Part 5: Zebra:The True Account of the 179 Days of Terror in San Francisco...Day 62...Day 64

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

Day 62

In the Potrero Hill district, fourteen black men were involved in a different kind of meeting. 

It was exactly one week after the shooting of Arthur Agnos. The fourteen men were residents of the area. Some were young, some old, some working, some retired or unemployed, some had families, a few did not. Besides being black and living in the same neighborhood, they had one other thing in common: they were all angry. 

"Just when we're starting to get something positive going in this area," one of the older men said, "some low-life nigger has to come down here and shoot a white man." 

"He wasn't white, he was Greek," a younger man said. It got a few laughs, but drew only rancor from the older man. 

"We're not here to make jokes, lad," he said sternly. "We're here to see if we can offset what happened, if we can make up for it in some way so that any help we might have received in support of our neighborhood clinic will not be withheld because we've been made to look like we belong in the jungle. Does anyone have any suggestions?" 

"Yeah, I've got one," another of the younger men said, with obvious bitterness. "Let's ask for the clinic on the basis of neighborhood need, and not worry about some black motherfucker who comes down here and shoots somebody. We got no control over that." 

"Well, perhaps we should get control then," his senior said. "Here's a liberal white man who can be of great help to the betterment of this area for black and white. Not only can he help, but he wants to help. He has a genuine, sincere desire to help minorities—whether they be minorities of color, like us; minorities of age, like our juveniles and our senior citizens; or any other deprived group needing help. So what happens? He comes to one of our meetings and promptly gets shot by some wild-assed nigger with a Saturday night special." 

"That kind of stuff is the police's business, not ours," said another of the men. 

"Right on! We're not responsible for crime in the goddamned streets!" said another. 

"We are when they're our streets," the older man said. "And when our people are committing the crimes." 

"Hey, man, don't start with that 'our people' shit. Just because they're black don't make them my people. I don't have nothing in common with junkies, pimps, welfare cheats, Black Muslims, or any other such shit. I work, I support my family, I don't ask for nothing, and I don't give nothing." 

"You still can't paint your face white, man. And every time a nigger does something violent to a white, you gonna pay for it — one way or another." 

"I'll be goddamned if that's so!" 

"And I'll be goddamned if it isn't. Let me ask you a question. Has anything been done about the neighborhood health clinic since last week's meeting? Has any of the action we proposed been carried out? Anything at all?" The speaker looked around the room, his eyes flicking from face to face. No one answered him. "No, it hasn't," he answered himself. "Nothing has been done—and nothing will be done. The meeting might as well have not been held, because the second that insane nigger pulled the trigger, everything we had accomplished for us and for our neighborhood up to that point went into limbo."

"Well, what the fuck do you want us to do about it, man? Patrol the streets with our own Saturday night specials?" 

"I wish to Christ we could. But it would never be permitted. Still, we have to do something. We must show our whites—the whites that we have to live and work with—that we as blacks are not to be classed with these street killers." 

"Do you have any suggestions?" 

"I have one. I propose that we form a bodyguard detail, and that on the night of our meetings we assign blacks to protect the whites that attend." 

"Shit, man, that would just be wasted effort," another of the older men said. "Chances are, whoever shot Art Agnos won't ever come back around here again." 

"That doesn't matter. Point is, it would look good. And the whites — our whites—would automatically disassociate us from any of the street violence." 

"Won't it seem kind of peculiar to the other blacks?" a man in the corner asked. "Like maybe we're siding with white against them?" 

"To a few I'm sure it will. But eventually they'll realize that it's for the good of the neighborhood as a whole—black and white." He looked around for more comments. There were none. "Shall we take a vote on it?" 

There was a show of hands. It was unanimous: blacks would guard whites in the Potrero Hill district. 

"Maybe it won't be for long," said one of the men after the meeting. "Maybe the cops will catch the crazy motherfuckers that did it." 

👮   👮   👮

The police, as usual, were trying. Methodically, relentlessly, they had been following up every lead they had for a week. 

At two o'clock in the morning following Marietta DiGirolamo's death, Sergeant Roger Maher and Officer Ronald Morehen had her apartment building staked out waiting for her black boyfriend, Paul Wilson, to show up. He arrived shortly after two. They followed him into the lobby and caught up with him at the top of the stairs. They were cautious; his description was too close to the killer's for comfort. As they approached him, he heard them and turned.

"I'm E. D. Moore," he said. "I understand the police are looking for me." 

"Mr. Moore," said Sergeant Maher, "do you also use the name Paul Wilson?" 

"Yes, I do. I understand that my wife has been shot." 

"A Marietta DiGirolamo has been shot, Mr. Wilson. We'd like you to come down to Park Station with us regarding that matter." 

"Am I under arrest?" 

"No, sir, not at this time. But we are going to request that you allow us to search your person for weapons only, nothing else." 

Moore permitted a quick pat-down with no objection. Then Maher and Morehen escorted him to Park Station. They turned him over to Schneider and Podesta of Homicide. The two homicide inspectors questioned him at length. Upon verification of what he told them, they satisfied themselves that he was not the killer. They subsequently turned him back over to the uniformed officers. 

"You are under arrest now, Mr. Moore—or Mr. Wilson, whichever is correct. There are twelve outstanding traffic warrants against you." 

Marietta DiGirolamo's boyfriend was booked and held in lieu of more than $300 in fines. 

Mitch Luksich was at his microscope again, this time with six new specimens to examine: the three spent shell casings found at the scene of the Marietta DiGirolamo killing, and the single spent slug and two shell casings picked up where Art Agnos had been shot. As Luksich worked, he occasionally made an audible but unintelligible sound: a low, modified grunt, or a not-quite-silent intake of breath. Each time he did so, Gus Coreris and John Fotinos, waiting just outside his cubicle, looked over expectantly, thinking that he might be ready to speak. When he continued to work without even looking at them, they exchanged impatient glances and resumed their vigil. Coreris had a strained look on his face that said, Goddamn it, why does everything take so long? Fotinos, just as impatient but showing it far less, simply shook his head once, then tried to think of something else. Something pleasant. Like his youngest daughter, Teresa, now eleven, who had come along after he and Barbara thought they had all the family they would ever have. Three fine kids: Elizabeth, thirteen; Christine, eleven; Anthony eight—then surprise! Another one. Twelve more years of parochial school tuition that he had not planned on. But the first time he had looked at the new baby, he had known—as he had with the others—that she would be worth it. In the Fotinos household, family pride and love were not measured monetarily. 

In the cubicle, Luksich continued to work. He matched the ejector marks on each case. Not satisfied with just that, he compared a series of fine, very minute machining cut impressions made by the firing pin. Also the amount of "bulging" or expansion common to each of the cases, and a slight protrusion of the primer out of its pocket on each one—both of which characteristics indicated to Luksich ultra trained eye that there was excessive headspace in the pistol. In layman's language, this meant that the breech of the weapon was just a touch larger than it needed to be for the size ammunition for which it was designed. A shade more quality control should have been present in the manufacturing stage, Luksich thought. 

When Luksich finally sat back from the microscope, he used a thumb and forefinger to smooth down the mustache that curved around the corners of his mouth. "Same gun, gentlemen," he announced. 

Fotinos and Coreris appeared in the doorway as if by magic. "All four?" asked Fotinos, as if it were too good to be true. 

"All four," Luksich confirmed. "Erakat, Dancik, DiGirolamo, and Agnos. Same gun." 

"I'll be goddamned," said Coreris. He looked hard at his partner. "Young, well-groomed, nice-looking blacks." 

