“No, it isn’t” he whispered. “And never fear, chica, it won’t be.”
He was marching me back toward what had been the women’s clothing department. Curtained dressing rooms lined the wall. “Excellent,” he whispered, shoving me inside one and turning me to face him. “Now,” he said briskly, “on your knees.” His eyes glittered, his expression expectant. I got the distinct impression, as his body pressed against mine, that the man had an erection.
As he snapped the cuffs around my left wrist, I chopped his adam’s apple with my right hand, kneed him in the groin with all the strength I could muster, and was off and running.
He followed, amazingly fast for someone I thought I had just disabled. I had hoped to be outside before he recovered; but I heard the crunch of his footsteps on broken glass behind me.
“Halt, or I’ll shoot,” he shouted, hoarse and gasping.
I dove down behind a counter, next to a cash register broken open on the floor. The metal cuffs still dangled from my left wrist. “I have a gun, chica. I will if I have to, but I would prefer not to shoot you.”
No, I thought, skittering on all fours to the cover of another counter, he would rather make it look like rioters killed me. No ballistics in beating deaths. I would be a statistic, another casualty of this huge disaster, lost in the numbers. I held my breath.
If I could make it out the door, the barricades were not far away. Once in sight of other cops, he wouldn’t dare.
I strained to listen, ears wide open, unsure of exactly where he was. The unfought fire was slowly spreading, smoke swirling around me. I got closer to the floor and tried not to cough. Only one thing was clear—I had to get out of there. I raised myself up to a crouch, like a sprinter at the starting line, breathed deeply, counted to three and bolted.
I heard his surprised grunt from somewhere to my right, but concentrated on moving fast and keeping my footing on the tittered, slippery floor. Ten feet from the door I heard the shot and the tinkling sound of glass shards falling as the slug jammed into a window frame ahead of me. I kept going and burst out the door, moving as fast as I ever have in my life.
Hesitating an instant to catch my breath and bearings, I broke for the barricades, only a short distance away. But as I ran and my eyes began to focus, I became disoriented, overwhelmed. Tears stung my eyes. The barricades, the perimeter was gone. They had moved out again, pulled back, without me. This was no man’s land now, abandoned to the mob, no cops in sight.
I had no idea how far they had withdrawn, or in which direction. A glance over my shoulder accelerated my heartbeat. Alvarez, running powerfully, was gaining, his gold-plated gun in his hand. A stitch stabbed my side, but the pain was nothing, I thought, compared to what would happen if he caught me. I forced myself to keep up the pace.
Skidding up to the corner, I looked wildly up and down, not knowing which way to run. No sign of cops or barricades or help, only smoky streets. I thought I was going crazy, because I smelled blood and the faint odor of tear gas.
I saw the source of the blood, a butcher shop on the far corner, ransacked, windows broken, raw meat littering the street. The distant sound of grinding metal, a car crash, drew my eyes to the west and a glimpse of the golden sun, setting serenely on a horizon that glowed purple and red. Panicked and almost sobbing at the sound of Alvarez’s footsteps pounding behind me, I ducked into a liquor store.
The alarm rang maddeningly. Smashed bottles lay in glittery heaps amid golden puddles tracked with crimson. Would-be looters, perhaps some of them barefoot or in flipflops, must have cut themselves on broken glass trying to salvage intact bottles from the mess. I hid behind the counter, scrabbling about, searching for a weapon. Most liquor store operators keep a gun, but this one must have taken his with him; either that or a looter owned it now. I thought bitterly about my revolver, in the glove box of my car, parked safely back at the newspaper.
A shadow fell over the sparkling diamonds of debris: Alvarez, breathing hard in the doorway. He stepped inside cautiously, like a man crossing thin ice, the gun in his hand, barrel pointed at the ceiling.
If I die, I thought, my mother will believe she was right. I should have sold dresses. I thought of McDonald. Where was he? Cops are never around when you need them. I pictured my father’s face. He would never surrender; he never did.
