Hard Revolution

  “You doin’ all right?” said Darius.

  “Fine,” said Derek in an unconvincing way.

  “Rough, isn’t it?”

  “It can be.”

  “I suppose you’re not gettin’ the love you thought you would.”

  “I’m not winnin’ any popularity contests.”

  “Remember, the good folks, they got no problem with seein’ you coming down the street. It’s the criminals and the no-accounts gonna look at you and hate. This city is finally getting a police force that looks like its people, so you’re doin’ something that’s necessary and right. You ought to be proud of that.”

  “It’s just hard.”

  “If it’s important,” said Darius, “it usually is. You’ll be fine, long as you don’t get off the path. Get caught up in that power thing, the way some of these police do. Forget why they took the job to begin with.”

  “I’m straight,” said Derek.

  “I know you are, son,” said Darius.

  “You just watch yourself, hear?” said Alethea.

  “Yes, ma’am.”

  Darius looked his son over with admiration. He didn’t have to say what he was feeling. Derek knew. He was getting, in a silent way, what every son craved from his father and what few ever got: validation and respect. It was all in his eyes.

  “We get your big brother straightened around, too,” said Darius, “we gonna be all right.”

  “BUY ME ANOTHER beer,” said Walter Hess.

  “They already turned the lights on,” said Buzz Stewart.

  “That’s good,” said Hess. “Now I can see what I’m drinkin’.”

  “He means it’s closing time,” said Dominic Martini.

  “I know what he means, you dumb fuckin’ guinea,” said Hess. He turned to Stewart with unfocused eyes. “Buy me another beer, dad.”

  They were in a white bar in a black neighborhood on 14th. The men wore leathers, Macs, and motorcycle boots. The women wore Peters jackets and Ban-Lon shirts. Mitch Ryder was playing on the radio. The crowd was sweaty and drunk-ugly in the bright lights of last call. A fog of cigarette smoke hung in the air.

  “C’mon, Shorty,” said Stewart, grabbing a sleeve of Hess’s jacket and pulling him toward the door.

  Hess pulled his arm free as they walked. He stopped at a woman he did not know who was standing beside a guy who was drinking a Schlitz. The woman had a pocked face and a peroxide streak in her hair. Hess gave her a kiss. Her back was to a wall and she dropped her arms helplessly to her sides. Hess jammed his tongue in her mouth and licked her lips for good measure as he pulled away.

  “Hey,” said the guy she was with, stepping forward.

  “Hay is for horses, faggot,” said Hess, cross-eyed and grinning.

  The man did nothing and said nothing else. A bouncer named Dale, a friend to Stewart and Hess, came quickly from around the stick. He went straight to the guy who had defended the girl and put him up against the wall. Dale’s left hand held his shirt collar and pinned him there. He smashed his right fist into the guy’s nose. The nose caved, and blood ran down the guy’s upper lip and into his mouth. He dropped his bottle and his eyes rolled to white. Dale hit him again. The people in the bar tipped their heads back to finish their beers.

  Hess left the place cackling, followed by Stewart and Martini. All lit smokes on the way to Hess’s car.

  They drove up 14th, all three drunker than shit. Stewart fucked with the radio dial and found a Marvin and Tammi single he liked. He turned it up. Hess double-clutched coming up a rise and the surge pushed Martini back against his seat.

  “Slow down,” said Martini.

  “Slow down,” said Hess in a girlish way. He gave the Ford more gas.

  “I’m not kiddin’ around,” said Martini.

  “Shut your cocksucker,” said Hess.

  Over the rise, on a residential strip of 14th somewhere between Park and Arkansas, they saw a young black man walking the sidewalk a block or so south of their car. Hess eased his foot off the gas, looked in the rearview, looked ahead, and saw no one else driving the street. Except for the black man, there was no pedestrian traffic. Hess cut the headlights and slowed to a crawl.

  “Buzz,” said Martini, “tell him to knock this shit off.”

  Hess and Stewart kept their eyes down the road. The black man looked over his shoulder and slightly quickened his pace.

  “He heard us,” said Stewart.

