Part 4: Zebra:The True Account of the 179 Days of Terror in San Francisco...Day 53....Day 55

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

Day 53

Gus Coreris walked like John Garfield used to walk: a little too fast, cocky, with his arms swinging as if he were on his way to a fight. 

His partner, John Fotinos, thicker, stockier, was oddly more graceful, and was able to keep up with Coreris apparently without difficulty. 

One got the impression that if they had been on their way to a fight, that Coreris's opponent would have had to do battle with a wild, tenacious tiger of a man who would have fought tooth and nail until he either won or was killed. Fotinos, on the other hand, would have fought like a bear: calmly and conservatively, waiting until he got his arms around his opponent. Then he would have broken his back. 

They had been partners, working Homicide, for thirteen years. Closer than most brothers, they had few, if any, secrets from each other, and were able to communicate almost silently at times. They knew things about each other that even their respective wives did not know, because in the business of bodies and bloody murder, there are many things a man cannot take home to the family he loves. Those things he shares only with his partner. Or his priest.

Coreris and Fotinos were both forty-eight years old, both native San Franciscans, both Greek Orthodox. Prior to becoming working policemen together, their lives had indirectly crisscrossed and matched many times. Fotinos had known Coreris's wife-to-be, Kathy Picras, most of his life; they had attended grade school, junior high, and high school together. Coreris had played football at Poly High against Fotinos at Mission. Their religious ties in the Greek Orthodox community of San Francisco were mutual. They both went off to World War Two—Fotinos in the Navy, Coreris in the Army Air Corps—and both returned home to marry San Francisco girls: Coreris marrying Kathy, Fotinos marrying a Catholic girl, Barbara Stevens. They became police officers, both rose through the ranks, both made inspector and were eventually assigned to the General Work Detail handling the scut work of the police department: assaults and batteries, sex crimes, surveillances, anything else that turned up. Finally they became Homicide partners. 

Over the years they fathered between them four daughters but only one son each. Those sons also became policemen. The two Homicide partners had begun a tradition. 

On December 11, 1973, when Saleem Erakat had been dead for sixteen days, Coreris and Fotinos still were not sure what kind of killing they were dealing with. That was what they told their lieutenant when they brought him up to date on the status of the case. 

"We know we've got a robbery," said Coreris, "because thirteen hundred bucks was taken. What we aren't sure of is whether the reason for the killing was robbery." 

"What other reasons are you considering?" the lieutenant asked. 

"A couple," said Fotinos. "It could have been a professional hit where the hit man picked up the money because it just happened to be there. The thing has got the M.O. of a hit: victim's hands tied behind his back, a single, small-caliber slug behind the ear, the whole thing appearing to be well thought out in advance." 

"The weakness in that theory, of course," said Coreris, "is the black lookout that witnesses saw at the front door. No white hit man is going to use a black for a backup. So if we're talking about a hit man, it's got to be a black hit man. Which in turn means we're eliminating a lot of motives. We're eliminating gambling, loansharking, protection: none of those would use a black hit man. If any of those operations had a reason to execute Erakat, they'd import a professional white man." 

"We don't think it's that anyway," said Fotinos. "But what it could be is a possible revenge killing." The husky officer leaned forward in his chair. "Maybe a couple of blacks pissed off at Erakat about something. Maybe he wouldn't give them credit, or sell them beer because they were under twenty-one, something like that. A Saturday-night run-in of some kind that they came back and settled first thing Sunday morning." 

"Or even a spur-of-the-moment thing," said Coreris. He occasionally brushed his neat black mustache flat as he spoke. "Maybe they were the first customers of the day and Erakat said or did something to offend them. So they decided to teach him a lesson. " 

The lieutenant sighed quietly. Coreris and Fotinos were creating a dilemma. A self-employed grocer had been shot and killed at his place of business. His store was robbed of thirteen hundred dollars, his person robbed of wallet and watch. Yet the two best Homicide cops in the department were for some reason reluctant to treat it as an ordinary robbery-murder. "What bothers you two about this case?" he asked bluntly. 

"The necktie around the wrists," Coreris said without hesitation. "It doesn't fit the pattern of two blacks holding up a grocery store." 

"It might be a holdup-killing," said Fotinos, "but it's something else too. That execution touch has got to put it in a different category." 

"Got to," Coreris emphasized. "Either a psycho, a revenge killing, a professional hit—something. But it wasn't just a heist murder." 

The lieutenant mulled it over for a couple of moments. Finally he said, "This is a case that the public and the papers are going to watch for a while. Erakat was well-known and he was popular. There were 250 mourners at his funeral. The cortege out to Woodlawn had eighty-five cars in it. In the Middle East there were memorial services by more than a thousand members of the Erakat family still living over there. And the Arab Independent Grocers Association has put up a five-thousand-dollar reward. I'd like to see the case cleared up as quickly as possible—and as cleanly as possible. By the same token, I want it cleared up right. What it comes down to, I guess, is that you're going to have to go where it leads you. Let's just get us a killer." 

"Yessir," the two detectives replied in unison. 

When they left the lieutenant's office, Fotinos said, 

"Well, where do you want to start?" 

"Let's start with a cup of coffee," Coreris said. 

They might as well, Fotinos thought. They sure as hell didn't have any place better to start. 

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At that moment, at the city jail, Paul Roman Dancik was being released from a short incarceration of less than five days. He had been arrested the previous Friday by Narcotics Inspectors Corrales and Herring in the 300 block of Haight Street. The charge against him was suspicion of violation of Section 11359 of the California Health and Safety Code: possession of marijuana for resale. 

Dancik had half a dozen prior arrests for drug-connected offenses: possession of hypodermic needles and syringes, possession of marijuana plants, loitering in areas where known narcotics trade was conducted. He had been a suspected user and/or dealer for at least five years. His favorite place to shoot heroin was in his inner left elbow: that was where most of his needle marks were. 

Dancik had just passed his twenty-sixth birthday the previous month. He was a thin young man, as most confirmed drug users are: nearly six feet tall, barely 130 pounds. He usually listed his occupation as an artist. Before San Francisco, he had lived in Monte Rio, a hamlet seventy-five miles north of the Bay Area. But he had lived all over the state—and been in minor scrapes with the law everywhere he lived. In San Bernardino he served five days in jail for failure to obey a posted sign. In Carmel he served another five days for violation of a municipal code prohibiting dogs running loose in the business area. In Santa Ana he was arrested for assault and battery. In Laguna Beach for the same thing. He was no stranger to trouble even before he started using drugs. 

When he was released from jail that morning, Dancik had shaggy brown hair and a droopy Zapata mustache. He was wearing denim Levis, a dark sport coat, and a white shirt. When he left the jail property room, he had plenty of money: included in the personal property returned to him was $345 in U.S. currency and $250 in Mexican pesos. 

When Paul Roman Dancik left the jail, he went immediately back to the 300 block of Haight. He had been five days without a fix. He needed to score—bad. 

When Anthony Harris finished instructing the teen judo class that Tuesday afternoon, he toweled the sweat from his body, got dressed, and hurried outside to meet Debbie. 

"Hi. Sorry you had to wait," he said. 

"That's all right, silly," she replied, taking his hand and squeezing it. "I don't mind waiting for you." 

Debbie was a short, round-faced black girl, not slim, but not heavy either. She was pleasant, rather docile, an energetic, hard worker, from a decent, honest family. She practiced Islam as a religion, not a holy war against the white man. Anthony had met her a month earlier at the mosque. He had immediately been smitten by her—and she by him. It was the kind of feeling he had dreamed about during his final days in San Quentin. 

As they walked down the street, holding hands, they talked about a wedding they had attended the previous night. Larry Green had married an attractive young girl named Dinah in a Muslim ceremony, and the newlyweds had then driven across the Bay Bridge to the Holiday Inn in Emeryville for a two-day honeymoon. 

"I'll bet old Larry is really getting it wet over there in that motel," Anthony said to Debbie. 

She pinched his hand smartly. "You know I don't like that kind of vulgar talk, Anthony," she chastised. 

"Hey, I'm sorry, baby," Anthony apologized, but he still had a lewd grin on his face. 

"Uh-huh," Debbie said knowingly, "you say you sorry for saying it, but that look on your face tells me you still thinking it. " 

"Hey, you know me too well, woman," he said, feigning chagrin. "How you get to know me so well in such a short time?" 

"I don't know," Debbie replied quietly. She was not playing a game now. "I just did, somehow." 

Anthony looked steadily at her and his own voice softened. "Yeah, I guess you did, all right." 

