Glitsky 01 - Certain Justice, A (3 page)

The jerk, the lunatic – he guessed it was still him – had thrown one end of the yellow rope – almost glowing in its brightness – over the arm of the first streetlight up 2nd Avenue. Now some of the men were jumping underneath the free end, trying to grab it, while the rest of them were chanting, 'pull him up, string him up!' He had to move.

He put a shoulder down and pushed. He got pushed back but everybody's attention was on the scuffle on the street and he kept pressing into the tight mob.

But it kept getting tighter the closer in he got. Pulsing, almost. Pushing toward the center.

He raised his head. Someone had gotten on some shoulders and as Shea watched, he gained the rope and pulled it. Both sides, which had been dangling, came straight. Taut.

'Yeah! Do it! Do it now!'

The unbelievable bedlam rose around Shea and he used his elbows and knees, pushing, now within ten feet. He got his first glimpse of the man – bleeding from the head now, still struggling, in what looked like a white shirt and tie.

He dug in again with his elbows, and somebody jabbed him back. With all his strength he threw the back of his arm into the man's face, pushing forward.

'Hey! Come on!'
Was that him
, yelling? Screaming at the top of his lungs. 'Wait a minute. Don't do this!' But whatever he was saying was getting lost in the rest of the din.

He was hit again. And again. On the mouth. His sides.

He kept pushing. The Swiss Army knife he always carried – it was out, opened. He slashed at the legs of the man in front of him, and he went down, yelling. Shea stepped on him, pushing forward.

But he wasn't any closer. The mob holding the black man had moved closer to the light, everyone else parting before them.

The noise, the noise. Unlike anything Shea had ever heard or imagined – a kind of sustained moan, tension wound to the nth, like the last minute of a close basketball game, except with this inhuman, animal quality. There was a guy next to him in the streetlight's glow, spittle coming from his mouth, yelling non-words. Others had started moo'ing, the way they used to do in the halls of high school. And always the teeth-on-edge screech of the car alarm, underscoring it all.

He kept fighting, using the flow now to help him, getting closer, his knife still out. He jabbed again, randomly, in front of him, striking out with his other hand, getting people out of the way.

But not enough of them.

Suddenly, the tension released itself with what almost sounded like a cheer. The black man, only four feet in front of him, was off the ground, above the crowd, the rope tight. At the rope's other end half a dozen of the men kept pulling, raising him up, higher – now his waist at the height of Shea's head.

The hanging man reached above his own head, grabbing at the rope. A second's reprieve. Maybe a minute's. How long could he hold out? Somebody yelled that Shea should grab the feet, pull down on his feet.

God. Animals.

Suddenly, pushing all the time, Shea got himself there – to the man's feet. He was still holding the rope above his head with his hands. Shea hugged the legs and lifted up, trying to relieve the pressure.

He pushed his right hand up. 'The knife,' he screamed above him. '
Take the knife
.'

Maybe he could cut himself down. He seemed to hear him. There was a shift in the weight and the knife was grabbed from Shea's hand. There were flashes of light – somebody taking photographs? Drops of something wet splattered against his jacket.

Someone in the crowd yelled, 'That's it, pull down! Pull!' The rest of the crowd took up the word in a chant. 'Pull, pull, pull, pull...'

The hanging man was struggling above him trying to slash the rope with the knife, but with only one arm, even partially held up by Shea, it took an immense and sustained effort. He was not getting it done.

Paul Westberg was the photographer.

He was a twenty-three-year-old freelancer trying to break into the small time, the free presses, some ad sheets, boudoir shots of housewives a couple of times a week. He'd been walking, taking the occasional
art shot
, heading east on the north side of Geary near 2nd a couple of blocks from his home as the dusk snuck up behind him. The light was terrific, casting a burnished glow over the city.

And then he heard the crowd over the hum of six lanes of traffic on Geary. News! And – astoundingly – he was here. Prepared. Hooey!

But the light – the fantastic light – had changed. With the sun now just under the rim of the horizon he'd need his flash on the north-south street, where the action was. He had to get it attached, change his stops. All almost automatic, but taking time.

He did it all before crossing to the south side. But something was really happening over there, like a rally or something. He made his way, jay-running, through the eastbound lanes, waited on the center strip, darted forward.

Cars were stopped in the right lane, swerving around, causing a slowdown. He squeezed off one shot, figured it was a waste, got to the other side. There was no chance of seeing above the crowd so he stood on the hood of the nearest car. You had to take some chances if you wanted to get ahead.

Finally he saw what was happening.

The mob around him pulsed back and forth, rocking the car he stood on, then moving away from it. He didn't know how long he'd get. If anybody saw him . . .

But there was some guy, his arms around a
hanging
man, holding a knife to his throat. God, what a shot! The shot of a lifetime.

His hands were shaking but he had to get the focus, he had to take the time.

There! One.

Snap. Another.

Someone below was grabbing at him, yelling. 'Hey! Get this guy!'

He kicked out, jumped off the back of the car and ran like hell. He was home in three minutes.

The crowd closed in. Someone hit Shea at the knees. The knife fell, clattering to the street. Above him, he heard a creak and a guttural sound – a deep
hnnh
as the rope took the man's full weight again.

The men who held the other end of the rope were coming toward Shea now. There was a fire hydrant he saw for the first time. They were looping the rope around it.

Shea grabbed up the knife from the street, lunged at the first man, cutting at the arm that held the rope. The man cried out and, for an instant, let it go.

