alt.sherlock.holmes

by Gini Koch

  “Hey, there, darlings in your bracelets. Come on over here, they don’t suit!” A tall, thin man in a rainbow tank top and a big afro near the front had a big smile on his face: he was holding up some keys he’d snatched from one of the cops.

  Sherlock tapped me on the shoulder and pointed down the street. The three suits were getting into one of the cars at the end of the block, their movements interrupted by wild gesticulations. It was an odd scene, like watching the television with the sound turned off. You’d expect to hear shouting, but they were controlling their voices, avoiding attention as they got in the car and drove away.

  “Well, this isn’t going how they expected tonight would go. The homos have some courage after all.”

  Ondine was nowhere to be seen. He must have been inside the bar, still, unless he got out without Sherlock seeing him, which wasn’t likely.

  We watched in amazed fascination as the homos took up arms together, a tangle of colored limbs, breaking windows and hurling abuse at the police barricaded in the Stonewall Inn, along with more bricks and bottles. Someone somehow ripped a parking meter up and two street queens started using it as a battering ram, trying to break the door down. People pulled trashcans from somewhere and lit them on fire and dumped their contents in through the windows, trying to smoke out the pigs.

  We stuck around for a while, watching the chaos, until the tactical pigs showed up with their body armor and riot shields. It was excellent at first. The homos didn’t disperse, and when they were talking tactics, a bunch of the girls started a chorus line, jeering at the cops. They started to form up into ranks, which I recognized all too well. I tapped Sherlock on the shoulder, and pointed at them, mouthing Time to go, and we slipped out the back of the park and walked east, with the splendor of the day and the night gleaming in our minds.

  Mycroft—

  I found your friend in the Factory. It would appear that he’s managed to get himself away from you and yours. You may have accidentally stirred up some trouble trying to get him back. Your misguided policies are going to bear this fruit. I hope you enjoy the harvest.

  —Sherlock

  “LOOK AT THAT, Sherlock. Another riot in Christopher Park last night. Imagine in ten, twenty, fifty years, looking back and thinking we were there. It’ll be like the moon landing, but for homophiles.”

  “Someone was directing that, John, and it didn’t play into their plans to have a bunch of queers rebel. If anything actually comes from it, it’ll be because they’ve got more important fish to fry.”

  “Look here, they think that the Black Panthers might be involved, and the Students for a Democratic Society. ‘Conspiring to organize the homos.’”

  “That’s exactly what I’m saying, John. The media have the link already. ‘Gays are getting together with both the scary black men with guns and the evil people who started the riots in Chicago, disrupting the Democratic convention.’ Message received.”

  “What’s wrong with you, Holmes? This is a big deal for people like you and me.”

  “Are you a gay, John? A homo? Do you identify with that place we’ve been, dancing late at night? Sure, it’s a fun group of people, but those people aren’t us, and we aren’t them. I’ve never seen you put on a dress or affect an accent or be particularly attracted to men. We spend time together, like each other, get naked together and, yeah, we sleep together. It’s not anybody’s business who we make it with. That’s only between me and those people I choose to have in my bed. It doesn’t have to have a deeper meaning. It doesn’t mean we have to be part of a movement. The important thing that I learned last night? Ondine’s definitely mixed up with something. Something federal. There’s no other reason for a Fed to be there directing the raid of a tiny gay club in New York City.”

  “What are you talking about, Holmes? What’s Ondine mixed up with?”

  “I’ve been pretty sure he’s been some kind of informant for the pigs of some stripe. He’s been on edge for ages. Remember when we saw him outside the party? Writing down who was coming and going? Why did he go clean so suddenly? Maybe as a reward for something. More likely he’s been taking the edge off his usefulness, and the Factory’s not stirring up trouble. That’s why we went, John. I brought him down there because I knew someone would come after him. I expected someone to grab him and drag him into a car. I didn’t expect a full-blown raid. Ondine’s the informant, but we’ve managed to use him to get information. It’s too bad he’s probably compromised. We could have passed him false information, followed the trail.” Sherlock paced for a minute, and then looked at the wall above his cluttered tool bench.

  “Come on, help me clear off this wall. I’ve got too much of Bill’s problem in my head. Time to get it out of the attic of my brain, store it on the wall, and reserve the analytic abilities of my mind for understanding the connections between these disconnected facts.”

  nine

  JUST BECAUSE YOU’RE PARANOID

  A MONTH WENT by and it seemed like the gays were winning. I didn’t know what to think. Sherlock was right, but I was still excited. Maybe I was partly gay, like Kinsey said.

  Sherlock came in the door in a huff. “Libraries, John. You can get me into the CUNY library, right? Come along and read some academic journals?”

  “What?”

  “I think I can convince NYU to give me an alumni card as well, even though I’m not technically an alumnus. Come on. We need to read up and find out what we can.”