They held hands a little more tightly as they walked. Anthony  sighed an inaudible sigh. Yes, this was what he had dreamed about in San Quentin. 

He just wished it had happened before he got involved in all that other shit. 

Shortly after noon on the rainy Sunday that Saleem Erakat had been killed, Judo had stood on a street corner and boarded a number 5 McAllister bus. It was uncrowded; he took a seat alone near the rear. As the bus proceeded along its route—starting, stopping, starting again—Judo surreptitiously slipped Erakat's wallet out of his pocket and examined its contents. The money first: $64. Judo quickly put it in his pocket. Then the other contents: credit cards (which frightened him because he did not know how to use them); miscellaneous papers, ID photos, something written in funny symbols, which Judo thought was Chinese but was actually Arabic. Junk, he thought. 

He kept the wallet concealed on his lap as the bus halted and two black men got on. They came all the way to the rear of the coach and sat several seats behind him. He pretended to pay no attention to them, but was already formulating a plan that indirectly involved them. 

The bus driver, Judo saw, noticed where everyone sat. In his big overhead mirror, he would glance up and watch which seat was chosen by each new passenger. He had done that with Judo; he had also done it with the two black men sitting in the rear seat. That was perfect, Judo thought. With a handkerchief, he carefully wiped his fingerprints off the wallet and its contents. 

Judo stayed on the bus until the two black men in the rear got off. Then, when the driver was concentrating on pulling back into traffic, Judo reached behind him and tossed Erakat's wallet onto the rear seat. When the driver found it, he would think the other two men had disposed of it. 

Judo rode a few more blocks and got off the bus, feeling very clever and crafty. It did not occur to him that all he had done was indicate that the Erakat killing had been perpetrated by two black men—which, in fact, it had. 

The wallet was found by the bus driver, Fred Langlois, when he routinely inspected his vehicle's interior at the end of the line. 

Langlois was a suave, cool black man who wore a beard, mod glasses, and one earring. He was independent, hep, tough, definitely his own man. And he was honest. 

He turned the wallet over to his supervisor. 

For a while, Judo enjoyed wearing Saleem Erakat's gold wristwatch. It was a great convenience simply to glance at one's arm to find out what time it was, instead of constantly having to search for clocks in store windows, or ask total strangers on the street. Judo would have liked to keep the watch. 

But he ran out of money. 

Roy Wittenberg owned Roy's Jewelry and Loan Company on Sixth Street. Wittenberg waited on Judo when he brought Erakat's watch in to pawn. 

"Ten dollars," he said, after examining the watch. 

"Come on, man, it's worth more than that," Judo protested. 

Wittenberg bobbed his chin at a showcase full of watches. "Not to me, buddy. Ten dollars." 

Judo took the ten. 

Honky motherfucker, he thought as he left the store. 

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Paul Roman Dancik was having problems. He had more than $300 cash in his pocket, had been out of jail for six hours, but could not make a drug connection. 

Dancik had immediately returned to the general location of his most recent arrest: Haight Street around Buchanan and Webster. That was the site of a large, low-income housing project where in the past Dancik had been able to connect for any kind of drugs he wanted. But on this day, for some reason, every contact he tried he had come up empty. It was crazy. Like he was in a strange city or something. 

Around mid afternoon he went to the project apartment of a black man known to him as Luther G. Luther was an outrageous looking individual: he had dyed red hair and a black mandarin mustache, and habitually dressed in tight trousers stuffed into the tops of cowboy boots, Western-style. He had not one but two white wives, both of whom he claimed to be legally married to by way of Hindu wedding ceremonies. 

Luther G was not a street person; he was simply an eccentric. He did not steal or otherwise hustle. For a living he worked nights as a warehouse watchman. Both his wives also worked, one as a salesclerk, the other as a tour guide on Fisherman's Wharf. Among the three of them, they earned enough to live modestly and satisfy their drug habits. All three were cocaine habitues. 

Luther was not pleased to see Paul Dancik when he answered his door that afternoon. He knew Dancik had recently been arrested right there in the projects. And he could see that Dancik had a desperate look in his eyes. 

"Man, what the fuck's the story around here?" Dancik asked Luther. "I can't connect." 

"Nobody around to connect with," Luther said, not inviting Dancik in. "Too much heat. Ever'body done set up in new locations." 

"Can you put me on to some, man? I need to connect." 

"I can put you on to some snow. That's all I use." 

"I don't want that shit, man. I want something real." 

"Sorry," said Luther. He started to close the door. 

"Wait a minute, man," Dancik pleaded. He pulled a roll of bills from his pocket. "Listen, it's worth twenty to me just for a lead." 

Luther thought about it for a moment. His wives, who were bisexual, had been wanting a double-headed dildo they had seen in a sex shop the previous week. It cost $19.95. 

"Okay," said Luther, "you give me the twenty and come back tonight. I'll have a contact for you then." 

"Out of sight," said Dancik. He gave Luther G the twenty and left. 

At the mosque, Skullcap was looking for Judo. 

"He already left," said the Fruit of Islam sentry at the rear door.

There was a stranger with Skullcap, a big black man the guard had never seen before. 

"Where'd he go, you know?" Skullcap asked. 

"He met some sister and they headed that way," the sentry told him, bobbing his head down the street. 

"Thanks, brother. Come on," he said to the stranger, "let's see can we catch up with him." They hurried off in the direction the sentry had given them. 

The stranger with Skullcap was a husky, moon faced man, six one, 210 pounds, a solid man with barely an ounce of fat on him. When he walked, he appeared unusually burly, as if he had extra muscles that other men lacked. He was clean-shaven, his hair trimmed very short and neat. He wore round, gold, wire-rim eyeglasses that looked incongruous on a man of such obvious strength and power. Against his dark brown complexion, the gold rims looked like ornamentations. 

Call this man Rims. 

Manuel Leonard Moore never liked white girls. In school they often ridiculed him because of a speech problem he had: he slurred some words, forgot some others, mispronounced some, and frequently interjected a grunting or hawking sound to substitute for a word or phrase he was not sure he could handle. 

"Looks like a monkey, talks like a monkey," the white girls would say. 

"Aw, go finger-fuck yourself," Manuel told them. 

Sometimes a white boy would overhear him and there would be a fight. Manuel was big enough and strong enough to win most of the fights, but that did not matter; after the girls told what he said to them, he was usually expelled anyway. From the time he was fourteen years old, he was suspended from school on a regular basis. 

At home, Manuel's father, Raymond Moore, was what is euphemistically described as a strict disciplinarian. That is, when Manuel was suspended, his father beat the hell out of him. Raymond Moore had no time for the psychological approach to child raising. He had nine others besides Manuel, and he broke his back ten and twelve hours a day as a laborer for a paving company to  support his large family. As far as he was concerned, there was only one rule that needed to be applied to raising his children: be good—or get a beating for being bad. Regular attendance at the Church of Christ with his wife Viola only reinforced his "spare the rod, spoil the child" conviction. 

Attending school was sheer torture for Manuel. He did not learn to read or write, yet incredibly, he continued to be passed to the next higher grade. Within the framework of the California system of education, Manuel Leonard Moore actually progressed into the tenth grade — his sophomore year of high school—without learning to read. He did learn to recognize certain words by the way they looked alone—but not many; and he learned to sign his own name; but he could not identify the individual letters in his name unless they were in the exact sequence in which he had learned them. 

Manuel began to steal when he was thirteen. Nothing big, nothing very valuable, just kid-type stealing, shoplifting, petty thefts. The family lived in San Bernardino County then, in Southern California. Most of the time when Manuel was caught, it was by the police in the little town of Fontana. Each time, the Fontana PD handled the violation without going through the formalities of the juvenile court. After all, Manuel was not really a bad boy, not a criminal; he was just a local black kid who had a speech problem and was not too bright in school. He would be all right, as soon as he was old enough to go out and get a laborer's job. 

There came a time, however, when the Fontana PD was unable to handle Manuel informally, internally. When he was fourteen, he ran away—probably from one of his father's severe beatings—and when he was picked up and returned to the area as a runaway, he had to face the court process. That process committed him to the Verdemont Boys Ranch. They kept him less than a year, then re- leased him to his home on probation. According to their evaluation, he had made "real progress"—they had taught him the alphabet all the way up to H. 

Manuel Moore was now one of society's misfits. He could not read or write, he was ridiculed for a speech problem, the schools did not want him, his father knew only one way to handle him, he was too young to hold a job legally, and he had a juvenile police record.

