Park & Die

By Harris Wolfson

Brach LaFave went from boy to man in the same last beat of his fathers heart. The mans body went to prison, and his mind went to the hell of why me and screw you. Perhaps it has become a cliche to say that there was a lot happening in 1960s San Francisco. The changes from that era are now a part of history, but there were also the unsolved murders. Park & Die is based upon true events, embellished around the main character Brach Lafave. His battle pursues unanswered questions literally left in smoldering ashes to present day. Despite the twists and turns and sleight of hand, Brachs never-ending troubles are really just the anxiety of the story, the frame around the tortured portrait of an old man in pain.
Brach LaFave is huge character set into a mystery, and historical fiction with a pinch of romance, to understand him, you have to go back to the beginning and not loose sight of that scared, frail weakling, a boy 14, being bullied by some punk in a vacant lot. His father coming to his rescue is shot, right in front of his eyes; an excruciating transformation of boy to man. Along with the oozing blood, Brach seeped into the misery of hell. Decades, fate and love bring him incredible success, but he is still a haunted man. On a dreary Christmas Eve the answer he has been searching for literally comes to him while parked at a vista point overlooking the Pacific.

• Language: English
• Publisher: AuthorHouse
• Release date: Jan 17, 2014
• ISBN: 9781491851043

Harris Wolfson

Although I’ve written another book, which I self-published (Cigar Connoisseur – Foreplay & Reference Guide / sales of 180,000 copies), and a comic strip while in college, this is the first novel. The idea for "Park & Die' came to me when I moved to San Francisco in 1970 to attend graduate school. It is developed around the incredible characters and events that swirled around in a hypnotic atmosphere that I would never forget. The book rattled around in my brain for decades until the day was right to put it to words. Today I still live in the San Francisco Bay Area in bucolic West Marin County.

Book preview

PART I

CHAPTER 1

It may appear that I am in some type of comatose or delusional state of mind, staring at a puke-green block wall. I’m not.

But I have become very familiar with this wall, and as walls go, this is a good one. The grout joints are smooth and even, a slight tongue of mortar licking over the blocks here and there, giving it a little character.

Every eight hours or so, I hear, Hey Brach, YO, how ya doing?

It’s better to answer, so I usually speak in the tongues expected of me, I’m good man, I’m good, just doin’ my time.

My wall was obviously built by a real professional, someone who has stacked and worried tens of thousands of blocks together during his career. I can go on and on about this particular wall’s nuances, having stared at it for almost a year now.

It is much more than just staring at a wall. It is my soothing, green pasture for thinking and calculating all sorts of things; right now I’m counting, a test for some unknown potential use. How close can I come, 5, 4, 3, 2, and 1?

I say to Jackson without looking up, One more hour for you, then just another year or 30. My words float out between the bars, and then there’s that familiar jingling of keys hanging from his belt, and the sound stops in front of my cell. I already know what he is thinking by me talking first. I’m saving him the trouble of determining if I’m still here or if I’m dead, sitting on my bunk, staring at a wall.

Hey Brach, maybe you’ll be gone when I get back here on Monday, Jackson says sincerely.

He does wish me well; we are, in many respects, longtime friends. No, wrong, not friends, let’s just say friendly acquaintances. He is one of the exceptions to my pig rule, and I only need half the fingers on my left hand to count the others. Jackson and I are about the same age, and he has been my keeper for almost six years—not six straight, usually with at least a year in between.

After the cell gate opened the last time, I was determined never to return. Well, I’m back here, and it will be a toss-down to see which one of us gets out of here first. Jackson, like all the others, comes as close to being in prison without really being in prison as one can get. He became a pig right when he got out of the army. In my way of thinking, it doesn’t matter which side of the bars you’re on. It is practically the same thing, depending upon, of course, what you have to go home to each night. Jackson rarely talks about his wife or family, mostly fishing, sometimes in exotic destinations. The wife never goes with him, major clue.

Over the years, you learn to observe the guards. Watching, listening, speaking to them, breathing the same air. Some pigs are sicker than others, some are more depraved, and some are filled with hate.

