Part 2 :Zebra:The True Account of the 179 Days of Terror in San Francisco...Day 4...Day11

Zebra:The True Account 
of the 179 Days of Terror 
in San Francisco
By Clark Howard

Day 4

Jesse Lee Cooks alighted from a Market Street bus with a white bakery bag in one hand. The bag contained two dozen freshly baked cookies, so fresh that several grease stains had spotted the bag. Jesse had brought the cookies from the place where he worked, the Muslim-owned Shabazz Bakery. He had been employed there as a baker's helper since his parole from San Quentin the previous summer. 

On this day, Jesse felt good. The cookies he carried were for his friends, Anthony Harris and Larry Green. They were a peace offering to make up for some differences that had arisen between them. Jesse had no family nearby, no girlfriend, no one who really liked him and wanted to be his friend. He knew he was difficult to get along with; he was moody, surly, hot-tempered. He had never kept a friend for very long, not in his entire life. But with Anthony Harris and Larry Green he was going to try. 

Despite outward appearances, Jesse liked Anthony Harris. Anthony had been straight with him in San Quentin, had taught him all the judo and kung fu that he knew. He was a good man, Anthony was, even if he didn't have the right kind of heart yet. That would come in time, Jesse was sure of it. All Anthony needed was a little experience. A little exposure. 

Larry Green now, he was something else. Just a kid, barely twenty-one, but that little motherfucker had a heart. No experience at all; never even been busted. So curious about prison; always asking those dumb fucking questions about life inside. (Jesse knew he was the right one to ask, however. Jesse's rap sheet read like a tour itinerary of jails and penitentiaries. Federal prisons at Lompoc, Terre Haute, Marion, McNeil Island, San Pedro. County jails in Denver, Omaha, Chicago, Los Angeles. Then San Quentin.) 

Jesse's expression always hardened whenever he thought about his years in prison. He had hated those years. He was determined never to go back. No more prison for him; they'd have to kill him next time. 

For the first time in his life, Jesse Lee Cooks felt as if he had direction. The Muslims in San Quentin had been the beginning of it. Then his job at Shabazz. And the good friends he had made since he got out. At last Jesse felt he was somebody. He felt a part of something. 

He walked with a slight strut as he crossed Market Street and headed toward the Black Self Help Moving and Storage Company. That was another Muslim-owned business, where both Anthony and Larry worked. Jesse had thought several times that it might be nice if he could work there also, then he and his friends could be together more. He knew he could probably get on if he cared to apply; he was bigger and stronger than most of the men who worked there now. put he liked his job at the bakery: it was clean work, everything smelled so good when it was baking, and he liked to watch the women come in to make purchases. Not like the moving company: dusty, musty, all that heavy lifting. 

Jesse walked around to the rear of Black Self Help. It looked oddly inactive. Anthony and Larry were nowhere to be seen. Or anyone else for that matter. He walked in the back door, into the storage area. Only one person was on the premises, a man named Dwight. 

"Say, brother, where everybody at?" Jesse asked. 

"Took off early for the wedding, man." 

"Wedding? What wedding?"

"Brother Anthony and Sister Carolyn," said Dwight. 

Jesse frowned. He knew that Anthony Harris and Carolyn Patton were engaged, but he had not known when their wedding would take place. "That's tonight, huh?" 

"Yeah, man." 

Jesse nodded. No one had told him. "Larry gone to it too?" 

"Sure thing. Larry, he the best man." 

Jesse stared into space for several moments. Not even Larry had mentioned it to him. 

"Say, man, you going to the wedding?" Dwight asked. 

Jesse shook his head once. "I got something else to do," he said self-consciously. He started to leave, then turned back. "You want a bag of cookies?" he asked. 

"Sure thing," said Dwight. 

"They good," Jesse emphasized. "I helped bake 'em myself." 

"Say, man, thanks," said Dwight, accepting the bag and opening it. 

Jesse shrugged. He did not know how to respond to a thank you. Still self-conscious, he simply bobbed his chin at Dwight and left. 

Outside, walking along Market Street, minus the carefree strut now, Jesse's expression slowly turned mean. I should have known, he thought. I should have known they wouldn't be my friends. 

Not after last night. 

↯ ↯ ↯

It was the first loft meeting following the Hague kidnap-killing. Head had the floor and was complaining bitterly about Judo's participation. 

"The man don't have the heart for Death Angel business," he proclaimed. 

"Can you elaborate on that for us?" asked the man with the Vandyke, who was moderating the meeting. He was flanked, as usual, by his bodyguards. 

"You want to hear more, I'll tell you more," said Head. He ignored Judo, who was glaring at him from the audience. "First, he fucked up when we had three white kids almos' in the van. He let one of them break away, then they all broke away. Next, when we had the two white devils down on the railroad track, he didn't even help. He didn't do nothing. The man just don't have the fucking heart."

