Bloody sunrise seeped along the eastern sky. Jesse huddled on the fire escape outside his apartment. To the northwest, the sights and sounds of the riot faded with the new day.
He hadn’t slept all night. Terrible images burned his memory. The gun, flashing under streetlights. The four terrible shots. Each shot loud, tracing murder through the dark air. The shooter’s arm recoiling. The restaurateur collapsing. The smell of cordite. The smell of blood. Blood flowing across the sidewalk. The shotgun lying on the sidewalk.
Jesse ran. Everybody ran. He didn’t know how or when he got back home to his apartment. He just remembered cowering in the dark. Terrified. Crying. Praying.
The morning was painfully clear. Not a shred of overcast in the sharp blue sky, not a wisp of fog over Twin Peaks. The sun sluiced golden over East Bay’s hills. Jesse unsteadily grabbed the railing to his fire escape and pulled himself up. Trembling, he stumbled into his apartment, fumbled for the light in his kitchenette, and turned on the coffeemaker. He noticed the vaguely familiar rumpled waxy bag on the kitchen counter. Awful recollections flooded his brain as he opened the bag. It was filled with crumbled donut cake, flaked chocolate icing, and smeared vanilla custard. The stink punched him in the nose. Jesse leaned over the sink and vomited. He continued to throw up until it became uncontrolled retching, then dry heaves. He collapsed onto the linoleum and clutched his aching stomach.
He got back onto his feet, weak and shaking. He turned on the faucet and rinsed away the puke until the fresh smell of coffee replaced the rank odor of barf.
Time to get out into the morning and to the day’s job. Jesse showered, hosed the vomit from his mouth, put on an orange Burning Bush T-shirt and a gray sweatshirt, and hefted an empty thermos. He bought copies of the SF Chronicle and San Jose Mercury News and drank half of the coffee before settling onto a bench at the Mission Playground and Pool. A police UAV floated along the street. “Local Militant’s Death Triggers Mission Riot,” the Chronicle proclaimed, whereas the Mercury News’ headline was more blunt: “One Dead, 326 Injured, 144 Arrested in Anarchist Riot.” He read the reports on the Valencia Street riot, including the opinion pieces about the incompetence of the police to protect anyone or prevent damage to local businesses, then ripped out the articles on David Pickett’s death. Folding the crisp pages into his back pocket, he discarded the remainder of the newspaper. Jesse needed time to analyze the news items, with more than caffeine to fuel him. His favorite cafe, Hopwell’s, was down the block.
“Fill ‘er up,” he said as he presented the waitress his thermos, then looked at the menu. “I want the breakfast special.”
He switched on his smartphone while waiting for his meal. Forty-two messages, seventy-one texts. Eighteen of the voice messages were from Angie Markham, the first ten ranging from “Where the fuck are you?” to “You asshole!” Four from her were simple hang-ups. Twelve texts out of twenty were of a similar nature, including three all-caps messages: “THEY MURDERED DAVID PICKETT!” Her tone changed abruptly after he’d fled from Stumpy’s. The calls and texts that followed begged him to call her back and please forgive her, pleading, “We need to talk” and “We can work through this.” Jesse felt a pang in his heart, but he deleted them all, then switched his phone to vibrate. Best to keep a meditative state of mind, he thought, and avoid confrontation. And nasty messages.
When breakfast arrived, he concentrated on the food, savoring each bite between each breath. Only when he’d cleaned his plate, only when he’d paid the check, only when he’d stepped back into the burnished San Francisco morning did the terrors of the night before return. He felt oddly refreshed, however, for not having slept in nearly twenty-four hours and returned to the apartment for his equipment.
“Shit,” Jesse mumbled when he reached his door at the top of the stairs. He pulled the card from between door and jamb. Beneath the SFPD logo, the card read “Investigator Michael Van Cornin” above the usual address and telephone contact information. On the back, a cellphone number had been written, in pen. “Shit, fuck, piss,” Jesse said.
Jesse snagged a notebook, pens, markers, label maker, and his first-generation Apple Fetch, which he stuffed into his knapsack before rushing out the door. He took the direct route over to Valencia and then north until he was surrounded by drones, idling cop cars and conferring police officers—and rolls of yellow crime tape. The sidewalk around Spencer’s Restaurant was completely sealed off for a quarter block in each direction. The Mission Street Police Station was open for business, despite obvious signs of damage. He tried to look inconspicuous even as he minutely observed his surroundings. Once past all the wreckage, he turned east at the homeless camp on 16th Street and walked to 2930 16th.