Some, in my opinion, deserve to die.

No matter what, it is not smart to lose sight of the fact that there is something fundamentally wrong with someone who would intentionally incarcerate himself. We might be on opposite sides of the wall, but it is the same wall with the same crevices, cracks and all the other surface details that connect with one another, a map. Here is something I have been working on while staring at my wall: (July 4th Holiday) 1960’s San Francisco—A young couple on their way to a party decide to pull off onto a deserted lover’s lane. In the far distance, the night-sky is erupting with the sporadic booms and bright flashes from fireworks; a man pulls up, walks over, and orders the couple out of their car. The young man is only half way out of the car when the right side of his head is blown off. The girl runs, she’s fast, she gets pretty far, but doesn’t escape. She is shot multiple times in the back. The hollow point bullets explode, blowing huge holes through her body, splattering her naked chest over the wet gravel road. It took the forensic team hours to gather all the pieces of the carnage.

I ask myself, what would it take for a half dressed guy to get out of his car for a stranger? Probably one of only two things: there was a gun in your face, or the killer was dressed as a cop. The wall is speaking to me.

There are different ways to do time—drugs, gangs—but I’d rather go to the library, take courses, learn something new. And no tattoos for me either, no one out there needs to know what I’ve done, or where I’ve been, unless I tell them. I learned pretty well, not only how to speak properly but also how to write. One of my lessons along the way to becoming a writer has been that to survive in a place like this is to observe. The devil is not only in the details, but also in the people around you.

I hope I learned good—only kidding. But developing a sense of humor in prison goes a long way to killing a little of the pain. I have talked to myself to the point that I actually believe I learned something from me.

How long I am going to be in here is heavy on my mind. Not long, I hope, as long as I listen to my attorney, Harry, and keep my mouth shut—no problem there, I’m conditioned to do that.

In the past, I always knew when I would be getting out, but I have to admit I’m a little worried about this latest rap. Harry will do it; he has to, or I am really going to go comatose if I keep staring at this fuckin’ wall.

Feeling sorry for yourself in prison is useless and should be avoided like the plague. It is an insidious disease that multiplies the hours in a day. And this time, the time is harder and much longer, probably because I was doing so great. Even I couldn’t believe it, me in love, I didn’t even know what that was until I met Elizabeth.

The wonder of being free and in love at the same time erased a lot of memories that needed to go away. My final days at Parlin Forks Conservation Camp were almost a distant memory. The ‘conservation’ part, just a useless word: it was a fire camp, something like the Soviets would have dreamt up. Now I know it is something I will never forget.

As they say, don’t forget about the sheriff because the sheriff never, ever, forgets about you after you kill his deputy—something like that.

* * *

It’s fucking hot, is about all you say or think when fighting a forest fire, and that doesn’t even come close to giving it justice. I know I must develop my prose if I ever have a chance of getting this nightmare recorded for a book. Learning how to write came from the three books on creative writing that I studied during my time at San Quentin; it was all they had.

The fucking hot is coming off the horizon, bright red with flickering yellow fingers stretching into the blackened sky. The ground Alonzo and I are crossing, with nothing but pickaxes as our weapons, has been left an ashen, dirty white—seared by the passing fire like some preacher’s version of hell. Our special shoes ain’t so special, their soles are literally smoking. Steam is rising off our clothes from the combustion of the heat and sweat. It’s too hot to stay in one place. The only things remaining where we walk are the roots of trees that once stood there, and they are literally burning under the ground, under our feet. I never knew that could happen, I thought a fire needed air.

Oxygen actually, that’s what an old cellmate once told me, a good fire needs oxygen. He knew everything about fires. You can learn a lot in prison, if so inclined.

When you’re standing there, you don’t have to be a genius to know that the roots are ablaze, oxygen or no oxygen. Alonzo almost looks like he’s dancing, the way his feet are moving. Another prisoner is shooting massive amounts of water from a hose onto the ground. The water instantly vaporizes into steam, ejecting even more nasty particles into the ash-saturated air. It is hell, and you would have to be an idiot not to prefer a jail cell to this. Give me San Quentin any day.

