Jocasta Meets Colston Westbrook
(Some quick points of clarification and context for Jo/Leonard here before the scene gets underway: Westbrook himself is technically still a student at Berkeley, despite all his involvements in prison programs and the Afro-American Studies and Linguistics departments. An old student (he's three years older than Jo), working towards his PhD (he just received his Master's in June: "The Dual Linguistic Heritage of Afro-Americans.” But he's also an influential TA in both these departments, and as Jo makes her way to the Afro-American Studies department at the Ethnic Studies building at Berkeley, she is made aware very quickly from pamphleting and postering that Afro-American Studies are, as of next month, being absorbed as a department-level program into Letters & Science, Berkeley's big undergraduate college. Most of the students in A-A are pretty upset about having to leave behind the other Ethnic Studies departments—Asian Studies, Chicano Studies, and Native Studies and possibly abandon them budget- and clout-wise.) Anyway, Westbrook's little office in A-A Studies is being packed up and ready to move to bigger and better things as Jocasta arrives early to "interview" the man currently pioneering academic study into Afro-American linguistic "code switching." As Westbrook comes back to his office after a morning in the libraries, he sees Jo waiting for him. "And how can I help you, miss?" (edited)
MutantsMichael — 9/23/24, 1:10 PM
(A little reminder of what Marshall and Sophie got out of Colston back in April: https://www.san-narciso.com/scenes/flyin-east-man )
Operation URIEL
Flyin’ East, Man? — Operation URIEL
Marshall and Sophie pay a visit to a certain Colston Westbrook and learn more about the CWG’s various pet projects.
@MutantsMichael
(Some quick points of clarification and context for Jo/Leonard here before the scene gets underway: Westbrook himself is technically still a student at Berkeley, despite all his involvements in prison programs and the Afro-American Studies and Linguistics departments. An old student (he's three years older than Jo), working towards his PhD (he just received his Master's in June: "The Dual Linguistic Heritage of Afro-Americans.” But he's also an influential TA in both these departments, and as Jo makes her way to the Afro-American Studies department at the Ethnic Studies building at Berkeley, she is made aware very quickly from pamphleting and postering that Afro-American Studies are, as of next month, being absorbed as a department-level program into Letters & Science, Berkeley's big undergraduate college. Most of the students in A-A are pretty upset about having to leave behind the other Ethnic Studies departments—Asian Studies, Chicano Studies, and Native Studies and possibly abandon them budget- and clout-wise.) Anyway, Westbrook's little office in A-A Studies is being packed up and ready to move to bigger and better things as Jocasta arrives early to "interview" the man currently pioneering academic study into Afro-American linguistic "code switching." As Westbrook comes back to his office after a morning in the libraries, he sees Jo waiting for him. "And how can I help you, miss?" (edited)
Leonard — 9/23/24, 9:45 PM
"Reinertson. Mizz," Jocasta replies, affecting a short, professional tone. "Close the door, if you don't mind, Mr. Westbrook. This is a business visit from Washington."
September 24, 2024
MutantsMichael — 9/24/24, 7:10 AM
"Shit," Colston mutters under his breath, looking both ways down the hallway, then ushering Jo into the tiny grad student cubbyhole he has cadged out of the A-A Studies faculty and shutting the door behind him. Colston's office is small, and the walls are packed with photos of African art, a couple of African sculptural pieces that look to Jo's untrained eye like Stateside knockoffs, and flyer after flyer for protests, most of which seem to revolve around the continued survival of the Afro-American Studies department; very little when it comes to actual Bay Area activism. There are, unbelievably, still even a couple of flyers up for the Black Cultural Association and its prison visitation program. "Been waiting for the other shoe to drop," Colston says, his body language betraying a deep nervousness. "Should've figured they'd send a wh... a woman after how the other one spooked me," he says, referring to Sophie playing bad cop to Marshall's good back in April. "What's the buzz, then? What do you need from me?"