“Britt! Come out, now.” The commanding voice was one accustomed to obedience. No telling how many shots in that automatic, probably fifteen or eighteen, I thought. He only got one, maybe two, off at the store. He probably had another clip. Whatever, there was little chance he would run out of ammo.
A door hung ajar at the far end of the counter, possibly to the stockroom or a bathroom. It might lead to a back door or a window, or trap me at a dead end. I tried to remember the outside of the building. It was freestanding, with a small parking lot at the rear. Whatever, I had to try for it, or else stay here to be shot like a fish in a barrel. Alvarez seemed to be checking the aisles from a command position near the front door. At any moment now he would look or vault over the counter. Thanks to the sounding burglar alarm, I could crawl toward the mystery door without him hearing my progress, if I was careful.
Broken glass shredded my slacks and ground into my knees and the palms of my hands. I’d reached the door and was inching it open a little wider when I heard him cry out and rush toward me. Staggering painfully to my feet, I dove through the door and slammed it behind me. There was a simple bolt; I knew it wouldn’t hold. A short hallway ended at the back door. There was a windowless stockroom on one side, a bathroom with a small, shuttered window at the other. I threw myself against the back door, made of steel and dead-bolted, as Alvarez kicked the door between us. It almost gave. Another kick would do it. The steel door wouldn’t open; it needed a key.
I scrambled into the bathroom, slammed the door; and locked it, another simple throw bolt. The wooden shutter creaked open easily, but the window had long been painted shut with many coats. I snatched up the small round waste can, stood on the toilet, and broke the glass, just as I heard the outside door crash open. The bathroom door rattled. I took off my sweater, wrapped it around my arm, cleared the frame of the sharp remaining shards of glass, and hoisted myself up and out. I dropped six feet to the ground as Alvarez shot the lock off the bathroom door.
My ankle and knees hurt when I got up, but I pulled my sweater back over my head and started to run across the parking lot. I glanced back at the window: nothing. Then I saw him charge around the side of the building. He’d run back through the store and out the front door rather than try to squeeze his bulk through that small window.
He had a clear shot at me now. I tried to weave from side to side, stumbling, as I ran. Several people emerged through the smoke. Men and youths, shouting, armed with clubs, pieces of broken furniture, and pipes. “Help me!” I cried, waving my arms, handcuffs catching the light.
Alvarez still came, focused on me. Other figures loomed behind him.
“There’s one of them! Get ‘em! Get ‘em!” somebody shouted. “Pig, motherfucker!” Cries went up. “Hey, look what we got here!” one man shouted. “A policeman! A goddamn policeman!” I stood, frozen, as the mob surged forward, then past me. Alvarez, gun in hand, boldly began to shove his way through, and reached for my arm. I yanked it away.
“She’s my prisoner…” he said, as a man hit him from behind. Another lunged for his gun. The gold-plated automatic went flying, scooped up in somebody’s hand. I backed away.
Alvarez went down on one knee, his eyes still on me as they swarmed over him. I ran. I looked back once, but all I saw was flailing elbows, knees, and feet. One man was kneeling, stabbing with what looked like a screwdriver, over and over and over. Then I heard gunfire: the gold-plated automatic.
Blindly I ran, running forever, stumbling, lungs in spasms, until I thought I heard my name. A patrol car, flasher spinning, screeched to a stop ten feet away. I kept running, thinking somehow that Alvare
z had come back to life to kill me.
The officer jumped out, clumsy in bulky riot gear, wearing a visored helmet with a Plexiglas face protector, and a gas mask strapped to her leg: the most beautiful sight I had ever seen.
“Oh Francie, Francie,” I gasped in relief. “Thank God!”
“Britt! How the hell did you get out here?” She reached for me. “Are you okay?”
“He tried to kill me,” I sobbed, slumping against her and her car. “He tried to kill me.”
“Who?” She stepped away and looked around, hand on her holstered gun.
I lifted my left arm, handcuffs dangling. “Major Alvarez. He’s dead. I’m sure he’s dead. The mob got him. He did it, Francie! He put out the false BOLO. He went to the hospital and killed D. Wayne Hudson!”
