Johnny Get Your Gun

by John Ball

  Lindholm sat up. “Agreed, except that if he’s still got his gun with him, things may not be especially funny before they’re over.” He looked up. “Yes?”

  Virgil turned to find Bob Nakamura behind him. “Something is starting in Brookside Park,” Bob reported. “At first it didn’t look like much, but it’s snowballing.”

  “Is anybody we know leading it?” Lindholm asked.

  “I don’t think so, sir, it appears to be more of a spontaneous thing, but it seems to be developing pretty rapidly. Five different patrol cars have called in during the last ten minutes to report a mass movement in that direction. All Negro, but apparently not the hippy types. So far five incidents of rock throwing damage, two store windows broken.”

  Lindholm quickly picked up the phone. “I’ll tell the chief. Virgil, I sent Ted Rasmussen down there, but he’s new in his rank and may need some help. You’d better get down there and lend a hand. Call if you need more manpower. As soon as I talk to Chief Addis I’ll call Anaheim.” He dialed.

  “Yes, sir,” Tibbs answered and left.

  Sergeant Ted Rasmussen set his jaw hard and resolved to do his duty, no matter what. In the back of the station wagon he was driving there was a mobile command post which would enable him to direct the five other men assigned to him, or to communicate with headquarters if necessary.

  Brookside Park was the trouble area of Pasadena, he knew that well although almost all of his work to date had been in the field of traffic. Any problems involving moving vehicles he could handle; what he was up against now was something else, but he would have to hack it because the responsibility was his.

  A swiftly thrown rock hit hard against the right front fender of his police car. He took no responsive action; he was needed where he was going and he had no time for a probably futile chase on foot of some leggy teen-ager. When he passed a car parked at the curb which had a freshly broken windshield he ignored it too. Ahead of him lay a much greater ugliness.

  Essentially a quiet man, Ted Rasmussen was depending on the authority of the law, and the training he had received for his new job, to handle the situation. He knew quite a bit about riots; he had seen a graphic news photo of a policeman, his face streaming blood, who had been caught in the melee of a New Jersey uprising. The memory of that picture steeled him; what had to be done, he would do.

  As he neared the park he was surprised by the number of parked vehicles; he guessed immediately that at least some of them had brought people from Los Angeles. Some of them would have come just to see the excitement; others might well be hard-core militants who were ripe for hostile action.

  His first glimpse of the crowd which had already gathered hit him like a blow in the abdomen; he had not expected half that many. One quick look around the area told him that more people were streaming in on foot, some even running.

  On a raised platform a speaker was haranguing the crowd. He had a loudspeaker system which he was using to augment the natural power of his voice. In the first few words that he caught Rasmussen heard the speaker talking about what a wonderful boy Willie Orthcutt had been.

  Ted Rasmussen pulled his station wagon up behind the gathering crowd of listeners and went around immediately to set up his command post. He dropped the tail gate, flipped on the switches of the electronic equipment, then turned to the two men who had been riding with him. “You know what to do,” he said crisply. “Go to the far side of the crowd and stay there. If I have to make an announcement, I want you to be able to testify that it was audible at the furthest point. Keep out of trouble if you can; if you need help, let me know fast.”

  The two uniformed officers left together, walking rapidly around the perimeter of the growing mass of humanity. Behind the sergeant the car which had come with him unloaded three more uniformed men.

  The police had made great strides in crowd handling since the outbreak of violence in Watts a few years previously and the sergeant had been well briefed. “You had better keep your batons with you. Don’t make a show of them, but if it becomes a question of self-protection, then do whatever is necessary. Avoid an incident if you possibly can.” He nodded toward the speaker. “I don’t know who that man is, but so long as he confines himself to protest, demanding Negro rights, and things like that, he’s within the law. Remember that. If he gets out of line to the point where we’ll have to take action, then I’ll let you know. Now spread out a little, but keep me in sight.”

