Death of a City

by Lionel White

“That’s no good, Mista Crown. You promise before. I don’t want no promises. I don’t want no check. Either get me the money right now, or I call Hambone and ...”

  “Pour me another drink,” Hughy said. “Another drink and I’ll tell you what I’ll do.”

  Hughy reached into his back pocket and took out his wallet. He shuffled through several papers until he found the registration for his Jaguar. Carefully he unfolded it and laid it on the table.

  “You know that car of mine? My XKE? Well, that car’s worth a couple of thousand dollars. Now, right now, I’ll sign this registration over to you. I’ll give you a bill of sale. For exactly what I owe you and for tonight and maybe tomorrow. Until I can leave. My God, you’ll be getting a car worth two, three thousand dollars for peanuts. Now, how’s that?”

  Goldie didn’t speak for several minutes but just stared at him. Then she looked down at the car registration which he’d tossed on the table.

  “Where at’s your car now?”

  “Where? Why right out on Central Avenue. Parked a few doors down the street. That’s where. You know my car. You seen it plenty of times.”

  Goldie slowly put the bottle back on the table. “Go ahead,” she said. She turned to where the girls sat. “Which one of you read?”

  “I can read, Miss Goldie,” Sissy said.

  Goldie handed her the registration. “That look all right to you?”

  Sissy studied the registration for several moments and then turned it over and read the print on the back. She looked up at Goldie.

  “It his car all right,” she said. “But he have to sign here on the back.”

  Goldie grunted.

  “Get some paper and a pen, Sissy,” she said. “Write out he sells me that car for five hunnert dolla, free and clear. Then he sign and you sign witness under his name.” She looked over at Hughy, who had poured a second cup to the brim from the whiskey bottle.

  “Where the keys?”

  “Keys? Why they’re in the glove compartment,” Hughy said. He smiled. “Now, what say? How about Milly getting some more booze then me”—he looked over at the girls—“me and a couple of the broads can go upstairs ..

  “You sign them papers first,” Goldie said. “Sign. Then you get the whiskey and you can take anybody up you want. This place is closed for the rest of the night so you can have any girl you ..

  “Closed?” Hughy said. “Good. Hell, I’ll take all five. And little Ruby, too. Where’s our little Ruby?”

  “Ruby’s sick,” Goldie said. “But you don’t need no Ruby. Five girls more than you can handle.”

  Hughy downed the drink. His face still hurt, but he was beginning to feel pretty good. It had been a close one, but what the hell, smart guys always win. And he was smart. Damned smart. He poured another drink.

  Ten minutes later, after he had signed the registration and the handwritten bill of sale, he staggered away from the table and started up the back stairs.

  “Come on, girls,” he said. “Come on. Old Hughy, old Hughy Crown, your and my favorite disk jockey, is now going to make a new record.”

  Goldie held Alice by the sleeve as the other girls stood up and started to follow Hughy. They didn’t look happy about it. Each one of them, at some time or other in the past, had been with him. They knew him and remembered him. It wasn’t just that he was brutal and unpleasant and gave them anything but pleasure. He always wanted everything, every way, and he’d never been known to give a tip. Nothing ever extra for the girl. Tonight was the first time he’d gone so far as to pay for a drink. It would have to be tonight, the one night Goldie had said the drinks would be on the house.

  Goldie waited until they had left the room and then she pulled Alice down so that she could whisper into the girl’s ear.

  “Go on out on the street,” she said, “an’ find that car. Get those keys out of the glove compartment.”

  5 HE knew that he couldn’t have been sleeping for more than an hour or so at the most. The room was still dark, or at least half dark. Someone must have brought in a candle and put it on the bureau.

  Christ! His head felt as if there was a blacksmith inside his skull hammering on his brain. He’d fallen asleep, or rather he must have passed out. Well, that wasn’t surprising. After all he’d been through! First that business over on Central Avenue. Then coming here, drinking all that rotgut. And the girls. Jesus, he was a hell of a man, but five of ’em! Or had it been four? Well, it didn’t

  matter. Whiskey notwithstanding, he’d showed ’em. Showed ’em what sort of guy old Hughy Crown was. A stud to end all studs.