The old, four-story, red brick building occupied much of the block. Known as the Redstone Labor Temple, or simply the Redstone Building, the structure was home to scores of labor unions, nonprofit organizations, and various and sundry artists. Jesse entered using a duplicate key and a combination to the Digilock. He had access thanks to his friendship with graphic designer and silkscreen artist Marco Loyola, who shared a fourth floor, west-facing office with an artist collective calling itself Chicanosaurus. Once in the funky, poster-and-mural-encrusted lobby, he climbed the stairs. He tread carefully down the fourth-floor hall because Marco’s fellow collective members were not very welcoming of Jesse’s white ass. The door chimed with the opening notes of Victor Jara’s “Venceremos.” Fortunately, the musty office was unoccupied.
Jesse had studied Library and Information Science at City College, interned in Digital Archiving at UC Berkeley’s Bancroft Library, and had remained sporadically employed ever since. He’d met Marco through the William James Work Association, a worker-run temp agency operated by David Pickett’s DUI, at the onset of the Marco’s multiple sclerosis. Jesse started working for him scanning, digitizing, massaging, and cataloguing the artist’s work and papers using Photoshop software and Macintosh computers. Marco used the office space primarily for storage of his prints and files, as advanced MS now kept him confined to his tiny Inner Mission cottage.
Jesse had spent hours taking in the contents of the office while working for Marco. The floor-to-ceiling filing system that took up most of one wall; flat file drawers and vertical hanging racks, constructed of varnished, weathered oak. The iconography in photography, silkscreening, painting, lithography, even graffiti depicted historical political, religious, and artistic figures from Spain and the Americas. He spread out the contents of his knapsack over the work table by the window, then lifted the window shades, mindful not to disturb the reflector telescope positioned with a focus on the BART plaza a block away. Pen-and-ink drawings painstakingly rendering aspects of the plaza were taped on the window jambs near the telescope.
The Fetch picked up a Wi-Fi signal immediately and Marco’s password worked. The office boombox had a mixtape of corridos and norteños he played low. He put in a solid two hours on Marco’s archiving project. In the process of scrupulously labeling and alphabetizing a cardboard box full of document CDs, he discovered a cryptic item. One CD in a worn white sleeve bore a dingy Post-it that read: “HOOLIGAN-X = D PICKETT?” CDs were antiquated technology and electronic players were ancient history, so he was at a loss. He put the sleeve and its contents into the knapsack before turning his attention to Pickett and the riot. He looked up a number of local news websites, laid out the pages ripped from the Chronicle and Mercury News, opened the notebook, uncapped the pen, and started to write. The sun claimed more and more of the table as it edged into late afternoon. An hour and ten minutes later, Jesse had three paragraphs written in the notebook and a new mixtape of Latinx resistance music in the boombox.
Notwithstanding some intriguing aspects to Pickett’s biography, it was how he died—whether it was an accident or murder—that mattered to Jesse now. Pickett died Saturday, July 15, at approximately 5:20 pm, after the Ford station wagon he was driving overturned on Highway 1, ten kilometers north of Mulegé. According to the Chronicle, Pickett and his four companions were returning from a scuba expedition at Bahia de Concepcion when the car and the dirt bike trailer it was towing flipped shortly after noon. Except for minor scrapes, none of the other passengers were seriously injured. Pickett’s injuries were far more serious—his abdomen cut open and his intestines perforated. The Mercury News claimed that a sixth person, a local fisherman and guide named Arnulfo Cassias, had also been present but uninjured.
Pickett’s injury warranted, first, transportation by helicopter to Hospital Angeles Tijuana, and then to UC San Diego Medical Center, where he was pronounced DOA. First on the scene, the Federales conveyed David to the hospital and arrested his diving buddies before ultimately transferring custody of Pickett to the California Highway Patrol. The CHP rushed him to San Diego. Somewhere in the midst of all of this, the FBI got involved.
The reporting was incomplete, inconsistent, and secondhand. So far, no evidence had surfaced for or against the involvement of these law enforcement agencies in Pickett’s death. There was also no information as to whether the diving excursion was business or pleasure. The Chronicle cast doubt on the FBI’s contention that Pickett’s expedition had been innocuous. The Mercury News had little to say for or against the FBI, but pointed out that David’s diving companions were still in jail. Their diving equipment, three motocross bikes, and two duffle bags of undisclosed contraband from their dives at Bahia de Concepcion had been confiscated.
Jesse shook his head over the mounting contradictions between official news accounts and between the news and the rumors he’d heard. When David Pickett’s death became known to San Francisco’s locals, last night’s riot had erupted. The Bay Area media was heavily criticizing the SFPD for failing to anticipate the mayhem at the police station, the wholesale destruction to the Valencia Street business district, and the murder of Spencer’s restaurateur, Samuel Barbier. Grainy videos of the murder from a PUD were in continuous rotation on every TV outlet. The SFPD had a BOLO out for the murderer as well as a call for witnesses and any information related to the murder.
