Hard Revolution

by George Pelecanos

  “Okay, I promise.”

  It was a lie.

  “Come here,” said Vaughn.

  She crossed the room and put her arms around his waist. He lowered his face and kissed her on the lips. He pushed himself against her to let her know he was alive. He thought of Linda Allen and her warm box.

  “I might be late tonight, doll.”

  “Call me. So I know you’re all right.”

  Vaughn left the room and stepped onto the second-floor landing, glancing at Ricky’s closed door before going down the stairs. Alethea Strange was waiting for him in the foyer, buttoning her coat over her uniform dress.

  “Let’s go,” said Vaughn.

  “Aren’t you gonna say good-bye to your son?”

  “What, you kiddin’?”

  “Tell him you love him. Hug him, Mr. Vaughn.” Alethea made a motion with her chin, pointing it toward the second floor. “Go ahead. I can wait.”

  Something in her liquid brown eyes told him not to protest. He went back up the stairs and knocked on Ricky’s door.

  DOWNTOWN GOVERNMENT WORKERS and private-sector employees, hearing the ongoing reports of escalating rioting on the radio, getting panic calls from spouses, and seeing the smoke drifting toward them from the eastern portion of the city, began to leave their jobs in numbers. Retail employees on F Street and in the rest of the downtown district did the same. Massive uptown and crosstown traffic jams ensued. Some citizens stepped into four-ways and tried to direct cars through gridlocked intersections. Others abandoned their automobiles and walked, trying to relieve the anxiety they felt at being trapped inside their vehicles.

  On Georgia Avenue, the northbound lanes were at a virtual standstill. Vaughn drove his Polara south with relative ease, Alethea Strange beside him on the big bench seat. They had passed through Shepherd Park and Sheridan, where there had been scattered window-breaking and looting at places like Ida’s department store, but nothing of the magnitude of 7th Street below. The sky had darkened and the smell of smoke grew stronger as they drove deeper into the city.

  Vaughn lit a cigarette and kept it in his left hand, hanging it out the window so as not to bother Alethea. He turned on the radio and tuned it to a middle-of-the-road station just as the DJ began to introduce a song: “And here’s one you’re gonna like, Frank and Nancy Sinatra doing ‘Somethin’ Stupid.’ I’m Fred Fiske, and you’re listening to twelve six-oh, WWDC.”

  Vaughn sang the Frank parts under his breath and let Nancy do her thing without his accompaniment. Alethea had to marvel at Vaughn’s nonchalant attitude in the face of the ongoing events. But then, that was Frank Vaughn all over. Single-minded, unchanging, stuck in a time that never was and that existed, perhaps, only in his mind.

  “Did you talk to Ricky?” said Alethea as the song came to an end.

  “A little,” said Vaughn, keeping his eyes on the road.

  “He’s a good boy.”

  “Yeah, he’s all right.”

  “It’s important to tell them that you love them,” she said. “Every time they leave the house, or you leave . . . You just don’t know if you’ll ever have the chance again. Only the Lord has that kind of knowledge.”

  “Amen,” said Vaughn clumsily.

  He was sweating a little under his collar. He knew she was reflecting on the death of her firstborn son and her own regrets. He had never been comfortable with these kinds of conversations.

  When he’d gone into Ricky’s room, their brief exchange had been awkward and forced. Ricky hadn’t even turned down the music, some guy singing about his “white room,” something to do with drugs, most likely. Vaughn had given his son a hug before he left, as Alethea had suggested, the first one he’d given him in years. It felt as okay as an embrace could feel between two men. What he hadn’t done was tell Ricky that he loved him. He didn’t understand why you had to say you loved your kid or, for that matter, put your arms around him to show it. Hell, he’d been feeding him, clothing him, and buying him things his whole life. For Chrissakes, wasn’t that enough?

  “Thank you,” said Alethea.

  “For what?”

  “Looking after Derek yesterday during that robbery. He told me the whole story.”

  “He . . .” Vaughn searched for the word. “He acquitted himself well. He’s a fine young man. Gonna be good police.”

  They drove into Park View and neared her street.

