behind them.
It took awhile--
maybe fifteen more minutes. But the figures appeared one at a time, popping out
from the shadows like pale faced ghosts. The first of these was a pudgy man,
dressed in a baggy suit and drawn down hat, resembling a businessman or
mobster, and yet for Lance, it lacked credibility. Like a child dressing up in
his father's clothing.
"Is it
him?" Lance asked.
Dan squinted, pushing
up the floppy brim of his cowboy hat for a better view. "Can't tell,"
he mumbled. "But this guy's about the right size and height."
This surprised Lance.
He'd half expected some towering mythological giant, a Sherlock Homes type,
tall, gaunt, steely-eyed. The man near the curb twitched nervously, glancing up
and down the sidewalk, more store keeper than drug dealer.
"Ut oh,"
Dan said. "I think I see the trap."
"Where?"
"There, and
there, and there," Dan said and pointed to several parked cars along the
street. One car sat slightly north of them. One to the south on the other side
of Vermont. A third car faced them from out of the mouth of Hollywood
Boulevard. "It looks as if the cops knew everything well in advance."
"Cops? Are you
sure?"
"If they're not,
then I'm Charlie Manson."
"You mean he
called the cops?"
"Or dropped a
little tip to them, yeah," Dan said, snorting out each word like a slowly
riled bull. "Which just about seals the case for our old friendship. I'll
kill the fucker when I get my hands on him."
He rose as if to
plunge down the stairs at the pudgy man, but Lance grabbed his arm.
"Wait!
Listen!"
Dan stopped. The
sound of roaring motor cycles echoed out from Hollywood Boulevard as several
gleaming machines appeared, Billy Night Rider in their lead with red bandanna
flapping from his throat. He looked every bit an outlaw with motorcycle for a
steed. He and his gang skidded to a stop in front of the nervous little man.
The sudden
interruption staggered the plump figure back a step or two before he turned and
bolted away. He charged south first along the east side of the street, only to
stop short at the sight of two suited figures stepping out of the shadows.
Others leaped out of a parked car.
"Halt," one
of them said. "We're the police. Put up your hands."
The little man,
caught between the dismounting bikers and the waiting police, darted sideways
across Vermont. The cops shouted and charged after him. As did Billy for the
moment.
It took Billy that
long to recognize the situation, as more police leaped out of cars behind him.
He and his bikers halted right in the center of the street, looking like
confused children caught in a sudden rush of traffic.
"Back,"
Billy shouted. He swung his shotgun around and pulled the trigger. The closest
cop took the blast fully in the chest.
Lance screamed:
"NO!" and lunged out from behind the pillar, nearly killing himself
in the descent down the stairs. Dan grabbed him a few steps later.
"Where the fuck
are you going?"
"The cop,"
Lance said, breathlessly. "He's hurt."
"So let the fuzz
take care of him!"
"I can't,"
Lance said, dragging Dan's fingers loose as he continued his plunge, down the
stairs and into the street. Other gunfire sparked from the dark doorways up the
block. Firefight! someone screamed in his head, as he stumbled over what might
have been the curb or a body or the ruins of a burned out hut, the jungle of
wires and street lights vanishing for that moment into a maze of confused
images. The choppers! Where were the Choppers? Why didn't someone call for
Med-vac?
The police dove
behind cars, as more bikers appeared out of the mouth of Hollywood boulevard,
bikers bearing shotguns and automatic weapons, chopping up concrete and metal
with their advance. The cops fell back, shooting to cover their retreat,
obviously unprepared for two dozen weapon-wielding warriors. Though Lance saw
someone on a radio screaming for help.
The point became
moot. Billy and his gang remounted their machines and sped away, retreating
back the way they'd come, shooting one last salvo at the cops as they did.
"Damn you,
Lance," Dan grumbled, jogging behind Lance and into the suddenly silent
street. In the distance, the wail of sirens came, but like the voice of some
unreal spirit never quite able to materialize. It was the voice of choppers,
teasing waiting soldiers with their slow advance, as if they would never
arrive.
"You're going to
get us busted," Dan said, ducking down behind a car as Lance did. But
Lance had gone onto auto-pilot. His head spinning with unreality, seeing jungle
where there was none, hearing moaning men where only one lay in the center of
the street-- driven forward by instinct. He could no more help himself than he
could overseas, when men crying for their mothers begged him to kill them. When
the only mercy he could give their dying were prayers he no longer believed.
He fell to his knees
at the side of the moaning man, tearing free the clothing from around the
wound. Most of the blast had missed him. A hurried aim of a frightened biker
saving the cop's heart. But the blast had taken away most of the man's right
side, blood and guts pouring down into the street like globs of pink and red
gelatin.
Dan wretched.
"Give me your
jacket," Lance demanded.
"My jacket?
Why?"
"Don't argue
with me. Just hand it over."
Dan complied, pealing
the tanned leather from his thin frame. Most of the fringe had broken or worn
away. But Lance took it and slid it under the fallen cop, then folded it up
around the wounded side, tucking the interior back into the body. He yanked his
own belt from his waist, tightening it around the make-shift tourniquet,
pulling it as tight as he could.
"Get to a
phone," he yelled at Dan. "Call for an ambulance. Quick!"
But others came up
from the shadows, cops stopping a few feet away, studying Lance and their
fallen comrade, their weapons drooping down at their sides. Some uniformed.
Others in various civilian disguises. All stared with horror. They'd not seen
this kind of thing before despite their tour of the street. But no one was
immune to it. Even hardened soldiers stared.
"Didn't you hear
me?" Lance screamed. "Get an ambulance."
Demetre's black face
floated down from out of the crowd, large hands hooking into Lance's armpits,
drawing him up, as if out of a dream.
"There's no
hurry," the black cop whispered, pulling Lance farther from the body.
"But he's going
to die," Lance protested, his hand sticky with the man's blood. The way
they'd been sticky even in his sleep in Nam.
"He's already
dead."
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