Silent terror, p.11
Silent Terror, page 11
From the Berkeley Barb, September 11, 1974:
HEAT HUGE IN WAKE OF SENSATIONALIZED SNUFFS
Last month Tricky Dicky resigned, and you thought things were looking up. You were right, but now the other shoe — or should we say hobnailed boot — has fallen. On September 2, Jill Eversall and her main man Steve Sifakis were brutally offed at Steve’s Richmond District crib. The killer hasn’t been caught yet, unfortunately, although the fuzz is trying. In some respects — too hard.
You see, Steve and Jill had an open thing, and they grooved on getting mellow with grass, and they weren’t uptight about who they hung out with. Jill had a gig at a slave market on South Mission, and — are you ready? — she liked helping the down-and-out guys on skid row find work. So...
So the San Francisco cops have concluded that Steve and Jill’s “loose life-style” was the cause of their deaths, and although deploring that life-style, they have set out to find the snuff artist/artists with bulldog determination. (Steve and Jill lived in the nice, safe Richmond, after all — why, it could have been someone... decent!) In the course of their investigation they have violated the civil rights of scores of peaceful “loose life-stylers.”
Item: In an early-morning raid, the fuzz rousted a half-dozen long-haired young people sleeping in Golden Gate Park, and when they found a pocketknife on one young man, they put a gun to his head and screamed, “Tell us why you sliced those people in the Richmond!”
Item: Workers drinking wine outside the Mighty-Man slave office were loaded into a van and hauled to the City Prison, where they were skin-searched, then harassed by homicide detectives. One plainclothes pig demanded that an old man admit to being hot for Jill Eversall. When the old man refused, the cop broke a wine bottle over his head.
Item: A number of innocent men with sex-offense records have been hassled by cops threatening to expose their records to employers and friends.
Item: Cops interrupted a chanting service at the Hare Krishna Temple on Delores Street, shaking down the chanters for dope and weapons. When the Temple’s head dojo demanded an explanation, one officer exclaimed, “I think the Richmond killings are cult-connected. My mom lives on Twenty-ninth Street! Don’t gimme no shit! I’m here to enforce the law!”
We at the Berkeley Barb wish to protest the above cited lawlessness and point out another law that may soon take precedence — the law of equal and opposite reaction. Breaking the law to enforce the law is never justified, even if the crime is murder.
14
While the events described in the preceding accounts were taking place, I was invisible in the storm center, lucid and gracefully careful, as apprentices should be when they finally achieve the status of Professional.
You are a murderer, Martin.
Awakening from my post-killing color sleep at 7:30, I automatically shaved and showered and prepared myself for work. I knew exactly what I had done and what I had to do, and went about it free of waking colors and brain-movies. First I dressed in my spare set of work clothes; then, knowing it was unlikely that the bodies had yet been discovered, I tossed Steve’s jump suit in with my bloodied khakis, web belt and ax, wrapped the plastic bundle up tightly and carried it out to my van. I drove to the clearing site as if my day portended business as usual, and I buried the death kit in a marsh area outside downtown Sausalito. Getaway step one completed, I sat on a rock and charted the remaining steps in mental typeface, “Business As Usual” my basic escape theme.
Neighbors may have seen you with the ax, so you need to obtain an identical ax illegally, then wear down the blade so that it will appear blood-free and well used if subjected to forensic scrutiny.
Your alibi is that you were home asleep at the time of the murders. The other tenants will corroborate you as an early riser, early returner and quiet tenant, and no one saw you on the street talking to Steve and Jill. No witnesses were present at the Mighty-Man office when you met Jill, and if she told people about meeting you and the police question you about it — you must deny it, because that line of questioning will, logically, follow their first routine questioning of all neighborhood residents. And if you change your story after first claiming not to have known her, you will become a major suspect.