  “I’m worried about him,” said Alethea. “Out there in all this.”

  Vaughn could feel her eyes on him directly.

  “I’ll look after him,” said Vaughn as casually as he could. “I’m goin’ down there now.”

  Down there, thought Vaughn, to find the one who murdered your son. I have fucked up everything good in my life, but there is one thing that I still do right.

  “Thank you, Frank,” she said.

  He felt himself blush as he heard her say his name. He turned left onto Princeton and went slowly up the street. He stopped at her row house, where her husband, Darin or whatever his name was, stood out front. He turned to look at her. She nodded at him once and smiled with her eyes. Vaughn thinking, She’s no Julie London. But, damn, that is a woman right there.

  Vaughn watched husband and wife embrace on the front stoop of their row house before he turned the Dodge around. He felt an unfamiliar stab of jealousy as he drove down to Georgia Avenue and hung a left. He put this feeling from his mind and punched the gas. At Irving, a group of kids stood on the sidewalk yelling things at southbound cars. A kid screamed “white motherfucker” at Vaughn as he passed.

  Vaughn flicked his cigarette out the open window and laughed.

  THIRTY-THREE

  THE TROUBLE ON H Street in Northeast started later than the trouble on 7th and 14th, but it came intensely and all at once. Sometime after one p.m., more than a thousand people rushed onto the strip, burning and looting twelve city blocks of commercial businesses, the longest continuous shopping corridor in black D.C. When the riot erupted, only two dozen police were on the scene.

  Police decided to protect the major stores as all available men from the Ninth Precinct sped to H. Shotgun-wielding cops patrolled the front of the neighborhood Safeway. Patrol cars blocked the front of the area Sears. But they couldn’t stop the damage occurring in the form of fire between 3rd and 15th, where H Street met Florida Avenue and Bladensburg Road.

  In alleys, looters collected their goods and made further plans of assault. Molotov cocktails were filled and ragged, tossed by men who were no longer interested in stealing liquor or merchandise. These arsonists went methodically from one store to the next, throwing their bombs. In this way, the Morton’s clothing store at 7th and H, one of the largest employers of blacks in the area, was destroyed. A teenage boy was later found inside the ruins, charred beyond recognition and never to be identified. At the I-C Furniture Company at 5th, a thirty-year-old man was crushed to death when a burning wall collapsed on him. Police arriving on H did not hesitate to fire gas grenades from launchers into the crowd. It deterred the rioters briefly. But by then, the entire corridor appeared to be on fire.

  Kenneth Willis walked down H with purpose. He had left his apartment and gone down to the strip, urging on the young men who were carrying the last of the beer and wine from the liquor store beneath his place, slapping others five who had gathered on the sidewalk. But Willis wasn’t interested in liquor or anything that small. He had seen a nice watch, looked like it had diamonds around its face, in the window of this jewelry store up a couple of blocks from where he stayed. Could have been fake diamonds pasted on that watch; he wasn’t sure. But a woman in a dark bar wouldn’t know the difference. A woman would want to get with a man who wore a watch like that on his wrist.

  Willis walked on, hoping these people out here hadn’t got to that jewelry store before he could.

  EAST OF THE Anacostia River, looting had become widespread. Police from the Eleventh and Fourteenth Precincts, showing less restraint than their fellow officers in
other areas of the city, and fearful for their lives, began firing their guns over the heads of looters to scare them off. By the end of the day, in Anacostia, police had shot and killed two young men.

  Police officials and Mayor Washington conferred with LBJ. Schools were officially closed, as were government offices. Sixty-four District fire-engine companies were deployed or put on alert. A like number of engine companies from Maryland, Virginia, and Pennsylvania headed for D.C. Troops from the Sixth Armored Cavalry were called in from Fort Meade, Maryland, as were the Third Infantry troops of Company D from Fort Meyer, Virginia. The Third would guard the Federal City and police 7th Street; the Sixth would stage at the Old Soldiers’ Home on North Capitol and proceed to H and 14th. The 91st Combat Engineer Battalion from Fort Belvoir, Virginia, was ordered into Far Southeast, Anacostia. The D.C. National Guard, now ready at the Armory, headed for Far Northeast.

