“OK.” I nodded. “Thanks.” I picked up the phone, looked at the Post-it Note on my desk that had Schmitty’s phone number, and dialed as Emma shut the door to my office.
Schmitty picked up after one ring. “Glass. What the hell?”
“I was going to ask you the same thing.”
“So you’re not doing this?”
“Of course not,” I said, perhaps too defensively. “Thought maybe you were doing it, trying to smoke him out.”
“Are you kidding?” I could hear the panic in Schmitty’s voice. “This ain’t gonna end well, my friend. Gotta go. The damn governor is on our ass, worried about another Ferguson. Call me if you figure out who’s posting this stuff.”
By sunset, there were a thousand people gathered outside Jimmy Poles’s house, shouting and chanting. Somebody on a megaphone instructed the crowd to disperse, but the command was ignored. Two helicopters circled overhead, one a police tactical unit, the other a news crew. There were moments where it looked like the two would collide. Plus there were at least five knuckleheads flying remote-controlled drones with cameras mounted on them.
In a McDonald’s parking lot six blocks away, four armored Missouri National Guard vehicles reviewed maps of the area. A small army of police officers suited up in full riot gear. A similar contingent prepared at a pharmacy on the other side of Jimmy Poles’s house.
The plan was to simultaneously approach the protesters from each side, press them together, pinch them at one end, and push the crowd toward the highway and out of the residential area.
It was the best strategy that they could come up with. Nobody expected it to go smoothly, but somebody should’ve known that it was going to be a complete failure.
A call was made, and the two units started their slow march. Squad cars and police officers eventually formed a corridor leading from Jimmy Poles’s house toward the highway. The squads and police officers were intended to limit the choices that the protestors could make by keeping them together and cutting off alternative routes.
Contain and control.
The crowd received another warning, ordering them to start dispersing or face arrest. The bright lights shone down on the crowd, growing bigger as armored vehicles crept closer. Riot police with masks and shields flanked the edges.
Chants grew louder as the units pressed.
As the protesters were pushed together, some started moving down the street and toward the highway as expected, but the police were too slow to pinch them from behind.
That was how the plan fell apart.
Rather than go toward the highway, hundreds of protesters moved in the wrong direction. They went off the street and onto Jimmy Poles’s front lawn. Then somebody threw a bottle through the front window.
More glass shattered. Cops got spooked. A half dozen canisters of tear gas shot into the crowd. Protesters panicked as their eyes watered. They got disoriented and didn’t know where to run. Some fell to the ground, coughing and seeking clean air. Others tripped or were pushed. Everybody was screaming as the vehicles and the line of police continued to push forward.
Then Jimmy Poles’s house was lit on fire.
CHAPTER FIFTY-FOUR
The governor called a state of emergency. A curfew was imposed across the entire city, but the protests continued night after night. Every day, television and newspapers were filled with images of the conflict. Reporters from around the world descended on the city. Gun sales were at a record high, and permit-to-carry classes filled as the frightened prepared for the worst. The community splintered into protests and counter-protests, with others stuck in the middle.
Saint Louis had always had an identity crisis. It was the intersection of North and South, East and West. The tension had always been below the surface, but now it was out in the open. Past police shootings and riots were prologue. This was different. It wasn’t going to end with a task force and a march to Jefferson City.
“Your father wants me to go to Washington, DC, for a few weeks.” My mother poured herself some more wine and then took a bite of her dinner salad. “Let things calm down. Sammy could come.”
I looked across the table at Sammy, but she didn’t say anything. “I’d rather Sammy stick with me.” I smiled at her and winked. “We’re getting the schools narrowed down to the top three. I want to get that started.”
“Now?” My mother’s look turned skeptical. “With everything going on?”
“Can’t stop living.” It sounded odd coming from me, a man who had been frozen for years and who—even now—was only partially thawed at best.
An awkward silence hung over the dinner table, and it stayed there until I broke it. “OK, OK. Y’all are given permission to laugh at me. I’m Mr. Corn-Dog. I get it. I got no business giving people life lessons.” I gave Sammy a goofy grin. “‘Can’t stop living.’ Hear that? ‘Keep on living.’ Go ahead. You can laugh now.”
And laugh they did.
It was a release, and it felt good. When it tapered down, the Judge knocked on the dining room table, suppressing his smile. He declared to the world, “I’m staying put.” Then he poured himself another glass of wine. “Down with the ship, I say. Not going to be driven from my home by a bunch of idiots. A lot of them aren’t even from here. Traveling to our fine city to cause trouble. Anarchists and professional protesters. Ridiculous.”
Then a small voice said, “I want to go to the lake.”
We all turned to Sammy.
“The lake?”
“It’d be nice.” Sammy smiled and looked at me. “And you promised we’d go last summer, but we never did.” She continued to justify her recommendation. “Peaceful. No Internet. No television. Doesn’t that sound good?”
“Yes.” I nodded. “Sounds about perfect, except I got work and we got to get you back in school, remember?”
CHAPTER FIFTY-FIVE
The next morning, I met my brother for breakfast at a box tucked between Broadway and the historic Route 66. Lincoln had wanted to get together since the press conference, but I had been able to put him off until now.
