Fear and Loathing at Rolling Stone (12 page)

The inquest ended with a split verdict. Smith’s lead paragraph in the October 6
Times
read like an obituary: “Monday the inquest into the death of newsman Ruben Salazar ended. The 16-day inquiry, by far the longest
and costliest such affair in county history, concluded with a verdict that confuses many, satisfies few and means little. The coroner’s jury came up with two verdicts: death was ‘at the hands of another person’ (four jurors) and death was by ‘accident’ (three jurors). Thus, inquests might appear to be a waste of time.”

A week later, District Attorney Evelle Younger—a staunch Law & Order man—announced that he had reviewed the case and decided that “no criminal charge is justified,” despite the unsettling fact two of the three jurors who had voted for the “death by accident” verdict were now saying they had made a mistake.

But by that time nobody really gave a damn. The Chicano community had lost faith in the inquest about midway through the second day, and all the rest of the testimony only reinforced their anger at what most considered an evil whitewash. When the DA announced that no charges would be filed against Wilson, several of the more moderate Chicano spokesmen called for a federal investigation. The militants called for an uprising. And the cops said nothing—at all.

The night before I left town I stopped by Acosta’s place with Guillermo Restrepo. I had been there earlier, but the air was extremely heavy. As always, on stories like this, some of the troops were getting nervous about The Stranger Hanging Around. I was standing in the kitchen watching Frank put some tacos together and wondering when he was going to start waving the butcher knife in my face and yelling about the time I Maced him on my porch in Colorado (that had been six months earlier, at the end of a very long night during which we had all consumed a large quantity of cactus products; and when he started waving a hatchet around I’d figured Mace was the only answer ... which turned him to jelly for about forty-five minutes, and when he finally came around he said, “If I ever see you in East Los Angeles, man, you’re gonna wish you never heard the word ‘Mace,’ because I’m gonna carve it all over your fuckin’ body.”).

So I was not entirely at ease watching Frank chop hamburger on a meat block in the middle of East L.A. He hadn’t mentioned the Mace, not yet, but I knew we would get to it sooner or later ... and I’m sure we would have, except that suddenly out in the living room some geek was screaming: “What the hell is this goddamn gabacho pig writer doing
here? Are we fuckin’
crazy
to be letting him hear all this shit? Jesus, he’s heard enough to put every one of us away for five years!”

Longer than that, I thought. And at that point I stopped worrying about Frank. A firestorm was brewing in the main room—between me and the door—so I decided it was about time to drift around the corner and meet Restrepo at the Carioca. Frank gave me a big smile as I left.

“Losing Ruben was a goddamn disaster for the Movement,” Acosta said recently. “He wasn’t really
with
us, but at least he was interested. Hell, the truth is I never really liked the guy. But he was the only journalist in L.A. with real influence who would come to a press conference in the barrio. That’s the truth. Hell, the only way we can get those bastards to listen to us is by renting a fancy hotel lounge over there in West Hollywood or some bullshit place like that—where
they
can feel comfortable—and hold our press conference there. With free coffee and snacks for the press. But even then about half the shitheads won’t come unless we serve free booze, too. Shit! Do you know what that
costs
?”

This was the tone of our conversation that night when Guillermo and I went over to Oscar’s pad for a beer and some talk about politics. The place was unnaturally quiet. No music, no grass, no bad-mouth
bato loco
types hunkered down on the pallets in the front room. It was the first time I’d seen the place when it didn’t look like a staging area for some kind of hellish confrontation that might erupt at any moment.

But tonight it was deadly quiet. The only interruption was a sudden pounding on the door and voices shouting “Hey, man, open up. I got some
brothers
with me!” Rudy hurried to the door and peered out through the tiny eye-window. Then he stepped back and shook his head emphatically. “It’s some guys from the project,” he told Oscar. “I know them, but they’re all fucked up.”

“God
damn
it,” Acosta muttered. “That’s the last thing I need tonight. Get rid of them. Tell them I have to be in court tomorrow. Jesus! I
have
to get some sleep!”

