Hard Revolution

by George Pelecanos

  Sixth Cavalry troops had arrived late in the afternoon on 14th Street. They assembled down at S and moved north in columns, chanting “March, march, march,” in cadence. They threw tear gas canisters liberally and, with police, made sweeping arrests. They secured the top and lower ends of the corridor with two 700-man battalions.

  As on 7th and H Streets, there was little left to protect.

  Lydell Blue sat on the bed of a four-ton army truck, eating a peanut-butter-and-jelly sandwich and drinking water from a canteen. A woman from the neighborhood had come with sandwiches to feed police and soldiers on a needed break.

  Blue’s uniform had taken on the color of charcoal. His back ached, and he could have slept where he sat. He had coughed up blood into his hands moments earlier.

  With all of that, he felt good.

  In the middle of it, at its worst, as he was protecting his city and his people, he had come to the realization of who he was and what he would always be. He was a black man, through and through. And he was police. The one didn’t cancel out the other. He could be both, and be both with pride.

  A BROTHER ON the street warned Jones about the curfew. Now Jones knew that he would have to travel with extra care across the city. His plan was to stay below Massachusetts Avenue, keeping close to the downtown buildings, in the shadows, out of sight of the soldiers and police. Then head east to 6th and up to his cousin’s crib. Grab his duffel bag, which held his few possessions, and reverse his path. He could do it, the darker it got. All he had to do was reach his Buick, over there on 15th, and he’d be southern bound and stone free.

  It took a while, but he reached 6th without incident and went north and east until he came to the block of Ronnie’s apartment. He went by the gutted market on the corner, keeping his head low, and crossed the street. He entered the row house where his cousin had his place on the second floor.

  Back in the depths of the market, looking through the space where the front window had been, Frank Vaughn stroked the wheel of his Zippo, got flame, and lit a cigarette. He snapped the lid shut.

  Little black man with light, almost yellow-colored skin. Just as Strange had said, he was wearing a black hat with a gold band. Now all Vaughn had to do was look up at the window of Ronnie Moses’s apartment. Watch for Strange’s sign and wait.

  Vaughn hit his L&M. Its ember flared, faintly illuminating the ruined market. The only light in there now was the dying light of dusk. There was little inventory remaining on the shelves. Paperback novels, boxes of cake mix and flour strewn about the tiles. Water dripped loudly from a busted pipe. A heap of half-burned newspapers sat piled in the middle of the shop. Someone had set the papers on fire, but the fire had not spread. The smell of carbon was strong in the shell of the store.

  Vaughn stepped forward, close to the doorway. From here he could see Ronnie Moses’s apartment on the second floor.

  “Make him talk and let him go,” Vaughn had told Strange. “Flash a light in the window if he confesses. I’ll do the rest.”

  “Do what?” Strange had said.

  Vaughn hadn’t needed to spell it out for the rookie. He would let the young man make the decision himself.

  Vaughn dragged deeply on his cigarette.

  SOON AS HE had got to the landing, Jones could tell someone had busted through his cousin’s apartment door. It opened, too, with just a little push. Someone had broke into his cousin’s crib, that was plain, ’cause he remembered clearly that he’d locked the door. But Jones reasoned that the break-in was just part of the general mayhem of the day. Kids being kids.

  He drew his gun from his slacks just the same. He stepped inside.

  Strange came from behind the open door and put his service revolver to the back of Jones’s head.

  “Don’t say nothin’,” said Strange. “Let go of that gun and drop it to the floor.”

  “Gun could discharge like that,” said Jones, not moving, not turning his head.

  “Do it,” said Strange.

  Jones dropped the old revolver. It hit the hardwood with a hollow thud.

  “Now move over there to the center of the room,” said Strange, “and turn around.”

  Jones obeyed the command. Strange kept the gun trained on Jones and closed the door with his foot.

  Jones smiled a little as he turned around and took in Strange.

  “Lawman,” said Jones. “Heard you were lookin’ for me.”

  Strange said nothing.

  “This about your brother, right?”

  Strange did not reply.

  “I heard he got hisself dead. My cousin Kenneth told me, man. Damn shame.”

