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.

A man police say preyed on elderly women was charged Tuesday with one count of murder and 12 of robbery. Frazier DeWayne Brown, 44, a 6-foot, 2-inch, 230-pound former Los Angeles county sheriff's deputy, was arraigned in the same Hall of Justice courtroom where he once worked as a bailiff. Police had long been seeking a man who befriended elderly women at bus stops and later attacked and robbed them. Evidence against Brown included possessions taken from victims of strong-arm robberies and found in his home.

L. A. Times 3/31/71

Several hours later we came back. Guillermo wanted to talk to Oscar about putting pressure on the KMEX-TV management to keep him (Restrepo) on the air. “They want to get rid of me,” he explained. “They started the pressure the day after Ruben was killed -- the next fuckin day!”

We were sitting on the floor in the living room. Outside, overhead, the police helicopter was looping around in the sky above Whittier Boulevard, sweeping the neighborhood with a giant searchlight beam that revealed nothing -- and served no purpose except to drive the Chicanos below into a seething rage. “Those sons of bitches!” Acosta muttered. “Look at that goddamn thing!” We had all gone out in the yard to stare up at the monster. There was no way to ignore it. The noise was bad enough, but the probing searchlight was such an obvious, outrageous harassment that it was hard to understand how even a cop could explain it away as anything but deliberate mockery and provocation.

“Now tell me,” said Acosta. “Why are they doing a thing like this? Why? You think they don't know what effect it has on us?”

“They know,” said Restrepo. He lit a cigarette as we went back inside. “Listen,” he said, “I get about fifteen telephone calls every day from people who want to tell me stories about what the police have done to them -- terrible stories. I've been hearing them for a year and a half, every goddamn day -- and the funny thing is, I never used to believe these people. Not completely. I didn't think they were lying, just exaggerating.” He paused, glancing around the room, but nobody spoke. Restrepo is not entirely trusted in these quarters; he is part of the establishment -- like his friend, Ruben Salazar, who bridged that gap the hard way.