On This Occasion I Do Not Speak Quite So Lightly Of 'My Adventurous Youth'
I don't think I've ever done anything so reckless as this, and while quick wit and a glib tongue helped, it took a current fad in party illumination, the physical geography of the locale, and some odd quirks of thought and crowd psychology to save my bacon.
I came back to Chicago at Christmas time from Indianapolis, where I'd been laying carpet in an uncle's small business. I'd gone there mostly to avoid police, who were leaning hard on local longhairs to be sure no assistance was rendered to a gaggle of college kids who'd announced, under the rubric 'Days of Rage', that they were coming here to engage Chicago Police in street fights. It did not end well for them, and was a good thing to be far away from when they set about it.
North and Wells was a major tourist attraction, and during a holiday weekend was thronged so thick with hippies and straights that pedestrians took over the pavement from automobiles. West of Wells, North Avenue was being widened, and for several blocks the sidewalk on its north side bordered a rubble field left from demolished buildings. In consequence, those buildings still standing on the south side of the street were more than usually visible from the crowded intersection.
I had gone on Saturday evening to eat at a pizza restaurant at the rear of Piper's Alley. I heard a greeting, and looked up to see Artie, a well built fellow who favored a pair of soft leather pants, a dealer I knew from the summer. He had a girl with him. They wanted help.
A guy who had burned people buying acid by giving them birth control pills instead was being looked for, and had been spotted. Doing this to weekender tourists was one thing, but to do it in quantity to a local dealer was something else. The guy thought himself immune, since he had some affiliation with the Latin Kings.
Artie had a scheme. The girl would approach this guy, offering to sell a quantity of hash, but he'd have to follow her up to her place on North Avenue. Artie and another dealer the guy'd burnt would snatch him as we passed the entrance to Artie's place. A girl wouldn't make such an approach alone, though, she'd have somebody along to make sure she wasn't ripped off. That would be me. Artie knew me, but I hadn't been around for ages in street time, and would ring no bells in even a suspicious guy.
I said sure. The girl made clear without words that while there might not be tangible rewards for doing so, experiential rewards were certainly possible. The guy we were to trap was meaningless to me. Those of us who regularly encountered one another here were not quite a gang, but a certain mutuality existed. Help was to be extended where possible, and at that moment, it was.
The guy's name was John. There was some nickname attached to it but I have long forgotten it, as I have forgotten the name of the girl. John was to be found tonight in the big poster shop, Insanity. It was not quite a community center, but people often met there, and the freaks who manned the counters did not put anyone out as a general rule. You could gawk to your heart's content. It was dark, with black walls, the better to show-off the black-light posters. There were other things, roach clips, pipes, and candles. One with the letters LOVE in a square was popular, so were novelties which might pass for a phallus from one side but revealed a face and figure on the other. There were bins of strobe candles, great globs of wax and paper in layers around one end of a dowel, which burned bright with a pronounced flicker, and were quite popular.
John was standing with his back to the well-stocked jukebox. With him was a stocky Mexican in a sport coat. We did not like each other. He certainly seemed to have a pistol lumped up on his chest to the left. I don't think he ever knew I already was holding the hilt of a hunting knife tucked behind my belt, in a manner I practiced doing, which gave every appearance of my just standing there with thumbs hooked into the big buckle.
The girl made her proposition to John, and again, the solvent of her apparent eager availability eased the matter greatly. But the bodyguard could not come. She was firm on that, and my only speaking role was to back that insistence. It took some work and a bit of cajolery, but finally John told the man to stay here, and that he knew what to do if this took too long.
So we set out west on North Avenue. John wasn't much bigger than the girl, and they walked together. Foolishly we walked up the north side of the street, and there was a flurry of worry from John that she didn't seem to know where she lived. I passed it off by saying I wanted to be sure he didn't have some friend following, and was now sure none was. We crossed to the south side of the street, headed back east, and when we came to a corner Artie and his companion appeared. They dragged John into the entrance of the building and hustled him up the stairs to the third floor. I followed with the girl.
John was set in a ratty recliner, and while Artie berated him, Artie's companion standing behind the recliner struck its back to either side of John's head with a length of motorcycle drive chain. There was another girl already in the apartment, and they both were in the bathroom, running a tub full of scalding hot water. Artie and company were going to kill the burn artist, and not just kill him but take some time and pains over it. I hadn't really realized that, though of course I should have, and it wouldn't make any difference when the screaming started and the corpse was found.
Artie went to the bath to check on the progress of preparations for torture, I lurked by the window wanting badly not to be here, and Artie's companion with the cycle chain was a bit too loose and slow. John made a bolt for the door, which no one had bothered to lock, and got out, running down the stairs yelling that they were going to kill him. It brought two guys out of the second floor door, who John begged to call the police. I urged them to call the LSD Rescue people instead, that he was having a bad freak-out, and the med students and old heads were what was needed, not police. I couldn't sell it, and they took him into their place, announcing as they did they were calling the cops.
It was quite a turn, and confusion reigned, because we were on the third floor and police were coming. I did not intend any kind of sophisticated manipulation, I just wanted the hell out of the place, and it was an old fashioned building, with an external fire escape accessed from the windows in what must once have been a living room. I stepped out onto it and started down. The others followed.
I've had occasion to think on it afterwards, and it's an odd thing. If you see people going down a fire escape, it's hard not to think there's a fire --- the very name calls it to mind, and that's what a fire escape is used for, escaping a fire. A number of windows in the building were illuminated by the vivid orange flicker of strobe candles, and these gave a passable imitation of flames with the idea there was a fire for inspiration. It's a conclusion someone must have reached, and called the fire department, while the tourist throngs at North and Wells could clearly see our parade down the fire escape, and people came surging west on North Avenue to get a better look at the excitement.
By the time we got to the pavement, there was a crowd bulging out into North Avenue, and they had got there before either the police squads or the fire engine, which were trying gingerly to poke their way through the press from the rear. It was nothing to blend into the crowd and disappear in it. We weren't dressed all that differently from the weekend hippies, just not so well laundered. Individually we emerged from the rear of the crowd, and strolled away, never drawing a second glance --- just some people who'd lost interest in the spectacle, and were heading back to the main drag, as the rest would be doing soon enough.
I didn't even think it necessary to clear off from the area, but loitered around a bit, which was how I happened to see that while John might have thought himself lucky that night, it wasn't over yet. I saw him walking east of Wells on North avenue, by a Polish sausage joint, and I saw three guys from a smaller Latin gang hostile to the Kings, the Comancheros, drag the little fellow into an automobile he did not want to enter. Their identity was obvious, they wore colors like outlaw bikers with the gang name on them.
I decided I should probably get on the Greyhound back to Indianapolis next morning, and I did. I didn't come back till spring. The only person I ever saw again from that night was Artie, at a good distance, still wearing those leather pants, and pushing a baby carriage.
= new reply since forum marked as read
I suspect Artie counts amongst that set.
Thank you my friend for the story. It tells me you got your scars early in life. Would buy you a round of something if we were nearer.
L-