"Muslims, like I told you," said Fotinos. 

"All using the same gun," Luksich interjected. 

"Shooting only white victims," said Coreris. 

The three men all looked at each other. A heavy silence fell over them for a moment. Finally Luksich stood up, towering over the two detectives. 

"I've got a feeling it's going to be a long winter, gentlemen," he said quietly.

On the advice of a friend, Gerald Bjork, who had witnessed the killing of Marietta DiGirolamo, called the police and told them about it. He was interviewed and then taken to headquarters where he went through a series of mug shots of blacks who had a police record and fit the description of the DiGirolamo killer. After going through numerous photos, Bjork selected one which he said he felt was the man he had seen do the shooting. 

The man whose photo Bjork selected was one Jasper Childs.* He was known to be a practicing Black Muslim and was employed at the Black Self Help Moving and Storage Company. 

*This person's name has been changed because he was never positively identified by the witness.

Two days after identifying Childs, Gerald Bjork was transported in a surveillance vehicle to a parking place near Black Self Help. The vehicle was a camper with curtained windows. Under the direction of homicide inspectors, Bjork used binoculars to observe the activities of Black Self Help employees. Among the individuals observed by Bjork was the same Jasper Childs whom he had identified by photograph. Bjork saw Childs come and go several times during the course of the surveillance. Each time he seemed to become less and less certain that Childs was positively the man he had seen kill Marietta DiGirolamo. Finally, because the detectives could not act on anything less than a 100 percent identification, the surveillance was terminated. 

Gerald Bjork observed numerous employees of Black Self Help during the surveillance. He identified none of them positively. 

Four of the men who worked for Black Self Help were visibly upset on the afternoon of December 14, 1973. They had just received word that earlier that same day, Jesse Lee Cooks had been sentenced to life in prison. They had been very upset when Jesse had been caught; now they were doubly upset because they had just learned that Cooks had pled guilty to first-degree murder. 

"Dumb son of a bitch," said J. C. "He knows he wasn't ever supposed to plead guilty." 

"That's right, he wasn't!" Manuel Moore said, agitated. "The laws of the mosque don't be allow that." 

"He wasn't being tried by the laws of the mosque," Anthony Harris said dryly. Sometimes he had the feeling that Manuel was not playing with a full deck. 

"It don't matter what law they tried him under," Larry Green said. "He's still bound to obey the laws of the mosque. And those laws say don't never admit no guilt in the white man's court." 

"Right on," said J.C. 

"What the hell was he supposed to do?" Anthony asked impatiently. "I mean, man, they caught him with the fucking gun sticking in his belt. It wasn't exactly circumstantial evidence." 

The other three looked at him with flat, fixed stares that bordered on hostility. Even Larry, who had been his "little brother" friend since the day Anthony got out of San Quentin, seemed now to be somehow looking at him through different eyes. There were times when he felt like a stranger among them. And that disturbed him — because if he could not feel accepted with these men who were his own color, his own faith, then where on Allah's earth could he be at home? 

"Sometimes I wonder about you, man," J.C. said in a glacial voice. The cool, handsome black was studying Anthony. His piercing eyes looked as if they wanted to strip off Anthony's skin and see right into the pit of him, actually examine his core. "I really wonder, man," he repeated. 

"Well, don't sweat none about it, sport," Anthony said evenly. "I still got a right to my own opinion. Ain't no motherfucker going to tell me what to think." 

There, it was said. If J.C. wanted to call him out, the door was open. It seemed to Anthony that Simon had been looking to pick a fight with him for a long time. Now he had his chance. And if Mr. Cool took it, Anthony was going to break his fucking back. 

But J.C. did not take the bait. He merely stared Anthony down: riveted his eyes to Anthony's, until finally Anthony just said, "Shit," and looked away. Kid stuff, he thought. Yet he could not help wondering why J.C. had not accepted the challenge. Instinctively he knew that J.C. was not afraid of him. J.C. was not afraid of anything. If Jesse Lee Cooks had been the most dangerous man Anthony had ever met, then certainly J.C. Simon was the most fearless. 

Whatever the reason, J.C. and Anthony, each firmly believing he could take the other, did not physically clash that night. But each felt inside that it was only a matter of time. 

"I'm tired of being alone," Anthony told Debbie that night. "I need to be with someone." 

"You are with someone, sugar," she told him. "You're with me, almost every night." 

"I don't mean just be with for a few hours. I mean have somebody to stay with, to be close to all the time, when I'm—" His voice trailed off. 

"When you're what, sugar?" 

Anthony swallowed and looked away. They were sitting on the couch in her apartment. Gently she took his chin and pulled his head around to face her. 

"When you're what, sugar?" she asked again. 

"When I'm scared," he said quietly. 

Debbie drew his face down to her bosom and held it there. She rocked him a little and stroked his forehead. At that moment, she was very much in love with Anthony Harris. 

"Are you saying that you want to move in with me, Anthony?" she asked. 

"I'd like to," he said. As he spoke, his lips moved against her breast. 

"You're still married to Carolyn, aren't you?" 

"Yes." And, he thought, as far as he knew, he was not divorced from his first, white, wife. Unless she had divorced him without his knowledge. 

"That thing with Carolyn wasn't really a marriage, you know that," he said. "I only was with her a couple of weeks." 

"It's still a true marriage," Debbie countered. "You did exchange vows." 

Anthony sighed a heavy, soul-weary sigh. "I'm sorry I got into that. I don't know why I did it. I was just out of prison and didn't have nobody; I guess I was lonesome to have somebody and someplace to call mine." He shook his head against her breast. "Shit, I can't never seem to do nothing right." 

She held his head a little tighter and rocked him a bit more, as she would do to soothe a child of its hurt. That's what Anthony was, really, in many ways: a child. Lost. Uncertain. Tired and wanting to sleep.

"There, there, sugar," she cooed. "Everything's going to be all  right. You can move in and stay with me if you want to. I'll take good care of you. You can be my sugar baby, all right?" 

With his face still against her breast, Anthony nodded. 

Maybe with her he could straighten out everything that was so fucked up, he thought. 

Before it was too late. 

In the apartment on Grove Street, J. C. Simon's wife was packing to go back to Texas. J. C. prowled the room, trying to talk her out of it. 

"You're just not used to San Francisco yet, baby," he said. "Give yourself a little more time. It's a fine city; pretty soon you'll love it just like I do." 

"It's not the city," said Pat. "You know it's not the city." 

"What is it, then?" he asked. "Is it the apartment? You want to move to a different place?" 

"It's not the apartment, J. C." Pat kept her voice nicely under control. She did not want to get into another of those arguments that neither of them ever won. 

"Well, what is it then?" J. C. asked in agitation. "What do you want out of me?" 

"I don't want anything out of you, J. C. Not anything at all." Methodically, she continued packing, folding Crissy's clothes and putting them on top of her own. 

J. C. paced. He shoved his hands into his pockets. He sighed dramatically. Pat ignored him. She had seen him act before. Finally J. C. glanced into the other room and saw Crissy playing on the floor. 

"It's not fair for you to take that baby away from her daddy and not even give me a reason," he accused. 

Pat faced him directly. "Now you listen to me, J. C. Simon," she said with an edge. "If you cared as much about that baby as you care about all your friends, you'd be coming back to Houston with us. Back where you belong. Instead of staying up here where you're going to find nothing but grief. " 

J. C. smiled his tolerant smile. "What you talking about, grief?" He chose to ignore the comment about his friends. That was an old thorn between them, and it stuck both ways. 

