1/4

Played: July 13, 2020.

Wednesday, February 14, 1973. An hour ‘till midnight, or thereabouts. Jocasta stands stock still with her hand on the partially-turned key at the door to Frank’s flophouse hotel room in the Tenderloin. She contemplates her fate while she waits for reinforcements. Downstairs, Mitch and Roger arrive practically at the same time, somewhat out of breath, and find Marshall talking in hushed tones with Special Agents Padden and Hall. They’ve already called the bomb squad. Marshall excuses himself and he leads Roger and Mitch up the stairs (the elevator is, of course, out of service).

Roger: So you said demolitions? Explosions? What’s the deal, man?

Marshall: We don’t know. So we're not sure it's a bomb. It could not be a bomb. But when we turned the key we heard a click on the other side that was — um, it didn't sound like a lock. It sounded like something was being tripped. And, uh, given the threats the suspect made and so forth, we naturally — well, Jocasta naturally —

Roger: And he has C4.

Marshall: Yeah.

Roger: Yeah. I figured that out in a couple seconds. But like, the situation. Meaning, uh, is Jocasta like … dead or … ?

Marshall: Oh! No! No no no. Jocasta is standing at the door with her hand on the key with it partially turned in the lock. I think she’s trying very hard not to move right now.

Roger: Oh. Oh, so she just tripped it.

Marshall: Yeah. Yeah like, 10 minutes ago.

Roger: So we have no time.

Marshall: We have literally no time. It’s very exciting!

The trio arrive on the fourth floor and find Jocasta standing at the door. She is clearly under a lot of strain. Marshall and Mitch wait down at one of end of the hallway, around the corner. Roger approaches Jocasta quietly, carrying a bottle of rum and a black bag. He surveys the scene. The door is a door; there’s no other way inside, like a casement or transom window, and no other doors that connect Frank’s room with an adjoining room. Conceivably one could go through another room, out the window, onto the ledge, and then climb across to Frank’s room and enter through his window, but who knows if he’s booby-trapped the windows, too. The exterior of the door doesn’t betray any obvious signs of tampering. This leaves Roger with one option: picking the lock from the outside in such a way as to bypass the trigger. Roger asks Jocasta if she’s doing OK and holding it together. Jocasta very slightly nods but says nothing. Roger attempts to reassure her and says he’ll be right back after he talks with Marshall and Mitch.

Roger: So man, um, yeah. I know this kind of trap. I mean, we saw this — this is a classic. Like, if it wasn’t for the spooks he would have had to have had Vietcong training. This is ugly.

Marshall: So this is definitely a bomb?

Roger: Yeah. I mean, yeah. It could be … it could be nothing, sure. It could be a bomb. But it's just one of those things where, like, this is a classic trip in the door, blow up everybody.

Marshall: So what do you recommend?

Roger: I recommend we pray.

Marshall: (confused stare)

Roger: So here’s what’s going to happen. I don't have much time but we're going to get through this. I know a guy. I have some favors. I just don't know — I don't think if it’s gonna be a little bit crazy.

Marshall: Are you going to do that … thing that we’ve tested you for?

Roger: … yeah. But if anything goes wrong, go and find Yolanda in the Botanica, and tell her Rogelio is in trouble. And then do what she says.

Marshall: (writes “Yolanda” and “Botanica” on his hand)

Roger tells Marshall to stay where he is — he doesn’t need convincing — and returns to Jocasta. He places his bag on the ground, opens it, and removes several items, among them lockpicking tools, a cigar, and an old-looking highball glass. He pulls the stopper out of the rum bottle and pours himself two fingers’ worth. As he does, he looks at Jocasta and says, “Sorry Jo. I’d offer you some but it can’t be offered to anybody else. Just stay cool.” From over his shoulder, Roger hears Mitch say: “I’m a little hurt. Standing right here, man.” Roger swings his head around and says: “What? Mitch! You can’t be here. Get around the corner!” Mitch shuffles off. Once he’s at a safe distance, Roger sips the rum, takes out one of his vèvèrs, lights the cigar, and gets on his knees. He starts praying aloud in what sounds like French. During pauses in his incantation he puffs on the cigar, blowing out giant billows of smoke, and slugs the rum. Jocasta raises an eyebrow but says nothing.