What to do? Manuel wondered. He did not know. He had no direction, no guidance, no goals. A piece of flotsam in the mainstream of life. 

Manuel began to break the law with stunning regularity. Before his seventeenth birthday, he was arrested twice for violation of juvenile curfew, and investigated for six burglaries and one car theft. After that, it was anything and everything: suspicion of robbery, battery, burglary, forcible rape, possession of alcohol by a minor, failure to appear on traffic citations, receiving stolen property, possession of marijuana, violation of probation, drunk driving; then more burglaries; and more and more. Occasionally they locked him up: 60 days for petty theft, 15 days for failure to appear on traffic citations, 120 days for receiving stolen property, more failures to pay traffic fines: 7 days, 4 days, 6 days, 5 days—he was in and out of the county jail like it was a transient hotel. The longest term he served was ninety days for petty theft; the shortest, two days for a traffic violation. 

In 1969 the State of California apparently got tired of playing games with Manuel. It convicted him of second-degree burglary and sentenced him to serve from six months to fifteen years in prison. He was sent to San Quentin. After two years and three months there, he was paroled. He stayed out thirteen months, then was arrested for two burglaries and returned to prison as a parole violator. This time they only kept him one year. As they had been with parole violator Jesse Lee Cooks, the people who decide these matters were certain that a very short term was adequate to prepare Manuel Moore to reenter society. 

One thing was certain: that short term was long enough for Manuel to embrace Muslimism fervently. 

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As Anthony Harris walked along the street holding hands with Debbie, J. C. Simon and Manuel Moore hurried to catch up with them from behind. 

"Hey, brother, wait up," said J.C. "Look who I got with me." 

Anthony turned and was surprised to see Manuel. He and Manuel and Jesse Lee Cooks had all belonged to the San Quentin Mosque together. "Well, kiss my ass if it ain't the Man," Anthony said. He was genuinely happy to see Manuel, whom he had always liked. He looked upon Manuel Moore as a big, muscular, gentle giant, always affable, always friendly, ready to do anything for a brother. As Manuel approached, Anthony offered his hand, palm up. Manuel slapped it down smartly. 

"Hey, Ant'ny," said Manuel, smiling widely. "How do you be making it, man?" 

"All right, Big Man. Making it just fine. When you get out?" 

"Le's see," Manuel said, frowning, thinking about it, trying to formulate an accurate answer in his mind. He was unable to do it, unable to track the days in his slow mind; but it did not embarrass him with Anthony, who was his friend. He merely grinned and shrugged, "I ain't be out long," he said. 

"He's been at the Halfway House," J.C. said. "But now he's going to stay at my place. And he's going to work at Black Self Help." 

"All right!" said Anthony. He remembered then that Debbie was waiting discreetly on the side for him to finish talking. "Oh, say, this here is Debbie," he said. "Sugar, this is the Man, Manuel Moore. Him and me done a little time together up in Big Q; ain't that right, Man?" 

"You right." Manuel looked at Debbie. He wished he could be supercool like J.C, say something like, "How you swinging there, little mamma?"—but from past experience he knew he could not handle that kind of talk. He always fucked up when he tried. So he just smiled and said, "Hi." 

"Hello, Manuel," Debbie said, "it's nice to meet you." Debbie held out her hand and he awkwardly shook it with his own big paw. 

"Do you have any people in San Francisco?" she asked. 

As Debbie engaged Manuel in conversation, J.C. drew Anthony aside and spoke to him in a confidential tone. "What you going to be doing later tonight, brother?" 

"Why?" Anthony asked suspiciously. 

"I just thought you and me could take Manuel out for a while. Show him around. You know what I mean?" 

Anthony glanced self-consciously at Debbie. She did not like J. C. Simon and did not approve of Anthony associating with him. "I ain't sure what I'll be doing tonight," he hedged. 

J.C.'s expression did not change but Anthony could see his eyes harden and turn cold. "Okay," J.C. said, "I just thought since  Manuel was a friend of yours, you might want to help him get start- ed on the right track, you know? I just thought it might look funny to the other guys down at Black Self Help if you didn't try to do nothing for your friend you was in prison with. But maybe you see it a different way. " 

Anthony was properly chagrined. He looked down at the sidewalk, then over at Debbie again. Both Debbie and Manuel were looking at him. "Okay, man, okay," he said quietly to J.C. 

"Hey, good deal, brother!" J.C. replied with a smile. He always smiled when he got his way. "We'll pick you up on the corner over by Alamo Park 'bout nine. Is that cool?" 

"Yeah," Anthony grumbled, "that's cool." 

After leaving Anthony and Debbie, J. C. Simon took Manuel Moore home with him. J.C. had an apartment on Grove near Fillmore. It was in a modern but modest two-story, multi-unit building set on a narrow but very deep lot. Larry Green and his wife Dinah lived in the same building. 

For nearly three months, J.C.'s estranged wife Pat and their little girl Crissy had been living with him. They had come up from Houston the last week in September to try for a reconciliation. It had been at J.C.'s instigation; he wrote Pat how well he was doing, how he had been promoted to assistant manager at Black Self Help, how he had made new friends through the mosque, and how in general he felt that they could make a go of it if she would come to him. 

Patricia made the trip to San Francisco. And found that nothing had changed. 

In San Francisco, just as he had done in Houston, J.C. still put his Muslim friends first, and her and Crissy second. J.C. still went out nights and left her and Crissy alone. J.C. still talked about four hundred years of oppression by white people, still scorned what he referred to as the "Caucasian intellect," still expected her to adjust her personal philosophy to suit his. And J.C. still brought strange, wild-eyed friends home to sit with in a dimly lit corner and talk in low voices about God knows what. 

No, J.C. had not changed. Pat knew it from the first week. But she tried to find a way to work it out, for Crissy's sake. The child worshiped her daddy—and J.C, when he was not busy with some Black Muslim meeting or whatever else he did with his time, reciprocated. Daddy and daughter together were a sheer delight to see. But the moments were rare. 

By the end of the second month, Pat had decided to return to Texas. She was just waiting for the right time, the right excuse. It came the night J.C. brought Manuel Moore home to stay with them. 

"J.C. , are you crazy?" she asked him in the privacy of their bedroom. "That man can't stay with us. Why, you don't even know anything about him.'' 

"I know he's a brother," J.C. replied. "That's all I have to know." 

"Well, it's not all I have to know. For God's sake, J.C, I'd be afraid to close my eyes at night with him in the next room, much less let Crissy go to sleep unguarded." 

"Woman, that is a lot of shit," J.C. said firmly. "The man is a brother. He is just out of prison and he needs help." 

"Let him get help at the Halfway House or whatever it is that he was staying at." 

"He is finished with the Halfway House. What he needs now is personal help, individual help. He needs my help." 

"I think you the one who needs help," she snapped. "Help in the head." 

"Whatever I need," he replied coldly, "it ain't advice from you. Now you fix supper for me and the brother, hear? And later on tonight after supper, him and me is going out for a spell, and I don't want to hear no shit about it either. Understand?" 

Pat turned and silently left the room. She certainly did understand. All too well. 

Judo was waiting on the corner when Skullcap and Rims drove up. He was surprised to see them not in the van but in a black Cadillac several years old. Judo got into the back seat. "Where'd you get the wheels, man?" he asked Skullcap. 

"They belong to the boss," Skullcap replied. 

Judo nodded. He was not quite sure who Skullcap meant, but he did not pursue the matter. He patted Rims on the shoulder. "How you making it, brother?"

"I be doing all right, just fine," said Rims. He grinned back at Judo. "I gonna get me my first devil tonight." 

Judo felt a sudden depression come over him. Shit, he thought. You too? Weren't there any sane people left? Then he grunted silently to himself. You a fine one to wonder, he thought. What the fuck you doing here? And with a gun in your belt, too. 

Judo tried to tell himself that he thought they were going out on a stickup. But he knew that he should have known better. 

"Say, man, you got your piece?" Skullcap asked. Then without waiting for an answer, he said, "Let the brother hold it for a spell. Get him used to handling one." 

Motherfucker! Judo thought. Why his gun? Why the fuck didn't Skullcap get his own piece back from whoever the fuck he let borrow it? Else get him another one. Judo did not like other people handling his gun. 

Nevertheless he slipped it from under his coat and passed it up to Rims. 

The moon faced black examined the weapon in what he hoped was a respectful, intelligent manner. "Look like a nice piece, man," he commented, even though he would not have known the difference had he been handling a German Luger instead of an ordinary .32-caliber automatic. 

