Zoot-Suit Murders (17 page)

“Friend of yours?”

The bright stab of light in the dead man’s face hurt Younger’s eyes. He turned away. Over the giant letters clouds were suddenly torn away from the mountainside, exposing the crystal-clear lights of Hollywood far below. “He was a friend all right, a real close friend.” Younger started walking toward the beckoning light. “That’s Chiquito Banana you’ve got there.”

T
he Hollywod Stars were burning up. Angel had thrown so many rocket pitches it looked like his arm was going to fall off. The crowd was hysterical with the scent of blood. The stadium was a great open wooden mouth, roaring, whistling, screaming as each San Francisco Seal swung hard at Angel’s pitches, striking out in a splutter of curses, spitting madly toward the high pitcher’s mound. Angel’s loose arm twitched with inspired life of its own. It wound and fired the ball like a bat out of hell going straight for the batter’s throat, then unexpectedly screeching straight through the strike zone into the surprised catcher’s mitt.

“There’s no way they can stop Angel now.” Kinney leaned
forward on the edge of his seat, resting his arms on the iron-bar railing separating him and Younger from the action on the playing field. “The Seals can’t stand up to him. Angel’s broken them. Only two more innings to go and the Stars will clinch the pennant.”

“Why didn’t you tell me the FBI had been trailing me?”

“Just relax and watch the game.” Kinney’s words came out of the side of his mouth as his body tensed, waiting for Angel’s next strike to sail across the plate.

“Relax! Senator, I must know what is going on!”

“Keep your voice down, Younger. We don’t want anybody recognizing us.”

“Keep my voice down! FBI has been secretly trailing me for months, and—”

“Just two months.”

“My life has been threatened in the Barrio, and I’ve shot a teenage kid, and all you can say is relax and watch the ball game!”

“You didn’t kill the kid.”

Younger spit his gum angrily over the railing with his words. “What? Don’t play with me anymore, Senator! What do you mean by that?”

“Just what I said. It wasn’t you that shot the kid.”

“You don’t mean to tell me the FBI shot him?”

“Don’t be ridiculous. I talked to the morgue just a half-hour before leaving to come over here. Cruz was shot in the back. This Chiquito Banana guy kept Cruz alive just long enough to smoke you out, then he nailed him, put the gun right up against him and
pow
.”

“That’s reliable information?”

“Gospel.”

Younger peeled the foil slowly off another stick of Juicy Fruit. “That still doesn’t let me off the hook. It’s the same thing as me having shot him. I was the one who made him go there.”

“You didn’t make him go there; he was a dead man already.”

“What do you mean?”

Kinney reached inside his coat pocket and handed Younger a round tin can with a key opener attached to the top.

“What’s this? Looks like a…”

“Like a can of tuna, doesn’t it? Open it.”

Younger slipped the key onto the tin tag of the lid and twisted it back, exposing a neatly packed plastic bag filled with fine brown powder.

“That’s what it is, all right.” Kinney spoke without looking at the contents of the can. Behind his dark glasses he followed another of Angel’s perfect strikes across home plate. “Five ounces of pure Mexican brown. They found four cans of it in Chiquito Banana’s pockets. You see, Cruz was a dead man all along.”

“My God, Senator, how can you sit there? You know what this means? Wino Boy’s tip on the Horse was right. Sea Biscuit was bringing the Horse in all the time. These are tuna cans; the Admiral’s been canning heroin!”

“The FBI knows that, Younger, just calm down. They raided the Admiral’s place last night. Remember, we’re all on the same team. I told you the FBI was on the job.”

“How come there wasn’t anything about it in the morning papers? Nothing about that, nothing about Chiquito Banana or Cruz?”

“Younger, this is still a national security issue. Do you think we want it printed that a retired admiral was smuggling heroin to support the Fascist cause in America? Do you think we want to tip our hand before we clear up the issue in the Barrio?”

“Where’s the Admiral?”

“Under armed guard on a slow boat headed north for Alcatraz Island.”

