Under Siege (53 page)

The wonder was that he had lived so long. He had a two-hundred-dollar-a-day crack habit and his welfare check

was only $436 a month. The shortfall he made up by stealing anything that wasn’t welded in place. Cameras, radios, televisions, and car stereos were his favorite targets. He sold his loot to fences for fifteen to twenty percent of their market value-not retail value when new, but market value used. He tried to avoid muggings, which were dangerous, but did them when nothing else readily presented itself.

Larry Ticono’s life defined the term “hand to mouth.” He slept under bridges in good weather and in abandoned buildings in bad. He rarely had more than twenty dollars in his pocket and was never more than three hours away from withdrawal.

This afternoon Larry Ticono’s three-hour margin had melted to zero. He was on the edge with only $17.34 in his pocket. The corner where he usually purchased crack was empty. Although Ticono didn’t know it, his suppliers were the retail end of the distribution network of Willie Teal, who had been forcibly and permanently retired from the crack business the previous night. So the street-corner salesmen had no product and were not there.

Frustrated and desperate, Ticono walked a half mile to another neighborhood that he knew about and tried to make a deal with a fifteenyear-old in a pair of hundred-dollar Nike running shoes. That worthy had not received his morning delivery from his supplier, an employee of Freean Mcationally. The streetwise dealers sensed that something was wrong although they had no hard information. They had seen the troops coming and going and had heard the news on television, and they were worried. Many of them were drifting away, back to the welfare apartments and ramshackle row houses they called home.

When Larry Ticono approached the fifteenyear-old, that youngster had only four crack bags left and no prospect of readily obtaining more. So that young capitalist demanded forty dollars a hit.

The thought occurred to Larry Ticono that he should just mug the kid, but it vaporized after one look at the corner boss, a heavyset man standing by a garbage can watching,

knew beyond a shadow of a doubt that the guard had within easy reach and would cheerfully kill him if so much as touched the youngster.

After trying futilely to bargain, he reluctantly turned away.

Two blocks later Larry Ticono threw a brick through a window of an electronics store and grabbed a ghetto blaster. He was promptly shot by a convenience-store salesclerk wearing a National Guard uniform. The blaster was just too large and heavy to run with at any speed.

The fifty-five-grain .223 bullet from the M-16 hit Larry high up in the center of the back, a perfect shot, which was pure luck because the clerk was wearing a pair of fogged-up glasses and had barely qualified with the M-16 in training. Before he threw the rifle to his shoulder and pulled the trigger the clerk had never killed any creature larger than a cockroach.

Still traveling at over three thousand feet per second when it pierced Larry Tocono’s skin, the jacketed bullet expended a major portion of its eleven hundred foot-pounds of energy shattering his backbone and driving the fragments through his heart, exploding it. The slug then exited his chest and buried itself in a parked car sixty yards away.

Larry Ticono, age nineteen, was dead before his body hit the pavement.

The convenience-store clerk vomited beside the body.

Jack Yocke took in the scene at a glance a half hour later when he arrived. He busied himself taking names and trying to think of something to say to the clerk-private, who was sitting on the tailgate of an olive-drab pickup staring at his hands.

“I shouted for him to stop, but he didn’t,” the private said so softly Yocke had to strain to hear. “He didn’t stop,” he Mwted wonderingly, amazed at the perverse ways of late. “No. He didn’t.”

“He should have stopped.”

“Yes.”

“He really should have stopped.”

The reporter wandered over to a sergeant standing near the body smoking a cigarette. Some fifteen feet away a group of army or National Guard officers were conferring with a uniformed policeman. Yocke had yet to learn the nuances of the shoulder patches on the uniforms, which as far as he could see, were the only way to tell which service was which. The sergeant glanced at Yocke and continued to puff leisurely on his cigarette. He was thoughtfully surveying the faces of the watchers on the sidewalk across the street.

“I thought,” Jack Yocke said, “that your people were supposed to fire their weapons only in self-defense.”

The sergeant appraised him carefully. “That’s right,” he said, then went back to scanning the crowd.

“Yet as I understand it, the victim was running away when the private shot him?”

“Something like that, I suppose.”

“So why’d he shoot?”

A look of disgust registered on the sergeant’s face. “Who are you, anyway’?”

