The Lightning Rule (26 page)

Farther down the tunnel, a row of metal rungs caught the beam’s light. “I see something, Calvin,” Emmett said, but Calvin had lost consciousness.

Emmett leaned him against the wall and quickly climbed the shaft. Rain was dripping through the manhole cover. When he pushed, the cover quivered. Straining, Emmett exerted everything he had left in him and lifted the cover clear of the hole.

Heavy rain pelted his face. He blinked hard to see. The red and white lights of a patrol car were flashing up the road, a beacon of rescue. The manhole had let out a half a block from a police barricade. Cops in rain slickers were interviewing the drivers of window-fogged cars as water sluiced off every surface toward the gutters. Emmett imagined the body of Lazlo Meers washing through the bowels of the city, carried by rainwater on a course for the Newark shaft, the three-hundred-foot pipeline into the abyss of the bay, never to be seen again.

The patrol car’s lights shimmered on the water-glazed street and refracted off every raindrop. The rain would quench the drought. The drought would end. The riot would end, and as with all endings, it would happen not when it was wanted, not when it was needed, but when it was through.

Pale light was coming through Emmett’s bedroom window. Drizzle pattered on the glass. It could have been early morning or near dark. He couldn’t tell. Mrs. Poole was sitting at the foot of his bed in a chair brought upstairs from the kitchen. She was reading the newspaper. Emmett wasn’t sure how long he had been asleep. He was still weak and tired. When he tried to sit up, the stitches in his chest ached.

“Lay back, Mr. Emmett. You’re supposed to be resting.” Mrs. Poole got up to prop his pillows and gave him a sip from a mug of coffee. “Should taste better than yesterday’s, I expect. The markets are open again. Freddie went and bought us fresh groceries.”

“You gave him money, let him loose, and he came home?”

“He was worried after you, Mr. Emmett. We all were.” She put her hand on his. “Now I’ll let you be.”

“No, stay. I’m awake. What’s the paper saying about the riot?”

Emmett knew there would be no mention of Calvin Timmons or himself in the news. They didn’t rank amid the chaos.

“How ’bout I read to you for a bit?”

“Are you trying to get me to fall back to sleep?”

“You’re too smart for your own good, Mr. Emmett.”

“There aren’t many who’d agree with you on that. Myself included.”

Mrs. Poole settled into her seat and read the newspaper to him from cover to cover. On the front page, Police Director Wallace Sloakes was quoted as saying he was immensely proud of the conduct displayed by Newark’s police force, the state troopers, and the National Guard during the city’s strife. Buried on page five was a piece in which Mose Odett condemned the department for its flagrant abuse of power. His article was a fraction of the length of Director Sloakes’s. Somewhere in between was a blurb about Inspector Plout and his brave struggle to hold the Fourth Precinct together. Plout was portrayed as the valiant captain of a marauded ship, when in actuality, Emmett hadn’t seen the man emerge from his office since the conflict began. The reality of the riot was already being distorted. Like a bad rumor, that week’s events would be modified and remolded every time the stories were told and retold until innuendo grew into truth and fiction solidified to fact.

“Oh gracious, listen to this,” Mrs. Poole said glumly. “‘Flames ripped through the entire block of Boyden Street razing countless tenements and leveling an abandoned warehouse. Area residents claimed they smelled a strange odor during the blaze. The fire department has yet to comment.’ Lord knows I always feel bad for folks who lose their homes in fires. It’s so sad, so final.”

The warehouse where Luther Reed cut and processed his drugs was on Boyden Street. Reed’s boobytraps would have been futile against the inferno.

“What’re you grinnin’ about, Mr. Emmett?”

“Nothing. I was just wondering what the smell must have been.”

Mrs. Poole read on. “‘Another suspicious fire broke out at a residence on Gold Street. Assumed to be the result of arson, police are investigating.’”

Emmett would have wagered that the house that was torched was the discreet gentlemen’s club frequented by off-duty brass. The arson was somebody’s rendition of revenge. It would hit ranking officers harder than the riot did.