Leonard — 9/24/24, 9:11 AM
Jocasta sits stiffly in the beat-up chair that occupies a corner of the tiny office. She unbuttons her jacket and lets it fall just open enough that Westbrook can see that she's armed -- not a threat, just an indication that this is a serious visit. "I won't waste your time, Mr. Westbrook. We do not have much left. I will assume that you are paying close attention to the work of the so-called Church Committee. If you have not, all you need to know is that a number of our community's activities are going to be exposed. It is our highest prority at the Agency," and here she will open her jacket a bit further, showing her NSA identification, "that this exposure be as limited as possible." She watches him closely, preparing a deep empathic read as she continues. "Given the...situation with former President Nixon, we are rolling up a number of the community's most controversial programs, and cutting any loose ends that might compromise further work in those areas. I will be frank, Mr. Westbrook: You are one of those loose ends. And," she adds, indicating the odd flyer or pamphlet from the prison visitation program, "you have not been careful about making sure nothing leads back to you. It would be very easy to feed you to Church and his cronies, and given the newfound seriousness of their investigation, an end to your academic career would be only the beginning of the consequences for you. Prison time would be the likely end, and we might not be able to arrange that you serve it in a facility free of your...former subjects." Jocasta lets that sink in for just a moment, then concludes. "Of course, we would prefer to give them someone who is both more important -- and thus a better pelt for them to mount -- and less likely to cooperate, as he has gone rogue and is now outside both our reach and our control. With him back in the fold of the community, we would be more able to offer you protection and insulation from blowback. So your help would be immediately rewarded." She looks him dead in the eye. "Mr. Westbrook, where is Jolly West?"
MutantsMichael — 9/24/24, 9:15 AM
Intimidation-18 (that's your Default of Will minus 5 plus 4 for that RP, the props, plus the general societal situational bonuses Jo cited in her little monologue)
Leonard used
roll
Dice GolemAPP — 9/24/24, 9:15 AM
@Leonard rolled
3d6#intimidation:(5+6+6)= 17Leonard — 9/24/24, 9:15 AM
MutantsMichael — 9/24/24, 9:16 AM
Ugh. Okay, well... it's just a plain failure, not a critical one, so it seems like Colston is gonna try to play this tough.
Leonard — 9/24/24, 9:18 AM
Whatever his response, she's still going to try an Empathic read. If he's gonna get tough, well, we'll have to get tough.
1
MutantsMichael — 9/24/24, 9:20 AM
You can go ahead and give me the Empathy-16 roll now, that should make this failure a bit more interesting/deeper than simple opposition.
Leonard used
roll
Dice GolemAPP — 9/24/24, 9:24 AM
@Leonard rolled
3d6#empathy:(2+5+3)= 10MutantsMichael — 9/24/24, 9:33 AM
Jo immediately reads Colston's oppositional posture in his body language and his manner. He's scared, yes, but he's also confident that he's made it through the worst of this set of exposures. He's no longer that Phoenix Program linguist working in 'Nam, no longer the agent provocateur trying to entrap wannabe revolutionaries. He's an academic, about to ascend to the main bough of Berkeley's institutional power, and he has the confidence that comes with feeling like his former life as an intelligence agent is just that: all in the past. But substantively, he does have to deal with what Ms. Reinertson is asking about. "If you're NSA, you're here because you have some kind of SIGINT that implicates me," Westbrook says in a snotty, haughty fashion. "Probably means Redgrave or that woman were wearing a wire back in April," he says. "Simple entrapment," he says with a slight quaver of fear in his voice. "It's probably how you got the information that I know something about Jolly. You have to understand, Ms. Reinertson, that Jolly was working at several levels higher than I ever was able to achieve in the Agency. This is... we're talking super-Agency placement. People doing things with weird technology, brain surgery... Jolly had friends with real power, friends whose reach I can't begin to calculate or estimate. And I'm not talking Governor Reagan, either. I'm talking about the men behind Reagan." Whether Westbrook has glimpsed either SANDMAN or the Owls is uncertain, but he definitely knows something he's not letting on with. "Quite simply, ma'am... I'm more scared of them than I am of you." For him to say that about the NSA, whose black budget is not even known yet to people outside the Cathedral, whose operations are therefore covered by absolutely deniability, is something else.