  Again he opened one eye and saw the shadows on the wall. Who the hell had brought in the damned candle?

  He felt around with one hand and realized he was in the bed alone. God, if only his head ...

  Maybe if he got one more drink down and could hold it. Maybe ...

  He turned his head on the pillow, hunched his body over to one side and opened both eyes. That’s when he saw them.

  They were standing in a row at the end of the brass bed. Five of them. Naked. Bare-assed naked. And behind them was Goldie. The candle was not on the dresser. Goldie was holding the candle.

  “Fa Chris’ sake,” he muttered, “what the hell you starin’ at? Git me a Goddamn drink before ...”

  “What did you want to do that to Sissy for?” Goldie said. "Come on, Mista Crown, you tell me. What you want to chew that girl up for? Goddamn me, first little Ruby gets it an’ then you come here tonight and you do the same thing to Sissy. You white sons of bitches all crazy or somethin’? You got a taste for black meat? What you try in’ to do, eat up my girls and put me outta business?”

  Hughy groaned.

  “Oh, for God’s sake,” he said, “get the hell out of here. You have Milly bring me a drink and get out of here now.”

  Goldie moved forward and reached down, taking hold of the sheet and pulled it off his naked body.

  “That a nice car you sold me, Mista Crown,” she said. “Real nice car. Course, I don’t know what I’m goin’ to do with a car that’s all burned up, but it's a real nice car. Mista Crown, you wan' another girl now?”

  Hughy groaned.

  “You and your girls take your black asses out of here,” he said. He groaned again and held his hand to his head, closing his eyes. “I had all the black meat I want for one night.”

  “Maybe time has come we have a little white meat, Mista Crown,” Goldie said. “You had your black skin, maybe now's time for some white skin.”

  “Just get out,” Hughy said. “Come on—out!”

  Goldie looked over at Alice and nodded.

  The girl suddenly fell forward on the bed and Hughy felt her hair flow over his naked stomach. He felt her hands reach around under him, clawing at his buttocks. He felt hot lips, her tongue, and then her teeth.

  And then he screamed.

  And kept right on screaming as the others fell across his naked body. Screamed until the teeth pierced his lips and the blood welled up and filled his mouth and choked him.

  6 IT was three days after the rioting was under control before the body was discovered in the tin garbage can in the alley which runs between Central Avenue and Mission Avenue. It was two days after that before there was a definite identification. It had been impossible even to determine the sex at first.

  The autopsy was made within the next twenty-four hours. It took a little longer than usual and it was extremely unpleasant. The coroner, as he finished, turned to where his assistant was being sick in the sink in the corner of the room.

  “It was no animal, or animals,” he said. “Either wild or domestic. But how the hell can I write down cannibalism? Who the hell is going to believe that?”

  1 DR. Warren Fielding, senior surgeon at the Oakdale Memorial Hospital, tried to keep the anger out of his voice, tried to control his temper as he stepped back from the operating table and handed the curved needle to his scrub nurse, preparatory to turning the patient over to his assistant who wo
uld place bandages over the freshly stitched incision.

  “Damn it, Perez," he said looking furiously into the drawn face of the night supervisor, “I know we haven’t any more beds. We haven’t had beds for the last hour. Put them any place you can. Put them in the children’s ward, the maternity ward or the hallways if you have to. Better yet, move some of your private patients out of their rooms unless they are critical, and put the worst cases in their beds until I can get to them. And don’t bother me. I have my hands full as it is.”

  Mrs. Perez nodded, saying nothing.

  “We are no longer trying to make anyone well," Dr. Fielding

  said, more kindly, “we are just trying to keep ’em alive until we can get some help.”

  Dr. Fielding sympathized with the night supervisor and he understood what she was going through. After all, she’d had no experience which could have prepared her for the utter madhouse which the hospital had become. At least he’d seen action in two wars and he knew what it was to work under handicaps, to make do the best you could under chaotic and hysterical circumstances.

