The Bonfire of the Vanities

by Tom Wolfe

  “Ayyyyy, wait a minute,” said Killian. “It ain’t that bad yet.”

  “It’s that bad,” said Sherman. “But I swear to you, I feel better about it now. You know the way they can take a dog, a house pet, like a police dog that’s been fed and pampered all its life, and train it to be a vicious watchdog?”

  “I’ve heard of it,” said Killian.

  “I’ve seen it done,” said Quigley. “I saw it done when I was on the force.”

  “Well, then you know the principle,” said Sherman. “They don’t alter that dog’s personality with dog biscuits or pills. They chain it up, and they beat it, and they bait it, and they taunt it, and they beat it some more, until it turns and bares its fangs and is ready for the final fight every time it hears a sound.”

  “That’s true,” said Quigley.

  “Well, in that situation dogs are smarter than humans,” said Sherman. “The dog doesn’t cling to the notion that he’s a fabulous house pet in some terrific dog show, the way the man does. The dog gets the idea. The dog knows when it’s time to turn into an animal and fight.”

  31. Into the Solar Plexus

  It was a sunny day this time, a balmy day in June. The air was so light it seemed pure and refreshing, even here in the Bronx. A perfect day, in short; Sherman took it badly. He took it personally. How very heartless! How could Nature, Fate—God—contrive such a sublime production for his hour of misery? Heartlessness on all sides. A spasm of fear reached down to the very bottom of his descending colon.

  He was in the back seat of a Buick with Killian. Ed Quigley was in the front seat, next to the chauffeur, who had dark skin, thick straight black hair, and fine, exquisite, almost pretty features. An Asian? They came down the ramp from the expressway right past the bowl of Yankee Stadium, and a big sign said, TONIGHT 7 PM YANKEES VS. KANSAS CITY. How very heartless! Tens of thousands of people would come to this place tonight anyway—to drink beer and watch a white ball hop and pop around for two hours—and he would be back in there, in a darkness he couldn’t imagine. And it would begin. The poor fools! They didn’t know what the real thing was like! Tens of thousands of them in Yankee Stadium, watching a game, a mere charade of war, while he was in a war. And it would begin…the elemental physical violence…

  Now the Buick was going up the long hill, up 161st Street. They would be there in no time.

  “It’s not the same courthouse,” said Killian. “It’s the building up on the top of the hill, on the right.”

  Sherman could see an immense limestone structure. It looked quite majestic sitting up there on the crest of the Grand Concourse in the sunlight of a perfect day; majestic and stupendously heavy.

  Sherman could see the driver’s eyes seeking him out in the rearview mirror, and then they locked in an embarrassing contact and jumped away. Quigley, up front next to the driver, was wearing a tie and a jacket, but just barely. The jacket, a curious Meat Gone High teal-green tweed, was riding up away from the pitted skin of his neck. He looked like the kind of fidgety Hard Case who is spoiling for an opportunity to peel off the jacket and tie and start fighting and cultivating hematomas or, better still, intimidate some funk-ridden weakling who isn’t ready to meet the challenge to fight.

  As the car ascended the hill, Sherman could see a crowd in the street near the top, out in front of the limestone building. Cars were squeezing over in order to get by.

  “What’s going on?” he said.

  “Looks like a demonstration,” said Quigley.

  Killian said, “Well, at least they aren’t in front of your apartment house this time.”

  “A de-mon-strrra-tion? Hahahaha,” said the chauffeur. He had a singsong accent and a polite and thoroughly nervous laugh. “What it is about? Hahahaha.”

  “It’s about us,” said Quigley in his dead voice.

  The chauffeur looked at Quigley. “About yooouuu? Hahahaha.”

  “You know the gentleman who hired this car? Mr. McCoy?” Quigley motioned with his head toward the back seat.

  In the mirror the chauffeur’s eyes searched and locked on again. “Hahahaha.” Then he became quiet.

  “Don’t worry,” said Quigley. “It’s always safer in the middle of a riot than out on the edge. That’s a well-known fact.”

