Hard Revolution

“Get that shit outta my face, Shorty,” said Stewart.

Hess cackled like a witch. “You ready to go sportin’, Buzz?”

“Yeah. Let’s pick up my ride.”

They switched cars at the doughnut shop, bought more beer down below the line, and drove into the District, looking for something or someone to fuck up.

Their next stop was the Rendezvous, down on 10th Street in Northwest. The bar was jammed with rough old boys, bikers, and women who liked their type. The place smelled like alcohol and sweat. Link Wray and his Raymen were up on the bandstand. Link was wearing leather and rocking the house.

Stewart and Hess stepped up to the bar and ordered a couple of drafts. Stewart got a man’s size and Hess ordered a fifteen-center. It looked like a girl’s glass, but Hess didn’t care. The fifteen-cent glass was tall, fragile, and ski

The band did a number with sometime vocalist Bobby Howard, then another. The Raymen were at their most raucous on their instrumentals, but Howard had a good voice for this kind of rock. It was known that Link couldn’t sing. He had caught TB overseas when he was in the service, and the doctors had removed one of his lungs.

“Here he goes,” said Stewart happily, and they watched Link use a pen to punch a couple of holes in the bands’ speakers. It was how he got that fuzz tone out of his ax, and it was a signal that the band was about to lift off.

Which is how it went as the band kicked into “The Swag” and then an extended version of “Rawhide.” It was a sound that no one else could seem to get, a primal, blood-kicking kind of rock and roll, and it energized the room. People were dancing into one another, and soon punches were thrown, and many of the people who were fighting still had smiles on their faces. Link himself was said to be a peaceable man, but sometimes his music incited righteous violence.

“You in?” said Hess, his eyes on a fight that was building in numbers on the edge of the room.

“Nah,” said Stewart, who just wanted to enjoy the music for now. “I’m good.”

Hess put his glass down on the bar, made his way into the crowd, and started swinging. His first punch met the temple of some guy who turned his head right into it, knocking him clean off his feet. Hess thinking, Some nights you just get luckier than shit, right before some other guy, looked like Richard Boone, up and split his lip with a straight right.

AN HOUR LATER they were parked up on 14th Street, way north of Columbia Road, drinking beers and huffing cigarettes. “The Girl Can’t Help It” was playing on the radio, and Stewart was tapping his finger in time on the steering wheel.

Both of them were drunk stupid but still adrenalized from the fight. Stewart had waded in after Hess had caught that right and they had cleaned house from there on in. The most prideful thing about it was they weren’t even tossed. In fact, they had walked out on their own two feet as the band played “Rumble” to their backs. Stewart would always remember the way that felt, like Link was playing that song for him. They should have been satisfied, but they still had energy to burn and felt that the night was not yet done.

“What you figure he’s doin’?” said Hess, looking down the street to where a young colored guy stood by himself.

“Pretty obvious he’s waitin’ on a bus,” said Stewart, thinking, as he did sometimes, that someone had taken a scalpel to Shorty’s brain. Hell, the boy was right there at the D.C. Transit stop.

Hess touched at his lip. The blood had congealed some, but it still seeped out occasionally, as the split was deep. He put his cigarette in the other side of his mouth and had a drag.

“What you go

“What you mean?”

“Like, with your life?”

“I don’t know.” Stewart hadn’t weighed it much.

“I’m thinking of enlisting in the Corps.”

“Think they’ll take you, huh?”

“Why wouldn’t they?”

“Ain’t you never heard of a Section Eight?”

Hess rubbed at his crotch, thinking of the duck-looking girl he’d had. She’d fought him some when he jammed his fingers down those panties of hers. Maybe he had been a little rough with her, but shit, they said don’t, you knew they meant do.

“You know that girl I had tonight?” said Hess.

“I seen her on You Bet Your Life. She dropped down from the ceiling and almost hit Groucho.”

“Stop it. That girl was the most, man.”

“The most ugly. Had to be to get with you.”

The two friends laughed. And then Hess’s eyes narrowed as he tried to focus on the colored boy down the street.

“Let’s try and peg that coon, Stubie. You wa

“Sure,” said Stewart. “Why not?”

Stewart hit the ignition and cruised slowly down the street. He kept the headlights off.

“He’s watchin’ us,” said Hess. “He’s trying not to, but he is.”

Hess reached over to the radio and turned it way up, Little Richard’s wail of release hitting the night. The colored boy turned his head in the direction of the Ford.

“Now we got his attention,” said Hess.

Buzz Stewart drove his car up on the sidewalk and punched the gas. The colored boy took off.

“Run, nigger, run,” said Hess.

“How many points if I hit him?”

“Say five.”

Stewart laughed as they closed in on him. The boy leaped off the sidewalk and hit the street. Hess cackled as Stewart cut left, jumped the curb, and felt his four wheels find asphalt. At the last moment, when they got dangerously close, Stewart braked to a stop.

They watched the boy hotfoot it down the street. They laughed about it on the ride home.

DETECTIVE FRANK VAUGHN checked in with his lieutenant down at the Sixth Precinct house and changed over to a black Ford. He drove around town, talked with his informants, and interviewed potential witnesses on a recent homicide involving a liquor store messenger who was lured to an address by a phone call, then robbed and shot dead. He had a few bourbons at a bar near Colorado Avenue and didn’t pay for one. While there, he phoned a divorcée he knew who lived in an apartment on 16th, near the bridge with the lions. He and the divorcée, a tall, curvy brunette named Linda, had a couple of cocktails at her place and some loose conversation before he fucked her on her queen-size bed. An hour after he had entered her apartment, he was back on the job.

Late that night he was called to the scene of a murder on Crittenden Street, down near Sherman Circle. The colored kid who’d bought it, eighteen years old, had been stabbed in the neck and chest. Uniforms had begun to canvass the neighbors but had turned up nothing yet.

Vaughn would do his job in a methodical, unhurried way. There wouldn’t be much pressure from the white shirts to make a quick arrest. A dead colored boy was not a high priority. Hell, it would barely make the papers.

The mother of the victim had arrived on the scene and was crying hysterically. The sound of her grief turned Vaughn’s thoughts to his maid, Alethea Strange. She had two sons, one the same age as Ricky, the other about the same age as the dead kid lying on the street. He’d met them once, and her husband, when he’d driven her home in a hard summer rain.

He shook off the thought. Every murder was a tragedy to someone, after all.

DEREK STRANGE LAY in his bed, listening to a scratching sound. The wind was moving the branches and leaves of the tree outside his window. A dog was making noise out there, too. Had to be the Broadnaxes’ shepherd, barking in the alley that ran behind the house. That’s all it was. A tree he climbed regular and a dog who always licked his outstretched hand.