Freedomland

by Richard Price

  The guy said nothing, just stared into Lorenzo’s face until Lorenzo ID’d him—a new kid in Narcotics, apparently working undercover today. Seeing the recognition come into Lorenzo’s eyes, the young cop tilted his chin to the left, to the rear, silently indicating a few other Dempsy undercovers scattered about. Lorenzo nodded, sliding back out to the flanks, thinking, Guns, we got guns in here today—forgetting his second Brenda sighting, that backpack, just wanting this to be over, having to admit to himself that, as in combat, the ultimate goal for him here, right now, was for everyone to make it back home intact.

  The procession was six blocks deep into downtown, still getting no reaction. Some of the marchers began to fall out of their ranks, just wandering a bit into the security lanes, the JNL ushers, sour-faced now, nudging them back into formation.

  “WHOSE STREETS”

  “OUR STREETS.”

  No, their streets, Lorenzo thought, overhearing the two motorcycle cops nearest him discuss Aruba, time shares.

  The Emergency Services Unit truck had developed a bit of an exhaust malfunction and was spewing back a faintly yellow plume, another joke, another head fuck. Lorenzo saw Longway and De Lauder lock eyes, both of them furious. Longway seized De Lauder’s forearm to speak into his ear over the racket of the motorcycles. De Lauder nodded animatedly then quickly sidestepped back out to the security flank, passing the reverend’s directive on to one of his ushers, that man quickly turning and passing it on to the JNL man behind him, the whisper chain stretching back six rows in so many seconds, not quite reaching Lorenzo. At the next intersection, Longway, still linked to Curious George and Tariq’s grandmother, abruptly veered left into a side street, De Lauder and the other left-flank ushers stepping to the curb to wave the marchers into this impromptu detour. The entire procession turned left like a magic trick—the ESU truck suddenly by itself a half block up Jessup, the motorcycles unable to continue the escort service because the side street was too narrow to accommodate them—and within minutes Armstrong had returned the head fuck, finessing the cops, the tight-faced spectators, marching now unchecked on Father L. Mullane Street, a tremor of triumph and joy shooting through the ranks, the motorcycles forced to form a rear-guard convoy.

  Lorenzo felt it too, that rush of glee, but it was quickly dispelled by a sense of insignificance, of pettiness—Lorenzo disgusted, thinking, This is what passes for a victory these days, all payoffs boiling down to a quick hit, here and gone, the beat going on. He was finally more angry than anxious, finally—if only for a moment—wanting more from today than everyone’s safe return home.

  The new, slightly giddy route took them past the Mary Bethune Houses, the only public housing project in Gannon, and at the sight of black Gannon faces hanging out of the aluminum-framed windows the marchers became ebullient, started coming on like victorious combat troops entering a liberated hill town. Bellows went up: “Come on down!” “We marchin’ for you!” The thrust fists of unity were returned with shouts and waves from the windows, a few of the Bethune kids hanging in front of their buildings hurling themselves into the ranks, each of them backslapped into the fold, everybody buzzed now except the motorcycle cops, who continued dutifully to bring up the rear.

  At the next intersection, the marchers took a right; a block later they turned right again, and soon they found themselves on narrow Father Pitino Street, which emptied out into Jessup Avenue again. The ESU truck was waiting for them at the intersection. There seemed to be an effort on De Lauder’s part to pull off an about-face, but that proved too chaotic, putting the motorcycle cops in front and the reverends in the rear. Since there was no room to make even a tight U-turn on Father Pitino, it was decided to march back out on Jessup, the marchers’ point made—Armstrong finally having rattled Gannon’s cage. But as the front ranks headed for the intersection, the ESU truck just sat there, blocking the mouth of the street. The abrupt halt this provoked, combined with the oblivious forward motion of the rear ranks, caused a rippling clash of bodies, the front wheels of the motorcycles abruptly offering seats to the last two rows of protesters, everybody else bumping one another forward until the very first line, the reverends and the families, were inadvertently shoved into the side panels of the truck.

  Lorenzo saw it in a blink: disaster. The marchers were trapped in a narrow canyon of brick, people starting to turn in place, some of them popping up from the bustle to get a look-see. A mutter rose, a few shouts, people yelling for the ESU truck to move out of the way. Lorenzo could see the driver, red-faced, working the ignition, the gears; the fucking thing was stalled. The shouts got louder, panic taking hold, someone’s Betacam hitting the wall with a hollow clatter, the motorcycles not knowing what was happening or where to go, the ESU driver shouting into his radio.