The moderator looked at Judo, raising his eyebrows inquiringly. 

"Your reply, brother?" 

Judo stood. "I got as much heart as he has. It's just that this is all new to me. I'm not used to it. I haven't been out of prison very long; it's taking me a while to adjust." 

Yellow looked up at Judo and winked. That was exactly the right thing to say. Exactly as they had rehearsed it the night before. 

"Anyhow," Judo added, and this was not rehearsed, "he's just pissed off because his white devil didn't die." Judo turned his eyes to Head, who was now glaring back at him. He decided to rub salt in Head's wound. "He had the sucker knocked out and his hands tied behind his back. He had a machete big enough to chop down a fucking tree. He had all that going for him and he couldn't even kill the devil." 

There were several smiles and a few chuckles from the audience as the men saw Head's discomfiture. Head's lips were pursed as far out as they would go, and his forehead was drawn into a tight scowl. "At least I tried, motherfucker," he said to Judo. "More than you did." 

In the audience, Yellow raised his hand for permission to speak. The moderator nodded. All eyes turned to Yellow with interest: he had a new, higher status because of what he had done to Quita Hague. Rising, he stood next to Judo. 

"I think maybe we might be pushing this brother too fast," he said. "After all, like he told us, he just got out of the white man's prison a while back. We can't expect to push him out front right away and have him score a kill." He glanced at Judo and grinned. "Anyhow, he getting married soon, you know, and he nervous about it. He don't know can he handle her or not." 

There were some raucous laughs from the audience. The moderator smiled through his Vandyke. Even Head could not contain the flicker of a grin. 

"All in all," Yellow continued, "I don't think this brother did too bad for his first time out. I vote we overlook what happened with those three white kids. This brother will do all right if we give him time." 

"I'm inclined to agree," said the moderator. He motioned for Head, Judo, and Yellow to sit down. From his coat pocket he took a neatly cut, one-column newspaper clipping headlined:

WOMAN SLAIN IN 

SAVAGE KNIFE ATTACK 

He read aloud from the clipping. " 'A young woman was hacked to death and her husband severely slashed after they were abducted by three men . . . Police say Mrs. Hague . . . had been nearly decapitated by a single stroke to her throat by a heavy-bladed weapon, probably a machete . . . Richard Hague found staggering around . . . taken to San Francisco General Hospital . . . underwent several hours of surgery . . . deep, savage slash wounds . . . in serious condition . . .'" He stopped reading and said, "In light of our younger brother's splendid kill, I think we will not cloud the event with any internal discipline or reprimand. Suffice it to say that he"—the moderator raised both hands and pointed proudly to Yellow—"is well on his way to becoming a respected Death Angel, while his two participating brothers"—he gestured toward Head and Judo—"have some catching up to do." 

There were a few more laughs from the group, good-natured now instead of derisive. "One final point, however," the moderator said, looking at the clipping again. "The police say the motive for the killing might have been robbery, since Hague's wallet was missing. Do any of you know anything about that?" 

Yellow and Judo looked suspiciously at Head. "Don't be looking at me, motherfuckers," Head muttered. "I don't know nothing 'bout no fucking wallet." 

The moderator allowed a moment of silence to pass. Then he said, "Of course, it could have been lost somewhere during the night, or a policeman may have stolen it. I bring it up simply to emphasize that we"—he spoke the word loftily—"are not thieves. Nor are we rapists. What we do, we do to avenge four hundred years of abuse. Always remember that." 

Before he left, the moderator took Judo aside and spoke to him in private. "I don't want you to be discouraged by this temporary setback," he told him in confidential tones. "I know a lot about you, and I feel that you have great potential. I think that if you work hard and apply yourself, you can become an important man"in the Nation of Islam. Men of your caliber are needed in New Mecca." 

The moderator departed then. On the way out to his car, he put the Quita Hague newspaper clipping back into his pocket and removed another one. This one was headlined: vicious slaying a mystery. The moderator's eyes skimmed the story: Oakland police trying to identify a young woman viciously hacked to death . . . found near the Oakland Coliseum . . . throat deeply cut by a hatchet or ax . . . numerous deep hack wounds in her body . . . two fingers missing from her left hand . . . 

The moderator sighed wearily. Two fingers. Why couldn't they just take Polaroid shots like everyone else? 

"Let's run across the bridge to Oakland boys," he told his bodyguards. 

As the big, shiny Continental pulled away, Head watched sullenly from an upstairs window. He was pouting. He felt cheated. 

After finding the Black Self Help premises nearly deserted, Jesse Lee Cooks wandered down Market Street with no particular destination in mind. He was angry, blue, moody—and the overall feeling was coated with self-pity. No friends, he kept telling himself. Nobody he could depend on. Nobody. 