According to the newspaper, twenty-six people had been killed during the course of four days. Over fifteen hundred were arrested. An
estimated ten million dollars in public and private property was damaged or lost. The devastation was incalculable despite the calculations. The paper’s op-ed section closed by saying: “Newark will rise from the ashes, better and stronger than before.” Even the ever-optimistic Mrs. Poole didn’t sound convinced reciting those words.

Emmett wasn’t certain either. To be better and stronger, things would have to change. The newspaper was proof that, so far, nothing had.

“Mind if I ask you something, Mr. Emmett?”

It was the very same question he had posed to her the first day she starting working for him. He answered with the same reply. “Depends on the something.”

“Is it true what Edward said? That you were going to be a priest?”

Emmett owned up to it. “Yes, that’s true.”

“Why didn’t you?”

The guilt he harbored about his brother’s accident had led him to the priesthood, then led him away from it and toward the police force. Years of punishing himself had gotten Emmett nowhere but alone. Now he had a chance. He had Edward back.

“I guess I wasn’t the right man for the job.”

“I think you would’ve made a darn fine priest, Mr. Emmett. Maybe the Lord just meant for you to be a detective instead.” Mrs. Poole smiled.

“Maybe.”

A knock came at the bedroom door. Freddie peeped through the crack. “Can I come in?”

“You boys talk. I have to get supper started,” Mrs. Poole said, an excuse to give them some privacy.

Seeing Emmett laid up and bandaged turned Freddie shy. “How ya feelin’?”

“I’m okay. I hear you were running errands.”

“Figured maybe I could do odd jobs for you to pay back that hundred I owe.”

“I have a screen door that needs oiling. A garage door too.”

“No problem.”

“Ever pull up crabgrass?”

“I can learn.”

“You’ve got a deal. As long as you promise to go to your court date.”

“Promise,” Freddie vowed.

“Seems you may be off the hook with Luther Reed, at least for a while.”

“No kidding? What about those detectives? They still gonna want the tape?”

“With the riot and Reed out of commission, they shouldn’t give you any trouble.”

“At least for a while,” Freddie added knowingly. “I found a place to hide it like you told me to. A place nobody’d ever look.”

“Is it under the mattress of my old bed?”

Freddie’s jaw dropped. “Damn.”

“Your secret’s safe with me.”

Emmett got up, too sore to move any speed other than slow. Freddie came to his side to lend a hand.

“Aren’t you s’posta to stay in bed?”

“Yup.”

“We goin’ downstairs?”

“Yup.”

“Thought so.”

Freddie helped him put on a shirt and take the staircase a step at a time. Mrs. Poole put her hands on her hips when Emmett shuffled into the kitchen with Freddie in tow.

“Don’t yell at me,” Freddie said, preempting her. “It was his idea.”

“Is Edward in his usual spot?”

“He’s been keeping it warm all day,” she replied. “Freddie, help me set this table. And don’t forget the napkins.”

“You heard the lady,” Emmett told him, smirking.

“Yes, ma’am.” Freddie sighed.

“I have to borrow this for a little.” Emmett took one of the kitchen chairs out to the porch. Edward was indulging in his new hobby, watching people’s windows across the yard, his substitute for television. Rain was dripping on the tin awning melodically.

“Should you be lifting heavy objects in your present condition?”

“I shouldn’t be doing anything in my present condition.”

Emmett winced as he sat down beside his brother. The welts on his legs smarted. The doctor at the hospital had identified them as electrical burns and informed Emmett he was lucky not to have any permanent damage. His physical injuries weren’t permanent. Any lasting damage from his encounter with Lazlo Meers remained to be seen.

“Jesus, Marty, you’re gettin’ as crotchety as me.”

“We make quite a pair.”

Sitting there together, they would have been eye to eye if either would look at the other.

“You wanna tell me about it? You don’t have to if you don’t want to.”

Emmett told his brother everything. He wanted to. He gave Edward his theory on the murders as well as the details about being held at the factory, the hunt through the sewer tunnels, all of it. The porch became his confessional. At the end, he told Edward what he had done to Lazlo Meers.

“I drowned him. I didn’t try to arrest him or take him in. I just drowned him.”

“He treated those boys like they weren’t human. Like they were animals. Like they didn’t matter.”