"You know what I mean," Pat said. Her pretty young face turned sad. "This isn't the place for you, J. C. These aren't your kind of people. If you stay up here, you'll be all alone. I know you think you've got a lot of friends, and I know you think they all care about you; but they don't, J. C. They don't at all. You'll find that out someday. When you get into bad trouble and need them, they won't be nowhere around." 

"You're talking scare talk," J. C. said. "You're talking like you got a Caucasian mentality, woman.'' 

Pat shook her head. Caucasian mentality. How often lately had he come up with that phrase, or one just like it? She used to think that he was simply verbalizing, that he did not really know what he was saying. It was the mosque speaking; something he had picked up in a pamphlet. But lately she was not too sure. Lately he seemed more and more to know what he was saying. And, even more frightening to her, to believe it. 

"You just won't listen, will you?" she said. "Won't listen to anyone. You just think you know it all." 

J.C. stared at her without responding. His gaze was flat, penetrating. Unmoving. And unmoved. 

Sighing quietly, Pat resumed packing. 

Two nights later, in the Bay View district, Ilario Bertuccio was finishing his last chore of the night at the 7-Up bottling plant where he worked: he was sweeping down the loading dock with a horsehair push broom. 

Bertuccio was eighty-one years old. A small man—five three, 135 pounds—he could have retired on his pension and Social Security. But he was a healthy old man, alert and agile, and no one—not friend, not relative—could convince him to stay home and take it easy. Ilario had worked all his life. He enjoyed work, firmly believed that it was healthy. That was why he had the job at 7-Up. It did not pay that well, the hours were not very good, the duties certainly not challenging. But it was work. 

When he finished sweeping, he returned the horsehair broom to the plant's utility closet and washed up in the men's room. He ran a pocket comb through his thick white hair and let it fall into place. Then he put on his Windbreaker and zipped it up against the night coolness. He went into the bottling room, slipped his nightly free bottle of 7-Up into a paper bag, and left by the employee door. He lived about a mile away, on Goettingen Street on the other side of the freeway. It made a nice walk for him every night after work. 

As he headed home, Bertuccio hummed an old Italian folk song and with a half-smile thought of the friends and relatives who constantly advised him to retire. They meant well, he knew, but they did not understand him. Work was good for him. It was healthy. 

Ilario Bertuccio had long ago made up his mind that he would never quit work. He would work until he died. 

A white Dodge Dart, borrowed from Yellow, turned off the Bayshore Freeway and drove south on San Bruno to Bacon. It turned left on Bacon to Bay Shore Boulevard, then doubled back to Phelps. It cruised along Phelps. 

Skullcap was at the wheel, scanning the street on the left. Rims was in the passenger seat, doing the same on the right. 

"Fucking streets are dead," Skullcap muttered, as much to himself as to Rims. 

"Yeah, dead," Rims echoed. He had Judo's pistol between his legs; his fingertips rubbed gently over it, as if he were petting a puppy. From time to time he would glance at his friend behind the wheel, trying to think of new things to say that might cheer him up. For days now, Skullcap had been out of sorts: depressed, irritable, edgy. The reason for it, Rims thought, was the white devil who had not died. The one that had not even fallen down after Skullcap shot him twice in the back. Skullcap was still upset about it; he had not received credit for a sting. 

Rims hated to see his new friend upset like that; he kept trying to say things that would make him feel better. "We ought to see can we get us a couple of sisters when we be through tonight," he said now. "We could go over to the mosque to the community hall and see could we find a couple." 

"Yeah, maybe," said Skullcap. He said it in hopes of making Rims shut up. The last thing he wanted—or needed—just then was a woman. They were more fucking trouble than they were worth. 

"You feel better with a new sister," Rims said. "Man always feel better with a sister, specially when she be a new one. We find one gonna do right for you." 

"Yeah, right," Skullcap said.

But he knew that no sister was going to make him feel better. His needs were not that simple. The only thing that was going to purge his low-down feeling was to destroy a blue-eyed devil. Destroy one of the evil beings that had persecuted his race for so long. Blow the life out of a grafted snake, that's what he had to do. 

And preferably a female snake. 

"There one now," said Rims as they approached the intersection on Bancroft and Phelps. 

Skullcap looked at the devil Rims was talking about. It was a white-haired old man carrying a paper bag under one arm. Probably a fucking old white wino, Skullcap thought. "You sting him," Skullcap said. "I'll do the next one." 

He would see that the next one was a woman. 

☠      ☠      ☠

Across the city, in the Lincoln Park district, a twenty-year-old college student named Angela Roselli* was attending a Christmas party at the apartment of some friends. She had been at the party for about an hour and, after three drinks, was beginning to feel mellow. Sitting in a corner with several other people, she was sharing her first joint of the evening with the young man next to her. 

Angela was a pretty girl with very long, very dark hair and a Candice Bergen mouth complete with an occasional hint of a lisp. Her face had a natural glow to it, and outwardly she seemed vibrant and full of life. The fact that she cared little about what went on around her was betrayed only by her eyes: they had a hollowness to them that reflected a total disinterest in anything difficult, anything requiring more than token effort, anything physically or mentally challenging. People who knew her could not ever remember seeing her excited about anything. She was an escapist, a non-contributor; if the world had started to sink, she would not have bothered to tread water. 

At the party there was a lot of liquor, a lot of pot, perhaps even some harder stuff not being shared openly; but Angela stayed away from hard drugs, preferring the pleasant mellowness of substances she knew she could handle—mostly wine and marijuana.

"This is good shit," said the young man next to her, passing the joint. "Best I've had in a while." 

"Me too," said Angela. She sucked in a deep drag and handed the joint back to him. 

Somewhere in the apartment a stereo was playing "O come, all ye faithful." 

Skullcap pulled the Dart to the curb and turned off the headlights. In the rearview mirror he could see the little old white man approaching the corner where he would cross the street. Skullcap looked over at Rims. 

"Sting the devil," he said softly. 

Rims swallowed dryly. His eyes under the round gold frames grew wide. An almost idiotic grin spread over his lips. "R-r-right on!" he stuttered emphatically. 

With Judo's gun in hand, Rims got out of the car and walked toward the little white-haired man. As he walked, he held the gun close to his thigh, allowing him to swing only one arm, causing him to pitch his right shoulder forward to compensate for it, creating an overall effect of a sailor trying to use his sea legs on land. 

Walking toward Rims, Ilario Bertuccio probably felt no anxiety at all. He liked most people, trusted most people, considered no one—acquaintance or stranger—suspect. He had lived his entire life that way. At eighty-one, he probably could not have changed even if he had wanted to. 

But he would never have a chance to want to. 

When Rims drew abreast of Bertuccio, he raised the pistol and started firing. The first bullet entered Bertuccio's right shoulder, hit a bone, detoured across his chest, and exited his left armpit. The second drilled through his right chest and back. The third did the same. The fourth entered his left chest and exited his back. 

Bertuccio fell. In seconds his upper front torso was saturated with blood. He died almost instantly. 

Angela Roselli left the Christmas party at nine thirty. She was feeling good, very mellow, and it was a fun party, but she had grown tired and decided to call it a night. The effects of the drinks she had consumed earlier had now worn off; she was still up from the pot, but not so much that it would impede her driving. 

She got her coat, said good-bye, and left. Her 1965 Ford was parked nearby. She got into the car and drove off. 

Fifteen minutes later she was looking for a parking place near Grove and Central, a block from her apartment. Skullcap and Rims were driving down Grove Street, going home. Skullcap was in a worse mood now than he had been earlier. They had been driving around for ninety minutes looking for a devil for him to sting, and had not found one. Skullcap wanted to sting a woman; he refused to settle for a man. They had been unable to find a woman out alone in an uncrowded situation; they were either with someone or there were too many people around. They had seen several good male candidates, but Skullcap would not settle for them. 

