Doug Weston was beginning to get a little prissy about his continuing to play The Ash Grove, which was dumb because Ed Pearl was not the sort of guy who ‘poached’ another promoter’s artist. Besides, he had told Doug that much as he was grateful for the opportunities he had given him, ‘I don’t remember signing a contract that says I have to be a Troubadour monk!’ The Troubadour was a ‘happening place’ but it did not begin to match The Ash Grove as a melting pot where half-a-dozen traditions from the blues to folk met. In the last few months he had seen Mississippi John Hurt and Muddy Waters, Doc Watson and Pete Seeger, Johnny Cash and Ramblin’ Jack Elliot on the stage of The Ash Grove, and one night a month ago he had spent two hours talking guitar technique — his was self-taught, sloppy and a little lazy — with a sixteen year old kid who had put him right on more things than he could remember. What was the kid’s name? Cooper? No, Ry Cooder…
“Ow!” He cried. If he had been a real man he would have bitten his lip and suffered in silence but he was way beyond that and if the last year had taught him anything, it was that ‘real men’ had only themselves to blame if they suffered in silence.
“Sorry, son.” There was a clink of metal on metal as the latest piece of buckshot was deposited in the silver kidney bowl at the side of the table. “I reckon that was the last one. That makes seven.”
This explained the oddly numb pain down his right leg.
And why he was lying face down on the table with his legs and his butt open to the wind.
“Is this still Van Nuys?”
“Yeah.”
Sam was still wearing his blood-stained shirt and nobody had cleaned the gore off his hands and forearms.
“You can wash in the bowl over there, son.” The doctor’s green eyes were dull, distant. “And get rid of that shirt.”
There was no hot water and Sam was shivering before he finished washing the worst of the blood off himself. The room was warm, clammy and he was shivering. Shock, maybe? A pair over oversize black slacks and a creased white shirt was dumped on the now cleaned table on which he had been ‘treated’ by a scowling, perspiring LAPD trooper.
Sam belatedly found his manners and turned to the doctor who was tidying away his instruments and re-ordering the first aid kit he had broken into to clean, suture and bandage his patient’s injuries.
“Thanks, doc. I appreciate this.”
To his surprise the older man grinned paternally.
“Don’t thank me, son. Just doing my duty.”
For the first time Sam realized the doctor was wearing a military tunic beneath his coat. However, before he could say anything the LAPD Trooper had opened the door.
“Escort Mr Brenckmann back to his holding cell.”
Sam confusion was complete when a carbine-wielding National Guardsman stepped into the doorway and indicated for him to follow him.
Chapter 10
Darlene Lefebure had only just finally managed to get back to sleep by the time the quietly insistent knocking at her door awakened her again. Last night’s nightmare had been nothing like the ones she had had since she witnessed the shooting of Admiral Braithwaite and his wife in Sequoyah County. Those bad dreams had been endless, varied replays of the shooting; not seen as the distant, unreal thing she had witnessed in real life but close up, unspeakably bloody and filled with screams and deafening gun blasts.
No, last night’s nightmare had taken her back to Jackson, Alabama. She was with Dwayne; surrounded by angry men in tall white pointed hoods brandishing nooses and burning braids. Dwayne was beaten to the ground, kicked and punched until his face was a bloody mess and then, slowly, slowly a rope was tightened around his neck. The mob had thrown the rope over a low tree bough, pulled on it until Dwayne was tottering on his toes, gasping and choking, his eye wide with terror. And then the Klansmen had hauled on the rope…
Afterwards the murderers had raped her.
They always raped her in those dreams.
She could smell the stench of those petrol soaked burning braids which lit the circle of terror about her even now.
The knocking at her door was firmly persistent.
“Miss Lefebure! Darlene!”
Darlene blinked quizzically at the broad, balding man with the heavy eyebrows and overlarge nose who forced a stern smile as she opened her door as far as the chain would allow. Agent Christie had told her to put the chain on; and she had heard his footsteps receding towards the stairs only when he had heard it click into place. She recollected that the FBI man had paid up her rent. The FBI guys had all been detached, uncommunicative while she was around them but last night Agent Christie had turned fatherly on her and now she did not know what to think about the him, or the other agents.
“Miss Lefebure,” the man in the hallway said quickly as if she was afraid she would slam the door shut. “I’m Harvey Fleischer. I’m an attorney. I worked with Stanley Mosk, the California State Attorney General to persuade the FBI to release you from protective custody…”
Darlene stifled a yawn.
She recollected that she had seen the man’s name on a legal document or form.
There were other men outside her door.
“I don’t want to have anything to do with the FBI or,” she protested feebly, “or anything…”
“That’s quite understandable, Miss Lefebure,” the man assured her. “But there was an unfortunate incident at the house in Berkeley last night, and what with things still being a little tense this morning after last night’s power outages and the looting, well, we were worried about you.”
What incident at the house in Berkeley?
What power outages?
What looting?
“I don’t understand, Mr Fleischer?” The young woman confessed.
The man hurriedly reassessed matters and tried to explain.
“The whole country is a mess this morning, Miss Lefebure,” he prefaced, deciding to keep it simple. “There is fighting in Washington DC. Some kind of uprising. Martial law has been declared across large areas of California and other states. There has been a lot of civil disorder here in Oakland and across the Bay in San Francisco. And also in Los Angeles and in San Diego.”
Darlene risked a long look at Harvey Fleischer through the crack in the door jam. He did not look terribly threatening; in fact he looked old, worn out and deeply troubled. She released the chain and opened the door. She had wrapped a blanket around her shoulders to guard her modesty as she was only wearing a thin cotton nightdress. Standing behind the lawyer were two US Navy military policemen, both packing Colts on belts at their waist and wearing steel helmets. The older of the two MPs smiled thin-lipped at her.
“What incident in Berkeley, Mr Fleisher?” She asked, suspecting she really did not want to hear the answer.
“May we come in?”
Darlene nodded jerkily and Harvey Fleischer and the older MP came into her claustrophobic apartment, virtually filling it. The second MP remained outside, ever watchful.
There was very little furniture in the ‘apartment’; Darlene’s narrow single bed, a small rickety table and two equally battered hard chairs which looked like something stolen from an old schoolhouse. She had no TV, and had not turned on her cheap Japanese transistor radio — the one luxury in her life — since she got home last night.
Darlene waved at the chairs while she sat on the edge of her bed, feeling small and trying to make herself even smaller, drawing the blanket close.
“Shortly after Agent Christie returned to Berkeley after driving you to McKinley Avenue, the house where you had been staying was attacked and all four FBI men present were killed.”