“Something’s coming, is all I’m saying. You can’t deny it. It’s like trying to stop the sunrise.”
Strange nodded tightly. Living conditions had deteriorated as poverty had grown throughout the decade. At present, only one out of three students in the city graduated from public high schools, resulting in a huge unskilled workforce released into a white-collar, government-industry town that yielded few jobs and little in the way of prospects. For many, the promise of the civil rights movement seemed broken. And if the ghetto was thought of by its residents as a kind of prison, then its police force was seen as the prison guard. This perception was exacerbated by the fact that, in D.C., roughly three out of four citizens were black, while four out of five police officers were white. No wonder that crime, civil disobedience, and unmasked hatred were on the rise.
The government, meanwhile, was making eleventh-hour efforts to ease the tension. President Johnson had appointed Walter Washington, longtime head of the National Capital Housing Authority, to be D.C.’s first black mayor. Mayor Washington then brought in Patrick V. Murphy, former chief of the Syracuse police, and put him in the newly created position of director of public safety. Murphy, who was perceived to be more sympathetic to the race problem than Police Chief John Layton, was charged with overseeing both the MPD and the fire department. Immediately, Murphy promoted blacks to higher ranks and stepped up efforts to recruit rookie black police officers. This did not make Murphy popular with senators and congressmen of a certain stripe, who feared that blacks were getting too much power in the federally controlled nation’s capital. Nevertheless, a new opportunity had presented itself, and black men and women began to sign on in numbers for the uniform, badge, and gun. Derek Strange and Lydell Blue were two of many who had heard the call.
Disenfranchised Washingtonians, however, considered these efforts to be too little, too late. The race divide remained the nation’s powder keg, and its ultimate explosion seemed destined to occur in D.C. In August of ’67, arson and minor riots had broken out along 7th and 14th Streets, with rocks and bottles thrown at firemen attempting to extinguish the flames. Since then, unrest and disorder had become almost weekly occurrences. Stokely Carmichael, the high-profile former spokesman for the Student Nonviolent Coordinating Committee, had moved to town. H. Rap Brown was being extradited from New Orleans to Richmond and ultimately to Maryland’s Eastern Shore, where he faced charges of arson and inciting a riot in the town of Cambridge. Black Panthers and other Black Nationalist factions had become active and entrenched around the city. And Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. was promising, some said threatening, to bring his Poor People’s Campaign, a massive rally, to Washington on April 22. But first he had to deal with Memphis.
Days earlier, King had led a six-thousand-strong march down Beale Street in support of an ongoing garbage workers’ strike in Memphis, where almost all the refuse men were black. Rioting and violence had ensued, ending in serious injuries, scores of arrests, and the death of a sixteen-year-old boy. Witnesses claimed the boy, Larry Payne, had been shot by a white policeman after putting his hands up in surrender. Subsequently, a prominent group of radicals had called for the annexation of five southern states with the intention of forming a separate black nation, warning that the country would have “no chance of surviving” if their demands were not met. A visibly worn down President Johnson stated that rioting could only serve to divide the people, while presidential candidate Richard Nixon declared that “the nation must be prepared to meet force with force if necessary.” King had pledged that the Memphis incident would not deter his plans to march in D.C. in April.
“Troy?”
“What?”
“Think we could get through one afternoon without talkin’ about all this bullshit for a change?”
“It’s not important to you?”
“I hear enough about it in my world every day. I just don’t need to be discussin’ it all day at work.”
Discussing it with a white man, Strange might have added. But there wasn’t any need to say it aloud. Peters was smart enough to read between the lines.
Strange had been riding with Peters for a while now, but it had only taken one day to know his history. Peters was twenty-nine years old, a devout Christian married to his college sweetheart, Patty, who worked for an American Indian-rights group on Jefferson Place in Northwest and drove a VW Bug with a flower-shaped McCarthy sticker affixed to its hood. Peters had strong feelings on civil rights, women’s rights, organized labor, and the war in Vietnam. On all of these issues, Peters believed he was on the side of the angels.