"It's got to be a woman devil or nothing,"[effin coward D.C] he told Rims emphatically. "I'm tired fucking around. I want my Death Angel wings, man!" 

"Sure, okay, man, okay," Rims replied, not a little fearfully. He did not want to mess with Skullcap; the man was too dangerous. Besides, Rims liked him and wanted to keep him for a friend. He had never had a friend as smart as Skullcap before; just being with him made Rims feel smarter. "We just keep trying," he had said earlier to placate Skullcap. "We look all night if we has to." 

They had been looking for an hour and a half, and now Skullcap was thoroughly irritated and ready to call it all off. "Fuck it," he said angrily. "Fuck the Death Angels! I don't need this kind of shit!" 

"Don't say that now, man," Rims implored. "You be okay. We go out again tomorrow night and find you a woman devil. Why, we even find you two! Come on now, man, don't be so pissed. Come on. It be all right. Tomorrow night it be all right." 

At that moment they approached the intersection of Grove and Central, and Skullcap saw the young white girl looking for a parking place. "Wait a minute," he said, looking up and down the deserted street. "Maybe it'll be all right tonight still." 

In a Cadillac borrowed from a friend, Yellow and Judo were cruising Grove Street looking for Skullcap and Rims.

"The motherfucker promised to have my car back by nine," Yellow said sullenly. 

Judo grunted derisively. "You be lucky you ever get the sucker back," he said. "He done have my piece for over three weeks now. Every time I ax him for it, he say he left it at home or some other excuse. I'm getting tired of it, man." 

"Wait a minute," Yellow said, peering down Central. "Ain't that my car double-parked up there?" 

Judo squinted. "Look like it is." 

Yellow swung into the 600 block of Central. 

Skullcap had got out of the Dart and let Rims take the wheel. He had walked in the shadows along the sidewalk, scanning the block, while Rims drove along Central and double-parked to wait for him. Now, as the young white girl in the '65 Ford negotiated her parking place, Skullcap walked over to the Dart and checked with Rims. 

"Everything look okay to you, brother?" 

"Look fine," Rims said, wide-eyed again. 

Skullcap gave the block a final cursory look and started across the street. A pair of headlights swung around the corner and came toward him. He paused a beat, considered turning back. Then he recognized the car. He watched it pull into a driveway at 617 Central, just behind where the white girl had parked. In the light of the streetlamp, Skullcap could see that Yellow was driving the Cadillac, and that Judo was sitting next to him. He smiled inwardly. Keep your eyes on me, brothers, he thought. You'll see a star be born. 

Angela Roselli saw the black man walking toward her. She decided that he was about to hit on her, try to pick her up, make out with her. Either that or he was going to hassle her because she was a white girl in a predominantly black neighborhood. She and her roommate constantly had to endure dirty looks, muttered comments, even outright open hostility from the black residents who did not appreciate their presence in the neighborhood. They had expected it when they moved in, but due to financial and location considerations, had moved in anyway. After all, it was a free country. They simply rolled with the verbal punches whenever necessary.

Angela was preparing to do just that when the black man in the white Superfly hat and suit walked up to her. She glanced at him, frowned at the zombie look on his face, the fixed, staring eyes as if he were in a trance. When he was several feet from her, he raised a pistol from next to his leg and began shooting at her. 

Angela was not immediately aware that she was being shot. The first two reports sounded like firecrackers exploding. The bullets hit her side, her rib cage, her stomach. The third one nicked her spine and her legs gave out. She fell. The fourth bullet, aimed at her head, missed as she dropped; it shattered the window on the driver's side of her car. As she pitched to the ground, she began screaming. 

As soon as the girl started screaming, Skullcap turned and ran. He wanted to shoot her two or three more times to make certain she would die, but her screams frightened him. He hurried over to the Dart and got in. Rims stamped the accelerator and the car shot forward. 

"I got her three times, man," Skullcap said anxiously. "You think she'll die?" 

"Yeah, brother, three times, she gots to die," said Rims. 

But as the car sped away, both of them could still hear the girl's screams. 

In the Cadillac, Yellow and Judo had watched in morbid fascination as Skullcap walked up and shot the girl. Then, as he turned and hurried away, they had looked at each other incredulously. 

"Shit, man!" said Judo. "Let's get the fuck out of here!" 

Yellow continued to stare at him, transfixed. Judo punched him on the muscle. 

"Come on, man! Move it! Get us the fuck out of here!" 

Finally Yellow responded. He shifted the Cadillac into reverse and gunned it backward out of the driveway. The tires screeched and as Yellow cut the wheels the body of the car lurched sideways on its shocks. Yellow quickly cut the wheels and jammed the gas pedal again. The car jerked forward. 

Angela Roselli was facedown in the street next to her parked car, trying to raise her gunshot body off the ground. She had stopped screaming and managed to get up on her elbows when she became aware of the big car backing out of a driveway. She saw two Negro faces in the front seat. Then the car turned and its headlights swept over her. The car started directly for her. 

My God, they're trying to run over me! 

Exerting all the willpower in her body, Angela threw herself sideways and rolled under her parked car to relative safety. 

The Cadillac sped past her and in seconds was gone. 

Back at Bancroft and Phelps, Officers Allen Duncan and Patrick White had secured the death scene of Ilario Bertuccio. They had recovered four spent .32-caliber shell casings and turned them over to a man from the Crime Lab. A Photo Lab man was moving around the body shooting flash shots. Captain John McSweeney of Operations had arrived to take charge of the crime scene. Inspectors McKenna, Podesta, and Nelson were there from Homicide. All three winced when they heard that the four shell casings were .32s. 

A Mission Ambulance Service steward named Van Steen was standing near his vehicle, patiently waiting for the police work to be completed. Van Steen had already pronounced Bertuccio dead. As soon as the picture-taking and evidence-gathering was over, the coroner's representative, Schultz, who was over talking to an officer, would issue a receipt for the corpse and Van Steen would take it to the morgue. Meanwhile, there was nothing to do but wait. And think about how cold San Francisco was at night in December. 

In another ambulance, Angela Roselli was being rushed to San Francisco General. 

"Am I going to die?" she asked the ambulance steward. 

"You'll probably have to have surgery right away," the steward answered noncommittally. 

A police officer named Foster was in the ambulance with her. "Can you tell me what happened?" he asked. 

She shook her head. Tears ran out of the corners of her eyes and down her temples. At first Foster thought she was not going to answer him, then he heard her say, "A black man walked up to me. Without saying a word he started shooting me."

Foster leaned close to the steward. "Is she going to die?" he asked quietly. 

The steward shrugged. "Hard to say," he whispered. "She took two bullets in the chest, one in the stomach." 

When the ambulance backed up to the emergency door, a resident on duty jerked open the ambulance door. "What have you got?" 

"Gunshot wounds, multiple." 

The resident snapped his fingers at two orderlies. "Trauma unit!" he ordered. 

As the orderlies moved Angela from the ambulance and into the hospital, Officer Foster heard something drop to the floor. He bent and retrieved the object. It was a .32-caliber bullet that had fallen out of Angela Roselli's body. 

At the end of Day Sixty-two, there were ten victims. 

Quita Hague, hacked to death. 

Richard Hague, his face butchered. 

Ellen Linder, raped, ravaged, threatened with death. 

