Hard Revolution

by George Pelecanos

  AN HOUR LATER they were parked up on 14th Street, way north of Columbia Road, drinking beers and huffing cigarettes. “The Girl Can’t Help It” was playing on the radio, and Stewart was tapping his finger in time on the steering wheel.

  Both of them were drunk stupid but still adrenalized from the fight. Stewart had waded in after Hess had caught that right and they had cleaned house from there on in. The most prideful thing about it was they weren’t even tossed. In fact, they had walked out on their own two feet as the band played “Rumble” to their backs. Stewart would always remember the way that felt, like Link was playing that song for him. They should have been satisfied, but they still had energy to burn and felt that the night was not yet done.

  “What you figure he’s doin’?” said Hess, looking down the street to where a young colored guy stood by himself.

  “Pretty obvious he’s waitin’ on a bus,” said Stewart, thinking, as he did sometimes, that someone had taken a scalpel to Shorty’s brain. Hell, the boy was right there at the D.C. Transit stop.

  Hess touched at his lip. The blood had congealed some, but it still seeped out occasionally, as the split was deep. He put his cigarette in the other side of his mouth and had a drag.

  “What you gonna do?” said Hess.

  “What you mean?”

  “Like, with your life?”

  “I don’t know.” Stewart hadn’t weighed it much.

  “I’m thinking of enlisting in the Corps.”

  “Think they’ll take you, huh?”

  “Why wouldn’t they?”

  “Ain’t you never heard of a Section Eight?”

  Hess rubbed at his crotch, thinking of the duck-looking girl he’d had. She’d fought him some when he jammed his fingers down those panties of hers. Maybe he had been a little rough with her, but shit, they said don’t, you knew they meant do.

  “You know that girl I had tonight?” said Hess.

  “I seen her on You Bet Your Life. She dropped down from the ceiling and almost hit Groucho.”

  “Stop it. That girl was the most, man.”

  “The most ugly. Had to be to get with you.”

  The two friends laughed. And then Hess’s eyes narrowed as he tried to focus on the colored boy down the street.

  “Let’s try and peg that coon, Stubie. You wanna?”

  “Sure,” said Stewart. “Why not?”

  Stewart hit the ignition and cruised slowly down the street. He kept the headlights off.

  “He’s watchin’ us,” said Hess. “He’s trying not to, but he is.”

  Hess reached over to the radio and turned it way up, Little Richard’s wail of release hitting the night. The colored boy turned his head in the direction of the Ford.

  “Now we got his attention,” said Hess.

  Buzz Stewart drove his car up on the sidewalk and punched the gas. The colored boy took off.

  “Run, nigger, run,” said Hess.

  “How many points if I hit him?”

  “Say five.”

  Stewart laughed as they closed in on him. The boy leaped off the sidewalk and hit the street. Hess cackled as Stewart cut left, jumped the curb, and felt his four wheels find asphalt. At the last moment, when they got dangerously close, Stewart braked to a stop.

  They watched the boy hotfoot it down the street. They laughed about it on the ride home.

  DETECTIVE FRANK VAUGHN checked in with his lieutenant down at the Sixth Precinct house and changed over to a black Ford. He drove around town, talked with his informants, and interviewed potential witnesses on a recent homicide involving a liquor store messenger who was lured to an address by a phone call, then robbed and shot dead. He had a few bourbons at a bar near Colorado Avenue and didn’t pay for one. While there, he phoned a divorcée he knew who lived in an apartment on 16th, near the bridge with the lions. He and the divorcée, a tall, curvy brunette named Linda, had a couple of cocktails at her place and some loose conversation before he fucked her on her queen-size bed. An hour after he had entered her apartment, he was back on the job.

  Late that night he was called to the scene of a murder on Crittenden Street, down near Sherman Circle. The colored kid who’d bought it, eighteen years old, had been stabbed in the neck and chest. Uniforms had begun to canvass the neighbors but had turned up nothing yet.

  Vaughn would do his job in a methodical, unhurried way. There wouldn’t be much pressure from the white shirts to make a quick arrest. A dead colored boy was not a high priority. Hell, it would barely make the papers.

