Revolver (5 page)

But first: they want to pick it clean.

Stan spies a kid, maybe seven years old, toddling out of a grocery store with at least a dozen cartons of cigarettes in his arms.

“Hey! Put those back!”

Kid stares at him with no expression. He's not dumb, or frozen with fear. He just doesn't care. His pops probably told him to go out there and bring home some smokes. Doesn't even occur to him he has to pay.

“You hear me?”

Wildey approaches him.

“Boy, get your ass back home right now.”

The kid takes a step back, unsure of what to do. After all, he was headed home. With the cigarettes. For his pops.

This exchange catches the attention of some older kids, teenagers, a few storefronts away. They've got bottles in their hands. They watch Wildey try to grab the kid—why is he trying to grab the kid, for Christ's sake—and they saunter forward, feeling strong. Maybe word has reached them. Cops aren't allowed to use their weapons. You can do whatever you want tonight. Take whatever you want. You're owed it. They ain't gonna do shit except growl at you.

“C'mere, you little son of a gun,” Wildey says, but the kid's too lithe, too wiry. And by that time the older kids have already decided to throw their bottles at Wildey.

“Black pig!”

A bottle shatters at Wildey's shoes, but he barely has time to react before he swats another out of the air and then a third clonks his forehead. “Motherfucker!” Wildey forgets the kid and charges toward the teens, who are already reloading—with rocks.

Stan looks at Taney and says, “Come on.”

They pull their nightsticks out—they're not going to use them, except to scare these bastards off. But Wildey's already on the kids, yelling, which has them turning tail and scrambling back down the street. By the time he comes back, Taney is fuming.

“The hell you doing, rook? Trying to get us killed?”

“Told you, I'm no rook.”

“Why were you going for the kid?” Stan asks. “Trying to arrest him?”

“No,” Wildey says. “I was trying to get him out of the way before someone stomped his ass.”

The three of them move down Columbia Avenue, broken glass crunching underfoot. Stan looks inside the ruins of stores. Pharmacies, their shelves cleaned out. Shoe stores. Butcher shops. No doubt there's some kid right now running up Twenty-Second Street with a side of beef.

Stan's seen the stories in the paper about the riots in Rochester and Harlem and Brooklyn. He can't figure out the rationale. If you're pissed off at someone, why burn down your own neighborhood? Why not go off to where all the rich people live and set their houses on fire? Makes no sense whatsoever.

There isn't much glass left in any of the windows on this block. Stan looks up and down the block to see if there's even a single window left intact. There is—right across the street. A women's shoe store. Somebody will get to it sooner or later, he's sure.

But it's a good thing Stan looks at that window at that exact moment, because he can see their own reflections as they move down the avenue.

And two stories above them—a huge, flaming mass that is just beginning its descent. He can practically feel the heat on the top of his head as he looks up.

Later Stan will think about his impulse in that moment. He barely has time to see the fireball and yell the word
shit,
let alone push both of his partners out of the way. So why does he pick the new guy?

Stan throws his shoulder at Wildey, knocking him off his feet. The fireball—or whatever the hell it is, a meteor maybe—slams into the pavement behind him so close Stan thinks it's burned off the backs of his shoes. Forward momentum carries him over Wildey's body and Stan throws his hands out. His palms scrape roadway, then his elbows take most of the impact of his fall, followed by the rest of his body. It's an ungraceful landing. But at least he isn't pummeled by the flaming object that dropped down from the heavens.

Which is when he realizes—oh no, Taney.

“Mother-
fucker,
” Wildey mumbles, still clearly dazed. He's looking at his bleeding palms as Stan climbs to his feet to look for his partner. Finally he recognizes the object that almost took all of them out.

It's a couch. A couch that someone set ablaze and heaved off the roof. Had to take at least two of them, probably more, to lift that thing over the edge.

Partially pinned under that couch is Officer Billy Taney.

“Come on, help me!” Stan is shouting, pulling Wildey all the way to his feet. Wildey looking at the burning couch as if he doesn't exactly know what he is seeing.