  ALVIN JONES PARKED his Special on 15th Street, along Meridian Hill, and cut through the park to 16th. He headed for a strip of stone-and-brick row houses, apartments, and a few small hotels. Real nice over here on the Avenue of the Presidents. A broad, clean street, lots of trees . . . usually lots of white people, too. But not today. They were all stuck in their vehicles, looking out the windows. Paler than usual, eyes full of fear.

  It had taken Jones a couple of hours to get across town. He realized he would have to leave his car where he had parked it and walk back to Ronnie’s crib. He hoped what he was about to do would be worth all this sweat and time.

  Jones went up a sidewalk leading to the hotel. Looked like just another house, but it was not. He had cased it a couple of weeks back, walked right up to the registration desk and asked about their rates. Young white boy behind the desk, had doll lips, looked like he took it in his hind parts, had said, “Which type of room are you looking for?” not even thinking to call him “sir.” Well, he was gonna show some respect now.

  Jones put the stocking over his face right before he stepped through the door. He had the gun out of his pocket two steps in. A woman sitting in a chair in the lobby got a look at him and said, “Oh!” in a loud voice.

  “Shut up, bitch,” said Jones. She made no further sound.

  Wasn’t anyone else in the lobby. Jones walked right up to the desk where that boy with the doll lips stood. He had put his hands up in the air. They were already shaking before Jones spoke. Boy wore one of those shirts with the flaps and brass buttons on the shoulders, like he was an admiral in the navy, sumshit like that. Figured that this one would be wearing a sailor suit.

  “You know what this is, motherfucker,” said Jones, pointing the .38 at the white boy’s chest. “Give it up.”

  Jones looked through the lobby window to the street as the desk boy extracted some bills from the cash drawer and placed them on the counter. Wasn’t anyone out there except those who were jammed up in their cars. The guests who were staying in the hotel were probably all upstairs, holed up in their rooms.

  “You got a safe in this piece?” said Jones.

  “Yes, but —”

  “Open it, slim.”

  “It will take a few minutes.”

  “It’ll take a few minutes, sir.”

  “Sir,” said the young man, his lips trembling.

  Jones smiled through the mask. “I got time.”

  Fifteen minutes later he was walking east, his gun in one pocket, eight hundred dollars in the other, smiling occasionally at nothing at all, thinking on what a good day it had been, dreaming of a white El Dorado with red interior and electric windows and seats.

  Here I go, thought Jones. No more police on my ass or women with babies trying to bust on my groove. I will be out of this motherfucker tonight. And: I am rich.

  FRANK VAUGHN PARKED his Polara in a Howard University lot and walked with his shoulders squared into the fray on 7th. He had removed his badge from his case and pinned it on his lapel.

  Everything around him was burning. Ladder trucks, now topped with plywood and wrapped with chicken-wire cages to protect the firemen, attempted to move through the crowds. White-helmeted riot police hung on the sides. Vaughn had not seen anything like this on the soil of his own country. It reminded him of the last days of the war.

  He cut left down past P. Rats, fleeing the flames, smoke, and heat, scurried across the street. A couple of blocks in, he passed a corner market that had been looted and tossed, all its windows shattered. He had Criss-Crossed the phone number to the apartment and found the building, a common row house, where Alvin Jones’s cousin Ronnie Moses had his place. Vaughn went into a small foyer and up a flight of stairs.

  He knocked on the door several times. He knocked again. He said, “Police,” just to have said it, and then he drew his service revolver and kicked in the door at the knob. He walked into Moses’s apartment and closed the door behind him.

  Vaughn went from room to room. He found nudie magazines and women’s clothing in the bedroom. He found a Polaroid camera next to a photo album and an open duffel bag holding clothing and shaving equipment dropped beside the shredded couch in the living room. These items told him that Ronnie Moses was a gash-hound and that he was currently hosting a male guest.

  Vaughn went back down to the street.