"It is, man," said Skullcap with a grin. "I can give witness to that, can't I, brother?" he asked Judo. 

"Yeah, sure," Judo said sullenly. He wanted his gun back. 

"Just hold on to it for a spell," Skullcap told Rims, as if it were his gun instead of Judo's. "Get the feel of it while we look for us a devil." 

The Cadillac moved south on Steiner, toward Haight. 

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When Paul Dancik returned to Luther G's apartment, the door was barely opened to him—three inches on a security chain. Through the narrow slit, he could see an attractive white girl with a peaches-and-cream complexion, wearing the uniform of a tour guide. One of Luther G's menage a trois, Dancik thought. Not bad either, if a man was interested in sex—which at that moment he was not. 

"Is Luther here?" he asked through the slit.

"No, but he left this for you." The girl handed him a scrap of paper with a telephone number on it. 

"Is this all? No name or nothing?" 

"That's all." 

Shit, Dancik thought irritably. "Can I use your phone?" 

"We don't have one," the girl said. "The deposit's too high. But there's a pay phone over by the corner of the parking lot." 

She shut the door before Dancik could say anything further, leaving him standing there with the scrap of paper in his hand. 

Shit, he thought again. He left the apartment building and started across the parking lot toward the pay phone. 

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"There one," said Rims as the Cadillac, now on Haight, cruised past the parking lot. They were near the pay phone and could see a young white man coming toward it. 

"That's just a man," Skullcap said. "We can keep looking and find you a woman or a kid." 

Rims shook his head. "I just—" He hesitated, the words faltering, then he blurted it out: "I just soon do it quick." 

"Okay, brother, it's your devil. I'll circle the lot and you can come up on him from behind." 

''Yeah that's good that's good.'' 

Skullcap accelerated slightly and rounded the block to the other side of the projects. Now they were in a position to see the white man going toward the pay phone, instead of coming toward it; his back was to them. Skullcap pulled to the curb and left the engine running. He slapped Rims on the thigh. "Go get that devil," he said in a voice oddly reverent, as if he were sending forth a preacher to spread the gospel. 

Rims put the gun under his coat and got out of the car. Skullcap looked in the back seat at Judo. "Be nice if you'd back the brother up," he said pointedly. "Or you just gonna sit back there and watch?" 

Judo felt a hot flush of embarrassment. "I could do a lot more, man, if you wouldn't keep taking my piece." 

"Shit, man," Skullcap chided, "you don't need a piece. You a fucking black belt, remember? I mean, your fucking hands supposed to be deadly weapons, daddy." Skullcap's tone was derisive. It was obvious that the swashbuckler felt he could take the judo fighter. 

A moment of heavy silence hung between them: challenging silence such as Judo had uncomfortably experienced with Head. His eyes were locked with Skullcap's eyes, and Judo knew instinctively that Skullcap would die before he averted his eyes first. Knowing that, Judo did not even try to make a contest of it. He looked away. 

Skullcap glanced out the car window at Rims lumbering across the parking lot behind the white devil. "Well, brother?" he said pointedly to Judo. 

Judo got out of the car and hurried after Rims. 

The pay phone in the corner of the projects parking lot stood on a single pole seated in the cement apron. At the top of the phone was an oval pod with an open front, which afforded protection from the elements for the instrument but not the user. A six-foot long bench seat was mounted on a cement ledge just behind the phone; a thick growth of shrubbery and vines grew between the ledge and the corner of a building a few feet away. 

Paul Dancik walked up to the phone, the scrap of paper in one hand, and fished around in his pocket for a dime. 

A few yards behind Dancik, automatic held under his coat, a wide-eyed, determined Rims moved ever closer to him. 

Behind Rims, Judo walked fast enough to make it look to Skullcap as if he were trying to catch up with Rims, but slowly enough that he would not actually accomplish it. 

Just around the corner of the building behind the pay phone, a man named Eduardo Abdi was on his way to use that same phone. Abdi was a small man in his forties, dark, swarthy, wearing a mustache. He had eyes that never stopped darting, shifting, searching, eyes that wanted to see everything, miss nothing. What he saw when he stepped around the corner of the building caught him completely by surprise and caused him to stop dead in his tracks. 

Paul Dancik stepped up to the phone pod, dime in one hand, scrap of paper in the other, and reached for the receiver. 

Rims stepped up behind Dancik and leveled the automatic. Nervously he wet his lips. "Hey, you" 

Without picking up the receiver, Dancik turned at the sound of the voice. Rims held the gun out straight and shot him three times. 

Dancik did not fall. The scrap of paper fluttered to the ground and he put one hand on his chest where the bullets had gone in. He and Rims stared incredulously at each other. Then Dancik began to stagger toward Rims. 

Behind his round glasses, Rims's eyes grew wide with fright. He turned and looked pleadingly at Judo, who was poised fearfully nearby. What the fuck do I do now?! his look asked. 

Dancik staggered past Rims, staggered twenty feet out to the sidewalk and stood there, eyes wide, probably seeing nothing. A single trickle of blood flowed over the middle of his bottom lip and ran down his chin. 

Eight feet away, Eduardo Abdi watched the scene, transfixed. 

Rims took a few steps toward Dancik, whose back was now to him. He wondered if he should shoot him again. Deciding he had better, he raised the gun; but before he could fire, Paul Dancik, already dead, fell straight back and lay across the sidewalk like a carefully placed barricade. 

Judo rushed to the fallen body and began to go through its pockets. Rims walked over and looked at him in revulsion. "We don't be 'posed to rob no devils," he said, recalling his San Quentin Mosque training. 

Judo ignored him. Rims began to blink rapidly, consternation shrouding his moonface. 

"Man, I say we don't be 'posed to do that!" he said loudly. 

"Shut up, fool!" Judo said. He found a thick wad of currency and shoved it into his pocket. Then he found another. Jesus Christ! Was this fucking guy a bookie's runner or something? 

"Man, we gonna get in a lot of shit over this!" Rims said, meaning the robbery, not the killing. 

"Will you shut the fuck up!" Judo snapped. He stood up and for a brief moment he and Rims faced each other over the dead man's body. 

Standing now about ten feet away, Eduardo Abdi was, incredibly, unobserved by either. 

Watching the scene from his apartment across the street, a sixty five-year-old black man named Albert Cook thought all three men were together. He had heard the shots and ran to his living room window. It looked to him as if three men were arguing. 

But it was only two: Judo and Rims, caught up in a moment of murder and madness, one killing the devil, one robbing the dead, neither able to understand the motive of the other. 

From across the parking lot, an automobile horn sounded. Skullcap. Judo and Rims suddenly remembered where they were, what they were doing, and why the horn was blowing. 

Motherfucker, what if he drives off without us? 

The two blacks turned and raced across the lot. 

👮   👮   👮

Officers James Long and Al Lambert were in a radio car three blocks away when the shooting call was broadcast. They rolled on it at once and were at the scene within one minute. As soon as they arrived, Eduardo Abdi ran up to them. 

"I was just gonna call you guys," he said excitedly. 

"What happened here?" Long asked. 

"We were just standing here," Abdi said, "when two guys came over and opened up on us." 

Lambert was checking the victim. "Looks gone," he said. 

"You know him?" Long asked Abdi. 

"Sure. We were working a case together." 

"A case? What kind of case? Are you a police officer?" 

"I can't say any more," Abdi told him. 

"This guy's gone," said Lambert. "Which way did they go?" he asked Abdi. 

"Across the lot." 

Lambert cautiously moved onto the lot to check it out. Long was suspicious of Abdi and his remark about "working a case together," but he was also acutely aware that precious seconds were ticking away without a description of the gunmen being on the air. "Give me a quick description of the two men," he told Abdi. 

"Well, let's see," said Abdi. "They were both black. The one guy was about five seven or five eight; maybe a hundred forty-five, hundred fifty; had an Afro, but it was a short one. He was wearing a navy-blue pea coat and blue jeans. That's all I remember." 

"That's plenty," said Long, impressed. Maybe the guy was an officer. "What about the second man?"

"He looked the same," said Abdi. 

"The same? You mean exactly?" 

"He might have been ten or fifteen pounds lighter. Maybe he had a shorter Afro. But dressed the same way." 

"Navy-blue pea coat and blue jeans?" 

"Yeah." 

"Are you sure you got a real good look at these guys?" 

"Yeah. Positive." 

Long was skeptical, but at the moment Abdi was all he had. "Wait here, please, while I call this in," he told the witness. 

