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Two

 

The West Hollywood night was softly lit by city glow off the overcast. The marine air was mild, vaguely moist, and heavy with night jasmine. Trees hemmed in and shadowed the narrow street—tall thin Washingtonia palms on one side, leafy trees shoulder to shoulder on the other. Along one curb, cars sheltered almost bumper to bumper beneath overhanging branches.

The buildings were two- and three-story apartment houses, their windows uniformly dark. A mockingbird called briefly, as if anticipating day.

At one end of the block a car stopped, and a young man, James "Lefty" Nagel, got out. The car was a Maverick, not new, its color uncertain in the night. A hammer in one hand, Lefty Nagel started walking in the street, a friend following slowly with the car.

They had worked this street two nights before. It would be funny to do it again so soon.

As he passed the left front windows of the first two cars, Lefty swung the hammer, smashing the glass, which rained down around his feet like crushed ice. The next car had only emptiness instead of glass in the driver's window. It was one he'd broken before, and the turkey owner hadn't gotten it replaced yet, so Lefty struck the windshield as punishment.

In this wise he went halfway down the block, feeling invigorated, full-chested, godlike. A Toyota sat by a bank of shrubs. In his euphoria, he noticed nothing as he approached it except the clean new glass in its grimy side.

He raised and swung, and as the heavy steel head impacted, someone plunged out of the bushes and ran in front of the car. Lefty's eyes caught the movement and turned to it, even as his hammer drove through. It was the face and the terrible intention distorting it that held his startled eyes, as if the sword was peripheral in importance. He felt something strike his side, then his heavyset black attacker turned and ran, disappearing behind the bordering shrubs. With a squeal of tires, the Maverick accelerated past, gunning down the street and out of sight around the next corner.

For a long moment then, things were quiet; the next sound was someone vomiting a little way off.

Jesus, Lefty thought, that was wild! He looked down to see if he was bleeding. There was abundant blood; his body lay sprawled beneath him in a pool of it, nearly severed below the ribs.

Even then, looking down at his body from a viewpoint some six feet above it, Lefty Nagel took a long moment to realize what had happened. When he did, he howled—howled with horror.

But no one heard, or no one knew they heard. Only a cat on a nearby balcony rail looked in his direction. The mockingbird tried again to call the dawn.

The ghost of Lefty Nagel hung there numbly for quite a while, hardly seeing, hardly hearing. His buddy did not come back; actually, he had driven through a store window a few blocks away.

About ten minutes later a patrol car turned into the street from Sunset Boulevard two blocks north, its flasher turning slowly, siren silent. It slowed abruptly when its lights picked up the body, then stopped a few yards away. For a moment the driver spoke into the radio, then both patrolmen got out. The entry door to the nearest apartment building opened, and the black man came over, his souvenir World War Two sword upstairs now in his bathtub. His body sagged; so did his face.

The ghost of Lefty Nagel stared at him, feeling no anger; feeling mainly grief.

"My name is Ernest Thorns," the black man said to the officers. "I'm the one that phoned you. I killed him."

"Mr. Thorns," said the corporal, "you have the right to remain silent. Anything you say may be held against you in a court of law."

Thorns was staring at the body in the street, showing no remorse, only a profound tiredness. "I'm the one that killed him," he repeated.

The remorse was Lefty's. If he could have cried, he would have. "I'm sorry," he said to Ernest Thorns, as an officer handcuffed the black man. "Jesus but I'm sorry. I don't know why I did it. I don't know why."

But Thorns ignored him, as if Lefty wasn't there. So did the police. Lefty didn't know what else to say; he realized now that they could neither see nor hear him. Only the cat on the balcony rail was looking at him, and Lefty hadn't noticed the cat.

They stayed until the ambulance arrived—all four of them: Ernest Thorns, the two patrolmen, and the ghost of Lefty Nagel. Then Lefty rode with his body to the morgue, not yet willing to leave it.

The paramedics didn't notice him either.

* * *

Leo Hochman left the Los Feliz Post Office—why the Los Feliz Branch, no one would ever know—and got into his delivery van. Leo had a house-cleaning business, and often the van held an industrial-grade vacuum cleaner, an assortment of pails, mops, and squeegees, buckets of solvents, and sometimes a steam cleaner for carpets. Today it held a pile of waxed cardboard boxes with a plastic tarp thrown over them.

He drove west on Franklin Avenue to the Hollywood Freeway on-ramp, careful not to encroach on the traffic signals, then went north on the freeway over Cahuenga Pass. After a few minutes he exited in the San Fernando Valley and drove to a large shopping center.

It was Saturday, early enough that there was still plenty of parking close to the L-shaped building, and he parked in the angle. A man and woman with three children were passing, and Leo Hochman waited a few moments, intending to let them get farther away. Instead, they went into the drugstore to his left; he could see them get in line at the ice cream counter.

He shrugged. Then he took the detonator out of the glove compartment and blew himself up with what later was estimated to be four hundred pounds of dynamite. The death toll was thirty-seven, including Hochman. Of the van, the biggest remaining piece was the engine block; only traces were found of its driver.

It was Monday before it was known who he'd been. Monday morning, the LA. Times received a letter by registered mail, registered on Saturday at 9:48 A.M., nineteen minutes before the explosion. So did Channel Eight News, KFWB Radio, and the Herald-Examiner. In the letter, Hochman had said exactly what he was going to do, and where, and approximately when. It was, he said, in protest of the British presence in Northern Ireland—the "brutal Brittish oppreshion" [sic] as he'd put it.

"That's absolutely crazy!" said anchorman James Fong Wu, after Channel Eight News was off the air. "Leo August Hochman? That's not Irish!"

Anchorwoman Sandy Steele looked pointedly at him. "Jim," she said, "that's absolutely crazy even if his name was Paddy O'Toole."

 

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Framed