Revolver

by Duane Swierczynski

  Rosie is already in the kitchen, fixing him food for the road. She doesn’t allow Stan to leave the house without food—maybe a liverwurst and onion on white, cold meatballs on an Italian roll—packed in a brown paper bag. His wife’s secret fear is that Stan will eat a meal that wasn’t prepared in their home and it’ll be the end of the world.

  “I’ll be right back down,” Stan says.

  Up in the bathroom he washes his hands and face with hot water, towels himself dry. Jimmy’s room is right next door and now Stan can hear that folk singer, Bob Dylan. That’s the other one the boy listens to all the time. One sings “Like a Rolling Stone.” Then you have the other ones that call themselves the Rolling Stones. None of it makes any sense. But Jimmy saves up and buys the albums himself, at a shop on Torresdale Avenue, so Stan can’t say anything. Maybe he’ll grow out of it. Or maybe Stan will buy him a set of headphones for his birthday.

  As if beckoned, Jimmy appears in the doorway. “You going back in, Pop?”

  “Yeah, they called us.”

  “You’re going to the riot, aren’t you?”

  Stan raises an eyebrow. “How did you hear about that?”

  “The radio. They said people are starting fires, smashing windows. Why are they doing that? What’s going on?”

  “I don’t know, Jimmy. Guess I’m going to go find out.”

  Stan goes to his bedroom to find a clean shirt. Jimmy follows him.

  “Sounds pretty bad out there.”

  “I’ll be fine. We just gotta calm everyone down.”

  Jimmy considers this for a moment. “The radio said it all started around Twenty-Second and Columbia,” he says. “That’s near the stadium, isn’t it?”

  “Ballpark’s up on Lehigh. Blocks and blocks away.”

  “I looked at a map. It’s not that far.”

  Stan looks at his boy, knows what he’s getting at. “Don’t worry, they’re not gonna cancel the Phillies over this.”

  They’re supposed to be headed to the game next Tuesday night. Stan bought tickets back when the Phillies were still on a losing streak. But now they’re heating up, and everybody in the city is getting excited, talking about the World Series, and those tickets were the smartest buy he ever made. Jimmy is out of his mind with excitement.

  “I hope not,” Jimmy says.

  “Off to the scene of the crime,” Stan says, then tousles Jimmy’s hair. Jimmy pretends to hate it but smiles.

  On their way in Stan sees a skinny murzyn kid hurl a Molotov cocktail at a red patrol car, shattering the back window. Three uniformed officers scramble out of the back door, brushing the glass from their shirts, looking for the kid, but he’s long gone, having zipped down a dark alley.

  You’d think the three would chase the little bastard down the alley, but they don’t even try. They just stand there, looking around at each other.

  Once they reach the staging area at Thirteenth and Berks, near Temple University, Stan learns why. They’re handing out white domed riot helmets. They’re handing out street assignments. And they’re handing out strict orders from up on high:

  Avoid physical confrontations.

  Keep violence and casualties as low as possible.

  No nightsticks.

  No drawn pistols.

  No dogs.

  No horses.

  No fire hoses.

  What, Stan wonders, are they supposed to use? Mean looks? Guess the scuttlebutt around the department is true. The commissioner isn’t a real street cop; he’s a goddamned egghead.

  “Your main instrument of control,” he tells his deputies,” is making an arrest.”

  Stan is within earshot of the deputy commissioner—Frank Rizzo.

  “That gutless son of a bitch,” Rizzo says. “He doesn’t know a goddamned thing.”

  Much as he might agree with Rizzo, Stan doesn’t like the deputy commissioner very much and the feeling is mutual. They worked together back ten years ago, policing the club district for a while, back when Stan felt like a real cop, invested in the job. That is, until things went very wrong and Stan found himself in exile in Whitetown.

  Anyway, Rizzo’s idea of a conversation with a suspect was a slap across the forehead, no further questions, Your Honor. To Stan’s mind he was worse than a thug. He was a thug with ambition.

  So of course this no-rough-stuff decree from the commissioner has Rizzo fuming, practically jumping out of his skin, wishing his cock were a nightstick that he could use to club all of North Philly into submission.

