Chapter Two Thousand One Hundred Twenty-Nine
4th March 1972
Los Angeles
It was funny how Captain Evans suddenly didnât know who Ritchie was. Mike said that it was because the incident in the High School last year. A massacre would have been nice copy for the Tactical Division, instead it gets ended by a street cop before they had a chance to make it to the scene. The City Council had questions and the Department Brass wasnât exactly thrilled with how it had all panned out. Now Ritchie was the hero that no one wanted. Not that he cared. With Lucia starting to show, it was only a matter of time before she would have to quit working at Ralphâs. They would be down to one income and still had a mortgage to pay for. That was why he was asking for every second of overtime he could get in the meantime, and it was a godsend that he had the check coming from the State Guard every month.
At least it wasnât raining today, Ritchie thought to himself as he looked towards the dark clouds hovering on the western horizon while ignoring the man he had been talking to. At least not yet. That would be all he needed considering how the crowds of fans would react if the show was called on account of weather. The venue, Dodgers Stadium, and the Production Company behind the Festival had hired their own security, but Ritchie was here in case something went horrifically wrong so that the LAPD wouldnât have to go look for someone on the scene to find out what was going on.
Ritchie had been in Dodgers Stadium dozens of times, watching Baseball even if Dodgers themselves hadnât had a decent team in ages. This was entirely different though. A Rock & Roll festival with the Detours, Moondogs from England, and Blue Mountain from up in San Francisco headlining, they had invited a few up-and-coming local bands who Ritchie had never heard of to warm up the crowd with mixed results. The crowd was mostly kids from area High Schools and Colleges. Ritchie had been told that he was mostly here to be seen, Not to actively police these people. If he saw a situation developing to radio it in and defuse it fast. This included things like if he spotted a pickpocket working the crowd or College boys getting into a shoving match that might turn into a brawl. If there were some kids in a corner smoking dope and not harming anyone, that wasnât his concern today. If it were, he would have needed to have busted most of the members of the bands the instant they had stepped out of their respective tour buses.
No one had said anything to Ritchie, but he was also looking for anyone who seemed off, like they didnât belong. This was entirely due to the notices that the FBI sent to the LAPD where they were pinned to a bulletin board and ignored. He had noticed that they were notices considered important enough by Interpol to send to the FBI. The others might have asked what a Police raid in Rome might have had to do with them, except Ritchie had seen that the Albanian suspects taken into custody had may have connections here in Los Angeles. Over the last year the street price of Bolivian Marching Powder had plummeted as well because of the war in South America as the gangs that controlled the trade had sold off their stock to get bugout money as the war had expanded. The world was actually far smaller than anyone seemed to be comfortable with. If the City Council and Eddie Evans thought they had a problem now, wait until something in the City went BOOM! And all Hell broke loose.
Where that left Ritchie was talking to Bobby Weir, the Guitarist and Singer from Blue Mountain backstage. He didnât seem to be a bad guy from Ritchieâs perspective, just slightly spaced out all the time. Not to mention that Bobby was only a few years younger than Ritchie was, but he seemed far younger than that. Presently, he was acting like a kid on Christmas morning and telling Ritchie all about how excited he was to be playing on the same bill as the Moondogs, the band that had apparently inspired him to start playing Rock music in the first place. Bobby also loved to talk about what it was like to be up on stage, playing music while the music of the Detours could be heard through the concrete walls of the stadium. Those guys liked to play loud.
âPlaying is like nothing else worldâ Bobby said in a dreamy voice, âYou go out there and itâs a highwire act, then the crowd starts cheering. You hit a note, play a cord and it all just goes away.â
âSounds like a HALO jumpâ Ritchie replied.
âA what?â Bobby asked, it didnât surprise Ritchie in the least that he was clueless on such matters.
âHigh Altitude, Low Opening, with a parachuteâ Ritchie said, âYou free-fall from thirty or forty thousand feet and open your chute at under a thousand. Something that Iâve done a few times.â
âAs a Cop?â
âNoâ Ritchie replied, âIn the Army, Special Forces.â
âWowâ Bobby said. He looked like he was about to ask another question when one of Blue Mountainâs Sound Engineers walked past. He did a double take when he saw Ritchieâs uniform and Ritchie knew that he probably had something he ought not to on his person.
âIâm not in Narcoticsâ Ritchie said, âSo, I donât give a shit.â
âWhyâre you here thenâ the Engineer asked.
Ritchie didnât feel like telling him the truth, which was basically Glorified Rent-A-Cop, so he made something up on the spot relating to those bulletins he had read. âCounter-Terrorismâ Ritchie replied and he saw the manâs eyes go wide.