After a minute or so, Roger starts shaking violently and his chanting grows more intense. Then his whole body snaps to attention. He lifts his head up slowly. Now he looks calm and confident. Suave, even. In a voice different than Roger’s, he says: “Ah, mademoiselle. I see you are in trouble. Do not worry! I am the Opener of the Way. I will make all paths open to you.” After calming her down a bit, Papa Legba picks up his lockpicking tools and says to Jocasta:

Now mon chéri — I want you to be very, very careful. I am going to go insert this into the key. Because I am the Opener of the Way, I will open this door. But I want you to be out of the way. So I am going to count very carefully and I am going to put this (he holds up a lockpicking tool) into the lock and you are going to release the key when I say so.

Jocasta nods and takes a shaky breath, attempting to steel herself as best she can. Papa Legba sets to work and after only a few seconds’ worth of finagling, is deftly able to unlock the door in such a way as to not trigger whatever is on the other side. He is also able to sense that if he were to turn the doorknob right now, the device on the other side would go off. So, he could remove the lockpick, and Jocasta could remove her key, but actually opening the door remains a risky proposition. But, owing to his attunement to thresholds, he suspects he can remove the plate and open the door without turning the knob, thus bypassing the device. Papa Legba looks up at Jocasta: “You may move, mon chéri.” Jocasta takes her hand off the key and hastily walks down the hallway to join Mitch and Marshall. Papa Legba fishes in his black bag and draws out a screwdriver. He deftly removes the doorknob and detaches the triggering device. The door slowly swings open. Papa Legba rises and steps inside. Jocasta follows, Mitch and Marshall a step behind her.

The room is musty, its contents in disarray. The distinct smell of decay hangs in the air. A quick glance at the interior of the door finds it is rigged with C4, arranged in such a way that it would explode both outward and inward, killing whoever was standing in the hallway and destroying the room itself. Jocasta warns Pape Legba to be careful — the door was a trap and they have no way of knowing what other tricks Frank may have left for them. Standing in the center of the room, Papa Legba looks around, his preternatural senses tingling. He spots a few boxes of rifle and revolver ammo, but no firearms. The boxes are open and they are mostly empty save for a few loose shells.

Jocasta notices a red YMCA duffel bag slouched in the corner near the bathroom door. She walks over to it and unzips it extremely carefully. Inside are a bunch of loose bills — she estimates about $20,000 worth — plus some withdrawal slips for various local banks. She turns one of these over in her hands and averts her eyes just in time to avoid getting hit with a SHEG (“Obey me”) glyph. As Jocasta shoves the slips back in the bag, Papa Legba limps over to her and holds out his hand. “Mon chéri,” he intones, “give me your hand.” Jocasta hesitates but obliges. Papa Legba kisses her hand and says: “Mon chéri, it was my pleasure to serve you. Now the way is clear before all of you and I may depart.” Roger blinks and is suddenly his old self again. He plunks himself down on the edge of the bed, still smoking the cigar. Jocasta says to Roger: “Tell him the next time I see him, the bottle of rum is on me.”

Mitch’s attention is drawn to a shoddy little bookshelf holding an assortment of cheap paperbacks and old hardcovers. They cover a range of topics. Several are about Mesopotamian history. More than a few are fringe works on Western occult tradition, etc. Amid these are also several books from the ‘20s and ‘30s having to do with public relations, advertising, and the role of propaganda in a mass democracy. With his wizard sight, Mitch instantly knows that Frank has spent a meaningful amount of time with all these books. He closes his eyes and reaches for one at random. When he opens his eyes, he’s holding a well-worn copy of Erich von Däniken’s Chariot of the Gods?. He flips through it. Out falls a folded up street map of San Francisco. It’s got a whole bunch of lines on it and the lines follow various streets. Mitch concludes that these must be routes, likely school bus routes because — at a glance — many of the lines meet up with various schools and originate (or terminate) at one of two city depots. Mitch shares his findings and working hypothesis with the rest of the group:

Mitch: My working theory at this point had been that he was employed as a school bus driver because I assume they'll just give anybody who shows up sober that job. But now I'm thinking that his plan was to impersonate a school bus driver, seize or hijack a school bus, and take the route … um, is his plan for tomorrow morning, given that otherwise — if he was an actual legitimate school bus driver — he wouldn't need this information. He would have it through other channels. Yeah. Or just put explosives on a bus — sure, sure. I like to imagine him driving the bus though, you know? Drive-drive, toot-toot.

