4. Elsa / The Boys in Blue

THOUGH HER DECISION to quit had not been so difficult, once circumstances prompted her to make it, she was nervous about telling Kris. All the next day she kept putting it off. Why was it so hard to go up to the boss and say “I quit”? Why did she feel almost guilty? Finally, near the end of the day, she realized it only made things worse to put the news off any longer, and she walked up to Kris and said: “I’m not going to be able to work here anymore, Kris.”

He was caught off guard, and stared at her. “What??”

“I said I–“

“You’re quitting? But Elsa, why? You’ve always been one of the best people here. Everyone likes you and you do real good work. Don’t you like it here? Has something happened?”

“It isn’t that. I have other work to do.”

“You’ve found another job? Look, I know we don’t pay so well here, it’s still a small business. But if you’re having a hard time I think we could manage another 25 cents an hour.”

She smiled at the irony. Six months ago he’d claimed he couldn’t afford to give her a raise. “Kris, it isn’t the money and it isn’t that there’s something wrong. I just don’t want to work here anymore. I’m going to work on our rent strike full time. The job’s been cutting into it too much. And it’s more important to me than working here is. It’s important to a lot of other people, too.”

“Yeah, I’d forgotten you were into that trip,” he said. “But how are you going to make it without a job?”

“I’ll manage,” Elsa replied, amused by his paternal tone.

“When did you plan on leaving?”

“I figured today is my last day.”

“Today! But what am I – what are we going to do until we get someone to replace you? Don’t you think it’s a little unfair to the other people working here to do that?”

“My mind’s made up,” Elsa said firmly. “I don’t see what fairness has to do with it. Everyone’s been telling you for months we should have more people working here. Besides, that guy Crow wants a job, why don’t you hire him?”

“I’d rather have another girl,” Kris said.

“Well, then, I guess you’ll have to cover my shifts yourself for awhile.”

She ran home with her final pay in her pocket, filled with elation, feeling light and free. It was a feeling she invariably got whenever she lost a job, whether through her own desire or the boss’s axe. Now she was also happy because now her life would make sense all the way around.

Jimmy was pleased too, and told her and Michelle to go out and celebrate, and he’d take care of Juliet.

It was a fine night, warm, clear, stars glittering. They had dinner at the Russian Bakery, their favorite neighborhood restaurant, then took the streetcar to the beach and walked, smoking a couple of joints. They talked about the rent strike and the other people in the building; about each other, reminiscing over their early days together and good times since; and about Juliet, things she’d done recently, whether to enroll her in a day care center so she could be with other children more often. Taking off their shoes, they ran along the edge of the icy cold surf and got their pants wet. Michelle suggested they go to the women’s bar in the Haight and shoot pool, and they got on the streetcar. The driver was young and friendly and asked them had they been to the beach, and did they want to go to the Cliff House when he got off work in two hours? They declined the invitation, but since the streetcar was empty other than the three of them, Michelle offered to share a joint with him. He was happy to partake, and headed the car slowly up Judah Street, passing by several waiting passengers. 

The bar, on upper Cole Street, was not very crowded tonight. They took a small table in the rear and sipped Olympias, waiting about twenty minutes before Elsa’s turn came up on the pool table. She beat her opponent, giving Michelle and herself the table.

“Have you been practicing?” Elsa asked suspiciously as Michelle sank two in a row. Michelle flashed a mysterious smile.

Suddenly the conversations stopped in the front of the bar. The blaring jukebox had an artificial tinny loudness against the sudden halt of voices and laughter and tinkling ice. Elsa looked toward the door. There were two cops, scanning the counter. She drew her breath in sharply.

“Do you know them?” murmured Michelle. “Are they the ones who stopped you that time?”

“Yes,” she replied. At that moment one of them looked at her. His eyes widened, and he tapped his partner, directing his attention to Elsa and Michelle. Then they sauntered to the pool table, both with their thumbs hooked in their belts, macho-style, their guns swaying with their hips.  Michelle moved instinctively closer to Elsa. The smaller, dark-haired copy was as usual giving her the kind of look no man (but particularly a police officer) had a right to give a woman. He said “Let’s see your ID, girls.” 

Every eye in the place was on the two cops. They were the only men in the bar.

Michelle, eyes narrowed, handed him her state ID card. She was well aware of the way he was looking at Elsa. Both men studied the card for a few moments.

“This your current address?” asked the blonde one.

Michelle hadn’t bothered to change it from her old Waller Street address. She knew what they were getting at. “No.”

Blondie said, “Write your correct address in here and notify the state it’s changed.”

“I don’t have a pen,” Michelle drawled.

“Use this one,” Blondie replied, taking a pen from his pocket. Michelle wrote the Grove Street address on the card. He glanced at it. “Same address as her, huh?” he commented.

The dark-haired one had kept his eyes on Elsa the whole time. “Never thought I’d see you in a place like this,” he said softly.

Elsa’s stomach knotted. Michelle retorted, “Leave her alone, cop!” Michelle and her quick, fiery temper!