  “Course he did,” said Hess, “loud as you’re playin’ that boofer music.”

  “It’s the exhaust system in this piece of shit that’s makin’ all the noise.”

  “If you call purrin’ noise.” Hess squinted. “How come he ain’t runnin’, though?”

  “They don’t never run no more, you know that. He’s daring you, son.”

  “I should peg that nigger, Stubie.”

  “Scare him some,” said Stewart. “Go ahead.”

  “Don’t,” said Martini, the word barely making a sound against the music coming from the radio.

  Hess found a break in the line of parked cars, carefully drove over the curb, and got the Ford up on the sidewalk. He cruised slowly down the hill. The black man turned his head again, double-taked, and ran. Hess laughed and hit the gas.

  “How many points?” said Hess.

  “Make it ten.”

  They closed in on him quickly. The black man leaped off the sidewalk and hit the street.

  “Look at him go,” said Hess.

  “Like he seen an alligator,” said Stewart.

  Hess tore up turf as he jumped the curb and got back onto the street. He downshifted, rubber crying as the tires struggled for purchase on the asphalt. He pinned the gas pedal and narrowed the distance between man and car. In the backseat, Martini’s fingers dented black vinyl.

  The young man suddenly cut right and headed for the space between two parked cars, a purple Chevy and a white Dodge. Hess followed. The Ford fishtailed, then found its feet again.

  Stewart looked over at his friend. “Hey, Shorty.”

  They were on the young man startlingly fast. Hess jammed the middle pedal to the floor, but the speed was too much for the brakes, and the Ford went into a skid. The young man’s head turned. Stewart thinking, Damn, his eyes are wider than shit, as the Galaxie lifted the young man and took him into the front quarter of the white Dodge. At the point of impact, all the occupants of the Ford were thrown forward. Stewart and Hess jacked into the dash; Martini’s head bounced off the bench. They sat there dazed, the world spinning slightly, the blare of the radio and something else ringing in their ears.

  Hess swallowed blood. His mouth had hit the wheel violently and the collision had split his upper lip. Stewart touched a deep gash on his brow, felt wetness there, pulled back a finger smudged with red. With a shaking right hand he cut the radio off.

  They cleared the dizziness from their heads. They looked through the windshield. They saw the young man, arms twisted, torso misshapen, lying at an unnatural angle on the hood in a quickly spreading pool of liquid, pinned to the Dodge. Lights came on in row houses that had been dark moments ago.

  “We need to get ourselves gone, Shorty,” said Stewart, seeing Hess working the shifter through the gears but doing nothing else.

  “What?”

  “Haul ass.”

  The young man’s body slid off the hood as Hess put the Ford into reverse and flipped on its lights. A single beam shot out from the front of the car. They pulled back, and a fine spray of blood erupted from the young man’s mouth as he rolled onto his side in the street. One hand reached up as if to grab at something. The hand dropped. The body moved in spasm and then didn’t move at all.

  Hess hit it. He drove up 14th as sirens gathered in the distance. Martini closed his eyes. Stewart put a Marlboro between his lips and pushed the lighter into the dash. Hess goosed the gas and shifted for speed, muttering all the while. He was wondering just how bad he’d fucked up his car.

  VAUGHN WAS COMING
up 16th Street in his unmarked, freshly fucked and relaxed from his last highball, listening to his dash radio, his two-way turned down low, when he heard the news about LBJ’s decision. The newsman on WWDC said that local reaction to the announcement had been swift.

  “Scores of local college students, some reportedly barefoot, danced in celebration, singing ‘We Shall Overcome’ across from the White House in Lafayette Park. Many wore McCarthy bumper stickers on their backs. . . .”

  “Christ,” said Vaughn. He only hoped his son wasn’t among the celebrants. Way his hair was hitting his collar, he’d fit right in.

  A call came in from the station. Vaughn pulled the mic from its cradle and responded. It was a hit-and-run on a residential block of a two-syllable cross street on 14th. He hit the gas. By the time he got there, uniforms, ME suits, and a meat wagon had already arrived.

