The Lightning Rule

by Brett Ellen Block

  The fire radiated light into the garage, outlining the figures of the two burly guys who had been guarding the back room that afternoon. They were lugging Luther’s beloved industrial air conditioner through the hall to the pickup truck idling at the curb.

  “Don’t drop it,” Reed cautioned. He was supervising as they loaded the air conditioner onto the flatbed. Afterward, he made the two of them sit in back with it while he road in the truck’s cab.

  Once the truck pulled away, Emmett came out of hiding. “Okay, Freddie, you can get down now.”

  The kid scaled the side of the wagon and dropped to the ground, hacking to clear his throat. “I figured out why this car was at the junkyard.”

  “Why?”

  “Smells like a cat died in there.”

  “Well, all I smell is smoke and it’s getting a lot hotter in here.”

  “Don’t have to ask me twice.”

  Shrill shrieks of bursting glass sent Emmett and Freddie sprinting from the body shop. Flames had engulfed the exterior walls. The intensity of the fire was blowing out the windows. From across the street, they stood watching the garage’s demise, then came a distant pop, pop, pop.

  “Was that the fire?”

  “No,” Emmett said. “That was gunshots.”

  More followed in rapid succession, far away yet distinct.

  Freddie put the tape in his pocket. “So what’re we standing around here for?”

  In the car, they caught the tail end of a transmission on the police band. The speaker wasn’t a dispatcher. It was Director Sloakes. “Firearms may be used when your own or another’s life is in danger and no other measures are available to defend yourself or apprehend an offender. Only fire if fired upon.” He enunciated with the clinical detachment of someone reading from a manual.

  “Think those were cops we heard shooting?” Freddie asked.

  “If it was, they missed the message.”

  “Or they got it crystal clear.”

  A bulletin came over the frequency that Spruce Street, east of the Fourth Precinct, was completely looted. Every single store had been scavenged to empty husks. Emmett lowered the volume.

  “What did Luther mean about ‘the house’?”

  “Ain’t no regular house. It’s a warehouse. Takes up most ’a Boyden Street. Luther’s always braggin’ about how it’s some fortress and how nobody could ever get in ’cause he’s got it booby-trapped.”

  “What’s inside that would need that much protection?”

  “Luther wouldn’t say. Just talked about how Fort Knox had nothin’ on his place.”

  “What would you guess was in there?”

  “Bunch ’a big old air conditioners.”

  “No, really.”

  “Dope. Cash. Guns. Whatever it is, it’s somethin’ special.”

  Since the body shop was a front, Reed had to have a hub for his operations. An unassuming warehouse would be the ideal place to cut his drugs, stash his weapons, and squirrel his money. Whether the elaborate booby traps were fact or fiction, Luther Reed would have gone to great lengths to protect his investments.

  “Speaking of something special, what are you going to do with that tape?”

  “Don’t get any funny ideas. I ain’t givin’ it to you. A cop is a cop.”

  “And a thief is a thief. I don’t want your tape, Freddie. I want you to find a smarter place to hide it is all. Maybe somewhere less flammable.”

  The orange aura of several nearby fires was bulging into the night sky.

  “And where would that be?” Freddie asked sarcastically.

  “Anyplace except your mother’s apartment. They’ll search there first. If they haven’t already.”

  “I wonder what they’re doing.”

  “Who? Ionello and Vass?”

  “No, my mama and Cyril. Maybe they’re at home. Or maybe they’re out doin’ what everybody else is.”

  “I can go and see if they’re okay. But I can’t take you with me. They’ll have your house staked out.”

  “You don’t have to go. I was just wondering. That’s not the same as caring.”

  His mother’s refusal to post bail pared away much of the sympathy Freddie had for her. He was too hurt to say he cared. Emmett could tell he did, though.

  “What does the R stand for?”

  “Huh?”

  “At court, when the clerk read your name, he said, ‘Fredrick R. Guthrie.’”

  “The R’s for Rodney. It’s my dad’s name.”

  “Did he get you interested in cars?”

  “Taught me all about ’em before he left.”

  “Left for where?”