“Did that give me the right?”

Edward grew quiet. A soft breeze blew past carrying the scent of a neighbor’s garden. Somewhere, something had survived the drought to bloom.

“There are much worse things than killing somebody, Marty.” He was talking about more than the case.

While Emmett’s experience had been harrowing, he couldn’t fathom what his brother had endured in Vietnam, what any solider faced in war. Torture of the mind could be a fate that surpassed pain or death. Emmett knew that was true from experience.

“The kid, Calvin, he gonna make it?”

“When I left the hospital, they told me he would be in intensive care for a couple weeks, but yeah, he’ll live.”

Unlike Evander Hammond, Julius Dekes, Tyrone Cambell, and
Ambrose Webster, Calvin Timmons would live. Yet the relatives of the murdered boys would never have the satisfaction of seeing their sons’ killer brought to justice or having their cases closed. In the end, Emmett had no hard evidence to connect Meers to their deaths. He could give a statement and Calvin could testify about Meers’s attempt on his life, but that wouldn’t corroborate the other crimes. Lieutenant Ahern would demand evidence, evidence Emmett didn’t have, that was if Ahern didn’t laugh him right out of his office. Police Director Sloakes had little to feed to the press or pin on him. That wouldn’t necessarily prevent Sloakes from trying to bury Emmett anyway. In the eyes of the Newark Police Department, he had yet to solve a single murder. He would, at last, get out of the basement, though he didn’t see a point in returning to Homicide. Then Edward reached out and patted his shoulder, a fleeting gesture that was over before Emmett fully felt it.

“You’re a hell of a cop, Marty. Don’t tell yourself different. You’ll go back to the job and everything’ll be okay.”

That simple statement was what Emmett had waited his whole life for. His brother’s confidence in him was all the assurance he needed or would ever need.

It was getting dark out. Lights in the houses across the yard were coming on. The smell of supper wafted out from the kitchen. Dinner would be ready soon. They would all sit around the table, he and Edward and Freddie and Mrs. Poole, and they would say grace together. Emmett had a lot for which to be grateful.

“If this rain lets up, should be a clear night,” Edward said.

“Should be cooler too.”

“Thank God for that.”

“Thank God for that,” Emmett seconded.

They had resorted to discussing the weather. For them, it was a good sign, a beginning.

The rain was absolution for that week’s heat wave, a temporary reprieve, like the sweet breeze from the neighbor’s garden. Summer promised to be long and hot and harsh, a season of penance that would stretch on and on. That night they had a few hours of forgiveness from
the heat. A little forgiveness was all anyone could ask for. Eventually, fall would arrive, then winter, though the city would not see the rebirth of spring for some time to come. No matter what the weather held, Newark was Emmett’s home and there were no seasons in the heart.

I would like to express my deepest gratitude to my parents for their unwavering encouragement and continued support.

Many thanks must go to my friends as well: Ruth Foxe Blader, Grace Ray, Heather Frater, Beth Foster, Alex Parsons, Alice Dickens, Amy and Brad Miller, Ann Biddlecom, Anne Engelhardt, Caroline Zouloumian, Carrie Gross, Maureen Squillace, Sara Gegenheimer, Sue Zwick, Matthew Vaeth, Rich Natale, and Barbara Sheffer.

I would also like to acknowledge all of the efforts of my editor, Jennifer Pooley, and my agent, Jonathan Pecarsky.

The books that were invaluable to me in researching this novel were
Report for Action
by the New Jersey Governor’s Select Commission on Civil Disorder and
Memoirs of a Newark, New Jersey Police Officer
by Anthony Carbo, with special credit going to Carolyn Bonastia for referring it. The book
Ours: The Making and Unmaking of a Jesuit
by F. E. Peters taught me everything I needed to know about the novitiate experience, and
The Ultimate Guide to Small Game and Varmint Hunting
by H. Lea Lawrence taught me even more than I wanted to know about small game hunting. I would have been lost without the website Old-Newark.com, and I am indebted to Glenn Geisheimer, who runs the site, as well as everyone who contributed to it. I also want to thank Charlie Cheskin for sharing his experiences during the riots with me.