While Long was at the patrol car broadcasting the descriptions he had been given of the gunmen, and Lambert was still checking the edge of the shadowy parking lot, a small crowd began to gather near the body. No one noticed when Eduardo Abdi slipped into that crowd and disappeared. 

☠   ☠   ☠

In the Cadillac, driving south on Buchanan, Rims was completely out of sorts. 

"This be my first sting," he said to Judo, "and you done fuck it up. You done make it look like a shitass street robbery by taking that devil's money. Like, we don't be 'posed to steal, man." 

"The brother's right," said Skullcap, at the wheel. 

"Shit, man, you did it," Judo retorted. "Or maybe you done forgot the money bag from that store. 'Member, you said it was going into the Death Angels' treasury?" 

"That's different, man." Skullcap defended himself at once. "If you took the money for the treasury, that's different. Is that what you did?" 

Judo tried desperately to think of some way to hedge, to evade a direct answer, to keep some of the money for himself. But they were at a stoplight  and  Skullcaps eyes were riveted on him in the rearview mirror. 

"Yeah, man, that's what I did," he said reluctantly. 

"How much you get?" Skullcap asked. 

"Shit, man, I don't know!" Judo snapped. "I didn't stop to count the fucking stuff—" 

Then he suddenly realized that he could salvage some of the money for himself. He had grabbed two rolls of bills from that sucker. Unless Rims had seen him take both of them, all he had to do was just hand over one. In the darkness of the back seat, he surreptitiously felt in each coat pocket, trying to determine which roll was the smallest. 

When the light changed, Skullcap pulled around the corner on Duboce Avenue and parked. 

"Let's see the money," he said. 

Judo randomly selected one pocket and pulled out the roll of currency it held. He passed it forward to Skullcap, who examined it in the light of the dashboard. 

"Pesos!" Skullcap literally spat. A fine spray of spittle landed on Rims's left hand. The big man wiped it off in disgust. "Fucking Mexican pesos!" Skullcap continued in mixed anger and incredulity. "Shit, man, this stuff don't be worth more than twenty dollars in American money." 

"What the fuck you mean?" Judo demanded. "You got a whole fucking handful of money there!" As long as he had to give it up, he wanted some decent credit for putting it into the Death Angels' treasury. Twenty dollars would not buy much credit. "Got to be more than twenty bucks there!" he insisted. 

"Hey, motherfucker, don't tell me," Skullcap said. "I be from Texas, remember? I know how much this greaser money is worth. It's worth shit, that's what it's worth." 

Son of a bitch, Judo thought. That meant he had another roll of shit in his other pocket. Motherfucker. He had hoped to score good so he could impress his new girlfriend. 

"Do this mean I stung a Mesican?" Rims asked almost petulantly. "I don't be get no credit for no sting?" 

"Hey, you going to get credit, brother," Skullcap said in as gentle a voice as Judo had ever heard him use. Skullcap obviously liked Rims. "That sucker was white, brother, and I'm going to witness it for you. Nobody going to do you out of that sting. " 

"Good," Rims said, nodding. "Good. Good." He repeated the word several times, grinning at Skullcap, sorry now that he had been so quick to wipe away his new friend's spit. 

Skullcap started the car and pulled away from the curb. "Want to try another one?" he asked. He glanced in the mirror at Judo. "You about ready to get one, brother?" 

"Not tonight, man," Judo said. "I ain't in the mood no more. That Mexican money done got me upset." It was the best excuse he could think of. 

"Sure it has," Skullcap replied knowingly. He was beginning to understand what Head had said about this man not having the heart to be a true Death Angel. 

"Run me up Webster a few blocks and drop me off, man," Judo said. "I got someplace to go." His new girlfriend had an apartment on Webster. 

As they drove north again, they all heard the sound of another siren speeding toward the projects parking lot. 

At the scene of the shooting, Paul Dancik was still stretched out across the sidewalk, his feet pointing toward the curb. A Central Ambulance unit had responded to the call and a medic named Michaud was bent over the body. When he got up, he said, officially, "Okay, he's dead." Officer Al Lambert logged the time of the pronouncement at 2150 hours—ten minutes before ten. Lieutenant Klapp and Sergeant Racin of the Northern District had arrived to take charge of the physical scene, while Lieutenant Ellis, along with Inspectors Podesta and Schneider, of Homicide, responded to take charge of the investigation itself. 

A Photo Lab inspector named Sleadd and a Crime Lab man named Ken Moses went to work as soon as the medic got out of the way. The first thing the Crime Lab man did was draw circles around three brass shell casings that were found on the ground between the pay phone and the point where the victim had staggered and fallen. 

"Look like thirty-twos," he said, half to himself. 

The Photo Lab man began to flash pictures from all angles. Each flash lighted the scene in stark, deathlike white, for a split instant making the living and the dead look the same. 

In the nearby small crowd, Officer James Long looked for Eduardo Abdi. The little witness was nowhere to be found. 

Skullcap stopped the car in the middle of a block on Webster. The sound of two more sirens was splitting the night silence. The men could not tell if they were heading toward the projects or not. 

"Go on, take off, man," Skullcap said urgently. "You on your own now." 

Judo got out of the car and walked quickly away from it. He did not even say good-bye to his friend Rims, whose eyes were darting nervously back and forth as if he expected a battalion of police to descend on him at any second. Nor did Judo think to get his gun back from Rims. He just got away from the car and its two remaining occupants as fast as he could. 

Crossing the sidewalk, Judo hurried past a few doors, then ducked into the entrance of a convenient apartment building. He stood just inside the doorway, hiding, until the Cadillac proceeded down the block and around the corner. Then he came back out and started walking toward the apartment of his new girl. 

Crazy motherfuckers, he thought, now that he was away from his friends. He had been happy to see Rims when the moon faced man got out of San Quentin, but now that he saw him in the company of Skullcap, he realized that Rims was as fucked up as the rest of them. I got to find a way to get shed of these mothers, he told himself. Else I be ending up like they be. 

He was almost to the corner when he suddenly remembered the other roll of currency he had taken off the white devil. Mexican pesos, he thought. Shit. He wondered where he would be able to trade it for American money. Even if he did only get twenty bucks for it, that was better than nothing. He stopped now in the light of a streetlamp to examine the money. Looking at it, his eyes got very wide. 

Motherfucker! It wasn't pesos, it was fucking dollars! 

Quickly, trembling, he counted it: 50—100—120—140—160 —200—250— Judo shoved the money back into his pocket and hurried down the street. 

He was exhilarated. His face split into a wide grin. 

Midway down the block, he paused and gave the finger to the general direction in which the Cadillac had gone. 

Back at the death scene, a man named Smith from the San Francisco coroner's office arrived and took charge of the mortal remains of Paul Roman Dancik. He wrote out a receipt for the body and gave it to Officers Long and Lambert. Dancik was loaded into the coroner's panel truck and taken away to the morgue. 

At the end of Day Fifty-three, there were six victims. 

Quita Hague, hacked to death.

Richard Hague, out of the hospital, his butchered face now horribly scarred. 

Ellen Linder, raped, ravaged, threatened with death—and soon to have to decide whether to allow her attacker to escape formal punishment for what he had done to her. 

Frances Rose, her face blown apart by close-range gunshots. 

Saleem Erakat, tied up and executed with a single shot behind the ear. 

And Paul Dancik, shot three times in the chest as he attempted to use a public telephone at the edge of a housing project parking lot.

Day 55

Gus Coreris and John Fotinos were concentrating heavily on the Saleem Erakat case. Erakat had been dead for eighteen days. So far they had nothing but suspicions and evidence which they could not correlate with suspects. 

"I still say it was Muslims," Fotinos insisted, emphasizing a hunch he had developed early on in the initial investigation. He based it mainly on the description of the black man seen at the front door by Joaquin Calles. "If it had just been some punk stickup guys, they wouldn't have been so neatly dressed and well groomed. Got to be Muslims." 

"Muslims don't steal," said Coreris. 

"Everybody steals," Fotinos retorted. 

"Orthodox Greeks don't," said Coreris. 

"That's different," Fotinos allowed. 

The two detectives were  perusing Crime Lab reports on the Erakat case. Coreris scanned the list of physical evidence. It was lengthy—all the items found in close proximity to the victim which might yield fingerprints: a small loaf of bread, four size AA Eveready batteries, a six-pack of Hamm's beer, a can of Franco American Beef Gravy, a light bulb, a two-ounce jar of Sanka instant coffee, two empty Coke bottles — ad infinitum. Plus the open-closed sign from the door. Miscellaneous papers from the table in the back room. One expended .32-caliber bullet casing. And the victim's wallet, which had been turned over to Homicide by the municipal bus line. 