Leonard — 9/24/24, 10:28 AM
Jocasta offers a forced smile and nods. "I understand, Mr. Westbrook. I hoped this talk would go differently, but if this is the way you've chosen to proceed, then I wish you the best of luck." She produces a card with Sonia Rienertson's 'information' on it, and places it delicately at the corner of Westbrook's desk. "In case you change your mind, we'd still appreciate any lead you have on Dr. West. Best of luck to you." She stands, buttons her jacket, and extends a (gloved) hand for him to shake. (edited)
[10:29 AM]
If he shakes, or if he doesn't, she is going to blast him full-on with a karate Power Blow.
MutantsMichael — 9/24/24, 6:24 PM
All right. Taking him by surprise like this—he's no physical paragon, Mr. Colston Whitehead—will require a couple of rolls. First Jo will need to activate her Power Blow-17. That will also cost 1 FP. And then she'll need to strike Colston with a Karate-14 roll.
[6:28 PM]
(And yes, Colston is surprised which means he must Do Nothing this round so if Jo wants to use an All-Out Attack maneuver here: she could do a Determined attack at +4, a double attack at 0/-4, or Strong Attack which will add 2 to your damage if you hit.)
Leonard used
roll
Dice GolemAPP — 9/24/24, 7:14 PM
@Leonard rolled
3d6#powerblow:(2+1+2)= 5Leonard used
roll
Dice GolemAPP — 9/24/24, 7:15 PM
@Leonard rolled
3d6:(3+5+6)= 14Leonard — 9/24/24, 7:17 PM
[She won't do an all-out or anything, this is a shock manuever, not an outright attempt to kill him or anything.]
MutantsMichael — 9/24/24, 7:19 PM
Gotcha. I will give you a bonus for the crit on the activation roll. Let's see how much damage you do and we can determine a crit-worthy narrative bonus from it. So that's double your normal punch damage, or 2d6 crushing. (edited)
Leonard used
roll
Dice GolemAPP — 9/24/24, 7:19 PM
@Leonard rolled
2d6#damage:(4+6)= 10MutantsMichael — 9/24/24, 7:24 PM
Okay so that's enough to bring him to 0 HP.
[7:29 PM]
Two HT rolls for Colston, one vs. knockdown/stun and one vs. falling unconscious, but like I said, with that crit on the Power Blow activation roll, you'll be granted a degree of finesse over this.
MutantsMichael used
roll
Dice GolemAPP — 9/24/24, 7:29 PM
@MutantsMichael rolled
3d6HT-10 Knockdown/stun:(4+3+5)= 12MutantsMichael — 9/24/24, 7:30 PM
Well he's definitely stunned.
Leonard — 9/24/24, 7:30 PM
LOL shit I didn't want to knock him out or kill him, I just wanted to fuck him up. If he's just stunned, as opposed to, like, unconscious for hours, that's okay, though.
MutantsMichael used
roll
Dice GolemAPP — 9/24/24, 7:30 PM
@MutantsMichael rolled
3d6HT-10 unconsciousness:(5+2+6)= 13MutantsMichael — 9/24/24, 7:31 PM
Yeah, you can precisely aim the Power Blow such that you stun him only with that crit on the activation roll.
Leonard — 9/24/24, 7:33 PM
Okay. If he's just slumped on the floor dazed for a minute, that's good. Jocasta will cuff him to the desk, lock the door from the inside, draw out her pistol and lock the suppressor, and stand right over him so that she's the first thing he sees when he comes around. She's not even going to search the office or anything (though she'll check to see if he's armed and take any weapon he has), she's just going to wait.
[7:34 PM]
Leonard — 9/24/24, 7:40 PM
Oh, actually she'll do a quick cursory search to see if the office is bugged. (edited)
[7:41 PM]
She doesn't want anyone listening in on what's about to go down.