  Abruptly, from the mob of spectators waiting on Jessup, at least two dozen Gannon cops materialized, jeans and Hawaiian shirts, high-tops and cutoffs, every one of them racing to the intersection, the sidewalk crowd apparently riddled with cops, each one putting a shoulder to the rear of the truck now, digging in and pushing its deadweight out of the way. The marchers were pouring through the widening gap, back onto Jessup, Lorenzo, De Lauder, and the entire armbanded security force trying to control the spillage into that broader street, trying to maintain formation until the marchers turned left and proceeded once again down the main drag, leaving Lorenzo damp and spent. The ushers, desperate to get everyone re-focused, called out through cupped hands, “WHOSE STREETS.”

  The marchers, shaking off a pinwheel of emotions, roared back, “OUR STREETS,” the Gannon locals greeting this reemergence of the invaders with a smattering of polite, sarcastic applause.

  Three blocks south of Jessup and Pitino, at the intersection of Jessup and Hruska, the crowds of spectators abruptly came to an end, even though the marchers’ goal was the front lawn of the Municipal Building, which housed the police department, a mere four blocks farther south at Jessup and Sisto. It was as if the line had been drawn and, once the marchers passed Cavanaugh’s Bar on the east corner of Jessup and Hruska and DeFillipo’s Bakery on the west corner, they found themselves entering a well-tended ghost town, each step bringing them deeper and deeper into isolation, that eerie sense of abandonment peaking at their destination.

  The march came to a ragged halt at a crossroads unlike any other on that low-slung, bustling strip. Broad, spacious lawns fronted vast civic and spiritual temples—the Municipal Building, Saint Anselm’s, the main branch of the Gannon Public Library, and the middle school. There were no shops, no homes, and no people, save for the motorcycle cops, the ever-present shooters, and a handful of renegade locals who had broken away from the sidewalk crowd. The silent aggregation of colonnades, spires, and uniform rows of dead-eyed windows seemed not only to isolate but to diminish the marchers, who were now re-forming in a rough square before Longway. The reverend stood above them on the front steps of the building, forced to preach to the converted. Taking five, the cops straddled their parked bikes under a line of trees across the street, joined by the shooters, who were finally cooling out, firing up smokes, this part of the gig the visual equivalent of a grounder.

  Angry and humiliated, Lorenzo was deaf to anything being said by Longway up on the steps. Looking back up to the populated side of Jessup and Hruska, he could see the locals coming off the sidewalks and mingling in the streets now, the body language and the odd raucous squawk or guttering laugh that made it down to Sisto suggesting a block party or some other kind of celebration. He had to admit it: Gannon had him tripping. It was as if they had allowed Armstrong in, then walked out of their own house.

  Spotting Jesse making her way alone down the deserted stretch of Jessup to the demonstration, Lorenzo gestured for her to join him at the back of the crowd. Sidling up alongside him, she did a half-whispered impersonation of Mahler, the Gannon chief: “Well, the Reverend Longway called up, said he was coming over, said it was gonna be a nonviolent demonstration, and, you know, we’ve known and respe
cted the reverend for years, so we’re taking him at his word, but…” Jesse paused, grimacing, pouring it on. “Look, personally, I feel they’re exploiting the tragic death of a child to push forward on some agenda and, you know, speaking personally again, I feel offended by that, but…”

  “Shit,” Lorenzo hissed in disgust.

  Jesse looked at him with sympathy. “They seen you comin’.”

  The motorcycles abruptly kicked up again, Longways speech had come to an end, and the marchers were once again on the move, heading back up Jessup to Armstrong, to home. Halfheartedly assisting in the shape-up, Lorenzo could see the plainclothes cops up there on the populated side of Jessup, pushing the locals back to the sidewalks, clearing the shop-lined street for the return march. He read in the distant choreography that some of the locals didn’t seem too happy about having to surrender their main drag a second time, and as he trotted up to the front rank, a part of him almost wished that Gannon would try to make a stand, create some kind of physical blockade, offer him something into which he could sink his teeth.

