Well, the liberty and justice for all had somehow become liberty and justice for merely some , and the glorious notion of a unified tribe had somehow become something no one ever mentioned anymore, like a dream dreamt too often and too yearningly, until its brilliant colors faded to drab and you woke up crying. Because the Deaf Man had realized all this, and because he’d had not the slightest compunction about capitalizing on it, he’d been able to instigate a riot with total certainty and absolute ease.
Carella and Brown were well aware of the riot.
They had rushed to the car before the crowd got completely out of hand because containing a riot was not their obligation; catching the man who’d caused it was. Now there was nothing but the riot on every police radio channel, interspersed with dispatcher warnings to maintain total radio silence until the trouble was contained. The riot made them uncomfortable because they were respectively a white man and a black man and the trouble in the park was one of color. But they were a black man and a white man acting as a team to catch the son of a bitch responsible for the riot, the man who’d turned a promising golden day into yet another dark and dismal gloom. Tight-lipped, they sped downtown with the siren blaring, passing a dozen or more radio cars racing uptown in the opposite direction.
Which was what the Deaf Man had planned all along.
“CHLOE!” he shouted. “Take my hand!”
She reached for his hand.
Reached for the future.
Grasped it eagerly.
Below the stage, there was bedlam. The first shot had inspired more shooting. When there are guns on the scene, the first gun openly to appear encourages boldness from anyone else who’s armed. Boldness and the challenge of the Old West. High noon in the OK Corral. All that shit. Guns are guns. Guns are weapons of destruction. There were an estimated 250,000 people on that lawn when the first gun came out and the first shot was fired. It was fired by a black man at a white man because the Deaf Man’s baiting words were directed at blacks, and because—as Rivera had written about the multitude—“It will turn on itself and see in itself the olden enemy.” Well,this multitude had heard the inflammatory words, and they had correctly identified the speaker of those words as white, and their single goal was to kill Whitey…
Its fury will blind its eyes…
…kick the ofay, kill the ofay, snuff the ofay, off the ofay, box the ofay,hate the ofay, cause the ofay hate you !
The crowd moved forward relentlessly, chanting, stamping, shouting, a massive beast that seemed all flailing arms and thrashing legs…
“This way!” Sil shouted. “The band trailer!”
White men and black men were shooting at each other, shoving at each other, screaming at each other, pushing at each other, kicking each other, punching each other…
…eager to destroy the victim it had chosen, the common enemy, a roar rising as if from a single throat, “kill, kill,kill ! ”
Sil threw open the trailer door, put his hands on either side of her waist, and lifted her onto the step.
The white man’s bullet took Chloe in the back of her head, spattering blood and brain tissue onto the side of the trailer where the wordsSPIT SHINE were lettered in bold silver lettering edged in black, shattering her dream and killing her at once.
OUTSIDE THE incinerator building, Carella and Brown found a man lying at the foot of the cyclone fence, dead. Inside the building, they found two garbage men and four police officers bound and gagged, blindfolded, and wearing ski masks for good measure.
They figured the Deaf Man had arrived in the garbage truck parked outside.
THE FOOT PATROLMAN walking the beat outside the boat basin saw what looked like a police van sitting in the parking lot, close to the river’s edge. He checked it out, and sure enough it was a P.D. vehicle, with Property Clerk’s Office markings on its side panels. He opened the door on the driver’s side, and found a set of keys hanging from the ignition.
Aside from that, all there was in the van was some stuff looked like syringes and pipes and other cheap drug paraphernalia.
THEY HAD DRIVEN from the boat-basin parking lot, uptown to the Hamilton Bridge, and then over it to the next state—Florry, Carter, and Gloria driving their own rented cars, the Deaf Man driving the Chevrolet he’d rented. By two-thirty that afternoon, he’d paid all of them the remainder of their fees and had opened several bottles of champagne in celebration. All four cars were parked outside the motel room. The stolen narcotics were covered with a tarpaulin in the trunk of the Deaf Man’s Chevy. He had told them it would be best if they went their separate ways in fifteen-minute intervals, Florry first, then Carter, then Gloria. They seemed content to let him do things his way. There’d been scarcely any fuss at all this afternoon, and they were now all a hundred thousand dollars richer because of him.
They toasted the ease with which the job had gone down, toasted each other’s brilliance and cool, particularly toasted Gloria, who, for a woman, had displayed uncommon ballsiness in putting away the garbage man. None of them complained about the split. They knew—or must have known—that the narcotics in the Chevy outside were worth a great deal more than the Deaf Man had paid them, but he was the one who’d concocted the scheme, and they knew in their hearts that he was entitled to the lion’s share.
So they drank their champagne like good old friends at a black tie party late in the night after everyone else had gone home, and at last Florry looked at his watch and said “Time to boogie,” and went into the bathroom to change his clothes. When he came out again, he was wearing brown corduroy trousers, a green sports shirt, a tan V-necked sweater, and brown socks with brown loafers. Carter told him not to spend all his money in one place, and they all laughed and he shook hands all around and went outside, where in a minute or so they heard his car starting and driving off.
Ten minutes later, Carter sighed and said, “My friends, all good things must come to an end,” and he went into the bathroom to change, shedding the spruce-green uniform and returning in a red turtleneck, gray slacks, a blue blazer, and blue socks with black shoes. He shook hands with the Deaf Man, kissed Gloria on the cheek, and went out. The moment the Deaf Man heard his car driving off, he said, “Alone at last.”
Gloria arched an eyebrow.
“I have to be out of here in fifteen minutes,” she said.
“You still haven’t taught me that trick of yours,” he said.
“That trick’s a secret,” she said. “I haven’t taught that trick to anyone in the world.”
“Know any other tricks?”
“A few.”
“Want to teach me those?”
“The fifteen minutes was your idea,” she said.
“But who’s counting?” he said, and smiled.
He poured more champagne, and he turned on the radio that was part of the room’s television set and found a station playing elevator music, soft and romantic, with a lot of strings. Gloria sat in the room’s only easy chair, and he sat on the edge of the bed, and leaned over to clink his glass against hers, and they both said “Cheers” at the same moment, and then brought the glasses to their lips and sipped at the good bubbly wine. She was watching him over the rim of the glass. He considered this a good sign.
“Are you going to drive home in that garbage man’s uniform?” he asked.
“No, I’ll change before I leave,” she said.
There was a moment’s hesitation.