  The three officers followed instructions; it was a case now where their uniforms were their best protection. Although they were armed, against a mob of hundreds, if the crowd broke loose, they would be virtually helpless.

  Ted Rasmussen tapped his fingernail against the public address microphone and verified the fact that the system in his station wagon was in working order. Then he picked up his communications mike and reported that he was on the job and had made his initial deployment. He was not able to give an accurate estimate of the size of the crowd, but he asked for reinforcements on the basis of the outsider cars he had spotted while driving in.

  He had barely pressed the mike back into its clip when a youth darted out of the crowd, aimed a rock at one of the uniformed men, and then scurried back into the jam of people. Fortunately he missed; Rasmussen saw it and signaled his men not to give pursuit. He tried to sense the feeling of the crowd, the extent to which it had been aroused, and he was not sure of his result. The speaker was well launched into a poignant description and biography of the dead Orthcutt boy; the crowd was responding, but everything that came out of the loudspeakers was well within the law.

  The communications set came alive with the message that another six uniformed men were being dispatched. Also Virgil Tibbs was on his way and should arrive at any moment. That was good news for Rasmussen; if things got any worse, Virgil, being both experienced and a Negro, could be a real help.

  “An’ I ask you, are we goin’ to let them do that to us?” The sudden increase in the power of the speaker’s voice awoke Rasmussen to the fact that he had not been listening and that something had been said which he should have heard. A roar of response came from the crowd, and with it a wave of movement. An unmarked car drew up behind the station wagon and Tibbs got out.

  “We pay our taxes in Pasadena, but we ain’t citizens of Pasadena,” the speaker went on. “You know this is a rich man’s playground, but it’s rich white men! Every year they crown a pretty white Rose Queen an’ have big parties while we’re crowded into ghettos. And that ain’t right!”

  “Know him?” Rasmussen asked Tibbs.

  Virgil shook his head. “He’s not one of the Negro community leaders, he could be from outside, or just someone who wants to sound off.”

  The crowd reaction was mounting, the speaker sensed it, and he responded in turn. The sense of caution which he had been evidencing began to vanish; his words took on a new bite and any sense of restraint was swept away.

  “This town is a symbol of the white man’s world, the white man’s dying world. He ain’t goin’ to be in charge much longer. This boy, this Willie Orthcutt: I’m telling you he was better than any white kid in this here whole town. And who killed him? A white boy killed him. A sneering white boy pointed a gun at poor, unarmed Willie, pointed it right at his guts and shot him dead. He didn’t even know him, but he shot him dead because he was black!”

  A wave of ugly sound ran through the crowd. Rasmussen looked at Tibbs quickly, searching his face for a clue as to what he should do. Virgil revealed no expression at all, he was simply listening intently to the speaker’s words.

  The speaker paused and read his audience. There was a steady stirring now, an undercurrent of mounting tension which charged the air. He had his listeners with him and he knew it. Suddenly he felt the power; understood that if he were bold enough, he could rouse the people before him into action. He drew a deep breath and made his gamble.

  “Well, are we just gonna stand here and talk about it, or are we gonna do something? It’s time
they were afraid of us, it’s been the other way too long. I say that we go now, like they did in Watts, and give ’em hell until every brown-nosed cop gets down on his knees out of FEAR every time he sees a black man’s face!!”

  Virgil thrust the public address microphone into Rasmussen’s hands. “That does it,” he said abruptly. “Put out the riot act—fast.”

  Rasmussen gulped air and held the microphone before his lips. “This is Sergeant Rasmussen speaking,” he declared. “I am a peace officer of the State of California and of the City of Pasadena. I declare this to be an unlawful assembly and command you in the name of the people of this state to disperse immediately. All those remaining present will be subject to arrest.”

  The speaker heard and understood the formal words, but he had worked himself into such a condition that he no longer cared. “An’ is it lawful,” he roared back, “to commit cold-blooded murder? You go catch that white boy and leave us alone.”