There were a few pleasantries, but it didn’t take long for Lincoln to get to the point.
“You know I still want you to take my spot.” Lincoln put his arm around me. He was ready to forget about the threats made to Annie and the other hard feelings, if I was. “What I told you was the truth. You’d be great. Wasn’t a bunch of BS, brother.”
“Sometimes I think I’ve got too much going on already.” I looked back at the cook working in the Eat-Rite’s cramped kitchen. “I’ve been leaning toward it, really I have, but then I’ll snap back to thinking maybe politics isn’t for me.”
“You talking about Sammy? Worried about whether she could handle it?”
I thought about what I should say before responding, trying to figure out how much to reveal and how much was already known. I didn’t like being guarded with my brother, but I was. “Yeah,” I said. “That’s a big part of it.”
“But this would be good for her and you.” He leaned in. “A state senator will have clients coming out of nowhere. And I’m not talking shady clients or criminals. I’m talking about legit companies who will hire you for five hundred dollars an hour, maybe more, for some legal advice. You’ll be taken care of.”
“Like bribes.”
My brother recoiled. “Ain’t bribes, man. That’s what you’re worth. That’s what real lawyers charge nowadays.” He paused and looked me straight in the eye. “Listen to me.” Lincoln pointed at my chest, then spoke every word with deliberation. “That’s what you are worth.”
“Maybe.” I watched as the cook plated our eggs and pancakes and then, as he brought them over to us at the end of the counter, our conversation paused. Lincoln started eating, but I’d lost my appetite.
He raised an eyebrow. “So now you’re not going to eat?”
I picked up a small piece of scrambled eggs with my fork and put it into my mouth. “I’m eating,” I said. “See?”
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br /> “You’re disgusted by how crass I can be,” Lincoln said. “I get it.” He sliced off a piece of pancake. “But somebody’s got to be real, man. If not, why’d you invite me here?”
“I thought you called me?”
“Technicalities,” Lincoln said, dismissing the chronology. “You want to hear the crass stuff. Admit it.”
“No,” I said. “I want to get your ideas and thoughts.” I sighed. “This is a big decision for me. I’m trying to work it through and just get it done and . . . you’re better at this stuff than me.”
Lincoln smiled wide. “A compliment,” he said, raising his voice. “My big brother complimented me.” He leaned over and patted me on the back. “I talk like that sometimes ’cuz I know it gets you fired up. I’m just playing with you.”
Lincoln took a breath. “I know you want to do the right thing. You’re pretending like there’s a downside, because you’re afraid of putting yourself out there. Afraid of disappointing people.” He paused, winding up his pitch. “But there is no downside. There’s some crazy stuff going on out there right now, and you can help in ways that I can’t. That’s why Dad did what he did, even though it hurt me. I get it, too.” Lincoln was actually sincere. “Remember, though, you don’t have to be like Dad. You can do your thing while you’re there and then move on, if you want. You don’t have to do it forever. Just try it out. It’s up to you.”
Our waiter came over. “One check or two?”
“Two,” I said, but Lincoln overruled me.
“One check, and it’s on me.” He pulled out his wallet and put his credit card down on the table. “Glad you called me.” He was serious, although he was, again, factually incorrect. “We gotta do this more.”
“You mean scheme?” I kidded him.
“I mean think,” Lincoln said. “Think big thoughts. Look out for each other. Like it or not, we could be good partners again, like when we were kids.”
“Dangerous partners.”
“JFK and Bobby.” Lincoln laughed. “And dangerous and good ain’t mutually exclusive.”
CHAPTER FIFTY-SIX
The march was my idea. I had to do something. For over a week, the city had burned. Every night at dusk, a militarized police force confronted young black men who had been reduced by the media to statistics: half as likely to graduate college, four times as likely to be unemployed, three times as likely to be in jail, twice as likely to be convicted of a felony, 20 percent less likely to ever marry, and so on.
I was tired of watching it happen. The news reports were caricatures—information and images manipulated to support the political priorities of either the Left or the Right. I felt the humanity fade in the numbers and the conflict. The reality was that the missing boys were sons who were thrown away, disconnected from the institutions that were supposed to care—schools, churches, the government, and even, sometimes, their own families. Where was the collective responsibility to never allow these boys to fall so far away?
Nobody talked about that, but I could.
My last name gave me a platform that I had been afraid, until now, to use. I didn’t want to be seen as a fraud, and I thought it’d be easy to dismiss me. I didn’t grow up in poverty. Half my relatives were white. I had the schooling. My family had the money, and my father had the power. When I examined my own life, it wasn’t hard to surrender to the voices in my head that sounded a lot like the bullies at Sammy’s school, questioning whether I was black enough.
It was time to silence those voices and lead.
I stood on a bench outside my law office with a bullhorn. Over a thousand people showed up. I didn’t know how they had found out about the march, but that was the Glass machine.
“Good morning.” I looked out over the crowd. “My name is Justin Glass. Like you, I wish we didn’t need to be here, but we don’t have a choice. We need to stand up. We need to march, and we need to demand answers for what has happened. We need to know what is going to happen. And we need to hold the person or people who did this responsible.”