Not that he cared, he tried to convince himself. He didn't need anybody. He could make it alone just fine. Fuck them all. 

After he walked around for a while, he became hungry. He entered the first fast-food restaurant he came to and ordered a cheeseburger and Pepsi at the counter. The white girl who waited on him had large breasts that pushed out the front of her uniform blouse. Jesse stared at them while he waited for his food. 

He took a table near the rear, as far away as he could get from the few other customers in the place. As he ate, he brooded about many things: not being invited to Anthony's wedding, not having any real friends, not being able to see his kids, all the years he had spent in prison, not ever seeming to be able to do anything right. 

That was an old story with Jesse. Not being able to do anything right. God knows he tried to do right. But sometimes other forces seemed to take over. Like the time back in 1958 in East St. Louis, when he was twelve years old. "Go out to play, Jesse Lee," his mother told him. "I want to lay down and rest."

"Yes, Momma." 

"And you mind, take care of those other children and see they don't go off and be hurt." 

"Yes, Momma." 

The other children were his brothers Johnny and Tommy, who were ten and eight, and his sister Glory, who was seven. When he got outside, Jesse had an overwhelming urge to go back into the house. But it was not like he was going back in; it was like somebody else was doing it and he was only watching. Somebody else sneaked back inside; somebody else crept up to the bedroom door and peeked in at his mother napping on the bed; somebody else slipped quietly into the room—and with a pillow, somebody else tried to smother the dozing woman. 

Somebody else. 

They committed Jesse to the Illinois State Training School for delinquent boys. Located at St. Charles, Illinois, it was commonly called "Charleytown." The boys lived in barracks called "cottages," which were named after U.S. presidents. They kept Jesse there until he was fourteen. It was one of the most terrible, frightening experiences of his life—as well as one of the most educational. For Charleytown is one of the best training schools for young criminals in the nation. It might have been "somebody else" who got sent up, but it was Jesse Lee Cooks who came out—reform school tough and reform-school smart. 

He stayed out eight months, then was returned for shoplifting. This time they kept him until he was sixteen. When he got out again, the family moved to Omaha. Jesse was enrolled in Technical Junior High School. He attended through the ninth grade, then dropped out. 

Young Jesse was a natural nomad; he liked to move around, to go places—even if he had no purpose for going, no goal in mind. His favorite place to wander to was Denver, 540 miles away. It was a nice hitchhiking trip. But trouble was usually waiting for him there. The Denver police arrested him for "investigation" whenever they saw him in town. Then, when he returned home, the Omaha police did the same, on "suspicion." 

In 1963, Jesse met Rosetta. He was eighteen, she sixteen. They married and began having children. Four children were born in a five-year period. They took them and moved to Los Angeles, looking for—well, something better. 

Trouble still waited. Jesse was arrested for fighting, for ignoring traffic citations, for "investigation." Times got hard for him. The only job he could find was as a parking-lot attendant, and that did not pay enough to feed four kids. Jesse finally decided that he could not make it. Not that way, at least. He decided to try another way. 

On September 11, 1965, Jesse and a friend entered the Boy's Market in the early afternoon and handed a note to the woman in the cashier's booth. The note read: "Give me all the money. A gun is pointed at you." The cashier handed over approximately one thousand dollars. Jesse and his partner fled. They got away clean. It had been easy. 

A week later they tried it again, at a Ralph's Market. The woman in the cashier's booth read a note with the same instructions on it, then she snatched up an intercom mike and started screaming for the store manager. This time there was no chance to flee; a number of store employees came down on them and held them until police came. 

Charged with second-degree robbery, Jesse managed to get out on bail. Now trouble began to mushroom on him. He needed money to fight the robbery charge, redeem the bail bond, take care of Rosetta and the kids. He was desperate. 

The first bank he held up was the Bank of America at Western and Washington. He got less than $700. The next one was the Bank of America at Pico and Vermont, only two miles away. There he got $1400—and also got caught. He was later identified in the first bank robbery. 

The federal courts work faster than state courts. Before California could schedule him for trial on the two supermarket holdups, the government had tried and convicted him for the bank robberies. He was sentenced to seven and a half years in prison. 

The Federal Bureau of Prisons apparently did not know what to do with Jesse. They first sent him to the Federal Correctional Institute at Lompoc, California. He remained there nine months. Then he was transferred to the U.S. prison at Terre Haute, Indiana. He stayed there two and a half months. Next came the big federal penat Marion, Illinois: nine months. Then to McNeil Island, where they kept him for nearly two years. Finally, he was sent to the Federal Correctional Institute at San Pedro, California. From there he was paroled and given back to the State of California to serve a one-year-to-life sentence for the market holdups. 

California sent him to San Quentin. He served fourteen months and was paroled. 

