McMillan was more concerned with the legal aspects. If a crime had been committed, he wanted to make sure that we weren’t damaging a criminal case against someone.
Finally, LeDoux turned to him. “Any good defense attorney will take advantage of our unorthodox approach, Mr. McMillan. But if we can show that I have followed the same procedures the State of Illinois would follow in its investigation, we will alleviate much of what you’re concerned with.”
“How would we show that?” Laura asked.
“Other experts who would talk about cases in which techniques like this were necessary,” LeDoux said.
“Like Emmett Till?” Laura asked.
“There wasn’t this kind of investigation in the Till case,” LeDoux said. “But you’re on the right track. Cases involving the suspicious death of Negroes, particularly in the South, is one area in which experts like myself get called in all the time. Our evidence is often overlooked by the civil authorities, and our testimony is worthless if there is no trial. But at least someone is prepared to speak the truth, and that way, the truth is not entirely hidden.”
Laura glanced sideways at me, as if his confirmation was something she had needed.
“Too bad no one takes those cases to trial with this evidence,” McMillan said.
“The only good thing about murder,” LeDoux said, “is that there is no statute of limitations. I have seen cases, mostly in New York, in which one prosecutor declines to pursue the court case, and the next prosecutor comes in, feels he owes something to that constituency, and re-ignites the investigation. If someone like me has preserved the evidence, then the crime scene continues to speak through the years, and often we have a successful prosecution.”
“You think that’ll ever happen in the Southern murder cases?” Laura asked.
“Negro murder cases?” LeDoux asked.
His continued use of the word Negro bothered Laura, but it didn’t bother me. It marked him as a man of a certain age, but it was clear that he had thought about these cases with justice in mind.
“Yes,” Laura said, with a pointed glance at me. “The death of black people.”
“There are several famous cases that haven’t been prosecuted yet,” he said. “I would love to see the men who bombed that church and killed those little girls a few years ago be convicted. There are others as well. Do I think that’ll happen in my lifetime? I hope so, although I doubt it. We were working toward enlightenment. Then someone extinguished the light.”
“Dr. King?” McMillan asked.
LeDoux nodded.
“The movement continues,” I said quietly. “It’s just not as visible now.”
“Or as unified,” LeDoux said.
“Unfortunately,” I said, “it never was unified.”
“Still,” LeDoux said, “every movement needs a leader—”
“And one will appear,” I said. “Right now there’s too much noise. We’ve been relegated to a back seat. We’re not through. We’re—”
The phone rang, startling all of us. Laura set her napkin beside her plate. “Excuse me,” she said, and got up.
The nearest phone was on an end table near the kitchen. She picked up the receiver, stopping the bell in mid-ring.
“Yes?” she asked coolly, clearly letting the caller know that he was interrupting something.
We were silent. McMillan sipped his Chianti. I finished the meatballs on my plate, glad that the conversation had ended. I normally didn’t talk politics with people I had just met. Often, I didn’t talk about it with people I knew well. Ignorance irritated me, and many white folks were ignorant of black politics. They understood it on a superficial level, gleaning what they knew from the broadcast news which, these days, was branding anyone who was not connected with Martin’s Southern Christian Leadership Conference as a dangerous militant or an outspoken radical.
Laura’s expression grew hard. “Is anyone hurt?”
We all turned toward her.
“All right,” she said. “Please call when it’s over.”
Then she hung up.
“What was that?” McMillan asked.
“Apparently we’re under siege,” she said.
“What?” LeDoux asked as I said, “The Weathermen.”
She nodded to me, then she turned to LeDoux. “We’ve been having protests over the Conspiracy Trial. Tonight there was a scheduled rally in Lincoln Park. It’s turned violent. People running through the street below, attacking each other.”
LeDoux looked at his plate as if he were alarmed. McMillan just shook his head. Laura’s gaze met mine, her eyes bright.
“Honestly,” she said, “I’d like to see how bad it is.”
I had been in rallies that had turned violent before. And those were peaceful events. This one hadn’t been planned as a non-violent protest. This one had been planned, as it said on some of the posters, to “stick it to the pigs.”
“None of us is going down there,” I said.
“How about standing on the balcony?” she asked.
She had a balcony off her bedroom.
“Let me check it out,” I said. “If I hear bullets, we’re not going out there either.”
She nodded. I headed down the hall. It had been a long time since I had been back here, and nothing had changed. The artwork, with the little lights hanging above each piece, seemed as extensive as always. The nearby bathroom gave off the faint scent of Laura’s perfume, and then I pushed open the door to her bedroom, trying not think of all the wonderful times we’d had in here.
I passed the king-sized bed, brushing my fingers against the silk comforter that she used on cool fall nights, and pushed open the sliding glass door.
Immediately, the room filled with sound. Sirens, screams, and breaking glass. Flashing blue lights from police cars reflected off nearby buildings and, on a balcony across the way, clumps of people huddled, watching as we wanted to do.
But I heard no gunshots, smelled no tear gas.