Rudy and Frank went outside to deal with the brothers. Oscar and Guillermo went back to politics—while I listened, sensing a downhill drift on all fronts.
Nothing
was going right. He was expecting a decision
on his Grand Jury challenge in the “Biltmore Six” case. “We’ll probably lose that one, too,” he said. “The bastards think they have us on the run now; they think we’re demoralized—so they’ll keep the pressure on, keep pushing.” He shrugged. “And maybe they’re right. Shit. I’m tired of arguing with them. How long do they expect me to keep coming down to their goddamn court-house and begging for justice? I’m tired of that shit. We’re
all
tired.” He shook his head slowly, then ripped the poptop of a Budweiser that Rudy brought in from the kitchen. “This legal bullshit ain’t makin’ it,” he went on. “The way it looks now, I think we’re just about finished with that game. You know at the noon recess today I had to keep a bunch of these goddamn
batos locos
from stomping the DA. Christ! That would fuck me for good. They’ll send me to the goddamn pen for hiring thugs to assault the prosecutor!” He shook his head again. “Frankly, I think the whole thing is out of control. God only knows where it’s heading, but I know it’s going to be heavy. I think maybe the real shit is about to come down.”

Later that week, the Los Angeles Board of Supervisors voted to use public funds to pay all legal expenses for several policemen recently indicted for “accidentally” killing two Mexican nationals—a case known in East L.A. as “the murder of the Sanchez brothers.” It was a case of mistaken identity, the cops explained. They had somehow been given the wrong address of an apartment where they thought “two Mexican fugitives” were holed up, so they hammered on the door and shouted a warning to “come out of there with your hands over your head or we’ll come in shooting.” Nobody came out, so the cops went in shooting to kill.

But how could they have known that they’d attacked the wrong apartment? And how could they have known that neither one of the Sanchez brothers understood English? Even Mayor Sam Yorty and Police Chief Ed Davis admitted that the killings had been very unfortunate. But when the federal DA brought charges against the cops, both Yorty and Davis were publicly outraged. They both called press conferences and went on the air to denounce the indictments—in language that strangely echoed the American Legion outcry when Lt. Calley was charged with murdering women and children at My Lai.

The Yorty-Davis tirades were so gross that a District Court judge
finally issued a “gag order” to keep them quiet until the case comes to trial. But they had already said enough to whip the whole barrio into a rage at the idea that Chicano tax dollars might be used to defend some “mad dog cops” who frankly admitted killing two Mexican nationals. It sounded like a replay of the Salazar bullshit: same style, same excuse, same result—but this time with different names, and blood on a different floor. “They’ll put me in jail if I won’t pay taxes,” said a young Chicano watching a soccer game at a local playground, “then they take my tax money and use it to defend some killer pig. Hell, what if they had come to my address by mistake? I’d be dead as hell right now.”

There was a lot of talk in the barrio about “drawing some pig blood for a change” if the supervisors actually voted to use tax funds to defend the accused cops. A few people actually called city hall and mumbled anonymous threats in the name of the “Chicano Liberation Front.” But the supervisors hung tough. They voted on Thursday, and by noon the news was out: the city would pick up the tab.

At five fifteen on Thursday afternoon, the Los Angeles City Hall was rocked by a dynamite blast. A bomb had been planted in one of the downstairs restrooms. Nobody was hurt, and the damage was officially described as “minor.” About $5,000 worth, they said—small potatoes, compared to the bomb that blew a wall out of the District Attorney’s office last fall after Salazar died.

When I called the sheriff’s office to ask about the explosion they said they couldn’t talk about it. City hall was out of their jurisdiction. But they were more than willing to talk when I asked if it was true that the bomb had been the work of the Chicano Liberation Front.

“Where’d you hear that?”

“From the City News Service.”

“Yeah, it’s true,” he said. “Some woman called up and said it was done in memory of the Sanchez brothers, by the Chicano Liberation Front. We’ve heard about those guys. What do
you
know about them?”

“Nothing,” I said. “That’s why I called the sheriff. I thought your intelligence network might know something.”