The Undying Echo of Fate

There’s a fine, earthy name for that pit-of-the-stomach familiarity at being pulled over: the unmistakable cop-car silhouette spotted too late, the flaring lights, the panicked mental inventory--Where’s my license? Did I pay that traffic ticket?

The “Oh s---” moment.

Imagine, then, on a midnight highway between a Marine base and a national forest, a CHP traffic stop that becomes an “Oh s---” moment on both sides of the car window: the nervous driver, with a few points already racked up on a spotty driving record, and the CHP officer who takes the driver’s license offered to him and reads the name . . . Rodney G. King.

Now, for every cop who may long to claim the bragging rights to Rodney G. King’s scalp, there must be dozens more who would rather pull over anybody else in the world for speeding--Ross Perot, Mother Teresa--anybody but Rodney G. King, motorist, victim, plaintiff, amiable ne’er-do-well, the most famous driver since Ben-Hur steered a chariot. Or at least since Al Cowlings didn’t try to take O.J. to Mexico.

Seventeen days before he was pulled over for going 90 on a freeway in north San Diego county, King waited on the marble bench of a hallway in an Alhambra courthouse. He would be convicted of misdemeanor hit-and-run in a fight with his estranged wife last year, acquitted on more serious charges. Even before he heard that news, he had made a pledge:

“You won’t hear about me anymore.” He relented and smiled to a reporter. “Maybe just a ticket. A parking ticket.”

In 1992, the year of the riots and the election, President George Bush’s name appeared in this paper almost as often as Rodney King’s (Bush 1,908, King 2,089). And George Bush could have told him that to make such a statement--like “Read my lips, no new taxes”--is not merely tempting fate but mailing it an engraved invitation.

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Some people believe unswervingly that the 1991 videotaped beating hung a flashing, beeping, glittering neon “Kick Me” sign on Rodney King’s back for the rest of his life.

And there are others who are certain that it handed Rodney King a get-out-of-jail-free card with no expiration date.

Those of the first school will point to a pile of small-potato encounters with the law since 1991--illegally tinted windows, picking up a transvestite hooker and aiming his car at vice cops, domestic abuse, seat belt violation, drunk driving charges here and there.

Police harassment, they will say. He put it to the cops, and now the cops are out to put it to him. And after what he’s been put through, who wouldn’t be completely freaked at the sight of a cop?

Those of the second school will answer, Yeah, but:

How many guys get a deputy chief called to the scene of an ordinary domestic abuse complaint . . . just because it’s Rodney King? How many drivers with an expired car registration and no license on him would get to drive away without even a ticket? How many times did Daryl Gates get awakened at 3 a.m. on a “red-1” alert for a man caught with a transvestite hooker? How many guys would get released without being booked, and never thereafter charged, after allegedly trying to run down the undercover vice cop who caught him?

And how many traffic stops can rattle a designated CHP spokeswoman into staying mum about a plain speeding ticket until the agency’s public information officer shows up the next day to do the talking, as happened Sunday in San Diego County?

Target or troubled, there’s Rodney King--a one-man full-employment act for police.

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Three or four dozen O.J. Simpson books, and look at the empty shelf of the lagging Rodney King industry. Lawyers, tour guides, reporters, comedy writers still haven’t produced the definitive guidebook to the man whose name is a Rosetta stone of these times. The index alone would be rich reading.

KING, RODNEY, and:

MOVIES: Court ruling prompts filmmaker Spike Lee to delete beating video from opening to “Malcolm X”

RAP: Rap musician invites King to remake “F--- tha Police.” Another denounces him as an Uncle Tom for his soothing remarks during the rioting.

GEOGRAPHY: Puts Lake View Terrace on the map.

JOKES: A boon to Comic Relief. LAPD flier jokes about a “stealth baton” not visible to video.

POLITICS: Joins neighbors to fight a county shutdown of recreation programs in a park near his home. Simi Valley school board candidate Jim King finds his campaign signs plastered over to read “Elect Rodney King.”

SCHOOLKIDS: Tustin High School students hear him urge them to stay in school. Poway students “play Rodney King,” beating and kicking one student.

POLLUTION: On fires during riots, “We’ve got enough smog in Los Angeles.”

DRIVING: Numerous entries. License expires 4/2/98. Lawyers are still duking it out over their take of King’s $3.8-million settlement. But there must be something left. Fox the cops, Mr. King: Hire a driver.