“Well?” Laura asked behind me.
“There’s not much to see.” Still, I stepped onto the concrete. We’d spent a lot of time out here as well, sitting in the wrought iron chairs and watching boats sail across the lake. Often we were talking about problems, but in hindsight it didn’t seem that way. It seemed like idyllic moments, now gone.
I walked to the iron railing. I heard McMillan say something behind me, and LeDoux answer him, but I didn’t pay attention to their words. Instead, I looked down.
A young man wearing a pith helmet and army fatigues hid between two parked cars. A teenage girl ran past, screaming, a brick in her left hand. Three police officers ran after her.
Another boy slammed a large club into the window of a building across the street, then jumped when he saw the police and headed toward an alley.
In the distance, voices rose in a ragged chant: “Ho, Ho, Ho Chi Minh. Ho, Ho, Ho Chi Minh.”
“Didn’t he just die?” McMillan asked as he stopped beside me.
“Around Labor Day.” LeDoux remained near the door, clearly frightened.
Laura was on my left side, her hands on the railing. She peered downward, just like I was doing. “What the hell are they trying to accomplish?”
“Whatever it is,” McMillan said, “they’re not achieving it.”
“Sure they are,” I said. “They have our attention, don’t they?”
“It’s not that simple,” he said.
“I think it is,” I said.
Another scream, loud and long, echoed down the street. The boy who had been hiding near the car sprinted down a side staircase and disappeared into the alley.
Two more police appeared, dragging a young radical — male, female, I couldn’t tell from this distance — by the arms, body limp in typical protest mode.
“What a mess,” McMillan said.
“Look.” LeDoux was pointing at a building to the west of us. Other people stood on balconies, and several of them were throwing cocktail ice on the young
people below.
“That’s constructive,” Laura said. Then she sighed so loudly that I heard her over the sirens. “Anyone else in the mood for dessert? I have ice cream.”
“Spumoni?” LeDoux asked.
“Spumoni,” she said with a smile.
McMillan shook his head one more time at the street below, then said, “Why not?”
He followed the other two inside.
I remained on the balcony, watching the running figures disappear as they headed away from the streetlights. A slow-moving police car went by, clearly looking for more protestors.
If this protest had started in the park, they had already run several blocks to get here. The protestors were frightened and the police determined.
The meal sat heavily on my stomach. This was only the first night of the so-called Days of Rage. We had three more nights to go.
I had a hunch the violence would only get worse.
ELEVEN
By the time I left, a little after eight-thirty, the violence had moved to another part of the neighborhood. As I let myself out the back door of the apartment building, I heard sirens several blocks away. To the north, smoke rose against the dark sky, and I hoped the smoke was from bonfires in the park, not a burning building somewhere.
The air had an acrid tinge, and in the distance I could hear voices, but no more screams. I had parked half a block away, and as I looked up and down the street, I had no qualms about walking that distance in the open and unprotected.
Security had called Laura’s apartment only a few minutes before, letting us know that the “action” had ended, and it was safe to leave the building. At my urging she asked them how long ago it had ended, and they claimed they hadn’t seen anyone in the past fifteen minutes.
That was good enough for me.
The conversation had gotten stilted by that point, and I was paying less attention to it than I was to the time. I wanted to get to the Grimshaws’, pick up Jimmy, and get him in bed before ten. I also wanted to get away from the fake collegial atmosphere that the dinner had engendered.
Working with LeDoux would be fine. He seemed more than competent. Socializing with him was another matter altogether. Although I agreed with many of his opinions, I disliked how he presented them, and as the stress of the evening increased, I grew less tolerant of him.
I hoped that tolerance would return during the night, since we were heading to the Queen Anne first thing in the morning.
I crossed the back parking lot, past the dumpster, and walked to the sidewalk. In Memphis, after these things, I never went down the street because I was afraid I’d get arrested or worse. Here, though, it would be clear to anyone that I hadn’t been involved. My hair was cropped too close to my head, my clothing was too nice, and I was too old.
I was also the wrong color. If anything, the police would assume I was a doorman getting off work.
Glass crunched under my feet. It littered everything — the sidewalk, the grass, the street. Most of the cars had broken windows, and so did many of the nearby buildings.
Laura’s building was fine — she had been right to bring in the extra security; apparently they had stopped more than one kid from swinging a bat at the plate glass windows on the building’s east side — but it seemed to be the only one.
As I reached the corner, I noticed a doorman, still in his uniform, sitting on the curb. He pressed a washcloth full of ice against the side of his face.
“You need help?” I asked.
He shook his head, then winced. “I just need someone to get those freaky bastards.”
And then when he saw that his answer wasn’t making me leave, he added, “I’m waiting for my ride.”
I nodded to him and continued, turning onto the side street where I had left the van.
To my relief and surprise, its windows were intact. But it was the shabbiest vehicle on the block. The Mercedes and Cadillacs all sported broken passenger windows, and those vehicles with canvas tops had become the victims of someone’s knife.
