Authors: Scott Flander
The cops I had asked for were all there waiting for me. “What the hell happened last night?” I said, looking around the intersection.
Donna and Buster told me they had seen the whole thing. Barney Stiller had been leading an anti-police candlelight march through West Philadelphia, protesting the beatings on 52nd Street. When it reached this intersection, the marchers halted temporarily so Stiller could talk to some people in the crowd.
“You wouldn’t believe it,” said Buster. “Some cop comes out of nowhere and starts wailin’ on him.”
Buster demonstrated the cop’s technique, waving his left arm like a conductor furiously leading an orchestra, except instead of a baton swinging through the air it was supposed to be a nightstick playing paddywhack on Barney Stiller’s head.
“Who was the cop?” I asked.
“We couldn’t see,” said Donna. “Too far down the block.”
Buster said that after the cop laid Stiller out on the pavement, he just vanished, and they never got a good look at his face. Meanwhile, the marchers started going crazy in anger. Only a few cops had been accompanying the march, and the situation quickly got out of control. Donna and Buster called for backup, but the new cops arriving on the scene couldn’t restore order—all they could do was help get Donna and Buster and the others to safety.
“It was pretty hairy for a while,” said Buster.
At least things were quiet now. The sky was bright blue, and the air was warm. For some reason I thought of soft-ball—it was a perfect Sunday morning, it would have been great to play today. Then I remembered that we were actually on the schedule to play the 17th District this afternoon in Fairmount Park. Maybe we could have our game in the middle of 64th Street.
Store owners had been coming by all morning to take a look at their shops. Most just went into shock. An older black woman who owned a small dress shop was standing on the sidewalk out front, tears running down her smooth cheeks.
“Why’d they do this to me?” she asked, over and over. “Why would they do this to Miss Mae—I never hurt a soul.”
Yvonne, who had grown up in the neighborhood, said she had known Miss Mae since she was a kid. She went over to comfort the woman.
The six of us didn’t have much to do. We were scattered up and down Locust, talking with people in the neighborhood who wanted a firsthand look at the damage. A couple of TV crews came by and filmed the intersection, and of course they spotted Miss Mae and her tears, and they made sure they got it all on tape. The TV crews looked very proud of themselves, like they had actually done something. One crew filmed me talking with another store owner, and I remembered someone saying that if you gave them the finger on camera, they couldn’t show it on TV. I almost did it, but they really didn’t seem too interested in me and quickly moved on.
About one-thirty, Kirk drove by to see how things were going.
“We got a police tow truck coming to get these wrecks out of here,” he said. “Commissioner wants Locust opened up again. You know, at least make things look like they’re getting back to normal.”
“Are they?” I asked.
“Shouldn’t take too long to find out,” he said, and pulled off. A few minutes later the tow truck arrived, with Dominic at the wheel.
“How come you’re the only tow-truck driver I ever see?” I asked.
“It’s because I’m
good,”
he said, climbing out of the cab. He surveyed the burnt-out cars, and his shoulders slumped.
“Yo, Sarge,” he said. “How’m I supposed to tow these? They ain’t got no tires. We need a flatbed.”
“Can’t you just drag them out of the middle of the street?” I asked. “At least over to the curb?”
Dominic stuck his finger in his ear and wiggled it around, thinking. It was like he was trying to jump-start his brain.
“Yeah,” he finally said. “I guess I could do that.”
He climbed into the truck and backed it up to one of the cars. When it was still alive it had been a Chevy Cavalier, but now it was just a blackened skeleton. I left Dominic to his work, and walked down the block to talk to Donna and Buster.
A couple of minutes later, we heard some shouting, and turned to look. Dominic was arguing with two young black guys. We hustled over. One of them was Homicide. Buster saw his T-shirt and his eyes narrowed in anger.
“What the fuck do you want here?” I said to Homicide.
Under different circumstances, I would have locked him up right there for what he had tried to do to me that morning. But there were a lot of people around, and they would have assumed I was just pissed off at his T-shirt. I’d probably singlehandedly start another riot.
Homicide acted like he knew I wouldn’t touch him. “You can’t take these cars away,” he said.
“You want to tell me why?”
“They’re monuments to West Philly.”
“Yeah,” said the other guy, who was wearing a black Phillies T-shirt. “They represent our struggle.”
I just laughed. “Get the fuck out of here.”
Homicide looked at me and then at Buster, who was still staring at his T-shirt. I could see Buster was making him nervous.
