“Who’s they?”
“The government. Or some free-lance running dogs, working for the government. Someone had to have poisoned the meat, planted charges, waited until all of us were in that warehouse, puking, weakened, then blew it to kingdom-come. Some sort of remote-control detonator. Death knell for the dream.”
“Collective farming,” I said. “It’s not exactly what comes to mind when you think of the Weathermen, FALN, the Black Army. People like Mark Grossman and Skitch Dupree.”
“That’s ’cause you’ve been programmed to think that way. Everyone in that warehouse- everyone in New Walden- was a fugitive from violence. We were sick of violence, sick of the way things had turned. Tonio and Teresa had just quit FALN. Skitch had taken a lot of crap for renouncing violence- even got shot at by Black Revo Army dudes because he changed his tune. Norm and Melba were the architects of the plan. They’d turned their heads totally away from violence.” He shook his head. “Bomb factory. Do you think Norm and Melba and Tonio and Teresa would have brought their kids into some bomb factory?”
People had brought their babies to Jim Jones. Sacrificed countless other innocents to other Molochs. I didn’t say anything.
He said, “I sat in that clinic waiting room, and I knew everything was over. I wanted to run. But Malcolm was hot as a skillet, needed to see the doctor, so I sat and waited and hoped no one could see I was ready to burst out of my skin. Finally we got seen by a nurse, after all that time. She gave me medicine, told me he’d probably be okay once the fever broke, to give him lots of fluids, come back in a couple of days. I left, walked around the corner, carrying him, kept walking until I found a car with the keys left in the ignition. Got in, laid him across the front seat, started it up, drove all the way through Nevada, into California. Stopped to buy apple juice and diapers, driving while holding a bottle to his lips. Hundreds of miles of nightmares, roads with no one else on them, him screaming for his mama, me constantly thinking someone was gonna get on my tail, gun us down. Made it all the way to L.A. before dawn.”
“To Venice,” I said.
He nodded. “Like I said, they’d never gotten along, she and Norm, but where else could I take him? I left him on the doorstep and split.”
I opened his book, turned to the Berkeley picture, and showed it to him. “The other people- they were the second cadre?”
Another nod. “They were a hundred miles up the Snake River, negotiating for building materials. The plan was to build log cabins. They had bought the stuff from a logging contractor but got delayed trying to find some way to haul it down- Teamsters gave ’em grief, didn’t want to deal with a bunch of goddam hippies.”
“What’d they do after the explosion?”
“Disappeared. Mostly up to Canada.”
He took the book. Gazed at it. Closed his eyes.
I said, “What happened to them?”
He opened his eyes and sighed. “These two”- he jabbed a finger- “Harry and Debbie Delage. They stayed up there- they were French Canadian. I think they’re teachers in Montreal but I’m not sure, haven’t had contact with them. With any of them.”
The finger drifted. “Ed Maher and Julie Bendix went to Morocco, moved around, and then came back, got married, had a bunch of kids. I heard she died of breast cancer a couple of years ago. He’s probably back east- his family had money… Lyle Stokes got involved in this New Age crap- crystals and past lives. He’s making a fortune… Sandy Porter I don’t know… Gordy Latch married that fascist’s daughter and became a scumbag politician… Jack Parducci’s a lawyer in Pittsburgh, joined the GOP.”
He stared at the picture a while longer, closed the book, and gave it back. “Fuck nostalgia.”
I said, “Who determined which cadre someone went into?”
“It wasn’t anything formal, just kind of natural selection. The first cadre were the leaders- thinkers, theorists.”
I said, “The second cadre fared a hell of a lot better than the first.”
“What are you getting at?”
“Nothing you haven’t wondered about yourself for seventeen years.”
“You’re wrong,” he said. “I don’t wonder about anything. Wonderings a dead-end street.”
I said, “Why’d you choose Bear Lodge?”
“Randy Latch owned the property- her father had left it to her.”
“She was Mountain Properties?”
“Behind a bunch of dummy corporations- trust fund stuff, tax shelters. Her old man set it up for her. That’s why we pretended to lease it, so it would look businesslike, no one would dig into it.”
“With those connections,” I said, “didn’t Latch aspire to first-cadre status?”
“He might have, but that wasn’t a serious possibility. He was lots of noise, no substance. Not well respected. One of the reasons they kept him around was her money. After Bear Lodge, the two of them dropped out, reappeared as Jack and Mrs. Armstrong. Still lots of noise, no substance. The American public eats that up, right? No surprise he ended up doing what he’s doing.”
“Tell me about Wannsee Two.”
He sat up straight. “Where the hell did that come from?”
“Ike Novato left some notes indicating he was researching it. He wrote it right above your name. He wondered about it.”
Crevolin gave a sick look. “That’s what he wanted to talk to me about? Hell that would have been easy.”
“Easy in what way?”
“Easy to answer. I could have told him the truth: Wannsee Two is government-issue drivel. Tricky Dicky Evil Empire Cointelpro disinformation tailor-made for John Q. Gullible. The government wanted to discredit us, so they planted bogus news items in the establishment press about us getting together with the neo-Nazi fringe- the old crapola about extremists on both ends being equivalent, Hitler and Stalin. Tarring us with the same brush as the KKK in order to isolate us, make us look bad. But in the end I guess it was just easier to blow us up- notice how you don’t hear about Wannsee Two anymore. And there are plenty of right-wing racist assholes running around.”
He shook his head, rubbed his temples. “Wannsee Two. I could have handled that in two minutes. I thought he wanted to get into personal stuff- his parents, raking up old memories.”
“Could Sophie Gruenberg have been interested in Wannsee Two?”
“Doubt it. That old lady was too sophisticated to be taken in by that kind of crap.”
“You knew her well?”
His headshake was vehement. “I only met her once. With Norm. But he talked about her. Said she was a revolutionary of the old stripe- well-read, intellectual. Even though he didn’t get along with her, he respected her intellect.”
“You only met her once?”
He was silent.
I caught his eye.
He said, “Twice. When I returned to L.A.- doing my little network page gig- I checked in with her. To see how things were going.”
“With Ike?”
“With the world.” He twisted his lip between thumb and forefinger.
I said, “Did you really just leave him on the step?”
“You bet I did. It was all I could do to hide and wait until she took him in. Going there in the first place was a risk. I was totally freaked-out, wanted to get the hell out of town before the men in the gray suits came calling. I figured eventually someone would figure out I hadn’t been blown up and try to finish the job.”