  When the marchers came within shouting distance of Hruska again, a yellow-and-white Gannon fire truck crawled out of a side street and cut in front of them, taking over from the stalled ESU vehicle.

  One of the motorcycles pulled out and came abreast of the front line, the visored, faceless cop addressing Longway: “Hey Rev, I don’t know how you’re holding up today with coming out of the hospital and all, but if you need to, be happy to give you a ride in the fire truck.” The cop said it straight-faced, but the offer was met with a molten silence.

  The procession moved slowly back through the heart of downtown Gannon, the marchers quiet, almost sullen now that the march, from Gannon’s point of view, was heading in the right direction. In contrast, the spectators seemed looser, slightly festive, people talking loudly to one another, a few of them making exaggerated waves of fare-thee-well, as if the marchers were about to head up a gangplank and set sail to ports unknown—the overall vibration Gannon 1, Armstrong 0.

  Although now was the time for him to be most vigilant—one town a steaming river of humiliation and disappointment, the other standing on the banks, high on victory—Lorenzo felt lead-footed, apathetic, looking neither at the crowds nor at the protesters, his eyes half-mast and filled with resentment.

  As the silent marchers reentered that urban wilderness sector of Jessup Avenue that fronted Armstrong, Gannon’s fire truck and motorcycles continued to box them in. The internal order of the ranks was falling apart now, some people tired from the tension; others, mostly the seniors, tired from the physical march itself; most everybody, Lorenzo figured, feeling burned and unsatisfied. The fire truck led them all the way to the Gannon entrance of Martyrs Park, where it finally peeled off, and the motorcycles reformed into those two defensive lines facing the projects. Lorenzo stood at the mouth of the park, watching the truck growl its way back downtown, then panned the impassively alert faces of the motorcycle cops. Lorenzo stepped in place, fuming, frustrated: Gannon was herding Armstrong back into Dempsy again, just like they always did.

  “WHOSE STREETS,” someone called out, trying to boost the mood.

  “OUR STREETS.” The response was slack and desultory as people entered Martyrs and began the juke and weave around benches and kiddie swings again. They ducked under the summer-heavy boughs, focused on the effort to maintain the physical flow of so many bodies through this small obstacle course, any further impulse to chant stopped cold by the bald sight of the Armstrong towers as the marchers came through the foliage to be smacked in the face with the reality of where they lived—came to it from Gannon’s point of view.

  Lorenzo stood at the park’s entrance as if holding open a door, his right hand extended toward Armstrong, pointing the way, his left stretched back to the marchers still in Gannon, the fingers unconsciously flexing in a beckoning speed-it-up gesture as he frisked the faces that went past him, gauging the potential for trouble. This close to home, his natural state of anxiety overwhelmed his anger at Gannon, and he found himself thinking, This is where I am, this is what I do. Stand at the door, straddle the fence—Lorenzo admitted to himself once again that this was all he ever truly cared about, keeping people out of harm’s way, physically safe, day by day, hour by hour, minute by minute. And as the protesters poured past him, he came to the realization that, in his own way, he was as bad as any knucklehead out here, perpetually surrendering to a craving for instant gratification, too fixated on the here and now to ever truly think about the future, the big picture. Revolution, rhetoric, confrontation, demonstration, agitation, manifesto, mandate—in his heart, Lorenzo cared for none of it, his credo, now and always, To Hover and Protect.

  Standing there volunteer supervising the exodus, he became aware of Jesse, who was behind and a little to the left of him, one foot in each city. She was shadowing him, riding his perspective, and it set him on edge, Lorenzo wanting her safely over the line too. But as he turned to her it happened. One of the motorcycle cops said, “You all have a good night now,” putting a slightly down-home spin on it. Upon hearing this Gannon farewell, Millrose Carter, the Man Who Never Sleeps, stopped dead. One foot in Dempsy, he slowly arched his back, chin pointing skyward, face drawn into a tired grimace, looking like a man who had just remembered some tedious undone chore. Then he turned back toward Gannon, breasting his way through the Armstrong-bound marchers until he came to stand in front of the motorcycles.

  “Can I help you?” one of the cops asked evenly.