  The chauffeur looked at Quigley again and said, “Hahahaha.” Then he became very quiet, no doubt trying to figure out which to be more afraid of, the demonstrators he was approaching on the street or the Hard Case who was inside and merely inches away from his as yet unwrung neck. Then he sought out Sherman again with his eyes and locked on and then jumped inside the cavity and flailed away, bug-eyed with panic.

  “Nothing’s gonna happen,” Killian said to Sherman. “There’ll be cops up there. They’ll be ready for ’em. It’s the same bunch every time, Bacon and that crowd. Do you think the people of the Bronx give a damn one way or the other? Don’t flatter yourself. This is the same bunch, doing their same weird number. It’s a show. Just keep your mouth shut and look straight ahead. This time we have a surprise for them.”

  As the car neared Walton Avenue, Sherman could see the crowd out in the street. They were all around the base of the huge limestone building at the top of the hill. He could hear a voice coming over a microphone. People were answering the voice with a chant. Whoever was screaming over the microphone seemed to be up on the terrace of the stairway on the 161st Street side. There were camera crews with their equipment sticking up out of the sea of faces.

  The driver said, “You waaaant me to stop? Hahahahaha.”

  “Just keep moving,” said Quigley. “I’ll tell you when to stop.”

  “Hahahaha.”

  Killian said to Sherman, “We’re going in through the side.” Then to the driver: “Take the next right!”

  “All the peeeoooople! Hahahaha.”

  “Just take the next right,” said Quigley, “and don’t worry about it.”

  Killian said to Sherman, “Duck down. Tie your shoe or something.”

  The car turned onto the street that ran along the lower edge of the great limestone building. But Sherman sat up straight in his seat. It no longer mattered. When would it begin? He could see blue-and-orange vans with wire mesh over their windows. The crowd had spilled off the sidewalk. They were looking up toward the 161st Street side. The voice harangued them, and the chants arose from the mob on the stairs.

  “Hook a left,” said Killian. “Right in there. See that red cone? That’s it.”

  The car was heading in at a ninety-degree angle toward the curbing at the base of the building. Some sort of policeman was out there lifting up a Day-Glo rubber cone from the middle of a parking place. Quigley was holding a card up in the windshield with his left hand, apparently for the benefit of the policeman. There were four or five other policemen on the sidewalk. They wore short-sleeved white shirts and had tremendous revolvers on their hips.

  “When I open the door,” said Killian, “you get in between me and Ed and make tracks.”

  The door opened, and they scrambled out. Quigley was on Sherman’s right; Killian on his left. People on the sidewalk stared at them but didn’t seem to know who they were. Three of the policemen in white shirts sidled between the crowd and Sherman, Killian, and Quigley. Killian took hold of Sherman’s elbow and steered him toward a door. Quigley was carrying a heavy case. A policeman in a white shirt stood in the doorway, then stepped aside to let them through into a lobby lit by dim fluorescent bulbs. On the right was a doorway to what looked like a utility room. Sherman could make out the black and gray hulks of people slumped on benches.

  “They did us a favor by having their demonstration on the steps,” said Killian. His voice was high-pitched and tense. Two officers led them toward an elevator, which another officer was holding open for them.

  They entered the elevator, and the officer stepped inside with them. The officer pressed the button for the ninth floor, and they began their ascent.

  “Thanks, Brucie,” Killian said to
the officer.

  “It’s okay. You got Bernie to thank, though.” Killian looked at Sherman, as if to say, “What did I tell you?”

  On the ninth floor, outside a room marked Part 60, there was a noisy crowd in the corridor. A line of court officers was holding them back.

  Yo!…There he is!

  Sherman looked straight ahead. When does it begin? A man jumped out in front of him—a white man, tall, with blond hair swept back from a sharp widow’s peak. He wore a navy blazer and a navy tie, and a shirt with a striped front and a stiff white collar. It was the reporter, Fallow. Sherman had last seen him when he was about to enter Central Booking…that place…

  “Mr. McCoy!!” That voice.

  With Killian on one side and Quigley on the other and the court officer, Brucie, leading the way, they were like a flying wedge. They brushed the Englishman aside and went through a door. They were in the courtroom. A crowd of people to Sherman’s left…in the spectator seats…Black faces…some white faces…In the foreground was a tall black man with a gold earring in one lobe. He rose up from his seat in a crouch and pointed a long, thin arm at Sherman and said in a loud guttural whisper: “That’s him!” Then in a louder voice: “Jail! No bail!”

