Lorenzo was furious. He considered himself one of the principals of the racial power collective in this town, and to not have been notified in advance by any of the people facing the press right now was a slap in the face. Even if they had refrained from getting him involved out of consideration for his status as catching detective, someone other than Bump Rosen, a white cop, should have called him with that heads up.
Longway did three final ten-foot circuits, then stepped up to the mike. “Let me keep this, short,” he said, glaring at the cameras, “and sweet.”
A chorus of “Yes’s” and “Awright’s” erupted from the fence, but the power players behind the rev were holding back for now. Only one of the ministers was nodding and clapping, the others just bobbing their heads, taking in the lay of the land.
“Of course, the primary, the instinctual, the natural desire of any decent, God-fearing member of this community, this city, is to see the child, Cody Martin, safe, back in the arms of his mother.”
There was another spatter of yeses from the fence, the power players nodding behind him.
Longway pushed his glasses up his nose. “But to quarantine, to, to seal off…to, to ghettoize—no! To double ghettoize the seven hundred families of the Henry Armstrong Houses”—the fence began to erupt in “Tell it”s, the players now clapping loudly but still nonverbal—“on the assumption! The assumption that the basic mentality the basic impulse of these seven hundred families would be to harbor a criminal of this, this ilk… is nothing less than state-sanctioned racism of the most pernicious, the most massive, the most monstrous nature.”
The fence started to rattle as if a train were coming, many of the shooters forsaking Longway to focus on the crowd.
“And I am here, today. We!” He swung an arm behind him. “We! Are here, today. To serve notice, on the police department of the city of Dempsy. To serve notice, on the police department of the city of Gannon. To inform them before the eyes of this community, this state, this country, before the eyes of the world!” Longway thrust a finger at the Betacams, “That, unh-uh! We ain’t having it!”
People began to bellow now, the fence undulating with the force of their emotion. Lorenzo, still sitting inside his ride, felt the rightness, the righteousness of Longway’s words yet held himself in check, continuing to suffer the sting of exclusion.
Whatever other cops were around also kept their distance, standing mostly on the tracks, looking impassive yet alert, their arms folded across their chests. Bobby McDonald, hands in his pockets, scowled at the gravel beneath his feet.
“I wish, I wish y’all could see yourselves right now,” Longway said, speaking directly to the fence, his voice now an almost sensuous hiss. “Y’all look like a, a, magazine photo of some African, refugee camp… Y’all look like some magazine photo of some, some, African, internment camp.”
The tenants exploded in “Yes’s” and “No’s,” their cries interspersed with a nonstop bellowing of names, people calling to their families and friends still back by the buildings, an endless agitated beckoning. The Betacams abandoned Longway almost completely now for creeping sweeps of the fence.
Lorenzo, anxiously looking toward the seething crowd, saw a dazzle coming at him from over the tenants’ heads, a multiplicity of dazzles in fact, and he panicked. Every refrigerator that he could see back up in the Bowl seemed to be on fire, each crate sporting its own meticulously precise, diamondlike flame. He shot out of his van and, staring over its sizzling roof, was relieved to see that the grand-scale arson was simply the afternoon sun winking at him as it bounced off whatever white enamel or chrome it could catch peeking out through the wooden slats. Slumping back into the driver’s seat, he palmed the sweat from his dome and stared at the reverend, thinking, You said short and sweet.
“Y’all look, de-tained, y’all look, imprisoned… But for what. I’ll tell you for what.” Longway counted off on his fingers: “For being black. For being poor… And for livin’ where you live.”
Lorenzo noticed that the people closest to the fence were beginning to be mashed into the chain link, their faces showing distress, and he experienced a cool fluttering in his gut.
“This blockade, this siege, this criminalistic wholesale denial of the basic freedoms guaranteed to us in the Constitution of the United States of America is nothing less than a class-action insult to the hardworking, the struggling, the upright…”
“The crack-smoking,” Lorenzo heard from behind him. Looking in his rearview mirror, he saw nothing but poker-faced cops.
