Death of a City

by Lionel White

  He had two options open. He could go directly to the police station and get help. But his intelligence told him that his chances of getting any help there would be just about nil. Those rumors which had been floating around the country club all evening could have been wildly exaggerated, but the fact remained that there sure as hell was a lot of trouble going on in town. All he had to do was look at the skyline through the windshield to verify that. All that smoke and flames sure as hell meant something. The one place he was damned sure not to find help would be police headquarters. Anyone hanging around there tonight wouldn’t be looking for trouble; they’d be trying their best to avoid it. No, the only help Knocky would be able to find would be that which he supplied himself.

  The smart thing to do would be to go home first and arm himself. Of course, he had a couple of guns in his private office at the garage, but if they were already in the place and looting, he sure as hell wouldn’t be able to get to them. The thing was to be prepared when he did get there. If they were actually looting and burning cars, he could park a short distance away and start picking them off in the light cast by the fires as they milled around. The best thing would be a shotgun, something which would cover a large area. The Browning automatic. If these bastards wanted sniping, he’d show them something about that. And a couple of handguns, just in case. The police thirty-eight which Whip Partridge had given him after he’d knocked off the agency commission on that new Chevy the chief wanted for his wife, and the little twenty-five automatic he kept in his top dresser drawer. That should do it all right.

  It would be nice, of course, if he could pick up a couple of his pals to go to the garage with him. The trouble was that he just didn't have time to waste running around trying to round up anyone. If Mort was telling the truth, he didn’t have any time at all, just enough to stop by the house and get a little real authority.

  Mary Jean would throw a fit, of course, when he came in and started picking up the guns. She always did. Guns scared her half to death. But what the hell, Mary Jean was always throwing a fit about something or another and it had been a long time since he’d paid any attention to her particular brand of hysterical nagging.

  Knocky Higgins also lived in Far Hills, some three-quarters of a mile down the same street on which Miles Overstreet had built his rather palatial ranch house. But when Knocky drove into his own blue-stone graveled driveway, unlike Miles Overstreet’s home, lights gleamed weakly from the living-room window. Knocky didn’t open his garage doors and didn’t cut off his engine. He merely pulled on his hand brake and leaped out and took the front steps two at a time.

  It wasn’t until he’d held his finger pressed to the doorbell for a full half minute that he realized that, without electricity, the chimes would not work. Knocky cursed under his breath and went back to the car to get the front-door key, which was on the same key chain with the keys to his car. He pulled the ignition key from the lock and then remembered the flashlight in the glove compartment and retrieved it.

  Two minutes later he stepped into the living room of his house, where a candle flickered in an ashtray on a side table. There was a scream from the bedroom wing and he hurried toward the hallway which led to the master bedroom.

  She was sitting on the bed, fully dressed, her clenched fists pushed into her eye sockets, her mouth wide open, a small, thin wail coming from her throat as the flashlight picked out her silhouette. There was a small transistor radio on the bed beside her and an announcer was saying something about a curfew in Oakdale.

  Mary Jean didn't open her eyes as the light found her face. She moaned, “Oh God, oh God, help me!”

  “For Christ’s sake, Mary Jean,” Knocky said, “cut it out! Who the hell do you think this is, the bogey man?”

  Slowly her fists came away from her tear-streaked face and her wide-open eyes stared blindly at him.

  “Knocky,” she said. “Oh dear mother of Jesus, where have you been, Knocky? I’ve been so scared ...”

  “What the hell are you doing sitting here in the dark like a damned idiot?” Knocky said. “We have candles, don’t we?”

  “Knocky, Knocky,” Mary Jean said. “The lights went out and the telephone—there’s no phone and you weren’t here and I have been so frightened ...”

  “You’re just being a damned fool again,” Knocky said. “Everyone’s lights are off and everyone’s phones are out. There’s nothing to panic about. I thought you were supposed to meet me at the club.”

  “But, Knocky,” his wife said, starting to cry again. “Knocky, haven’t you heard? The rioting and the looting. I’ve been getting it on the radio. Not our local station, but..

  “Listen, Mary Jean, pull yourself together,” Knocky said. “Dig up some more candles and just don’t sit here like a damned fool in the dark. Now, I’ve got to go down to the garage and ...”

  “Knocky,” Mary Jean wailed, “Knocky, for God’s sake, you are not going out again, not going to leave me alone? I tell you,.I have almost died of fright and I didn’t know where you were and I have been sitting here ..

  “I haven’t got time now to hear your sad story,” Knocky said. “I have to get down to the garage, I told you. I hear those black bastards have broken in and ...”

  “You can’t. You simply can’t go and leave me again. Knocky, I don’t care what you have done to me in the past, or what you may do again, but tonight, just tonight...”

  “I am giving you just one minute to get off that bed and pull yourself together. Otherwise ...”

  “Then take me with you ...”

  “I’ll have enough to worry about without a sniveling wife on my hands,” Knocky said. “Now, come on, get your fat ass off that bed and ..

  He swung the flashlight around and started for the door as Mary Jean again burst into tears. He could still hear her sobs as he was leaving the house four minutes later, the Browning automatic tucked under one arm and the two handguns shoved into the belt around his waist.

