Authors: Thomas Perry
26
Kepler lifted the receiver in the telephone booth and dialed the number of Mann’s Chinese Theater. There was a hum and a click, and a young woman’s recorded voice said, “Thank you for calling Mann’s Chinese Theater. This message will be repeated in five seconds….” Kepler waited, and there was another click. “Thank you for calling Mann’s Chinese Theater. Our feature presentation, Woody Allen’s
Bitter Herbs
, will be shown at eleven, one-twenty, two forty-five, six oh-five, eight-thirty, and ten fifty-five. No passes or discount tickets accepted for this engagement. Thank you for calling Mann’s Chinese—” Kepler waited, but there was no sound except a faint, empty rustling somewhere in the wires. He hung up and put in another dime. This time there was no dial tone. He dialed the operator, but nothing happened. He put the telephone back on the receiver and glanced at the black face of his Rolex watch. It was precisely six-thirty.
Kepler walked across the street to the city maintenance yard, opened the door of the orange dump truck, and hotwired the ignition. Trucks were so much easier than cars, with everything plain and in the open and easy to reach. He ground the gears getting it into second, but after that he got used to the stiff clutch and the sloppy transmission. The bright morning light made a glowing haze on the dusty, flecked windshield as he wound up the entrance ramp, but when he was on the Golden State Freeway he could see well enough, and soon he passed under the green sign that said “Jct Harbor Fwy South 1” and went by the Dodger Stadium sign. At that point he abruptly steered across to the left lane. Three cars shot past him on the right, and two others dropped far behind, seeming to be aware that something was wrong. He slowed down and moved onto the left shoulder and they too slipped past. In his right mirror he could see that he had a gap of at least a quarter mile before the next pack of cars reached the Dodger Stadium sign. He started the hydraulic lift of the dump truck and moved almost to the point where the two freeways separated. As soon as he saw the first pieces of gravel start to hit the pavement and bounce behind him, he swung the truck across all five lanes of the freeway, dumping the load as he went. As he drove on, he could see the gray pile of gravel stretching across the junction three feet high at the shoulders and at least six in the center lanes, like the body of a big gray fish. He lowered the bed of the truck and then he was up to speed again, heading south.
After two miles he came to the junction with Route 10, the Santa Monica-San Bernardino Freeway. At the narrowest point on the overpass he waited for an opening and then pulled the truck perpendicularly across both lanes, set the hand brake, and jumped to the ground. As an afterthought he leaned in and turned on the emergency lights. Then he reached into his boot, pulled out his pistol, shot two of the tires, and climbed down the sloping bank of ice plants to Mission Street.
At Tyler Bailey’s Acres of Datsuns he was glad to see that the delivery truck was still loaded and that nobody had arrived to open the gate. He’d worried about this part of it. The Highway Department always kept two or three trucks full of gravel for the morning’s work, but who could predict when Tyler Bailey decided to move his merchandise around? When Kepler had the truck started he followed Mission to Sunset and drove onto the Harbor Freeway. He was surprised to see it so empty, until he remembered that he’d already cut off the main feeder route from the north.
It was only one and a half miles to the junction of the Hollywood and Harbor freeways. He felt conspicuous driving the long rig with its load of shiny little cars, all the colors of fruit. At the place where the inbound Hollywood merged with the Harbor Freeway and swept into downtown Los Angeles, Kepler pulled over to the left shoulder again and jumped down from the cab. He climbed up on the steel track and released the chains and bars and chocks that held the little cars on the two levels. Then he got back in and waited for a break in the traffic.
When it came, he pulled forward and slammed on his air brakes so the cars rocked forward, then pushed the gas pedal to the floor. The cars started to roll off the back of the truck and skitter along the freeway, then come to rest wherever their momentum carried them. Some turned sideways, two or three he could see rolled over. One even caught fire, but he resisted the temptation to wait for the explosion. It was only two and a half miles to the Santa Monica Freeway, but another nine and a half to the place where it met the San Diego Freeway.