When Jesse got home, he found that his wife had born two illegitimate children while he was in prison. He refused to live with her. Instead he went back to Omaha to live in the home of his parents. He got a job with a construction company. 

Jesse had four years to do on parole. He only managed one. Then he yielded to his nomadic nature, took his girlfriend, and left town. He went to New Orleans, stayed there four months, then moved on to Chicago. In March of 1973 he was taken into custody by the U.S. marshal in Chicago on a charge of unlawful flight to avoid confinement. Returned to California, he was turned over to the state and sent back to San Quentin as a parole violator.

Back in the California prison, Jesse was assigned to the Short Term Program for parole violators. He was scheduled for counseling, vocational aptitude testing, and institutional work assignments which would, in theory, prepare him for rerelease. The officials in the program were certain that they could have him ready to reenter society within six months. 

During those six months, however, Jesse joined the prison mosque of the Nation of Islam. 

And met a jujitsu and kung fu expert named Anthony Harris. 

Head had nothing to do. He was loitering around Black Self Help, hoping someone would show up. But no one had. Even Dwight, who had been there earlier, was gone. 

There was nothing to do. Nothing. Head was edgy, restless. 

Then the white woman came along. 

It was about eight thirty. She got off a bus at Van Ness and Market, and started walking down Market toward the street on which she lived. She was a slim, pretty woman, twenty-seven years old. She wore a tailored blue dress under an off-white raincoat. In one hand she carried her purse and a briefcase.

She walked past Black Self Help. Head fell in a short distance behind her. 

Before she got to her street, the young woman noticed the husky black behind her. She thought perhaps he was following her, but she could not be sure. She quickened her pace slightly. Head noticed it; he quickened his pace also. 

The young woman glanced around. There was practically no one on the street, certainly no one close enough to help her. But she was almost home. She hurried faster. Head hurried after her. 

At last she reached her building. She ran up the outside steps, door keys in hand. She unlocked the outer door and was about to enter when she felt a strong hand on her wrist and the cold metal of a gun barrel on the side of her neck. 

"You best be quiet," Head told her, "or I'll kill you." 

The young woman felt her mouth go dry. "I'll be quiet," she said. 

Ellen Linder* had already made up her mind to live. She decided it the instant she felt Head's grip on her wrist. She would be quiet—and do anything else he told her to. Ellen had a degree in psychology from an Eastern university, and was then studying advanced psychology at a nearby California school. With the black man's viselike fingers holding her right hand immobile, she was mentally gearing up to use everything she had ever learned to deal with whatever kind of mind she was now facing. 
*Due to the nature of this incident, the victim's name and identity have been altered
"I'll be quiet," she said again. 

Head took the gun away from her neck and put it in his coat pocket. "Come on," he said. 

He guided her down the steps to the sidewalk. They walked to the corner and into a very dimly lit parking lot. 

"In here," he said, walking her onto the lot. He took her purse and briefcase and tossed them into some bushes. 

"My money is in that purse," Ellen said.

"I'm not after your money," he told her. "Now keep quiet or I'll kill you. Take off your coat. " 

He tossed her coat into the bushes also. 

"Take off your underpants." 

Ellen slipped out of her panties and handed them to him. Head tossed them after the other things. 

They moved into the shadows of the lot. 

"Get down on your knees," he said. Ellen complied. Head was very close to her. She heard the zipper as he opened his trousers. She felt his thick penis brush her lips. "Suck it," he ordered. 

Ellen closed her eyes, blanked her mind as much as possible, and ministered to him with her mouth. 

Presently they were interrupted by several people coming onto the lot. "Shit," said Head. He zipped up his trousers and pulled Ellen to her feet. "Come on." 

They walked around the corner and up two blocks. Head walked with his arm around her as if they were intimates. 

"Where you been tonight?" Head asked. 

"I'm on the board of directors of a youth group," she told him. "I was at a meeting." 

"Youth group? What kind of youth group?" 

"A church group. Nondenominational." 

Head frowned. He did not know the meaning of that last word. He decided to change the subject. "Where at you work?" 

She told him, and what she did. 

"Sounds interesting," Head allowed. "I'm a boxer myself. Out here from St. Louis." 

They came to one of the city's mini parks and Head guided her to a bench. Ellen studied him in the artificial illumination of the streetlight. He seemed to want to talk. She led him on, encouraged him. The conversation eventually evolved to racism. 

"Oppression of black people has got to stop," he told her. She noted that his tone lacked conviction; it was as if he was mouthing rhetoric from someone else. "The country has got to change. But before it happens, they's lots of people going to be killed. And you might just be one of them." 

No, I won't, Ellen thought grimly. Gently she urged him to continue talking.

"The people to be killed will just be picked out," he said. "Just picked out, like—ah, how do you say it—?" 