  Quite by coincidence, Knocky took the same indirect route into the city which Miles Overstreet was to take a half hour later, but unlike Miles, Knocky was intercepted before he had driven a half mile from his house.

  The state police car with the red flashing light on the roof switched on its siren when he was more than a block away from it and it swung across the roadway in front of him so that he had no option but to stop. The trooper who got out from the seat next to the driver had his revolver in one hand as he approached, a flashlight in the other.

  “All right, brother,” he said, “get out and keep your hands up. Way up. Against the side of the car. Feet out, legs spread, hands on the roof.”

  “What the hell is this anyway?” Knocky said. “I'm Knocky Higgins and I ..

  “I don’t care if you are God Almighty,” the trooper said. “Get out of that car. With your hands up. Maybe you haven’t heard, but there’s a curfew on in this town tonight. Now get out and be quick about it!”

  A couple of seconds later, he yelled over to the driver of the patrol car.

  “Better get over here, Sarge,” he said. “This bastard is loaded for bear. Got enough fire power on him to start a private war.”

  It took about ten minutes, but finally Knocky was able to make them understand. They checked his registration, his driver’s license and even went over the car, opening the trunk and glove compartment. They even looked at the checkbook he was carrying with his name on it and a couple of envelopes he had in his pockets before they were satisfied.

  But finally they gave him back his papers and his guns.

  “Well, we haven’t heard anything about your garage and showroom being hit, Mr. Higgins,” the sergeant said, “but it’s possible. Anything is possible in this city tonight. I can’t blame you for wanting to check up and do anything you can. But frankly, I’d advise you to forget it and go on back home. If they have hit your place, it's probably too late now to do anything about it anyway. Of course, if you insist, we won’t stand in your way. But let me wa
rn you before you go barreling into town. Stay away from the colored district. There has been a lot of sniping going on. Another thing. If you see anyone on a motorcycle who may look to you like a cop, a nigger cop, give him plenty of clearance. We have had a few reports of cars being fired on by guys riding motorcycles who seem to be wearing what look like police helmets, black leather jackets. Believe me, they are not policemen. Neither we nor the local police have any men out here on motorcycles tonight.”

  “I’ll be careful,” Knocky said.

  “One other thing. Take it easy with those weapons you got there. Keep them concealed. And if you find anyone looting or burning when you get to your place, don’t be a damned fool and try to do anything about it. Get away as fast as you can and let the insurance companies do the worrying. We really shouldn’t let you go around armed this way.”

  “I only want them to use if and when I get to my business. A citizen does have the right to protect his own property and I . . .”

  “Use them to protect your property if you want to, Mr. Higgins. Just be damned careful not to use them any other way. One thing we don’t want is a race riot. Nobody, black or white, is going to start taking the law into their own hands.”

  “I understand, officer," Knocky said. “I’ll be careful.”

  “You do that,” the state trooper said. “You just do that.”

  Knocky Higgins reached the center of the business district without further incident and, as he passed in front of the Oakdale First National Bank on Court House Square, his headlights picked up the figure of a man leaning against the side of a black sedan. The man appeared to be wearing some sort of badge over his left breast pocket. For a moment, just as he came opposite the bank, his eyes went to the double glass front doors and Knocky was quite certain he saw the flash of a light from somewhere inside the bank building. It didn’t strike him as particularly surprising.

  He assumed that it would only be natural that the bank would have guards on duty inside.

  Three minutes later he turned right on South Charter and then he was suddenly in front of the darkened building of the Higgins Chevrolet Company at the corner of Peach Street. His headlights picked up the wide unbroken expanse of glass of the main showrooms.

  There was no sign of the slightest disturbance.

  For a second, as he pulled into the curb in the front of the building, he was torn between two diametrically opposed emotions— relief at the knowledge that there had been no looting, no burning, and fury with Mort Goldfeather, who had very obviously played him for a sucker, made a damned fool out of him in front of everyone at the country club.

  “Jew bastard,” he said as he climbed out of the car.

  He was carrying the shotgun under his arm again as he put the key into the lock of the heavy glass front door.

  Once inside the building, he hesitated for several seconds. Again he said, “Jew bastard. I’ll get that son of a bitch if it’s the last thing I ever do. I’ll drive him out of the country club and the Cosmos Club as well. I don’t give a shit if Cass Asmore is his best buddy. Making a damned fool of me!"

  Actually, he’d been simpleminded to fall for the story in the first place. What the hell, police headquarters was only two blocks down on South Chester at Central Avenue. No nigger in his right mind would dare to start anything that close. He should have known that the place would be all right. But it didn’t matter now. He was here and everything was all right.

  For a moment he was tempted to turn around and go back out to Far Hills and get a decent night’s sleep. But suppose he did and then something were to happen? It is true police headquarters was only a couple of blocks away, but on the other hand, the rioting was going on even now in the colored section only a few blocks from police headquarters in the other direction, to the north. As the state cops had said, anything could happen tonight. The thing to do was stand by just in case.