“… the God-fearing families not only of these houses, but of all public housing communities in this city, in this country. And I am here, today—we are here, today—to say, to you… that, Unh-uh, we ain’t having it!”
The players were all clapping now. One minister came up behind Longway like an ecstatic deacon and joyously patted him on the back, Longway mopping his furious face, tightly pacing again, that fence now holding back people six deep, and more coming on the run from the high end of the projects. Lorenzo was about to step out of his van again to deploy some uniforms to loosen up the mob, but Bobby McDonald beat him to it, sending a half dozen cops to the Hurley Street entrance to go into the projects and come up on that side of the fence.
“To descend on these houses under the cover of night, to, to brutalize and maim the young men of this community.” Longway flung an arm back to Teacher and Tariq, both of them looking somewhat embarrassed.
“To, to, to strike terror, into the hearts of their mothers, their grandmothers….” Another flung back arm, Tariq’s grandmother in tears, but Teacher’s mom’s face a rage-chiseled rock. “… Kicking in doors like a bunch of got-damn South African storm troopers, like a bunch of…”
Longway abruptly cut himself off, and waved in disgust at the microphone, as if his indignation were throttling him. The ministers and parents were shouting and clapping, egging him on, the fence ballooning crazily Lorenzo silently praying, End It. Longway finally stepped back up, his voice now as hoarse and raw as if he had been screaming all day.
“Well, I am here, today. We are here, today, to say to you that this, police action… this, Johannesburg-izing, this, So weto-izing of the Henry Armstrong Houses has just come to an end, because, unh-uh… we, ain’t, havin’ it!
The roaring behind the fence turned the world into a waterfall. Sober-faced, Longway quickly turned and, raising his arms like a conductor, silently directed the assemblage behind him into two more or less straight lines.
And with the rev counting cadence, they finally stepped off, arm in arm, some people behind the mesh joining in on the chant:
Hey, Dempsy
Have you heard,
Armstrong ain’t
Johannesburg
The players shouted with varying degrees of passion, the women and ministers full-throat, the two council members more circumspectly. Teacher Timmons and the crutch-swinging Tariq Wilkins were down almost to a lip sync, both boys still looking more embarrassed than enraged.
As soon as Longway and his contingent began to march, they were flanked by reporters, the shooters racing ahead, then furiously backpedaling to document them coming forward, the total media glom-on tripling the population of the protesters.
Lorenzo was relieved to see that the tenants were pacing the marchers on the other side of the train fence, the fanning out of the crowd pretty much eliminating the danger of someone’s getting crushed against the mesh.
Hey, Dempsy
Have you heard,
Armstrong ain’t
Johannesburg
He figured they were heading for the Hurley Street checkpoint, the plan to just march on in, violate the ID checks, and blow off the blockade. Lorenzo was finally, grudgingly, transcending his own bruised ego, giving it up, thinking Bump said it right: About fuckin’ time. Rising from the van, he saw Bobby McDonald horse whistle, knuckles to teeth, a piercing blast, catching the eye of the two Dempsy cops manning that exit. McDonald waved to the
m, a short, chopping “Let ’em through” gesture. Both cops nodded, stepping back, and the siege of Armstrong was officially over. The reporters raced past the marchers into the houses to interview the interned tenants, and the tenants raced out of the exits, simply because they could.
Coming away from the train fence, Lorenzo backed up to Bobby McDonald, standing between the rails.
“Glad that’s over,” Lorenzo said, half under his breath.
“Nothing’s over,” McDonald said. Then, looking up at him, “What are you doing here?”
Lorenzo pointed to the abandoned checkpoints, speechless, wanting to say, What the fuck you think I’m doing here, but finally muttering, as if embarrassed, “They got her doped up over at the medical center.”
“Yeah? So?” McDonald continued to squint up at him.
“I’m on it,” Lorenzo said.
“You said give you today, right?”
