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home. As he walked over to Ramparts, Emmett wondered whether the editors would sacrifice the kind of colorful copy that satisfied the voyeurism of their readers, "For the good of the cause." But he never got to ask them that question because, when he turned the corner onto Broadway, he saw a scene going down which made talking to ink-slinging calumniators seem less important that day than usual. At first glance, it looked like a stick-up was being pulled with a short, black kid holding an M-l across his chest and standing on the bottom steps of the front entrance to the Ramparts offices.

A squad car had just driven up and Emmett planted himself against a parked truck for a better view, as one of the cops got out and walked over to the young, armed black, leaving his partner to burn up the police radio frantically reporting into headquarters with his eyes bulging and his face all twisted, flapping words at the microphone. An older black man, about thirty, witll a moustache and a .38, came out of the front door and stood on the landing at the top of the steps, watching the cop talk to the younger guy below him. In addition to both having guns, the two blacks were dressed the same way, in car-length black leather coats and black berets. Emmett looked closely at the older one and remembered seeing his picture somewhere wearing similar clothes. It only took him a moment to match the face with the name of "Bobby Seale" and quickly figure out that whatever was happening had to do with the "Black Panthers. "

The little dude with the M-l snarled something about the Fifth Amendment to the cop, who took a couple of steps around him and up toward the landing, until he was right next to Bobby Seale. Seale stared at the copper real hard, which made the cop visibly nervous causing him to talk louder, shrilly like he had a red-hot poker up his ass "Who's the leader?" he asked and Seale answered by gesturing toward himself The copper said something else which angered Seale, and he stuck his face into the cop's, yelling, "Goddamit! I don't want to talk to you! So, you can go away from here! Go on, git!" And the copper apologetically muttered, "Oh!" turned around and walked back down the steps, as more cops drove up

These were plainclothesmen, and as soon as they got out of their cars, they began talking heatedly among themselves One of them pointed towards the little dude who looked very young, but they didn't do anything, just kept on talking back and forth to each other More of them drove up and Bobby Seale opened the front door at the top of the stairs and shouted inside Two more black [end page 305]