“Is that a couch?”

“Taney's under there!”

Being cooked alive. All Stan can see are two arms. Hands splayed, fingers trembling. Stan and Wildey exchange quick glances, unsure of what to do. They're going to have to touch this burning couch to pull it off Taney. There's no question that they're going to do it—Taney's under there. But they need it noted for the mutual record.

“Shit,” Wildey says.

“Let's do it. One, two…”

“Wait!”

“Wait for what?”

“Kick it over!”

Stan understands immediately. Much, much better idea. Both men nudge the toes of their right shoes under the burning furniture and
lift
.

The couch rolls backward, revealing a moaning and charred Taney. Moaning is good. Moaning means Taney is still alive.

“Get an ambulance,” Stan says, kneeling down.

Wildey nods twice, eyes still fixed on Taney, who looks like an action figure belonging to a pair of sadistic children. Limbs all akimbo, uniform ripped, skin smoking.

“Wildey, go!”

But by now other officers are swarming to the scene. Word travels through the ranks at synapse speed.
Niggers dropped a couch on Billy Taney!
Somebody says an ambulance is on its way.

Stan touches the back of Taney's head. He can feel the sharp edges of the man's recent haircut. His skin is hot. He's still moaning.

“Hang on there, Billy,” Stan says, not daring to move him. All he can do is pat the back of Taney's head until help arrives. What city has this city become? After a time Stan hears a sharp voice, cutting through the din.

“Officer Walczak.”

“What's that, Wildey.”

“How about we go catch the sons a bitches who did this?”

This is stupid, this is stupid, this is stupid,
Stan thinks as he runs along the rooftops above Columbia Avenue, looking for the people who would be crazy enough to toss a burning couch on top of three cops.

But there is no stopping Wildey. The only thing Stan could do was follow him—through the broken door, up the two flights of stairs to the fire escape and then the roof.

As they run, tar sticks to the bottoms of their shoes. Stan can hardly see where the roofs end and the gaping holes between buildings begin.

“I think I see them!” Wildey says.

Stan can't see a damn thing. North Philadelphia looks very different from up here. Maybe that's because everything seems to be on fire.

But they reach the end of the block and see nothing. Maybe the couch-tossers went downstairs again. Broke into another place.

A voice comes cutting through the noise. Stan doesn't know who it is. Did one of these
murzyns
steal a bullhorn?

“Huh,” Wildey says. “That's Georgie Woods.”

The bewildered look on Stan's face leads Wildey to explain.

“Georgie Woods, man—WDAS? The DJ?”

Stan has no idea who he's talking about. He stands on the roof, fists on his hips, and listens to the man plead.

“Please get off the streets,” the voice bellows. “If you have problems, this is no way to solve them!”

That's for goddamn sure, Stan thinks.

“The woman you heard about is fine,” the voice says. “No one was killed tonight! Please get
off
the streets!”

They continue to search the rooftops for another half hour but there are no signs of the sofa-tossers, nor any proof of their existence. If they had rags and cans of fuel, they must have taken it with them.

“Really wanted to slap the cuffs on those bastards,” Wildey mutters.

Stan will bet Taney does, too.

By dawn people have grown tired of smashing windows and looting and setting fires and wander back to their homes. Like a tide receding off the shores. Cops are still wired with adrenaline, but there's no one to chase, no one to yell at. Just emptied, hollowed-out stores. When the owners return and see what's happened here, they're going to weep.

Stan tells Wildey he'll see him later. Wildey nods, does a half-wave.

“Get some sleep while you can. This ain't over. We're gonna hunt down and catch these guys. Throwing a goddamn couch on us!”

We, huh, Stan thinks.

Stan feels like hell the next afternoon. He's at the age where messing with sleep patterns throws his body into total chaos. His deepest bones ache. His stomach is leery about processing anything, and reminds him with belches and other alarming sounds. The world appears to have been draped in gauze, yet sounds and sensations are sharper than ever. Like his headache, for instance. Or Jimmy's records, which are loud, even though they're being played on the other side of the house.