Somebody hit Shea again. Fists. He struck out with his knife, then someone kicked it. He heard it clatter away. A kick in the head. Then another one. Then darkness.

Helter-skelter before the distant wail of the first sirens, and still the closer, unending alarm klaxon that had been shrieking for half of eternity, the mob was disappearing around the corner onto Geary, down 2nd Avenue into alleys and doorways, over dump-sters and back fences. Coming to, Shea heard panicky voices, the scrambling of feet, men running.

On his knees, he struggled to clear his vision. Whoever had beaten him had done some damage – his face was crusted and it felt like some ribs had been broken and perhaps his left arm, too. He tried to lift it but it hung dangling from his side.

The rope was still there, tied to the hydrant.

Looking up, seeing the man hanging, looking now very much dead, he forced himself to the hydrant. Maybe there was still a chance to save his life if he could get him down. He tried to pull at the mass of knots that had been tied at the hydrant, but with the weight from the man pulling on the rope from the other end, tightening it all down, there was no way, with only one hand, that he could even get a start. The knots wouldn't give.

His left arm was a throbbing, useless burden. Still, he tried to use it, tried to take some of the pressure off the rope with his good hand and use the bad one to untie one of the knots. Or something – he had to do something.

He pulled. Something new gave in his arm and, without intending to, he screamed, nearly blacking out for a second, going down to one knee. He hung his head, gritting through the pain, hearing something else.

A pair of lights came around the corner up at Geary, tires screeching, heading right for him. It pulled in front of him, a door opened and two men jumped out of the open bed of the truck, another from the front seat.

'Thank God, guys. You gotta—' But they weren't listening. One of them had a hand on his bad arm, pulling. Another grabbed his leg, lifting. 'Hey! What...?' They had him by both legs now and lifted him over the sides of the truck into its bed, the three men holding him down.

'He in?' the driver yelled, but without waiting for any answer, the tires squealed again.

One of the men who had grabbed him snapped Shea's head against the metal floor. 'You don't know nothing,' he said. 'You tell anybody anything, you're dead meat. We'll find you.'

They were gaining speed, taking one corner, then another. He was all turned around, held down, trying to get some bearings, anything. The three men were panting, holding him down.

Then, he didn't know if there was some signal or what, but the truck screeched, pulled over, stopped. With one last warning that they would kill him if he said a word, they threw him out, then were off in a spray of gravel and the stink of burning rubber.

'What is this about, Chris?'

'It's about civil war, Elaine. Is your television on?'

'Almost never.'

'Well, check it out. Now. I'll wait.'

'What channel?'

'Any channel.'

Elaine Wager had been asleep. The call was from her boss and self-appointed mentor, San Francisco District Attorney Christopher Locke, who took a special interest in Elaine Wager.

She, like Locke, was black. She was also intelligent and already, though just barely twenty-five, a good lawyer, a tenacious prosecutor. Added to this were her considerable physical charms – mocha-colored skin as finely pored as Italian marble, a leggy, thin-waisted body, an Assyrian face. Of more importance to Chris Locke than any of these attributes, though, was Elaine's mother, Loretta Wager, a United States senator and the first African-American of either sex to be elected to that office from California.

Elaine Wager swung her bare legs to the floor. On top she wore a man's Warriors T-shirt. Waking up as she walked, she found herself becoming dimly aware of a conceit of sirens down below, out in the city. The digital clock on her dresser read twelve-fourteen. Her apartment was a one-bedroom, twelve stories up, a few blocks north of Geary Street on Franklin near Lafayette Park. She glanced out the window – there seemed to be several fires a few blocks away in the Western Addition. To the south, too, the sky glowed orange.

Still carrying the phone, she moved quickly now through her sparsely furnished living room.

'What's going on, Chris?'

The tiny portable television was on the counter in the kitchen area. She flicked it on.

'We're in riot mode, Elaine. The projects are on fire. They lynched one of the brothers tonight.' Elaine sat down hard on one of the stools by the counter. 'Arthur Wade.'

'What about Arthur?' she asked stupidly.

'You know him?'

'Of course I know him. He went to Boalt with me. What about him?'

There was a pause. 'Elaine, Arthur Wade is dead. A mob lynched him.'

'What do you mean,
lynched?'
She was babbling, trying to find a context for it, an explanation for the inexplicable.

On the television, more of the now-familiar visions – already the crowds were out in the streets, already the shop windows were being smashed, buildings were burning. Her eyes left the screen, went out to the real city again.

'Chris?'

'I'm here. I was wondering if you'd heard from your mother.'

'No, not yet. I'm sure I will. Meanwhile, what are we going to do?'

'Are you still in front of your TV?'

'Yes.'

'Look at it now.'

On the screen was a still photograph that would in the coming days become as famous as the Rodney King videotapes. Arthur Wade was hanging from a streetlight and under him a white male was hugging him, apparently pulling down on his legs, trying to break his neck. Wade, in his last futile seconds, was holding the rope above his head with one hand, and with his other appeared to be trying to strike the man pulling his legs, to drive him away and purchase himself another few seconds of life.

Elaine stared transfixed at the horror of the scene. She had never expected to see it played out in her lifetime again, especially here, in supposedly liberal San Francisco.

She forced herself to look again – the black man hanging by the neck, surrounded by the white mob. All the faces were blurred except the two in the center, and they were in perfect focus. Arthur Wade and the man who'd hung him, whoever it was.

Chris Locke sounded raspy, drained. 'We're going to get proactive here, Elaine. That man's got to be found. And then we've got to crucify him. Can you come down to the Hall...?'