Marshall: So, uh, you think he's going to, what? Hijack a school bus? Blow one up?

Mitch: Hijack was my first thought. Maybe blow it up, I guess. That’s equally plausible. Maybe more than one bus. But buses, definitely busses. Definitely buses.

Marshall: How reliable is this intelligence?

Mitch: Buses, Marshall. I said buses.

Marshall: I know, but —

Mitch: I didn’t say “but.” I didn’t say "buses question mark.” I didn’t say “maybe buses.” I said buses.

Marshall: OK. Um, so … we should probably get in touch with someone in city government to make sure the buses don’t depart tomorrow. Or maybe we do let them depart but we have them under surveillance so that we can find him.

As Mitch and Marshall talk, Jocasta idly thumbs through Frank’s books. She wonders: if Frank’s said he has to bury these kids, are we assuming that he means this literally and that he's going to go through the rather laborious task of burying all these kids or are we assuming that he's just going to die with them? The books yield clues. Some have circulation cards in back indicating they’ve been checked out of local libraries. The ones pertaining to Mesopotamian history and culture are well-worn and contain copious drawings, scribblings, and notes. In one such book, she finds a heavily annotated and dog-eared chapter on Mesopotamian ghost stories, which includes reference to a method for “casting out” an êkimmu. That method entails burying (or re-burying) a person who was not properly buried the first time, thus putting the êkimmu to rest. Jocasta surmises that this story registered in Frank’s mind and, going a step further, likely prompted him to believe that he could rid the world of the êkimmu that possessed his father through blood sacrifice and the ritual interment. So he’s not talking in metaphors. He’s being literal. He’s gonna bury some kids not to save the world, Jocasta concludes, but to save his father.

Marshall heads to the lobby pay phone to call Archie, with Mitch shouting, “Tell him about the buses! TELL HIM ABOUT THE BUSES!” as he goes. Downstairs, he finds the FBI bomb squad has arrived. They hustle past him up to Frank’s place. Jocasta, Roger, and Mitch work quickly to gather up all the occult literature and History B-adjacent material. When the squad arrives, Jocasta and Roger bluff their way into walking out the door with the YMCA duffel bag and couple of unlabeled boxes containing Frank’s library. Special Agents Padden and Hall are completely on board, or perhaps fooled. Sure, this weird Mod Squad trio doesn’t look like law enforcement, but they have all the necessary credentials and know all the proper procedures. Plus they positively reek of secret high-level covert government shit. It’s probably best not to question them too much.

On the pay phone, Marshall dials Archie at home and looks at this Rolex. It’s nearing midnight. Archie picks up and Marshall tells him that he and the rest of the team are going to swing by Archie’s place in Pacific Heights to debrief and figure out next steps. Over the phone Archie can hear a lot of commotion and people shouting; Marshall himself sounds a bit manic, probably from all the cocaine. Archie says OK, hangs up, and then helps his wife Melanie get the kids back to bed. He tells her that he’s going to meet with his coworkers in his den. She offers to make lemonade. Archie asks if they have any leftovers. Melanie gives him an odd look and says she has some casserole left. Marshall, in the Tenderloin, hops in Roger’s car with Mitch. Roger says they’ll need to stop and get Chinese food first to bring because it’s been on his mind ever since Mitch mentioned it.

About a half-hour later and all of URIEL, minus Sophie, is assembled in Archie’s home office. They update him on what happened. Jocasta explains that Special Agents Padden and Hall told her that Frank shot first upon seeing the agents. The agents returned fire, but no one was struck. Frank then escaped through the lobby, out a back door, and into the alleyway, where he promptly vanished. Of course, this points to more glyph-usage. Archie fusses over everyone — Jocasta especially — when he learns about the bomb. Then the conversation turns to the school buses. Archie explains that he’s kicking himself for having overlooked the school bus angle.