MutantsMichael — 9/24/24, 8:29 PM
(Secret Search rolls made.) Jocasta does a quick toss of the office while Colston is out and finds no contraband in his desk, no evident bugs, no weapons. She does find a pocket address book/calendar in his desk with some recent appointments marked... nothing too incriminating by the looks of it, a lot of faculty meetings during the summer and classes back during the school year, another trip out to Pennsylvania to see family around Memorial Day. Jolly West does not feature anywhere in the address book but Randy Hearst is in there, what looks like a private number. There are a few DC-area phone numbers in there, and Jo jots those down quickly; only first names, likely CIA contacts. For those most part, though, it appears Colston keeps his intelligence life (or afterlife) out of his academic sphere. Which means if he's got anything valuable intel-wise, it's likely at his apartment back in Albany or a third location. Jo bets he has at least one pied-à-terre from back in his Black Cultural Association days, probably closer to the kids on the street in Berkeley or Oakland. The keys in his pocket definitely look like more than just one set of house keys, work keys, and car keys. Colston rouses from his unconsciousness in a little under 10 minutes. Jo's opinion using First Aid is that he's mildly concussed. He seems physically weak and confused when he wakes from being knocked out. He doesn't struggle against the cuffs, he stares down the barrel of the silencer with a weak, loopy gaze. "I haven't... talked to Louis in months. We weren't, like, close." Blood drips onto his shirtfront from the karate chop to the face he received.
Leonard — 9/24/24, 8:59 PM
Jocasta looks at his milky eyes without a lot of confidence. Shit, she thinks, I might have done the job too well this time. You're getting reckless, Joey. She talks to him quietly and directly, abandoning any further plans to bristle up on him. "Listen good, Westbrook. I tried to play nice with you. I could have handed you to those Beltway vultures without a second thought but I thought you were smart enough to play ball. Looks like I was wrong." She puts the keys on the desk. "You better get your head on straight, soldier. Tell me what these match up to and I'll get a medical team here to get you patched up, otherwise I'm more than happy to let you bleed out on the floor. Let Church and his goons solve the mystery of the dead grad student. And if you pick up even a whisper of Jolly West, I better hear about it five seconds after you do. You hear me?" [If he's too rattled to give Jo any information, she'll just cram anything interesting in her bag, take his keys and wallet and address book, and leave him cuffed to the chair like it was a robbery gone bad.]
MutantsMichael — 9/24/24, 9:10 PM
[It's not like there's any lack of people who'd want to beat his ass senseless in the Bay Area right now, lol. And who's he gonna go to at this point?] "I got a... I got a pad in Oaktown. It's a safehouse, it's bugged. I lent it to the Peking House crew last year when they were waiting for Cinque to get sprung. I've let the kids use it for organizing the past three years... get them on tape. All the sound recordings are there in the hall closet, behind a panel on the back wall. The SLA never stayed there, it was too hot then." "And if you want my opinion..." he spits a wad of tissue and blood and a tooth out of his mouth, "Jolly is being protected from on high right now by the holiest of holies. I know he had some baaaad connections in Texas and Oklahoma. Back when he was shooting up elephants with LSD... and treating Jack Ruby." Jo remembers the "ghost" of Tony Reinhardt and his running commentary when Jo was driving through Dealey Plaza on the way to New Mexico last October. Combined with the violence, the reference to Jack Ruby has her a little paranoid. Fright Check, Rule of 14.
Leonard used
roll
Dice GolemAPP — 9/24/24, 9:34 PM
@Leonard rolled
3d6#frightcheck:(5+1+3)= 91
Leonard — 9/24/24, 9:52 PM
"Remember this if you remember nothing else: even a whiff of West, you call me like your life depends on it. It does," Jo hisses. "Meanwhile, you can take down your fucking shingle, because you are out of the spook business. No more guests from the Company. You're in silent running, pal." She puts a little edge in her voice, not hard to do given the combinations and possibilities running through her mind. "You're afraid of the real power? You think your friends and your hedge-lawyering and your goddamn academic review board are going to protect you from the consequences? I am the real power, motherfucker. I am the consequences. If you're not scared you better get scared and quick. The next time I put my hand to you you won't wake up." Jocasta strolls purposefully out the door, across the quad near the Ethnic Studies building, and past Faculty Glade towards where she parked near Moses Hall. All the old haunts, she thinks, as a few other ghosts swirl around in her head. Tossing Westbrook's stuff in the trunk, she heads back to Livermore to do some research -- and to ask Marshall if he's talked to Melvin Belli lately.
1
[9:59 PM]
[We can close this if you want, but Jo is going to check in with Marshall, and then probably get a case of Tab and stake out the Oakland safehouse.]
MutantsMichael — 9/24/24, 9:59 PM
Yeah, I think comparing notes with Marshall would be a really good idea.