“And the yacht?”

“There was more than one—payoffs for heroin, cleaner than money. After the tuna fleet brought in enough catches of heroin a yacht was tucked away in a grain ship and sent to the Mexican
official who was supplying the heroin. It was easy to get the heroin through. It’s wartime, we need food. Coast Guard isn’t about to inspect tuna boats the way they would in peacetime. In wartime you can get away with almost anything,
anything
.”

“How long have you known about this?”

“He struck him out, did you see that? Angel struck him out. That leaves only one more inning. One more inning to glory.”

“How long have you known about this heroin thing? How it was channeled into the Barrio? How long have you and the FBI been using me as bait?”

“I haven’t had the
whole
story till now.” Kinney turned the hard glare of his sunglasses at Younger, the green lenses reflecting Younger’s angry face. “The FBI knew the Admiral was funneling heroin into the Barrio, but once it got there they couldn’t track down who controlled it. They found out it wasn’t the Zoots early on. The Sinarquistas knew using heroin to gain power over the gangs would backfire on them; that’s why they got rid of Chiquito Banana. Banana was nothing but a gangster, using the Sinarquistas and the Admiral to push heroin. But what made it tough was the Zoots would die before exposing him; their street code wouldn’t allow it. That’s how the FBI lost those two agents on the Barbara Carr deal.”

“What do the Zoot-suit murders have to do with it?”

“Everything.” Kinney leaned forward on the rail again. “That’s it! The Stars are taking the field again. This is the last inning. Is that Angel a wonder? I tell you, he just gets word of another of his brothers dying and he walks out on the mound and murders the Seals.”

“What do you mean, everything?”

“Carr was a junkie, Younger. Didn’t you figure it out? I thought you covered all the angles in the Barrio. Carr was there because since the war broke out the Barrio’s the only place she’s been able to get a ride on her favorite Horse, pure Mexican brown. The FBI set her up, posing as dealers, figured she’d tip them to the main man. FBI logic was if they trapped Carr in
the Barrio she’d spill all to keep her public from knowing she was a Horse jockey. Strike three. Angel’s got the first man down.”

“So what happened?”

“Someone tipped Carr about the agents.”

“But she came into the Barrio anyway? She walked into the trap?”

“Carr was hungry for Horse. She took a chance. When she realized there was no way out she ran, screaming she was being kidnapped.”

“Then the Zoots shot the agents to protect Banana?”

“That’s what the FBI thought at first, but now we know better.” Kinney slapped his hand on the iron rail excitedly. “Strike one. Five more strikes and this game is history.”

“Know what better?”

“The Zoots were set up. Whoever tipped Carr to the FBI agents was also the one who killed them.”

“Who’d want to set the Zoots up?” Younger couldn’t help watching Angel intently, as if somehow the answer was out there on the pitcher’s mound. “The Sinarquistas can’t survive in the Barrio without the Zoots protecting them.”

“Right, that’s why someone wanted the Zoots destroyed, discredited with their people, talked about in the press as mad murderers. Destroy the Zoots and you destroy the last chance for the Sinarquistas to establish a political beachhead in America.”

Younger didn’t even blink as Angel threw another perfect strike. “The FBI wouldn’t kill two of its own men just to discredit the Zoots.”

“No.”

“Then who, Senator?”

“Who hates Fascists more than us?”

“The Communists.” Younger spoke the word as the third strike flashed before the baffled Seal at home plate.

“That’s it, Younger. Two Seals down, one Seal to go.”

“How could Communists have shot the agents? The shots were fired from the gang of Zoots.”

“Fired by a Communist undercover agent.”

“But there wasn’t anyone else with the Zoots except La Rue.”

“And no fingerprints on the gun found lying on the ground. Remember, Younger, that always bothered you?”

Younger placed his hand over Kinney’s and squeezed it against the iron rail. “You can’t be serious?”