  “Wherever.” Freddie stepped over the issue like a crack on a sidewalk. He would say no more. “Cyril don’t know nothin’ about cars. He don’t even got one. What kinda man are you if you don’t even got no ride? Someday I’m gonna get me a car. It’ll be real slick too. A Corvette maybe. Or a sweet Mustang. I’ll drive by and everybody’ll be like, ‘Hey, that’s Freddie’s car.’” The fantasy put a grin on his face that lasted until they returned to Emmett’s house.

  “Your brother still gonna be mad at me?”

  “Probably.”

  “What am I supposta do?”

  “You could try saying you’re sorry.”

  “And that’ll work?”

  “Hasn’t worked for me. But he doesn’t know you that well. Maybe it’ll work for you.”

  “Thanks. That’s some advice.”

  When Emmett unlocked the front door to his house, it wouldn’t open fully. An overturned chair was barring the way. The living room had been ransacked. He drew his service revolver.

  “Freddie, wait here.”

  Emmett shouldered in the door. The TV was still there, the record player too. Nothing of value was missing. The place had been tossed.

  “Edward? Mrs. Poole?”

  A whimper came from the kitchen. Gun raised, Emmett flipped on the lights with his elbow. Mrs. Poole was crumpled on the kitchen floor, crying.

  “Are you all right?” He knelt and examined her for injuries.

  “I’m okay. But I can’t get up.”

  Emmett lifted Mrs. Poole to her feet, her bad back crimping her every move.

  “She okay?” Freddie had disregarded Emmett’s orders and trailed him into the house.

  “Didn’t I say to wait outside?”

  Short on excuses, Freddie just shrugged.

  “What happened?” Emmett wanted to know too.

  “These men, they broke into the house. Said not to call the police because they were too busy with the riot. Then they, they…” She stammered into tears.

  “Mrs. Poole, where’s Edward?”

  She motioned to the porch.

  “Freddie, get a chair for her. Get her something to drink.”

  He passed Mrs. Poole into Freddie’s arms and burst through the screen door. His brother was in his wheelchair facing the yard. “Edward, what—”

  “You shoulda left me your gun.” Blood was dried around his nose and lips. His right eye was swollen shut. “They said they wanted the nigger’s name. Said you’d know why.”

  Caligrassi had sent his men to terrorize an answer out of Emmett. Rage mingled with the misery of bringing his troubles onto his brother and Mrs. Poole.

  “I told you not to help that kid, Marty.”

  “It’s not him. He’s not the one they were after.”

  Emmett leaned heavily on the porch rail and told Edward the story of Vernon Young’s murder as well as what had transpired with Lieutenant Ahern.

  “Why didn’t you say anything?” The secret seemed to hurt Edward more than his eye.

  “In case of something like this.”

  “Marty. I gave ’em the kid’s name,” Edward admitted. “I’m sorry. I didn’t realize.”

  Emmett’s heart sank. He looked through the screen door into the kitchen. Freddie had gotten Mrs. Poole a glass of water and was sitting with her at the table, comforting her. He was
sixteen years old, skinny and puny, and the most powerful men in the entire city of Newark—the cops, Luther Reed, and Ruggiero Caligrassi—were all on the hunt for him.

  Emmett was torn. He hated to leave Edward and Mrs. Poole again, however he knew what was heading for Lossie Guthrie.

  “They’ll go to his mother’s house.”

  Edward understood. He put out his cigarette and held open his palm. Emmett gave him the pistol from his leg holster.

  “Don’t worry,” Edward said. “I’ll wait up.”

  TWENTY-TWO

  Midnight had come and gone, yet the Central Ward was as busy and noisy as if it were midday. Rose Street, where Lossie Guthrie lived, was at the epicenter of the riot, and every road Emmett tried to turn on was blocked by hordes of looters or fire trucks. The closest Emmett could get was Tenth Street. He would have to cross through Woodland Cemetery to get to Freddie’s house.

  The fencing didn’t go all the way around the fifty-five-acre graveyard, so people traipsed through as they pleased, mainly kids taking shortcuts and junkies rushing to their favorite spots to get a fix. By flashlight, Emmett could follow a beaten footpath between the thicket of tombstones. He wasn’t afraid to be there. Woodland was safer than most places at that hour. What he would face once he left did worry him. Sirens and distant gunshots fractured the cemetery’s signature silence.

