Time Bomb

“How would he know?”

“She. From Cambodia.”

“Oh. Tell you one thing, old Holly was no pro-warrior. The rifle was a Remington Seven-hundred Classic. Bolt action, scoped. Nine pounds, stripped- one of the heavier ones they make, lots of kick. Not a girl’s gun. You just don’t pick up something like that, go boom, and hope to hit your target.”

“Even with the scope?”

“Sighting and aiming wouldn’t have been the problem, Alex. Holding on to the damned thing would be. According to the license she weighed under a hundred and twenty. And she hadn’t gained anything since applying for it. I saw the body- skinny, no muscle on her. Unless she had plenty of practice, she might as well have brought a cannon to shoot mice. Women succeed in the shooting game, they get up nice and close, use a comfortable little handgun. Not that a handgun would have been of much use in a sniping situation.”

“The license also said corrective lenses. Was she wearing her glasses?”

“Yup. Took a bullet in one of them, glass went right into the eye socket. Like shrapnel.”

“How many shots did she get off before Ahlward stormed the shed?”

“Looks like three out of six rounds- though to listen to the teachers and kids, she had a machine gun; it was a regular blitz. But panic’ll do that, magnify things. And some of what they heard was probably Ahlward shooting her- he put eight right in her.”

“There’s your pro,” I said, remembering the redheaded man’s calm. “Ex-cop?”

“Nope. Frisk said some kind of ex-military commando.”

“Hard-ass type for a guy like Latch to employ.”

“Not if Latch is a pragmatist. It’s like that old bumper sticker that used to be on half the lockers at the academy: ‘Mugged? Call a hippie.’ Latch may spout the love-and-compassion line, but when it comes to saving his ass he ain’t gonna hire Cesar Chavez.”

“How’d Ahlward get into the shed?”

“Same back door Burden used. She left it unlocked- I told you she was no pro. He ran around the back, waltzed right in, and pow.”

I thought again of the face on the driver’s license. Superimposed a mesh of blood and glass over the dull face.

“What is it?” said Milo.

“Nothing.”

“My, my, my. You feel bad for her, don’t you?”

“Not really.”

“Not really?” He clucked his tongue. “Jesus, Alex, you turning mushy on me? I thought by now I’d raised your consciousness.”

I said, “The whole thing’s pathetic, Milo. A girl, holed up with a rifle she couldn’t handle- God knows what’s going through her head.”

“So?”

“So I guess it just would have been nicer for the bad guy to be badder.”

He put his fork down and stared at me. “Oh, she could have been plenty bad. No thanks to her she wasn’t real bad. Just imagine a couple of lucky shots- couple of those cute little kids catching rifle slugs in-”

“Okay,” I said, “I get the point.”

“Good,” he said, crumpling his napkin. “Get it and keep it. Situation like this, got to keep the old priorities straight. Now, how about some dessert?”

5

I got home by eight, picked up calls, did paperwork and chores, then spent half an hour with a new acquisition: a cross-country skiing machine. A genuine implement of torture that left me a sopping ball of sweat. In the shower I kept thinking about terrified children and evil babysitters. So much for aerobic cleansing.

At nine I watched the news on one of the local stations. The shooting at Nathan Hale was the lead story: file clips of weeping kids followed by the official LAPD statement delivered by Lieutenant Kenneth Frisk. The ATD man was articulate and at ease with the cameras as he sidestepped questions; his designer duds and mustache, prop- room photogenic. New-age cop. Lots of style, very little substance.

Armed with few facts and needing to stretch the broadcast, the newspeople flashed more file clips: a segment on Massengil’s State House fistfight, a year before, with an assemblyman from the northern part of the state named DiMarco. The bout had taken place in the chambers of the legislature, the two of them going at it verbally- some esoteric issue having to do with gerrymandered districts. Massengil had come out of it without a scratch; DiMarco had suffered a bloody lip. The camera showed the loser pressing a crimson handkerchief to his mouth, then cut to footage taken today: DiMarco leaving his Sacramento office. Asked about Massengil’s temper and how he thought it related to the sniping, he passed up a chance for retribution, said it wouldn’t be prudent to comment at this time, got in his state-issued car and drove away. Discretion, or a loser’s reticence.

Next came a retrospective on Gordon Latch- the speedy, compressed history that only a TV photomontage can accomplish, beginning with a twenty-year-old film: Latch, hirsute and bright-eyed, marching with Mario Savio at Berkeley, shouting slogans, getting busted at the People’s Park. Cut to a hippie-style marriage in Golden Gate Park to the former Miranda Brundage. The bride, only child of a movie tycoon, former art history grad student at Berkeley, former Young Republican fashion plate programmed for Deliberate Understatement and the Junior League, had worn tie-dye.

Latch had radicalized her fast. She got arrested with him regularly, dropped out of school, lived in splendid Telegraph Avenue squalor. To the press, the irony was irresistible: In Hollywood circles, Fritz Brundage had long been regarded as a crypto-fascist- a prime mover behind the McCarthy-era blacklist and a passionate union-buster. The media covered his daughter’s wedding as if it were hard news. Latch played to the cameras, enjoying his role as First Radical. Soon after the wedding he took Miranda to Hanoi, recorded messages for the Viet Cong exhorting GIs to desert their posts. The networks were there with open mikes. The Latches returned to the United States topping the Ten Most Hated List, fielding death threats and possible prosecution for sedition.

They went into seclusion at a ranch owned by the old man. Somewhere up north. People wondered why Fritz had given them sanctuary. The government decided not to prosecute. There were rumors of Fritz’s calling in markers. Latch and Miranda stayed out of the public eye for five years, until Fritz died, then emerged, the heirs to a fortune. Freshly barbered and mature. Apologetic for Hanoi, self-proclaimed “democratic humanists,” eager to work within the system.

A move to the West Side of L.A., a couple more years of good works- environmental activism, groceries for the homeless, charity camps for disadvantaged youths- and Latch was ready for the electoral process: a City Council seat vacated by the car-crash death of a well-loved incumbent with a well-hidden drinking problem and an abhorrence for delegating authority. No designated successor, a sudden vacuum filled by Latch. And some generous monetary transfers from the former Brundage estate to the party’s coffers.

The only protests against Latch’s nomination came from veterans’ groups. Latch met with them, ate crow, said he’d grown up, had a vision for the city that transcended partisan politics. He ran against token opposition. Regiments of college students went door-to-door in the district distributing potholders and talking clean air. Latch won, made an acceptance speech that sounded downright middle-of-the-road. Miranda seemed content to host political teas.

She photographed well, I noticed. Kneeling on the beach scraping tar off an oil-slicked pelican.

End of montage. The anchorman offered a two-sentence review of the racial tensions at Hale. More shots of crying kids. Worried parents. A long view of the empty schoolyard.

The tail end of the story was an interview with a portly, white-bearded psychologist named Dobbs, billed as an expert on childhood stress who’d been enlisted by the School Board to work with the children. That held my attention.