"At random?" she offered. "Picked at random?" 

"Yeah, that's it. And it can happen to anybody, at any place. That's the way the world works, see? That's how it be going to happen here. The streets of San Francisco be going to run red with blood before it's over." 

The night grew quieter around them. Head rose and took her arm. "Come on." 

They walked to a vacant lot a block away. It was overgrown with bushes and weeds. Head led her to a dirt area behind the bushes. 

"Lie down on the ground. Pull your dress up and spread your knees apart." 

He dropped his trousers, got down between her legs, entered her. She blanked her mind again until he ejaculated. 

Later, Head and Ellen left the bushes and he walked with her back to the parking lot to retrieve her coat, purse, briefcase, and panties. 

"You going to call the cops after I'm gone?" he asked. 

"No, of course not. Why should I? I sympathize with you. I mean, I believe in the things you believe in. Not in murder, of course, but in stopping the oppression of blacks in this country. No, I won't call the police." 

"Why don't I just go back to your apartment with you, just to make sure?" 

"All right, fine." That did not make any sense, she thought. Unless, of course, he planned to kill her in the apartment. "You've got to promise not to hurt me," she said. "I promise not to call the police, but you've got to promise not to do anything harmful to me." 

"I promise," said Head. 

They walked to where it had all begun, the front steps of her building. This time he let her unlock the door and went inside with her. 

In her apartment, Head seemed to want to talk some more. Ellen again encouraged him. He told her of his disciplined life. "I gets up early every day," he said. "Before dawn. I do it to train my body," he boasted, "and for discipline. A man got to have a lot of discipline." 

Head now wanted to kill Ellen Linder so that he would be even with Yellow in their quest for Death Angel wings. But he was afraid to. The words of the man with the Vandyke kept running through his mind: We are not thieves. Nor are we rapists. 

Suppose he killed her? The cops would surely determine that she had been raped. He had shot a healthy load into her. The papers would probably call it a rape-murder; he would get no credit at all for the kill. Might even be put out of the group for it. 

Shit. Fucked up again. Then he decided that he might as well make the most of a bad situation. He went over and put a strong hand on Ellen Linder' s throat. Without gentleness, he forced her into the bedroom. Pushing her onto the bed, he fell on top of her like a great, panting, dark animal. 

After he came a second time, Head was through with her. But just for the night; apparently he had designs for the future. 

"Give me your phone number," he ordered. She did. "And the one where you work." She gave it to him. "I'm going to call you soon for a date," he promised. Then he pointed his right index finger at her head like a gun. "Remember, if you call the police, I'll come back and kill you, hear? You be long gone." 

Head left and Ellen Linder called the police. 

At the end of Day Four, there were three victims. 

Quita Hague was dead, hacked to death. 

Richard Hague was still alive, in serious condition but expected to recover, with more than two hundred stitches in his face and head. 

And Ellen Linder had been raped twice, forced to perform fellatio once, and placed in fear of losing her life for more than two hours.

Day 11 

The lights had been turned off in the loft and a movie projector was grinding away, throwing a bright picture onto a silvery portable screen. The film was silent, but the man with the Vandyke narrated it from the rear of the room. 

"Here you see scenes from the Watts riot," he said. "Note that most of the policemen are white. Also note that not a single arrest is being made in a nonviolent manner; usually there are two white policemen for each black man being arrested, and they are very liberal in the use of their riot clubs." 

The film was patchy and broken, lacking any sort of continuity, as if it had been spliced together with selected scenes taken from an assortment of reels of varying quality. 

"There was a great deal of publicity about looting," said Vandyke. "It was the excuse that the police department used to justify so many broken black skulls and smashed black faces. But the fact of the matter, as you can see by these scenes, is that our people were only salvaging merchandise that lay in the path of the various fires and would have been burned anyway. Of course, most of the stores in Watts were owned by Jews, and we all know that they'd rather see a TV set or a suit of clothes burn up rather than go to a poor nigger without him paying an inflated retail price plus some outrageous interest rate every month." 

As the men in the loft watched the film, Muslim observers, who had come with Vandyke, walked slowly up and down the sides of the room, studying them. They searched their faces, looking for expressions of hatred and hostility. Such expressions were not hard to find—not in this audience. Not in the faces of Head, Yellow, Judo. 

The film switched from Watts to the rural South. Sharecropper shacks, forlorn-looking black women, little black children with flour-sack clothes and no shoes. 

"This is how poor blacks are forced to live in some parts of America today," said Vandyke. "They are practically in bondage, terribly oppressed, living indebted to white landowners year after year after year. There is, of course, a method to the white man's madness here: the white father keeps the black father under his heel throughout their lifetimes; the black children grow up exactly the way their fathers did; then the cycle completes itself when the black son is grown, and the white son takes over where his father left off." 