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, surviving after having his lungs, spleen, and kidney ripped apart by bullets. 

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

Ilario Bertuccio, gunned down in the street as he walked home from work with a bottle of 7-Up under his arm. 

And Angela Roselli, also shot down in the street as she was returning home from a Christmas party. 

Day 64 

Judo and Yellow were walking down Franklin Street on their way to a loft meeting. Judo was again fuming about his gun, which Skullcap still had. 

"This is it tonight, man," he said angrily. "Either he gives me back the piece or him and me are gonna go at it. " 

"You better be careful with him, brother," said Yellow. "I mean, like I know you know kung fu and all that, but you talking about one mean sucker now."[yeah real mean,shooting women, real pussy if the truth be told DC]

"Shit, I can take him. I can take him easy." 

Yellow glanced dubiously at him. "Hey, man, can't nobody take him easy. I'm telling you, he mean." 

"We'll see how mean he is if he don't have that piece for me," Judo promised. 

As they walked along the street, Judo sensed that Yellow was up: he was hyper, charged, ready to take on something heavy. "You taking anything?" Judo asked suspiciously. 

Yellow looked aghast. "You crazy, man? I don't take nothing. I'm a Black Muslim, brother, not some nigger pimp. My spirit comes from Allah, not from some shit in my arm." 

"You acting pretty high," Judo said.

"I am high, brother!" Yellow exclaimed. "High with the Word! Ready to take up my sword for Allah again!" 

"Listen, brother," Judo said urgently, "you done proved yourself a man once already. Don't make no sense for you to do it again. Listen, why don't you and me just forget about this Death Angels' shit and go on and just practice our religion without no more killing? We don't have to be Death Angels, man." 

"The blue-eyed devils must be killed," Yellow said. "The grafted snakes must be destroyed." 

"They don't have to be destroyed by us," Judo argued. "Let those others do the killings; they're all crazy motherfuckers anyway. But we're not crazy, man. You and me, we're all right in the head, you know what I mean?" 

"You not talking from the heart, brother," Yellow said. 

"Yeah, I am, man." Judo took Yellow's arm and stopped him. "Look, man, you and me, we not like these other dudes, you know? We don't need to all the time be killing white folks— " 

"White devils," Yellow corrected. 

"Whatever. But what I'm saying is, I don't think there's any reason to do any more killing. Either one of us." 

Yellow's eyebrows rose. "Either one of us? The way I see it, you hadn't done any yet. 'Less there's some I don't know about." 

"I haven't done it because I'm not sure it's right, man," Judo said quietly. His eyes met Yellow's and held. Judo was sincerely fond of his younger friend; he felt closer to him than he had ever felt toward any other male, even his own brothers. If only he could find a way to get inside Yellow's head and sweep out all the shit the Death Angels' meetings had put there. 

"I don't believe you mean any of this," Yellow said resolutely. "You having a moment of weakness, of doubt. It'll pass and your heart will be strong once more." He started walking again; Judo fell in step beside him. 

"Look, man," Judo pleaded, "if you'll just think about it, you'll see there ain't no sense to it at all— " 

"Quiet!" Yellow hissed a caution, bobbing his chin up the street. There was a white man approaching. 

Judo stopped talking. The white man was in his thirties, lean, not too tall. He looked ordinary. 

"Watch this," Yellow whispered when the man drew near.

Before Judo knew what was happening, Yellow had stepped in front of the white man and struck him a crushing hand slash to the larynx. The unsuspecting man's eyes bulged and he clutched at his throat. Yellow kicked his feet out from under him and he pitched to the ground. Blood ran from each corner of his mouth. 

"Let's go!" Yellow said, stepping over the fallen man. He took off running. Judo, overcoming his surprise, sucked in a breath and ran after him. 

Judo looked at Yellow running in front of him: green raincoat flapping, knit ball bouncing at the crown of his ski cap, tennis shoes slapping against the pavement. Then it came to him. He's crazy, he thought. Yellow was crazy. Just like the others. 

They were all crazy. 

Maybe he was crazy too. 

In the loft, Judo went up to Skullcap, ready to fight. "I want my piece back, man. And I want it now." 

"Why, sure, brother," Skullcap said pleasantly. He slipped Judo's .32 automatic from under his coat and handed it to him, grip first. "Sorry I kept it so long, man. But you can be sure it was put to very good use. Am I right, brother?" he said to Rims, standing beside him. 

Rims grinned what looked to Judo like an imbecilic grin. "You right!" he confirmed. 

"I done made arrangements to get me a new piece very shortly," Skullcap said. "The brother over in Oakland had to go underground, so I let him keep my old one. Brothers have to look out for brothers, dig?" 

"Yeah, sure," Judo said. He was examining his gun, making sure it was not damaged in any way. 

Yellow walked up and slapped Rims playfully on the muscle. "Hey, brother, I been hearing good things about you. You really on your way!" 

Rims grinned again, pleased. "I be doing all right," he said. He had one female and two male devils to his credit, and was ahead of all of them. 

"Man, that is finel" said Yellow. He nudged Skullcap. "Ain't that fine, brother?" 

"Right on," Skullcap replied. There was a tinge of jealousy in his voice. He thought of the two devils who lived after he stung them: the man talking to the two women in Potrero Hill, and the girl parking her car the other night. As close as he had been to them, they had still lived. It was piss-poor luck. If they hadn't lived, Yellow would be congratulating him. 

As if Judo could read Skullcap's mind, he said, "You not been doing too well lately, have you?" 

"Still better than you, motherfucker," Skullcap replied coldly. "Least I got the heart to try." 

Before Judo could say anything further, someone clapped his hands for attention. "You all sit down now," a voice instructed. "The man be coming up." 

Presently the well-groomed man with the Vandyke entered the room, accompanied as usual by his bodyguards. The men in the loft all took seats. Judo and Yellow sat on an old daybed against the back wall. All the lights in the room were turned off except for an overhead bulb above Vandyke. When the room was quiet, he opened a zippered leather binder and began to read. 

"Allah has said, 'Behold, I have set before you the way of life and the way of death.' The Messenger of Allah, in the person of the Honorable Elijah Muhammad, teaches us that the devil's way of life is one of sport and play. He tells us that there are two people: one a people of foolishness and mischief, who are the enemy of Allah from the time they are made, and are appointed for destruction. This is the white race. The other people are of the family of Allah, and to them Allah will restore the rulership of the earth. These are the people of the black nation. Science has already proved that the white race has never fully developed physically or mentally. They are still a race of inquisitive children. Their whole civilization is one of play; even their statesmanship and their scientific experiments are another form of play. The white race in- tends to die laughing; there can be no other reason for making themselves and those who follow them the laughingstock of every civilized black nation on earth. The Messenger teaches us that we—the blacks—are the father of races. We will no longer follow an irresponsible child-race in the way of death. We follow Elijah Muhammad, a man who leads us in the way of life!" 

In the back of the room, Judo leaned close to Yellow and whispered, "Be right back, man. Got to take a piss."

Quietly he stood up and slipped out the nearest door. Yellow stared curiously after him. Never before had Judo—or anyone, for that matter—left the room during a meeting. Yellow frowned. What was going on with him? The way he had been talking earlier, and now leaving a meeting.

Yellow glanced around the room. Everyone was watching and listening intently to the speaker. Even the two bodyguards, who were supposed to watch all movement in the audience, were caught up by the lecture and not paying proper attention to their duties. 

Intrigued by what Judo might be up to, Yellow decided to slip out also—or try to. He waited until Vandyke took a few steps at the front of the room, when all eyes were on him, following his movements; then he slid off the daybed, dropped into a crouch, and duck walked out the rear door. 