I wondered what the vandalism proved. Then I sighed. I didn’t understand any of this — not on a deep level — and that concerned me. Maybe my lack of understanding was a product of my age and my upbringing. Or maybe I still clung to Martin’s vision of non-violent resistance to a violent world.
I did understand how people like Black Panther leader Fred Hampton could talk about self-defense, how black people needed to protect themselves against the police brutality that hit our neighborhoods, often for no apparent reason.
But I did not understand wearing riot gear, gathering weapons, and planning to provoke the police, all with the intent of – what? Getting attention? Scaring the city? Protesting a trial where the defendants were accused of the very same thing: coming to Chicago with the intent to riot?
Although most sensible people knew the defendants were not guilty. Even the government-commissioned Walker Report, which came out last year, called the events at the Democratic National Convention a police riot.
Tonight was a planned action, a planned provocation, made worse by yesterday’s destruction of the Haymarket statue. The Chicago police were already angry and confused, and most of them weren’t sympathizing with anyone outside the blue brotherhood.
I had no idea what they did tonight in other neighborhoods, but here, near Laura’s place, it seemed to me that the police were restrained. I hadn’t heard gunshots and the air did not smell of teargas.
Was that because the rioters were white? Or because the national press corps was nearby, ready to attack the Chicago PD one more time?
Maybe Daley had issued a different order than the one he’d issued during the riots that happened after Martin Luther King’s assassination. Then Daley had told the police to kill all the arsonists and maim all the looters. Maybe this time he’d been reasonable.
He was a canny man. If he urged restraint this week, he would win this public fight.
So long as he didn’t send his storm troopers into the ghettos. Like Franklin feared.
Like I feared.
So long as he didn’t let the entire city take out their frustrations on us.
TWELVE
The next morning, the headlines screamed disaster: RADICAL INVASION and RADICALS RAMPAGE ON THE NEAR NORTH SIDE. I set our paper front-side down on the kitchen table and kept the radio off, but I didn’t have to. Even though Jimmy saw the headline, he didn’t associate the near North Side with Laura. He had no idea how close I had been to the riot.
He was more concerned with homework. Mrs. Armitage, his after-school teacher, had assigned him an essay on the Haymarket Riot, and he didn’t understand the language of the book he had checked out of the library — socialists, anarchists, labor rally. I didn’t help him because I’d been warned not to. Instead, I urged him to look up each and every detail until it all became clear.
He glared at me as if I had made the assignment and didn’t talk to me all the way to school.
After I dropped Jimmy off, I picked up LeDoux at the Blackstone Hotel. The Blackstone was across the street from Grant Park. Most of the action during the Democratic National Convention had taken place here, and rumor had it that the radical protestors would stage one of their actions nearby.
I parked in the Conrad Hilton’s lot across the street because I was familiar with it. I had briefly worked at the Hilton when I had first come to Chicago, thinking that a regular job would be better for both me and Jimmy. That assumption turned out to be a false one; I chafed at being an employee. I discovered that summer that I preferred getting into trouble on my own.
I met LeDoux in the lobby of the Blackstone. He had been waiting for me, cameras slung over his arms, and a thick black case near his feet. I carried the case as we headed back to the parking lot.
Then I opened the back of the van, had him stuff his case and cameras into a duffel, and gave him the painter’s coveralls that we had agreed we’d wear. He slid the coveralls on in the back of the van, put on the painter
’s cap I’d bought him, and then climbed into the front seat.
The sky was dark, the clouds heavy, promising rain. That pleased me. Neighbors would be indoors and probably not paying a lot of attention to any activity outside.
When we got to the Queen Anne, I parked in the driveway with the back of the van facing the street. If anyone was watching us, I wanted them to see us remove the equipment so that they wouldn’t call the rental agency and ask what we were doing.
Laura had told Sturdy’s rental agency that she was hiring a few down-on-their-luck friends to paint and repair the interior of the Queen Anne. Because the company knew she had unusual friends (namely me), she had a hunch no one would question this news.
We all hoped this cover would work.
By the time LeDoux and I had reached the Queen Anne, rain dotted the windshield. The air was humid, and it felt like the storm would only get worse. I got out first, opened the back of the van, and pulled out the wooden ladder that I’d bought — it was the only piece of this new equipment that we’d probably use.
LeDoux joined me, took his duffel and a single paint can, and headed toward the back door like we’d planned. The billed cap, coveralls, and his poor posture made him look like a man who had spent his entire life painting other people’s homes.
I leaned the ladder against the back stairs, went up them, and unlocked the back door. The stale odor of rot reached me first, and I winced. Then I stepped inside, relieved to find the place much cooler than it had been on my first visit.
My clipboard remained near the door at the top of the stairs. No one had been in the building since I had been here nearly two weeks before.
“Where’re we going?” LeDoux asked.
“Basement,” I said, opening the door farther. “Be sure to take the paint.”
He grinned at me, then headed down the stairs. I went back out for some brushes, another paint can, and a tarp. Then I closed and locked the van, and came back into the house.
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