There was an undercurrent of grumbling among the dozen men in the loft audience. Vandyke always knew when it was coming. He always paused at appropriate moments to let it come. 

The film changed scenes again, this time to a white Establishment confrontation with a black demonstration where fire hoses, then dogs, were turned loose on teenage blacks, on women, on old people. 

"These are atrocities," Vandyke intoned in an ice-cold voice. "This sort of evil is the type of thing that could be expected if America was a dictatorship under an Adolf Hitler or a Joseph Stalin. But it is insanity that such things go on today in the finest civilized country in the world. Stop the film, please— " 

The projector was turned off, the lights turned on. Vandyke walked to the front of the room. He scanned the set faces of the men before him. "Evil," he pronounced, "must be met with evil. It is no good to try—as the white man teaches—to combat evil with good, for evil is strong and good is weak. But if we use evil to fight evil, then the evil we use becomes good."[not too much delusion there uh DC]

In the audience, Judo frowned. He was not sure that what he just heard made sense. He swallowed and licked a drop of perspiration off his upper lip. It was hot in the loft, the air beginning to thicken. Judo rubbed his sweaty palms together—then suddenly realized what he was doing and quickly looked to see if the decal on his left palm was still there. It was. The decal was square-shaped and had a number on it: 125. As usual on the afternoon of a meeting, it had been given to Judo to admit him to the loft. Each man attending was given one. It was moistened and pressed into the palm of the left hand, where the black man's skin was light enough for it to show. That imprint on the left palm was his admission to the meeting. 

"It is clear to all righteous-thinking black men," Vandyke continued, "that the white devils are out to destroy the black race. Throughout the years they have literally cut open our mothers' bellies to destroy black babies. They are evil and will resort to any atrocity in their efforts to put us under. That is why we must get all the fear out of our hearts and fight back. Fight back in the same way they are fighting us: with evil. Except that our evil, when we use it, becomes good." 

Judo glanced at Head and Yellow. Head, as usual, was nodding stupidly. You could tell that motherfucker anything and he'd agree with it. Yellow, on the other hand, was nodding thoughtfully, as if he actually understood what Vandyke meant. Maybe I'm slow, Judo thought; some of the things that were said in the loft just didn't make sense to him. 

Judo was glad when the lecture portion of the meeting was over and the men in the loft had a few minutes to mingle and socialize. He went over to a corkboard set up on a portable easel. On the board were several rows of small, ID-type photos. Some of them had tiny black wings drawn in ink on each side of the subject's neck. Judo looked enviously at them. Next to him, Head and Yellow did the same. 

"Death Angel wings, man," Yellow said, his voice quiet with awe. 

"That's for me, man," Head said enthusiastically. "I gots to get me them wings." 

A tall, handsome black came up and stood with them. "What's swinging, brothers?" he asked. "You all daydreaming about becoming Death Angels?" 

"Right on, man," said Head. "Ain't you?" 

The newcomer smiled a brilliant white smile. "I got higher goals, man," he replied smugly. "I not only want to be a Death Angel, I want to be a lieutenant in the Death Angels. I want to lead, man. " 

Judo studied the speaker. He had smooth, even features, with a suggestion of boyishness; a Muhammad Ali face: now pretty, now quietly thoughtful, now mischievous. His shoulders were broad, his carriage graceful, catlike. He had a natural strut. His wiry hair was cut even above his ears and around the back of his head, leaving no sideburns, making him look as if he were wearing a monk's crown. 

He was Skullcap. 

"How you going to get to be a lieutenant?" Judo asked. 

"By standing out in the crowd, man," Skullcap said, snapping his fingers. "By making myself known." He flashed his bright smile again. "Just watch me in the days to come, brother: you'll see a star be born." 

Skullcap walked away, half-strut, half-swagger: a swashbuckler in a checkered suit. 

"Big motherfucking deal," Head said when Skullcap was gone. He turned to Judo and Yellow, eager for their friendship again. 

"Come on over to Shabazz with me, brothers. I'll get us a box of pastry and we can go to my place and eat it." 

Judo and Yellow exchanged glances. Then Judo shrugged. "Why not?" 

In Head's kitchenette apartment, he brought up the subject of another kill. "Let's go do us a kill, brothers. Get one for each of us tonight." 

Yellow shook his head. "Too soon, man. The pigs is probably still worked up over that cunt's head that I chopped off." 

"He's right, man," Judo agreed. "It's too soon." 

Head took another bite of cream-filled pastry and thought of Ellen Linder. Too soon, shit. They were just chickenshit. He had already done one sting since then by himself. He could not tell them about it because he had only fucked the white woman, not killed her. Motherfucker, he silently cursed: why hadn't he offed that white bitch? If the papers had called it a rape-murder, he could simply have denied to the Death Angels that he had fucked her. He could have said that he had seen her boyfriend leave just before he made the sting. Or that a white pig cop had fucked her after she was dead. Anything. Nobody could have proved him a liar. 