“I know.” Lorenzo, flustered, didn’t know where to rest his eyes. McDonald made a big show of studying his wristwatch, gave him one more long look, then walked away, leaving Lorenzo standing there feeling blank and talentless.
The motel operator put Lorenzo through to Room 303 at the Quality Inn.
“Cesar?” Ben came on in a semiwhisper. “The guy never showed.”
“Ben?” Lorenzo reared back, thinking, Cesar. “This is Lorenzo Council.”
“Hey!” Ben’s voice became brighter. “How are you?”
“You know I can’t really show preference to one member of the media community over the others,” he began, hearing the self-conscious formality in his choice of words.
“I understand,” Ben said respectfully.
Lorenzo hesitated. “Give me a number for your sister.”
Ben rattled off a cell phone number, and Lorenzo carved it into the cover of his notepad with a dried-out pen.
“You tell her I’m gonna call.”
“You got it.”
“You tell her to wait for my call.”
“You know she will.”
“And you tell her our contract still stands.”
“Absolutely,” Ben said, another fervent acquiescence. “May I ask where they’ll be hooking up?”
“No, you may not.”
“Could you tell me about when this hookup will take place?”
Lorenzo hesitated again, then said, “A few hours.”
“Excellent. And can I offer my services to them as a driver?”
Lorenzo thought about it. Jesse and Brenda without wheels would be a mess.
“Can I trust you to honor your sister’s arrangement with me?”
“Lorenzo, please.” He could envision Ben on the other end of the line, eyes shut, hand on heart.
“All right then,” Lorenzo said.
“Thank you,” Ben said solemnly.
“Now…” Lorenzo lowered his head, saw stars behind his eyelids. “This best be good on your end.”
14
An hour after calling Jose, Jesse wandered the confines of her room, her anxiety such that, when the apartment’s phone rang, its shrill signal sounded to her as abrupt and jolting as a car alarm.
“Ben?”
There was an off-balance silence on the other end of the line, followed by an off-balance voice saying, “Is this Jesse Haus?” Adult, male, most likely white.
“Who’s this,” Jesse said, impatient, thwarted.
“I could tell you more than you know.”
“About…”
“You know.”
“Just say it.”
“Brenda Martin.”
“Who are you.” She hauled on a fresh pair of jeans.
“I have a history with her.”
“Yeah?” Jesse jumped a few inches off the ground in order to jerk the zipper up to the top snap. “Is this Ulysses?” she said, taking a stab.
“Who?” The voice sounded genuinely thrown.
“How come you’re calling me?”
“I saw you with her in front of the house this morning.”
“Yeah?” She began brushing her hair with her fingers. “Do you know what happened to the kid?”
“Do I?”
“You. Do you know?”
“I have no idea. But I know Brenda.”
“You’re not going to give me your name, right?” Jesse reached for a cigarette.
“There’s a bar in Dempsy McCoy’s?” The voice became a little steadier.
“Uh-huh.”
“Can I meet you there in an hour?”
“At McCoy’s?”
“Yeah.”
“I hear that’s where all the news crews are hanging out.” Jesse scanned the room for matches, for socks. “The reporters and all. You sound like you kind of want to lay low.”
“It’s not like I’m famous,” he said.
“Just giving you a heads up,” Jesse said evenly, thinking maybe she’d show, maybe she wouldn’t. “Where do you know Brenda from again?”
Ben’s cell phone rang, a discreet flutelike trill, somewhere from within the swirl of sheets on her unmade bed.
“OK, McCoy’s,” she said quickly, then hung up, diving for the other phone.
“Ben.” The command was this time obeyed.
“Well, I got some good news.” He sounded as if he was about to take some goodies out of a bag, one by one. “I talked to Lorenzo.”
“And…”
“And I got her back for you.”
“Yes!” Jesse spun herself around, feeling recharged, fresh.
“He’ll call you in a bit. I gave him the cell phone number in case you want to go out.”
“When do I get her.”
“A few hours.”
“Where.”
“I’ll come get you,” he said with studied casualness.