Breathing is so difficult, it takes a moment to remember how I got here, and then I wonder where my attorney, Harry Zingerman, is spending his vacation. Along with the heat I’m thinking, shouldn’t we have been given some kind of masks? No budget for that of course, shut up Brach.

I like Alonzo, and I already knew what he was going to do before we got here. The fire we are fighting is south of San Diego, close enough to the Mexican border for Alonzo to almost feel his wife’s breath, and hear his two kids that he hasn’t seen for almost a year. One thing I have learned from my Mexican barrack mates is that they seem to really worship their families. We were bused down here from Mendocino in three of those dark green school buses, joining six other forest conservation camps. Our mission: to beat back the latest conflagration. Very little rain for the last two years has turned all of southern California into the perfect furnace. I am pissed at Harry, but as smart as he is, I know he had no idea I would be sent into hell; he would never have set me up intentionally.

The conservation camps we left late last night are minimum security. No fences or barbed wire, no guards with guns; it is different, and was hard for me to get used to. Mexicans who came across the border illegally for the third or fourth time inhabit most of the barracks at Parlin Forks. The poor souls were only trying to make a few bucks to feed their families while waiting for a Mexican revolution to save them. They were sentenced to a year or two in these forest conservation camps. Ironic, because now they’re forced to labor practically for free in a different country, cleaning culverts and brush, or providing private staff for the big shot assholes at the Department of Corrections; a real privilege to work for them. Did I mention revolution—don’t get me started on that one, keep your mouth shut, Brach.

There was no need for much security at Parlin Forks, as the distance between Mendocino, California and Mexico was significant enough to make escape impractical, especially with the Mexicans’ almost non-existent English language skills. Add to that the obscure physical location of the camps: a beautiful valley, next to another beautiful valley, in the middle of a forest, located in some gigantic tract of government-owned parkland. With only one long road in or out of the camp, escaping was virtually impossible, any after-hours getaway car would be easily detected.

This venue, however, was much, much different. The same unarmed guards who were nice and mushy up north, now had guns. In addition to the weapons they now carried, they wore an entirely different demeanor, one that became blacker with each mile going south. Even before getting down here, I knew their northern persona was an act. I knew they had to feel vulnerable without their guns, and them being all friendly and professional to the inmates was not a real part of who they were. However, I could conceivably believe that some of the Hispanic guards were decent to their countrymen, and even befriended a few. They would have realized there was no threat from most of camp’s inhabitants—just young men who wanted an adventure in America and a means to help their families.

There were exceptions to the placid Mexican family men of Parlin Forks, me being one of them. I’m not sure I mentioned it, but I don’t trust pigs, northern or southern, guns or no guns. Of course, an unarmed pig is preferable. Seeing and feeling their apprehension when they approach me without the bars, fences, or guns between us is something I cherish. You could feel it the same as a horse senses fear. It was unbelievable to them that I ever got sentenced to a forestry camp in the first place. They can thank Harry for that. I honestly couldn’t care less about this latest bunch of pigs, except Sergeant Anderson, the one the Mexicans called Gordo.

Yeah, I despised Gordo. It’s a matter of record that he thought he would die by my hand. Actually, I only told him that he was going to have his baton or shovel shoved up his ass until it came out his nose, I can’t remember which; either one would have killed him was his theory. You’d think I would have been shipped out of the country club and back to San Quentin for threatening the prick, but that never happened. Too bad, because then I wouldn’t have been around when the fire alarm went off at 9:00 PM on October 9, 1969.

