The inquest ended with a split verdict. Smith’s lead paragraph in the October 6 Times read like an obituary: “Monday the inquest into the death of newsman Ruben Salazar ended. The 16-day inquiry, by far the longest and costliest such affair in county history, concluded with a verdict that confuses many, satisfies few and means little. The coroner’s jury came up with two verdicts: death was ‘at the hands of another person’ (four jurors) and death was by ‘accident’ (three jurors). Thus, inquests might appear to be a waste of time.”
A week later, District Attorney Evelle Younger—a staunch Law & Order man—announced that he had reviewed the case and decided that “no criminal charge is justified,” despite the unsettling fact two of the three jurors who had voted for the “death by accident” verdict were now saying they had made a mistake.
But by that time nobody really gave a damn. The Chicano community had lost faith in the inquest about midway through the second day, and all the rest of the testimony only reinforced their anger at what most considered an evil whitewash. When the DA announced that no charges would be filed against Wilson, several of the more moderate Chicano spokesmen called for a federal investigation. The militants called for an uprising. And the cops said nothing—at all.
The night before I left town I stopped by Acosta’s place with Guillermo Restrepo. I had been there earlier, but the air was extremely heavy. As always, on stories like this, some of the troops were getting nervous about The Stranger Hanging Around. I was standing in the kitchen watching Frank put some tacos together and wondering when he was going to start waving the butcher knife in my face and yelling about the time I Maced him on my porch in Colorado (that had been six months earlier, at the end of a very long night during which we had all consumed a large quantity of cactus products; and when he started waving a hatchet around I’d figured Mace was the only answer ... which turned him to jelly for about forty-five minutes, and when he finally came around he said, “If I ever see you in East Los Angeles, man, you’re gonna wish you never heard the word ‘Mace,’ because I’m gonna carve it all over your fuckin’ body.”).
So I was not entirely at ease watching Frank chop hamburger on a meat block in the middle of East L.A. He hadn’t mentioned the Mace, not yet, but I knew we would get to it sooner or later ... and I’m sure we would have, except that suddenly out in the living room some geek was screaming: “What the hell is this goddamn gabacho pig writer doing here? Are we fuckin’ crazy to be letting him hear all this shit? Jesus, he’s heard enough to put every one of us away for five years!”
Longer than that, I thought. And at that point I stopped worrying about Frank. A firestorm was brewing in the main room—between me and the door—so I decided it was about time to drift around the corner and meet Restrepo at the Carioca. Frank gave me a big smile as I left.
“Losing Ruben was a goddamn disaster for the Movement,” Acosta said recently. “He wasn’t really with us, but at least he was interested. Hell, the truth is I never really liked the guy. But he was the only journalist in L.A. with real influence who would come to a press conference in the barrio. That’s the truth. Hell, the only way we can get those bastards to listen to us is by renting a fancy hotel lounge over there in West Hollywood or some bullshit place like that—where they can feel comfortable—and hold our press conference there. With free coffee and snacks for the press. But even then about half the shitheads won’t come unless we serve free booze, too. Shit! Do you know what that costs?”
This was the tone of our conversation that night when Guillermo and I went over to Oscar’s pad for a beer and some talk about politics. The place was unnaturally quiet. No music, no grass, no bad-mouth bato loco types hunkered down on the pallets in the front room. It was the first time I’d seen the place when it didn’t look like a staging area for some kind of hellish confrontation that might erupt at any moment.
But tonight it was deadly quiet. The only interruption was a sudden pounding on the door and voices shouting “Hey, man, open up. I got some brothers with me!” Rudy hurried to the door and peered out through the tiny eye-window. Then he stepped back and shook his head emphatically. “It’s some guys from the project,” he told Oscar. “I know them, but they’re all fucked up.”
“Goddamn it,” Acosta muttered. “That’s the last thing I need tonight. Get rid of them. Tell them I have to be in court tomorrow. Jesus! I have to get some sleep!”