Archie: Of course! The school buses. The letter talks about how he knows where all the children linger. We should have — we should have read it from the letter. Oh dear. Well, goodness graciousness. And tomorrow night we — the timing was such that we thought that if something is going to happen, tomorrow’s a school day, yes?

Roger: Yeah. Tomorrow, Downtown will be full of parade stuff for the Chinese New Year. The guy at the bodega was saying that they had, like, blocked off all the roads and stuff like that. That may mean that there’s only particular routes going and that might narrow, like, where he goes. Plus, if you’re gonna blow something up around Chinatown where there are fireworks or something like that — that’s a potential. I mean, he’s got to get the school bus and get the kids …

Archie asks if Mitch can show him the map he found, and Mitch obliges. Archie spreads it out on his desk and looks it over. Using his skills as an intelligence analyst and master esmologist, he’s able to discern that all of Frank’s lines originate from one of two lots. These lots are owned by different companies but both have contracts with the city to provide school busing services. So when the buses go out in the morning to pick up the kids, they all come from these two hubs, with one serving the western part of the city and the other serving the eastern half. Now, could Frank be posing as a school bus driver at one of these depots? Absolutely. Background checks weren’t really a thing in 1973, and Frank could very well be working under an assumed name, perhaps even as a fill-in or temp driver. If that’s the case, then the bus companies won’t have record of him — but they may recognize him if shown a sketch or photograph. Fortunately, Jocasta made such a sketch after psychometrically reading the photo she found of Frank and his father. To do that, they’ll need to get to the depots early in the morning to ask the people who work there if they recognize the man in the sketch.

Marshall says the timing in unfortunate because one must assume that the busses take off for their routes really early in the morning, like 6:00 or 6:30 a.m. That leaves them about six hours. Archie notes that they could wake people up, get the police or the FBI involved. But Frank plainly has access to some powerful glyphs, including SHEG and SANGUSH, at least. So mundane law enforcement likely won’t have much success in locating him if he doesn’t want to be located.

Marshall: Let's say we know that he's a bus driver — we're able to determine he's a bus driver, we know he's a bus driver, which I'm not sure is a knowable thing in such a short amount of time. What does that information get us? I guess it could get us a location where he would report to work tomorrow at one of the bus companies. But otherwise, I don't know if that's the best use of our time. Like, I feel like we’re missing something. We just need to know where he’s going to be.

Archie: So we just —

Mitch: I don’t think we can assume that he doesn't have some kind of backup plan. If we identify specifically that he's the driver of bus number seven, and we shut down bus number seven and he shows up at work and bus number seven has been — I don't know what the bus version of grounded is — I feel like we should assume that he’s gonna be able to turn to bus number nine and hop aboard and adapt bus number nine to his purposes. I feel quite strongly that what we need to do is stop all the buses. No buses. No buses.

Jocasta: Given that we don't have a lot of time, and at the risk of — you know, as they say every time something like this happens in a movie — causing a panic, discretion is probably the better part of valor here and we should talk to the FBI, have them coordinate with the local cops and just tell them all the buses need to stop tomorrow.

Archie: But also, I mean we could — we should be there —

Jocasta: Sure. I’m saying we should let them take care of that now while we figure out what we want to do from this point on.

Archie: But does that stop him from showing up at work?

Marshall: So we can have the FBI contact the bus companies and tell them the buses cannot go tomorrow. How many bus companies are there? Because if there's fewer — if there's five or fewer, one of us can go to each depot.

Archie: There’s two.

Marshall: Right. So we'll have the FBI close down the buses but not communicate that to the workers. Well, the companies will shut it down but everyone will just pretend that the buses are still going to go and we will — some of us — go to one depot and the others will go to the other depot and keep an eye out for Frank.

Roger: We want to catch him, right?

Archie: Right. There’ll be a certain amount of chaos as these bus drivers show up and people say, oh, you’re not driving today. So we have to be there, yes, at both places, watching for this guy.

Mitch: Keep an eye out for him.

Archie: What if we did something that would provoke a reaction from him? Like, what if when he got there, there was something that would really — you know, like an eye in the pyramid kind of thing —

Mitch: Like a big paper mâché pyramid?

