And perhaps that's why fate intervened and allowed two things to happen. Both coincidence.
The first coincidence lay in the fact that at this very same moment, some ten miles away in a suburban sports stadium, a group of 10,000 unemployed men, 99 percent of them drunk, had gathered to watch the Annual Blue Collar Soccer Convention. By now the playoffs were over and this was the final game. At this precise moment it was half time, and for some reason some wag who had read the morning papers began to yell his own chant that went something like this: "Headhunter four. Women zero! Headhunter four. Women zero!''
Within minutes the bleachers were filled with men who were filled with booze who then filled their lungs with air and picked up the chant:
“Headhunter four! Women zero! Headhunter four! Women zero!"
The media on this day just happened to be broadcasting live from the game to those fans who got drunk too early and never got out the door. In the background of the broadcast a listener could hear the chant. And such a listener was a woman named Joan Thistlethwaite who at that moment was caught in the massive traffic jam to the right of Robson Square and who happened to tell one of the feminist organizers of the rally who passed by her driver's window about the content of the broadcast and what its message was.
Within one minute the woman had returned to the steps of the old courthouse, had seized the microphone from an octogenarian who had been part of the original Suffragette Movement, and had told the crowd. The crowd was not pleased. And to show its displeasure the group began to shout out a chant of retort."Kill the Pigs.' Kill the Pigs! Kill the Pigs!"
It is likely, however, that even at 3:46 that afternoon disaster might have been averted. For the group in Robson Square, despite all the animosity now finding verbal vent, was still under control. And it very well might have stayed that way if only by a second coincidence Fernand Zirpoli had not decided to work the crowd.
Zirpoli was a small greasy man with crooked teeth and a fringe of straggly Einstein hair surrounding his balding pate. As a young man Zirpoli had misspent his youth in Rome by watching the gigolos cruise around those tourist spots most adored by North American women who had come to the Eternal City with stars in their eyes, softly sighing as the Latin lovers pinched their bottoms and any other soft parts of their bodies. Often Zirpoli looked back on those days with fond memory, wishing to God that he had never emigrated to Canada. Women here just did not seem to crave the same hot-blooded male attention. Zirpoli already had seven Criminal Code convictions for indecent assault on a female.
Unfortunately for him, he'd never make number eight.
His usual technique, the one with both the best results and the best defense if needed, was to find a tightly packed group of women and then to slowly move among them toward some imaginary destination, rubbing this breast or that buttock. Most of all, Zirpoli liked redheads. Particularly redheads in sweaters, just like that redhead standing over there.
Zirpoli was smitten.
He stepped back a pace or two — a very difficult maneuver given the number of people now cramming Robson Square — and approached her from behind. With force he bumped into her back, a squeaky-voiced "oops, sorry," escaping from his lips as both his hands circled her front to close on the mounds of her breasts. The woman lost her balance and pitched forward, her buttocks rubbing the man's groin as she went down on one knee.
' 'Kill the pigs! Kill the pigs!''The crowd took up the chant again.
Zirpoli didn't notice. He was in ecstasy, his penis hard in his pants, his hands refusing to let go of the redhead in his grasp — refusing, that is, until the woman next to the two of them, who had had too much to drink at lunch and was caught up in the mood of the moment, bent down and removed her high-heeled shoe, also a difficult maneuver given the pack of the crowd, and screaming out "Kill the pigs!" herself, drove the spiked heel full force into Zirpoli's left eye.
His scream literally seemed to shatter the brittle autumn air.
As blood in a spurt mixed with ocular fluid fountained out from his mangled face, the Italian was mobbed and clawed and kicked even after he was dead.
An impact seemed to radiate out from the point of violence to the very edge of the crowd. Push turned to shove as people craned to see what was going on.
Then all hell appeared to break loose as order disintegrated.
And that was the moment that Sergeant Scott Barthelme ordered his Vancouver Police Mounted Squad in full riot gear to charge the crowd.
The squad hit the square at a gallop.
Within seconds the center and heart of the city was filled with cries of agony, the clatter of horse-hooves on stone, shouts and obscene hollers and the sound of wood on bone.
One woman, screaming, "No more violence!" pulled a policeman from his horse and kicked him in the groin. Four seconds later a riot club took out all her front teeth.
It was not until 4:30 p.m. that the Battle of Robson Square ended. And even then the police were kept busy galloping up and down the stairs of the open concourse, flushing out the remnants of those women not in the hospital, in jail or dispersed and fleeing throughout the city.
5:20 p.m.
They say that a man with virility problems will often reach for a gun.
If this is true then recent statistics tell us quite a lot. For in 1980 the comparative figures for handgun deaths within a number of countries were as follows: Japan, 48; Great Britain, 8; Canada, 52; Israel, 58; Sweden, 21; West Germany, 42; United States, 10,728.
Even taking account of population differences the conclusion is quite obvious: either the American male is in desperate need of psychosexual therapy. Or something is very, very wrong with US laws on gun control.
The two women who left Vancouver for Seattle late that morning were counting on the latter conclusion as being the correct answer. At 5:20 that same afternoon they stopped at the Douglas Border Crossing to reenter Canada. As a matter of routine Canada Customs searches every fiftieth car. Theirs was number fifty. So that was how, both in the trunk and under the back seat, a rather surprised Customs Officer found fifty-two loaded Smith and Wesson.38s purchased that day in Seattle.
As the slogan goes: You can't rape a.38.
Hoodoo
5:46 p.m.
It was Corporal William Tipple of Commercial Crime who first made the connection: in fact were it not for Tipple the left hand might never have known what the right hand was doing.
The Corporal was not the sort of man that the Royal Canadian Mounted Police would portray on a recruiting poster. He was five foot ten with a slight build, a pockmarked complexion and an ever present dusting of dandruff on the padded shoulders of his checkered sports jacket. Though the collar of the shirt he wore was a little frayed and dirty, and though there was also grime under his fingernails, the man made up for his shortcomings by his boundless energy and an effervescent disposition. Tipple had spent the past five years as an electronic surveillance specialist in Commercial Crime Section, but he missed being in harness. Tipple was the sort of member who enjoyed wearing a uniform, passe though that may be.
Late that Monday afternoon the Corporal had come to Headhunter Headquarters to get a feel of the action. He had no other reason to be there. It was just that Tipple was proud to be a Member of the Royal Mounted and liked to feel that he was a part of all that was going on. So late that Monday afternoon Tipple walked into the library.
The library was jammed.
There were men and women everywhere, members in and out of uniform sitting at tables, leaning on walls, some even squatting on the floor reading. Tipple was elated. He was thriving on the activity. Wishing to feel a part of it, he moved about from table to table.