“Jack Yocke, Washington Post. I didn’t mean-was

“Shove off, pencil pilot. Before I lose my temper and ram that notebook up your ass.”

661, m sorry. No offense,” Yocke said, then turned away. He shouldn’t have asked that question. Why had he done it? Now he felt guilty. It was a new experience.

Disgusted with himself, he looked again at the private slumped on the tailgate and the body covered with a sheet, then walked to his car.

He had always been so confident, so sure of himself and his perceptions. And now …

Six blocks away a group of people outside a closed liquor store-the military authorities had ordered them all closed comwere throwing rocks at passing cars. One of them thudded into the side of the Post’s little sedan. It’s started, Jake Yocke decided. The supply of crack has dried up and the addicts are getting restless. He pointed the car toward the National Guard armory adjacent to RFK Stadium.

He didn’t get very far into the building, of course. He his credentials and the soldier on duty let him into press room, the first door on the right. There he found a half dozen government-issue steel desks, some folding chairs, and one telephone. And over a dozen of his colleagues, two of them from the Post. They were waiting for the press briefing scheduled for five p.m., fifteen minutes from now.

Yocke muttered at the people he knew-and he knew three or four of them-and found a corner to sit in. He sat there musing, thinking about the private who had killed a man when he shouldn’t have, wondering if he, Jack Yocke, would have done any better. Maybe he wasn’t really cut out to be a reporter. Stupid. He had made a stupid, insensitive remark, and now it rankled.

The reporters were waiting for Dan Quayle when he came out of Bethesda Naval Hospital. He could have avoided them but he didn’t.

Ignoring the shouted questions, he stood still and waited until a battery of hand-held microphones were waving before him. “The President regained consciousness this afternoon for a short period of time. Mrs. Bush is with him. He is asleep now. The doctors believe his recovery will be rapid. He’s in excellent health for a man his age and we have high hopes.”

“Did you discuss the hunt for the assassin with him?” someone shouted.

“No,” said Dan Quayle. Actually the President wasn’t well enough to discuss anything, but he didn’t say that. He thought about it and decided to let the monosyllable stand alone.

“Mr. VicePresident, what about the claim that the Colombian Extraditables are making, that they are responsible.”

Quayle ignored that one. Then he heard a question he couldn’t ignore. “The Extraditables say that the terrorism will stop if you release Chano Aldana. Could you comment on that?”

“Said when?” Quayle asked, silencing all the other reporters. “About an hour ago in Colombia, Mr. VicePresident. It just came over the wires.”

Quayle thought about it. “We’re not going to bargain with terrorists,” he said. The crowd waited. The red lights on the fronts of the television cameras stayed on. “Chano Aldana is going to get a fair trial. As long as I am acting for the President, I promise you, I will use the full might and power of the United States government to accomplish that come what may.”

“Are there any circumstances where you might release Aldana?” someone pressed.

“If the jury acquits him.”

“Before trial, I mean.”

“Not even if hell freezes over,” Dan Quayle replied, and turned away.

“You know,” Ott Mergenthaler said to Senator Bob Cherry, “the man has the personality of a store dummy, but I do believe there’s some steel in his backbone.”

Ott was in the senator’s office and the two of them had just finished watching Quayle’s performance. The tor reached for his remote control and killed the picture and sound after Quayle walked off camera and the network analysts came on.

Cherry sneered. “He’s a medical miracle. He’s got the brain of a penguin and the jawbone of an ass.”

“Come off it, Senator. Say what you will, this crisis is not hurting Dan Quayle’s reputation one whit. The public is getting a good look and I think they’re liking what they see. I do, anyway.”

“Ott! Don’t kid around! You don’t really believe this National Guard move was wise? For God’s sake, man, 1 thought you had some sense.”

“I do have, Senator, but I found out years ago that it does no at all to proclaim the fact.” Had Cherry known Mergenthaler better, he would have stopped right there. When the columnist retreated to dry, retorts, he had been pushed as far as he was willing to Cherry pressed on: “Bush could control Dorfman, but can’t. Dorfman is a shark and Quayle is a damn little fish. You don’t seriously think that Dan Quayle is making the decisions over there, do you?”

“I hear he is,” Ott said mildly, cocking his head slightly.