  “Take care of your men,” Tibbs said. “I’m going in after him.”

  “No!” Rasmussen said.

  Virgil laid a quick hand on his shoulder. “Thanks, Ted, but in my case it’s different—I’ve got a black face. Stand by.”

  He began to weave his way into the mob. As he worked forward he heard the speaker’s voice cutting through the air. “Now there’s a white man back there who says that we all gotta go away. Just because he said so. Have we got rights, or haven’t we?”

  As he worked forward as fast as he could, Virgil Tibbs tried to understand what the speaker was feeling. Raw in his own mind were memories of his childhood in the deep South when he had been called a pickaninny among other things, of his growing years when he had had to be afraid, particularly at night, of cars filled with three or four young white men just because he had a black skin. He remembered bitterly the hundreds of times he had been made to step off the sidewalk because a white man wanted to pass and then he could see himself in the position of the man who was still talking, seeking to escape from the trap into which his racial heritage had thrust him.

  As he moved he tried to block out of his mind the risk he was taking, and the limited chance that he would come out of this rebellious crowd with both the man he was after and a whole skin.

  He wormed through the tightly packed front row of listeners, walked to the side, and climbed up onto the small platform from which the speaker was still talking. His voice was beginning to fail him now and a decided hoarseness tinged his words. When he sensed that he was no longer alone, he turned, faced Tibbs, and said, “Whadda you want?”

  “I’ll take over,” Virgil said. “Your voice is gone.”

  “You think you can?”

  “Damn right.” Without knowing yet what he was going to say Virgil Tibbs took over the microphone and faced the crowd. He sensed at once that to reason would be out of the question; he would have to pick up where the other man had left off and somehow direct things from there.

  He raised his own voice, therefore, and deliberately put a bite into it. “How many of you come from Mississippi?” he demanded.

  He got a small wave of response.

  “Alabama?”

  Some hands shot up, some voices answered.

  “Georgia?”

  Again, a limited reaction.

  “Well that’s where I come from. That’s where we locked the doors nights, not because we had anything worth stealing, but because we were afraid of white men.”

  A bigger reaction this time—a swelling volume of sound and motion.

  “I know what it means, brother,” Virgil went on, “because I’ve been there! I washed cars for three years and saved my money so I could come to California. I heard I could go to school here and they’d let me. I wanted to come; we lived in a shack where my mother cooked our food, when we were lucky enough to have any, over a wood stove. A white man built the house for us colored to live in and he didn’t bother to put in any bathroom.”

  They were listening to him now. Very few who heard his words had any idea who he was, but they knew that he had taken command in a decisive manner, and that he was black. So they waited to find out what he would do or say next.

  “Willie Orthcutt was a wonderful boy,” Tibbs went on. “I never met him, but I know all about him and I can tell you this—he would have made his mark in the world.”

  He leaned forward until the tension now in his being could be seen and felt. “I don’t know the white boy who shot Willie Orthcutt, but I’ll promise you something—I’m going to find him. And when I do, justice is going to be done and you can depend on it!”

  He was an enigma to the crowd; he was telling them what they wanted to hear, but he was speaking to them with the voice of an educated man—a man who might have been white. He could easily have put a Southern slur into his speech, he had talked that way all through his childhood and had never forgotten how. It had taken him long hard work to overcome it. But he would not do it; he talked to them as he was now and made no apology.

  “They did let me into school, as I was promised, and I washed dishes in a fraternity house until I graduated.” At that moment he sensed that he must make his move. “Now I’m working for you,” he went on without a break. “I’m going to catch that boy; take all the bets you can get on it. I’m a police officer and that’s my job!”

  The man who had been speaking thrust himself forward and took possession of the microphone. “You know who he is?” he demanded. “He’s a white man in a black man’s skin!”