The police will be taking down license numbers of every vehicle in the surrounding area, cross-checking the registration against the California Criminal Records Bureau’s files. Your burglary conviction and the fact that you recently completed your probationary term and moved here from Los Angeles will be noted, and you will be subjected to intense questioning and possible physical abuse. You must never waver in your denials of guilt, even under extreme duress, and you must refuse to take a polygraph test.
You are a murderer, Martin.
In the end, my scenario translated into reality with almost perfect fidelity. I shoplifted an ax identical to my old one at a hardware store in Sausalito and devastated the cutting edge on the site’s few remaking tree trunks. I continued my mop-up work for Mr. Slotnick, and the foreman came by and told me that on September 10 I was out of a job, because the site was going to be plowed, and the “Ecofreaks” had put the kibosh on Big Sol’s “Singles Paradise” tract. I maintained my business-as-usual plan, and the delay in discovering the bodies made my confidence grow in quantum leaps.
Then, fifty hours and ten minutes after the moment, I heard the sirens, and I looked out my front window and saw red twirling lights proclaim my name. I watched as the red was intensified by more and more police cars, then I went to bed and slept, and dream lights spelled out “You are a murderer, Martin.”
Loud knocks on my door awakened me at dawn. I put on a robe, walked over and yawned into the peephole. “Yeah? What do you want?”
A perfunctory voice answered, “Police, open up.”
In an instant I knew they had already run their vehicle cross-checks and had knowledge of my record. The thrust of my performance came to me, boldly embellished. I rubbed sleep from my eyes, opened the door and reverted to my old jailhouse persona. “Yeah, what is it?”
Three hard cases were on my doorstep. They were all as big as me, and they were all wearing crewcuts, cheap summer suits and scowls. The one in the middle, distinguishable only by a badly stained necktie, said, “Don’t you know what it is?”
“Fill me in,” I said. “It’s six-fucking A.M., and I’m dying to hear what you have to say.”
The cop on the left muttered, “Comedian,” and motioned for me to step aside. I complied with feigned reluctance, and the three filed into my living room, the necktie man immediately pointing to my ax and 3cythe propped up against the wall by the door. “What are those?” he asked.
I looked him straight in the eye. “An ax and a scythe.”
“I can see that, Plunkett. What do you use them for?”
I acted surprised at his mention of my name, and made myself hesitate three seconds, watching the other two fan out to search my apartment. “To trim my nails,” I said.
“Don’t fuck with me,” he said, easing the door shut.
“Then tell me what this is all about.”
“I’ll get to it. How long have you lived in San Francisco?”
“Since April.”
“Why do you possess those tools?”
“I’ve been working at a building site in Marin, and I use the tools to dig out tree stumps and brush.”
“I see. Who got you the job?”
“I got it off the bulletin board at S.F. State.”
“Are you a student there?”
“No.”
“Then what gave you the right to the job?”
“Being broke gave me the right. What’s—”
“Shut up. Are you sure you didn’t get the job at the Mighty-Man Agency?”
“I’m positive.”
“How many burglar.es have you pulled in San Francisco?”
“Three trillion at last count. I—”
“I said don’t fuck with me!”
I flinched backward and looked scared. Shifting performance gears, I said, “I pulled one B and E in L.A. five years ago, and I did a year, and I stayed clean and topped out my probation and moved here. I was a fucking kid when I pulled that B and E, and I haven’t done it since. Now what do you want?”
The necktie cop hooked his thumbs in his belt. The pose allowed me a view of his holstered .38, and staring straight into his eyes gave me glimpses of the low-voltage brain behind them. “You know this is serious,” he said,
I cinched the belt of my robe. “I know this is more than a burglary roust.”
“Smart lad. Did you see the police cars on this block last night?”
“Yes.”
“Wonder what was happening?”
“Yes.”
“Make any attempt to find out?”
“No.”
“Why not?”
“I’ve had enough of cops to last me a lifetime. What—”
“I’ll tell you in due time. You like pussy?”
“Yeah, do you?”
“Had any lately?”
“In my dreams last night.”
“Cute. You like blondes or brunettes?”
“Both.”
