He tagged doors, too, hanging flyers over the locks. While a rushed business owner might not see a flyer on their window, there was no way they could miss a flyer blocking their lock. They might rip it off and toss it aside without a glance, but at least they wouldn’t miss it entirely. He imagined a business owner looking at the flyer, taking it in his hand and reading it, then going home. Arnesto was jolted back to reality. The door he had just tagged moved. Not much, less than an inch, but it was open. It wasn’t a business.
It was an apartment building. He peered inside and saw rows and rows of those thin little mailboxes that can only hold mail inserted vertically. Feeling bold and not seeing anyone around, he opened the door and stepped in. It was the perfect spot for him to deliver his message. While his other flyers might be read by no one, here he was virtually guaranteed a much larger audience. He put up several flyers, more than a dozen in total. He felt satisfied as he reached the back door of the long hallway. Just in time, too. He heard footsteps coming down a stairway from above, two, maybe three floors up. The bottom of the stairs was right behind him on his side of the building.
He pulled on the back door, but it didn’t budge. He pulled harder with the same result. The footsteps were getting louder and coming fast. He paused in disbelief. What the hell?! What am I doing wrong? He tried twisting and turning the handle, which didn’t move, before attempting one final yank with no better luck. He peered out one of the small windows on the side and saw a garden area. It’s a private area. That’s why it’s locked.
He turned to see feet appear at the top of the stairs. He sure as hell didn’t want to go up the stairs and pass someone who wouldn’t recognize him on the way up. His only option was to retrace his steps and go out the way he had come in. He ran as quietly as he could toward the front door but knew he wouldn’t make it. He heard a loud thud as whoever was running behind him must have jumped down the last couple of steps and landed on the ground floor. Slowing to a casual but hustled walk, the footsteps behind him closed in on him, then slowed. It allowed Arnesto just enough time to reach the front door first. He lunged at the door handle, then stepped back, holding the door wide open.
“Gomawo,” the man said, thanking Arnesto in Korean before running out the door and pedaling away on his bike. Arnesto noted the uniform. The man was simply making a late-night food delivery. He wasn’t pursuing him. In fact, being in a rush, the man was probably oblivious. He would never be able to identify Arnesto as having been there on the morning of the first day of the riots. As if with all the rioting, looting, and killing that’s about to happen, anyone would care about one late-night trespasser. What is wrong with me?!
The stress compounding his exhaustion, Arnesto finished up his route and headed back to his hotel. Along the way, he found a newspaper dispenser where he dumped his remaining stack of flyers; there were quite a few left. Half a block away, he realized whoever filled the dispensers would probably toss the flyers. Oh well, there’s no turning back now. I don’t have a better option anyway. He made it back to his hotel room and crashed.
The acquittals came at 3:15 that afternoon. Arnesto hung out downtown and waited. An hour passed, then another. Maybe he had done it. Maybe he had actually prevented one of the largest riots in American history. He headed back down the busy street toward his car. He didn’t notice the fast-moving van pass him in the opposite direction, but he did hear its tires make a faint screech as it took the corner. Arnesto spun around and saw a logo on the side of the van as it disappeared behind a building. He ran back to the intersection and watched the news van roar down the street for a few blocks until it got lost in the traffic. Damn, it’s happening.
His eyes shifted upward to the helicopter crossing overhead, several intersections down. Damn. Against his better judgment, his better judgment being to get the hell out of there, he ran after it. After running only three blocks, he saw the smoke. One more block and he saw the fire. “Damn it!” he yelled.
He made his way to the pay phone he had carefully selected days earlier. Just as he had hoped, there wasn’t anyone in range to overhear the call. He took out his tape recorder and adjusted the volume to the highest setting. With his left hand, he picked up the receiver and dialed 911. Arnesto hit “Play” on the tape recorder and held it up to the mouthpiece, holding both at arm’s length in front of him. After a few seconds of blasting the sounds of a riot mixed with gunfire into some poor emergency responder’s ear, he hung up and stopped the tape. He rewound and recorded over the tape and then without touching the tape itself, he ejected it into a nearby trashcan and headed back to his car. He made it north of the Grapevine on Interstate 5 before stopping for gas.
“You’re not driving into the city, are you?” the female cashier asked.
“No, I’m heading north.”
“Well, you picked a good time to get out of town. Sounds like there’s trouble down there. Some nasty fires, too.”
“Is that right?” It’s going to get a whole lot worse, lady. Businesses are going to burn to the ground, people are going to die, and I couldn’t save them. I could have prevented this, all of it.
Arnesto Modesto, the world’s most ineffectual time traveler.
He had no way of knowing many of the flyers had gone unnoticed. Many had gone straight into the garbage, both read and unread. Of those that were read, many were immediately forgotten. But there were some, not many, but some that weren’t ignored. Some businesses closed early, losing less merchandise to looters. Fire extinguisher sales in the area were about the same, except that the sales came a little earlier in the day and were used to slightly greater effect. He had saved no lives, but in the end, he had saved a few businesses. Not that he would ever know.
It was getting late by the time he returned home, but not too late for a debrief.
“Why focus solely on Koreatown?” Pete asked from the other end of the phone line. “It seems like a huge chunk of LA is burning to the ground. Do you… hate blacks?”
“No! I couldn’t remember where all the incidents happened. I only remembered finding it odd that four white cops beat a black man and a bunch of Koreans lost their businesses.”
“That is odd. So what was on the tape?”
“Part of the riot scene from Police Academy.”
“You can’t be serious,” Pete said. “What was your plan there?”
“I thought if they heard riot sounds and machine gun fire, the police would react a little quicker.”
“I… don’t even know how to respond to that. Anyway, don’t beat yourself up over this. You had no time to prepare. We’ll catch the next one.”
Compounding the Problem
Arnesto’s Home
Silicon Valley, California
Saturday, April 3, 1993
Evening
“This Waco standoff seems like it’s going to last forever,” Pete said over the phone.
“No, only another couple weeks,” Arnesto said.
“It’s not going to end well, is it?”
“No, I’m afraid not.”
“Is there something you can do?” Pete asked.
“Like what? Call up Janet Reno and tell her that a siege is going to leave scores dead, including the children, as they burn the place down from the inside?”