  Before Tibbs could respond to that a youth darted out of the crowd and leaped up onto the platform. He had a fanatical glint in his eye, but he seemed to know what he was doing. Virgil recognized Charles Dempsey. The crowd was on the fence now and it could go either way. He decided to let Dempsey go ahead—because to prevent him from doing so might be fatal.

  With a self-possession well beyond his years the teenager faced the microphone and the crowd. “Hey,” he shouted. “Ya all know me. If ya don’t, you heard about me. I’m Sport. You see all these cops around here? Well this here is their boss, and he’s a black man!”

  He swung his arm wide to arrest attention. “I was there when Willie Orthcutt was killed,” he yelled at the top of his voice. “He was with me. I saw the white kid do it. And this here black man’s gonna ketch him. He’s gonna make that white kid hate the day he was born. Now let ’im go do it!”

  Virgil read the crowd’s reaction and quickly took command. “OK,” he announced. “The party’s over. If you go cool now, no one will get hurt and you won’t get arrested.”

  It didn’t quite take, so he resorted to dramatics. Over the microphone he called to Rasmussen. “Call your men back. Let these people through. Let them go home, however they want.”

  Ted Rasmussen knew, as every experienced police officer does, that acting is sometimes a vital part of law enforcement. He understood at once what Virgil was doing and he used his own public address system to respond. “Whatever you say, sir,” he came back.

  It was enough. Even amplified the words came out respectful and subservient, as he intended them to. Some of the people sneered at him a little as they began to go past where he was standing, but he did not mind. He was glad to let Virgil take all the bows, he had earned them.

  On the platform Tibbs took down the name and address of the speaker and then spoke to him quietly. “I know how you feel,” he said. “I’ve felt that way more times than you can count. But don’t ever call me a white man that way again—I’m a Negro, I know it, and I’m proud of it. I had to work two times harder than any white man to get where I am, now don’t you try to take it away from me.”

  “All right,” the man said.

  Virgil snapped his notebook shut. “You were het up,” he went on. “I told you I can understand that. Have you ever been arrested before?”

  Worried now, the man shook his head. “Traffic tickets, that’s all.”

  “Then go on home and don’t get involved in any mess like this again. Inc
iting to riot is a serious charge, you could do time for it.”

  The ex-speaker decided not to push his luck. “Thanks,” he said.

  “Good enough. If your record is as clean as you say that it is, then you can forget about today. If it isn’t…” Tibbs tapped his notebook and then slipped it into his pocket.

  The show was over, the crowd was flowing away. When the area had cleared enough Virgil walked calmly back to where the station wagon was still standing and said, “Let’s go.”

  On the way back into his office Tibbs encountered Captain Lindholm in the corridor. “I heard what happened,” the captain told him. “You did a good job. Now please get back onto that problem about the McGuire boy before something a lot worse happens. Try to get that youngster back today if you can—take him into protective custody if you have to. Get the gun away from him. I know what I’m asking, but there isn’t any alternative.”

  “I’ll do my best,” Virgil promised, and went to his desk. Before he could sit down Bob Nakamura intercepted him and indicated that he had some news.

  “I’ve got a lead for you. While you were out a call came in from a filling station attendant who works nights near Orange Grove Avenue. He had just gotten out of bed and heard a newscast. He phoned in to say that a boy of about nine or so, who looked as though he might have been out all night, came in and asked to use the washroom about six this morning. He didn’t have a red jacket, but he was carrying a shoe box.”

  “A shoe box?”

  “Yes, now get this: after he used the head he asked for directions to Anaheim, by road and by bus. He said that his father was going to take him there. The attendant briefed him and gave him a map. When he asked the boy why he was up so early, he said that he had a paper route.”

  Virgil nodded, thinking as he did so. “That was Johnny all right, and you know what was in the shoe box. Anaheim! It fits.”

  “And Orange Grove is where you catch the bus into L.A.”

  Tibbs became aware of a visitor and looked up to see Charles Dempsey framed in the doorway.