C
HINESE
G
ORDON SANG A CHORUS
of “On, Wisconsin” as he jammed the stolen school bus across the single lane that connected the San Diego Freeway with the Hollywood Freeway. As he jumped from the bus he chanted “Hold that line,” but he sank into a profound silence when he reached Ventura Boulevard. It was his last stop. By now Kepler and Immelmann should nearly have finished too. In all there were seventeen spots that had to be cut off. The big problem now was the long walk home. He smiled to himself. Immelmann was going to think of that after he cut the 605, the 405, the Arcadia Freeway, and the Pomona Freeway and remembered that he was forty miles from home.
I
MMELMANN GAVE THE THROTTLE
of the Caterpillar bulldozer more gas and raised the blade a few inches to hit the signpole at its strongest point. The immense billboard tilted and gave a sickening crack, then bobbed a few times. He backed the bulldozer a few feet, then moved to the other main support. Fifty feet below on the freeway, a big tractor-trailer clattered by, with a tiny Ford drafting in its wake. Immelmann jammed the throttle and jumped from the bulldozer, then watched it rumble into the billboard.
The second pole snapped and the billboard, still vertical, moved forward into the chain link fence. The bulldozer’s inexorable force uprooted six fence posts and forty feet of fencing while the billboard folded in the middle. Then the fence, the billboard, and the bulldozer, now a single tangle of metal, wood, and machinery, lost contact with the hillside and tumbled, turning once in the air to crash onto the freeway.
Immelmann shook his head. Chinese Gordon had said to use the bulldozer and to make sure they couldn’t press it into service to clear the road later, but maybe he’d gone too far. It might be days before anything big enough to clear the Foothill Freeway could be moved into position, and it looked as though a whole section of the concrete had been pounded into the ground. This was unquestionably the worst one he’d done, because it also blocked the northern end of the San Gabriel Freeway where it met the Foothill. It was nearly seven o’clock already, and it would take almost to post time to walk the five miles to Santa Anita, eat breakfast, and pick the winners in the newspaper. It would be a nice day at the track, a little hot in the stands, but certainly not crowded.
M
ARGARET LEFT THE PILE OF HANDBILLS
beside the gate with a brick on top of them, and the signs on the sidewalk, then posted the note: “Be Back Soon—Please Take One,” and drove off. It was the last of the major Rapid Transit District bus yards, and the morning shift would arrive any minute. She had to make it onto the Pacific Coast Highway before the first of the commuters started to sense that the freeways were blocked.
As she approached the airport she could see the overpass a few blocks to her right where the San Diego Freeway crossed Century Boulevard. The freeway was packed with cars and as still as a photograph. As she drove toward Santa Monica, she wondered if she’d make it to Topanga Canyon before that route too was blocked by the overflow. It was still early enough to try, and if she couldn’t swing north there, it would be better to be stranded at the beach than anywhere else. She could tell already it was going to be a hot day. It was already over eighty-five, and the sun was barely up.
She didn’t have much confidence in the bus-driver plan. The handbills said, “Emergency Strike Called at Midnight! Three Thousand to Be Laid Off. Rest to Take Pay Cut of Twenty Percent.” It was hard to imagine Los Angeles bus drivers falling for that one, and they probably wouldn’t. It had been designed for Central American cities, where government-owned transportation systems had gone bankrupt repeatedly, missed payrolls, and tried to save themselves by hiring and laying off drivers according to no comprehensible plan. It would be easy to start a bogus strike there, but not so easy in a place like Los Angeles. It was worded that way in the Donahue papers, though, so it would help get the message through.
A
T THE BUS YARD IN
L
ONG
B
EACH
three drivers were walking back and forth in front of the gate carrying signs that said “Emergency Strike.” A fourth was passing out handbills to the people who came to the gate carrying lunch-boxes.
A driver named Evangeline Bartlett yawned and stared at the handbill. “What is this?”
The man who had handed it to her said, “Strike. Read it.”
“Who called it?”
“The union. Who else?”
“Did you vote on it?”
“I just heard about it when I got here. Ask him.” He pointed to a big man with curly gray hair and a nose with small red veins visible on its fleshy surface, who was engaged in a heated discussion with two other men a few yards down the sidewalk.
Evangeline Bartlett tapped him on the shoulder. “Are you from the union?”