  Emmett could tell that he was nearing the main gate. He had come to a section devoid of headstones, a flat tract of graves for infants and children. Were it not for the divots in the ground, that part of the graveyard could have been mistaken for a meadow.

  Ahead was a small Gothic church enshrouded in trees. Its turreted spire dissolved into the night sky. The church marked the cemetery’s entrance, and its gate let out onto Brenner Street, which intersected with Rose. Emmett snapped off the flashlight. From here on, he would have to do without it.

  While the main roads surrounding the area were jammed, Rose Street was deserted. The residents were nowhere to be seen. They could have been barricaded inside their apartments or out indulging in the free-for-all. For their own sakes, Emmett hoped Lossie Guthrie, and her boyfriend, Cyril, hadn’t stayed home.

  Caligrassi’s thugs would be driving a nice car, so Emmett took note of the vehicles on the street. Most were older than his with rust eating away at the edges and broken windows replaced by garbage bags. The mobsters would take no pains to conceal their car by parking elsewhere. Their goal was to make their presence known. Since there was no sign, Emmett thought he might have gotten to Lossie’s first. He took the stairs two at a time up to the fourth floor and pressed his ear to the door, hand on his sidearm. He heard a pained mewling and tried the knob.

  The apartment had been wrecked. The furniture was demolished. Amid the mess, Lossie’s arm was protruding from under the capsized love seat. Emmett rolled it off of her. She had been sheltering beneath the cushions.

  “Mrs. Guthrie? It’s Detective Emmett.”

  Traumatized, she clenched her eyes closed. A huge welt had risen on her cheek. She was clutching a rag rug that had been kicked aside in the fracas as if it was a security blanket.

  “You’re okay. They’re gone. You’re safe now.”

  Lossie opened her eyes timidly. She blinked as though Emmett might be a mirage. “Where is he? Where’s Cyril?”

  “Is that who did this to you?” Emmett was so focused on Caligrassi’s thugs that he had forgotten what type of guy Lossie’s boyfriend was.

  “No, it was them men. They hurt him. I saw it. They hurt him bad.”

  Blood droplets led from the living room down the hall, confirming what type of guys Caligrassi’s thugs were. Emmett took out his revolver. Lossie huddled into herself, sobbing.

  The trail ended at the bathroom. Cyril was on the floor, unconscious. His head lay at the base of the toilet in a troth of blood. The mirror was spattered, and the corner of the sink was smeared where Cyril’s forehead had been bashed against it. Emmett got a pulse in his wrist but couldn’t rouse him. Ambrose Webster’s grandmother had mentioned that the Guthries didn’t have a telephone. Emmett would have to find one.

  “Mrs. Guthrie, listen to me. Listen.” He had to shake Lossie to get her to reopen her eyes. “Cyril has to go to the hospital. I need a phone to call for an ambulance.”

  She grabbed his arm. “Don’t go. Don’t. Please.”

  “If you don’t let me go, Cyril could die.”

  For a brief instant, she became lucid. “Okay,” she said, releasing him. “Okay.”

  Emmett pounded on the door to the apartment below. “This is the police. There are injured people upstairs. I have to use your telephone.”

  Nobody answered. He did the same on the second floor, then the first. No one was home, or they wouldn’t answer the door. Emmett went back to Lossie’s. She was coiled on the rug, cradling herself in her own arms and humming.

  “Mrs. Guthrie, I have to go get help. I need you to sit with Cyril and make sure he keeps breathing. Can you do that?”

  Lossie buried her face in the carpet and hummed louder. It was useless. He had to leave.

  Emmett planned to flag the firemen from the trucks that had been obstructing the main roads and have them radio in for him. To his dismay, the fire trucks were gone. Bergen Street was abandoned, already plundered. Water dripped from burnt storefronts and washed into the gutters. The marauders and the firemen had moved on.