  “Yes,” Strange heard himself say, looking into the odd golden eyes of Alvin Jones.

  “I don’t know nothin’ about it,” said Jones. “I mean, if that’s why you been huntin’ me down, I’m just sayin’ . . . I was with a woman the night he was killed.” Jones chuckled. “The whole night. Bitch would not let me out the bed, you hear what I’m sayin’? I could give you her phone number, you want it. She’ll tell you.”

  “I don’t want any phone numbers,” said Strange.

  “What, then? You standing there holdin’ a gun on me. Tell me what you want. I told you I don’t know nothin’, man. I don’t know what else to do.”

  Strange stared at Jones.

  “If you think I cut him,” said Jones, “you are wrong. It wasn’t me.”

  I didn’t say anybody cut him. I didn’t tell Willis he died that way. The newspapers, they didn’t print it . . . so how could you know?

  Strange lowered his gun.

  “There you go,” said Jones, smiling. “Now you seein’ things clear. No hard feelings, blood. I can understand you bein’ upset.”

  “Get out of here,” said Strange, very softly.

  Jones went to the side of the couch, bent down, zipped his duffel bag shut, and snatched it off the floor.

  “I’m gone,” said Jones.

  He walked toward the front door, eyeing the gun on the floor. Strange shook his head. Jones laughed a little, like a kid, and kept on going, straight out of the apartment. Strange listened to his footsteps on the stairs.

  He turned off the main overhead light in the living room. He walked to the window that fronted the street. A naked-bulb lamp sat on a small table near the window. Strange put his finger to the switch on the lamp. He hesitated for a moment; Jones had not confessed, exactly. But he had known that Dennis had been “cut.” Only a few friends, family members, and police had knowledge of that. And the killer. The killer knew.

  Strange switched on the lamp, then quickly switched it off.

  From the darkness of the apartment, he watched Jones cross the street. He watched Vaughn emerge from the corner market, a small automatic in his hand. He watched him say a few words to Jones in a threatening way, then point him toward the market with the muzzle of the gun. Vaughn stepped aside to let Jones pass inside the market before he followed him in.

  Strange heard a popping sound from below, then two more pops right behind it. Light flashed from the market’s depths and briefly illuminated the street.

  Strange left the apartment in darkness and walked down the stairs. He exited the row house and headed across the street to an alley entrance beside the market. Vaughn came outside, looked around, and smoothed out his suit jacket. He joined Strange, standing in a patch of black at the edge of the alley. He pulled a wad of cash from his pocket and handed it to Strange.

  “Take it,” said Vaughn. “I emptied his pockets and his wallet.”

  “I don’t want it,” said Strange.

  “Take it. Throw it away or give it away, it makes no difference to me. It’s gotta look like a robbery, so there it is.”

  Strange put the money in his pocket.

  “It gets easier,” said Vaughn, looking into Strange’s hollow eyes. “Let’s go.”

  They walked toward 7th Street. The sirens and burglar alarms grew louder, as did the upraised voices of the soldiers, citizens, and polic
e. As they neared the commotion, they came upon a sewer that was taking in a river of water from the curb. Vaughn drew the cheap .32 from his belt line, wiped it off with his cloth handkerchief, and dropped the gun into the sewer along with the wallet he’d taken off Alvin Jones. Vaughn barely broke his stride.

  At the intersection of 7th and P, amid the confusion, the strobing lights, the flames, and the noise, he shook Strange’s hand and broke away.

  Vaughn disappeared into the smoke. Strange walked north.

  THIRTY-FOUR

  THE CURFEW, AND the presence of more than six thousand armed soldiers, National Guardsmen, and police, brought the city under control. Prisoners in overflowing precinct jails were transferred to facilities downtown. Rioters and looters who had escaped arrest began to return to their apartments, houses, and public housing units to examine their bounty, treat their wounds, and tell tales. A few law-abiding residents came out of their homes, in violation of the curfew, to give food and drink to exhausted firemen and police. For many, it was the first shocking glimpse of the streets and businesses they had frequented every day for most of their lives. The destruction of their neighborhoods had been devastating and complete.