  Stan walks out of earshot. Somebody hands him a helmet. He tries to put it on, but it won’t fit. He hands it over to Taney.

  “Fucking Democrats,” Taney says, plopping the dome on his head. “I knew this was coming. All summer long I’ve been tellin’ ya, this is coming. Haven’t I?”

  Democrats: Taney’s new favorite word for blacks. He insists he’s not racist. Instead, he says, it’s political. Because all Democrats are nigger-lovers.

  “Yeah, you been telling me,” Stan says.

  “The way they challenge ya. Daring ya to do something.”

  “Uh-huh.”

  “Guess they’re gonna find out what happens when you dare a cop.”

  Billy Taney is an okay guy and a decent cop but a blowhard, especially when he’s been drinking. The more he drinks, the angrier he gets, the more his eyes disappear. Clearly he’s been drinking a lot tonight.

  “They let us crack some skulls,” Taney says, “this would be over in an hour.”

  It’s past midnight now and Stan can see the glow of the fires from a dozen blocks away. This whole thing is nuts. He should be home asleep instead of here in the Jungle.

  Lieutenants continue handing out helmets and assignments. They are also handing out rookies. Three-man teams, two veterans and a rook, sent out to keep the peace. Weird, but orders are orders. Like everything else, it’s done alphabetically.

  “Wildey!”

  “Uh, that’s Will-dee, Lieutenant,” says a voice.

  “Don’t give a shit. You’re with Walczak and Taney. Walczak, where are you?”

  Stan reluctantly raises a hand in the air, trying to find the face that matches the voice. Will-dee. The crowd of cops parts to reveal Wildey. He’s a murzyn. Should have figured. Wildey can’t find him, so Stan raises his hand again, shouts,

  “Over here, Wildey.”

  Wildey finally locks eyes with him—but only for a second. Wildey doesn’t smile. Stan takes a wild guess about Wildey’s spot assessment: big blond Polish boy. Head too big for a helmet. Yeah, well, Stan’s not too happy to see him, either.

  “How’s it going?” Wildey says.

  Stan nods. This neighborhood is tearing itself apart. How does he think it’s going?

  “I’m Walczak, and that’s Taney.”

  Taney grunts and fiddles with the straps on his riot helmet.

  “Looks like we’re in for a long fucking night,” Wildey says.

  “Yeah. Looks like it, rook.”

  Wildey recoils as if he’s been slapped. “Rook? I ain’t no rook.”

  “Then why are you with us?” Taney asks.

  “You heard the lieutenant, same as I did. Thought maybe one of you guys was new.”

  Stan looks at the dozens and dozens of uniforms out here. Maybe if they just hang back they can stay out of the worst of it. Some dumb bastard comes running out of the riot zone, then they can lock him up. Maybe there’s even a bar around here. They could hole up, have a few. Keep the internal peace.

  “Well,” Wildey says, “shall we get in there?”

  Stan and Taney look at each other, then sigh. This guy, Will-dee, seems to be one of those overeager types.

  They used to call this part of Columbia Avenue the Gold Coast. Back in the 1930s, when Stan was just a kid, the gangsters would stash their molls up here, in apartments from Broad all the way to Eighteenth Street. There were so many store awnings you could walk from Broad to the park during a rainstorm without getting a single dr
op of water on your head. Now it’s all Jewish-owned stores desperately hanging on in a murzyn neighborhood. And tonight the murzyns are trying to burn it all down.

  But first: they want to pick it clean.

  Stan spies a kid, maybe seven years old, toddling out of a grocery store with at least a dozen cartons of cigarettes in his arms.

  “Hey! Put those back!”

  Kid stares at him with no expression. He’s not dumb, or frozen with fear. He just doesn’t care. His pops probably told him to go out there and bring home some smokes. Doesn’t even occur to him he has to pay.

  “You hear me?”

  Wildey approaches him.

  “Boy, get your ass back home right now.”

  The kid takes a step back, unsure of what to do. After all, he was headed home. With the cigarettes. For his pops.