  There certainly was no doubt that they were all working under handicaps. The power situation was bad enough, but at least they were able to function by using the auxiliary generators. The telephone’s being out was a damned inconvenience; they still hadn’t been able to reach at least half of the staff to bring them in for the emergency. Worst of all, however, was the crowding, the scores of injured people being brought in off the streets. Blood banks were virtually depleted and they were already out of certain stocks of critical drugs. Thank God they still had morphine and anesthetics, but the sulfas were running low. The hospital, handicapped by the lack of communications, had done what it could so far as attempting to get additional supplies from local sources, drugstores and various private doctors’ offices.

  Dr. Fielding knew that word of the disaster had reached the outside world, that local ham radio operators had spread the news and that the state police must have picked up information by intercepting local police-department radio calls. Help would arrive, but whether it would arrive soon enough was another matter.

  In the meantime, the only thing to do was to carry on the best they could.

  Mrs. Perez, about to turn away, hesitated.

  “Doctor,” she said, “someone just brought the Mayor in. Mr. Millard. I believe it was a car accident. I have him down the hall in a semiprivate room. He’s going to need minor surgery. Could you take him next?”

  “How bad is he?”

  “Lacerations on his face and head. He can use stitches. Possible concussion. He’s lost quite a bit of blood but he is conscious and ..

  “Is he still bleeding?”

  “No. Young Dr. Jensen ...”

  “I’ll try to get to him later,” Dr. Fielding said. He turned to the intern who was checking the pulse of the patient on whom he’d just operated. “Bring in that young colored girl, the one with the shattered leg and the crushed pelvis. We’ll amputate.”

  The intern stared at him for a moment.

  “She’s dying, Doctor,” he said. “Heartbeat is ...”

  “That’s between her and God,” Dr. Fielding said. “If we don’t get that leg off, she’s sure to die. Bring her in. And, Mrs. Perez, is Dr. Jensen still with the Mayor?”

  “No, he did what he could and he has gone up to Emergency. Mayor Millard will be all right for awhile. Mr. Asmore, the district attorney, is with him. He was in the hospital when they brought Mr. Millard in. When he leaves, I’ll give Mr. Millard a sedative and ...”

  But the doctor had turned away and was no longer listening.

  2 BOYD Morris Millard lay on the high hospital bed, his head wrapped in white bandages, and stared at Carlton Asmore with the one eye which remained uncovered.

  “I’ve got to get out of here,” he said. “Goddamn it, I have to ...”

  “You’re not going anywhere,” Asmore said. “You’ve had a bad accident, Boyd, and you’ll just have to stay here until...”

  “But I tell you, Carlton, this town has gone mad. I have to try and ...”

  “You can delegate your authority to me for the time being, Boyd,” Asmore said. “The best thing you can do is stay quiet until they have a chance to really check you over and get you patched up."

  Millard groaned and swore.

  “All right, Carlton, all right,” he said. “You’ll have to handle things for the time being. You were right after all. I hate to admit it, but you were.” He shook his head and hesitated for several moments before going on in a baffled voice.

  “By God, I just don’t understand it. I can’t understand it. I simply am unable to believe it could happen here. In Oakdale.”

  “It can happen anywhere,” Asmore said. “It has happened—in a lot of cities."

  “But here,” Millard said. “In Oakdale.”

  He suddenly straightened up and stared hard at the district attorney.

  “It must have been planned,” he said. “Goddamn it, I damn well refuse to believe that this thing could have been locally generated. It must be the work of some outside militant group. There simply has to be some sort of criminal, anarchistic mentality behind this. Someone has set the stage, arranged ..

  Asmore shook his head.

  “Are you trying to tell me, Boyd, that you think someone deliberately . . .” He hesitated, again shaking his head. “No,” he said, “no, I can’t quite believe that. It is merely a chain reaction. The church was bombed, deliberately without a doubt, by some maniac and then everything just followed. Whoever might be behind this couldn’t possibly have foreseen what it would lead to, the slaughter of innocent...”

