Zoot-Suit Murders (16 page)

“Oh, my God!” Younger dropped the teacups, knocking the door all the way open. The cat jumped without a sound through the window. Kathleen was sprawled across the bed, one leg bent beneath the length of her dress, a hand draped from her forehead across her eyes as if she had fallen back in a dead faint. Younger pushed her hand back. Her eyes were clamped closed, her face gone totally white, drained of all blood. “Kathleen! Talk to me! Wake up!” He slapped her face. “Kathleen!” He locked his hand around her wrist, feeling for a pulse, but only the wild beat of his own excited blood echoed at him. He put his arms around her, pulling her limp body roughly to him, attempting
madly to squeeze life back into her, trying to will her back into the real world. He let her fall back on the bed. He knew what he had to do. He jumped up and ran down the hall, tripping over the fat chairs in the living room, throwing the door of the icebox open in the kitchen. He saw the hypodermic needle, its glass-vial plunger filled with clear liquid. He grabbed the syringe and ran back to the bedroom, slamming shut the window in case the cat tried to slip back in. He knelt over Kathleen, the syringe of adrenalin clutched in his hand like a knife. There was not the slightest sign of life on her lips. She looked dead.

For a moment he was completely stunned, gazing at her spread across the bed, her face whiter than the sheet beneath her. He ripped her dress open, pulling it down over one shoulder and grabbing the soft flesh above the elbow of her limp arm, sticking the needle into her. His thumb drove the plunger down, the adrenalin screaming in his own body as adrenalin in the vial leaped out of the needle into the throbbing bulge of blue vein. Kathleen’s eyes opened, rolling backward, bulging with terror, her lips barely parting, wordless, breathless. Younger jerked the needle out, throwing the empty syringe across the room. A sudden burst of blood oozed from the needle puncture in Kathleen’s arm, spreading quickly, rolling down the sheet. Younger bent the arm into itself, locked up like a folded bird’s wing, stopping the bleeding. He slapped at Kathleen’s face, trying to get her eyes to open again, trying to get her to breathe. He tried to think, tried to recall what he had read in a Civil Defense manual about what to do for a shocked bomb victim. He thought maybe the adrenalin wasn’t in her, maybe he had made a mistake, maybe he would have to shoot her with another dose in the heart. Suddenly he saw the page of the Defense manual in his mind clear as day. He knew what to do. When someone can’t breathe, when someone is dying,
massage
the heart, press on it, knead it, pound it, anything, get it pumping. He cupped his hand over the stiff white cloth of her brassiere, pressing down on the soft cone of her small breast, trying to get rhythm, trying to sense the life in her. He felt a slight beat coming up
beneath the pressure of his hand. He leaned the full weight of his body against his hand over her heart, pressing up and down, again and again, feeling the beat coming stronger, then fading, then surging back, pounding, faster and faster. A cry escaped from her lips, drew them back in agony, followed by a rush of air, softening her mouth, almost as if she had gone beyond pain to pleasure. Her eyes were on him, no longer terrified, filled with a strange and powerful wonder, like a newborn child looking at its mother for the first time. It was a gaze devoid of all desire and envy, a plea of pure vulnerability.

Younger’s heart banged blood up to his temples, surging a strange heat of desire between his thighs, frightening and inexplicable, dazzling him with a sensation of dizziness, flooding him with such a momentary rush of passion for the simple flame of life he had just saved that he was left totally robbed of all reason. What he did next was quick and crazy, involuntary and extraordinary. He leaned over and kissed the bright red lipstick softness of Kathleen’s lips like she was a helpless child. She coughed and gasped, sucking up his breath like a starved baby at a mother’s breast, her tongue coming into his mouth, fleshy and insistent, not hard and desperate, but soft and searching. He found himself sucking back. Sucking frantically on her, his hand spreading over her entire breast, feeling the wild beating of her heart beneath the hardening of her nipple. Her tongue struggled from his mouth. She shook her head wildly, red curls flying up from the white sheet, scattering around her face like flaming snakes. Her heaving breasts had worked free of the brassiere, the tight nipples almost touching his lips. He ripped her dress down between her legs, exposing the whiteness of her thighs. She did not take her eyes from him. He felt totally trapped in their bright blue circles, like they were pulling him on top of her, compelling him to spread her legs, unbuckle his belt, probing with a gasp her openness. His gasping was like a drowning man, a man sucked into a current beyond his control.