“We think she’s a Fellow Traveler. We think the whole damn Mankind Incorporated thing is a stinking Commie front, rotten from top to bottom. FBI has tried to move in on the Voice, but he’s dropped out of sight. The DIALGOD number they have is for passing coded messages back and forth between different Communist cells.”

“So that’s why, when I first started seeing La Rue, Cruz called me a Commie. The Zoots knew.” Younger dug his fingernails into the back of Kinney’s hand. “You knew she was a Pinko all this time and let me play the game!”

Kinney pulled his hand from under Younger’s maniacal grip. “Get hold of yourself, man! She’s a Fellow Traveler—did you hear me, Younger? She’s a Red. And the one in the best position of getting the truth is you.”

“It’s not safe for me in the Barrio anymore; that’s one of the things I had to report. La Rue doesn’t know who I am, but now with this Cruz thing last night …” Younger felt a dryness in the back of his throat as he spoke Cruz’s name, a hard dryness like a fist had punched his throat, making it painful for him to speak.

“What about the Cruz thing last night?”

Younger continued, swallowing hard. “The Zoots are on to me; it’s not safe.”

“You’re a soldier, Younger. We all are. It’s going to get more dangerous for you now, but the issue here is national security. These are the biggest un-American activities of all we’re talking about here. You’ve got to get all the truth from La Rue.”

Younger pressed against the iron rail so his words were close to the Senator’s ear. “If she really is a Pinko, I have a way to find out. I hate to do it, but I will if I have to.”

“It’s not a question of whether or not the girl’s Pink.” Kinney’s hot breath was on Younger’s cheek, his words like tiny knives jabbing into the skin. “I suppose it never occurred to you, when La Rue and the Voice were at the Shrine Auditorium, that they condemned every national leader from Roosevelt to Hitler, every leader except one: Joe Stalin. She’s Red as the blood that would come out of Uncle Joe Stalin’s veins if he slashed his wrists today.”

Younger looked at the Seal stepping to the plate. He felt as nervous as the ball player, his sweaty palms gripping the iron rail before him like it was a bat. The game was up. Younger could no longer put off the confrontation with Kathleen. He knew that by doing his job, staying loyal to his country, he was going to kill the one bright moment of his life, the woman he had seduced himself into believing was above the mean corruption of mere mortals. An angel in a world gone to hell, who gave him the belief he could be born again in his love for her as a better man. Younger heard his words come out clear and even, spoken from some deep source of strength in his gut. “She’s a Red, Senator. I know how to handle Reds.”

The Seal swung his bat furiously at empty air, the fans in the stands thundering their approval. Younger leaned wearily back in his seat. All around him people were going crazy. Photographers charged onto the field like an invading army, popping the flashbulbs of their cameras off before them in a barrage of blinding light. Everyone was trying to get to Angel, slap him on the back, shake his hand. Younger saw Angel running through the mob. But Angel was not headed for the dugout; he was coming straight at Younger. The photographers tried to head Angel off with their flashing line of fire; it was impossible. Angel stopped in front of Younger’s box seat, panting, sweat pouring from beneath the gold cap over his handsome face. Without a word, a wad of spit flew from Angel’s mouth, a wild spray striking
Younger full in the face. The madness of the moment caught the mob off guard, and they started screaming in a frenzy as Angel tried to leap over the iron-bar railing, lunging for Younger’s throat. The hysterical cry of Angel’s voice was drowned out by fanatical fans as they took him captive, lifting him to their shoulders in jubilant victory, racing back onto the field. Only Younger heard the cry of Angel’s words clearly.

“Thanks for getting my brother a job, you bastard!”

“Y
ou seem so nervous, Nathan. Would you like another Coke?”