  This exchange catches the attention of some older kids, teenagers, a few storefronts away. They’ve got bottles in their hands. They watch Wildey try to grab the kid—why is he trying to grab the kid, for Christ’s sake—and they saunter forward, feeling strong. Maybe word has reached them. Cops aren’t allowed to use their weapons. You can do whatever you want tonight. Take whatever you want. You’re owed it. They ain’t gonna do shit except growl at you.

  “C’mere, you little son of a gun,” Wildey says, but the kid’s too lithe, too wiry. And by that time the older kids have already decided to throw their bottles at Wildey.

  “Black pig!”

  A bottle shatters at Wildey’s shoes, but he barely has time to react before he swats another out of the air and then a third clonks his forehead. “Motherfucker!” Wildey forgets the kid and charges toward the teens, who are already reloading—with rocks.

  Stan looks at Taney and says, “Come on.”

  They pull their nightsticks out—they’re not going to use them, except to scare these bastards off. But Wildey’s already on the kids, yelling, which has them turning tail and scrambling back down the street. By the time he comes back, Taney is fuming.

  “The hell you doing, rook? Trying to get us killed?”

  “Told you, I’m no rook.”

  “Why were you going for the kid?” Stan asks. “Trying to arrest him?”

  “No,” Wildey says. “I was trying to get him out of the way before someone stomped his ass.”

  The three of them move down Columbia Avenue, broken glass crunching underfoot. Stan looks inside the ruins of stores. Pharmacies, their shelves cleaned out. Shoe stores. Butcher shops. No doubt there’s some kid right now running up Twenty-Second Street with a side of beef.

  Stan’s seen the stories in the paper about the riots in Rochester and Harlem and Brooklyn. He can’t figure out the rationale. If you’re pissed off at someone, why burn down your own neighborhood? Why not go off to where all the rich people live and set their houses on fire? Makes no sense whatsoever.

  There isn’t much glass left in any of the windows on this block. Stan looks up and down the block to see if there’s even a single window left intact. There is—right across the street. A women’s shoe store. Somebody will get to it sooner or later, he’s sure.

  But it’s a good thing Stan looks at that window at that exact moment, because he can see their own reflections as they move down the avenue.

  And two stories above them—a huge, flaming mass that is just beginning its descent. He can practically feel the heat on the top of his head as he looks up.

  Later Stan will think about his impulse in that moment. He barely has time to see the fireball and yell the word shit, let alone push both of his partners out of the way. So why does he pick the new guy?

  Stan throws his shoulder at Wildey, knocking him off his feet. The fireball—or whatever the hell it is, a meteor maybe—slams into the pavement behind him so close Stan thinks it’s burned off the backs of his shoes. Forward momentum carries him over Wildey’s body and Stan throws his hands out. His palms scrape roadway, then his elbows take most of the impact of his fall, followed by the rest of his body. It’s an ungraceful landing. But at least he isn’t pummeled by the flaming object that dropped down from the heavens.

  Which is when he realizes—oh no, Taney.

  “Mother-fucker,” Wildey mumbles, still clearly dazed. He’s looking at his bleeding palms as Stan climbs to his feet to look for his partner. Finally he recognizes the object that almost took all of them out.

  It’s a couch. A couch that someone set ablaze and heaved off the roof. Had to take at least two of them, probably more, to lift that thing over the edge.

  Partially pinned under that couch is Officer Billy Taney.

  “Come on, help me!” Stan is shouting, pulling Wildey all the way to his feet. Wildey looking at the burning couch as if he doesn’t exactly know what he is seeing.

  “Is that a couch?”

  “Taney’s under there!”

  Being cooked alive. All Stan can see are two arms. Hands splayed, fingers trembling. Stan and Wildey exchange quick glances, unsure of what to do. They’re going to have to touch this burning couch to pull it off Taney. There’s no question that they’re going to do it—Taney’s under there. But they need it noted for the mutual record.

  “Shit,” Wildey says.

  “Let’s do it. One, two…”

  “Wait!”

  “Wait for what?”

  “Kick it over!”

  Stan understands immediately. Much, much better idea. Both men nudge the toes of their right shoes under the burning furniture and lift.

