Motivated by his own experience of anti-Greek prejudice and discrimination as a child Christopher had gained enormous notoriety for his outspoken stand on civil rights. He had once offered a black man to whom a Forest Hills real estate agent had refused to sell a property his own home. It was no publicity stunt. It was because of Christopher’s commitment that the city of San Francisco had, for example, funded ground-breaking ongoing mental health and drug rehabilitation programs. Moreover, when the House Sub-Committee on Un-American Activities provoked a large demonstration outside City Hall by holding sittings in the Supervisor’s Chambers, Christopher had fearlessly courted the hated committee’s opprobrium by informing the Federal Government that the Committee was not welcome in city buildings.
Now the Mayor of San Francisco sighed long and hard.
Governor Pat Brown had done him a big favour warning him that J. Edgar Hoover was renewing his attempt to undermine the fragile racial harmony of the city. Christopher had enough on his plate without the Federal Bureau of Investigation using elements of his Police Department to pursue its Director’s obsession with persecuting the leading Afro-American figures in the civil rights movement, and therefore, playing fast and loose with the constitutional rights of American citizens living in his city.
George Christopher had met the willowy blond who walked into his office like a model down a — now sadly flattened — Paris catwalk carrying a slim black attaché case at a few minutes after ten that morning, several times over the years. He had known Harvey and Molly Fleischer, the kid’s godparents for twenty years and always welcomed the opportunity to be photographed with Ben and Margaret Sullivan, the movie star parents from whom Miranda had inherited her god-given looks, more than once. For all that the Fleischers and the Sullivans were staunch ‘big ticket donor’ Democrats, like many Americans their party affiliations were more from habit than political conviction, and the Mayor of San Francisco had learned early in his political career that it did not pay to hold that sort of thing against people who were not, nor would ever be, his enemies.
“Thank you for seeing me at such short notice, sir,” Miranda smiled, as if she was addressing a favourite uncle she had not spoken to for some months.
George Christopher took the young woman’s hand.
He waved her to a chair in the window.
“Governor Brown said you had information that I needed to know, young lady?” He asked, not beating about the bush.
“Yes, sir,” she confirmed, extracting a slim Manila file from the black attached case, which she placed on the floor by her feet. “The Governor suggested I prepare brief summary reports for your eyes only. Names, addresses, that sort of thing, and particulars of which San Francisco PD stations appear to have been induced by the FBI to co-operate in this matter.”
Christopher accepted the Manila file but did not open it.
Before the October war the Mayor would have been indifferent to the presence of Federal investigators — be they FBI, National Security Council, Secret Service, US Armed Forces SIB, or whatever — operating on his streets. Lately, he viewed practically everything the Federal Government did with intense suspicion. Basically, ever since the war the Administration in Washington had been a hindrance, not a help to the good governance of his and, he imagined, every other big city and state in the Union. These days whenever somebody from DC arrived in town he knew he had a problem. His counterpart in Oakland was being run ragged in the wake of the shooting of Admiral Braithwaite and his wife, and the whole Alameda base was in lock down by the Navy. He did not want or need that the poison spreading across the bay to his city.
“What is the connection between the Sequoyah Country Club killings and the FBI’s anti-constitutional activities in San Francisco?” He prompted sombrely.
Miranda Sullivan was dressed plainly. Like a young blue collar housewife, in fact in an off the rack brown jacket over a shapeless white blouse, and a calf-length pleated grey skirt. Her short off the shoulder blond hair was clipped back, and she wore a modest gold band on her third finger. Margaret and Ben Sullivan’s little girl would have to do that to discourage male staffers back in Sacramento hitting on her. Contrary to some of the things he had heard about her — all of which went back before the war — she was a sensible girl, obviously.
“The only witness to the Sequoyah road shootings is a Miss Darlene Lefebure. She came to San Francisco from Alabama about two months before the October War in company with a Mr Dwayne John. At the time they left Alabama Miss Lefebure was twenty years of age, and Mr John was a fortnight short of his twenty-second birthday. Miss Lefebure and Mr John were separated on the night of the October War and have not seen each other since.”
George Christopher waited patiently for the punch line.
“Mr John,” Miranda Sullivan explained, “is a peripheral associate of Dr Martin Luther King’s organisation in Atlanta. He acts as a courier for Dr King.” She guessed that she did not have to expand on Dwayne John’s role but she did anyway. “You may be aware that the Federal Bureau of Investigation attempts to monitor Dr King’s communications with all his associates, sir,” she remarked. “Dwayne John carries confidential communications to Dr King’s supporters. For example, to men like Terry Francois, with whom you will have worked in that gentleman’s capacity as the President of the San Francisco chapter of the National Association for the Advancement of Coloured People.”
“Yes, I know Terry Francois. He is a man of the highest principles. A good American.”
“Quite, sir. Dwayne John was arrested by the FBI with the assistance of members of the San Francisco PD last week and has been held in the lockups of two separate city police stations without charge during that time. He is currently being held at Mission Police Station at 1240 Valencia Street on a Federal warrant issued by a judge in Washington DC. A lawyer sent to the station by the Governor’s Office was denied access to Mr John yesterday evening. I attended Mission Police Station at eight o’clock this morning and was also refused access to Mr John. I ascertained at that time that Mr John has not been charged with any extraditable offence under California law.”
“Okay, okay,” the Mayor groaned. “The FBI is playing hardball. What’s the problem?”
“The FBI is holding Miss Lefebure incommunicado at a safe house in Berkeley,” Miranda replied evenly. “It is likely that they had her under surveillance, or were at the very least, cognisant of her general whereabouts, at the time of the shooting of Admiral Braithwaite and his wife because of their interest in Dwayne John.”
The Mayor of San Francisco did not want to get involved in this. Whatever was going on he definitely did not want to get involved. Intuitively, he knew the young woman sitting in his office understood as much and had no intention of doing anything likely to cause him embarrassment.
“Why are you telling me this, Miss Sullivan?”
“Because my boss, Governor Brown, thinks that you need to know about it, sir. And,” she shrugged, her lips momentarily forming a thin pale line, “I was once, very briefly, acquainted with both Miss Lefebure and Mr John, and there is therefore, a possibility that I might become a liability to the Governor if this thing becomes public knowledge in the wrong way. I blame myself,” she confessed, “I walked into this without thinking things through.”