I just didn't motherfucking think, he silently chastised himself as he labored to chew a huge mouthful of cream puff. But he knew it was more than that. It had something to do with the girl herself, some feeling he had for her. Something that not only made him walk out without killing her, but also made him telephone her at the office where she worked. 

"You know who this is?" he asked when she answered her phone. 

Ellen felt a catch in her throat. "Yes," she said as calmly as she could. 

"I said I was gonna call you, remember?" 

"Yes, I remember." 

For several moments, a heavy silence came over the line, as if Head was not quite sure why he called, did not know just what it was he wanted to say. Finally he said, "You don't sound too happy to hear from me." 

"I'm not," Ellen told him. "You had me very frightened the other night." 

"You rather I just didn't call you up no more?" 

"I think that would be best, yes. You scare me." 

"Okay," Head said. It seemed the easiest way out. He did not know why the hell he even bothered to call in the first place. 

Anyway, it was too late to be brooding over it. The cunt got lucky and lived. Head would see that it didn't happen again. 

"Man, I don't see how you figure it's too early for another sting," he argued with Judo and Yellow. "Been ten days since the one by the railroad tracks." 

"Still too soon," Yellow replied. 

"Yeah," said Judo. "Anyway, I got something to do tonight." 

I guess I know what too, Head thought jealously. You and that new wife of yours. Head could not help wishing that he had someone to occupy his time.

"How 'bout you, little brother?" he asked Yellow. "You and me? Go stinging?" 

"I got something to do too," said Yellow. 

Judo and Yellow finished their pastry and left. Head sat alone in the dingy little kitchenette, looking at the crumbs and crumpled bakery paper where they had eaten. Stayed just long enough to eat my pastry, he thought sullenly. Fine motherfucking friends. He looked at a partially eaten napoleon in front of him, decided he was no longer hungry, and pushed it away. Sighing quietly, he looked around at the shabby furniture, the depressing walls, the aura of utter gloom that seemed to pervade the place when he was there alone. It was like the solitary-confinement hole in the white man's prison—only worse. 

Got to get out from this place for a while, he decided anxiously. Don't like it here by myself. 

Head got up from the table, stuck a loaded automatic pistol in his belt, and left the apartment. 

The University of California Extension campus was only a block from the little apartment where Jesse Lee Cooks lived. Its main entrance ran slightly uphill from Laguna Street, through a large double gate that was closed to traffic after all classes had ended for the night. Just inside the gate, on either side, were trees and shrubs. Often, when Jesse grew lonely at night, when he became blue and moody thinking about his wife and children, he would walk over to the Extension entrance, loiter back away from the gate near those trees and shrubs, and watch the people drive in to attend evening classes. 

What puzzled Jesse about the people attending UC Extension was that they did not appear to be college students—as he imagined college students to be. Jesse's impression of a college student was someone white, young, wearing a sweater, the boys having blond hair, the girls with bouncy young breasts and ponytails. Jesse did not know what extension classes were; to him, a college was a college. When he saw middle-aged men and women arriving for evening classes, he assumed them to be teachers. The black middle aged people he guessed were maintenance and clean-up help. It did not register in his dull mind that the "teachers" far outnumbered the younger "students," or that as many "clean-up help" people entered as did white people. 

Often as he stood there watching the gate, Jesse wished that he were smarter, that he knew more, that he could drive into the campus and park, get out of the car with a thick, impressive-looking book in his hand, and walk into one of the Extension buildings. Cool, casual, confident. How motherfucking sweet that would be. At times when he felt that way, he secretly, briefly, regretted having wasted all the years he spent in federal prison: years during which, instead of lying idle in lockup, he could have been going to school studying something, studying anything. 

If the white men who ran the prison would have let him, that is. 

Which Jesse Lee doubted. 

And even if he had learned a little something, he knew he never would have gone far enough to get into college. Not the kind of college he imagined, anyway. College with white girls with bouncy breasts, wearing sweaters, flashing perfect smiles. Cool, casual, confident girls. 

Like the one slowing down at the gate now. . . . 

She was twenty-eight but looked younger. Her auburn hair was cut short, a little longer than gamine-length. She wore jeans, a light crew-cut pullover, and over it a bright plaid blouse unbuttoned all the way down. The Mustang she drove was gold with a black vinyl top and had bucket seats. Sharp, sporty. There was an AAA sticker next to the left taillight; this woman was not about to change her own flat. 

In the rear window was a decal that read: Carolina. 

That was in the South, thought Head, as he watched from the shadows of the trees. The South, where little black kids didn't have shoes. And were called niggers. 