  By midnight, the capital of the United States was under occupation by federal troops. Sporadic rioting and civil disobedience would continue through the weekend at a greatly reduced degree, leading to a Sunday of relative peace.

  By the end of the weekend, there would be almost 8,000 arrests, 1,200 reported injuries, and nearly 30 million dollars’ worth of damage. Twelve citizen deaths were attributed to the riots. A thirteenth death was listed as a homicide. The body of a man was found in a gutted market near 7th Street, his death the result of close-range gunshot wounds to the head, throat, and chest.

  The man was never identified. His killer was never found.

  LATE FRIDAY NIGHT, a squad car went up Georgia, along Howard University. It occupants, two veteran white cops out of the Thirteenth Precinct, pulled to the curb, where a big white man in a cheap suit stood talking on the phone in a public booth, the door open to accommodate his bulk. The cop riding shotgun had recognized the man.

  “Detective,” said the cop, tilting his head out the window of the Ford. “Everything all right?”

  Vaughn put his hand over the receiver. “Just out here solving homicides.”

  “You’re behind enemy lines, case you haven’t noticed.”

  “I’m undercover,” said Vaughn, and the uniforms laughed.

  “You been around forever,” said the cop, winking at his partner. “Any advice for this situation we got here?”

  “Don’t shoot till you see the whites of their eyes.”

  “That ain’t no trick.”

  “You be safe, hear?”

  The patrol cops drove off. Vaughn removed his hand from the receiver.

  “Couple of cops,” said Vaughn into the phone. “Worried about the Hound Dog.”

  “I’ve been worried about you, too,” said the woman on the other end of the line.

  “Told you I’d call, didn’t I?”

  “Sure, only . . .”

  “What?”

  “I wanna see you, Frank.”

  Vaughn screwed a cigarette between his lips. “I could use a drink.”

  “I’ll be waiting,” said Linda Allen, and she cut the line.

  Vaughn stepped out of the booth and lit his smoke. He’d go home to Olga and the kid. But not yet.

  THE SQUAD CAR continued north. The veterans drove by a young black cop, slowly walking up the long hill.

  Derek Strange saw the squad car pass. He didn’t wave or acknowledge it. He crossed Georgia Avenue and walked west on Barry Place. He stopped at Carmen Hill’s row house and looked up at her apartment and saw that it was dark. He stared at the blackness behind her window and then he walked on.

  Despite the curfew, people were out, sitting on their stoops, the younger ones gathered in alleys, some at street corners, leaning against lampposts or perched atop garbage cans. Some cold-eyed Strange. A few nodded in a friendly way. None spoke to him at all.

  In his mind, Strange pictured his brother. Standing in the living room, trying to school his family on the revolution that had to come.

  “You missed, D,” said Strange.

  He wiped tears from his cheeks as a boy ran from an alley, carrying a dress over his shoulder. His eyes were wide as Strange reached out and grabbed his arm.

  “What’re you doin’?” said Strange.

  “I’m just funnin’,” said the boy. “This dress is for my moms.”

  “Where’s your mother and father at? Didn’t they tell you there was a curfew?”

  “I ain’t got no father, mister. My mother is out with a man.”

  “Go home,” said Strange, releasing the boy’s arm. “Go home!”

  The boy dropped the dress and fled. Strange walked on.

  He turned right on 13th Street and went up the hill alongside Cardozo High, not looking at the smoldering ruins of Shaw behind him. At the top of the hill he came to his building and glanced up at his apartment. His windows were wide open. He tried to remember if he had left them that way when he had gone out last.

  Strange started up to the door of his building, went for his key, and felt the roll of cash folded in the pants pocket of his uniform. He stood there for a moment at the door, thinking of the boy he’d just rousted. Thinking of all the boys he saw out here every day. Thinking of the baby boy whose father he’d just killed.

  Strange returned to the sidewalk of 13th. He walked north, past Euclid, to Fairmont. West on Fairmont, he came to the row house with the turret and the peeling paint. He went inside and up to the second-floor landing. He knocked on a door there and waited.