Yet he's up, getting dressed, preparing himself to head back into the burning Jungle. Jimmy pokes his head into the bedroom just as Stan is pulling on a fresh white T-shirt.

“You were out pretty late, Pop. Was it bad?”

“Well, it wasn't good. But I think the worst is over.”

“Think we're still going to the game on Tuesday?”

Stan looks at his boy. “We're
going,
” he assures him. But he doesn't want to admit that he's not really sure, because he's got this sneaking suspicion the whole thing may boil up again. And again. And again. Until the
murzyns
have destroyed everything in North Philly.

Downstairs Stan pours tomato and clam juice over some ice and throws a shot of vodka in there, too. Drinks it down and makes another. Rosie pretends not to see, offers to make him some eggs and pork roll. Stan shakes his head. He doesn't want anything to eat right now.

He also doesn't want to tell Rosie and the boy about the fireball couch. But Rosie will talk to Taney's wife at some point today and then she'll be pissed at him for not telling her.

But of course Rosie gets pissed anyway, because two sentences into his story—which downplays the danger as much as he can—she's off on a tear, slapping him on the shoulder for not telling her earlier. Earlier? How much earlier did she want to know?
Good morning, Rosie, some
murzyns
dropped a burning couch on Billy Taney, hey, you feel like making me some eggs?

Rosie makes a beeline to the phone just as Jimmy enters the kitchen, having heard enough of the story.

“They dropped a couch on you?”

“No, not me or Wildey—just Billy.”

“Who's Wildey?”

“Some guy they partnered up with us last night.”

Jimmy takes a seat across from his dad. Their rectangular table takes up most of the floor space in the kitchen. You have to shimmy around the table to do anything else in there, like open the fridge or check something in the oven. Stan never could understand why they need a table in the kitchen, because they have a perfectly good one in the dining room. But Rosie is stubborn. The dining room table is for holidays and entertaining; otherwise, they take their meals in the kitchen.

“Did you see who did it?” young Jimmy asks.

“No.”

“You'll catch 'em, Dad.”

“Yeah, you think?”

“Hey, partner. Welcome back to Hell.”

Stan grunts.

While daylight seemed to send the worst of the looters into hiding, the fast-approaching evening has fired them up again. Even more cops were brought in for tonight's shifts, yet somehow, in all the chaos, Wildey found him again.

Wildey is waiting for him at the rendezvous point. “Hey, Stan. How's Taney?”

Stan shakes his head. He honestly doesn't know—he's a little ashamed that he hasn't thought of Taney much today. But that Irish bastard is tough. What's a flaming couch to a man like that?

“My wife talked to his wife,” Stan says. “I think he'll be okay.”

“You ready to do some hunting?”

“What do you mean?”

Wildey smirks. “Don't tell me you're gonna let some guys throw a motherfuckin' couch on us and just get away with it.”

“Jesus, you sound like Jimmy.”

“Who?”

“Never mind.”

A few hours after dark the riot is in full swing again. Rioters: throwing bottles, bricks, launching more furniture off the roofs. Scrambling to start fires. Smashing any remaining windows that by some miracle weren't smashed the night before. Stan swears the word must have gotten out to neighboring areas.
Free shit on Columbia Avenue! Bring your own bricks and bats, take whatever you want.

Tonight, though, their marching orders are different.

Tonight Deputy Commissioner Rizzo spreads word through the ranks:
Take no prisoners. The club is trump.
Meaning: Use your baton to stop any and all looting. “Beat 'em and leave 'em.” No arrests. And if some bastard has the stone to take a shot at you, then you shoot back. He doesn't care what Leary said.

Wildey glances over at Stan.

“Tonight's gonna be interesting.”

Stan's about to ask what he means when a police inspector walks up to him and taps his nameplate.

“Walczak. Stick your badge and your name in your pocket. Tell your partner to do the same.”

“What for?”

The inspector stops and turns on his heel. A hairy fireplug of a man, he's clearly used to snapping orders without anyone questioning him.