Airport Run
April 15, 1974 | Monday
Michael
At around 5 pm, Jocasta arrives at Naval Air Station Alameda on URIEL's private jet, from Burbank–Hollywood. The springtime air off the Bay is bracing compared to LA, and outside the gates waits Genevieve, standing beside the lemon-yellow 1970 Toyota 2000GT that Jo helped pick out for her as her "welcome to SANDMAN" present back in July.
As the two women pile into the slick import, Jo's unchecked-by-Burbank-security bag going in the back, Viv says, "Just a normal Monday night with the Project, huh? Patty Hearst just shot and killed two people, I stake out the Bohemian Club like I'm Popeye Doyle, and end the afternoon picking up my girl friend at a high-security Naval airbase." Viv smiles, goes into her sensible bag and proffers a plump, gorgeous-smelling Acapulco Gold joint to Jo.
"Welcome back to the Bay, Jocasta. Open the windows if you don't mind; sometimes Charles drives my car and I don't like to trouble his sensibilities unnecessarily."
(Viv will also fill Jocasta in on all the developments she's aware of.)
(Including the fact that the Maoists Jo was eyeing back at Mansa were likely the core of the SLA.)
Leonard
Jocasta ties a scarf around her hair to keep it from flying out wildly even at the GT's low-gear speeds. "Look at you," she laughs. "The reserved, sensitive family therapist and respected novelist, turned into a regular Denise McCluggage."
She gives the j a deep whiff before tucking it into her purse. "I'll save this for when I have some of my increasingly rare free time," she says. "It's also fun to picture Charles driving this thing, so it would be unseemly to trouble his sensibilities. It is good to be back, though; L.A. is a whole different planet I'm having a good time exploring, but this will always be my home."
After hearing Viv's download, her eyes narrow a bit as she tries to process everything. "Standard procedure for URIEL," she sighs. "A dozen threads tugging at us from a dozen directions, none of which will end up leading where we think they will. I'm sure Marshall will have something he'll want to put me on, and I've got a few ideas myself; in fact, if you've got time to to stop at a liquor store and the regional FBI office before we drive out to the Mission, I can get started on one of them. But let me ask you this, Viv.
"I know your URIEL training was...rushed. There's a lot of tradecraft, a lot of the nuts and bolts of intelligence work, that they probably fast-tracked you past. And that's fine! Circumstances being what they are, you've been doing an excellent job. Those technical and procedural aspects, they all matter, but one thing I've found is that, in the end, I've come to rely on that same feeling I got when I was out on these streets back in my lost years. It's hard to explain; I don't want to gloss over it as just vibes or anything like that, but...in the end, when you're dealing with people doing crimes or engaging in any kind of secretive work, there are these details that stick out at you, for better or for worse. And if the details are wrong, then the whole thing is wrong. And a lot of what we do, a lot of getting past the surface, of not getting distracted by the noise of one mirror reflecting another, is to figure out how and why those details are wrong.
"So tell me this, Agent Bee: when you were at the Bohemian Club, did anything strike you as...wrong?"
[If we don't want to have Jo stop by the FBI office and bribe Padden and Hall with a good bottle of Scotch to see if they need any 'help' from her on the Hearst case — I recall that at least one of the SLA was an Army vet, though I don't know if this is widely known at the moment — then it's no problem, she can just call them from the Mission.]
Michael
"If we're going to the Federal Building to bring tidings to our friends at the Bureau, we should probably go to a store on the other side of the bridge," Viv says as she pulls out onto the onramp to the Bay Bridge. Jo remembers seeing the UFO/float-car hovering over the Oakland skyline from this same perspective last year, a vague acid-tinged flashback at the periphery of her memory and vision as Viv collects her thoughts to report in on the Bohemian Club situation.
"Yes, the Bohemian Club was weird," Genevieve says. "I mean, I'm no innocent, I know why the vibes of that place are so generally bad, given the type who generally besports themselves there." Viv turns onto the bridge. "The aftermath of the fire, though... wouldn't you think there'd be a huge police presence, especially after the SLA committed a robbery across town, considering how deep the Hearst family and other members of San Francisco's best and brightest are tied to the Club? Purely on a political level! You know, until they ruled out a bombing or the like. But... no cops. No feds, for sure. One fire engine. And if my, er, 'sight' is accurate, an engine and firehouse that's somehow... tied tightly to the Bohemian Club itself? Very strange." Viv leaves something unspoken in that final doubling of how "weird" and "strange" the scene was; Jo knows Viv well enough at this point to know Viv's thinking and processing the information she's gathered and doesn't want to engage in conjecture or some kind of broad theorizing. In that, her probity and thoughtfulness is definitely the opposite of her "twin" Andrew.