Yellow went as quietly as possible down the steep wooden stairs that led to the loft. When he got to the bottom, he stopped and listened. Hearing nothing, he wondered if Judo had gone home. He walked softly to the building's office, looked in, saw no one. Going to the rear door, he peered through its small window and looked out back. Nothing. 

Just as he was about to give up and go back upstairs, Yellow heard a sound from the direction of the first-floor bathroom. He frowned again, at himself this time. Maybe Judo had gone to take a piss. Yellow tiptoed to a doorway and inched one eye around the edge to see the bathroom door. It was open. Judo was inside. But he was not taking a piss. Instead, he was using a fingernail clipper to tighten the bolts of a small air vent above the toilet. 

What the fuck could he be doing? Yellow wondered. Then it came to him. Judo was either taking something out of the vent, or putting something in. The vent was a hiding place. 

As Yellow was grinning in delight at his own cleverness, Judo finished with the vent and got down off the toilet seat where he had been standing. Yellow jerked his head back and hurried away from the door. One of his shoes hit the leg of a folding chair and moved it noisily. Judo, wiping his hands on his trouser legs, froze at the sound and looked up anxiously. He stepped out of the bathroom and picked up a hammer from a nearby crate. Holding the hammer up to strike, he moved to the doorway and stepped quickly through it. No one.

Yellow was back at the stairs by then, climbing them on all fours. Halfway up, one of the steps creaked loudly under his weight. 

Again Judo heard the noise. Again he followed it with the hammer raised. But when he got to the bottom step and looked up — nothing. 

Judo finally put the hammer down and went quietly back upstairs. When he slipped back into his place beside Yellow, his young friend glanced at him, nodded, and resumed giving his full attention to Vandyke. Judo stared at Yellow for a long moment, studying him suspiciously, looking for some outward sign of guilt or conscience. Yellow just kept listening intently to Vandyke and watching the speaker's movements. Judo finally looked away and stopped staring. 

Out of the corner of his eye, Yellow saw him turn away. Yellow expelled a silent breath of relief. 

After dinner on Saturday night, in the apartment they now shared, Anthony Harris and Debbie Turner sat on the couch to watch television. 

"What time is it?" Anthony asked, opening the newspaper to the TV listings. 

"Anthony, I have to talk to you about something," Debbie said. 

"Yeah? What is it?" 

"I'm pregnant." 

Anthony put the paper down and looked at her. His mind worked rapidly, tallying the weeks, the days. He did not think they had been together long enough for her to know she was pregnant. Not if the baby was his. 

"Is the baby mine?" he asked. Then before Debbie could answer, he raised his hand and said, "Never mind, don't say nothing to that. I don't want to know." 

For a few minutes, neither of them said anything. Anthony resumed reading the television listings, finished them, but made no move to turn on the set. Debbie moved to a chair across from him. She picked at her fingernails and smoothed wrinkles out of her skirt, glancing at him now and then to see if he was looking at her. Finally she asked, "Why don't you want to know, Anthony?"

"I don't need no more worries," he said quietly. "I got enough already." 

"What kind of worries you got?" she wanted to know. 

Anthony's expression became sardonic, then it changed to half sardonic and half helplessness, then it became all helplessness. "I'm not sure I could explain it even if I wanted to," he said. 

"You don't want to try?" 

He shook his head. "Not now. I gots to figure it out some more. Then maybe I can explain it." 

Debbie came over and sat next to him again. "What about the baby, Anthony?" she asked. "What must I do about it?" 

Anthony put his arm around her and pulled her head to his shoulder. "We'll have it," he said. "We'll have the baby. It'll be ours." 

Debbie had hoped against hope that he would say something like that. Now that he had, she cried silently against his shoulder. 

It was commonly believed throughout the San Francisco Police Department that Chief of Inspectors Charles Barca had a photographic memory. No one could remember his ever forgetting anything. Occasionally a subordinate would test his memory by deliberately failing to carry out a minor or insignificant instruction from Barca, thinking it would slip the chief's mind. Invariably, just as soon as the slacker thought he was safe, Barca would fall on him like the proverbial ton of bricks. It was considered a never-to-be forgotten experience to be reamed out by Charley Barca. Few men ever tested him a second time. 

Barca joined the police department during the Depression. He became the youngest officer ever to make sergeant, one of the first Italian-Americans to rise to the rank of captain on the civil service rolls, and the first man of Italian descent to become the chief of inspectors. None of which surprised anyone who knew him. From his days at St. Ignatius High School where he played softball and ran the mile, Barca was considered a fierce competitor and a sure bet to get ahead in life. In appearance he was strictly soft-sell: average height, medium build, well-groomed, a face pleasant enough to belong to a monsignor. It was under the surface that the high voltage was hidden: the unlimited energy, the relentless determination, the incredible memory, and above all the total dedication to law and order. 

It was the dedication to his job that prompted him to convene, on Saturday, December 22, 1973, a pre-Christmas, weekend meeting with all the lieutenants of the various police bureaus, as well as Gus Coreris, John Fotinos, and several other homicide inspectors. On the desk before him were all the Incident Reports of all the cases thus far connected to the .32-caliber automatic pistol to which Mitch Luksich had matched all the recovered shell casings and slugs. One by one, Barca went over them in his mind. 

"Erakat, Dancik, DiGirolamo, Bertuccio—all murders," he said aloud. "Agnos and Roselli, attempted murders. By the way, how is the Roselli girl?" 

"Not good, Chief," a homicide inspector answered. "One of the slugs nicked her spine. And she's got a collapsed lung." 

Barca's expression darkened slightly. Random violence disturbed him to the very core. Domestic quarrels, murders for hire, killings during robberies—there was some pattern, some logic, to such crimes. But the four murders and two attempts with which he was faced here were without rhyme or reason. They were mindless. 

"All right," he said, "I want a special unit formed to get this killer—or killers—as the case may be. I want it to be a hunt-and-prevent unit, and I want it on duty from dusk until dawn. Select the men from both the uniformed and plainclothes ranks; have them work in civilian dress and unmarked autos. I want this operation given top priority. These killings are wanton, vicious, and unprovoked. I want them stopped." 

At the back of the room, Fotinos and Coreris exchanged glances. They knew the look on Charley Barca's face. It meant sixteen-hour days and lots of black coffee. 

☠☠☠

Just hours after the Barca meeting, Yellow returned alone to the building where the loft meetings were held. He slipped unnoticed into the employee rest room on the first floor, locked the door behind him, and stepped up onto the toilet seat. From his hip pocket he produced a small screwdriver and quickly loosened the screws of the air vent he had seen Judo tightening. With the faceplate removed, he peered inside the vent. There, just inches inside, was Judo's automatic pistol. 

Yellow grinned in delight, then he suddenly had to go to the bath- room. Stepping off the toilet, he urinated. Without bothering to flush the toilet, he stepped back up, got the gun, and hung the faceplate back in place. 

Minutes later, the fully loaded automatic in his waistband, Yellow left the building and walked out into the streets of the city. 

Donald Crum, a twenty-four-year-old longshoreman, waited at the corner of Twelfth and Market to cross the street. He had just finished dinner in a Market Street diner and, walking home, lighted his first after-dinner cigarette. There was a breeze coming in from the bay; Crum patted his neatly styled hair to keep it in place. Not too many longshoremen had styled hair, but that did not matter to Crum. He had worked on the San Francisco docks for two years and was grappling-hook tough; no one ever kidded him about his styled hair. 