The Erakat death scene had been processed for latent fingerprints, and numerous usable prints had been developed—but so far none of them had been matched to anyone whose prints were on file. Fotinos and Coreris were concentrating on a palm print that had been lifted from the inside doorknob in the tiny bathroom where the body was found. When they had a hunch who the palm print might belong to, they filled out a Form 64 and sent it down to the crime lab. Form 64 was a request for any laboratory examination involving latent prints, firearms, laundry or dry-cleaning marks, tool marks, documents, blood, hair, semen, paint, or other matter which was capable of being identified, evaluated, and compared. So far Coreris and Fotinos had sent in a number of Form 64s on the palm print, with no positive results. 

"Harold George came back negative," said Fotinos, tossing the report onto a pile. "John Hunter, negative." Another toss. "Leroy Doctor, negative. Earbie Moore, negative." He tossed them all onto the pile. "At this rate, we'll soon eliminate every creep in the city." 

"I had a lot of hope for the Earbie Moore hunch," said Coreris. "Who made the report on the print?" 

Fotinos looked at the typed name and scrawled signature at the bottom of the Form 10—Laboratory Results of Examination. The name was Mitchell L. Luksich. 

"Mitch Luksich," said Fotinos. "Why? You think he might have made a mistake?" 

"Shit, no," said Coreris. "Luksich don't make mistakes." 

In the basement of the Hall of Justice, in a cubicle barely large enough for his six-foot-seven-inch, 230-pound frame, Mitch Luksich was bent over a microscope examining the striations on two spent slugs: the microscopic marks etched into the body of a slug as it passes through the barrel of a weapon. Infinitesimal, these marks are as distinctive as human fingerprints: no two are alike.

At twenty-nine, Mitch Luksich was one of the most qualified firearms experts in the business. A biology graduate from San Francisco State College, he had been a crime lab employee for the SFPD for seven years. He was an individualist, wearing cowboy boots and smoking foul-smelling cheroots in urbane San Francisco. Articulate and confident, he could talk for hours about firearms; he had a personal collection worth more than half a million dollars, and spent nearly every weekend traveling to gun shows all over the country to buy, sell, and trade weapons. He made far more money bartering old guns than he did as a civil servant, but his job was as important to him as his hobby, because he was a man of science and nothing gave him greater pleasure than to locate infallible truths through the lenses of a microscope. 

As he was doing now. 

On a counter beside his microscope was a cellophane envelope marked "Lab. 73-9082" with the name "Dancik" on it. It contained three spent shell casings and two spent slugs which had been removed from the body of Paul Dancik. The third slug taken from his body was under Luksich's microscope. Also under the microscope was another slug from another cellophane envelope, that Luksich was carefully examining, slowly and carefully comparing, slowly and carefully—and patiently, always patiently—matching the minute striations. 

When he was finished, and had satisfied himself that he was absolutely, scientifically correct, he picked up the phone and called Homicide. 

"Gus, Mitch Luksich," he said when Coreris answered. "I just made a match of the slug the coroner took out of Saleem Erakat's head. It was fired from the same gun that killed a fellow named Dancik who was shot on the street night before last." 

Luksich had no way of knowing it as he spoke, but his phone call was the first line in a terrible pattern yet to be drawn. 

☠   ☪   ☠

J. C. Simon strutted into a coffee shop on Market Street, a swashbuckler now in work clothes. Manuel Moore lumbered in behind him. They sat in a booth next to the window. J.C. unfolded a Chronicle, took out the sports section, and pushed the rest of the paper to Manuel. Self-consciously, Manuel accepted it.

J.C. began to emote on the second Ali-Frazier fight, which was six weeks away. "Ali going to ruin that motherfucking Frazier," he predicted. "Ali got Allah behind him. He got the prayers of every Muslim in the world going for him. Frazier's nothing but a white nigger. Muhammad will destroy him!" 

"Frazier awful tough," Manuel said dubiously. "He like a fire- plug." 

"Don't mean shit," J.C. assured him. "Ali going to hit all over him. Then, after he beat Frazier, he going to go after George Foreman. That be when he win the title back." 

"Foreman awful tough," said Manual. "And big." 

"Size don't mean nothing to Ali," J.C. said disparagingly. 

They ordered milk and doughnuts. While they ate, J.C. continued to scan the sports pages. He noticed that Manuel was not reading the rest of the paper. 

"You want the sports, brother?" he asked. "I can read another part." 

"No, man, that's okay." Manuel looked out the window, embarrassed. 

"What's the matter, brother? Something wrong?" 

"No, everything be cool," Manuel said. 

But there was something in his voice—a strain, a pull—that told J.C. it was not so. He put aside the paper in concern. 

"Listen, man," he said quietly, "if you got a problem, you can tell me about it, you dig? I mean, we brothers, see? We got to share things and help each other. I mean, people like us, if we don't got each other, we got nobody. We don't survive. Now what's bothering your ass?" 

Manuel sighed quietly. "I can't read," he said. 

J.C.'s eyebrows went up. "No shit? I mean, for real? You can't read nothing?" 

"Nothing but a few things. Signs and stuff like that. And my name." 

"How far did you get in school?" 

"Second year high." 

"Without reading?" 

"Yeah. Teachers just kept on passing me." 

"Well, kiss my black ass," J.C. said in astonishment. "Second year high school without being able to read." He shook his head. "The fucking white man's educational system. What about the two times you were in the joint? Didn't they try to get you to go to school?" 

Manuel shook his head. "One counselor say it be too late for me. Say my learning motor—something like that—done got too. old." 

"He's full of shit," J.C. said almost viciously. "Fucking white man just don't want no black men educated. Nobody ever too old to learn." 

He leaned forward eagerly and touched Manuel's hand. "Listen, brother, you want to learn to read?" 

Manuel blinked rapidly several times. "S-s-sure." 

"Then I'm gonna teach you how, man. We'll start tonight; lesson number one tonight. Right after we get back." 

"Get back from where? Where we going to?" 

"We going out tonight," J.C. said. 

His face had become a cold mask. 

☠   ☠   ☠

Seven weeks after she had been assaulted and raped by Jesse Lee Cooks, Ellen Linder met with Inspector John T. O'Shea and Assistant District Attorney Robert Podesta in the latter's office in the Hall of Justice. Podesta, one of the rising young attorneys in the DA's office, was not related to Inspector Podesta, of Homicide, who was then working the Dancik killing. 

"Miss Linder, as you know," said Podesta, "the man who assaulted you, Jesse Lee Cooks, has been in custody for the past six weeks on a homicide charge. Through his attorney, he has tentatively agreed to plead guilty to first-degree murder if we will agree not to prosecute him on the four charges placed against him for the incident in which you were involved. Those charges are kidnapping, rape, oral copulation, and aggravated assault. We'd like to know if you would agree to this." 

"I'm not sure," Ellen Linder said hesitantly. "Are you saying that this man won't be punished at all for what he did to me?" 

"Not exactly," said Inspector O'Shea. 

"He'll receive the same amount of punishment no matter how many charges there are against him. The only difference is that this way we'll get him back into prison faster, and it'll cost the taxpayers less to do it." 

Ellen studied O'Shea thoughtfully. He was the Sex Detail officer who had investigated her case. A week after her assault, he had been watching television and had seen Jesse Lee Cooks being put into a radio car at the scene of the Frances Rose killing. The description Ellen had given him of her attacker had come at once to the surface of his mind. On a hunch, he had gone downtown at once and secured photographs of Cooks. Ellen had identified them the same night. 

Now she was being asked not to prosecute Cooks for what he had done to her. Just let all those hours of terror and anger pass into the forgotten, as if they never happened. 

"Let me explain it this way, Miss Linder," said Podesta. "Since there is no longer a death penalty in California, the most severe sentence Cooks can receive for any crime is life imprisonment. Since he is a twice-convicted felon who would be pleading guilty to first-degree murder, there is no question that he will get exactly that. Now, even if we tried him on the four charges stemming from your assault, he would still get the same sentence—life." 

"Do you think you could convict him for the things that he did to me?" Ellen asked. 

"In my opinion, definitely," Podesta said. "I certainly don't want to mislead you in that respect. The chances of a successful conviction on our part are very high. But again I have to point out that even with a conviction—a conviction on all charges—the court will still merge the sentence with that given for the murder charge." 

Ellen Linder nodded slowly. "So it really doesn't matter what he did to me?" 

