A Certain Justice

'Chris?'

'I'm here. I was wondering if you'd heard from your mother.'

'No, not yet. I'm sure I will. Meanwhile, what are we going to do?'

'Are you still in front of your TV?'

'Yes.'

'Look at it now.'

On the screen was a still photograph that would in the coming days become as famous as the Rodney King videotapes. Arthur Wade was hanging from a streetlight and under him a white male was hugging him, apparently pulling down on his legs, trying to break his neck. Wade, in his last futile seconds, was holding the rope above his head with one hand, and with his other appeared to be trying to strike the man pulling his legs, to drive him away and purchase himself another few seconds of life.

Elaine stared transfixed at the horror of the scene. She had never expected to see it played out in her lifetime again, especially here, in supposedly liberal San Francisco.

She forced herself to look again – the black man hanging by the neck, surrounded by the white mob. All the faces were blurred except the two in the center, and they were in perfect focus. Arthur Wade and the man who'd hung him, whoever it was.

Chris Locke sounded raspy, drained. 'We're going to get proactive here, Elaine. That man's got to be found. And then we've got to crucify him. Can you come down to the Hall…?'

'You mean now?'

'I mean yesterday, Elaine.'

7

Shea made it home, walking.

It took him over two hours to make it on the smaller streets from where he had been dropped in the grassy center divider of Park Presidio Boulevard to his apartment on Green Street near Webster.

The details kept coming back. The black man struggling. Reaching for him. The man's weight on his shoulders while he was still alive.

Maybe, Shea kept thinking, reliving it, he shouldn't have gone for the guys near the fire hydrant, should have just stayed holding the man up, maybe then it would have turned out…

It still wasn't real.

He limped, stopped, leaned on things, vaguely aware of sirens, of the sky glowing now off to his right. At the moment, he couldn't put it together.

There were six apartments in his three-story building, three up front and three in the back. He had the one all the way back and all the way up. He wasn't sure he could make it.

He'd better see a doctor soon. Maybe he should call the police, although they'd already be all over the scene back at the Cavern. Still…

Finally he made it, took out his key and got inside, locking the door back behind him. God, his arm was killing him. His ribs. Everything.

From his cupboard, he took down a bottle of vodka, poured about six ounces into a glass, added two ice cubes and a spoonful of orange juice concentrate and, drinking, went into the bathroom. He finished the drink before the shower had gotten hot, before he'd been able to strip off his shirt.

He looked at himself in the mirror. He shouldn't be drinking now, he told himself. He should call the police, a doctor, somebody. But first he needed the one drink tonight, now. Who'd blame him for that, after what he'd been through? And the shower, wash off the blood, check the damage. Then he'd have one more before bed, dull things a little, the pain. There was nothing they could do tonight anyway.

That poor bastard…

8

By three in the morning units of the police force, fire department and emergency crews had been mobilized within the city and county of San Francisco. The mayor, Conrad Aiken, had also put in a call to the governor's office in Sacramento requesting that the National Guard be called out, that martial law be declared. There were already nineteen fires and property damage was going up faster than the national debt.

Here in the middle of the night Aiken had forsaken his ornate digs at City Hall in favor of the Hall of Justice at Seventh and Bryant streets, the home of the police department, the district attorney's office and the county jail. He had commandeered District Attorney Chris Locke's outer office and sat behind what was usually a secretary's desk.

The mayor was an imposing figure in spite of considerable physical drawbacks for a politician – he stood only five-foot-seven and was so thin that the joke was when he stood sideways, unless he stuck out his tongue you couldn't see him. He was also nearly bald, with a half-dollar-sized port-wine stain that ran under his left eye and halfway across the bridge of an aquiline nose with a bump in the middle of it.

Most people put him a decade younger than his stated age of sixty-two. He had that spring in his step, contained energy and piercing gray-blue eyes. He had all his teeth, and they were pearly white, though he wasn't flashing any of them now.

With him in the office were Locke, Assistant DA Elaine Wager, Police Chief Dan Rigby, Assistant Chief Frank Batiste, County Sheriff Dale Boles (pronounced Bolus), who was in charge of the jail and its prisoners, Aiken's administrative assistant, a young man named Donald, and Lieutenant Abraham Glitsky, a forty-four-year-old Jewish mulatto who headed San Francisco's homicide detail.

Aiken had started off by wanting to get a report on the status of the riots from Chief Rigby – the affected areas, what measures were being taken, how many men were on the street and so on. Rigby was in the middle of ru

'… mostly containment at this stage. We don't have a hope of any real control until we get more people on the streets, and of course we've got the usual looting-'

'We're not go

'No, sir,' the chief replied, 'but how are we pla

'I'm in favor of shooting to kill.'

Rigby looked shocked. Pleased but shocked. 'Well, we can't do that.'

'Why not? Don't they do it in the midwest after tornadoes. We'll do it here. Why not? I'm not going to allow looting in San Francisco.'

Chris Locke took a step forward. He was a big man, half again the mayor's weight, the only person present in a business suit. 'Sir, the only people you'll shoot will be black. It's racist.'

Aiken didn't like that. 'I'm no racist, Chris. The only people I'd have shot would be looters. Black, white or magenta, I don't give a damn.'

Elaine Wager spoke up. 'But the only people rioting so far are African-Americans, sir, the same as you had in Los Angeles -'

'There's a lot of rage,' Locke added.

'I don't want to hear that shit. I don't want to hear about rage. Rage isn't any issue here, and it sure as hell isn't any excuse. Keeping the law is what this is all about.'

Rigby said, 'It's moot. Black officers won't shoot black looters.'

Lieutenant Glitsky almost spoke up for the first time to say that he would – half-black and half-white himself, he had little patience with the posturing and excuses from either side. But he kept his mouth shut, for now.

'What the hell?' Aiken said. 'Don't black officers arrest black lawbreakers every day?'

Rigby shook his head. 'It's not the same thing.'

The mayor wasn't buying. 'Look. I'm talking about preserving the city, protecting all its citizens. Let's not turn this thing into a race war.'

Elaine Wager spoke up again. 'But that's what it is. That's the issue. A black man's been lynched… sir.'

'Goddamnit, I know that. But what we're talking about now, this minute, is not a racial question. It's about people who're breaking the law. Riot control.'

Rigby repeated that he couldn't shoot looters.

Aiken held up a hand. 'Look, I don't want to talk about shooting looters. I don't even know if we've got looters at this stage, but I don't want them tolerated. I think we've got to make a stand somewhere. We're not going to just sit and watch 'em. I want them prosecuted-'