When there was a break in traffic, Crum crossed the street and walked south on Market, toward the Civic Center Hotel where he had been living for five months. He noticed a man a few years younger than himself come out of a bar on the corner. They shared a yard of sidewalk until Crum, longer-legged, walked on ahead. He noticed that the young man was carrying a brown paper bag with a stuffed Teddy bear in it. To each his own, Crum thought. 

The man with the bag containing the Teddy bear was Neal Moynihan. Nineteen years old, he was a fifth-generation San Francisco Irishman—on both sides. His grandfathers were Cornelius Moynihan and Michael Minihan. The daughter of Michael Minihan had been his mother. She was dead now and his father, Cornelius J. Moynihan, had remarried. The Teddy bear that young Neal carried was a Christmas present for his sister, Christine, who was ten. 

Neal was a slim young man with a baby face and thick black hair growing far back on a very high forehead. He wore old denims and motorcycle boots, and as he walked he whistled a new rock tune to which he had not yet learned the words. 

As Neal Moynihan walked south on Twelfth Street, with Donald Crum a few feet ahead of him, Yellow came around the corner from McCoppin and walked toward them. 

Two blocks away, Mildred Hosier, age fifty, trudged along Gough Street toward Otis. She had two blocks to go to her bus stop at Otis and Van Ness. The bus ride would take ten minutes. Then, when she got off at Ellis, she had a little more than three blocks to walk until she was home. Mildred was a quite heavy woman; she had difficulty breathing if she walked too far or too fast. That was why she measured every trip in terms of how many blocks she would be on foot. 

What a blessed relief it would be, she thought, when she never had to do any extensive walking again. 

Walking toward the two white men, Yellow felt his nostrils flare. His eyes were wide and unblinking. A small amount of white, foamy spittle had collected at the corners of his mouth. 

I will slay these grafted snakes for Allah, he thought. 

His eyes darted from one man to the other. The taller one, with the styled hair, was closest to him. He would die first. Then the shorter one carrying the paper bag. Two devils for Allah. 

But even as Yellow was planning it in his mind, the first white man turned off the sidewalk and entered the Civic Center Hotel. For a terrible moment, Yellow thought the second man was going to do the same. Like Rims had felt that night on Divisadero when Marietta DiGirolamo kept changing direction, Yellow could see his plan for murder being foiled at the last moment. 

But Allah remained with him: the second man kept walking. 

Yellow slipped the gun from his belt and held it at his side. 

Neal Moynihan glanced up at the light-skinned Negro approaching him on the sidewalk. Automatically he switched the bag containing the Teddy bear to his other hand, the one farthest from the young black. Being that close to Christmas, there were a lot of purse snatchers and parcel snatchers on the streets, lightning-fast young hoodlums who could grab what a person was carrying and be gone before the victim could even yell. As far as Moynihan could tell in the night light of the street, this one walking toward him looked harmless enough; but he was still black, and you never could tell about those people. 

Moynihan was on the outside of the sidewalk as they started to pass each other. From the corner of his eye, he saw the black man's hand begin to move. Instinctively he took a step toward the curb. The black man was backing up toward the closest building, a furniture store, its triple window filled with tables, chairs, and other odd pieces of furniture. Moynihan half turned to see what the black man was doing. As he did, an explosion in red suddenly engulfed his head. 

The first bullet hit him on the right side of his face, coursed down, and exited his neck. The second hit him in the left side of the neck, coursed down into his chest cavity, and lodged in his left lung. The third penetrated his heart, went all the way through, and exited his back. 

Neal Moynihan was dead when he hit the sidewalk. 

Donald Crum was a few feet inside the lobby of the Civic Center Hotel, warming his hands at a radiator, when he heard the shots. He ran out to the sidewalk to see what was happening. To his surprise, the young man with the Teddy bear was lying spread-eagled in the middle of the sidewalk, his face a patch of blood. The bag with the Teddy bear was lying next to him on the left, close to his body, as if he had let go of it with great reluctance. 

Crum dashed to the body and knelt beside it. "Hey, man, can you hear me?" he said. "Hey, bud, can you hear my voice?" 

Moynihan did not respond. As Crum knelt there, he heard the sound of running footsteps—not coming closer but going off into the distance. He rose and stepped over to the mouth of Stevenson Street, a narrow, alleylike lane that jutted one way off Twelfth Street. A figure was running away down the lane. 

Crum looked back toward the hotel. The desk clerk was standing out front. "Hey, call the cops, man," Crum said. He glanced over at Neal Moynihan. "And an ambulance," he said hopefully. 

Yellow ran as fast as he could down Stevenson. He cut through a trailer-rental lot and around a couple of buildings. He got to Brady Street. Down Brady he ran to Otis. He turned right on Otis and ran half a block farther—to a wide but quiet tri corner intersection where McCoppin, Gough, and Otis all came together. 

Yellow knew exactly where he was running to; he knew the neighborhood very well. By turning right at the tricorner and heading up Gough Street, he could, in a matter of seconds, be on Market Street, and there lose himself in the pedestrian traffic of that busy street. 

That was what he had in mind when he ran up to the tri-corner intersection and stood there for a moment to rest. He had an odd little smile on his face, and he was thinking: Another white devil has been given up to Allah. Yellow felt a surge of exhilaration, a tickle that flowed from his testicles to his throat. It was not as powerful as the feeling he had the night he cut off the white female devil's head—but it was a tremendous high nevertheless. Allah be praised! he thought. I am a good and worthy servant of the Master! 

Yellow laughed aloud. Then the laughter broke and died as he looked over at the opposite corner and saw an older, heavyset woman staring curiously at him. 

An older, heavyset, white woman. 

Mildred Hosier did not know what to do. She was at the edge of the rounded corner, where Gough flowed around into McCoppin. To her left was a stop sign to halt any traffic coming down Gough. To her right on McCoppin was a bus stop. Behind her, an empty flagpole in the tiny corner yard of a small public building. Directly in front of her was a marked pedestrian crossing: two bold white lines creating a path over to the Otis Street side of the tricorner. Halfway across—because Gough was a six-lane street—was a narrow safety island. 

Ordinarily Mildred would have simply walked across and continued down Otis to her own bus stop at Van Ness. But she had seen the young Negro run up to the corner, seen him acting peculiarly and laughing out loud. She was afraid he was drunk or on drugs; she did not want to walk past him. Perhaps if she just waited at the corner for a moment, he would go on his way. 

But that was not to be. He had looked over and seen her. Seen her and stopped laughing. And stood there staring at her.

Mildred thought briefly of turning oft to her left and walking up Gough, to Market. It was not an immediate desirable alternative to her because, for one thing, it meant an extra two blocks to get to her bus stop, and for another, Gough ran slightly uphill, which made for more difficult walking. Still, it would be better than having to walk past a drunk—or whatever he was. 

She made up her mind and starting walking up Gough. As soon as she did, the young Negro started across the street toward her. Because of her size and weight, Mildred could not move too fast, especially on an incline. So she knew she had no chance of getting away from him. Glancing sideways, she saw him walking briskly on an angle to intercept her. He reached the narrow safety island, stepped over it, kept coming. 

Mildred knew she was helpless, now at the mercy of whatever this strange young black man decided to do to her. She probably tried to remember how much money she had in her purse. She must have said a silent prayer that he would not hit her or molest her when he took her purse away. 

And he did not. 

Instead he walked up and shot her four times. 

All four bullets hit Mildred Hosier in the left anterior chest area. They formed a pattern partway around her left breast: one at seven o'clock, one very close at seven thirty, one at eleven, one at twelve o'clock, high. 