  The couch rolls backward, revealing a moaning and charred Taney. Moaning is good. Moaning means Taney is still alive.

  “Get an ambulance,” Stan says, kneeling down.

  Wildey nods twice, eyes still fixed on Taney, who looks like an action figure belonging to a pair of sadistic children. Limbs all akimbo, uniform ripped, skin smoking.

  “Wildey, go!”

  But by now other officers are swarming to the scene. Word travels through the ranks at synapse speed. Niggers dropped a couch on Billy Taney! Somebody says an ambulance is on its way.

  Stan touches the back of Taney’s head. He can feel the sharp edges of the man’s recent haircut. His skin is hot. He’s still moaning.

  “Hang on there, Billy,” Stan says, not daring to move him. All he can do is pat the back of Taney’s head until help arrives. What city has this city become? After a time Stan hears a sharp voice, cutting through the din.

  “Officer Walczak.”

  “What’s that, Wildey.”

  “How about we go catch the sons a bitches who did this?”

  This is stupid, this is stupid, this is stupid, Stan thinks as he runs along the rooftops above Columbia Avenue, looking for the people who would be crazy enough to toss a burning couch on top of three cops.

  But there is no stopping Wildey. The only thing Stan could do was follow him—through the broken door, up the two flights of stairs to the fire escape and then the roof.

  As they run, tar sticks to the bottoms of their shoes. Stan can hardly see where the roofs end and the gaping holes between buildings begin.

  “I think I see them!” Wildey says.

  Stan can’t see a damn thing. North Philadelphia looks very different from up here. Maybe that’s because everything seems to be on fire.

  But they reach the end of the block and see nothing. Maybe the couch-tossers went downstairs again. Broke into another place.

  A voice comes cutting through the noise. Stan doesn’t know who it is. Did one of these murzyns steal a bullhorn?

  “Huh,” Wildey says. “That’s Georgie Woods.”

  The bewildered look on Stan’s face leads Wildey to explain.

  “Georgie Woods, man—WDAS? The DJ?”

  Stan has no idea who he’s talking about. He stands on the roof, fists on his hips, and listens to the man plead.

  “Please get off the streets,” the voice bellows. “If you have problems, this is no way to solve them!”

  That’s for goddamn sure, Stan think
s.

  “The woman you heard about is fine,” the voice says. “No one was killed tonight! Please get off the streets!”

  They continue to search the rooftops for another half hour but there are no signs of the sofa-tossers, nor any proof of their existence. If they had rags and cans of fuel, they must have taken it with them.

  “Really wanted to slap the cuffs on those bastards,” Wildey mutters.

  Stan will bet Taney does, too.

  By dawn people have grown tired of smashing windows and looting and setting fires and wander back to their homes. Like a tide receding off the shores. Cops are still wired with adrenaline, but there’s no one to chase, no one to yell at. Just emptied, hollowed-out stores. When the owners return and see what’s happened here, they’re going to weep.

  Stan tells Wildey he’ll see him later. Wildey nods, does a half-wave.

  “Get some sleep while you can. This ain’t over. We’re gonna hunt down and catch these guys. Throwing a goddamn couch on us!”

  We, huh, Stan thinks.

  Stan feels like hell the next afternoon. He’s at the age where messing with sleep patterns throws his body into total chaos. His deepest bones ache. His stomach is leery about processing anything, and reminds him with belches and other alarming sounds. The world appears to have been draped in gauze, yet sounds and sensations are sharper than ever. Like his headache, for instance. Or Jimmy’s records, which are loud, even though they’re being played on the other side of the house.

  Yet he’s up, getting dressed, preparing himself to head back into the burning Jungle. Jimmy pokes his head into the bedroom just as Stan is pulling on a fresh white T-shirt.

  “You were out pretty late, Pop. Was it bad?”

  “Well, it wasn’t good. But I think the worst is over.”

  “Think we’re still going to the game on Tuesday?”

  Stan looks at his boy. “We’re going,” he assures him. But he doesn’t want to admit that he’s not really sure, because he’s got this sneaking suspicion the whole thing may boil up again. And again. And again. Until the murzyns have destroyed everything in North Philly.