[10:00 PM]
In James Ellroy books, there are always these characters whose destiny is to get knocked around by the protagonists and man is Colston Westbrook one of those guys
Leonard — 9/24/24, 10:02 PM
Ha ha, man, I honestly didn't mean to have Jo clobber the guy that bad, but if it puts a big enough scare into him, it'll serve her purpose in visiting him just as well...
MutantsMichael — 9/24/24, 10:03 PM
The Intimidation failure ended up being way more interesting than the success would've been in my humble opinion
1
September 25, 2024
MutantsMichael — 9/25/24, 6:33 AM
Not sure if Marshall on this random day in August is at the Mission or Kearny Street, but wherever he is, Jo can go call on him.
Inverarity — 9/25/24, 8:45 AM
“Redgrave here.”
Leonard — 9/25/24, 11:13 AM
"Marshall, it's Jocasta. I just paid a visit to Colston Westbrook's office trying to run down some leads on West, and he's got a safehouse in Oakland that might be of interest -- he's been taping some of the program kids. I'll probably head there next. I had to get a little rough with him," she says, her voice not quite covering the understatement, "But he's spooked. I don't know if he's got full exposure on us but he seems to think West's out of reach; under the protection of the men behind Reagan, is how he put it. Anything else you want me to take care of before I head south?"
Inverarity — 9/25/24, 11:28 AM
"Program kids, meaning INDIGOs? Or participants in his, uh, whatever it was -- experimental audition for the Owls? If the former, we will want them for ourselves. Alive, naturally." (edited)
Leonard — 9/25/24, 11:42 AM
"Yeah, in his little test program. Vacaville transfers, Black Cultural Association types, Maoist kids. I'll see who's out there now -- I'll turn the place, bring a few in if they seem like they know anything. The tapes ought to be interesting, at any rate." She hesitates for a moment, then presses forward, all business. "Hey, do you still have Melvin Belli on retainer? I ask because Westbrook mentioned Jack Ruby. I know, I know this is probably just me being paranoid, but when I was, uh, off campus last year, I drove through the Plaza in Dallas and got some...well, I started thinking of Ruby myself, and Belli was his lawyer too, right? He brought Jolly in to do his T25. Maybe I'm crazy -- no maybe, eh Doc? -- but Belli seems like a through-line. Might want to get your money's worth and see if he's still got a line on Jolly. Hell, he might be a Bohemian for all we know, right?" (edited)
Inverarity — 9/25/24, 12:04 PM
This idea sends a chill down Marshall's spine. It hadn't occurred to him. Bafflingly, it hadn't occurred to him. Well, not bafflingly – ignorance borne of a shared purpose, back when Marshall shared a purpose with the Owls, was as much their tool as, presumably, men like Belli. Belli himself, perhaps. He rubs the back of his neck and says, simply: "I hadn't thought of that. Shit."
Leonard — 9/25/24, 12:28 PM
"Yeah. Maybe it's bullshit, but probably worth pulling his coat about, yeah?" She wonders, not for the first time, how many vipers really are in the nest by now. "Regardless, I wouldn't worry too much about missing it - so many strands in this spider web, you can't count every one. I'm gonna head down to Oakland, but when I come back, let's meet face-to-face at Livermore when you have time. I have Westbrook's little black book, and I doubt there's any really high-value stuff in it, but there's a few names that I think are his contacts at the Company. I don't recognize them, but you might, and there might be some leads worth following. I also wanted to talk over a few things I'd rather not say even on the secure lines." (edited)
Inverarity — 9/25/24, 2:27 PM
There's a pause as Marshall puzzles over this information. "OK. Authorization granted. Call me when you're back in the Bay Area, we'll coordinate a time to meet at Livermore. Good work, Menos." He hangs up.
MutantsMichael — 9/25/24, 3:01 PM
I know there's a lot going on and I don't want Jo scenes eating up everybody's time, but her plan next is to surveil Westbrook's Oakland squat for a few days, get a sense of who (if anyone) is there and what their comings and goings are, then figure out a way to roll them up, get inside for a search and grab his monitoring equipment and tapes, and then, assuming nothing goes sideways, do some downtime stuff until she can meet with Marshall. ASYNCHRONOUS so take your sweet time.