The headline roared across the top of the morning paper. It seemed to Younger there were getting to be more stories about Zoots every day, more than the war itself: sensational stories about knife stickups, steel-chain, brass-knuckle, and tire-iron fights between rival Zoot gangs, slugfests between Zoots and sailors, sailors giving Zoots “white man’s haircuts” to cheering crowds. Maybe the stories took people’s minds off the real terror in their daily lives. He read the article quickly. It left no doubt the prohibition was aimed at breaking up Zoot gangs in the Barrio. But for the War Production Board to step in meant the
desperate situation of unemployment and uncontrolled violence in the Barrio was becoming a national issue. The board issued a decree making it illegal for any Zoot suit to be sold, claiming the suits were counterproductive to the war effort, since scientific study proved Zoot suits required fifty percent more material to make than a normal suit. The coat alone was thirty-six inches from collar to hem, using sixty-five dollars’ worth of precious wool and cotton that could go into making badly needed uniforms. The mayor of Los Angeles applauded the prohibition and asked the City Council to make it a crime for anyone to wear a Zoot suit within city limits. The mayor insisted his actions involved no discrimination against any of Los Angeles’ quarter million Mexican-Americans, as ninety percent were born north of the Mexican border and were full-fledged citizens. When Younger finished the article he was convinced the logic of the War Production Board and the mayor was more complex than it first appeared. Stories were going around the Barrio that U.S. sailors were roaming the streets down south in San Diego, beating Zoots, even chasing them into stores and theaters. It was like a civil war. If it became illegal to wear a Zoot suit, then the sailors would have no one left to beat up, and the problem would end. But Younger knew the problem wouldn’t end, an article buried behind want-ads left no doubt to that:

The explosive implications of the article could not be hidden. Mexico lodged a protest over reports of brutalities against those of Mexican descent in Southern California. Mexico asked for an investigation of charges, made by America’s War Manpower Commission, that discrimination and segregation against Latin people were responsible for the rise of the Zoots, idled and restless because they were not allowed work in the war industries.

Younger let the paper drop from his hands. There was nothing in it but bad news. The Japs were counterattacking in the Pacific,
Hitler had completed his iron wall around Western Europe, the Stars dropped a doubleheader to the San Diego Padres. It was all rotten, and the silence from Marvin didn’t sweeten the pot. Outside, rain from a summer storm that had swept up from Mexico was beginning to come down in the fading dusk. Younger picked up the telephone and dialed God; the line was busy. That must be the trick, he thought, gazing through a milky film building up on the inside of the window as rain bounced off the brittle green skirts of palms like ricocheting glass bullets. The trick was to advertise for people to call a certain number; the more they called, and the more there was no answer, the more curious they became. He called Kathleen. Her phone rang and rang as hard rain needled the windowpane, glass bullets rapping like distant machine-gun fire. Younger hung the phone up and thought about the article. If America was at war for the equality and brotherhood of man, why were its Latin citizens treated with such disrespect? Why not give them jobs in war industries? What was the real reason? Younger thought he knew. It had taken him a long time to fit the pieces into a clear picture. He knew the answer had nothing to do with segregation and discrimination. It was simpler than that, more basic. But he did not know how he could change it. Only the end of the war could change it, and by then it would be too late to explain. That’s why what he did now was so important, why he risked his life. He was a good soldier, a good American.

The ringing of the phone startled him. Jumping up, he knocked the receiver off the hook. He heard a voice shouting at him from the other end of the line. He grabbed the receiver and pressed it to his ear.

“What’s going on there?” Cruz’s voice was strong and commanding in Younger’s ear.

“Nothing. Where are you? Why didn’t you call earlier? I’ve been worried.”

“I’ve been clean for two weeks. No hot Horse. Only cold turkey.”

“Swell! Do you need help?”

“How come you weren’t at Holly woodland?”

“I was there! I swear I was there, Cruz!”