Her blue eyes widened. “You sure you’re okay?”
I knew I sounded hysterical. “Come on,” she said gently, then scanned the streets around us. “This is a war zone, they’re burning down the whole damn town. We have to get out of here—until the Guard comes in to back us up. The perimeter has been pulled back again.”
Shots, crashes, and breaking glass resounded from the next block. A bonfire roared in the street, rippling heat waves rising into the darkening sky. Francie looked and sounded exhausted, her pale face streaked with perspiration.
“This gear is as hot as hell,” she said. “It weighs more than I do. My T-shirt is soaked.”
“Have you seen Lottie?” I said. “I’ve gotta get back to the paper.” Shots sounded close by.
“Get in the car.” She reached for my arm. “It’s too dangerous for us to…” Her hands flew to her throat.
“Francie? What is it?” Spurts of bright red arterial blood suddenly pumped from between her fingers. I watched in horror as she crumpled to the pavement.
“Oh my God, oh my God,” I cried. I knelt beside her, looked up, and saw another bright flash from a building across the street. A bullet ricocheted off the bumper of her patrol car. “Oh my God! Francie.” She moved her lips, trying to say something, but made only terrible sounds. Blood bubbled and was everywhere. I unfastened her helmet strap, pushed it back, and tried to stop the flow. But the hole was too big, and if I applied pressure to her throat, she would choke. She was already choking, drowning in her own blood. I pulled her into my arms and cradled her, weeping, not knowing what to do. “You’ll be all right. You’ll be all right,” I repeated, over and over. Her body began to convulse, arms and legs jerking. I held her until the shaking stopped.
When a car horn blared, I looked up. A yellow taxi cab, a black man at the wheel, skidded to a stop. “Come on, come on!” he yelled. “You the lady reporter, right?”
“Yes.” I felt foggy, about to wake from a bad dream.
“Come on, get in. We’ll get outta here.”
It took a moment to begin to compute, then I stood up and tried to drag Francie toward the cab, my hands under her armpits. My fingers kept slipping in the blood. Her heels dragged in the dust.
Something bounced by me and rolled to a stop under her patrol car. A bottle. A Molotov cocktail. It ignited in a whoosh, bathing the undercarriage of the cruiser in flames.
“Sheeet,” the cabbie said. “Come on! Come on! Leave her be.” He looked around wildly, one foot out, his door half-open. “Leave her here. She’s dead. She’s gone.”
“No,” I whimpered, well aware that he was right.
He swung the back door open. “Come on, come on. I can try to get you out of here.”
I let go of Francie and went to the cab, my hand on the door. “No, wait!” I cried.
“Sheeet!” he yelled, as I turned and ran back to the patrol car. The door handle was hot to the touch and flames crept up around the chassis.
“It’s gonna blow!” he yelled. “Git away from it!”
I yanked it open, scorching my palm. She was crouched on the floorboard in the front.
I reached out and Bitsy crept into my arms. I ran back to the cab and scrambled inside. He took the corner squealing, on two wheels, as I heard the muffled blast behind us.
“Get down. Stay down,” he said. I fell to the floor, my cheek pressed against the carpet, sure I would never get up again.
“Where you want to go?” he asked after a time.
“The newspaper.”
“You sure you want to go there?”
The question surprised me. Where else would I go?
Twenty-two
They tried to send me home, but I stayed, washed up as best I could in the ladies’ room, changed to the clothes in my locker, and worked through the night on the riot coverage. My clearest recollection was a moment I wish I could forget.
As we pieced together the stories of destruction, terror, and confusion, the managing editor emerged from his carpeted office in shirtsleeves, smiled at me, nodded and said, “Good work, Britt.”
I sat there numb as he walked away. But his words stayed with me. Exhaustion, deadlines, and breaking stories suppressed my conflicting emotions and feeling of guilt for a time. My landlady, Mrs. Goldstein, took care of Bitsy, while Lottie and I camped out at Onnie’s place the following night. Police had imposed a curfew, and there was no other way for reporters to have access to the riot zone after dark. While there, of course, I had to keep up a good front for Darryl.