  So we started to spend time in libraries. It was tedious work, weeks and weeks of cross-referencing and pulling down information. I didn’t know what he wanted, but I followed his lead, until it turned out that I was too slow for him, most of the time, and I just stood around. I started reading journals that Sherlock was done with, and then started ordering my own. There was tremendous work being done on the brain and neurochemistry. I thought I owed it to my patients to explore the edges of research in the areas of the brain. I wanted to explore the possibilities of actually using chemistry to expand the mind, increase intelligence, creativity. Writers were infamous drunks, but also terrible depressives. There were promising chemicals that seemed to be stimulating empathy as well as reducing appetite. What if we could isolate the euphoric effects and remove the adverse effects? What if you could remove the hangover, but keep the fun? Boost intelligence? Creativity?

  I read, and I experimented, while Sherlock read, building a constellation on the wall of photocopied notes, pictures, all linked to a map with colored pins all over it.

  Tensions started boiling all over New York that summer. The gay rights movement started, and the Young Lords organized themselves and their neighborhoods in their purple berets. They somehow got all that trash in the middle of Third Avenue, blocking the streets in the early mornings when the garbage trucks were supposed to head down to the Upper East side. When the cops came out, they burned the garbage and threw bottles and stones and trash at them. Then the Young Lords took over a church, saying that it was the property of the people. They set up a clinic in it, nurses and doctors volunteering their time. I don’t know where they got their equipment, but there was an x-ray machine when we went to go have a look. We were told it had been requisitioned for the struggle.

  “DID YOU KNOW that there’s been a significant increase in university funding over the last ten years, John? There’s the spillover from the Space Program, but this seems even bigger than that.”

  “Hmmm?” I was reading in our growing collection of academic journals about the active component of grass being identified, and being posited as an analogue to a neurotransmitter. There was also a modification to Amphedoxamine: a very old chemical reaction, but it seemed promising and I thought it was worth an attempt at trying myself. I’m no chemist, but this seemed fairly straightforward. I was used to being interrupted by Sherlock, but it wasn’t usually anything important.

  “Patterns, John. That’s what this research is all about. Finding them. Where are the patterns, where is the power, a
nd why would someone want to discredit Bill? The Ford Foundation has been spending tens if not hundreds of millions growing universities over the past four or five years. More buildings. More research grants. More growth. They’ve been getting government matches or other foundation matches for a lot of it as well. Some universities have doubled in faculty size, and gotten new buildings and libraries and laboratories and everything. Did you know that? When in doubt, John, look for the money. Who benefits? In America, that’s money. Look at this list of universities that have been funded by Ford and received matching grants from the US government.”

  “Yeah? So? There’s two or three dozen schools there.”

  “What about the ones who have good math departments? That cuts it down to sixteen. If you look only at universities publishing number theory, there are seven.”

  “But Bill’s only got beaten to the punch on six papers.”

  “Exactly, John. And after talking to him I’ve identified at least two other potential papers in Bill’s notebooks. Two different theories that he’d worked out but not yet written up or submitted for publication. One of them is in a notebook that was ‘lost’ and found again over a year ago. Why don’t we go talk to some mathematics professors at the University of Chicago?”

  ten

  WHY CHICAGO

  THAT’S HOW NOON a few days later found us at Grand Central finding the platform for the B&O Capitol railroad. It had fallen off from its heyday, and it was nice, even though we didn’t get first class tickets. I couldn’t remember the last time I’d left New York. The air in August was stifling, and the town was quiet with all the power brokers away in the Hamptons. Andy hadn’t been in touch since the whole Garland thing. I guessed we were on the outs, or he’d found another supply. I was happy with the air conditioning on the train. We didn’t splash out on sleeper tickets, but we had plenty of space to ourselves.

  There was something pleasant and relaxing about beating the heat while watching the miles roll past, out first through all those commuter towns that people moved to: Jersey City and Wilmington, passing the water on the left and going through Baltimore and DC. I should have probably read a book or something, but I just wanted to stare out the window and watch the miles get eaten up.

  Sherlock stared out as well, appearing lost in the countryside, but I knew he was thinking, pondering, planning his move. He turned to me and spoke up.

  “We’ll get in in the afternoon, John. I want to do two things while we’re here. I’ve got a list of math professors that I want to chase up. Could take a few days, maybe a week. We’re in too early to go straight to the University, but I thought we could go to see about these Black Panthers in Chicago. I like the idea of seeing if the praise that Joseph has heaped on them is true, and I suspect... something involving them. It may or may not be relevant to Bill’s situation.”

  I nodded to him, then sat back in contemplation, watching a world slide by. The railroad was the dividing line of cities. The neighborhoods framing the tracks in the outskirts of Baltimore and Pittsburgh; little nondescript towns with good and bad sides of the tracks, but I couldn’t ever tell which was which.

  It was still early morning when we pulled into Chicago’s Grand Central station. We’d had fitful sleep in our seats.

  “They’re talking about knocking down this station. Not enough traffic, it seems.”

  I looked around at the Art Deco splendor of the building. “It would be a shame. An awful shame. But maybe Chicago has more important things to preserve or fix now than an empty station. Now, it’s the El and a walk.”