Right or not, his opinions often came off as speeches, like he was up in front of one of those poli-sci classes he had taken back in school. Strange sometimes felt it was his duty to bring Peters back down to reality. Let him know in his own way that while all black people were looking for equality, few were looking to be accepted, or loved, by whites. It was, in fact, just about the furthest thing from black folks’ minds. This was something that many of these well-meaning types could not seem to understand.
One thing about Peters, he was different for sure from most of the cops Strange had come to know. A Carolina boy who’d graduated from Princeton, joined the Peace Corps, then signed up for the MPD, he was one of several high-profile recruits with similar backgrounds who’d come to the force with Ivy League degrees in hand, hoping to change the system from the inside. There had even been a New York Times article written on these men in which Peters had been quoted, and a Look magazine spread that featured a photograph of his freckly, blue-eyed face. He claimed to be embarrassed by all the attention, and Strange had no doubt that he was. Certainly his notoriety and well-heeled upbringing did not endear him to many of his fellow officers, black or white. To them he was just playing dress-up until he got bored and moved on to something else.
Not that Peters was soft. Boys tended to be built bigger and tougher in the South, and Peters was a southern boy all the way. From what Strange had seen so far, he was unafraid to enter into a conflict and had no physical problem subduing suspects on the street. More important, Strange was secure in the belief that Peters would have his back in the event of a situation.
So Peters was all right. He wasn’t Strange’s boy or anything like that, but he was fine. Strange just wished he didn’t try so hard to endear himself to his “black” partner all the time. It got tiring sometimes, listening to the beat of his pure heart.
“I wish I could have been there,” said Peters.
“Where?”
“The cathedral. I would’ve liked to have heard him speak.”
“Thought we were done with that,” said Strange.
“The radio said four thousand showed up to hear him,” said Peters, unable to give it up.
“Gonna be four hundred thousand,” said Strange, “he comes back in April.”
“First he’s gotta go back to Tennessee to try and put a Band-Aid on that situation they got down there.”
“Fine by me,” said Strange. “Let the Memphis police deal with it for a while. Leave us with some peace.”
He looked out the window of the squad car, saw a man washing his Cadillac curbside. A snatch of “Cold Sweat” came from its radio. Two kids were dancing on the sidewalk, one of them trying to do a JB split beside the man’s ride.
“Maceo,” said Strange under his breath.
Farther along, a woman in a gone-to-church outfit walked alone, swinging a handbag, her backside moving beautifully beneath her short skirt.
“What’d you say?” said Peters.
“I love this city,” said Strange.
NINE
BUZZ STEWART WALKED through an open bay door, stepped into the cool spring air, and lit himself a smoke. He had just finished changing the oil on a ’66 Dart, needed a break, and felt he was due. Behind him, from the garage radio, came that new one from the Temptations, “I Wish It Would Rain.” Now, that was a nice song.
“Day in, day out, my tear-stained face is pres
sed against the windowpane,” sang Stewart, soft and off-key, his eyes closed, the sun warming his face. David Ruffin on vocals, you couldn’t go wrong there. Course, Stewart couldn’t stand the sight of most niggers. But, boy,they could sing.
After Stewart’s discharge from the army, the manager of the Esso station at Georgia and Piney Branch had rehired him straightaway. Manager said he hoped the service had made a man out of him, and Stewart assured him that it had. Soon Stewart had been promoted to junior mechanic, a title that allowed him to do simple work: water pumps, belts, hoses, battery replacements, thermostats, and the like. No valve jobs, though, or even tune-ups, because the fat man still insisted he pass the certification course before he could take on those kinds of procedures. Stewart wouldn’t do it. He had long ago decided that he was never gonna sit in any kind of classroom again, have anyone laugh at him the way kids used to laugh at him back at St. Michael’s just because he couldn’t read the long words in those stupid books.
Manager said, “You take the class, you make full mechanic, it’s as simple as that.”
Stewart said, “Fuck a lot of class,” ending the discussion right there.
Stewart liked to work on cars, but he was no longer looking to make a career of it. There were easier ways to make money.