“Easy, honey,” he cautioned. “No one’s laid a finger on your girlfriend.” 

Elsa felt Michelle’s nerves jumping and her body leaning forward. She hated cops on principle, but when they messed with one of her people she became livid. Elsa met her eyes and flashed a warning. 

Although these two patrolmen had seen her ID not more than a few weeks ago, she wordlessly handed over her driver’s license. They didn’t even bother looking at it. “Where were you born, Elsa?” the blonde one asked.

“I don’t have to tell you that,” she said, irritated by his use of her first name.

He grinned, though not with humor. The dark-haired one continued to stare at her, his expression growing more intent, and he said, “You think you’re pretty smart, don’t you. You think you know all your rights.”

“That’s right, she does, little man,” Michelle said, her voice sedate, but Elsa knew she meant to insult him. She’d pegged him as overly sensitive about being small. Fury crossed his face fleetingly, and for a moment Elsa was afraid he would leap at Michelle. But he regained his composure and handed Elsa her driver’s license. His partner recommended: “You ought to watch your mouth.” 

Elsa’s rage was rising, too, but she swallowed the retorts. No point in angering them, getting thrown in jail and beaten, just to let off steam. Her voice was carefully calm. “Is that all? If not, tell us what we’re charged with.”

Blondie shook his head. “I tell you, Tim, this neighborhood’s sinking lower and lower.”

But they began walking away. “Tim” looked back, looked at Elsa, slowly dragged his eyes up and down her body. “See you later,” he vowed softly, making it sound obscene, somehow injecting a leer into his voice. 

Michelle opened her mouth, probably to tell him to go fuck himself, but Elsa touched her hand. “Forget them,” she murmured when they were out of earshot. They were cruising the rest of the bar, but not carding anyone else. “They just want an excuse to take us to the station. Don’t let them see how mad they make you.”

Michelle, nodding, lit a cigarette, but her eyes had narrowed into slits and didn’t leave the two cops. She blew out long jets of smoke. 

Elsa bent over the table to take her shot. Her hands trembled and she forced herself to concentrate. Line it up. Measure the angle. Change the grip on the cue stick. Practice the stroke once, twice, three times. Now shoot, gently, carefully. The 13-ball rolled slowly toward and into the pocket. She looked up.

The cops were gone. Conversations began again.

Michelle moved to her side. “That short one really has it in for you. He can’t stand seeing a real woman. He thinks you should act like a Barbie doll because you’re beautiful.”

“You know that’s how cops are,” Elsa pointed out.

“I’m not surprised, I’m just pissed off!”

Elsa shot the 11 and it stopped just shy of the corner pocket. “Your shot.”

“They can’t stand seeing a woman being anything but a stupid little robot.” Michelle bounced the 5 off the wall and it smacked around the table before coming to a stop in the middle of the green. “Sick sexist pigs with their prissy suburban wives, little slaves to cook and clean and have kids and fuck whenever big daddy wants. They probably have to smack their wives around to get it up. Seeing us together was too much for them.”

“But it’s not just because of that,” Elsa said, slowly as the understanding dawned on her. “They hate men who fight the system but I think they hate it even worse when a woman does. They’re more brutal and more outraged. They saw me at the building and ever since then, they’ve been pissed off. Seeing us together adds to it.”

Michelle abruptly pulled her close, both arms tight around her waist. “Let’s go home. I don’t want to stay here any longer. I love you. If he ever gets near you again–”

ELSA MULLED OVER the incident the next morning in the shower, and thought about cops in general. Who deserved respect less? she wondered. Most of them came from the working class, but they were so dumb they not only sold their labor to the man, but put their lives on the line for money and glory. No cop existed who was so naïve he thought he worked as much for the folks in Hunter’s Point as the ones in Pacific Heights. They knew their job, all right, and willingly contracted to do whatever necessary to protect the rich man’s property. And it wasn’t just for the salary or even payoffs. They were sick, perverted rejects of their own class who were so eager for the privilege of entering the rich man’s back door that they agreed to be his mercenaries. How low could you sink? Traitors – for a few dollars and a pat on the head from their masters.

Of course, once a man became a cop his motivations and interests intertwined with those of the rich. Maybe it was the guns they got to wear and use almost indiscriminately. Power. They could do almost whatever they wanted to the poor – beat them, steal their money and drugs and property, subject them to all kinds of irritation, abuse and harassment, even rape and kill them – and they’d be covered and backed by the wealthy. They were given incredible slack, and so long as they continued using it in the approved of ways, their power would only grow stronger. They’d get better guns, more intensive training, and more freedom to use both. Pretty good fringe benefits, for a certain type of mind. Perhaps they felt that the dangers they faced were the price for the power, and for the crass, earthly pleasures of its use that their bosses could not enjoy.