  WE COULD HEAR the crowd from a couple of blocks away on Western Avenue. It was dirty, this part of the city. Not as dirty as Spanish Harlem had been, but older, with more burned-out shopfronts and tumbledown buildings. You could see why the Black Panthers, or anyone who brought stability, would do well here. Schoolchildren walked past derelict and collapsed tenements. Men in stained tank tops stood around all over the street, sweating in the August heat.

  We heard the cadences of political rhetoric, the call and response of the leader working his crowd from around the corner. Madison Street. Fred Hampton was there in front of what looked like a bombed-out office with the same scraggly chinstrap beard. There was a crowd, probably a hundred people, maybe more. It was a motley crowd, mostly black, but some Hispanics, and quite a few whites as well.

  “Is that Dr. Spock, Sherlock?”

  It was, indeed, the famous author and doctor. We listened to Hampton.

  “So that’s how I got convicted, and out on this appeal bond. The people got together and collected the money to get me out, and for that I am humbled and honored. Every one of you knows that I’ve given my life and my body over to the people, and I’ll fight and die for the people, whether those I’m working for agree with me or not. I was not born to die in a car wreck. I was not born to die slipping on a piece of ice, or of a bad heart, or of lung cancer. I’m going to die doing the things I was born for. High off the people. I’m going to die in the international proletariat revolutionary struggle, and you should come along.

  “Now, you want to know what the funniest thing is about this so-called trial? They talked about me stealing all those Good Humor bars after beating up the driver. Seventy-one dollars’ worth. Seven hundred and ten bars. Me, I know I’m big, so I asked what I was supposed to be doing, eating all them bars. The prosecutor said I did it to give those ice cream bars out to children. They lie about me, just like they lie about you, but the only thing they’re going to try to convict me for is some kind of Robin Hood thing.”

  A murmur of laughter pealed across the crowd.

  “Now, this here, the office getting raided and shot up. You know and I know how our training works in the Black Panther Party. They’re going to be saying the Black Panther Party shot at them, but we’re just exercising our rights. Second Amendment says the people have a right to their weapons. Our training, everyone will tell you, is shoot second. We have the right to defend ourselves from a tyrannical government who has visited upon us a long train of abuses and usurpation. We shoot if we’re shot at, whether it’s a murderer, a robber, a rapist trying to come up in our homes and offices, or the government’s pigs, being all three of those.

  “Now, two weeks ago when I was locked up and waiting for my trial, the Chicago pigs came in shooting up the offices, illegally. They put it in the papers that we were arming ourselves, that we’re devils coming out to shoot cops down in the streets, but you can see we’re just defending ourselves. You count these bullet holes, you know they shot us out, ran us out. We got those motherfuckers, though. Only one Black Panther died and one wounded, but we wounded six of those pigs and killed two of them. I don’t celebrate the deaths of people, but these were soldiers, agents of a tyrannical system that was trying to murder us in our beds.

  “After they ran us out of there, you know what they did? Went upstairs and burned up all our records, burned up boxes of cornflakes and oatmeal we had for the free breakfast program. Taking food out the mouths of children in this neighborhood. They had no reason to do that. They want to shut us down. They don’t like that we’ve been doing their jobs for them. They don’t like the idea that black, brown, and yellow children get an education and some breakfast. They don’t like the idea that we can turn gangs into revolutionaries. They want us to keep being angry with the Young Patriots there, with the Young Lords. They know that if we keep fighting each other, none of us will notice that they’re the ones keeping us down.

  “Well, I’m here to tell you, each and every one of you: I—am—a revolutionary. Now, you could say it too. Repeat after me: I—am—a revolutionary. Power to the people.”

  The crowd had been chiming in with nods, and “umm-humms” and “uh-uh” here and there, but they all chimed in together, a hundred voices there in the street. “I—am—a revolutionary!”

  Fred spoke back up. “If you say, ‘I don’t want to make a commitment, cause I’m not ready to die,’ what you did, you�
�re dead already. You have to understand that the people have to pay the price for peace. If you dare to struggle, you dare to win. If you dare not to struggle, then goddamnit you don’t deserve to win. Now listen here what we’re going to do. The man, what he wants is for us to shut up our shop and leave our storefront. Do you think that’s what we’re going to do?”

  “Oh, no!” said the crowd.

  “No, no, we’re going to go right back in and fix up our offices. Get new glass in the windows, but put some plywood up there if there isn’t any. We going to sweep out the upstairs and get this office back open. Fortified again, better this time. If the pig wants to come, he can come. We got a lease on this place, so we going to open it right back up, starting right now. Power to the people!”

  The people responded, right back, “Power to the people!” and Fred Hampton and his bodyguard William and Dr. Spock and all of these people, filed inside and just got to work. I turned to Sherlock, and he was gone. I looked for him—with his height he should be immediately visible—but I couldn’t find him anywhere. I was alone, and I was in a strange city, standing outside of a Black Panther office that had recently been the scene of a gun battle. I put my hands in my pockets as I turned to stroll, and there was a note from Sherlock. Odd. He must have slipped it in while Hampton was talking.