Archie: Or, I mean … proof that his father’s dead. Or something from Vietnam …

Marshall: But why do we need to provoke him? If we — if we see him, and we know it’s him, we can just take him. He doesn’t need to do anything. We know he’s going to do something.

Roger: But in case he cleaned himself up or something — but if there’s just two lots, there’s probably just two exists, you know? You can just cover the exit, let the workers go in, watch them go out, say they have to check something on a clipboard and look at each one as he goes by, and just watch for him. Because catching him is the right thing, right?

Archie: Yes.

Roger: The only thing that could go wrong with this is if he’s got some bus already, and he’s gonna start going on one of the routes early.

After a little more discussion, URIEL settles on a plan: they will split into two teams with each team going to a different depot. Marshall and Archie will take different teams, since they each possess neurolinguistic capabilities and can operate as face-men in dealing with the depot employees. They also decide to allocate Roger and Jocasta to different teams, as each has law enforcement credentials they can use as cover. That leaves Mitch, whom Marshall takes for his team because, well, he’s a good guy to have around. Archie, smirking: “And because whichever depot Mitch goes to, that will be the right one.” Mitch sighs. He closes his eyes and spins the map around on Archie’s table. Then he slaps his finger down. It lands on the depot on Napoleon Avenue, the one that provides bus coverage for eastern San Francisco. So that’s where he’s going. Archie shrugs and says he and Jocasta can take the west side bus depot — his son, Eddie, takes a bus that’s dispatched from that depot every day anyway. (The Ransom kids go to public schools, but good public schools … you know, good public schools).

With only a few hours before dawn, the team spends the rest of the night popping Modafinil (well, except Archie), reviewing their intel, going through Frank’s things, and prepping. As the light turns the horizon gray, Jocasta suggests to the group:

One thing to keep in mind is that, given not only his general precarious mind state — probably at the moment — and the fact that we know he’s armed, he also left a sizable chunk of cash in his apartment — or in his room, rather — and didn't take it with him. So we should be entering into this with the mindset that he does not expect to live.

Thursday, February 15, 1973. Dawn. The teams set out. Archie and Jocasta arrive at the west depot and inform the site manager that no buses are going out that day. Cowed by Archie’s neurolinguistic skills and Jocasta’s law enforcement credentials, the manager immediately acquiesces. They also show him Jocasta’s sketch of Frank — “I have no idea who that guy is,” he says — and inspect the bus lot to make sure no vehicles are missing. None are. On the east side of town, Roger, Mitch, and Marshall arrive at their assigned depot. Backed by Roger’s FBI credentials, Marshall swoops in and immediately brings the site manager under this thrall. The manager agrees to shut down bus service but to avoid broadcasting that fact so that the team can watch the drivers coming and going. Marshall shows him Jocasta’s sketch and the manager’s eyes go wide: “That’s Dan Williams. He’s a short-term bus driver. He’s only been with us for two or three weeks but, um, yeah — he’s like a fill-in or substitute driver.” Marshall asks when was the last time Dan was there, and the manager checks his records. “Last Thursday, a Chinatown to South Side run.” Marshall asks which bus he was assigned to, and the manager says yes, absolutely — do they want to go inspect it? Employing his NLP abilities, Marshall tells the depot manager that he (Marshall) is going to stay behind and go through his records while the manager brings his two colleagues to the bus. The manager nods, eyes glazed, and leads Mitch and Roger outside.

As they walk to the bus, Roger asks the manager if he’s expecting Dan today, what time he usually gets in, etc. The manager explains that Dan would only come in if he was needed and he’s not needed today. He also informs Mitch and Roger that Dan’s usual route will need to be diverted because he goes through Chinatown, and the parade will require detours. Mitch doesn’t seem to be paying attention to any of this; he looks around randomly but spots nothing out of the ordinary. In the manager’s office, Marshall reads through Dan’s file. It’s slim and fragmentary. It looks like “Dan” had previously worked on-again, off-again as a taxicab driver, and that he only pulled a bus shift perhaps once a week over the past few months.