  ON H STREET, the Sixth Armored Cavalry arrived in jeeps and trucks and blocked both ends of the shopping district. The soldiers wore yellow kerchiefs around their necks and black gas masks over their faces. They marched in combat formation down the center of the street, carrying M14s with sheathed bayonets, thrusting them at looters, throwing tear gas grenades liberally. Paddy wagons and police officers followed them, making arrests.

  Kenneth Willis pushed a drunk down to the sidewalk as he made his way home, going by the big Western Auto store at 9th, completely in flames. There were plenty of drunks on the street, stumbling and laughing, feeling the effects of the liquor they had stolen.

  Willis had gotten lucky. He had found that watch in the jewelry store, though it was not in the window where he had expected it to be; there was no window anymore, or anything behind it on display. The watch had been knocked to the floor and kicked by someone toward the back of the shop. The face was scratched some, but Willis knew that a little toothpaste would remove the marks. Willis wore the watch now on his wrist.

  He neared his building. Firemen were spraying water into the liquor store and the units above. The fire had engulfed the apartments. The building was completely aflame.

  Willis stood there frozen, watching. He had lost his job, for sure. He was up on a felony gun charge. In the last few days he had taken multiple beat-downs from various police. Now everything he owned was carbon and smoke.

  He looked at the watch on his wrist. He saw that one of the diamonds circling the face had come loose. He picked it out and squeezed it between his thumb and forefinger. It turned to dust.

  Rhinestones, thought Willis. He found this funny, and he laughed.

  STRANGE HAD USED his nightstick and muscle to make some arrests. He had chased several kids off the corridor, into alleys and onto side streets, hoping they would stay off the main drag. He was doing what he could.

  He walked down 7th at Q. An apartment house over a clothing store was burning. A man was screaming at firemen, telling them that his mother, too slow to get down the stairs, was trapped in the blaze. Newspapers would later report that the woman, who died of smoke inhalation, had weighed over four hundred pounds. Her son had begged arsonists not to set the building afire, but they had ignored his pleas.

  Strange passed a small furniture store with a plate-glass display window that had not been looted or burned. A white man sat in a rocking chair in the window with a double-barreled shotgun cradled in his arms, a cigar wedged between his lips. The man winked at Strange.

  Strange walked by a black man wearing fatigues and shades, pleading with a group of young men to get off the streets, invoking the teachings of Dr. King. Strange knew this was an undercover officer, a man trained in counterrioting technique
s. He was not having much success today.

  Strange wiped tears from his face. His throat was raw and his eyes stung mercilessly from the gas. His exposed skin felt seared from the heat. Seventh Street was burning down all around him.

  Third Infantry soldiers had arrived on 7th and begun to teargas and pursue looters. They protected firemen whose hoses had been cut as they were shelled by bricks and beer bottles from all directions. The soldiers had also begun to make massive arrests. The worst appeared to be over. But there was little left of the street.

  “Young man,” said a voice behind Strange.

  He turned. It was Vaughn. His face was smudged, and his hair had darkened from the soot drifting in the air.

  “Detective,” said Strange.

  “I went to Ronnie Moses’s place,” said Vaughn, “looking for Alvin Jones.”

  “And?”

  “Jones is staying there, I think,” said Vaughn. “He’s not in . . . yet.”

  “So?”

  “You want him, don’t you?”

  Strange nodded tightly.

  “I just spoke to a lieutenant down here,” said Vaughn. “The powers that be are about to announce a curfew. They’re gonna have this under control eventually. All these folks out here, they’re gonna have to get back to where they live.”

  “What are you sayin’?” said Strange, raising his voice above the burglar alarms and shouts around him.

  “Let’s get outta here for a minute,” said Vaughn. “All this bullshit, I can’t hear myself think.”

  Vaughn and Strange cut down P, stepping around a steel girder that was glowing red in the street.

  MAYOR WASHINGTON, in consultation with Police Chief John Layton, Director of Public Safety Patrick Murphy, and President Johnson, imposed a strict curfew on the District of Columbia to be in effect from 5:30 p.m. Friday evening to 6:30 a.m. the following morning. Police, firemen, doctors, nurses, and sanitation workers were excepted. Beer, wine, and liquor sales were forbidden. Gas would only be sold to motorists who were dispensing it directly into their cars.