“Hey, Dom,” said Stewart, watching Dominic Martini scrape a rubber squeegee across the windshield of a ’64 Impala over by the pumps. “You missed a spot. How you gonna get employee of the month like that?”
“I dunno, Buzz,” said Martini without looking away from the chore at hand. He had to have known Stewart was cracking on him, but if it bothered him, he didn’t let it show.
“Just don’t want to see you get off that management track you’re on.”
“Thanks for lookin’ out for me, man.”
Stewart grunted. Martini was in his midtwenties, dark and pretty like Broadway Joe. He could have been a movie star, maybe, or one of them gigolos got paid to go on dates with old ladies, he wanted to. And here he was, a pump jockey, still cleaning windshields in the neighborhood he grew up in, a neighborhood gone half spade.
“Dumb ass,” said Stewart.
Dumb, maybe, but tough. Unlike Buzz Stewart, who had been stationed in the Philippines for the duration of his enlistment, Dominic Martini had seen Vietnam. Talk was his outfit had been involved in some real action, too. But Martini, who had been a cocky sonofabitch when he was a teenager, had lost something overseas. Funny how being in the middle of that shit storm had took the fire out of him. Or maybe it had something to do with his kid brother. The boy, Angelo, a weak tit if you asked Stewart, had always been his shadow when the two of them were growing up.
Whatever it was that had turned his lights off, and despite his lack of enthusiasm, Stewart had made Martini a part of his plans. He figured that if something went down, Martini would act without thought and also act with authority. After you’ve been programmed to kill, thought Stewart, the instinct never left you.
Martini had said that whatever Stewart had in mind was okay. He had said it without enthusiasm, like he said everything else, but agreed to come along. Stewart had brought Shorty in, too, soon as he’d done his straight time. Prison had made the little guy crazier than shit, and that could be useful, too. Not that he’d ever been normal or anything close to it. Walter Hess didn’t need no Marine Corps to teach him how to kill.
Stewart hit his smoke, hit it again, hot-boxed it so the paper collapsed under the draw. He crushed the cigarette under his boot. There was an Olds 88 in the garage beside the Dart, waitin’ on its tires to get rotated. It was time to get back to work.
He stopped by his car, a ’64 Plymouth Belvedere, double red with a white top, parked along the cinder-block wall of the garage. Stewart babied his ride, a customized 440 with a Max Wedge head scoop, Hooker headers, three-inch pipes, a 727 automatic trans, and chrome reverse mags. On the left front quarter panel, in white script, was written the word “Bernadette.” He’d named the car after one of his favorite songs.
Stewart noticed a smudge on the hood. He grabbed at the hip area of his belt line, where a clean shop rag always hung, and pulled the cloth free. He rubbed the smudge and removed it. Now she looked right.
WASN’T LONG BEFORE Stewart had the Olds up on the lift and was using an air gun to loosen the lugs on the wheels. The old lady who owned the car would be by soon to pick it up.
He had his sleeves rolled up high on his biceps, and as he worked he periodically checked his arms to regard their size. He had always been a big boy. The army had made him big like Kong.
Barry Richards, that fast-talking DJ on WHMC, introduced the brand-new Miracles record, “If You Can Want,” saying, “Go ahead, Smokey,” before the tune kicked in. It wasn’t no “I Second That Emotion,” but it was okay.
Walter Hess gave Stewart much shit about his newfound love of R&B. It was true that Stewart had been a rocker way back when, but something had changed in him early in the decade, when he started going to the Howard, down off 7th Street below Florida Avenue, to see the live acts with his friends. Most of the time they were the only whites in the place, but the colored kids were so into the show that there never had been any kind of trouble. None to speak of, that is, outside of the occasional hard look. Stewart always sat in the balcony, where he was less visible, just in case. Because of his size, he stood out too much as it was.
Early on, he caught the big-name acts. For fifty cents, in the early years, you got live performances and a movie, too. Comedians, sometimes, like Moms Mabley and Pigmeat Markham. But mostly musicians, and it was them he would remember most: James Brown and the Famous Flames, Little Stevie Wonder, Martha and the Vandellas, the Impressions, Joe Tex, and Aretha when she wasn’t much more than a little girl. Hell, she was so young then, her father had to be onstage with her, like a chaperone. Stewart had gotten tired of the hits he’d been hearing on the radio, especially that British shit, but what he saw at the Howard put a hot wire up inside him and got him buying music again.