  The mother of the victim had arrived on the scene and was crying hysterically. The sound of her grief turned Vaughn’s thoughts to his maid, Alethea Strange. She had two sons, one the same age as Ricky, the other about the same age as the dead kid lying on the street. He’d met them once, and her husband, when he’d driven her home in a hard summer rain.

  He shook off the thought. Every murder was a tragedy to someone, after all.

  DEREK STRANGE LAY in his bed, listening to a scratching sound. The wind was moving the branches and leaves of the tree outside his window. A dog was making noise out there, too. Had to be the Broadnaxes’ shepherd, barking in the alley that ran behind the house. That’s all it was. A tree he climbed regular and a dog who always licked his outstretched hand.

  Dennis was still out with his friends. Their parents had returned from the movie and gone to bed.

  Derek felt his blood pulsing hard inside him. He wanted Dennis to come back home. He wanted him under the same roof as his mother and father. It was safe here when they were all together in this house.

  He got up, went to Dennis’s bed, and slipped underneath the sheets and blanket. His brother wouldn’t mind that he’d switched. Derek smiled, smelling Dennis in the bed, knowing then that he could rest. He closed his eyes and fell asleep.

  As he slept, shadows crept across the wall.

  PART 2

  Spring 1968

  EIGHT

  COMING OUT OF Sunday school at St. Sophia Greek Orthodox Cathedral, a boy heard a slow, carefully enunciated voice echoing from outdoor speakers. The voice was commanding and somehow welcoming. The boy walked down the front steps of his church and headed in the direction of the voice.

  Around him, fathers were gathering their wives and children. Men were laughing with one another and smoking after-service cigarettes. The day was pleasantly cool. The smell of tobacco smoke and the scent of dogwood and magnolia blossoms were in the air.

  The boy neared a big man with a friendly, wide-open face, scarred on one cheek, who was on the sidewalk talking to another aging Greek. The big man smiled at the eleven-year-old boy, who had curly brown hair and wore a blue blazer with an attendance pin fixed to its lapel.

  “You ready, Niko?”

  “Not yet, Papou. Soon.”

  “Where you goin’?”

  “Gonna see what’s goin’ on over there. I’ll be right back.”

  “Okay, boy. Meet me at the karo.”

  The big man watched his grandson cross Garfield, go down a set of concrete steps, and disappear into the grounds of the National Cathedral.

  The boy followed the voice and walked through a lawn landscaped with azaleas and other shrubs, finally reaching the edge of a huge crowd. He made his way into the middle of the crowd, which was mostly white, but a different kind of white than he and his grandfather and friends. His grandfather called these people Amerikani, or sometimes simply aspri. They were facing the loudspeakers that had been placed outside the cathedral and they were listening to that voice, sounded like a black man, which was coming from somewhere inside the stone walls. From the look of concentration on their faces, the boy could tell that what was being said was important.

  “. . . we are not coming to Washington to engage in any histrionic action, nor are we coming to tear up Washington. . . .”

  The boy turned to the man beside him and tugged on his suit jacket.

  “Excuse me,” said the boy. “Who is that?”

  “D
r. King,” said the man, who did not take his eyes from the loudspeakers as he answered.

  “. . . I don’t like to predict violence, but if nothing is done between now and June to raise ghetto hope, I feel this summer will not only be as bad, but worse than last year.”

  Some of the men in the crowd looked at their wives as this was said. These same men and women then glanced at their children.

  Soon the boy grew bored, as he did not understand the meaning of Dr. King’s words. He walked from the cathedral grounds back toward the property where his own church and people stood. His grandfather was leaning against his gold ’63 Buick Wildcat, parked on Garfield. He flicked the last of his cigarette onto the street and opened the passenger door for the boy. Then he got under the wheel of his car and turned the ignition.

  “You went to hear the mavros, eh?” said the grandfather, pulling away from the curb.

  “I heard a little,” said the boy. “Is he good?”

  “Good?” The grandfather shrugged. “What the hell do I know? I think he believes what he’s sayin’. Anyway, he’s stirring things up, that’s for sure.”