According to Harry, the police have Brach LaFave, and what happened on that early October morning, all figured out:

Even through the dense smoke, LaFave could see Alonzo looking around nervously, so he thought the coast was clear. He was about 20 yards away on top of a slight rise, with Alonzo on one side and Sergeant Anderson on the other. Alonzo raised his clenched fist so LaFave could see it, just as Sergeant Anderson came up to the top of the rise. Alonzo dropped his pickaxe and ran, and Sergeant Anderson raised his rifle. Seeing this, LaFave ran up and buried his pickaxe in Sergeant Anderson’s head. He then dragged Anderson’s body a short distance into the path of the fire and took the ring of keys off his belt. LaFave walked away, leaving Anderson’s body to be destroyed by the fire.

I will leave this part of the story, for now, with this thought: There are a few truths to forest fires that are known to the professionals who fight them. Forest fires are peculiar beasts; they can change course in an instant and leave a random tree or house standing in a black sea of destruction; it makes no sense. As it turned out, the fire may have sent Sergeant Anderson to hell, not much more than a pile of ashes and bone fragments. It is one of the reasons I am still staring at my green pasture, thinking about murderers and Elizabeth.

CHAPTER 2

2013

There is no black of night in today’s law firms. Once my eyes adjusted, the red and green pulsating light from the computers, copiers, monitors, cigar humidors, and other necessities was sufficient to allow me to stumble through two floors of offices without breaking any toes. Every office had an endless array of equipment checking its own pulses, with blinking lights dancing everywhere. It reminded me of the bridge of the Starship Enterprise that I used to watch on my little TV in San Quentin.

It was 3:00 in the morning, and I was walking around the law offices of Zingerman and LaFave, on the top floor of San Francisco’s Crown Zellerbach Building. While I could make my way around, the faint lighting was not enough to illuminate the honed granite counters, the floors covered with oriental rugs, or the miles of polished wood conference tables, but they were there; Harry and I paid for it all. We had come a long way in 40 years.

Sleep had become a luxury that eluded me for the last five of those years. So, to escape the demons and the monotony of what my life had become, I once again escaped to the city to spy upon the dozens of underlings who worked for us. I chose one of the offices on the top floor, at random. Because this office was one of the smaller ones, the occupant has probably been with my firm for only about five years. But it was the top floor, so this attorney was doing well, and was moving right up the proverbial ladder of success. Once behind the desk, the immediate, the delightful scent of perfume told me the gender of the occupant. With the flick of a switch, the desk lamp provided a photographic look at a day in the life of Jennifer Franklin. It was somewhat disconcerting that Ms. Franklin left files lying on the top of her desk instead of locking them in one of the cabinets supplied to her for just that purpose, but that is one of the reasons I am here, to keep abreast of what’s going on. I didn’t consider it spying, because my partner, Harry, and I were responsible for everything that came out of this place. Lately, I just happened to choose different hours in which to work. The real truth is that Harry pretty much runs everything now, but I feel compelled to contribute and act interested.

What happens in these offices has changed over the years as much as the typewriters that used to clack away endlessly at the hands of young women in the typing pool. There are no more typewriters, and there are no more Civil Rights or Vietnam Conscientious Objector cases. Like the typewriters, the burdens upon those people simply disappeared one day in the 1970s; which day would be a wild guess.

The cases the firm now brings in are a reflection of the monumental changes that have occurred in this country, and in my life. The fight has shifted from civil rights and the gay movement to drug dealers, polluters, and malpractice, and the term ‘mass murderer’ has been given a new moniker, ‘serial killer’. If there is one constant, it would be murder; even if you change the title of the killing machine, it never seems to go out of vogue. There are a few old, unsolved murder cases I am most interested in; they keep me going—I have no choice. Here’s another one of those connections that is still haunting, decades later. (News Year Eve) 1960’s San Francisco—An 18-year-old female student was brutally murdered by a clever and diabolical killer adjacent to the parking lot of Riverside City College’s library. Neither rape nor robbery seemed to have been a motive, as her clothes and purse were found next to her and intact. The detectives theorize the killer, after disabling the engine of her VW bug, waited for her to return to her car and attempt to start it, whereupon he offered her assistance. After this ruse, and possibly with the offer of a ride, he either lured or forced her into a dark area, between two empty houses where they spent approximately an hour and a half. Exactly what happened during this time period is uncertain, but it had to be the blackest and most terrifying moments of the young woman’s life. I can feel the sweat on my own neck bead into little rivulets and my heart race as it always does when I put myself into that dark eternity. It is uncertain if it happened all at once or slowly. The pretty coed was choked, beaten, and sliced about the face. The man then slashed her numerous times across her breasts, once in the back, and multiple times across the throat. The cuts to her throat were so deep and brutal as to nearly decapitate her, severing her jugular vein, larynx, and carotid artery. Found at the scene was the heel-print from a large shoe. Two separate witnesses reported hearing a ‘horrible scream’ at around 10:30 PM, followed by the sound of whimpering. The detectives, while not releasing much information, did state months after the initial investigation that they were convinced the murderer was not a boyfriend or a spurned lover. Also known was that the library closed that evening at 9:00. It is believed she left the library and went straight to her car. An hour and a half passed before the scream. Did she know her killer? Maybe it was someone she didn’t know but would trust; maybe a . . . Enough of that, time to move on.