“No, Kathleen.” Younger looked out the window, not mentioning the orange cat pawing around nervously on the fire-escape ramp behind her. The sunset caught the fluffy fur of the cat, dazzling the animal’s presence until it looked more like a burning spirit than a harmless house pet. Younger ran the back of his hand across his eyes, trying to block out the odd vision of the cat. “I’m just tired, I guess. The war, not hearing from Marvin in so long, the usual. I’m like you. I’m ready for a vacation up to the top of your Bright Angel Rim on the Grand Canyon. Far away from people; nothing but the desert far as the eye can see, nothing but the lazy Colorado River winding its
way through the bottom of the endless canyon. Simple, all so simple.”

Kathleen smoothed a hand back through her wild curls, as if she could tame them all into a nice soft halo of red around her head. “Is Marvin still being terrified by that awful man on board his ship?”

“The Shitter?”

“Yes.” Kathleen’s gaze fell to the floor in embarrassment. “Yes, he’s the one I mean.”

“I suppose so. It’s a shame a boy has to fight a war and worry about a thing like that as well.”

“It’s a shame young boys have to fight any war.” Kathleen’s solemn face brightened. “But soon all this devastation will end. Mankind will triumph and we can get on with the work of rebuilding the planet, and the armies of the world will be dismantled and sent into fields to plant crops, not sow devastation and disgrace.”

Younger watched the cat tapping the window behind Kathleen’s earnest face. “You really believe that?”

Kathleen slipped off the chair and knelt beside him, taking his hand in both of hers. “I believe that with all my heart.”

“Maybe it will happen one day.” Younger was distracted by the cat’s soundless scratching on the other side of the glass pane.

“It can happen, Nathan, and it
will
.” Kathleen lifted his hand to her face, her lips almost touching his fingertips as she spoke. “I promise you will live to witness that day of perfect brotherhood.”

Younger let his fingertips rest in the curved hollowness of her cheek. “And you, Kathleen, will you live to see that day with me?”

“It makes no difference if one day you don’t know me as I am now. Don’t you see? I’ve explained to you so many times before.” She pressed Younger’s hand desperately closer to her cheek. “We all have three bodies: physical, astral, and cosmic.
I know I will soon die. But I am God-conscious. I must trust my ultrahigh vibrations to free me from this physical body. No one can exist on the spiritual plane and animal plane simultaneously. Don’t you see? I must free myself from this wretched, hacking, wheezing body.” She brought his fingertips to her lips so he could feel the excited breath of her words. “And you, dear Nathan, must cure your skeptical mind. Think only thoughts harmonizing with the greater universal law. Then you will be born again, and we … we can be together always, in mind as well as spirit.”

“Jesus!” Younger pulled his hand from Kathleen’s lips and jumped up from the fat chair, stalking back and forth before the long bookcase. “Don’t talk like that! It’s so macabre. I want to be with you now, just like you are, sick body and all. I don’t care about the rest of it. I don’t care about meeting you out on some godforsaken astral plane. I don’t want to rendezvous in a millennium on some distant planet. I want you, now. Just as you are.”

Kathleen put her hand to her heart and sank against the arm of the chair, gasping for breath. “Nathan, how can you shout at me like this? What’s wrong with you? You’ve never talked to me like this before. And I thought you had learned so much, cared so much for ultimate liberation from our temporal selves. That’s what I have been talking about all these past months. I thought that’s what we were progressing toward, what this has been all about—spiritual freedom.”

“What it’s really been about is us, Kathleen.” Younger knelt next to her, putting his arms around her thin body, cradling her against him. “I didn’t want to scare you.” He placed his cool hand gently across her hot forehead. “But all this stuff happening to us is crazy. It doesn’t make any sense. We have to be honest with each other if we are both to survive this. I can’t bear to think of you dying. I can’t bear to think of losing you to some higher unseen vibration that will translevitate you away from me. It’s just that I’ve only suddenly come to realize …” He slowly reached above his head, slipping a heavy book from the
bookcase and flinging it across the room so it crashed loudly against the wall next to the window, the frightened cat nearly leaping over backward, flashing up the fire escape. “I’ve come to realize I love you too much to lose you over any differences in our beliefs. If we can’t believe in our feeling for each other, our love for each other, then what good is all the rest of it? What possible good? If we are more dedicated to our ideals than to the faith of our love for each other, then we are doomed.” He watched the tears in Kathleen’s eyes come swiftly, without hesitation, her cheeks glistening as she uttered her words in short, almost painful gasps.

