Eddie gasped and thumbed over his shoulder at the unfolding violence. “Can’t you see that this is bigger than a documentary on my grandfather? I have a real opportunity here to capture something great.”
“You, you, you; it’s all about you; there you go again. What about me, your wife?”
“I can’t talk about it right now, Dee.”
“I’m getting out of this place right now. And if you’re not coming with me, you might as well not bother coming home at all. If I can’t count on you to do the responsible thing, protect me, your wife, then I shouldn’t have to put up with your pipe dreams, Eddie. Besides,” she straightened her hair, “I’ve still got my charms. If you want to know the truth of it—“
“—you could do a lot better than me, I know, you tell me that all the time,” Eddie said. “I’m staying here. If you want to go, go.” Eddie turned away from Dierdrie and walked toward where the Vietnam vets were brawling with the NRPL hippies.
“Eddie, I mean it,” Dierdrie shouted as he walked away, “I’m leaving, really leaving this time.”
Eddie flicked his hand in the air in a fine, whatever gesture.
Dierdrie Pearlman turned on her 2-inch heel and clocked away from her ignorant husband. She made it a half-dozen steps before she stopped and turned around. Eddie hadn’t slowed. He walked towards the fight with his camera slung over one shoulder.
Dierdrie swore under her breath and stamped on the pavement, both her hands clamped into fists. She looked over her shoulder towards the way out, then back at her husband. She straightened her hair, pulled her silk gloves tight onto her hands and followed him straight into the fight.
Chapter 23
Bixbie stood next to Officer Howell of the Columbus Metropolitan Motorcycle unit. He and three other motocops had rumbled into International Plaza atop their Harley Davidson Sportsters, all sunglasses, jack-boots, and authority.
Bixbie pointed along the parade route, shouting over the push of press questions and rumble of Harley engines. “You get up there now. But remember, no guns. I don’t want this to turn into an incident.”
“With all due respect, sir, I think this is already an incident,” Officer Howell said.
Bixbie pinched his lips until they were bloodless. He hated motocops. “No guns unless we are fired upon, am I clear?”
“Word on the street is that shots have already been fired, sir.”
“Could have been a backfire or a firecracker; we don’t know.”
“Firecrackers are illegal, sir.”
Bixbie fixed Officer Howell with a reproachful glare. “For now we are giving the situation the benefit of the doubt. No guns unless some S.O.B. in that hell-storm starts blazing, I don’t want to see anything bigger than a nightstick. Am I clear?”
“Yes, sir.”
“Good. Now go take control of this situation.”
Officer Howell signaled to the other three riders by wheeling his hand around then pointing towards the riot. Like a well-tuned instrument, the motorcycle unit rumbled into formation. They split into two flanks and shot down the street on either side of the World War I marchers, who seemed to be moving into some kind of tactical formation of their own.
Bixbie found another duty officer who stood nearby. He moaned then made the order he had been dreading. “Get dispatch on the line. We are going to need at least one riot unit.”
The officer got into his cruiser and snatched up the radio handset under the dashboard. He raised dispatch and began to explain the situation.
Bixbie glanced up High Street at the rumble. The sound of the pop that sparked off the whole affair replayed over and over in his mind. It sounded like a .38 round. But something about that shot had been different. Usually Bixbie could nail the make of a gun by its report, but he couldn’t peg what kind of weapon had fired that shot. It made no difference. The single shot had stirred up a wasp nest and now it was up to him to clean up the mess.
He closed his eyes and pinched the bridge of his nose. At least the situation couldn’t get any worse. Could it?
Chapter 24
Schecky spotted a 1962 Impala parked on the side of the road. The car offered more than enough room for him to comfortably crawl underneath and wait out the storm. He pushed himself up to his haunches with his one good hand and glanced around, perched like a baboon, looking for the right moment to make a break for cover.
Most of the combat had broken out in the middle of the street with small skirmishes towards the curbs. He spotted hoards of parade spectators who had been unable to escape the area. People of all walks, families, businessmen in suits, children with toys and pennant American flags, stood huddled together in the nooks and stairwells of businesses banking the wide sidewalks. They had come for a show, and a show was exactly what they were getting.
Schecky broke into a low trot. His bad hand, a mess of coagulated scab tissue, ached with every step. He peeled to the left to allow a wide birth between himself and a pair of scrappers, a Vietnam vet and a hippie with horse-sized front teeth and tan skin. The veteran dominated the fight, delivering three calculated blows. Karate, Schecky thought, those war-pigs all know karate. But Schecky knew that the numbers were on the side of the NRPL. No amount of kung pow could compete against four or five on one.
He half ducked, half slid under the Impala, perhaps a bit too anxious. The cheese grater road rubbed through his silk shirt and bit into his chest and belly. He winced, forced to use his bad hand to push his body under the carriage of the Impala. With a little squirming and wriggling, he made it to cover and flipped onto his back. He positioned himself so he could watch the show from the street-facing broadside of his new hiding place.
He heard the clocks of leather-soled shoes coming from up the parade route. He craned his neck and spotted a police officer, clad in blue with an eight-point cap. The officer stopped near the Impala and swore to himself as he surveyed the carnage that was unfolding before him. He unsnapped the holster of his service revolver and drew the weapon free. A radio, clipped to the officer’s shoulder strap, clicked and the voice of another officer squawked through the tinny speaker. “Holster your weapon, Fern.” Schecky looked across the street for the source of the voice. A black officer stood almost directly on the other side of the brawl, holding a wieldy nightstick, drawn from a loop in his Buster Brown belt. The black cop held his radio handset and angled a stern look across the street at Fern.
Fern unclipped the handset from his shoulder and thumbed down the button. “Ain’t you lookin’ at what I’m seeing? It’s a battle zone.”
“How many times I gotta’ tell you,” Smash said, “The Serge said to contain the riot, but to do so without firearms. Until someone in this crowd starts smoking heavy iron, there ain’t gonna be no trigger-happy cops on my watch.”
“What do you call that pop goes the weasel hippie with the old glory pants?”
Schecky looked at his meaty hand and hissed out a little chuckle.
“A zip-gun. The little S.O.B. only had one shot. Now put your service pistol away.”
Fern complied, dropping his .38 into its holster and snapping the release shut. “Smash, if we get through this, you owe me drinks. And I don’t wanna go to that spook bar with the jungle music.”
“Watch your mouth, cracker.”
Fern laughed and drew a baton from a loop on his belt.
The fight between the veteran and the hippie with the horse-sized front teeth had spun out of control. The vet jammed the hippie down and kicked him in the head. Schecky could only imagine what the brain damage might have been if the veteran had been wearing combat boots instead of Tom McCann sneakers.
“Back