  The deep voice of a woman: “Lock him up!”

  Yegggh!…That’s the one!…Look at him!…Jail! No bail!

  Now? Not yet. Killian held his elbow and whispered in his ear, “Ignore it!”

  A falsetto croon: “Sherrrr-maannnn…Sherrrr-maannnn.”

  “SHUT UP! SIT DOWN!”

  It was the loudest voice Sherman had ever heard. At first he thought it was directed at himself. He felt terribly guilty, even though he hadn’t uttered a sound.

  “ANY MORE OUTBURSTS—I CLEAR THE COURT! DO I MAKE MYSELF CLEAR?”

  Up at the judge’s bench, beneath the inscription IN GOD WE TRUST, a thin bald hawk-nosed man in black robes stood with his fists on top of his desk and his arms straight, as if he were a runner about to spring from the starting position. Sherman could see the white beneath the irises as the judge’s blazing eyes swept the crowd before him. The demonstrators grumbled but grew still.

  The judge, Myron Kovitsky, continued to stare at them with his furious gaze.

  “In this courtroom you speak when the court asks you to speak. You pass judgment on your fellow man when you are selected for a jury and the court asks you to pass judgment. You stand up and render your obiter dicta when the court asks you to stand up and render your obiter dicta. Until then—YOU SHUT UP AND SIT DOWN! AND I…AM THE COURT! DO I MAKE MYSELF CLEAR? Is there anyone who disputes what I have just said and holds this court in such contempt that he would like to spend some time as a guest of the state of New York contemplating what I have just said? DO—I—MAKE—MYSELF—CLEAR?”

  His eyes panned the crowd from left to right and right to left and left to right again.

  “All right. Now that you understand that, perhaps you can observe these proceedings as responsible members of the community. So long as you do so, you are welcome in this courtroom. And the moment you don’t—you’ll wish you hadda stood in bed! Do—I—make—myself—clear?”

  His voice rose again so suddenly and to such an intensity the crowd seemed to recoil, startled at the thought that the wrath of this furious little man might descend upon them again.

  Kovitsky sat down and spread his arms. His robes billowed out like wings. He lowered his head. The whites still showed beneath his irises. The room was now still. Sherman, Killian, and Quigley stood near the fence—the bar—that separated the spectators’ section from the court proper. Kovitsky’s eyes settled on Sherman and Killian. He appeared to be angry at them, too. He breathed what seemed to be a sigh of disgust.

  Then he turned to the clerk of the court, who sat at a large conference table to one side. Sherman followed Kovitsky’s gaze, and there, standing beside the table, he saw the assistant district attorney, Kramer.

  Kovitsky said to the clerk, “Call the case.”

  The clerk called out: “Indictment number 4-7-2-6, the People versus Sherman McCoy. Who is representing Mr. McCoy?”

  Killian stepped up to the bar and said, “I am.”

  The clerk said, “Please give your appearance.”

  “Thomas Killian, 86 Reade Street.”

  Kovitsky said, “Mr. Kramer, you have a motion to make at this time?”

  This man, Kramer, took a few steps toward the bench. He walked like a football player. He stopped, threw his head back, tensed his neck, for some reason, and said, “Your Honor, the defendant, Mr. McCoy, is currently free on ten thousand dollars’ bail, an insignificant sum for a person with his particular advantages and resources in the financial community.”

  Yegggh!…Jail! No bail!…Make him pay!

  Kovitsky, his head down low, glowered. The voices died down to a rumble.

  “As Your Honor knows,” Kramer continued, “the grand jury has now brought in an indictment against the defendant on serious charges: reckless endangerment, leaving the scene of an accident, and failure to report an accident. Now, Your Honor, inasmuch as the grand jury has already found sufficient evidence of the defendant’s abandonment of his responsibilities to indict him, the People feel there also exists the substantial possibility that the defendant might ignore and abandon his bond, given the small amount of that bond.”

