With a self-possession well beyond his years the teenager faced the microphone and the crowd. “Hey,” he shouted. “Ya all know me. If ya don’t, you heard about me. I’m Sport. You see all these cops around here? Well this here is their boss, and he’s a black man!”
He swung his arm wide to arrest attention. “I was there when Willie Orthcutt was killed,” he yelled at the top of his voice. “He was with me. I saw the white kid do it. And this here black man’s gonna ketch him. He’s gonna make that white kid hate the day he was born. Now let ’im go do it!”
Virgil read the crowd’s reaction and quickly took command. “OK,” he announced. “The party’s over. If you go cool now, no one will get hurt and you won’t get arrested.”
It didn’t quite take, so he resorted to dramatics. Over the microphone he called to Rasmussen. “Call your men back. Let these people through. Let them go home, however they want.”
Ted Rasmussen knew, as every experienced police officer does, that acting is sometimes a vital part of law enforcement. He understood at once what Virgil was doing and he used his own public address system to respond. “Whatever you say, sir,” he came back.
It was enough. Even amplified the words came out respectful and subservient, as he intended them to. Some of the people sneered at him a little as they began to go past where he was standing, but he did not mind. He was glad to let Virgil take all the bows, he had earned them.
On the platform Tibbs took down the name and address of the speaker and then spoke to him quietly. “I know how you feel,” he said. “I’ve felt that way more times than you can count. But don’t ever call me a white man that way again-I’m a Negro, I know it, and I’m proud of it. I had to work two times harder than any white man to get where I am, now don’t you try to take it away from me.”
“All right,” the man said.
Virgil snapped his notebook shut. “You were het up,” he went on. “I told you I can understand that. Have you ever been arrested before?”
Worried now, the man shook his head. “Traffic tickets, that’s all.”
“Then go on home and don’t get involved in any mess like this again. Inciting to riot is a serious charge, you could do time for it.”
The ex-speaker decided not to push his luck. “Thanks,” he said.
“Good enough. If your record is as clean as you say that it is, then you can forget about today. If it isn’t…” Tibbs tapped his notebook and then slipped it into his pocket.
The show was over, the crowd was flowing away. When the area had cleared enough Virgil walked calmly back to where the station wagon was still standing and said, “Let’s go.”
On the way back into his office Tibbs encountered Captain Lindholm in the corridor. “I heard what happened,” the captain told him. “You did a good job. Now please get back onto that problem about the McGuire boy before something a lot worse happens. Try to get that youngster back today if you can-take him into protective custody if you have to. Get the gun away from him. I know what I’m asking, but there isn’t any alternative.”
“I’ll do my best,” Virgil promised, and went to his desk. Before he could sit down Bob Nakamura intercepted him and indicated that he had some news.
“I’ve got a lead for you. While you were out a call came in from a filling station attendant who works nights near Orange Grove Avenue. He had just gotten out of bed and heard a newscast. He phoned in to say that a boy of about nine or so, who looked as though he might have been out all night, came in and asked to use the washroom about six this morning. He didn’t have a red jacket, but he was carrying a shoe box.”
“A shoe box?”
“Yes, now get this: after he used the head he asked for directions to Anaheim, by road and by bus. He said that his father was going to take him there. The attendant briefed him and gave him a map. When he asked the boy why he was up so early, he said that he had a paper route.”
Virgil nodded, thinking as he did so. “That was Johnny all right, and you know what was in the shoe box. Anaheim! It fits.”
“And Orange Grove is where you catch the bus into L.A.”
Tibbs became aware of a visitor and looked up to see Charles Dempsey framed in the doorway.
“I didn’t mean to listen, honest I didn’t,” Sport said.
“Don’t worry about it,” Virgil answered. “I’m glad you’re here, it gives me the chance to thank you for what you did down in the park. I’ll mention it in my report.”
The young Negro flushed with pride and satisfaction. “You better make me look good now, heh?”
“I’ll certainly try.” He turned to his partner. “Help me out. Call Anaheim and tell them that I’m coming into their jurisdiction. Kill the jacket ID, it’s been recovered, and advise them about the shoe box-that ought to be fairly easy to spot. I’m going over to get the boy’s father and take him down there, we may need him before we’re through.” He looked up sternly at Sport who was still in the doorway. “You heard this accidently, that’s understood, but I’m telling you now not to breathe a word about it to anybody, I don’t care who he is. Can I trust you?”
Instead of answering the lanky youth spread out his hands in appeal. “Please, can I come with ya? I won’t do nothin’, but I figure I got that comin’.”
Tibbs made a fast decision; he would have given a great deal if the teen-ager had not heard what had been said and he blamed himself for not having been more careful. “I can’t take you down in the official car, that’s absolutely out. Under no circumstances do I want you to follow me after I leave here-and that’s an order. If you want to drive to Anaheim on your own, then that’s your privilege.”
Bob Nakamura understood perfectly; if Dempsey got in the way down there, Virgil would handle it. “I’ll pass the word that you’re on your way,” he said, then his voice became grim. “Enjoy the ball game.”
12
As the bus rolled smoothly down the Santa Ana Freeway, Johnny McGuire sat staring out of the window. He had escaped now from Pasadena, but he knew that within a matter of hours he would have to go back. He was on his way to see the Angels in person and meet Tom Satriano face-to-face, but he was also moving farther and farther away from his mother and father who offered the only real shelter, protection, and love that he had ever known.
The vehicle he was riding in was taking him to Disneyland, an almost unbelievable place of enchantment, but so deep was his preoccupation with his troubles, he was hardly aware of that fact. Instead he saw before him, repeated like the rotating patterns of early moving picture devices, the fearful image of the boy he had shot. He saw him standing there; he felt the gun go off in his hand. Then with terrible clarity he saw the boy fold his arms across his abdomen and slump to the ground.
He, Johnny, had done that terrible thing with his father’s gun. And what was the worst part, he could not say that he was sorry and help the boy to get up again. A horrible, ice-cold chill seized him as he realized once again the paralyzing fact that the boy was dead. His mother had told him so-he had killed the nigger boy.
His chest began to tighten and he wanted to cry. If he could have done so, he would have gotten off the bus right then and started back to Pasadena, back to his mother who would shelter him. He was ready to face the punishment he knew he would have to accept, from the cops for killing the boy and from his father for breaking his radio and then running away. The radio part was not too bad, his mother had told him that his father knew that it had not been his fault. But he had taken his radio to school and he knew that that had been wrong. It had started the whole thing.