  Lorenzo knew what was going to happen next. He might have had a second or two to keep it from going down, but he just watched it happen. Millrose punched that cop flush in the mouth, knocking him backwards off his bike, and within a heartbeat the world turned upside down, the Man Who Never Sleeps disappearing under a pile of blue helmets. Themarchers on either side of the assault, after a moment’s confusion, began smashing into one another as they raced either to safety or to further set things off. Motorcycles toppled like dominoes as people were bulled into trees, fences, benches, the video shooters scrambling just like everybody else—to safety or toward the fray—the sky breaking up into peals of panic and impulse, emotion and radio squawk.

  Lorenzo’s first act of commitment was yoking Eric Convoy, catching him across the throat with a forearm as he high-stepped toward the action, taking him off his feet. The kid came down flat on his back, Lorenzo not sure what to do with him next, settling for getting down in his face, aiming a finger, and saying, “I see you.”

  Coming upright, Lorenzo clotheslined another kid, Corey Miller, flinging him back toward Armstrong, then another, then another, feeling like a manic, overtaxed goalie, getting into a rhythm of interceptions, keeping the Armstrong hotheads off the Gannon cops, and keeping those same cops from locking up half the high-rises.

  Back across the line in Gannon, Lorenzo saw Jesse dancing in and out of harm’s way, as if daring herself to rub up against the rage, craving the rage, the physical communion. He saw a couple of the Armstrong knuckleheads stomping on downed choppers; saw Daniel Bennett, the sulky kid from the self-esteem workshop, catch a baton across the midsection, then curtsy to the pain; saw one of the satellite-truck antennas crack and topple; saw two of Dempsy’s black undercovers basically doing what he was doing, running interference; saw one of them, the dashikied bearded kid from Narcotics, being backed into the motorcycles by an onrush and catching yet another Gannon baton, thrust like a bayonet between the ribs, then dropping on all fours like a dog, Lorenzo remembering feeling that kid’s gun as he slid across the parade ranks in pursuit of Brenda, Lorenzo thinking, Guns, guns, attempting to radio for help, having held off earlier, sure someone else had done so already, then stopping midtransmission to grab Eric’s brother Caprice, getting spun around by him, and losing his radio.

  He saw a Betacam skitter across the four-lane Gannon roadway, heard sirens, saw a satellite truck peel out, then change its mind, running over a motorcycle as it backed up closer
to the action.

  More sirens: Gannon coming, Dempsy coming. Lorenzo turned back to the Hurley Street cul-de-sac and saw the Reverend Longway, looking angry but dazed, restrained from the fray by Teacher Timmons’s mother and another minister; saw Donald De Lauder and the JNL security ushers forming a cordon, calmly escorting their own marchers back onto the yellow buses, the people moving swiftly, quietly. De Lauder was impassive, tight-lipped, repeating Lorenzo’s shepherding gesture, one arm outstretched toward the open bus doors, the other extended toward his people, fingers flexing in a gesture of urgency.

  The Gannon cops, deserting their motorcycles, withdrew into a tight defensive square, unconsciously stepping over and obscuring a sprawled body as they did, no one rushing them now, just tossing shit—rocks, bottles—going after the sat trucks and cameras, the shooters filming as they retreated. Lorenzo saw a group of Armstrong hotheads and others he didn’t know bypass both the cops and the media, running blindly back into Gannon as if to destroy it with their bare hands. But there was nothing out there in this part of the city—it was a paved prairie, just highway and sky—so they wound up running toward the heart of Jessup Avenue, a half mile away, running like it was a race. Where you going, Lorenzo thought, seeing in the distance the flying blue misery lights, a convoy of Gannon cruisers and Crown Victorias coming in. Lorenzo looked away: Save your wind, boys, Gannon’s coming to you.

  Through a shifting human screen, Lorenzo caught sight of that sprawled body again, lost it in the defensive shuffle of the cops, then got another peek. It was Millrose Carter, flat on his back, mouth agape, eyes rolled in frozen revelation, a creeping fan of blood beneath his head, the Man Who Never Sleeps having finally come to rest. Lorenzo made a move to claim him, his body, then saw two teenagers crawling like cougars over a mountain range of slant-parked Crown Vics, crawling toward Jesse, saw her eyes fill with knowledge as she braced to pay her tab. Lorenzo stood there, flat-footed with indecision now, Jesse wide right; Millrose, lying in his stained halo, wide left; Daniel Bennett directly before him, forehead to the asphalt, retching in pain; the black Dempsy undercover curled on his side now, softly moaning.