"Marshall's there now, I checked in with Merrick over at Kearney Street before I picked you up. I'm sure he's doing the... HUMINT gathering? That I didn't get to do. I didn't want to set foot in the place." An authentic shiver. "Not like I could have, being a woman and all." Viv puts on a voice and says the word "woman" the way, perhaps, a Bohemian Clubber prancing around at the Grove might, with an exaggerated sense of white male plutocratic disgust at the very concept of "woman."
Leonard
"Hmm, yeah, it's a real he-man girl haters club over there, I'm sure. Not that different from SANDMAN if I'm honest. Anyway, that's good surveillance! The lack of security and any kind of outside presence is exactly the kind of tell I'm talking about."
Jocasta's mind drifts a bit as they cross the Bay Bridge. She remembers her father, after he made some real money during the war, talking about how he wished he could get in with the Bohemian Grove crowd, and how they were such snobs to him, the son of immigrants, and the stink of his new money. Her mother despised them for their politics and their contempt, even though her family was exactly the sort who formed the background of the Grover membership. Not that the crowd he eventually fell in with was any better.
She's intrigued with the news that the SLA's membership includes some of the Third Worldist types they ran into at the Mansa show. Letting herself go into a mild meditative state, she tries to pull up their faces from her memory and embed them in the front of her mind in case any of them show up on the news, or elsewhere in the course of her research.
Dreamily, she asks Viv: "Did you know I once saw a flying saucer on this bridge? I chased it all the way to Oakland. It was the first UFO I ever saw, but it wasn't the last." She intones, in a stern voice: "Keep watching the skies." Then she lets out a cleansing laugh.
Michael
Viv smiles indulgently at Jo's UFO reference. "I never really got a sense of what exactly happened when you all were away in October, but I got a vague sense of what it was all about from Sophie and, well, what has been appearing in the 'weirdo' journals since then. The war in the Middle East broke out, and then all of a sudden people were seeing UFOs everywhere over the eastern US. Especially around Air Force bases. So I figured it all either a cover story to cover up for sneaky shipments to Israel, or there was actually something happening out there with respect to liminal spiritual experiences and, let's say, 'aerial entities.' And then of course you and Roger started working the American Indian Movement thing right afterward. So yeah, I've put some stuff together." Viv pauses. "They're real, huh?" Genevieve puts an index finger up into the sky and twirls it around. "Probably a bit simplistic for me to ask 'whose side are the saucers on?' but thankfully for us in this business there is at least one side that is truly the Other. But I get the feeling that the UFO thing isn't nearly that cut and dried."
(Jo can give me a Psychology-15 roll.)
Leonard
>> SUCCESS by 1
Michael
So there's one element of Viv's personality that has stayed solid and constant, from the early days of Jo's acquaintance with her at the St. Francis, to last summer's slow initiation into the URIEL History B archives, to her ego break under the influence of mushrooms at Terence's, through the time she was on tour and keeping her eyes open for Weirdness on the road, and to today's events: a marked sense of curiosity about the things lurking at the interstices of reality. It's evident here, as Viv gently prods Jo for information on the UFO flap in October, and Jo guesses it also has to do with today having been a day full of (so far) small-i irruptions into what we've all come to assume is Normality. Viv's xenophilia is, right now, well and truly activated, and it's looking for a safe venue for expression before Jo and Viv start talking about Patty Hearst, Jack London, or dead poets at the Bohemian Club in earnest. UFOs have nothing to do with the current case, but they do have to do with Viv's overall investigative and analytical "vibe."
Leonard
Jo will patiently spell out the details of the UFO takedown, with special emphasis on the merging of the multiple entities that she saw, and, given her psychological read, she'll focus on the alien-ness of it all, and how it strengthened her mystic connections and guided her towards developing her current approach of spiritual diversity. She'll also mention the Mormon angle, and how that seemed to have a personal hook for Archie. She's not trying to steer Viv in any particular direction, just whet her appetite and encourage her to think about anything she encountered recently, specifically at the Bohemian Club.