Just putting this here for follow-up tonight/tomorrow
September 26, 2024
MutantsMichael — 9/26/24, 7:21 AM
So the stakeout of Colston's rental apartment in North Oakland is honestly very boring and uneventful; no one seems to be coming or going from it in the three days Jo spends surveilling. It's a detached bungalow a few blocks from the infamous "Peking House" where the SLA gathered after Cinque's release. When Jo eventually does B&E the joint, she finds the tape rig in the living room and the tapes where Colston said they'd be in the secret panel in the closet. The twelve tapes date from April to November 1973; if Jo remembers her SLA timeline correctly, November was the month the SLA shot Marcus Foster and really put their name out there as radicals not to be messed with. By looking at the place during her entry, Jo assumes that the apartment hasn't gotten much active use since late last year, and that Colston probably only comes here to keep it tidy and ready for any eventual use. The tapes, though... when Jo plays a little snippet of a few of them, it's clearly Cinque and company on the tapes in 1973; Cinque spends a lot of the time fulminating at the embryonic SLA about prison, about capitalism, about race in America, the white kids hanging on his every word. There are definitely points in the recording where Jo feels that familiar tug of memetics trying to get its hooks into her; she manages to make a Will roll and shut it off before it can get fully into her system. During his speeches Cinque's voice definitely changes cadence, and there's a weird wobble on the tape; a sign, perhaps, of him receiving active Transmissions. Jo wonders if at one point, one of those broadcast gadgets was actually just installed here in the house to pump Cinque full of revolutionary memetics.
Leonard — 9/26/24, 12:32 PM
Hmmm. If the place is dead, there's not a lot of reason to try and roll anyone up. Here's what she's gonna do, more or less in sequence:
Grab all the tapes, secure them, and toss the joint just in case there's anything of interest.
After review, see if she can find any references to specific individuals -- from the Peking House, from the Vacaville program, from anyone who passed through here -- and give them to Sophie to pass on to Roger, since he's much more on the forefront of dealing with them.
Just in case he's checking in on the place, grab some spray paint and crudely write on one of the interior walls: "WESTBROOK HAS SOLD YOU OUT! HE'S ON THE PAYROLL OF THE MAN AND WILL SEE YOU IN JAIL OR DEAD!!!"
Throw together a little flyer with a number (forwarded, as usual, to the hardworking Sophie, who by now must have a whole book detailing Jocasta's dummy lines) for a 'support group' for anyone involved in what they believe were government experiments similar to -- but vague enough for plausible deniability -- what West and Westbrook have been up to. She'll mail this to the Light of the Lodge and have the manager put it up on the community board and put the contact info for anyone who asks in a lockbox.
Call Marshall for a meet.
1
September 27, 2024
@Leonard
Hmmm. If the place is dead, there's not a lot of reason to try and roll anyone up. Here's what she's gonna do, more or less in sequence:
Grab all the tapes, secure them, and toss the joint just in case there's anything of interest.
After review, see if she can find any references to specific individuals -- from the Peking House, from the Vacaville program, from anyone who passed through here -- and give them to Sophie to pass on to Roger, since he's much more on the forefront of dealing with them.
Just in case he's checking in on the place, grab some spray paint and crudely write on one of the interior walls: "WESTBROOK HAS SOLD YOU OUT! HE'S ON THE PAYROLL OF THE MAN AND WILL SEE YOU IN JAIL OR DEAD!!!"
Throw together a little flyer with a number (forwarded, as usual, to the hardworking Sophie, who by now must have a whole book detailing Jocasta's dummy lines) for a 'support group' for anyone involved in what they believe were government experiments similar to -- but vague enough for plausible deniability -- what West and Westbrook have been up to. She'll mail this to the Light of the Lodge and have the manager put it up on the community board and put the contact info for anyone who asks in a lockbox.
Call Marshall for a meet.
MutantsMichael — 9/27/24, 6:44 AM
Right on. I can have Sophie give a report of what's on the tapes—they'll definitely need to be handled with care due to the memetic content—and have that ready for you when Marshall, Jo, and Roger meet (see [M10I3] Roger and the Victims o… ) So I think I'll set up a three-hander in Roger's channel for you, Bill, and Brant now.