“No,” he said. “The union steward will be back in a little while.” He said to one of the men with him, “Get this copied now or we’ll run out by noon.”
Bartlett turned and started to walk away, staring at the handbill, when a hand touched her arm. She looked up. It was her friend Donald.
“What’s going on?”
She shrugged. “Looks like a layoff, a pay cut, and a strike.” She handed him the flyer. “Enough trouble for one day.”
Donald’s eyes narrowed as he read the handbill. “It can’t be true. It’s a joke.”
Evangeline’s brows knitted and she walked on. “The fat man over there talked to the union steward.”
“Where are you going?”
She said quietly, “It may not all be true. But it doesn’t matter much which part of it is true, because it means no paycheck for at least a month. Trailways is advertising for drivers, and in about twenty-four hours you can rush down there and be three thousandth in line. Not me.”
W
HEN
K
EPLER REACHED HIS CAR
he turned on the radio and listened as he made his way along the quiet residential streets. The first station announced that “Because we’ve got some kind of problem with the phones here at the station,” the prize for Day Seventeen of the Crazy Sound Contest would be given away on Day Eighteen: “But if you’re listening out there, telephone company, send us a carrier pigeon. And make sure he brings his tools with him.” Kepler held a can of beer between his legs and popped it open with his free hand. It sprayed the dashboard, but he didn’t care because it didn’t add much to the old spray marks. He tried another station. “It’s time for Bob Byrd in his Byrdmobile to give us the bad news as he flies over the freeways. How is it out there, Bobby? A little rough this morning?”
A voice that was slightly muffled said, “For seven o’clock in the morning it’s something special, all right. At the moment I’m over the Hollywood Freeway at the Harbor and Pasadena interchange and believe me, nothing is moving. We’re monitoring the CHP broadcasts, and they haven’t found the problem yet. I’ve heard three different stories. But it’s going to be a tough commute for anybody coming into the downtown slot today. I’d recommend that if you have to get there try surface streets. If you can avoid the area, do it. We’ve also got reports of major accidents on the inbound San Diego, Santa Ana, Foothill, and Long Beach freeways already, and the reports are coming in faster than I can write them down.”
“Sounds like you’ve got your work cut out for you today, Bobby.”
“No problem for the Byrdmobile, Dan. I can fly just about anywhere today and have plenty to talk about. And believe me, I’d rather be up here than down there sweating on the freeway. I’d advise everybody to leave for work as early as possible and be prepared to spend some time in the car.”
“I’d say it’s time to play a real oldie, Petula Clark’s ‘Downtown.’”
Kepler smiled. They wouldn’t know the size of it for another half hour or so, and they probably wouldn’t believe it then. The radio stations would lure as many cars as possible into the trap in that time. The disk jockey played “On Broadway,” then Arlo Guthrie’s “Comin’ into Los Angeles.” Kepler listened to the music, tapping his fingers on the roof of the car as he glided along tree-lined back streets. The main thing was to keep heading north and west, away from the city. If he had to backtrack even once, he knew he might be stuck all day. Already, even on these streets, the inbound lanes had begun to clog and stall, and he had to stop occasionally while a car from the other lane pulled in front of him and turned around to try another route.
It was only ten minutes before the disk jockey stopped “Summer in the City” in the middle. “We have an update on the traffic situation from Bobby Byrd up there in the Byrdmobile. Bobby?”
“Dan, the California Highway Patrol has just called Sig-Alerts in four more places. Route Five, the Golden State Freeway, is a disaster area, with four incidents. It’s cut off at the Santa Monica–San Bernardino interchange, the junction with the 605, and the junction with the Hollywood south. I’ve just flown over those areas and I can tell you the best thing to do is stay far away from them. I’ve never seen anything like it. The traffic is stopped dead all over the northern half of the city, and they say there’s no way CALTRANS can get emergency equipment to any of the trouble spots before at least ten o’clock. From up here the freeway system looks like one gigantic parking lot. For thousands and thousands of those cars down there I’d say there’s no way to go forward, no way to go back, and no way off until the accidents are cleared. What I’d do is turn off my engine and wait.”