For despite their adulation for the wealthy, it was clear that a lot of cops held a curious contempt for them. Partly it was simply the working class scorn for the snobbishness and lack of sensuality among the upper classes. Beyond that, they realized that the rich were unable (and unwilling) to protect their own interests and had to hire mercenaries to do it for them; and knowing that, ultimately, the ones with the guns were the ones with the real power.

Elsa had been raised not so much to fear police as to disrespect them. Her father often derided cops as the men who did the dirty work of the men in suits you never saw; they were chumps, but at the same time, the most treacherous of traitors to the people they had come from. Her father had told her that cops never hassled or arrested rich people. Never respect them as equals, he told her. Flash a twenty dollar bill and the speeding ticket they’d been about to write would disappear. Get in trouble if your father was a doctor or lawyer or someone big in town, and everything got “straightened out” at the station. If your father was just a logger, though, you were in trouble for good.

Besides that, all the cops he personally knew were the guys who hadn’t been able to get any other decent job, and they had social problems stemming back to their youth. Most of them drank too much. They were supposed to be brave and bold, but a cop would rather arrest teenagers for being out after curfew or drinking beer than stop a knife fight in a bar or a burglary in progress. Never was she to trust a policeman, or consider him equal to her or her family. “The only guys who become cops are little men who want to be big. They spend their whole lives trying to prove to themselves and everyone else they are men.”

That was the situation in Susanville, anyway. And her life experiences had proven her father correct about city cops, too. She’d been arrested before and harassed many times by them, and these incidents only deepened her scorn for police officers. 

But never had a cop acted the way this one was. He and his partner were dangerous to her in a deep and chilling way. But how far would they push things? She sensed something else behind that one cop’s lust. It was almost that he feared her. Maybe because he had to wear a gun and a badge and a uniform to get respect – from himself, and from others. But she, a mere woman, a lesbian, an unemployed waitress, she respected herself. She had true self-confidence. She didn’t need to push powerless people around to feel strong. And she was not looking for a pat on the head from the rich. His resentment of this strength was, of course, compounded by the fact that she was a woman who loved another woman, and that he found her physically attractive. 

But what to do? She could only think that she must tell the others in the building of the situation, and try to always be with someone else whenever she went out. 

IN THE MEANTIME the suit for damages was filed against Sanford Bergman. Bergman had thirty days to answer it or demur. Bergman himself had filed unlawful detainer suits against the tenants, and Marty Singleton, on their behalf, had made a motion to dismiss the suit on the grounds that Bergman hadn’t given the tenants thirty day notices of their rent increases back in November. The dismissal motion would be heard in a week. 

The next person to be the victim of harassment by local law enforcement was Jimmy, who still had several months to go on his parole. After not having to worry much about surprise visits, blood or urine tests, or threats to be sent back to jail for two and a half years, suddenly he had a new P.O. and found himself being asked to come in and piss in a bottle. Jimmy was enraged. “I’ve been out all this time and haven’t used junk or been busted. What the hell’s going on?”

At Elsa’s suggestion he had Marty Singleton call his new parole officer the day before he was to report. The P.O. hastened to explain to Marty that he wasn’t intending to make Jimmy come in once a week for testing, that he was certainly aware of Jimmy’s excellent record for the past few years, and that he simply wanted to see and test Jimmy at this particular time because it was his standard procedure with new clients.

His P.O. was not the only government agent Jimmy had to worry about. One evening while he was walking to the store, a squad car pulled over to him and ran a check. They claimed to be investigating a crime for which he supposedly fit the suspect’s description. Maybe this was true, though Jimmy doubted it. In any case the cops now knew who he was, and knew that one of the Grove Street tenants had a record.

Several times in the next couple of weeks, Elsa and Michelle were on the street and a cop car slowed to look at them, or turned on the flashing lights and siren while driving past. Apparently the word had been circulated about them at Park Station. One night, the sergeant who had come to the building during the “burglary in progress” saw Elsa and, looking directly at her, pushed his cap up and made an expression of disgust, shaking his head.

All of these incidents further convinced the people in the building of the urgency of being security-conscious. Though they were not always sure whether the police were deliberately harassing them because of the rent strike, they realized that at least some of the harassment was because of the militant position they had taken. They tightened up the telephone emergency system, which relied on the law student, Cynthia, and her housemates, and another flat of supporters. These were the two most reliable households and would, in case of emergency, get the calls for witnesses and legal assistance started.

The tenants continued their door-to-door work and updated their lists of supporters, which grew steadily. Everyone in the several blocks surrounding them at least knew about the rent strike. No one believed the tenants had been wrong to go on rent strike, and no one took Bergman’s side – not openly, anyway. But not everyone would do something to help the tenants, either. Making complacent or frightened people budge was not easy. Elsa was surprised at how many people saw that a lot was wrong with the neighborhood, their jobs, society as a whole, but simply shrugged, “Yeah, things are terrible, but what can you do? It’ll get worse before it gets better.” As though some invisible force directed events and had decreed that things would certainly get worse, then miraculously improve. What would it take before such people would finally start trying to change things themselves?