  With the streetlamps in smithereens, all Emmett had to see by was a dwindling fire in a trash can. He spotted a pay phone outside a ravaged pharmacy. Neighborhood junkies had cleaned the shelves bare. Emmett was amazed he hadn’t run into any of them in the cemetery, reveling in their spoils. He picked up the pay phone’s receiver. There was no dial tone. The cord had been cut. Emmett was running out of options. Earlier that afternoon, he and Otis Fossum had been standing on that very curb. He thought of Otis lamenting how he hadn’t helped with Vernon Young’s case, then Emmett remembered the call box.

  The Bergen Street box was set up outside a bar named Woody’s. Boxes were often placed in close proximity to reputed trouble spots. Most bars in the neighborhood qualified, but Woody’s was notorious for its drunken brawls and for the twelve-gauge shotgun the bartender would brandish if a fight broke out. Foot patrolmen were actually prohibited from pulling at that box between the hours of one a.m. and three. Since it took five to ten minutes for a radio car to arrive at the location after a double pull, the sign for distress, it was considered too dangerous for an officer to be there on his own past one for even that short a time.

  Emmett’s watch read two in the morning. He pulled the lever on the call box twice and waited.

  Minutes ticked by with no response. He imagined that the Central Complaints Division was inundated with calls. Still, a double from the Bergen Street box should have been a priority. Central Complaints should have rung back as per protocol. That night, Emmett’s double pull didn’t even warrant a response.

  He looked around for any lights on in apartment windows. Every single one was dark, all except the front window of Woody’s. Between the slits in the blinds, there was movement. It was the last place Emmett wanted to go or would be welcomed, but Cyril had to get to the hospital. He crossed himself and went in.

  Woody’s was packed as if it was a Saturday night. There wasn’t a single white face in the crowd. Men were crowded at the bar, arm’s length from the taps, while women clustered in the jade green Naugahyde booths, sipping drinks. A haze of cigarette smoke mellowed the lights. Heads turned as the door swung closed behind Emmett.

  “I need to use the phone,” Emmett announced, holding his badge in the air. “It’s an emergency. A man and woman living on Rose Street were beaten up badly and I have to call an ambulance.”

  The address was a giveaway. Nobody white lived on Rose Street. The patrons would know that.

  “Maybe you the one who beat ’em up,” someone mumbled.

  “I need to use the phone,” Emmett repeated, unwaverin
g. He felt someone coming up behind him.

  “You all by your lonesome, Officer?” the guy said into his ear intimidatingly.

  Any second Emmet expected to feel a knife or a gun press into his ribs. “All I want is to use the telephone.”

  “You move on off ’a him, Billy,” said the bartender, an older man whose hair receded into a high arch. He was reaching under the counter with the practiced calm of someone who defused violence on a nightly basis. “Don’t force me to get out this here shotgun. It’s too damn hot for a ruckus.”

  Billy backed away a step. “You no fun,” he told the bartender, who set a rotary dial telephone on the counter.

  “Just don’t make no long-distance calls.”

  Everyone stared as Emmett dialed the Complaints Division number direct. It rang and rang. Finally, somebody answered.

  “Dispatch.”

  “This is Detective Emmett. I need a bus at—”

  “No buses available.”

  “None?”

  “Too many calls. First come, first served. You can tell me the location, Detective, but you’re at the end of the line. And it’s a helluva long line.”

  Emmett gave Lossie’s address and hung up.

  “Maybe you should ’a told ’em they was white folks,” the bartender suggested. “Then maybe they woulda come.”

  “Thanks anyway.”

  As Emmett headed for the door, someone muttered, “You know thing’s bad when even a cop can’t bring the cops.”

  “I’ll drink to that,” another toasted.

  Outside, the night air was dense with the acrid chemical odor of melted plastic. The fire in the trash can was almost out. The ambulance wouldn’t arrive for hours, if at all. Emmett did the only thing he could think to do. He went and got his car and double-parked in front of Lossie Guthrie’s building. Lossie was exactly where he left her, now asleep on the floor. Emmett woke her, saying, “We have to bring Cyril to the hospital.”

  “Okay.” She cooperated like a sleepy child, holding open the front door as Emmett slid Cyril out of the bathroom, through the apartment, and into the hall. Unconscious, the man’s muscle became ungainly dead weight.