  Again he hesitated for several seconds, torn between two I courses of action. He could go over to the salesman’s desk at the side of the showroom and sit there in the dark, the shotgun across his lap, his revolver and automatic on the table in front of him, and wait. If they came they wouldn’t see him, but he’d be able to pick out their silhouettes against the glass of the show windows and half light of the full moon. He could pick them off one by one.

  On the other hand, if they did come, and he started shooting, God only knows how it might end. They wouldn’t be likely to come just one or two at a time.

  Knocky, in spite of everything, was no coward. Even now contemplating what might happen if they did decide to loot and burn, he wasn’t afraid. All he was doing was trying to figure out the best strategy.

  Without electricity, it would be impossible really to light the place up. On the other hand, he had, in a sense, a damned good built-in lighting system. There were some half dozen new cars on the floor. Each of these cars contained brand-new, fully charged storage batteries. Those batteries would certainly last out the rest of the night and certainly by tomorrow night the electric power would be back on.

  He nodded his head in satisfaction. That would be the smart thing to do, turn on every Goddamned one of those headlights, light the place up like a Christmas tree. Looters and arsonists liked to work in the dark, in secret. It was a pretty sure thing that, if they saw the place all lit up, a man sitting there calmly with a shotgun across his lap and a couple of handguns at his side, they sure as hell would hesitate a damned long time before they started anything.

  Laying the shotgun on the desk, Knocky walked over to the nearest car and, using his flashlight, found the headlight switch. Five minutes later he was back, seated at the salesman’s desk, the shotgun in front of him and a half-filled bottle of bourbon in his hand as he poured three ounces into a paper cup. There was a smug, complacent smile on his face as he lifted it to his mouth to take it neat.

  Let the sons of bitches come now!

  The first heavy lead thirty-o-six slug, fired from the front seat of the car which had quietly and without lights coasted to a stop directly across the street from the showrooms of the Higgins Chevrolet Company, smashed the plate-glass window into a thousand pieces and was deflected so that it glanced off the fender of a brand-new Corvette and buried itself in the upholstery of a second car.

  The second lead slug, from the same gun, caught Knocky Higgins full in the mouth as he half-rose to his feet, dropping the half-filled paper cup and splashing its contents down his trousers.

  The third and last slug took away most of the right side of his upper face and forehead.

  Tossing the rifle into the back seat of his car, the man who’d pulled the trigger which sent those lethal slugs on their path of destruction, in no way considered himself a murderer or even an executioner. He felt that he was merely exercising his rights as a private citizen in defending his home, his wife and his dignity.

  eight

  1 WHEN Carlton Asmore walked into the chief of police’s office shortly after midnight, Del Partridge looked up and drew a long sigh.

  “By God, boy,” he said, “am I glad to see you. This thing is really getting out of hand. I have every cell in the place filled and we are beginning to handcuff ’em to the rails in the hallways. Just where the hell am I supposed to find a place to put them all? I not only am not going to be able to feed them, I can’t even find a place to keep 'em.”

  “Maybe it would help if you could cut down on arresting them,” Asmore said.

  For a moment Partridge just stared at him.

  “You know what’s goin’ on out there?” he asked. “What are we supposed to do, just turn our backs? You want those niggers to burn this town down around our ears?”

  “Look, I know what you’re faced with,” Carlton said. “But just making wholesale arrests ..

  “I ain’t making wholesale arrests, Mr. Asmore," Partridge said. “Hell, an hour ago I told my men not to even bother with the looters. That is, if they are just kids. We haven’t even been picking them up, not ev
en when we see ’em walking down the street with television sets under their arms. We just fan their asses with a nightstick and send them on their way. But when them buck niggers call us pigs and throw rocks at us, we are not just going to stand still and take it. We’ve picked them up with guns, with knives ...”

  “You’ll just have to do the best you can,” Asmore said. “I left the Mayor a few minutes ago. He’s over at Memorial. Had a minor accident and got cut up a bit. He’ll be all right. He suggested we open up the basement of the courthouse and use that to hold prisoners if you get overloaded here.”

  “We’re overloaded all right,” Partridge said. “The courthouse is a good idea. I’ll start sending them over there. But you realize I’ll have to pull a few men off the streets to stand guard.”

  “Have any of them been trying to make bail?”

  “I had that colored lawyer on my hands and he was yelling his head off, but I told him we are holding everyone we pick up on short affidavits for investigation before we charge them. I’m not about to turn these bastards loose on the streets again tonight, not after we once get our hands on them. The ones we’ve been picking off aren’t just plain disorderly-conduct cases. These boys have been apprehended in the commission of felonies, and they should be so charged. That’s your department, of course, but you can be damned sure we’ll have the evidence for you to act on.”

  “And you can be sure that I’ll act on it,” Asmore said. “Tell me, have you had any trouble yet with white ...’’

  "Couple of my boys in a squad car stopped a car out by one of the canneries. Filled with a half dozen young punks and they were heading for nigger town. Had a couple of sawed-off shotguns, some knives, bicycle chains. Aching for trouble. My men would have let them go, but they got snotty and started giving us some lip so they just gathered them in and we got them in a cell by themselves down in the basement here.”