"In a way, no," said O'Shea. "Not as far as punishment goes. Not after what he did to Frances Rose." 

Ellen Linder thought it over. She finally agreed to it. 

"But only on condition that his guilty plea is accepted," she specified. "Only on condition that he goes to prison for the rest of his life." 

"There's no question that he will receive a life sentence," Podesta assured her. 

When Ellen Linder left Podesta's office that day, she felt satisfied that justice had been done. Although it did not seem quite right that, after what she had gone through, it should all be summarily dismissed like that—as if it never happened; and it did not seem altogether just that even though Cooks was going to receive the maximum sentence allowable, none of it would be for what he had done to her; she nevertheless resigned herself to the fact that none of it really mattered, not as long as Cooks would spend the rest of his life in prison. 

What she did not realize was that in California there was no such thing as a firm life sentence. Sentences in California—even supposed life sentences—tend to be quite flexible. California had a bad habit of letting its convicted killers out to kill again. 

Arthur Agnos was a pleasant-looking man of thirty-five, cleancut, well-groomed, a Greek-American of ambition, intelligence, and very definite upward mobility. He was employed as a consultant—read "troubleshooter"—to the California State Legislature's Joint Commission on Aging. A liberal, he was sincerely dedicated to working with senior citizens, blacks, low-income families, in any blighted or needy area in which he felt he could serve. He was a doer rather than a talker. 

On the evening of Thursday, December 13, 1973, he left his home at 637 Connecticut Street and drove in his Volkswagen a short distance to the 900 block on Wisconsin Street. He was to attend a meeting there of residents of a public housing development. The topic of discussion was to be the necessity of having a new health clinic to serve the area. Agnos was strongly in favor of such a clinic. As he drove toward the meeting place, he developed in his mind as many reasons as he could think of to support that position. 

The time was 7:00 p.m. 

Skullcap and Rims started prowling at eight o'clock. In the borrowed Cadillac again, they drove south on the Bayshore Freeway. 

Rims was worried because Judo was not with them. He still had Judo's gun. "Maybe it don't be right for us to use his gun when he don't be along," Rims fretted. 

"Don't matter whether he's here or not," Skullcap said. "And it don't matter who the gun belong to, long as he's a brother."

"Yeah, but what if we sting with it, then when he find out, he be pissed?" 

"Let him," Skullcap replied with easy confidence. "Nothing he can do about it." 

"He tough," Rims reminded his friend. "He know all that judo shit." 

"Shit is right," Skullcap said derisively. "That's about all it is: a lot of shit. Man, I can take him, and I don't know none of that shit." 

"You can take him?" 

"Bet your sweet ass I can, baby. You probably can too. That motherfucker ain't half as bad as he's got people thinking he is." 

"I don't think I want to fuck with him," Rims decided. 

"Don't nobody want to fuck with him. The dude's a brother, whether anybody likes him or not. He just been slow developing the kind of heart a true Death Angel needs. Which means we got to help him along when we can. Meanwhile, he got no complaint if you use his piece to develop your own heart. So don't sweat about it, hear?" 

Rims sighed a heavy sigh and drummed the thick fingers of one hand on his knee. He would try to take his friend's advice. Clearly, he did not expect it to be easy. 

Skullcap got off the freeway at Army Street and doubled back, driving up Kansas Street toward the Potrero Hill district. 

Art Agnos left the Potrero Hill health committee meeting with a good feeling. The session had been very friendly and, in his estimation, productive. He had even been asked to run for a position on the board of directors; the people liked him that well. 

As he walked toward his car, two women came after him and caught up with him under a streetlight. They were residents whom he had seen at the meeting; both were named Susoeff and they lived in the next block. Agnos, smiling as he usually did, stopped to talk with them. 

None of them paid any attention to the black Cadillac as it drove slowly by and pulled to the curb near the corner. 

Skullcap got out and walked back toward where the white man and two white women were talking. His mind raced as he planned what to do. He had a chance now to do three stings at once—two of them women. That would put him well in the lead for the next Death Angel wings. But he had to do it just right. The women were facing him as he walked toward them; they had already glanced up and noticed him. The man's back was to him, and the man had not turned around, probably did not even know he was coming. The thing to do was get the man first, in the back, before he knew what was happening. Then pick off the two women. Quick and easy. 

Nothing to it, he told himself. He slipped Judo's gun from his pocket and held it next to his thigh. Even as he walked toward premeditated murder victims, he still had the slight strut. Going to kill the blue-eyed motherfuckers, he thought. 

Skullcap walked directly up to Art Agnos and shot him twice in the back. Agnos felt as if someone had punched him. He whirled around to face his assailant. What he saw was a handsome black man who was staring blankly at him. The man did not blink. His expression carried no sneer, nothing at all ugly. He appeared to Agnos to be in some kind of state. 

Skullcap froze where he stood. Something was wrong: the white devil was not falling. Instead, he had turned around and was staring back at him — 

What the fuck was this? 

Skullcap felt his bowels churn. Cold sweat popped out along the length of his spine. The two white women were backing away; they appeared to be shrieking, but Skullcap heard no sounds coming from them: his ears suddenly seemed blocked. The smell of burned nitrate from the two bullets he had fired was heavy in his nostrils. Everything around him started to become hazy, cloudy, slow: like a dream sequence in a movie. 

And still the motherfucker stood there! Two bullets in him and he would not fall down. Staring at him. 

A ball of fear rose in Skullcap's chest. He almost threw the gun away from him, as he would a disgusting bug that had landed in his hand. But he was too frightened even for that. 

With a whimper, he turned and ran. 

Art Agnos still did not fall. Under his coat, the back of his shirt was slowly being saturated by a widening spot of blood. The dull, punch like feeling was becoming a burning pain. But he stayed on his feet. Presently he felt supporting hands take hold of his arms. What seemed like a faraway voice was urging, "Bring him over here! Get him inside!" 

He was half led, half helped, across the street and into someone's house. It was a relief to feel carpet under his feet; at least now if he fell it would not be on concrete. 

And fall he finally did. The people helping him felt his legs go out under him. His body went limp. Gently they laid him on the living room floor while someone called the police and an ambulance. Meanwhile, the members of the black family whose home he was in did what they could to make him comfortable. 

In the Cadillac, Skullcap and Rims were on the Bayshore Freeway again, speeding north. Rims was driving this time. Skullcap sat beside him, talking out loud, but more to himself than to Rims. 

"Motherfucker stood there! Wouldn't fall! Stood there looking at me! Looking at my face! White motherfucking devil!" 

"Man just calm down now," Rims said excitedly, running his words together in a nervous string. He gripped the steering wheel almost desperately. As he drove, he threw quick glances at Skullcap. "Don't get so  uptight on me man!" he said. There was a plea in his voice. Rims needed a calming influence, not a strung-out madman.

"Never saw nothing like it," Skullcap said, ignoring Rims as if he had not spoken, was not nervous, did not need his composure to drive the big, unfamiliar car. "Two slugs and the motherfucker did hot even go down." Furiously he slammed a fist into the palm of his hand. It made a loud noise — smack!—startling Rims. "And I missed getting those two women!" Skullcap suddenly remembered. "Motherfucker!" 

"Don't be worrying  none about it," Rims spurted like a gush of steam.''That sucker gonna die. I know he gonna die. You still gonna get one sting anyways.'' 

"What make you so sure?" Skullcap asked. "How you know he gonna die?" 

"Shitman," said Rims. Then his voice slowed down. "I know that man has gots to die. Man don't live with two bullets in him."

Skullcap thought about it. Rims was right; somebody shot twice in the back at close range like that had to die. The sucker must have suffered some kind of delayed reaction; maybe he died standing up, then fell. At any rate, Rims had a point: Skullcap would still get credit for one sting. That was not as impressive as three, but it was better than nothing. He reached over and slapped Rims fondly on the knee. 

"You right, brother. I'm going to calm down. No sense getting uptight. We out here to just take care of business. I got one for to- night; now we got to go find one for you." Skullcap looked at the next freeway sign: Oak Street. "Get off at the next ramp," he said. 

In an apartment at 651 Scott Street, three blocks north of Oak, Marietta DiGirolamo was getting ready to go out. She had been waiting all evening for her boyfriend and sometimes roommate, Paul Wilson; now it was past nine o'clock and she was tired of waiting. She was going to take a walk, maybe get a drink. 