  In the flashbulb light of an MPD photographer, amid the strobe of the cherry tops, Vaughn saw the twisted body lying in a slick of blood on the street. The young man, Vernon Wilson, age seventeen, had been IDed by the contents of his wallet. Uniforms had begun to canvass the residents, but as of yet no one claimed to have seen a thing, though one man said that, through his screen windows, he had heard the squeal of tires, loud music, and a collision. Headlight glass, bits of a grille, and a Ford insignia were found near the body. The light of a flashlight revealed red paint on the dented portion of the white Dodge where the crime had taken place.

  Vaughn walked up and down the block and examined the general area. Tomorrow he’d try to determine the make of the Ford by having his lab man, who was good with cars, study the grillwork, logo, and shards of glass. Vaughn would put the word out at the usual body shops to look out for damage to the fender, headlights, grille, hood, and front quarter panels of a red Ford. He’d visit certain garages that had a history of breaking down or repairing vehicles associated with criminals and crime.

  If it was determined that this was something other than a homicide, then his involvement would end. It might have been a garden-variety blind drunk who had hit the kid, panicked, and fled. If so, then the hope would be that the driver would wake up sober, see Jesus, call the police, and turn himself in. But Vaughn was almost certain this would become one of his.

  North of the death spot, the grassy strips framing the sidewalk had been tracked and dug up in spots, telling Vaughn that the driver of the Ford had deliberately gone off the road. Also, the car had burned rubber on the street, with skid marks at the scene, indicating recklessness and acceleration. It was as if Vernon Wilson had been hunted. The loud music meant the driver or occupants were young and, to some degree, enjoying the game, too.

  It was highly doubtful that Wilson was connected to someone of importance in some political way, so there would be no pressure to solve the case. This was, at bottom, a colored kid with a broken neck, a low priority at best. Still, Vaughn would do his job.

  DENNIS STRANGE STOOD in the alley that ran behind Princeton and Otis. He struck a match and cupped his hand around the flame. Masking its flare, he lit the joint he’d rolled, drew on it, and let the sweet smoke lie in his lungs.

  A dog was barking at the north T of the alley, up near Park View Elementary. He knew from the deep sound that the dog, a long-haired German shepherd, was the family pet of those people, the Broadnaxes, who’d recently lost a son in the war. They’d had that animal for fifteen years. He could identify most every dog around these blocks by their barks. It was a thing that happened when you stayed in one place so long. In his case, too long. Wasn’t natural for a man to be staying with his parents past a certain age, he knew. But then, he hadn’t planned it. Problem was, he never had planned a thing.

  Dennis let the smoke out and took more in.

  Up in the kitchen of his parents’ apartment, the circular fluorescent in the ceiling had been shut off. He could see the blue light of the television playing on the walls, bleeding out from the living room, where his father still sat. Watching a western if there was one on; if not, one of those cop things.

  Dennis had delivered the check to his man, James Hayes, the longtime dealer who lived over on Otis, and had gotten some smoke in return. Hayes was on the old side, not flashy, dressed clean, quiet. Lived alone and occasionally entertained women friends. Every neighborhood seemed to house dealers like him, one for gage and one for heroin. Sometimes, but not often, the same man sold both. Many of the adults living in the vicinity knew what the man did to make his living, and as they grew, the kids learned, too. Most of the time, people decided to go about their business and let him be.

  Dennis drew hard on the reefer and felt it hit him like a kiss.

  You didn’t talk to the police. That was the rule. Not unless some violent shit got perpetrated on an elderly person or a kid. In the eyes of many, a snitch was worse than a criminal. That’s just the way it was. Even his father, about as straight as a man could be, felt that way.

  Not that his father didn’t admire Derek and his uniform. It was understating it to say that he did. Loving his son the policeman was different, though, than loving the police. To go to a police for something that could work itself out or be worked out by means other than the law, well, that was wrong. Dennis felt that way for sure. Course, it did present problems sometimes. Like that thing that was gonna go down tomorrow with Alvin and Kenneth. If his father knew about something like that in advance and one of those involved was his friend, what would he do?