“Ever get a woman to dye her hair for you?”
I laughed to cover my shock at the unanticipated question. “Snatch hair, you mean?”
The necktie cop snickered, then looked over my shoulder. I turned and saw his partners going through my kitchen drawers. When one of them gave a negative head shake, Necktie said, “Let’s change the subject.”
“How about baseball?”
“How about boys? You bisexual?”
“No.”
“Into three ways?”
“No.”
“You take it up the ass?”
“No.”
“Oh, you eat it then?”
I started to get angry for real, and my hands twitched at my sides. Necktie noticed my change of expression, and said, “Strike a nerve, cool cat? Maybe you got reamed doing your bullet in L.A.? Maybe your switch gets flipped by boys now, and you hate yourself for liking it. Maybe your switch flipped Monday night about nine o’clock when Steve and Jill suggested a party? Maybe you misinterpreted the whole scene, and when Jill wouldn’t put out you took it out on Steve with a meat mallet, and you chopped off Jill’s head because you didn’t like the way she was looking at you. How many people you killed, Plunkett?”
In the course of a microsecond, an astonishing thing happened. As I felt the color drain from my face I became my performance, my real anger became perfect real shock, and I was the innocent man falsely accused. Stammering, “Y-y-yyou mmean pppeople wwere mmurdered,” I knew that the necktie cop bought it straight down the line. When he said, “That’s right,” I saw his disappointment that I wasn’t guilty; when he said, “Where were you Monday night?” I knew the rest of the interrogation was just a formality. The revelation passed, and as I assumed a normal, sane sense of culpability, it took every ounce of my will not to gloat. “I... I w-was here,” I stuttered.
“Alone?”
“Y-y-yes.”
“What were you doing?”
“I... I got home from my job around eight-thirty. I ate dinner, then I read for an hour or so and went to bed.”
“A swinging evening. That what you usually do?”
“Yes.”
“Don’t you hang out with friends?”
“I haven’t really made any friends here.”
“Don’t you get lonely?”
“Sure. Who do you think—”
“I’ll ask the questions. Do you know a woman named Jill Eversail or a man named Steven Sifakis?”
“Are they the ones...?”
“That’s right.”
“What do — did they look like?”
“She was a foxy brunette, about five-six, nice tits. You like tits?”
“Come on, Officer.”
“Okay, what about Steve Sifakis? Five-eleven, one-ninety, reddish brown hair with muttonchop sideburns. He was supposed to be hung like a mule. You dig big cocks?”
“Just my own.” I heard the two cops in the kitchen laugh, and turned around to look at them. One man was shaking his head and drawing a finger across his throat, the gesture obviously intended for Necktie. Turning back, I said, “Can we wrap this up? I have to go to work.”
“We may damn well wrap you up, Plunkett,” Necktie said slowly.
I went in for the kill, knowing I could outgame any machine in captivity. “This is getting old, so why don’t I wrap this up? Since I didn’t kill anybody, why don’t we all hotfoot it down to the station. You hit me with a lie-detector test, I pass it, you cut me loose. What do you say?”
Necktie looked past me to the leader cop. I resisted the urge to watch their signals, and concentrated on the stain that gave the cop his impromptu name. I had just decided it was chili when Necktie said, “Did you see anybody on the street when you came home Monday night?”
I considered my “victory” question for a moment, then said, “No.”
“Hear any strange noises?”
“No.”
“See any unfamiliar vehicles?”
“No.”
“Ever fuck Jill Eversall or score grass from Steve Sifakis?”
I gave Necktie a look of contempt that would have wilted the Pope. “Come on, man.”
“No, you come on. Answer my question.”
“All right. No, I never fucked Jill Eversall or scored grass from Steve Sifakis.”
One of the cops behind me cleared his throat; Necktie squared his shoulders and said, “We may be back.” The leader cop said “Stay clean” as he walked past me to the door, and the other one winked.