I’ve always talked to myself or to a wall, but now, in my 60s, I do it out loud more, and more often, as part of my effort to remain social and well informed.

Let’s see what our Ms. Franklin is up to… It only took a few minutes to learn that our firm was alive and well in environmental lawsuits. A little resort on Tomales Bay accidentally let loose ten gallons of oil from its marina. It was being pummeled by a dozen government agencies that probably didn’t even exist when I got out of jail for the last time back in 1970, with names like the Coastal Commission, Bay Area Water Quality Regional Board, Gulf of Farallones Sanctuary, and on and on.

Whoever these people are, and whatever it is they do, it is not what Elizabeth and I went to law school for. How many lawyers does it take to clean up ten gallons of anything—it’s not a joke, especially to those paying the bills. We were once there to fight the fight for the ‘people.’ Christ, what happened to the people; where did they go? One minute we were all driving around in little VW bugs, listening to concerts in Golden Gate Park, demanding Nixon’s head, changing the world. What happened? Did some alien space ship deport us to another universe? When I ask myself those questions, I tell myself yes, we all went to some other universe and yet never left the planet. In today’s world it probably takes a dozen lawyers from a dozen agencies to make ten gallons right for the ‘people’—right on! I remember that.

I didn’t envy Ms. Franklin, and took another look at the photographs displayed on the credenza behind her desk. She likes to ride her bicycle, hike, drink water, and dress in outerwear that looks, to me, as tight as a condom. She didn’t appear to like men or smiling; all her photographs were with other women. I shut the desk light wondering how she could possibly negotiate with these government pigs. Shit, did I say that out loud? I knew there was no one else around, but it’s best to keep those thoughts hidden; I promised myself I would. Most of the attorneys who work here are young enough to be my kids, even grandkids; what a depressing thought, another reason I can’t sleep. After two more offices, I become bored with Muni vs bicycle rider and the new lexicon of the day, ‘road rage’—time to move on.

For me, standing in front of an open elevator door has the potential of becoming another miracle of the universe. Which button to choose, ‘P’ for the parking garage, which takes me back home to Nicasio, or ‘16,’ which brings me down one floor to our other suites of dark offices. You never know what simple decision can change your life forever. I convinced myself of this phenomenon a long, long time ago—usually when sitting in jail trying to figure out how I got there.

‘P’ for home is bucolic Marin County where a magnificent estate, adjacent to a famous ranch of Hollywood fame, awaits me. There was enough time to make it back before my staff even awoke. Perhaps for the best, as it would be rude for Maria to cook me breakfast only to learn there was no one to eat it. However, that slight was not sufficient to influence my decision.

I chose ‘16,’ and in less than 10 seconds the doors opened to the dark entryway of the floor of the worker bee colony. No reception desk or humongous, backlit, smiling flower arrangement to greet visitors. Attorneys at Zingerman and LaFave step off the 16th floor elevator for long hours of work, work, work. It actually started to make me sleepy thinking about it; maybe I could transform one of the offices into a bedroom. The thought of all these young