[I don't really have much else for this scene other than color -- obviously, if Viv wants to chat more I'm game, and Jo definitely wants to draw her out on anything specific she picked up in her scouting, but otherwise, I'm happy to move on to Padden & Hall, or if you want to take that as read, I can just chill until it's time to meet up with Marshall. Jo has some plans but they're contingent on whatever he thinks is a priority.]
Michael
Okay, I don't need to spell out everything Viv might have to say about Jo's experience near the end of Mission 8... we can leave it as a tantalizing thread to pick up conversationally, maybe a little later when the investigative trail for the current mission is not quite so hot. I guess for the purposes of game rules and such, we should roll to see if Padden and Hall are available: 9 or less to see if they're in their cubicles at the Federal Building on April 15. If not tonight, of course, you can try once a game day hereafter.
Leonard
>> FAILURE by 4
God do your jobs losers
Probably filing their taxes at the last minute
Michael
Well, I figured regardless of their actually being in the office (it's evident they're probably in the field canvassing, collecting evidence, supervising the door-to-door in Sunset, etc.) Jo could enter the FBI office, leave them the note (and the whiskey?), have a quick sniff around and then Jo and Viv could reconvene with Dave and Marshall either at the Bohemian Club or Kearny Street.
Leonard
Oh, for sure she'll drop off the bottle and a note, and she'll keep her Army ID out and her ears open for any chatter.
She's not gonna directly interrogate anyone — no need to draw attention — but she'll maybe chat up some of the staff casually and see if she can pick up on anything
Michael
Clear-cut roll of Observation-19 for Jo.
(Needless to say, Genevieve is waiting outside in the car.)
Brant
(She'll suffocate if you don't roll a window down, Jo!)
Leonard
>> SUCCESS by 5
Michael
The FBI floor of the Federal Building is pretty low-energy right now; actual Special Agents are thin on the ground while communications and administrative staff are plentiful, to help coordinate affairs on the ground. Jocasta manages to gather the fact that the door-to-door search has not gone well and has produced nothing in the way of leads; other agents are hitting Berkeley and Oakland chasing leads on leftist fellow travelers but no hideouts have been uncovered (and, more importantly, there haven't been any requests for court orders or warrants yet). Kook calls have certainly come into the Bureau; Jo can see the office's "nut file" full of Telexes of eyewitnesses seeing "Tania" this afternoon as far afield as Maine and Michigan, and other folks who think the newly-dubbed killer Miss Hearst is an imposter or a robot or what have you.
The pressure from Washington, Director Kelley and President Nixon, is apparent among the rank and file agents and personnel here. The fact that one of San Francisco's most prominent ruling class families now has a leftist domestic terrorist and murderer among their number is not only bad press for the ostensibly "law and order" Nixon but also for the ongoing shadow war still happening between federal law enforcement and the leftist underground, thought moribund for the past year or two. This is an electrifying event, and one the administration is committed to correcting at all costs. Jo can see from the motor pool assignments that there are going to be Special Agents from DC and elsewhere coming in on red-eyes tonight to SFO, and that the federal manpower in San Francisco is going to be substantially boosted, which is good because it offers Jo (and Dave, and others) more cover for their own activities under federal LE/intel cover identities.
Leonard
Jocasta will drop a bottle of Haig's Gold Label in Padden & Hall's office with a note.
Gents -- Hairy situation w/r/t our beloved Tania. Pursuing SLA tendrils in Army jurisdiction -- let me know if I can be of assistance. Good hunting.
She'll leave her regular dummy number as well as that of a similar number at URIEL North and head out. Once she gets to 1 Kearney, she'll wait for Marshall and Dave to get back and meditate further, trying to pull the images of the Mansa Maoists out of the dregs of her memory; if she has any success, she'll make a quick police-artist-style sketch.
Michael
Very cool. Give me a pair of rolls—Meditation-18 and Artist (Drawing)-17—and we'll have Jo, Viv, Dave, and Marshall meet back at URIEL HQ at around 7 pm.
Leonard
Meditation.
>> SUCCESS by 11
Drawing.
>> SUCCESS by 3