  The boy reached for the radio switch. “Where we goin’?”

  “To see Kirio Georgelakos, over on Kennedy Street. He ran out of tomatoes. I told him we’d drop some by.”

  The boy, whose name was Nick Stefanos, fiddled with the dial of the radio, stopping it at 1390. He found a rock-and-roll song he liked on WEAM and upped the volume. He began to sing along.

  “What the hell?” said the grandfather, also named Nick Stefanos, with a gruff voice. But he was not annoyed. In fact, he was amused. He looked across the bench and gave the boy a crooked smile.

  BIG NICK STEFANOS parked his Wildcat in the alley behind a fastback Mustang, got a crate of tomatoes out of his trunk, and called through the screen door of the Three-Star before he and his grandson walked inside. He dropped the crate in the small storage room before going through a doorway leading to the dishwashing area behind the counter.

  “Niko,” said Mike Georgelakos, holding a spatula, leaning over the grill, his bald dome framed by patches of gray.

  “I put the tomatoes in the back.”

  “Thanks, boss.”

  “Tipota.”

  Nick and his grandson went around the counter, nodding at Billy, Mike’s son, who was working colds. Billy, a younger, taller, hairier version of his father, wore an apron and kept a ballpoint pen lodged behind his ear. Over by the urns, a thin waitress pulled down on a black handle and drew a stream of coffee into a cup. The two Nicks found seats on empty stools.

  All the booths and half the counter seats were taken. Mike Georgelakos opened for a few hours on Sundays to catch an after-church flurry that occurred between noon and one o’clock. Many of the customers wore dresses and suits. Gospel music came from the radio set on the AM station that normally played rhythm and blues.

  A black cop and a white cop, both in uniform, sat at the counter having breakfast. Before them were cups of coffee and plates of eggs, potatoes, grilled onions, and half smokes. Occasionally they said a few quiet words to each other, but mostly they worked on their food. A couple of teenage boys sitting in a booth with their mother stared boldly at the backs of the police officers, studying their size and the service revolvers holstered on their hips.

  “That your new car out back, Billy?” said the older Nick.

  “It’s a two-plus-two,” said Billy Georgelakos, his eyes on the club sandwich he was making on the board in front of him.

  “Orayo eine.”

  “Yeah, it’s nice.”

  “Tha fas simera?” called Mike from behind the grill.

  “No food today,” said Nick Stefanos. “Just a quick caffe for me and a cherry Co-Cola for my boy.”

  The frail, pretty waitress drew a coffee for the older man, poured a shot of cherry syrup into a glass of Coke she had pulled from the soda dispenser, and served them both.

  “Ella, you do good work.”

  “Thank you, Mr. Nick.”

  They drank up their coffee and soda. The boy was not uncomfortable here, as his grandfather also owned a lunch counter, Nick’s Grill, on 14th and S, that catered to blacks. Still, in both establishments he was always aware that he was in a different world than his own.

  Big Nick left a dollar under his saucer for Ella. He and the boy went to the register, where Mike had just finished ringing up a sale. It was understood that Mike would not give Nick money for the tomatoes and that sometime in the future the debt would be repaid in kind. Also understood was that the drinks were on the house.

  “How you doin,’ young man?” said Mike to the boy. “You all right?”

  “Yes.”

  “Good boy.” Mike turned to the older man, whom he’d known for twenty-some-odd years. “You went to church, eh? I heard the mavros was supposed to talk down there.”

  “King?” said Nick Stefanos. “He talked. Got a big crowd, too.”

  “He’s gonna make trouble,” said Mike, lowering his voice. “He’s gonna get ’em all stirred up.”

  “Whatever’s gonna happen’s gonna happen,” said Nick with a shrug. He looked across the counter at Mike, carrying twenty pounds he didn’t need, sweating, breathing hard from walking down twenty feet of rubber mats. “You can’t stop it, patrioti, so don’t waste your time worryin’ about it. You’re gonna make yourself sick.”

  Mike waved his hand. “Goddamn, you know me, I don’t worry about nothin’.”

  “Looks like you can use some help. Where’s your grill man today?”