“How much I know what you are truly saying. How much I have longed to say it myself but have been too afraid to even think it, to even speak it.”

Younger felt himself trembling, shaking like a frightened child on a department store Santa Claus’s knee. It was odd, the closeness of Kathleen in his arms. Her physical vulnerability made him feel afraid, out of control. “Look, Kathleen.” He pulled her to her feet. “We can’t sit around feeling sorry for ourselves. We’re young, vital. There’s a war going on and thank God right now we’re two people not out there in it. I have a swell idea.” He gently pushed her back and wiped the streaks of tears away from her cheeks with his thumb. “Let’s go have some fun. Let’s forget everything and go to a movie.”

“A movie? You want to go to a movie, now?” Kathleen looked at him suspiciously. “I’m so upset, and it’s so—it’s so late.”

“There’s a new Barbara Carr picture downtown at the Orpheum. It premiered at Grauman’s Chinese in Hollywood just last month. It starts at eight tonight. We can catch the streetcar and be there in plenty of time.” Younger watched her face intently, trying to divine the flickering expression of surprise in her eyes, hanging on her words as if their consequence might promise some final truth.

“I don’t know if I can do that. Not a Barbara Carr movie. I’ve been trying so hard to forget that awful night last summer and those horrible days of preliminary hearings afterward, all
those questions, those poor frightened boys being held without bail for a murder trial. Every time I see Barbara Carr’s face on a movie ad I just think of the whole ugly nightmare.”

“That’s just why you should go, to prove to yourself the nightmare is over. Everything is normal now.” Younger couldn’t control the tone of his voice. His words came back to him in the room with too much urgency, too much insistence. He tried to soften their effect, but what he said still sounded like a challenge. “We
must
go. It’s Barbara Carr’s first picture since she was involved in the Zoot-suit murders; she’s spent eight months making it. She’s such a good actress. We can’t blame Barbara Carr for what happened.”

Kathleen said nothing. A strange light in her eyes made her seem distant even though she was close to him, so close Younger felt the heat from her frail body. There was some other part of her far away, and from that place, slowly, her words finally came. “If you say we should, Nathan, I’ll go. I’ll go anywhere you say.”

  “How come there are so many sailors out tonight?” Kathleen watched the busy sidewalk outside the window of the packed streetcar. Everywhere in the bright lights of the busy department stores there were sailors. Sailors by twos and threes, fives and eights, hundreds of sailors walking quickly in their dark blue uniforms, white caps cocked back on their shaved heads as they roved nervously in packs, alert, as if searching for some mysterious and elusive game, expecting some ultimate danger. Elbowing their way through the sailors, clubs swinging at the sides of their white pants legs, squads of Shore Patrolmen roamed easily, aloof but alert, sensing potential violence, riding herd on the thickening packs of sailors growing more numerous as the streetcar rolled along the widening streets, block by long block, farther into the deepening canyon of towering downtown buildings.

“It’s Friday night, Kathleen, no more sailors than usual.
They’re all out hunting for girls. It’s like this every weekend. You don’t get out of the Barrio enough. Usually you’re spending all your off moments going from door to door preaching.”

“Well, what’s wrong with that?” Kathleen turned quickly from her reflection in the window, her body stiffening next to him.

“Nothing.” Younger laughed, tightening his arm around her shoulders. “Nothing in the world wrong with it. But you must have some fun, relax. We can’t be so serious all the time.”

Kathleen turned and looked back out the broad window. “Just so
many
sailors. It doesn’t seem right, so many like this.”

“Maybe the fleet’s in.” Younger leaned across her to get a better view of the crowding sailors clogging sidewalks. “Maybe they’re all looking for a girl pretty as you.” He kissed Kathleen unexpectedly on the cheek and laughed. “A pretty redhead with lots of curls and great legs.”