Not until the third day, after the National Guard had restored order, did the full impact hit. McDonald arrived at my door, also exhausted, still wearing a uniform that smelled of smoke and tear gas, after forty-eight hours on duty. We fell into each other’s arms. He held me and listened to everything that had happened. Spilling the story to him was little comfort. Bruised body and soul, sore and sick, I had trouble sleeping. Neither sleep nor sex nor long hot baths restored me. That’s when I made up my mind and told him I was quitting. I called the city desk to make it formal, but McDonald reached past me and hung up the phone.
“Don’t do it,” he said. “You would only regret it the rest of your life. I know exactly how you feel, but this is no time to make a major decision.”
“You don’t know how I feel! How could you possibly?” I said irritably, pulling my bathrobe tightly around me and hugging my scabbed knees, which were drawn up to my chest.
His face worked, as though summoning up secret thoughts, unpleasant ones. “You know I killed a man once?”
I nodded. “Justifiably.”
“Sure, he was armed and loco and dangerous. He tried to kill me, but I managed to get him first. That doesn’t make taking a life any less traumatic. It was a numbing, shattering experience.” His eyes clouded in recollection. “But when I got back to the station, I was congratulated and backslapped, and told by everybody from the chief to the guys in the locker room what a great job I had done.
“I shook their hands and accepted their congratulations. But I knew that what had happened was not something to be congratulated for. It was a tragedy, something painful that I had had to do. I went home and bawled like a baby.”
I leaned against him, he put his arm around me and stroked my hair. “That’s something else we have in common, Britt. Our jobs are a lot alike. We’re going to hurt people, and they’re going to hurt us. Sometimes they’re strangers, sometimes they’re the people we work for. That’s sad, but that’s what happens in this business. Lord knows my life would be easier if you chose some other line of work. But we both care about our jobs, do them the best we know how, and go on in spite of it when these things happen. We’re not quitters.”
He was right.
Francie will always be alive in my heart. Not a day passes that I don’t think of her. How could she be gone? Not Francie. I still have not come close to accepting it. Her nearest relative, a cousin from Tampa, wasn’t interested in taking Bitsy. After seeing what a good dog she was, Mrs. Goldstein agreed to let me keep her until I found a suitable home. “If Billy Boots can deal with it, so can I,” she said. I didn’t want a dog. They are so
much more needy than cats. But I guess I have one. How could I give up Bitsy, already uprooted and bewildered, to a stranger?
As soon as the riot coverage ended and the city was under control, I began putting together my story about the truth, what really happened. I worked hard on it, for two days. It explained everything. It was never published.
After I turned in the story, there was a solemn meeting among editors, lawyers, the mayor, the city manager, the police chief, and black leaders.
“They believe you,” Fred Douglas told me, when he called me into his office later. “We believe you. But there is no sure way to prove Alvarez was guilty. No way a dead man can defend himself against allegations.”
“But we have to expose the truth about what happened.” I couldn’t believe what I was hearing. “The public has a right to know.”
“Britt, you know as well as I do, the black community would never believe that those officers who were acquitted did not kill D. Wayne Hudson.”
“They didn’t”
“But they did commit a crime. They beat him, and then tried to cover it up. The chief has agreed to tighten supervision on the midnight shift and investigate the practices that led to some of the bad cops being there in the first place. The people who run this city and this newspaper agree it’s time to put this case to rest. More accusations, stirring up more controversy, won’t solve a thing.”
I understood what he was saying. The city had already been through a terrible trauma. Its image, along with that of the police department, had been cruelly wounded. The quicker the healing process and rebuilding began, the better for all of us who lived here. My story would bring no one to justice and would only further polarize a divided community. For those reasons, the most important story I ever wrote was never read.
The final toll was fourteen civilians and two police officers dead, hundreds of people injured, and millions of dollars in damage. McDonald was right: I love my job, and the city, and want to be part of the recovery process. But it isn’t easy.
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