Chapter 8
Motorcycles just start gunning it right outside the window!
June, '95, S. Murphy Blvd., Sunnyvale, CA
just a week or so before the first infernal regions encounter …
It’s mid-afternoon, a few days later, and I’m up in my motel room reading a beaten up Stephen Crane paperback (Spotsylvania again) when the motorcycles first started.
One at a time. Every few minutes. Down the otherwise vacant street just outside my window. The loud one's. The really powerful ones. They would start from a dead stop at the far end, where the road crossed El Camino Real, and then just 'give it the gas' — and you could hear each one gaining on you, the pitch climbing, until it roared past the motel window like something escaping hell. Full throttle. Every few minutes. For hours. And all of it deliberate. And all of it a message. I just wasn’t sure which one. And I forgot to ask.
Then the voices erupted in the hallway. Two of them, just outside my door — there were only two other upstairs rooms — panicked in a way that’s hard to fake, halfway through the motor show outside. I’d already given up on the Stephen Crane novel. Through the door I could make out the words clearly enough: "somebody’s been narc’d!" Whoever they were, they were terrified. The genuine article.
I then hear somebody scratching something on the outside of my motel room door! And I then noticed, while I was just sitting there and listening to the apocalypse that was now exploding right outside my room, that a motorcycle enthusiast who I had recently met, and who had visited the day before, had apparently and mysteriously left his unopened knapsack behind in my room. It was sitting on the floor in the corner. I hadn't even noticed it until just then. And it was ominous!
WHY?
WHAT WAS IN IT?
WAS IT PURPOSELY ABANDONED?
I did not look inside of it. And you wouldn't have either. I was now just staring at it. Intently. All the while listening … to the maelstrom outside … and the two panicked voices in the hall.
AND IT WAS ALL ABSOLUTELY FASCINATING !
(I always wanted to be a part of really intriguing stuff)
AND THE BIKES OUTSIDE CONTINUED TO ROAR ON UNABATED.
(And this was!)
They continued to terrorize the atmosphere just outside. And apparently the two poor fellows out in the hall too! But not so for whatever it was that was inside that knapsack. It, whatever it was, was loving it! Even more so than my own fascination. It was just something that was obvious. And without even knowing what it was. I was now sure beyond a reasonable doubt that it's contents were of the 'incredibly interesting' kind. And, yes, that it had been left on purpose!
And to be honest, I knew when the very first motorcycle 'gunned it' down the street that the whole show was meant for me. Right away I knew. Me and me alone. The chills that immediately went up and down my spine somehow gave it away.
These people - they're good! And they were definitely sending a message. But which one:
It was to scare me to death: I was supposed to now think that the backpack that was so-called 'accidentally' left had illegal narcotics in it and the guy who left it got busted with other stuff just after leaving and so now I was considered a narc (and by people with powerful motorcycles !) and so now I was 'dead!' unless (they were hoping) I became so scared by the maelstrom outside that I instead would just run right outside and just jump right off of the first bay bridge that I could find.
It was to protect me from all of the minority gangs or orgs (and hopefully that's all) on the peninsula who were trying to kill me (remember the Julius Caesar stuff - and the Chinese restaurant stuff - it was all still alive and well). The guys with motorcycles were sending a message that I was off limits! Because it was their turf and so it would be their decision and their decision only!
They couldn't actually enforce an 'it's our turf so back off' ruling (but they could though - and they did - as you'll see as you read on) so they were instead creating the perfect decoy; everybody else would back off if it looked like I was already in somebody else's sights!
They were angry that their original plan wasn't working: I was supposed to have been dumb enough to have looked inside the mysterious knapsack - and then to have been easily finished off by the 'visitor' that was silently waiting inside. Patiently coiled. Luminous red eyes. Just waiting!
It was payback time for one of the things that I said back at "Mr. Smith's" about that Italian American family - the one from Cleveland - and it's 'reach'. A lot of dumb things have been said in bars over the years but this one …
To this day I really have no idea which is the correct answer.
ONLY THAT AT LEAST ONE OF THEM IS !
The fellow who left the mysterious knapsack, btw, had made three or four well placed appearances over the previous ten days or so. He showed up at the motel just out of the blue once or twice - probably perfectly timed to deflect stuff - and only after I'd conveniently run in to him at a bar a couple times.
And there was one other rather 'timely' appearance as well. One of those 'just in the nick of time' kind. And very much so. A life saving affair. I was in a cheap motel at the other end of the S. Murphy street. I had gotten myself cornered in there one night by the wrong crowd when he suddenly just 'showed up' - and then everybody just got out of his way. And so mine too. But how the hell he knew that I was in a predicament I have absolutely no idea!
And he was one of 'those'. The so-called red seas would just part in front of him. No need, when he was around, to worry about the ‘street’. I'd never seen this before. Not even in the movies. But I certainly wasn't going to complain. Considering my predicament; I needed all of the help that I could get.
These people - they're good! And decidedly no nonsense. And they don't debate. We were discussing politics once when he suddenly told me to just “shut up!”
But I used to be expert … hey maybe he was that guy Thompson!
But as invigorating as all of this was it would all, as it turns out, turn out to be nothing, in comparison, to what would happen next, in just a few days.