“Not at seven.”

“I had trouble finding it.”

“You know where it is now, mon, Hollywoodland?”

“Yes.”

“
Bueno
, because you only have fifteen minutes to be there.”

“I can’t make it in fifteen minutes, impossible! Cruz, don’t hang up! Cruz! It’s raining. I have to find a cab!”

“Make it, Younger!”

   The empty streets were running rain. Water a foot deep raced down steep roads. Through slapping windshield wipers the shiny black pavement snaked endlessly into night, curling, twisting, and coiling higher and higher into the hills above Hollywood, making Younger sick to his stomach in the backseat of the cab. When the road ended and he got out to walk, his legs felt shaky under him, his feet sliding in mud as he scrambled quickly along the steep trail leading to the giant sign. All he made out through dense rain was the incessant, rhythmic blur of the radio tower light on the ridge top. Mud sucked up into his shoes, caking around his socks as the trail softened, rising quickly toward the looming letters leaning awkwardly from the hillside:

The huge letters were bone white, rain washing them free of dust. The maze of iron and wooden struts supporting them from behind dripped with water like a forbidding rain forest.

“Cruz!”

Younger’s call disappeared into wet wind driving around him, dying beneath the rush of water carving irregular quick rivers in every direction on the mountainside, spouting sudden waterfalls, tumbling with a roar into the echoes of distant deep canyons. The metal of the gun tucked underneath his shirt was cold and clammy. Younger slipped the gun out carefully; it was dripping wet. He didn’t know if it could still fire.

“Cruz!”

Younger leaned against the giant
H
of the sign for protection from raindrops growing colder and harder, turning to hail, beating on the high arms of the letter
H
above his head, hammering the wood loudly like bony knuckles beating into a face. The hail forced Younger behind the
H
to protect his own face. Through the long line of the sign’s support struts it was impossible to see farther than the letter
L
. There could be someone at the end of the sign, all the way down to the
D
.

“Cruz!”

The name tangled in the dripping struts, tore to pieces in the wild wind drumming the hail. Younger wound his way cautiously through the protruding struts, holding a hand before him so one of the splintered boards or iron pipes couldn’t bang him in the forehead. He had to reach the other end of the sign. Someone might be there and not be able to hear him. He stopped, trying to quiet his breath. Someone was calling in the wind, so thin and distant, like a lost child. His ears picked up the full sound; it was not human. The sound against the wind whistled through the chinks and cracks of the giant letters, the sound of a coyote, moaning and lamenting, an inconsolable spurned lover.

“Younger?”

The word slid down the muddy incline of the steep hillside above Younger.

“Yes! Cruz! I’m down here!”

“Where? I can’t see you.”

“In back of the second
L
!”

The three gunshots came so fast for a split second Younger thought they were part of the hammering hail; the bullets tearing and splintering through the thick wood of the letter above his head came, not from the sky but straight out of the barrel of a .38. Younger slipped in the mud, sliding around to the downhill side of the
L
. He lay flat on the ground, directly in line with the letter. The only sound was wind and hail mixed with his frightened breath against the back of his cold hand clutching the gun. The rip of another gunshot stopped his breathing totally.
He held his breath to hear how close the bullet would strike to him, or in him. No sound. The bullet must have completely missed the letter shielding him. He slithered silently, his chin scraping through mud until he was sprawled along the length of the
W
for protection. Then he heard it, the heavy sound of someone coming down the steep hill toward the sign, someone coming fast, trampling over wet brush, running, threatening to crash right into the sign. Younger was afraid to expose his position, but he couldn’t wait until he was at pointblank distance from Cruz. He knew he had to get up and shoot, he had to get up and fire. Younger jumped up. On the other side of the sign the bulk of a shadow hurtled toward him. He lifted his gun and fired. The shadow kept coming, low to the ground. Younger fired again and again into driving hail. The shadow kept coming; it couldn’t be stopped. Younger emptied his gun into the shadow, the gun hammer clicking futilely. He was defenseless. Out of the hail the shadow came into his vision, a body, rolling and tumbling. Younger could tell, even in the dense rain, it was Cruz. He must have hit Cruz, shot him, killed him. The dead weight of Cruz’s body couldn’t be stopped, the momentum hurtling him at the sign, rolling him down through the crisscrossed support struts of the giant letters, bumping, banging, slamming him against Younger and the wooden
W
, tearing the
W
away from its supports, ripping it from the line of letters on the mountainside.