“Nathan!” Kathleen jabbed him in the ribs with her long fingernails. “Be quiet.” She looked around the streetcar self-consciously. “People may be listening. That’s not the kind of thing to joke about in public.”

“Here we are.” Younger yanked the buzzer cord to stop the streetcar. “The Orpheum Theater, where we get off.”

The gold-red-and-blue neon of the theater sign fell from three stories high in a sparkling waterfall over heads of people lined at the ticket booth. The giant painted face of Barbara Carr loomed behind sheets of glass over display windows. She swooned in the arms of a dark romantic man with his shirt torn open, her glazed-over eyes fixed in a stupor on the man’s bare chest, the wild blond cascade of her hair flung in a careless tangle of knots behind her.

“Hey, this really looks swell! These are the kinds of pictures Barbara Carr is best in, jungle pictures.” Younger studied the slack expression on Carr’s face behind the smudged glass. “Aren’t you glad we came, Kathleen?”

“I’m glad.” She took Younger’s arm as the line moved slowly toward the ticket booth and into the gold-pillared lobby. The
slightly mildewed and smoky odor of hot popcorn wafted to far recesses of the balcony’s ceiling, its false baroque angels flittering about in brash coats of bronze paint.

Younger fumbled along the dark aisles inside the crowded theater, finally finding two vacant seats. Before him the United States Army was marching triumphantly across the movie screen through the bombed and shattered city of Naples, the announcer of the newsreel shouting excitedly:

“Down in front!”

“Get down! Down in front!”

“I can’t see what’s going on. Who’s doing the shouting?” Kathleen rose in her seat, trying to see over the sea of heads before her stretching to the foot of the movie screen. “Can you see what is going on up there, Nathan?”

“No, I can’t see either.”

“Get down! Hey, what’s going on?”

“Somebody call the police!”

Kathleen grabbed Younger’s arm. “Let’s go. Something terrible is happening up there.”

From the back of the theater the swinging doors on all six aisles banged open, men running down the aisles with flashlights, stabbing bright beams out into the audience. Beams of blinding light shot into Younger’s face. He jumped up with his arm around Kathleen. People were pushing and shoving, screaming to get out, trapping themselves in their own panic.

“Oh, my God!”

“Stop them!
Stop them
!”

The newsreel died on the screen, pitching the entire theater into darkness. The shadows of the men with the flashlights leaped into the audience.

“My God! They’re killing people! They’re killing people!”

The men with the flashlights waded into the screaming audience, knocking people down, grabbing others.

Younger pushed Kathleen into her seat as he tried to shove back the hysterical people stampeding in all directions around him.

“They’re going to kill us all! We’re all going to die!”

Brilliant showers of light shattered the vast darkness from tiered chandeliers that dangled from the high ceiling of the theater, exposing the panicked crowd, exposing the men with flashlights. Younger was shocked. The men with flashlights were sailors. More sailors kept pouring through the swinging doors, searching out anyone dressed in a Zoot suit. Three aisles before Younger two teenage Zoot-suiters crouched down, trying to hide from six sailors pushing their way to them through the terrified crowd.

“
¡Que nos matan! ¡Que nos abusan
! Don’t let them get us! Don’t let them kill us!” The two Zoots screamed, caught in the trap of the crushing crowd. The sailors surrounded the Zoots, knocking their slouched hats off, grabbing them by their long black hair, dragging them kicking and shouting up to the stage in front of the blank movie screen, where more sailors stood with their young captives, tearing off their Zoot suits, ripping off their underclothes. Sharp metal of scissors flashed in the sailors’ hands as they cut the hair from struggling Zoot boys crying out in Spanish for mercy, pleading not to be murdered. Everywhere in the audience sailors found more Zoot-suiters, beating them to the ground, quickly stripping them naked and shearing their hair off, shaming them before the eyes of the horrified crowd.