Unlike Neal Moynihan, six minutes earlier and two blocks away, Mildred Hosier, because she was a much heavier person, did not die before she fell. 

After he killed the white woman who had been watching him — and there was never any doubt in Yellow's mind that he had killed his victims; none of them had ever survived yet, unlike the unlucky Skullcap—Yellow ran back across Gough and up to Market. He fell in with the pedestrian traffic on Market, merging into the ebb and flow of people that seemed always to populate that major crosstown artery on Saturday night. Walking along, he could hear the sirens heading toward Twelfth Street, toward the first devil he had destroyed. Soon there would be even more sirens when someone called about the woman devil on Gough. Yellow grinned and giggled. He was elated, felt almost as he did when he ejaculated,tickled throughout his body. Allah had been good to him tonight, he thought. Praise be to Allah! 

Up ahead, near Rose Street, he saw a uniformed policeman talking to a flower vendor on the corner. Yellow suddenly remembered that he had Judo's gun still stuck in his belt. The barrel was warm against his stomach. 

Got to get this piece back in that vent, he thought. He walked as nonchalantly as he knew how past the policeman and the flower vendor. When he thought he was past the point of being noticed, he hurried a little faster down the street. He headed for the building where the loft meetings were held. 

"Two people were shot down in the street within two blocks of each other just minutes ago," the television commentator said on the 9:00 P.M. newsbreak. "Neal Moynihan, nineteen, died in a fusillade of gunfire from an unknown assailant near the intersection of Twelfth Street and Stevenson, at approximately eight fifteen. Less than ten minutes later, at McCoppin and Gough, a scant two blocks away, Mildred Hosier, fifty, was also cut down by an unknown gunman.'' 

Judo stared at the TV picture as if transfixed. Live remote pictures of both victims were shown, while the commentator continued to talk. 

"Witnesses at both scenes described the gunman as a light skinned Negro, five eight to five ten in height, one hundred thirty to one hundred fifty pounds. He escaped on foot after each incident. Police at both scenes have recovered similar bullet housings which they say were possibly fired from the same gun, believed to be a thirty-two-caliber automatic pistol." 

Judo felt his mouth go dry. He got up, put on his jacket, and left the apartment. 

At the crime scenes, it was confusion compounded. 

The responding patrol officers were Douglas Dumas and James Selby in radio car Three-Bravo-Four. They arrived at the Moynihan scene at 8:15 P.M., approximately five minutes after the shooting. They were met there by Inspectors Sullivan and Kennealy of the Sex Crime Detail, who had been nearby. Lieutenant Syme and Sergeant Bragg were on their way to take charge of the physical scene. Up to that point, everything was proceeding smoothly. 

Then the second call came. 

Another shooting, less than two blocks away. Dumas and Selby quickly left the Moynihan scene and rushed to the Hosier scene. Despite their close proximity, another policeman, Blackwell in Car 3F-94, beat them there. He was already talking to a witness, Carlos Paniagua, who had observed the shooting of Mildred Hosier from a window at 26 Gough Street. 

Inspectors Sanders and Gilford, of Homicide, arrived at the Moynihan scene. They were advised of the second shooting by Lieutenant Syme, who, with Sergeant Bragg, then hurried to the Hosier scene to take charge of that area. 

Sleadd, of the Photo Lab, and Tedesco, of the Crime Lab, arrived at the Moynihan scene. Three spent shell casings were located, circled with chalk, and photographed. A Central Ambulance unit, commanded by Steward Haynes, had also arrived at the Moynihan scene. Haynes officially pronounced Neal Moynihan dead at 8:23 P.M. Deputy Coroner Schultz arrived to take charge of the body. 

When they had completed all of their preliminary work at the Moynihan scene, Homicide Inspectors Sanders and Gilford rushed to the Hosier scene. Another Central Ambulance unit was already there; a steward named Holbrook could not determine, because of her weight, whether Mildred Hosier was dead or not. Taking no chances, he rushed her to Mission Emergency Hospital. 

Sleadd arrived to photograph the scene, Tedesco to collect any physical evidence. The Crime Lab, Tedesco thought solemnly, was getting quite a collection of .32 caliber slugs and casings. 

At both scenes, officers were managing to round up witnesses. Besides Donald Crum, one other person had seen the killer of Neal Moynihan: one Eugene Tracey had heard the shots, looked out his second-floor window, and seen the gunman running down Stevenson Street. At the Hosier scene, four additional witnesses had been located, although none of them, except the original witness, Carlos Paniagua, had seen the killer. 

Meanwhile, at Mission Emergency Hospital, Dr. John Eugene officially pronounced Mildred Hosier dead.

☠☠☠

Without being seen by any of the night employees, Judo entered the building where the loft meetings were held and went directly to the first-floor washroom. He locked the door and stepped onto the toilet seat. Using his nail clippers again, he removed the screws and lifted off the faceplate of the air vent. He looked inside. The gun was still there. 

Judo took it out and looked at it. He felt it carefully. It was not warm, did not look any different. Then he smelled the barrel. And he knew. It had been fired. 

He slipped the magazine out of the handle. Checked it for load. There was only one bullet left in it. When Judo had put it in the vent, the magazine had contained eight rounds. 

Judo's jaw clenched and his mouth pulled into a tight line. His nostrils flared in anger, as Yellow's had earlier in excitement. Bastards! he thought. Motherfucking bastards! 

It had to be one of the men from the loft meeting. One of the eleven or twelve besides himself who had attended that last meeting. Somebody who had come in late, maybe, and seen him hide the gun there. One of the men he did not know too well. 

Angry as he was, Judo tried very hard not to let himself think that it was Yellow who had taken the gun. He hated like hell to think that Yellow would have done that to him, deceived him like that. Yet he had been suspicious of his young friend the very night he had hidden the gun there; he had suspected even then that Yellow had followed him down from the loft and spied on him while he hid the gun. 

Wasn't there nobody he could trust? he wondered. 

Then he made up his mind about something: This was the last time anyone was going to use the gun. He had hidden it in that vent in the first place because he did not want to take it home. He did not want his woman to see it. Besides, Muslim rules forbade keeping a gun in the house. Always hide weapons outside the home, the lessons taught. Outside the home—but close and convenient enough to retrieve quickly. 

But Judo did not want to retrieve the gun anymore. He was sick and tired of the gun, did not want the responsibility for it anymore. There was no telling how many people the fucking thing had killed: the old man in the store, that guy using the telephone, the woman on Divisadero, the old man on Bancroft, these two tonight.

No more, he thought grimly. As far as this gun is concerned, it is over. 

Judo stuck the gun in his belt and replaced the vent plate. He slipped out of the building just as he had slipped in: unobserved. 

One hour later, in a borrowed car, Judo drove to the middle of the Golden Gate Bridge and hurled the pistol into the bay. 

At the end of Day Sixty-four there were twelve victims. 

Quita Hague, hacked to death. 
Richard Hague, his face butchered. 
Ellen Linder, raped, ravaged, threatened with death. 
Frances Rose, her face blown apart by close-range gunshots. 

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

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

Arthur Agnos, surviving after having his lungs, spleen, and kidney ripped apart by bullets. 

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

Ilario Bertuccio, gunned down in the street as he walked home from work with a bottle of 7-Up under his arm. 

Angela Roselli, surviving but seriously injured after being shot down in the street as she was returning home from a Christmas party. 

Neal Moynihan, shot down in the street on his way home with a Teddy bear for his little sister. 

And Mildred Hosier, shot down in the street as she walked to- ward her bus stop.

next Day 65