“Cruz?” Younger tried to stand, pushing the mud and hair caked over his face away from his eyes. “Cruz? Where are you?” Younger focused his eyes. Above him the entire letter
W
was knocked out from the sign, the jackknifed hump of Cruz’s body directly below a giant
O
. Younger started toward the body. Maybe Cruz wasn’t dead, maybe he was still alive, maybe the bullets only maimed him. Younger struggled uphill against tearing sheets of hail, desperately trying to reach Cruz. Straight above him, through the empty space of the
W
, Younger saw it, unexpected as a quick coal-bright glare from a dangerous animal’s
eye. The sudden flash of a gun being fired. Younger dropped to the ground, squirming into mud for protection, clawing at the wet earth like a beached crab trying to sink from sight into sand. There had been
two
of them. The gun fired again, the smack of lead making the mud jump around Younger’s body. More gunshots whizzed over his head, but they weren’t coming from the hole in the sign; they were coming from behind Younger. There were even more than two men. Suddenly the gunfire stopped. The sound of hail beat tirelessly on the slick letters. Younger turned his head slightly, toward the sucking sound of shoes coming clumsily from the deep mud as two men worked their way up the hill below him. He clutched his hands over the back of his head, as if he could stop the bullets he knew the men were going to pump into him. He waited, trembling.

“Nathan Younger?”

Younger turned his face slowly into the bright beam of a flashlight aimed down at him by the two men. “Yes, I’m, ah, I’ve heard of him. Who are you?”

“Are you Nathan Younger?” One of the men clicked the hammer back on his gun, the barrel sticking into the flashlight beam. “Are you or aren’t you Nathan Younger?”

“Yah, sure.” Younger turned his eyes away from the bright beam. “I guess so.”

“Goddamn!” The man with the cocked gun reached down and pulled Younger up from the mud. “Christ Almighty, buddy, we thought we might have gunned the wrong guy! It was damn confusing in this rain to tell who was who! We couldn’t tell if we were nailing the right guy, lead was flying so fast!”

“Who are you?”

The man flipped open his coat and shined the light on the bright metal of a badge. “FBI.”

“Look.” Younger started across the slippery mud, toward the body beneath the big
O
. “We’ve got to get to the kid. We’ve got to see if Cruz is hurt!”

The FBI agents followed Younger, shining the light on Cruz as Younger rolled him over, brushing the mud out of the boy’s face.

“He’s dead, Younger.” The FBI agent with the flashlight flicked the beam off Cruz’s motionless face and trained it through the hole in the sign above him, tracking the beam around on the dark slope. “Let’s get up there and make sure the other one’s in the same condition.”

“I killed him.” Younger let Cruz’s head sink back into mud. “He was coming straight at me and I shot him. He was only a kid.”

“He was a spic, buddy.” The agent with the gun pulled Younger to his feet. “And that means he was probably a Fascist to boot.”

“He wasn’t a Fascist. He was a kid.”

“Tell it to the Hitler Youth.” The agent turned away and followed the trail up the slope his partner lighted with the flashlight.

Younger stood alone, looking down at the dead boy in a stupor. The hail softened to a slow rain, the drops splattering noisily against the floppy coat and pants of Cruz’s Zoot suit, washing mud from his handsome face, slicking back the black hair. For an odd moment he looked like a teenager shined up for his first date.

“Hey, buddy! You comin’ up?” The agent with the gun shouted down through the empty space in the sign where the W had been. “I think you’re going to be interested in this!”

Younger struggled up the slippery hill, trying to steady his wobbling legs. The FBI agent held a flashlight to the face of a man snagged behind the sign in the struts, his body dangling like a wet noodle from the prongs of a fork.

“Recognize him?” The agent with the gun rested its metal barrel against the dead man’s cheek, pushing the face into the center of the harsh flashlight beam.

“Yes, I recognize him.”