Head walked over to the Mustang as it slowed almost to a stop to enter the gate and negotiate the hill. He waved a hand to signal the woman to stop. She did. Possibly because she thought he might be an Extension classmate. Or in trouble. Whatever—she stopped. 

"Give me a ride," Head said. 

There was something about his voice. He was not asking for a ride; he was telling her to give him one.

She must have frowned and looked at him more closely then. He was approaching the passenger door. 

God, it was unlocked! 

She probably tried to accelerate, but it was too late. Head could move fast when he wanted to. And at that moment he wanted to. He was not going to make the same mistake with this one that he made with Ellen Linder. 

He snatched open the passenger door and drew his automatic. She must have been filled with sheer terror at the sight of him up close: his eyes wide and wild, lips curled in the insane hatred he felt. She must have seen the gun as he aimed it at her face — Head shot her four times. The first bullet went all the way through her lower neck and shattered the window in the driver's door. The second entered her upper neck and lodged in the brain area. The third entered her right cheek, tore up her mouth and tongue, and exited. The fourth went into her right side, hit the chest wall and aorta, then coursed down to penetrate her liver and lodge in her left kidney. Mercifully, she died quickly. 

Her name in life had been Frances Rose. All she had been doing was trying to get to class on time. 

But she had been white. 

Everything happened very quickly after that. 

Head hurried away, walking north on Laguna and turning the corner at Haight. 

John Fischbach, a university security guard, ran down the hill to the gate. He found Frances Rose slumped forward against the steering wheel. Her head was blood-soaked. Fischbach ran to summon an ambulance. 

Dr. Herb Kressel and an acquaintance, Harris Silverman, were leaving a UC Extension building when someone shouted that a woman had been shot down at the gate. Dr. Kressel and Silverman hurried down to see if they could help. 

And across the street from the gate, a woman named Mary Turney left her second-floor apartment and came downstairs to wait for the police to arrive. She had seen the killer from her window; she wanted to describe him to someone while the image was still fresh in her mind.

🔃   🔃   🔃

Officers Thomas O'Connell and William Kelly were patrolling in a radio car when the first call came in about the shooting at the UC Extension gate.  

"That's close", said O'Connell, the senior officer. ''let's make it." 

They radioed that they were on their way to the scene. The patrol car leaped forward and sped toward the UC Extension gate. Six blocks from the scene, however, Communications advised that another unit had arrived ahead of them. Almost immediately following that notification, a description came on the air which had been obtained at the scene from the witness Mary Turney. The shooting suspect was a Negro male, approximately twenty-five years old, five nine to five ten in height, muscular build, wearing a blue knit watch cap, an olive-drab army jacket, and light trousers. 

"Let's take a perimeter drive and see if we can spot him," Kelly suggested. 

"Right. Up Haight to Steiner and back around." 

The radio car started to prowl. Down Buchanan Street. Nothing. Up Haight Street. Nothing. Around into Steiner Street. 

"Over there," said O'Connell, bobbing his chin at the sidewalk. A muscular, bald-headed black man in a dark sweat shirt and khaki trousers was walking down Steiner toward Waller. 

"No army jacket," said Kelly. 

"Witness could have been mistaken," replied O'Connell. 

"Yeah. Or he could have taken it off." 

The car was creeping up slowly behind the bald man. 

"What do you think?" 

"I think we'd better have a look." 

The radio car drew alongside the bald man and stopped. O'Connell and Kelly got out. 

"Just a minute, please " 

The black man, Jesse Lee Cooks, halted and warily faced the two officers. His right hand moved slightly—perhaps an inch, perhaps reflexively—toward his belt. 

"Watch it," said O'Connell. Both officers saw that Cooks had been sweating profusely, as if he had been running. This was no time to take chances; a woman had been shot back there. "Put your hands on top of your head," Kelly ordered.

Cooks glared at them and made no move to obey. His right hand moved again; a twitch, an impulse. O'Connell and Kelly quickly drew their service revolvers. "Just freeze, mister!" Kelly covered him while O'Connell, his gun reholstered, got Cooks hands up and patted him down. He found the automatic in Cooks's belt. "Okay, mister, down on the sidewalk," O'Connell ordered. "Spread your arms and legs wide." 

While Kelly continued to keep him covered, O'Connell placed Cooks under arrest, knelt beside him and handcuffed him, and began routinely to recite to him his constitutional rights. 

"You have the right to remain silent— " 

At the end of Day Eleven there were four victims. 

Quita Hague, hacked to death. 

Richard Hague, surviving, his butchered face beginning its slow, painful healing process. 

Ellen Linder, raped, ravaged, threatened with death, trying not to remember her ordeal. 

And Frances Rose, her young face blown apart by bullets fired at close range.

next Day 37