Big Jim climbed out of the shower, reached for his towel, wrapped it around his bulk, and gazed at himself in the mirror. He needed to lose some weight, and he sucked in his gut. When he got back to New York, he told himself, he’d start the diet.
Suddenly, he felt out of breath.
He plunged forward, grabbing the sink with both hands, but he could feel the strength in those hands weakening. He tried to push his fingertips into the marble, but they wouldn’t grip; for some reason, a desperate need to hold himself up rushed over him, and as he felt his bulk dragged toward the cool floor, away from the fogged-up mirror, he had the odd thought that the floor was red.
Then he realized it was. It was red and slippery with his blood.
He lost his grip, and his face hit the oozing puddle hard.
He never saw the man who fired the second round into his head.
Levon had his men watching Soledad’s men for any concerted movement. The T-shirted motorcycle gang seemed too professional for Levon’s taste; he’d originally thought them a group of overwrought, racist kooks, but they always seemed to encamp at the inflection points in the crowd—bottlenecks, thin spaces. They met up at night in one of the tents, but kept a guard stationed outside, armed.
Now, Levon’s men told him, the T-shirt gang was on the move.
There were eight of them, all told. Four had their hogs planted in the corners of the street, ready to move off at the first sign of trouble. Three of the other four planted themselves near the front of the crowd, near the steps to the detention center.
The lone remaining man, a white-bearded, big-bellied bear in his mid-sixties, stood near the center of the crowd. A group of young protesters screamed obscenities at him; he stood his ground placidly.
A buzz built at the back of the crowd.
More white men, all wearing the same T-shirts, pulling up on motorcycles. Silent. Saying nothing. The crowd of protesters moved up on them, expecting a confrontation.
That’s when Levon’s phone rang.
He picked up, heard the crying. He hung up without saying a word. His gut churned. Then he set his teeth.
He raised his right arm, his fist clenched.
“THEY KILLED BIG JIM!” he screamed. Then, again, this time for the cameras, which he knew would be zooming in on him: “THEY KILLED BIG JIM! TEAR IT ALL DOWN! TEAR DOWN THIS CORRUPT SYSTEM!”
Wailing and screaming broke out on the street. Women sobbed. Young men shouted, tore at their clothes. “THEY KILLED BIG JIM! THEY KILLED BIG JIM!” Media members, most of them white, stepped back a few feet from the seething crowd. A few lone police officers at the front of the crowd—Levon hadn’t even noticed police officers on the street at all—stepped backward quickly, moving into the detention center for protection as their compatriots opened the doors for them.
One of Levon’s men, a teenager carrying a tire iron, sprinted through the crowd until he was right in the face of the big-bellied white man. He grabbed him by the beard, twisted it until the man fell to the ground. Then he screamed, raised the tire iron, and brought it down with a sickening thunk into the man’s belly. Levon’s men pushed forward against the glass doors of the detention center; Levon could see the cops cowering inside.
“GIVE US O’SULLIVAN!” Levon screamed as he climbed the steps to the detention center. “GIVE US THE CHILD MURDERER!” A member of his entourage handed him a brick as he made his way forward.
He strode up the steps, the cameras catching him from behind, his huge back framed against the lights inside the detention center. Then he reared back and hurled the brick, spiderwebbing the plexiglass door.
Behind Levon, the street exploded into chaos, protesters and rioters merging into one throng. The bearded white bear had disappeared into the center of the crowd, his body trampled, kicked, stomped, spit on. Hundreds of people gathered in a circle to watch, to participate.
On the outskirts of the riot, the motorcyclists revved their engines, fending off rocks and bottles. One motorcyclist pulled out a handgun and fired it into the air, scattering the crowd near him, but drawing a fusillade of debris from all quarters. The street broke up into a series of running battles, bikers leveling their weapons, avoiding firing into the crowd directly. One biker revved his engine and then plunged it directly into the center of the crowd, screaming, trying to reach his bearded comrade, who by now was lying motionless, blood streaming from his ear.
Someone handed Levon a crowbar, and he raised his powerfully muscled arms, then brought the crowbar down with brute force against the windows. After a few blows, they shattered, and he made his way inside.
The room was empty.
“Find O’Sullivan,” he growled as six of his men sprinted down the halls.
The detention officer unlocked the cell holding Ricky O’Sullivan, and it creaked back on its hinges. O’Sullivan backed up quickly into the corner, his bulk filling it.
“You leave me alone,” he said to the masked woman in the police uniform. She wore a bandanna over her face, and her gun was pointed directly at the head of the detention officer.
“Follow me,” Soledad said, the mask muffling her consonants. “We don’t have time to argue. You either come now, or you come later in a body bag. Can you hear that upstairs?” She motioned toward the ceiling, where the pounding thumps of running feet were clearly audible. “They’re coming for you. Aren’t they, kid?” The detention officer nodded. “And I don’t think they want to play patty-cake. Jim Crawford’s dead.”
For the first time, panic came over O’Sullivan’s face. “Who killed him?” he asked.
“Do you want to play twenty questions, or do you want to leave this building alive? Get your ass in gear.”
Soledad lowered her weapon. “No threats. Aiden said you don’t respond to threats. Silly me.”
At Aiden’s name, Ricky brightened. “Okay,” he said, “let’s go.”
Soledad forced the detention officer into the cell. “Hide under the bunk,” she said. “Hopefully they won’t have a key.”
Then she and Ricky took off down the hall.
“Do you have any idea where you’re going?” O’Sullivan asked.
“Motor pool,” she said. “We’re gonna get ourselves a vehicle.”
Behind them, at the other end of the hall, Soledad could hear the pounding footsteps nearing, the shouting, then a gunshot and more running feet, nearing. She and O’Sullivan crashed through the door to the stairs, sprinting, lungs burning, toward the basement.
Aiden was waiting for them in the covered garage, behind the steering wheel of a SWAT van. The back doors to the van were open, only about thirty feet from the stairwell. Soledad and O’Sullivan jumped in, slammed the doors closed, just as four young black men burst into the garage behind them. Two ran at the van; two more ran for motorcycles, searching for the keys.
Soledad pounded on the barrier to the van’s driver’s compartment. “Go!” she screamed. “Go! Let’s get the hell out of here!”
“Not without Ezekiel,” Aiden replied.
“What? He’s not here?!”
“He’ll be here any moment.”
Now two of Levon’s men had reached the van; one began slamming on Aiden’s window, while the other tried to pry open the back of the van. “Hold on!” Aiden shouted, throwing the van into reverse. The man at the back of the van shrieked as his head banged against the iron of the door; Soledad felt sick to her stomach at the bump as the wheels hit him. But Aiden kept backing up until there were just a few inches of room between the rear doors and the elevator next to the stairwell.
“Ezekiel’s coming,” Aiden said. “Any second.”