Directly in front of me were the families of the Lost Boys, my clients. I’d gotten to know every one of them. I’d sat in their apartments. I’d shared in their grief, surprising myself and letting them get closer to me than a lawyer should probably allow.
I had made sure that each family held a sign with their son’s name. Each family also had a black coffin hoisted on their shoulders. They floated along on the sea of people. “We can’t burn our own community. We need to organize. Put pressure on the police to stop harassing us and start investigating in earnest for these families right here in front of me.”
There was more that I wanted to say, but I couldn’t put the ideas together as a coherent whole. I didn’t know the right words, and perhaps that was the problem. Everyone standing in front of me knew that something far bigger was wrong. They knew that the system was broken, but we all lacked the language to express it, and so we were here to grieve these lost boys.
But the issue wasn’t just about troubled black boys who disappeared. That was only on the surface. The real reasons lay beneath. We were people who had been wronged. We were protesting bad schools, run-down housing, high unemployment, no credit, regressive taxation, exorbitant fees for government services, unnecessary fines, and the list could go on.
Rigged.
That was the only word I could come up with to express the situation.
I put the bullhorn down, and then I looked at Lincoln, who cued the Dirty Thirty Brass Band. The drummers struck a slow beat. Then the trumpets came in, followed by the trombones, tubas, and a couple of guys on sax.
Our protest was a New Orleans–style second line—a funeral parade from my law office to the Juvenile Justice Center. At first the music was solemn, playing the classic hymns, and then, per tradition, it picked up. By the time we crossed Page Boulevard, it was an expression of life.
Schmitty hadn’t returned my phone calls. He hadn’t updated me on any information. This would, hopefully, get his attention. I was done waiting. And, looking at the crowd, I could tell that they were done waiting, too.
CHAPTER FIFTY-SEVEN
The vast majority of the marchers were gone after a few hours. They had dispersed easily; some walked to the light rail station on Grand, and others had rides waiting. Lincoln had also arranged for buses to take people back to the start of the march.
About a hundred or so appeared to have set up camp on the corner of the Juvenile Justice Center’s parking lot. The police weren’t going to like the idea of a permanent protest, especially in front of the court, but I didn’t know what I was going to be able to do about it.
Emma honked her horn to get my attention. I waved at her, said a quick good-bye and thanks to a group of pastors who had spoken at the rally, and got into her car. “Thanks for the ride back.” I buckled my seatbelt as Emma pulled away from the curb. I asked, “Any coverage?”
“Every channel,” she said. “Most carried it live. I think they were hoping to see some violence, but had to settle for speeches.”
I smiled. “You’d think they’d be tired of the violence by now.”
She pulled into the left lane to go north on Grand toward the office. “Oh, Mr. Glass, they never get tired of violence.” Then she looked out the window at the sky, maybe thinking about all the violence that she’d seen in Bosnia, thinking that most Americans didn’t know how fragile things really were.
She snapped back to the present and looked back over to me. “Plus all the other stuff happened at night. This time they had good light for all their pretty photographs.”
I decided I’d check my messages and then go home. I figured that it wouldn’t take too long, and that I could still get home for a late dinner with Sammy, my mother, and the Judge.
I was, ultimately, wrong about the length of time I’d spend at the office, but I was right about Schmitty finally returning my phone calls.
“Want to tell me what the hell that was all about?” Schmitty was not
happy at all. He started talking the moment I answered the phone. “Thought we were on the same team, had an understanding.”
I didn’t match his intensity, although I was tempted to come back at him by pointing out his failure to update me on the investigation. “I didn’t do anything wrong, Schmitty.”
“Great,” he said. “I’m so glad you don’t think you did anything wrong. Within seconds of that little speech you gave, Chief Wilson was up my ass, calling you a traitor. Said you were inciting violence.”
“There was no violence.”
“Not right then. Not right now,” he said. “Wait till tonight.”
“Tonight’s going to be no different than every night for the past two weeks,” I said. “You guys need transparency. You need to communicate.”
“Transparency?” Schmitty was still agitated. “You’re smarter than that. It’s a damn investigation. You don’t tell the public how and when you are investigating a dozen murders.”
“Well maybe you need to communicate with me. That would be a start.” There, I’d laid it on the table.
Schmitty grunted. “Surprised by you, man,” he said. “Thought you were different than your brother, playing games.”
“I don’t have to take that, Schmitty,” I said. “Been working hard, asking nothing in return. You asked me to do this, remember? I know these families. I talk with these families all the time now, and they deserve better.” I collected my thoughts. “And don’t criticize my brother to me. He is what he is, and I am what I am.”
There was silence, and neither one of us wanted to fill it. If I waited long enough, I knew that Schmitty would break. Whether he felt betrayed or not, the police needed me on their side.
At last, Schmitty cleared his throat. “You just gotta give me a heads-up when you do stuff like that, that’s all,” he said. “I’d been meaning to call you, but there’s been a lot going on.”
“Good,” I said. “Glad you agree. If there’s stuff happening, you need to tell me that. Give me direction. We can get the feedback loop going again.”
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