  “He don’t work Sundays. Between me and my boy and Ella, we can handle it all right.”

  “Take it easy, Michali,” said Nick, reaching over the counter to shake Mike’s hand.

  “You, too.”

  As Nick Stefanos and his grandson left the store, the two cops dropped some change on the counter, got up off their stools, and walked to the register. The boys who had been staring at them so boldly looked down at their plates as the tall men crossed the room.

  “How you like it, boys?”

  “I’m gonna be dreamin’ about those half smokes tonight,” said the white cop, who had the South in his voice.

  “That’s my signature,” said Mike, catching the black cop’s eye. “I learned it from a pro.”

  “How much, Mr. Mike?” said the black cop.

  “Two dollars for both,” said Mike, charging them two dollars less than he would have charged civilians.

  “Have a blessed day, young man,” said the waitress, Ella Lockheart, as she passed behind the black cop, who was in the process of returning his wallet to the back pocket of his slacks.

  “You do the same.”

  At the door, the young black cop, broad shouldered, dark skinned, and handsome, turned and called to Billy Georgelakos, standing at the colds station.

  “Yasou, Vasili.”

  “Yasou, Derek.”

  The black cop, Derek Strange, and the white cop, who was named Troy Peters, walked out of the Three-Star and headed toward their squad car, parked out on the street.

  STRANGE KEYED THE mic and radioed in to tell the station operator that he and his partner were back on duty. They cruised west down the strip, Peters under the wheel. A few kids were lining up for the matinee at the Kennedy; its marquee read “Joan Crawford goes Berserk!” Bars, cleaners, and other shops were shuttered. A couple of young men dipping down the sidewalk cold-eyed Strange as the squad car passed.

  “Go on, fellas,” said Peters. “Wave to Officer Friendly.”

  “Don’t you know the po-lice is your buddy?” said Strange. Peters chuckled, but Strange could not bring himself to smile.

  This was the part of the job, the open contempt, that got under Strange’s skin. Wouldn’t have been so bad if he only got it while he was in uniform. But he was reminded of it even when he was not on duty. Once, at a party near Florida and 7th, a woman told him in front of Darla Harris, his date, that what he was doing was a form of betrayal,
that, in essence, he was a traitor. But he felt that he was not. He was protecting his people. He was doing a job that few were willing to do and that needed to get done. He had convinced himself of this early on so he could get through his day-to-day.

  It was true that he had been warned by the experienced black officers to expect this kind of attitude. But he didn’t know it would continue to bother him as deeply as it did. He talked about it with his friend Lydell Blue whenever he could, because he could not talk about it with Troy Peters. Lydell had also become an MPD cop, straight out of the army. He knew.

  Wasn’t everybody. Plenty of people showed him respect. Older folks, mostly, and little kids. Still, as he got into the poorer neighborhoods, he was looked upon as the enemy by everyone, especially by the young. Sometimes he caught it from his own blood. On the afternoon of Strange’s graduation from the academy, his brother, Dennis, high on something, had congratulated him, then said, “You a full-fledged member of the occupying army now.” Strange was tempted to tell his brother that he had no call to be cuttin’ on anyone who had a job, but he held his tongue. Dennis didn’t mean anything by it, for real. He had always been against anything that smelled like the system. His parents, at least, had looked at him with pride.

  “You hear those two old birds in there, talkin’ about Dr. King?” said Peters.

  “I heard ’em,” said Strange.

  “They’re afraid, is what it is.”

  Strange looked across the bench at his blond-haired partner. “Now you’re gonna tell me you’re not.”

  “Not in that way. Look, if these people out here don’t get some kind of relief, it’s all gonna boil over. I don’t look forward to that kind of violence. I’m afraid of it, okay? But those old guys, what they’re afraid of is the change itself. I’m talkin’ about how their world is gonna change forever when all of this gets settled once and for all. Me, I welcome that kind of change.”

  “You welcome it, huh?”

  “You know what I mean.”

  “Okay. But here’s something for you to remember while you’re bein’ so broad-minded. Come revolution time? You go out there and greet these people with open arms? Yours is gonna be the first throat they cut.”