“Just say.” Jesse suddenly became wary. That tone of Ben’s was the one he used when he had to string people along.
“It’s—I’ll come get you.”
“Why can’t you just say.” Jesse was on full alert now.
“I’d rather not.”
“Well, that’s fucked. What’s the deal?”
“Let me just come get you.”
“Well, I’ll be out,” she said childishly.
“No problem. Just take the phone.”
She hung up, angry, then remembered the punch line—Brenda. Jesse felt herself brimming with joy with life.
McCoy’s was an obscure and surly bar situated in a ground-floor corner of a mansard-roofed, purple-gray Victorian that straddled the Dempsy-Gannon line, two blocks north of the Armstrong Houses, and was surrounded by history. Directly across the street, on the Dempsy side of the border, standing alone and surreal in a junk-strewn field, was a fifty-yard-long, ten-foot-high time-pocked cement wall, all that remained of a POW camp built during the First World War. Three hundred yards in the opposite direction, on the Gannon side of the bar, sprawled an abandoned abattoir, the setting of a notorious labor strike early in the century, during which Ukrainian and Slovak meatpackers toting rocks, pistols, and homemade bombs had taken on a small army of local cops and imported Pinkertons in five days of spasmodic street fighting that had yielded a death toll of eleven.
The saloon itself, known as Koerner’s in those days, served as headquarters for the Pinkertons, who tossed Koerner out of his own establishment after he refused to serve them. When Jesse finally got it up to enter the damp, beery room, she looked for the last memento of that bloody week, five bullet holes preserved behind a Plexiglas shield between the dartboard and the pay phone. The damage had been done when a handful of armed meatpackers, led by the proprietor himself, had attempted to liberate the bar from the goons. The assault left three dead, including Koerner, who was accidentally shot from behind by one of his own raiding party.
Jesse had heard that the press had basically commandeered McCoy’s for the duration of this story, but she didn’t believe it until she saw the inordinate number of rental cars parked on the POW side of the street. Whe
never a story broke nationwide, in no matter what state, city, or town, the media people drawn to the scene would instinctively home in on one particular bar-restaurant not too far from the visual base camp and could reliably be found there in force each night after sending off their copy or stowing their gear.
But McCoy’s… The air conditioning gave off Legionnaires’ disease, and although there was some kind of grudging, nominal menu, the geriatric cook had TB and it took twenty minutes for him to dismount from his bar stool, the resulting hamburger on white bread, with a side of potato chips, finally showing up something like six drinks after it had been ordered.
Scanning the room from the bar, Jesse found it easy to separate the media people from the regulars. Relaxed and chatty, almost schizophrenically so, compared to their daytime personas, the reporters and shooters were, for the most part, younger, thinner, and possessed of a more expansive, easy air than the McCoy’s regulars, who either talked to each other tonight with one eye on the invaders or sat alone, smoking and glaring at their drinks. With one elbow kissing the edge of a small, sweetish-smelling puddle on the bar top, Jesse watched a New York tabloid columnist shoot mini-pool with a gaunt, bearded photographer wearing a USA Today T-shirt.
Over by the pay phones, a newscaster from Hot Copy was putting the moves on a heavyset, chain-smoking woman who Jesse thought might be with the Washington Post. Directly across the room from her, all three of the torn vinyl, smoke-wreathed banquettes were elbow to elbow with visiting press scarfing down burgers and throwing back drinks, the volume of chatter like the magnified thrum of bees. It seemed to Jesse—as it always did when she was given the opportunity to go after an out-of-town story and found herself entering one of the countless crime-scene-convenient, courthouse-convenient, disaster-area-convenient McCoy’s of America—that she was surrounded by a group of people who had known one another for years, that what she had walked into, yet again, was some kind of spontaneous cousins club. In fact, as she well knew, the overwhelming majority of those assembled here now had never even set eyes on one another before last night, before Brenda walked into that emergency room bearing two palmfuls of grief.
Freedomland Page 29