“C’mon, let’s go,” he said to his friend. “Fuckin’ cops.”
When they were out of earshot, I said to Buster, ‘Thank you for restraining yourself.”
“I was about to rip that T-shirt off and then beat the shit out of him.”
“Yeah, I know, that’s why I’m thanking you.”
Dominic was able to get the first two cars over to the curb, and we opened 64th Street to traffic. But Locust was still blocked by the burnt-out police car—Dominic was having trouble hooking it up. I watched him for a moment, and then turned and almost crashed head-on into Michelle.
“Hi, Eddie. Have you seen my father?”
“Michelle, what are you doin’ here?”
“I went to Police Headquarters, they said he was at the Twentieth. I went to the Twentieth, they said he was on his way over here.”
Donna and Buster spotted Michelle and came up to talk to her, and pretty soon the others did, too. My eye caught a black Seville cruising slowly through the intersection. Was it Bravelli’s? I wasn’t sure. No, it had to be. What was he doing here?
There was some more yelling, and I turned to see about twenty young guys marching toward us down the center of Locust. Homicide was leading the way. Who was he, a little Adolf Hitler? I got on the radio and told the other cops to rejoin me. Kirk immediately came on the air and asked whether there was trouble.
“Not yet,” I said.
“I’ll keep you posted.”
The group came up and started yelling at Dominic not to take away the police car. I told Michelle to wait over by Miss Mae’s, and then I had my cops form a semicircle around the car. Dominic had finally got it hooked up, and was just getting ready to lift the front off the ground. He looked pretty nervous.
“Don’t worry about them,” I said. “You’re doing fine.”
“Maybe I should just leave it here,” he said. “Why don’t I just unhook it.”
“You’re doing fine,” I said.
The shouting was attracting attention, and more and more young guys were collecting on the street. Buster came over to me, and said in a low voice, “This is how it began last night, Sarge.”
I knew that if I called for help, the block would be swarming with cops. Maybe we’d be able to lock up people fast enough to keep things from getting out of hand. But it could also start another riot.
Four or five older black men, all with graying hair, came up and wanted to know what was going on. The neighborhood’s old heads.
“Well,” I explained, “Mr. Good-cop-is-a-dead-cop here doesn’t want us to take this police car away.”
“Why the hell not?” asked one of the men, who was tall and imposing, with a beard that made him look like a black Abraham Lincoln.
“It’s our monument,” said Homicide. “These racist cops are trying to take away our monument.”
“Bullcrap,” said Abraham Lincoln. He turned to me. “Officer, we don’t want this thing in our street.” The other men with him agreed.
Then the younger guys started yelling at the older men and we had to step between them to keep them apart. I caught a glimpse of the Seville passing by Locust again, but I couldn’t pay attention to it for long. There was shouting coming from the other direction, on the back fringe of the crowd. Something was happening halfway down the block, and the crowd started sweeping back in that direction.
Buster stood on his tiptoes. “Looks like they’re chasing someone.”
“Dominic,” I said. “Get in your truck and stay there. Don’t move the car, don’t move anything.”
“You got it, Sarge,” he said, and gratefully hopped in and slammed the door shut. I ran down the street toward the action, my cops behind me. We came upon a young black guy kneeling on the street, blood pouring from a gash on the top of his head. A woman trying to help him saw us and shouted angrily, “See what you’ve done.”
In the middle of the block, the crowd had gathered thick around someone. They were keeping their distance from him, but slowly swirling. Everything was in motion. We tried to get through, but we couldn’t get a clear look.
“It’s the cop that beat Councilman Stiller last night!” a woman yelled. “I saw him with my own eyes.”
“Kill the motherfucker!” someone else shouted.
Nick, I thought. Have they got Nick?
We finally pushed our way into the middle of the crowd. It wasn’t Nick at all, it was Goop—in a cop’s uniform, using a nightstick to swat his attackers away like flies.
So Nick had been telling the truth. And if Goop was the “cop” who had cracked open Stiller’s head, that meant he was probably also the one who had beaten the store owners on 52nd. Bravelli had said he’d like to see riots. He was certainly doing his best to make them happen.
I turned to my cops and yelled, “Lock this asshole up.”
As the six of us moved forward, surrounding Goop, someone yelled, “Let’s get us some cops.”
The crowd was out for blood. I turned to face them, and pointed at Goop. “He’s not a cop,” I yelled.