  Yeah…That’s right…Unh-hunh…

  “So, Your Honor,” said Kramer, “the People feel it is incumbent upon the court to send a clear signal not only to the defendant but to the community that what is at issue here is in fact regarded with the utmost seriousness. At the heart of this case, Your Honor, is a young man, an exemplary young man, Mr. Henry Lamb, who has become a symbol to the people of the Bronx of both the hopes they have for their sons and daughters and the callous and deadly obstacles that they face. Your Honor is already aware of the passion with which the community is following every step of this case. Were this courtroom larger, the people of this community would be here at this moment by the hundreds, possibly the thousands, just as they are even now in the corridors and on the streets outside.”

  Right on!…Jail! No bail!…You tell him!

  KAPOW!

  Kovitsky brought his gavel down with a tremendous explosion.

  “QUIET!”

  The rumble of the crowd sank back to a low boil.

  His head down low, his irises floating on a sea of white, Kovitsky said, “Get to the point, Mr. Kramer. This isn’t a pep rally. It’s a hearing in a court of law.”

  Kramer knew he was staring at all the usual signs. The irises were floating on that foaming sea. The head was down. The beak was out. It wasn’t going to take much more to set Kovitsky off. On the other hand, he thought, I can’t back down. Can’t give in. Kovitsky’s attitude so far—even though it was nothing but standard Kovitsky, the usual yelling, the usual belligerent insistence on his authority—Kovitsky’s attitude so far established him as an adversary of the demonstrators. The Office of the District Attorney of Bronx County was their friend. Abe Weiss was their friend. Larry Kramer was their friend. The People were…truly the People. That was what he was here for. He would just have to take his chance with Kovitsky—with those furious Masada eyes that now bore down on him.

  His own voice sounded funny to him as he said, “I’m mindful of that, Your Honor, but I must also be mindful of the importance of this case to the People, to all the Henry Lambs, present and future, in this county and in this city—”

  Tell him, bro!…Right on!…That’s right!

  Kramer hastened to continue, in an even louder voice, before Kovitsky detonated: “—and therefore the People petition the court to increase the defendant to a significant and credible amount—to one million dollars—in order to—”

  Jail! No bail!…Jail! No bail!…Jail! No bail! The demonstrators erupted into a chant.

  That’s right!…Million dollars!…Yaggghh!…The voice of the crowd rose in a cheer laced with exultant laughter and the
n crested with a chant: Jail! No bail!…Jail! No bail!…Jail! No bail!…Jail! No bail!

  Kovitsky’s gavel rose a full foot above his head and Kramer flinched inwardly before it hit.

  KAPOW!

  Kovitsky gave Kramer a furious glance, then leaned forward and fastened upon the crowd.

  “ORDER IN THE COURT!…SHUDDUP!…DO YOU DOUBT MY WORD?” His irises surfed this way and that on the furious boiling sea.

  The chanting stopped, and the cries lowered to a rumble. But little riffs of laughter indicated they were just waiting for the next opening.

  “THE COURT OFFICERS WILL—”

  “Your Honor! Your Honor!” It was McCoy’s lawyer, Killian.

  “What is it, Mr. Killian?”

  The interruption threw the crowd off stride. They quieted down.

  “Your Honor, may I approach the bench?”

  “All right, Mr. Killian.” Kovitsky beckoned him forward. “Mr. Kramer?” Kramer headed for the bench also.

  Now he was standing next to Killian, Killian in his fancy clothes, before the bench, beneath the glowering brow of Judge Kovitsky.

  “Okay, Mr. Killian,” said Kovitsky, “what’s up?”

  “Judge,” said Killian, “if I’m not mistaken, you’re the supervising judge of the grand jury in this case?”

  “That’s correct,” he said to Killian, but then he turned his attention to Kramer. “You hard of hearing Mr. Kramer?”

  Kramer said nothing. He didn’t have to answer a question like that.

  “You intoxicated by the sound of this bunch”—Kovitsky nodded toward the spectators—“cheering you on?”

  “No, Judge, but there’s no way this case can be treated like an ordinary case.”

  “In this courtroom, Mr. Kramer, it’s gonna be treated any fucking way I say it’s gonna be treated. Do I make myself clear?”