George Pelecanos - Hard Revolution

Vaughn went from room to room. He found nudie magazines and women’s clothing in the bedroom. He found a Polaroid camera next to a photo album and an open duffel bag holding clothing and shaving equipment dropped beside the shredded couch in the living room. These items told him that Ronnie Moses was a gash-hound and that he was currently hosting a male guest.

Vaughn went back down to the street.

ON H STREET, the Sixth Armored Cavalry arrived in jeeps and trucks and blocked both ends of the shopping district. The soldiers wore yellow kerchiefs around their necks and black gas masks over their faces. They marched in combat formation down the center of the street, carrying M14s with sheathed bayonets, thrusting them at looters, throwing tear gas grenades liberally. Paddy wagons and police officers followed them, making arrests.

Kenneth Willis pushed a drunk down to the sidewalk as he made his way home, going by the big Western Auto store at 9th, completely in flames. There were plenty of drunks on the street, stumbling and laughing, feeling the effects of the liquor they had stolen.

Willis had gotten lucky. He had found that watch in the jewelry store, though it was not in the window where he had expected it to be; there was no window anymore, or anything behind it on display. The watch had been knocked to the floor and kicked by someone toward the back of the shop. The face was scratched some, but Willis knew that a little toothpaste would remove the marks. Willis wore the watch now on his wrist.

He neared his building. Firemen were spraying water into the liquor store and the units above. The fire had engulfed the apartments. The building was completely aflame.

Willis stood there frozen, watching. He had lost his job, for sure. He was up on a felony gun charge. In the last few days he had taken multiple beat-downs from various police. Now everything he owned was carbon and smoke.

He looked at the watch on his wrist. He saw that one of the diamonds circling the face had come loose. He picked it out and squeezed it between his thumb and forefinger. It turned to dust.

Rhinestones, thought Willis. He found this funny, and he laughed.

STRANGE HAD USED his nightstick and muscle to make some arrests. He had chased several kids off the corridor, into alleys and onto side streets, hoping they would stay off the main drag. He was doing what he could.

He walked down 7th at Q. An apartment house over a clothing store was burning. A man was screaming at firemen, telling them that his mother, too slow to get down the stairs, was trapped in the blaze. Newspapers would later report that the woman, who died of smoke inhalation, had weighed over four hundred pounds. Her son had begged arsonists not to set the building afire, but they had ignored his pleas.

Strange passed a small furniture store with a plate-glass display window that had not been looted or burned. A white man sat in a rocking chair in the window with a double-barreled shotgun cradled in his arms, a cigar wedged between his lips. The man winked at Strange.

Strange walked by a black man wearing fatigues and shades, pleading with a group of young men to get off the streets, invoking the teachings of Dr. King. Strange knew this was an undercover officer, a man trained in counterrioting techniques. He was not having much success today.

Strange wiped tears from his face. His throat was raw and his eyes stung mercilessly from the gas. His exposed skin felt seared from the heat. Seventh Street was burning down all around him.

Third Infantry soldiers had arrived on 7th and begun to teargas and pursue looters. They protected firemen whose hoses had been cut as they were shelled by bricks and beer bottles from all directions. The soldiers had also begun to make massive arrests. The worst appeared to be over. But there was little left of the street.

“Young man,” said a voice behind Strange.

He turned. It was Vaughn. His face was smudged, and his hair had darkened from the soot drifting in the air.

“Detective,” said Strange.

“I went to Ronnie Moses’s place,” said Vaughn, “looking for Alvin Jones.”

“And?”

“Jones is staying there, I think,” said Vaughn. “He’s not in… yet.”

“So?”

“You want him, don’t you?”

Strange nodded tightly.

“I just spoke to a lieutenant down here,” said Vaughn. “The powers that be are about to announce a curfew. They’re gonna have this under control eventually. All these folks out here, they’re gonna have to get back to where they live.”

“What are you sayin’?” said Strange, raising his voice above the burglar alarms and shouts around him.

“Let’s get outta here for a minute,” said Vaughn. “All this bullshit, I can’t hear myself think.”

Vaughn and Strange cut down P, stepping around a steel girder that was glowing red in the street.

MAYOR WASHINGTON, in consultation with Police Chief John Layton, Director of Public Safety Patrick Murphy, and President Johnson, imposed a strict curfew on the District of Columbia to be in effect from 5:30 p.m. Friday evening to 6:30 a.m. the following morning. Police, firemen, doctors, nurses, and sanitation workers were excepted. Beer, wine, and liquor sales were forbidden. Gas would only be sold to motorists who were dispensing it directly into their cars.

Sixth Cavalry troops had arrived late in the afternoon on 14th Street. They assembled down at S and moved north in columns, chanting “March, march, march,” in cadence. They threw tear gas canisters liberally and, with police, made sweeping arrests. They secured the top and lower ends of the corridor with two 700-man battalions.

As on 7th and H Streets, there was little left to protect.

Lydell Blue sat on the bed of a four-ton army truck, eating a peanut-butter-and-jelly sandwich and drinking water from a canteen. A woman from the neighborhood had come with sandwiches to feed police and soldiers on a needed break.

Blue’s uniform had taken on the color of charcoal. His back ached, and he could have slept where he sat. He had coughed up blood into his hands moments earlier.

With all of that, he felt good.

In the middle of it, at its worst, as he was protecting his city and his people, he had come to the realization of who he was and what he would always be. He was a black man, through and through. And he was police. The one didn’t cancel out the other. He could be both, and be both with pride.

A BROTHER ON the street warned Jones about the curfew. Now Jones knew that he would have to travel with extra care across the city. His plan was to stay below Massachusetts Avenue, keeping close to the downtown buildings, in the shadows, out of sight of the soldiers and police. Then head east to 6th and up to his cousin’s crib. Grab his duffel bag, which held his few possessions, and reverse his path. He could do it, the darker it got. All he had to do was reach his Buick, over there on 15th, and he’d be southern bound and stone free.

It took a while, but he reached 6th without incident and went north and east until he came to the block of Ronnie’s apartment. He went by the gutted market on the corner, keeping his head low, and crossed the street. He entered the row house where his cousin had his place on the second floor.

Back in the depths of the market, looking through the space where the front window had been, Frank Vaughn stroked the wheel of his Zippo, got flame, and lit a cigarette. He snapped the lid shut.

Little black man with light, almost yellow-colored skin. Just as Strange had said, he was wearing a black hat with a gold band. Now all Vaughn had to do was look up at the window of Ronnie Moses’s apartment. Watch for Strange’s sign and wait.

Vaughn hit his L amp;M. Its ember flared, faintly illuminating the ruined market. The only light in there now was the dying light of dusk. There was little inventory remaining on the shelves. Paperback novels, boxes of cake mix and flour strewn about the tiles. Water dripped loudly from a busted pipe. A heap of half-burned newspapers sat piled in the middle of the shop. Someone had set the papers on fire, but the fire had not spread. The smell of carbon was strong in the shell of the store.