The Man Everybody Was Afraid Of Read Online Free PDF Page B

ours—right?”
    “Film can be manipulated,” Dave said.
    “It wasn’t—not here.” Light leaked from slot windows in a projection booth up short stairs and behind the seats. She called, “Cecil, baby, are you there?”
    “All set up.” Cecil’s voice came muffled.
    “The men who own this mountain, this building, and all that is therein also own most of the landscape you so much admired between here and La Caleta. Ranchers, growers, vintners. Rich and loud. They liked Orton.”
    Light shafted from the projection booth. On the screen, numbers inside targets flickered upside down.
    “So you didn’t switch Ben Orton footage around?”
    “Not if I wanted to go on eating.” She tinkered with a digital watch on a bony wrist. She peered at it. “Which I won’t do if I don’t get a move on.”
    “If they liked him, why didn’t they see to it he got paid? Did you know he died broke?”
    Colors reflected from the screen made her frown garish. “No. I mean, twenty-five thousand a year isn’t half bad out here in the boondocks. He lived, as they say, simply. Nobody ever accused him of extravagance.” She gave her head a quick, troubled shake and opened the room door. “Enjoy,” she told him with a tight smile. “And see me before you leave—all right?”
    “Wait,” he said. “Who laughed at him?”
    “Anyone with an I.Q. over ninety.” She went away.

5
    O N THE SCREEN, LONG-HAIRED lads in tank tops and faded bellbottom jeans carried picket signs in front of a white, sunstruck building marked LA CALETA CITY HALL . Dave dropped into a seat. A lot of the lads had muscles but they minced. There appeared to be chatting and laughter. At a guess, high-pitched. Someone pirouetted. A shriek would have gone with that. The camera moved in. They weren’t all lads. Thin hair stirred on a bald scalp. A beer belly bulged through a fringed leather vest.
    “You want the sound, Mr. Bannister?” Cecil stood at his shoulder.
    “I can imagine it, thanks,” Dave said.
    “‘Five, six, seven, eight—,’” Cecil grinned.
    “‘—Gay is just as good as straight,’” Dave said.
    “Do they all want to be cops?” Cecil asked.
    “They all want to be girls,” Dave said. “But it’s the principle of the thing.”
    The screen filled with a placard lettered in orange marker pen, NEANDERTHAL GO HOME . It wobbled. The next frames showed a pair of sturdy youths in sand-color uniforms standing, feet apart, hands behind their backs, at the top of the city hall’s tidy front steps. A doorway was a black, rectangular hole behind them. Sun glinted off their short fair hair, their badges, their sunglasses. They wore heavy guns and nightsticks and no expression.
    Not even when the picket signs surged toward them. They didn’t move. They stood blocking the door. The first of the demonstrators charged up the steps. The camera tilted. The signs waved. It was hard to read them. GAY. LAW & ORDER. EQUALITY. GERMS. Germs? What was that about? A blur of red and yellow doubleknit stripes blocked the camera. Then it was clear again and watching from another angle. At the top of the steps, a gaunt man, beard, mustache, yellow hair clubbed back, sweaty blue workshirt with the arms torn off, flapped long sheets of paper in front of the stoical cops. They stared straight ahead.
    Behind them in the shadowed doorway a face made a pale, square blur. Ben Orton? The gaunt man lunged. The uniformed boys caught him. He seemed to be kicking. One of the officers raised a nightstick. A sign slammed him between the shoulders. It said something about FREEDOM . Bodies got in the camera’s way. There was a splice in the film. The cameraman had switched to telephoto. The gaunt man’s face filled the screen. Blood trickled down a forehead where a ropy vein swelled. Framed by the tobacco-stained beard, his teeth were rabbity. His eyes bulged. He raved.
    Dave asked, “Could I just have the sound on this?”
    Cecil went away. The screen became a streak of