  The door opened to reveal the tall, heavy woman with the wide features and the almond-shaped eyes. She wore an old shirt and the “Black Is Beautiful” earrings he’d seen before. She held her baby boy in the crook of her arm.

  “Mary,” said Strange. “Sorry to bother you so late.”

  “You look rough.”

  “Been workin’ damn near two days straight. Can I come in? I won’t stay but a minute.”

  She stepped aside to let him pass through, then closed the door behind him. They stood there awkwardly in her small foyer. The apartment smelled of baby and cigarettes.

  “You want a coffee, somethin’?”

  “No, thank you,” said Strange, thinking of the cup she’d served coffee in before and the roach crawling on its saucer.

  “Is this about Alvin again?” said Mary. “What, did you find him?”

  “Looks like he’s gone,” said Strange. “I don’t think he’s coming back.”

  “I’m not surprised.”

  “Anyway,” said Strange, reaching into his pocket and retrieving the roll of cash. “I just came to give you this. It’s for your baby boy.”

  Mary eyed the bills in Strange’s hand. “I don’t understand.”

  “I took it off a suspect tonight,” said Strange. “Down in the trouble, on Seventh. Had to be stolen out the register of some store. I couldn’t keep it. And I couldn’t see turning it in. Now, I don’t mean to insult you, but . . . look, I know you can use it. You can use it to buy some things for your son.”

  Her brow wrinkled in suspicion. “How much is it?”

  “Count it,” he said, holding it out.

  She hesitated for a moment.

  “Hold my baby,” she said.

  Strange exchanged the money for the child. Mary’s lips moved as she counted the bills. Strange looked down at the light-skinned baby boy staring up at him with odd golden eyes.

  “There’s eight hundred dollars here.”

  “It’s yours,” said Strange, still looking at the boy. “What do you call him?”

  “Granville,” said Mary. “Granville Oliver. I gave him my last name.”

  “He’s gonna be handsome,” said Strange.

  “I hope he’ll be a fine young man,” said Mary Oliver, s
miling at Strange for the first time. “Thank you for this.”

  It ain’t nothin’ but blood money, thought Strange. Something to ease my conscience, is all it is.

  “I better be gettin’ on,” said Strange.

  GOING DOWN FAIRMONT, Strange took in the fragrance of a lilac bush growing against a fence. He turned right on 13th and walked the two blocks south to his building without looking over the crest of the big hill.

  He went through the double glass doors and into the lobby, where groups of young people sat, talking and smoking cigarettes. They fell silent at the sight of him. He wondered if they knew that this was his last night as police.

  “You’ve been given a responsibility, son. You do something to betray that, you don’t deserve to be wearing that uniform.”

  Up on his floor, he stepped down the carpeted hallway, hearing music coming from behind the door of his apartment. As he arrived at his place, he put his ear against the door and listened to a familiar voice. Strange smiled.

  It was Otis, with those ace session men behind him. “That’s How Strong My Love Is.” Volt single number 124.

  Strange used his key to enter his apartment.

  She was there by the open windows, wearing that light blue dress, the blue ribbon in her hair. Strange crossed the room and moved into her embrace, taking in the smell of her dime-store perfume. He kissed her mouth full, then said her name.

  Below, in Shaw, lights glimmered faintly through the curtain of black smoke that hovered there and darkened the night sky. A breeze came in through the windows. Magnolias, dogwoods, and cherry trees had bloomed around the city. The scent of their flowers, and the smell of things burned and cleansed, was in the air.

  ACKNOWLEDGMENTS

  Thanks to my friends Logan Deoudes and Jerome Gross, who gave me extensive, invaluable assistance during the research stages of Hard Revolution. Thanks go out as well to Dan Fein, Leonard Tempchin, Pete Glekas, Tim Thomas, Bob Fegley, Gary Phillips, Ruby Pelecanos, Bob Boukas, Paulina Garner, Billy Caludis, Frazier O’Leary, Mary Rados, Jim and Ted Pedas, Michael Pietsch, Reagan Arthur, Claire McKinney, Betsy Uhrig, and Alicia Gordon. In addition, I spoke to many active participants in the riots of April 1968 who will remain anonymous. Their candor and honesty was greatly appreciated.