The crowd was stunned into near silence.
“What?” someone finally said. “What, you think we’re stupid, motherfucker?” Others took up the cry.
“He’s with Mickey Bravelli,” I said. They all knew who Bravelli was, and there was silence again. I took advantage of it.
“He started the riot last night. He’s trying to get another one started now.”
Someone behind gave me a hard shove. “You lyin’ cop motherfucker!”
Goop was half raising his club at us, he didn’t know what to do. He didn’t have a gun, he didn’t even have a gunbelt. He looked like a fucking idiot. Donna circled around behind him and pulled her gun out, but kept it discreetly at her side, pointed at the ground.
“All cops carry police ID,” I yelled to the crowd. “Let’s see if he has it.”
The crowd wasn’t ready to start believing me, and people were yelling, “You’re lying to us, you’re fuckin’ lying.”
I turned to Goop and said, loud enough for everyone to hear, “Let’s see your ID.”
“I don’t have it with me,” he snarled.
“See,” I said, turning to the crowd. “He’s not a real cop.”
Homicide had pushed his way to the front of the circle, and now his eyes were full of hate. “All you fuckin’ cops are evil,” he yelled. “We don’t give a fuck. This one’s real, that one’s fake, we gonna fuck you all up.”
“But that’s wrong,” came this booming voice, and there was Abraham Lincoln, suddenly towering over Homicide. I was hoping he was coming to free the slaves, which in this case was me and my cops. The old man looked down at Homicide and yelled, “You know that ain’t justice.”
“Fuck that, we’re gonna make our own justice,” yelled Homicide, and the crowd cheered. It didn’t look like Lincoln was going to free anyone today.
I turned to Goop and took out my handcuffs. “You’re locked up,” I said, but an instant later a bottle thunked off my shoulder, it hurt like hell. Now the crowd was shoving all six of us, pushing from all directions, and I didn’t see Abraham Lincoln anymore. A brick was hurtling through the air at Buster, I yelled and he saw it and jumped out of the way. Mutt and Yvonne and Marisol were together, nightsticks out, with Mutt in the middle, and they were forming a wedge to protect themselves from the crowd. I glanced over at Donna, she was still half holding her gun on Goop. I keyed my radio.
“I got a priority, this is 20-C-Charlie, my squad is under assault at Sixty-fourth and Locust. I need a very big assist, very quickly.”
As the crowd moved and shifted around us, a momentary hole formed, and I could see the tow truck a half block away. The Seville was stopped next to it—I caught a glimpse of Michelle and two men … Canaletto and … it was Bravelli. They were leading Michelle into the car. Goop was just a diversion, I realized. They wanted Michelle.
And then the hole in the crowd closed back up again, like in a dream. I tried to push through the crowd, but there were too many people, too many angry faces. I keyed the mike clipped onto my shoulder.
“This is 20-C-Charlie, we need to apprehend a black Seville—”
A huge black guy reached down and yanked the radio from my belt, and started to take off. I still had the mike in my hand, and as the guy ran, the coiled cord to the radio simply popped out.
“What’s the car wanted for?” I heard the dispatcher ask as the guy disappeared into the crowd with my radio. There I was, just holding the mike with a cord leading to nowhere.
Something hard hit my forehead and I went down on one knee, and there was blood streaming down my face. As I got to my feet, the crowd swarmed around me.
“Buster!” I yelled. “Buster, Donna!” But they were fighting with the crowd themselves, they couldn’t help me. Faces were closing in, and now I couldn’t see the others at all. Someone grabbed at my gun. I swung around with my stick and whacked at an arm, and there was a yell and the arm disappeared. Something else hit my head, and white lights were popping in front of my eyes. I fought to keep my balance, but all I saw were hands and arms, and faces filled with hate. I felt a tugging at my gun again, and again I swung my stick around. But this time hands grabbed the stick, freezing it. I twisted and turned like a hooked fish, but the crowd was all around me now, closing tightly, and I was trying to hold on to my stick with one hand, trying to keep my gun in the holster with the other, trying to keep from going down. I was hit again, and I turned and caught a glimpse of Donna, wrestling with Goop. Goop was getting her gun away from her, oh my God, I had to get there to help. But arms and fists kept coming from all over, and my gun was being pulled from the holster. I dropped my stick and grabbed the gun with both hands, pushing it back into the holster, and then there was a BOOM! from a few feet away and I was suddenly free, the crowd was pulling back.