Marietta DiGirolamo was thirty-one years old. Five feet one inch tall, she bordered on fleshiness at 125 pounds. But her figure was nicely proportioned and she had good breasts. Her hair was thick and dark, falling well below her shoulders in back. In profile, she looked very much like the actress Ellen Burstyn. 

At her bathroom mirror, Marietta applied a touch of coloring to her already dark eyebrows and leaned forward closely to examine the corners of her upper lip. For years she had fought an on-again, off-again battle with dark lip hair, which she blamed on her Mediterranean heritage; but lately she had been more conscientious about keeping it bleached or removed. That was because of her boyfriend, Paul Wilson. Paul liked her face completely clear of all dark hair. He wanted her as smooth and creamy as possible. 

Idly Marietta wondered if all black men were like that about white women. 

🔖   🔖   🔖

Back in the Potrero Hill area, Art Agnos had been removed by ambulance and taken to Mission Emergency Hospital. Police officers Michael Thompson and Theodore Schlink III, using flashlights, were searching the sidewalk, gutter, and street where the victim had been shot.

"Here's one," said Schlink, bending to pick up a spent shell casing. "Matter of fact, here's two," he amended, seeing a second one as he reached for the first. 

"And here's one of the slugs," said Thompson. He retrieved a spent copper bullet from the curb. 

The two officers continued their search for a few minutes, then gave it up. "The other one must still be in him," Schlink guessed. 

"Let's get over to Mission and see if he's conscious yet," suggested Thompson. 

The two officers drove to the emergency hospital. When they got there, however, they were not permitted to interview Agnos. He had just been wheeled out of the X-ray lab and was being prepped for surgery. 

Marietta DiGirolamo walked three blocks south from her apartment, then turned on Haight Street and walked over to Divisadero, thinking she might find her boyfriend in one of the neighborhood bars. As she walked, she turned up the collar of her coat against a chill breeze coming in off the bay. 

The black Cadillac was cruising south on Divisadero when Skullcap spotted her. "There's a nice female white devil for you, brother," he said. "Pull over." 

Rims pulled to the curb and Skullcap motioned for him to get out. He slipped Judo's gun to the moon faced black. 

"Go get her, baby," he said, sliding into the driver's seat. "I'll pull right around the corner and keep the engine running." 

"I'll be get her," Rims said determinedly. "Fucking white bitch gonna die." 

Rims crossed the street and walked toward Marietta DiGirolamo. She stopped and looked in a shop window, then she started toward him again. He mentally measured her pace. At the speed they were both walking, they would meet near the middle of the block. Or so he thought. Then Marietta fooled him. Abruptly she turned and started back in the direction from which she had come. Rims stopped and his mouth dropped open. 

He blinked rapidly several times. What the fuck she doing? he asked himself. For a brief moment, his entire plan was disrupted by the white woman's sudden change of direction. So slowly did Rims respond to this surprise turn of events that he almost aborted. He actually took a tentative step back toward where the car had been, then he saw Skullcap drive past on his way to the corner. Quickly he hurried after the woman. 

Marietta stopped again to look in the same store window. It was a candle shop; the window was filled not only with decorative candles but also displays of incense, teas, herbs, and lotions. After looking in the window a second time, Marietta again reversed her course and resumed walking back toward Rims. You white evil bitch! Rims thought. He was infuriated at the way she kept changing direction. In his simple mind, he took it as something she was doing purposely to distract and confuse him. 

They were almost upon one another now: the unsuspecting white woman, drawing her collar closed against the evening air; the bull bodied young black, eyes now wide and unblinking behind his round, gold glasses. They moved abreast of each other, as if to pass. 

Rims suddenly shoved her into the doorway of a barbershop. He stepped in after her and raised the gun. Her face flashed anger at being shoved. "What the hell do you think you're doing?" she snapped. 

Rims shot her twice in the chest. Her body jerked with the impact of each bullet. When the second one hit her, she spun around, facing the door. Rims fired again, shooting her once in the back. 

Marietta started to fall back out of the doorway. 

Rims turned and ran down to the corner. 

🔖   🔖   🔖

William Bryan, in the city from Sonoma, fifty-five miles north, was stopped for the light at Haight and Divisadero. He saw Rims and Marietta in the doorway, saw Rims fire the shots and saw Marietta lurch backward out of the doorway and fall to the sidewalk. Rims ran around the corner. A municipal minibus started along the street in the same direction he was running. Bryan saw several people tentatively approach the fallen victim, so he quickly decided to follow the man who had shot her. As soon as the light changed, he made a left turn and pulled as close to the rear of the minibus as he could. He edged out over  the  centerline to look past it. By that time, the running black man had disappeared.

The minibus driver must have seen where he went, Bryan thought. Tooling his car around, he caught up with the bus. He yelled over at the driver. 

"Did you see where that guy went?" 

"What guy?" asked the driver. 

"The guy that was running! He shot a woman back there!" 

The driver shrugged. "I didn't see no guy running." 

Didn't see no guy running? He must drive that bus with his eyes closed. 

"Listen," said Bryan, "a woman was just shot back there. Will you use your radio to call the police?" 

The driver shook his head. "There are a lot of pay phones around; you'll have to use one of them." He closed the door of the bus and drove away. 

William Bryan stared after him incredulously. 

Another person who saw Rims shoot Marietta DiGirolamo was Gerald Bjork. On his way home from the Gold Cane cocktail lounge where he had been drinking beer with a friend, he was walking along Haight Street and had just turned the corner to go down Divisadero when he heard the first shot. He whirled around just in time to see Rims fire the second shot. Then he watched, stunned, as the third shot was fired and the woman fell out of the doorway and pitched backward to the sidewalk. 

Bjork watched Rims dash around the corner and run down Haight. He saw the minibus proceed along Haight, saw William Bryan's car make a left turn and pull up behind it. He could see the black man running for perhaps a hundred feet, then Bjork lost sight of him. 

Bjork started to cross the street to where the victim was, but changed his mind. This was not his business. 

He walked on home instead. 

As soon as Officers Lloyd Ritter and Frank Peda arrived at the scene, they summoned a Code Three ambulance and had Marietta DiGirolamo transported to Mission Emergency Hospital. She was unconscious during the entire trip. 

After the victim was taken away, the usual routine followed. A lieutenant was called to supervise the crime scene; he was Lieutenant Joseph Lordan, platoon commander of Park Station. The Crime Lab was notified; Inspector Moses responded to the scene. The Photo Lab: Inspector Sleadd. Homicide: Inspectors Podesta and Schneider. 

Three spent cartridge casings were found on the sidewalk and turned over to Moses. From a small purple cloth purse Marietta had been carrying, her identification and address were determined. 

"Get Sergeant Rivas out here to go with you to the victim's address," Lieutenant Lordan instructed Ritter and Peda. 

The officers, along with Rivas, drove to the Scott Street address that Marietta had left barely an hour earlier. No one answered the door to her apartment, number three. They tried number four. A black woman named Stella Burton came out and talked with them. She told them about Marietta's black boyfriend, Paul Wilson, describing him as six two, 180 pounds, short hair, about thirty-five. The officers exchanged glances. William Bryan and other witnesses had described the assailant as six feet to six two, medium build, about thirty years old, wearing a cap. Ritter and Peda almost read each other's thoughts: Maybe we lucked out on this one. 

Since the door to apartment three was open, the officers entered to look for the name of a next of kin or friend. They did not find a name, but they did find six unpaid traffic warrants issued to Paul Wilson. 

"Leave them there," Rivas said. "We'll let the morning shift come back and get him." 

At Mission Emergency Hospital, Marietta DiGirolamo was quickly wheeled inside and examined by Dr. Noyes of the night staff. He checked her thoroughly for vital signs. There were none. 

"Dead on arrival," he told the ambulance steward. 

In another section of the hospital, Arthur Agnos was in a surgical field being operated on by a team of doctors. His spleen had already been removed and the surgeons were now attempting to repair his punctured kidney. They would then turn to his collapsed lung. 

At the end of Day Fifty-five, there were eight victims.

Quita Hague, hacked to death. 

Richard Hague, his face horribly scarred. 

Ellen Linder, raped, ravaged, threatened with death—and her ordeal not even formally charged to the person who did them to her. 

Frances Rose, her face blown apart by close-range gunshots. 

Saleem Erakat, tied up and executed with a single shot behind the right ear. 

Paul Dancik, shot down as he attempted to use a public telephone. 

Arthur Agnos, his internal organs—lungs, spleen, kidney—torn apart by two bullets in the back. 

And Marietta DiGirolamo, thrown into a doorway and shot to death as she walked down the street.

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Day62
128S