He liked all kinds of R&B. But when he was looking to spend money in the record stores, he kept his eye out for the labels Tamla, Gordy, and Motown. There wasn’t nothin’ better than the Motown sound. Those blue-gum singers they had down south, Otis Redding and Wilson Pickett and them, some of their stuff was okay, but when they got to grunting and sweating they were way too niggerish for Stewart’s tastes. The Motowners, they dressed high-class, in tuxes and gowns, and wore their hair like whites. What they were singing about, you could tell it wasn’t just meant for colored. Hell, they could have been singing about things that happened in white people’s lives. Sometimes, you closed your eyes, you could even pretend that they were white.
Not that Stewart had given up on rock completely. He and Shorty, sometimes with Martini in tow, still went out to the clubs. And Link Wray remained his man.
Stewart had missed Link’s long run at Vinnie’s, a rough old bar down around the Greyhound station on H, because those were the years he had been in the service. When he returned, Wray and the Raymen were the house act at the 1023 Club in Far Southeast. It was a bikers’ bar, with members of Satan’s Few, the Phantoms, the Pagans, and others in the mix. By then that part of Anacostia was going from working-class white to colored, and tensions between the neighborhood residents and the club patrons had begun to boil. In the summer of ’66, coloreds attacked the club, cutting power lines, knocking over bikes, and tossing bricks through the 1023’s windows. The following week the Pagans retaliated with some righteous ass kicking of their own. Buzz Stewart and Walter Hess had joined the melee. This was before Shorty went to jail for something else he’d done. But on the bloody night of that retaliation, Stewart had seen him take a gravity knife to some coon’s face during the free-for-all. Last Stewart had seen that man, he was running down the street screaming like a girl. Shorty musta cut him good.
Eventually that club had to close. Link moved to the Famous, on New York Avenue, across from the Rocket Room, another rough-an
d-tumble joint. Stewart followed him and continued to drink there and in other bucket-of-bloods just like it. There was the Anchor Inn, in Southeast, which was known to employ a whore waitress or two; and Strick’s, on Branch Avenue, which still had country music; the Alpine, on Kennedy; the Lion’s Den, on Georgia; and Cousin Nick’s, another Pagan dive, near the bus depot, high on 14th. Coloreds were not welcome in most of these places, though many of these bars were in colored neighborhoods. If one came in and leered at one of the white girls, well, that was his misfortune. You just had to go ahead and stomp his ass.
Inside these establishments, Stewart felt safe with his own. It was like he was with his car-club boys in the parking lot of Mo’s, the Chantels were singing from the dash radio, and the calendar still read 1959. But outside the club walls, the attitude had changed. Coloreds weren’t looking away when you stared them down. They walked real slow across the street, almost daring you to hit ’em. Young ones especially had that laughing, fuck-you look in their eyes. Clearly they weren’t going to take any shit from white boys anymore.
There were other changes as well. Greasers were no longer cool. Hot rods were out, muscle cars and pony cars were in, and Elvis was for squares. Stewart lost the Brylcreem in his hair and let it grow, just a little, over his ears. Some of Stewart’s friends got into pot. A few got into worse. Walter Hess still drank beer and sometimes Jack, but somewhere along the line, probably in prison, he’d started in on amphetamines, too. As for Stewart, he stayed with beer and hard liquor. He liked Ten High bourbon and ginger ale. On certain nights, when he wanted to get way outside his head, he went with gin and Coke.
In their day, Stewart and Hess had relied mainly on their fists. Now they never went into the colored sections of town without some kind of weapon. Buzz kept a derringer in his boot; Shorty always carried some kind of knife. They wore the same accessories in the after-hours bars they frequented on 13th and 14th Streets, down in Shaw. Of course, the races in those joints mixed, as a certain tension release came with the late-hour buzz. The patrons were a drunken blur of black and white. The whores were mostly black.
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