Of course they never came back, and I spent the next several weeks enjoying my anonymous fame as the “Richmond Ripper,” an appelation bestowed on me by an Examiner reporter. “Business as usual” were my watchwords, and I imagined myself under twenty-four-hour surveillance, my every move being scrutinized by equally anonymous forces anxious to bring me down. The conscious cultivation of paranoia kept me coming home at night when I wanted to be on the street listening to people talk about me; it kept me going to university job boards, searching out work, when I wanted to be spending the money I had hoarded on guns. It would not let me collect newspaper clippings on my crime, nor would it let me do what I most wanted to do — move on to other cities and see how they affected me. The regimen boiled down to asceticism in place of celebration, and the only thing emotionally satisfying about it was that I knew it was making me stronger.
Ten days after the killings, I found another “Heavy Labor” job — weeding an entire hillside on the edge of the U.C.-Berkeley campus. The work was tedious — exacerbated by the fact that I didn’t need the money — and eavesdropping on students’ conversations made me angry: Watergate and Nixon’s recent resignation were their favorite topics, and when they deigned to talk about me, I was dismissed as a “psycho” or “sick puppy.” I decided that on October 2, a month to the day from the murders, I would celebrate.
The time passed slowly.
I worked on the hillside, listened to students talk and read newspapers on my lunch hour. Reading the papers was like being dangled on an ego string. Articles comparing me to the Manson Family, “only smarter,” felt like yanks into the clouds; paragraphs attributing my murders to the “Zodiac” killer — a mystic psychopath who sent lurid communiques to the police — felt like being flung to the dirt. Eight straight days of no print space was the complete abandonment of a mother hurling an unwanted child into a garbage heap.
Nights were the slowest to pass.
On my way home, I would sometimes see cops rousting long-haired youths, and I would know, somehow, that I had been the catalyst of that minor chaos. Cutting a street-swath through people in my van was satisfying, because I knew they knew of my actions. But at home, in my cocoon of caution, there was only me. And though “you are a murderer, Martin,” was now my identity, I had not yet decided to stay yanked in the clouds through continuous killing.
By October 2, the Richmond Ripper case was stale media bread, and my instincts told me that the police had gone on to matters of more urgent priority. Logic joined my heart in telling me to celebrate, and I did.
It took me an entire day and night to find what I wanted, and the four-hundred-dollar price tag was infinitesimal compared to the effort of talking out of the side of my mouth to a long succession of South San Francisco hoodlums, exchanging “pedigrees” and criminal amenities, then going on a half-dozen wild-goose chases before connecting with a retired pawnshop broker looking to liquidate “hot stock.” The ultimate transaction was quick and effortless, and I was the unlawful owner of a brand-new, never-registered, untraceable Colt .357 magnum “Python” model revolver.
Now I had two talismans — one handcrafted, the other earned. At home I brought them together, threaded cylinder to muzzle. They fit perfectly, adding a tactile weight to my new identity. On my way to work the next morning I bought a box of hollow-point ammunition, and with the loaded and silencered hand cannon under my shirt, I dug weeds out of the soft dirt until dusk. Then, framed by dormitory lights and a starry night, I practiced.
Muzzle flash, recoil, the dull thuds of the silencer; slapping sounds as the bullets tore into the spade-furrowed dirt. Cordite and soil in my nostrils, and headlights from passing cars on the road above me momentarily illuminating the craters made by individual shots. My right wrist aching from the magnum’s internal combustion; emptying the spent shells into my pocket after every sixth explosion; reloading in the dark and firing, firing, firing until my box of hollow points was empty and the hillside smelled like a battlefield sans blood. Then the drive home, trembling inside, anxious to hit the open highway and just go.
But going was, at that point, inimical to business as usual, which meant “stay.” So I did stay, finishing my weeding job, but continuing at U.C.-Berkeley as a backup custodian, sweeping and mopping on the regular crew members’ staggered days off. I set my go day as Thanksgiving, November 24, and continued to live on the cheap, allowing myself one luxury: ammunition.