Jesse reviewed the information he’d written up and remembered the CD when persistent noise from the waning afternoon outside intervened. Seven cop drones converged on the airspace over the BART plaza with a growing clatter. He popped the lens covers off the telescope and looked through the pre-positioned instrument. Six Mission District Latinos stood, clustered, in the middle of the plaza, as scores of cops, in plain clothes and in uniform, carefully approached. The cops had their guns leveled. Two more PUDs whirred over. Four of the youngsters started to raise their arms. Was that a bottle of water or a gun in an upraised hand? Suddenly, shooting rang from the plaza. “Holy shit,” Jesse breathed, but didn’t take his eye from the lens. Volley after volley shattered the sunlit day. When the gunshots stopped, all six young men were lying motionless on the square. There was blood everywhere.
He shoveled everything into the knapsack, dropped the window shade, turned off the music, and made sure the office door was shut and locked before sprinting down the stairs. He was at the BART station within five minutes, but by then there was a full-on police cordon in place, cops and police cars holding the line, with more men and vehicles arriving every moment. The early evening sky was jammed with UAVs.
Jesse hovered around the periphery of the police barrier. However, it soon became clear that there was no getting near where the police killed the six young men. The crowd outside the cordon was growing larger. And angrier. He walked south on Mission, stunned and staggered. Police sirens wailed. He climbed his apartment stairs, tossed his knapsack onto the couch, and eased out his window to stand on the fire escape in the cool of the evening. The orange sun got entangled with Sutro Towers on its way toward bloody sunset.
He remembered three grandparents, an aunt, and two cousins who died, as had two high school classmates, a college professor, and now David Pickett. But he hadn’t personally witnessed any of their deaths and now, within twenty-four hours, Jesse had seen seven people shot dead. Gunned down. Murdered. He turned on his smartphone but his fingers shook too much to use the tiny virtual keyboard. So he re-entered his apartment, switched on the Fetch, and activated its communication apps.
There were seven additional voice messages, eight more texts, and an email from Angie, all of which he deleted without opening. Jesse had ended their relationship, a kind of death, but a gutless one. He’d never called it quits; he just stopped seeing or contacting her. He wasn’t proud of his behavior, but he couldn’t yield to the pull of his heart. The remaining messages—thirty-eight voice mails, sixty-six texts, and twenty-one emails—fell into several categories. Eight were wrong numbers/addresses and thirty-odd were advertisements. The rest were an assortment of messages, texts, and emails from friends and acquaintances about David Pickett’s death. Asking “Hey, did you hear…” and “What do you think about…” Some “Sorry about…” and “Hope you’re…”. He’d dealt with all the emails and texts and was working through the last third of the voice messages when he heard: “This is Investigator Van Cornin with the Homicide Detail. I need to speak to a Jesse Jacob Steinfeld at his earliest convenience.”
How did Van Cornin know his smartphone number? Did he have to worry about Van Cornin hounding him at his apartment? He opened a browser on his Fetch to look up Van Cornin’s SFPD biography. Jesse saw on the social media newsfeeds that a demonstration, Occupy the Mission, was set for Wednesday at Dolores Park. He continued deleting phone messages. The last message raised the hairs on the back of his neck.
“Jesse, this is David Pickett, calling you from beyond the grave.” The voice sounded loud and present, inflected with David’s signature gravel and a bit of a chuckle. “You and I haven’t been real good friends. Didn’t know each other well at all, matter of fact. But, now that I’m on the other side, I need you to take care of that thing with Toby for me. It ain’t cool, what he did in my name.”
The voice on the message hung up. Jesse sat, dumbfounded. What kind of shitty joke was this?
He kept the message but turned the phone to vibrate. Time to visit Kevin Farley. He’d contracted Kevin’s services when he’d gotten himself into a jam. Jesse handled other people’s data as a digital archivist, but in trying to cut corners and save costs, he’d let a client’s work get hijacked and held for ransom. Kevin had recovered the stolen data without paying the ransom. But Farley wasn’t answering his phone and his website only offered appointments for the next day, starting at 11 a.m. Jesse took the first available appointment.
Between thinking about the call from Van Cornin and the one supposedly from David Pickett, Jesse’s fears kicked in. He ran down to the corner taqueria, Goyaałé, for a burrito and the corner liquor store for three bottles of Chimay Tripel, but neither food nor alcohol nor several hits of prime indica bud alleviated his anxieties.