  The reefer had begun to work on Dennis’s head. His thoughts grew grandiose and bold.

  Okay: He wasn’t gonna stand back and let those boys rob that market. Way Alvin was wired, he might just murder that older brother behind the counter if things went wrong. And he, Dennis, would have that on his head. Another thing to add to his list of shame.

  He could do something about it. Something that would make his father look at him the way he looked at Derek. The way he himself looked at Derek in his mind.

  “Oh, shit,” said Dennis, chuckling at the thought, liking the thought, staring at the joint burning between the fingers of his hand.

  Maybe I’ll let this high come on me full now, he thought. Walk around a little, think up a plan.

  That would be a change for me, thought Dennis Strange. A plan.

  FIFTEEN

  ON MONDAY, DOWN in Memphis, the body of sixteen-year-old Larry Payne, shot and killed by a white policeman, lay in state at Clayborn Temple African Methodist Episcopal Church, the starting point for the previous week’s march led by the Reverend Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. Hundreds of blacks came to the church to pay their respects under the gaze of National Guard troops. King would return the following day to Memphis, where he was scheduled to lead another march on Friday.

  On Monday, around the country, politicians commented publicly on LBJ’s withdrawal from the race and his new, relatively dovish stance on the war in Vietnam. Former Vice President Richard Nixon, the leading Republican candidate, said that “a bombing halt in itself would not be a step toward peace.” California governor Ronald Reagan stated that “de-escalation has usually resulted in the death of more Americans” and added that he “would favor a step-up of the war.” Robert Kennedy, Eugene McCarthy, and Vice President Hubert Humphrey publicly expressed support for the president’s decisions while scrambling behind the scenes to capitalize on this unexpected opportunity and position themselves more favorably for the upcoming race. Johnson himself, in an unusually candid and relaxed speech to the National Association of Broadcasters, said that there were “some things that a president cannot do to buy popularity” and admitted to his “shortcomings as a communicator.”

  On Monday, in D.C., working-class people went about their day-to-day. Derek Strange and Troy Peters patrolled their district. Buzz Stewart followed Walter Hess to a garage in Hyattsville, Maryland, where Hess dropped off his Galaxie to be repaired. Then Stewart drove Hess to his job at the machine shop and went on to his own shift at the Esso station, where Dominic Martini was already on the cl
ock, pumping gas. Inside the Three-Star on Kennedy Street, Darius Strange stood over a hot grill, trying not to think of the pain in his back, while Mike Georgelakos patrolled the diner, operating the register and making small talk with the customers. Ella Lockheart served food around him. Kenneth Willis cleaned an elementary school off Kansas Avenue in Northwest. Alethea Strange cleaned a house on Caddington Avenue in Silver Spring. Her older son, Dennis, rode down 7th Street in a D.C. Transit bus.

  Dennis Strange, carrying a book he had been reading, got off the bus between Florida and Rhode Island and walked east into the low-number streets of LeDroit Park. He found the market with the green-and-gold sign over the door and went inside.

  The old Jew, Mr. Ludvig, sat behind the counter, the Post spread out before him. The market’s black-and-white set was on channel 5, playing the local interview show, Panorama, had that young dude, the son of the sportswriter Shirley Povich, as the host.

  Mr. Ludvig raised his head as Dennis entered the shop. Negative recognition came to his watery eyes. Then he forced himself to smile. “You’re my pack of Kools. Am I right?”

  “That was me,” said Dennis, “but not today. I’m lookin’ for that man works here, goes by John.”

  “Mr. Thomas is in the stockroom.”

  “I speak to him?”

  Ludvig looked Dennis over, then got off his stool slowly, grunted, and walked into the stockroom. Dennis heard muffled voices, and in short order Ludvig returned.

  “Walk around to the alley. John’s getting ready to have a smoke break. He’ll be out back.”

  The alley bordered two residential blocks, all row houses, with the market the only commercial property on the strip. Street cats and kittens scattered as Dennis walked the cracked concrete. Up ahead, a boy was throwing a tennis ball against a wall of bricks. The boy studied Dennis, then held the ball to let him pass.