“Don’t you believe it! Dorfman’s pulling the strings. And I guarantee you the last thing Will Dorfman cares about is the U.s. Constitution. When is the Army going to leave? What about people’s rights? Why hasn’t the Congress been asked to authorize all this extracurricular military activity? The legalities-they’ve got the troops outside the federal district, out in Maryland for God’s sake. The government will get sued for-was

“What’s your real bitch?” Cherry looked blank. “What do you mean?”

“You’re blowing smoke. I’ve been writing a column in this town for fifteen years, Bob.”

Senator Cherry took a deep breath and exhaled. “Okay, okay.” He shrugged. “Quayle scares me. Real bad. If Bush dies we are in big big trouble.”

“Next presidential election is in two years. Look at it as the Democrats” big chance.”

Cherry writhed in his chair. “This country can’t afford to drift for two years with a clown on the bridge. The only damn thing Quayle knows how to do is play golf.”

“Bob, you’re making a mountain out of a manure pile. True, Quayle’s had a lot of bad press, some of it his fauh, some of it because he’s such an easy target to pick on and he’s a darling of the conservatives. The man has an uncanny talent for saying the wrong thing. But this country is over two hundred years old! We can survive two years with

r anybody at the helm, be it Dan the Bogeyman or Hanoi Jane or my Aunt Matilda.”

Cherry wanted to argue. After a couple more minutes Ott Mergenthaler excused himself. Out in the corridor he shook his head sadly. Assassins and terrorists and wholesale murder everywhere you looked, and Bob Cherry wanted to

mutter darkly about Dan Quayle. Worse, he expected Ott to print it.

Cherry looks old, Mergenthaler told himself. His age is telling. Querulous-that’s the word. He’s become a whining tilde , querulous old man absorbed with trivialities.

The news conference at the D.c. National Guard Armory had barely gotten under way when it was abruptly adjoumed. A junior officer announced that someone had attacked the crowd at the L’Enfant Plaza Metro Station. The brass hustled out. Among them was Captain Jake Grafton.

Jack Yocke fought through the press crowd to get to the door and charged for the street at a dead run. He ran along the sidewalk toward the entrance to the Guard’s parking lot, just in time to see a government car coming out. He bent and scanned the passengers. Nope. The next one? Nope again.

Grafton was in the third car. Yocke jumped and waved his arms and shouted “Captain Grafton! Captain Grafton!” at the top of his lungs. The uniformed driver locked the brakes. Yocke jerked open the rear door and jumped in.

As the car accelerated away Jake Grafton and Toad Tarkington looked the reporter over. “Riding your thumb today?” Grafton asked’ ” —I’M really glad you stopped, sir. Thanks a lot. If you don’t mind, I’d like to tag along with you.”

“The press regulations-was

“Yessir. Yessir. I know all about them. We have them stenciled on our underwear. Still, I’d like you to bend the rules a little and let me tag along with you for a few days. If you like, I’ll even let you comment on the stories.”

Jake Grafton’s brow wrinkled and he looked ahead at the traffic the driver was threading through. Toad Tarkington gave Yocke a big grin.

Grafton held a walkie-talkie in his hand. The instrument was spitting out words too garbled and tinny for Yocke to understand. Grafton held the device to his ear for a monient, then lowered it back to his lap.

“You’ll have to agree,” Grafton said slowly, “not to do stories at all until this is completely over.” Tarkington’s grin faded.

“That’s the only condition?” the reporter asked incredulously. “You don’t want to comment on the story?”

“No. Just don’t print anything until this is all over.”

“No catch, eh?” Yocke said, still skeptical Actually, all he l wanted was a ride to L’Enfant Plaza. He sat now slightly stunned at Jake Grafton’s willingness to go along with his spur-of-the-moment proposal. What was that old rule of thumb-if you ask ten women to go to bed with you, you’ll only get your face slapped nine times?

“We can always let you out at the next corner,” Toad told him sourly. “Captain, you got a deal.”

Umm.

“What’s happening now?”

“Some gunmen opened fire in the Metro Station at L’Enfant Plaza. Lot of people down, some of them soldiers. A real bloodbath.”

“Colombians?”

“I don’t know.

Yocke fished his notebook from an inside jacket pocket and flipped it open. As he scribbled and the car jolted, Toad said, “It’s T-A-R-K-1-n-was