One of the losers laughed. “Yeah, mama’s boy, your mama’s looking for you.”
“Shut up,” Aiden slurred to him. “Yeah? Well, tell her I’m out here.”
“I’m not going to do that. I said I’d come and get you.”
Aiden laughed, a high-pitched whine that eventually tapered off into a snort. “Well, you tried, Boy Scout. Now get back home to your mama.”
Ricky grabbed him by the scruff of his T-shirt. “Get your ass home, Aiden.”
“Or what?” Aiden sneered.
“Or this.” Ricky punched him in the face. Aiden went down like a load of bricks, laying on his back in the dirt. “You’re a loser, Aiden, and if you’re not careful, you’ll end up like these ones.” Aiden started to push himself to his feet, his lower lip bleeding onto his chin. Ricky hit him again, clipping him right on the point of the chin. Aiden wobbled, fell.
Ricky picked him up, took him home, cleaned him up, and got him home to his mother. That was the last time Aiden got high.
After high school, they went their separate ways. Aiden joined up with federal law enforcement; Ricky went to school, then joined the police academy. They chatted on Facebook from time to time, but their friendship fell into acquaintance, and finally into complete disuse.
Until now.
Aiden went silent. The small fire in the center of the tiled conference room reflected light off the mildewed walls.
Soledad turned to Ezekiel. He stepped forward, warming his hands on the fire. Then he made a circle with his hands.
“Imagine the detention center in the center of our map. My hands are the crowd. Now, they’re rowdy, and they’re waiting for O’Sullivan’s release. That’s why the cops have him locked down tight. But the protesters know that eventually the cops will crack, release him, put him out there on his own. They just have to find the right button to push. And they’re going to move fast now to push it.
“So here’s the plan. We have to wait for the right time. We’re not interested in taking on the police. They’re armed, and they’re scared, and armed and scared cops are just as likely to shoot us as anybody else. Instead, we need chaos for the cover. Every riot is led by a few key characters. Everybody there may look like they’re ready for war, but most are there to show their friends that they’re brave. The authorities know that, so their chief task is to arrest the rabble-rousers and let the rest sort of fade away.
“If that happens, we’ll never get Officer O’Sullivan out of there. I guarantee you that whoever is leading this thing is smart and capable. This is not amateur hour.”
One of the men in the back piped up. “Why don’t we just grab him off the street when he’s released?”
Ezekiel guffawed. “Have you seen us? We stick out like a KKK rally in Harlem. No chance they don’t find us and at least neutralize us. No, here’s what we’re gonna do.”
Aiden took out a garbage bag, pulled from it four uniforms. These he tossed to Soledad and three other men, who stepped forward to put them on. “Now, for the rest of you guys, I’ve got something really special.”
He opened a duffel bag. In it were T-shirts. When the rest of the men saw them, a few jaws dropped. Soledad chuckled. “Well,” she said, “you’ve gotta die sometime.”
Levon
FOR TWO DAYS, LEVON STOOD in the cold. He had his men bring him food and clothing. He slept on the sidewalk. Next to him slept the mother of Kendrick Malone. With them slept hundreds of others. Every day, local businesses shipped out supplies for the group, eager to be seen as caring for the plight of the righteous protesters.
And still, they didn’t release Ricky O’Sullivan.
Perhaps they thought that the crowd would dissipate. Perhaps they were waiting for federal intervention—intervention that wouldn’t come. The president had already declared that this was a local matter, and the resources of the state had already been redirected to the disaster area in New York City. There would be no cavalry.
And so they waited. Each day, members of the media crowded around Levon to hear his words. But each day, the number of media dwindled. The attention span of the nation ran shorter and shorter these days. With the cleanup in New York, the investigation underway to identify the culprits for the attacks, and the situation on the border, the media had a full lineup without having to go back to the same pictures of the same people lying on the same street.
The time had come, Levon knew, for action.
But action required provocation. So far, the authorities had been smart: they had holed up, put nobody on the street, waited for the ire to burn itself out. They hadn’t made any statements other than to praise the peacefulness of the protesters and suggest their sympathies for the protesters’ cause. The city of Detroit didn’t run well anyway—what was a few days of crowded streets and delayed services?
Meanwhile, Levon itched. Big Jim had already told him he could negotiate a way out of the stalemate—he said that Levon could become a player by accepting the verdict, demanding change from the feds, and being granted an informal say in the appointment of officials up to and including police officers. He said that Levon should just let O’Sullivan go, show that he was the bigger man. Already, Big Jim had gone on national television urging the president to send more federal officials to talk about the future. The nation’s eyes had been riveted on Detroit, but with Big Jim’s imprimatur of legitimacy, the Detroit-federal solution was gradually drawing the steam out of the kettle. Levon knew he couldn’t hold out much longer, and that he might be forced to take Big Jim’s deal.
And then they arrived.
Like a blessing from the skies, they came. There weren’t many of them, but there were enough: white men, riding motorcycles, planting themselves in the midst of the newly minted tent city. And they wore T-shirts: “FIGHT THE THUGS.”
That got the media’s attention. But oddly enough, few of the men wanted to talk to the media. One, in particular, bowed his head anytime the cameras came near. Levon denounced them for the cameras—“Who are these white supremacists, coming into a city white racism has ruined, and accusing us of racism for standing up for our human rights?”— but secretly thanked God for bringing them. It kept the fight alive, at least for another day.
Big Jim Crawford lounged in the marble shower of the luxury suite at the MGM, enjoying the feeling of the dual rain heads slapping him with their steady stream. He’d been penning an op-ed for The Wall Street Journal, and the steam of the shower cleared his senses, helped him think. He’d get what he wanted, he knew.
He always did.
The game had become almost too easy. Big Jim didn’t think of himself as a con artist or a shakedown expert. He thought of himself as a leader in need of resources to bring change. If that meant skimping on taxes, what of it? Who hadn’t cheated in the United States? Who had clean hands? So long as he spent his days fighting for social justice, why shouldn’t he enjoy the benefits of a nice house, the ministrations of a young mistress? Martin Luther King Jr. had been sainted for his civil rights work, and nobody looked twice at his various financial and personal improprieties. The cause cleansed him, as it should have. History eventually deemed everyone either a saint or a sinner, no in-between.
The next step in Detroit, Big Jim knew, would be to give Levon an option for withdrawal with some grace. He’d already pressed Levon, and he knew Levon was waiting, hoping for something big to happen, but that seemed unlikely with the nation’s attention riveted elsewhere.