In the bus itself, Roger does a thorough inspection for any explosive devices but finds nothing. The bus seems to be in normal working condition. Mitch goes inside and looks around. Immediately he notes the edge of a piece of paper taped to the inside of the driver’s seat sun visor, so that when the driver flips the visor down, the piece of paper will land right in his field of vision. Mitch puts two and two together and determines that the piece of paper probably has one of those bad things, the things you’re not supposed to look at, written on it. He partially covers his eyes with one hand and then flips the visor down. Glancing at it in the most cursory way, he’s able to determine it’s a SHEG (“Obey me”) glyph. But there’s nothing written underneath. It’s a command, but not an order. Typically, Mitch thinks, when an untrained person sees a glyph like SHEG and isn’t told to do anything, they’ll just act sort of dazed, zombie-like. Mitch flips the visor back up.

Inside the depot, Marshall continues going through the manager’s files while keeping an eye on the drivers as they arrive. He glances out a window and his eyes go wide. There’s Frank. He’s across the fucking street! Marshall watches for a moment and reads Frank’s body language. Frank has noticed something unusual is going on and he’s getting ready to get out of there. Marshall panics. He asks the manager if there’s a radio that’s hooked up to the buses. Yes, but the radio won’t work because the bus Mitch and Roger are in hasn’t been turned on. He considers making a run to Mitch and Roger, but Frank would almost certainly see him and would probably get away before Marshall reached his teammates. But! Mitch and Roger have line-of-sight on Marshall through the manager’s office window. So, out of ideas, he pulls out his service weapon and fires it up in the air. Then he starts frantically pointing outside, in Frank’s direction.

Mitch and Roger hear a gunshot. Roger immediately un-holsters his gun. Mitch stumbles out of the bus. Marshall watches as Frank gets in his car and turns it on. He runs outside, into the bus yard, and starts screaming: “It’s Frank! He’s getting in his car you fuckers!” Mitch and Roger bolt for it while Marshall calls Archie and Jocasta to tell them what direction Frank is going in. Mitch and Roger careen around the side of the depot building just in time to see Frank peeling away in his own vehicle. They hop in Roger’s Chevelle LS2. Roger turns the key in the ignition … and nothing happens. The car won’t start. The car won’t start! (Roger critically failed his Drive roll.) Roger curses, jumps out of his car, and flags down a passing vehicle with his FBI badge, commandeering it. The passenger gets out, confused, and Roger and Mitch take his place. They burn rubber to keep Frank’s car in sight. In the near distance, they can hear police sirens approaching.

On the opposite side of town, Archie and Jocasta get in Archie’s Dodge Monaco and make haste for the general direction of Napoleon Avenue. Using their various skills — Archie with analytic skills, Roger his street knowledge — each team deduces that Frank must be making his way to the Bay Bridge. He’s going through the Mission District, and he’s going to try to get out of town. So they need to either stop him before the bridge, or on the bridge. If they stop him on the bridge, it will be a huge deal, a major public disruption. Roger guns it and takes an illegal shortcut. When he emerges back on Frank’s trail, he finds that he’s only a few car lengths behind him. They can see him now, or the back of his head at least. As he watches, Roger sees Frank reach up to his brow and wipe it with his hand. He glances over at Mitch and sees that Mitch is starring bullets and, apparently, concentrating quite hard. A couple beats later, Roger and Mitch watch as Frank opens the driver side door and hurls himself outside, tumbling ungracefully onto the road. His car careens, driver-less, into a fire hydrant. A geyser of water erupts.

Roger yanks on the emergency brake to avoid spinning out or colliding with any other vehicles. He manages to stop the car mere inches from Frank, who is in a bad state: his arm is clearly broken, he’s covered in road rash, and he’s dazed. Mitch steps out of the car and glares at Frank. The air is getting extremely hot, like a furnace. Roger jumps out of the car and pull his weapon on Frank, shouting at him to freeze, motherfucker. Frank does not freeze, though! He tries to get to his feet. Roger shoots him in the leg. Frank screams and collapses. He reaches into his shirt pocket, pulls out a piece of paper — and erupts into flames. Roger looks back at Mitch in horror. He takes a deep breath to steady his nerves and stop his post-combat shakes. 30 seconds later, a cop car arrives. A minute after that, Archie and Jocasta pull up. Marshall arrives in a cab five minutes later. They all stand around the smoldering corpse of Franklin Roosevelt DiGuiseppe as the cops close off the streets.