A Certain Justice

Brandon Mullen, the victim's brother, slammed his beer glass on the bar and screamed at the newscaster at the top of his lungs, as though she were standing there with him. 'What are you talking about? There were four eyewitnesses!'

Somebody back by Kevin Shea took it up. 'He had Mikey's credit card, didn't he? He had the damn gun!'

'What do they need anymore to put somebody away?'

'Damn niggers gettin' away with murder…!'

'More than that, with anything…!'

Peter McKay had finished his beer. He backed it up by throwing down another shot of Bushmills, his fourth. Standing on the rungs of his barstool, he rapped his empty jigger at the top of the pitted bar four or five times – crack, crack, crack, crack - 'I'll tell you what they need. I'll tell you what we need. We need some justice!'

McKay had a grand speaking voice, deep and resonant, and now it had the added authority of an impassioned hoarseness. But he had no need to argue. Everybody was already with him. He was their voice. He was standing on the bar. 'They need a message. We got to give 'em a message.'

Fuckin'A!'

'Right on!'

Over and over now, guys poking each other in the shoulders, in the guts, pumping up.

3

Just at that moment, Arthur Wade could not believe his good luck. Here, on Geary Street, he had found a parking place directly in front of the Cavern, not two doors down from the French laundry where he was supposed to pick up the cleaning. The door in between was a hardware store that had locked up for the night. You just didn't find good parking places in San Francisco, not when you wanted them. And he only had ten minutes before the laundry closed at nine. He was going to make it. It was a good omen.

Karin just hadn't had the time to get his shirts. Both of the twins were down with one of what seemed like the never-ending cycle of children's ailments and his wife hadn't been able to get out all day. She was cooped up, going crazy. So he'd told her, no sweat, on the way home he'd pick up the cleaning.

He really did try to do his share with the household stuff, but when you're a black man in a professional job your first priority had better be to give your bosses no reason on the planet to think you weren't giving a hundred and fifty percent at all times. Which was what Arthur Wade, a four-year associate attorney at Rand & Jackman, did. It didn't matter that Jess Rand and Clarence Jackman were both African-Americans themselves. They had set themselves up to compete with the best of the all-white firms, pulling in major corporate accounts from all over the country, and their associates could get to partner if they gave every minute of their time for eight years and were also brilliant, tireless and blessed with an entrepreneurial spirit.

Which, fortunately, most agreed, Arthur Wade was.

He got out of his BMW and slammed the door, in a hurry, his mind still on his work. Shivering at the sudden blast of heat, he realized he'd been isolated from the weather all day – ten hours of grueling depositions. Luckily the depos had finally burned everyone out, which was why he had time to help Karin. Getting off work any time before eight was more or less a holiday.

He had closed the car door, but he wasn't even walking fifty feet in this heat with his coat on. He took it off, and holding it, reached inside his pants pockets to take his keys out and put his coat back over the seat. The keys weren't there. They were still in the ignition.

Locked out.

He slammed his hand in frustration on the roof of the car, which set off his two-toned, shrieking, ear-piercing alarm. EEEEeeee! EEEEeeee! EEEEeeee!

Peter McKay was still standing on the bar, in the middle of his rave against the release of Jerohm Reese, the rotten unfairness of the way black people could get away with absolute murder, all of that, when he heard the racket of the car alarm and could see Arthur Wade outside the Cavern's front window, doing something around a nice new-looking BMW. Stealing it, he thought, the black bastard.

'Hey, look a-here!' he called out. 'I don't believe this…'

Kevin Shea liked to tell himself that pretty soon he was going to get his act together and even finish his damn thesis and get his Ph.D. and maybe after that get a job teaching, or something else, just as long as it included time for drinking and didn't want too much of his soul. He wasn't giving up any more of his soul. That was settled.

But for the moment it was all just too much to sort out. Changes. The relationship thing. Where he was going, what he was doing. All the hassles. Forget it. It was easier to drink. Not take anything too seriously.

But he didn't like this.

Okay, he'd gotten rid of Neil Young, but these guys were really getting obnoxious now. Nigger this and nigger that. He hated the word – God knew he'd heard it often enough growing up. But it was frightening here. Guys yelling stuff he couldn't believe in modern-day San Francisco. And some jerk standing on the bar going nuts.

He'd had enough of this. Kevin Shea was leaving, out of here.

EEEEeeee! EEEEeeee! EEEEeeee!

The car alarm was blaring.

McKay jumped down off the bar and was through the crowd, men – his cousin, Mullen, all the others – falling in behind him. Even the bartender Jamie O'Toole coming over the bar, into it.

Then McKay was at the front door, yanking it open, out into the twilit street.

Arthur Wade, embarrassed, turned, his hands spread in a what-can-you-do gesture, trying to be heard above the sound of the screeching alarm.

McKay was at him before he could be heard, shoving at him, pushing him away from the car. 'What the hell you think you're doing?'

'Hey!' Wade didn't push back. He didn't like getting pushed but this obviously was just a misunderstanding. He'd explain to this hothead, get it cleared up. 'This is my car. I got locked out-'

McKay pushed him again, up against the truck parked next to him, both hands in the chest. 'Your car, my ass.' Then, turning – screaming over the noise – 'Nigger says he owns a BMW! I say my ass.'

The alarm continued to shriek.

'I say he's stealing the car!'

Wade straightened up, set himself. A dozen men had come out of the bar, and more kept coming. So did this drunken guy, right at him. These were bad odds. Arthur Wade didn't like it but the better part of valor was to walk away and come back when things cooled here.

'Hey! Where are you going? Where do you think you're going?'

One step backward. Two. Hands up, moving away. 'Look, I'm just walking away, I don't want any trouble-'

The drunk kept at him. 'Hey, you don't want any trouble, you don't try to steal cars.' A rush at him, then another push. And then somebody behind him, blocking him.

'Hey now, look guys-'

EEEEeeee!

A shove from behind now, from the other direction. The drunk guy in his face, screaming. 'You guys get away with murder. Anything you fucking want to do-'

And then another sound – even over the screech of the alarm – the picture window of the hardware store exploding in a shower of glass. Jamie O'Toole had thrown one of the Cavern's heavy beer mugs into the window of the hardware store. Now he was in the front display area, amid the lawnmowers and power tools, the coiled clotheslines and the sledgehammers, yelling something.

The violence of the noise, the shrill cacophony, the huge display window smashed, alcohol and testosterone, ratcheting it all up notch by notch.

EEEEeeee! EEEEeeee! EEEEeeee!

O'Toole was in the hardware-store window, grabbing something from where it hung on the wall. What the hell was that, a rope?

A rope. A heavy, yellow nylon rope.