  “They wouldn’t have cared,” Millard said. “These Goddamned radicals and Commies don’t add up the cost in human lives and human misery. To gain their own ends, they are capable of doing anything.”

  Asmore looked at the other man thoughtfully for several seconds.

  “Perhaps you are right, Boyd,” he said at last. “Perhaps you are right. Radicals and Commies are people like everyone else. And people, or at least some people, never add up the cost. After all, the man who is motivated by an ideal is no different than the man who is motivated by a desire for profit. When a manufacturer of a bomber builds a plane which is going to give him a fifty-thousand-dollar profit, he knows very well that that plane is going to be used as an instrument which will probably destroy and kill dozens or hundreds of other people. When the maker of napalm turns out his product, also motivated by a desire for profit, he knows very well that the only possible purpose it can be put to is to maim and burn and destroy, to take the lives of hundreds and thousands of innocent men and women and children. So if people, normal everyday people, can do these things to make money, it is not surprising, I guess, that someone else may do it because of a political or social or economic theory.”

  Mayor Millard’s face, the part which remained unbandaged, turned brick red and his good eye glared.

  “Goddamn it, Asmore,” he said, “what kind of talk is that? What the hell are you trying to say? Are you trying to compare the insane, criminal sons of bitches who are responsible for what is happening here in Oakdale tonight with the patriots who turn out the weapons to defend this nation?”

  “In wars,” Asmore said, “both sides cannot be defenders. Someone has to be the aggressor. Someone makes arms and munitions for the aggressors.”

  “You are a Goddamn Commie, Asmore,” the Mayor said. “Or worse. We make arms and the hardware of war in this country. Perhaps more, and better, than any other nation on earth. But we don’t make them to murder innocent people with. We make them for defense. For the defense of freedom, here and in the rest of the world.”

  Asmore stood up and half-smiled.

  “I’m afraid, Boyd,” he said, “you and I just don’t see things in the same light. Our war hardware is being used right now in Vietnam.”

  “You’re damned well right it is. And ...”

  “And more innoc
ent people, women and children and civilians, have been slaughtered in Vietnam, on both sides, than all of the soldiers..

  “A soldier’s job is to fight and die for his country. That’s why he’s there. That’s why ...”

  “He’s there because he was drafted, if he’s an American,” Asmore said. “If he’s on the other side, he’s there because he was conscripted. Children, boys and girls, too, twelve, fourteen years old, on both sides. Handed a gun and ordered to go out and kill and be killed. Why, not one in fifty of them have the faintest idea of what they are fighting for and they couldn't care less.”

  “For Christ sake, get out of here,” Millard said. “I don’t want to listen to you. Anyway, our problem is . .

  “You are right,” Asmore said. “Our problem is here and now. In Oakdale. And it doesn’t really matter who started it or why. Or even for what reason. The job now is to stop it."

  He leaned over the bed and patted the Mayor on the arm. “Try to get some rest and take it easy until they can get you into surgery and get those stitches in. I’m heading back into town and I’ll try to spread instructions about the curfew as rapidly as possible. If we can just get people to stay in their homes, get them off the streets, contain the fires and try to control the looting, we can hold out until outside help comes. The state police ...”

  “There were some twenty state police cars in the city a little less than an hour ago,” the Mayor said. “I had them deployed in the residential sections. That’s the hardest part to patrol because of the distance between places and the size of the area. There were already a couple of reports of fires and of cars being stoned. I don’t want people to start panicking. Where will you be later?”

  “Probably at police headquarters," Asmore said. “Del has set up a command post there and I want to get back to him as soon as possible.”

  “I’ll be there as soon as I can get out of here," the Mayor said. “Tell the Chief to try to confine things to the Negro sector. We don’t want this to develop into a race war. And we don’t want those fires spreading into the downtown business area.”

  “I’ll do what I can,” Asmore said. “You take care of yourself.”