“Gentlemen,” Sam Brown said.
Bergeron was right, he looked like a fullback. Hell, he looked like two fullbacks. You could land fighter planes on his shoulders. He wore a black suit skillfully tailored to downplay his size, but man’s ingenuity only goes so far.
“Most of you here, I’ve worked with you before. And work, for those new to SeCure Corps, is most definitely the operative word. We pay good money, we expect good value. You take care of business, we’ll take care of you.
“Tonight’s business is crowd control, people. You are intelligence, and intelligence only. You’ll be teamed in pairs, given walkie-talkies and specific watches. You’ll report in each fifteen minutes. You do not, repeat not, take any action. See anything unusual, anything suspicious, any sign of trouble, you get away from there and report back to me. And that’s all you do. Is that understood?
“Officially the city anticipates that about three hundred people will show up tonight; they’re prepared to handle twice that. Police estimates are running higher, maybe as many as a thousand, they say, before it’s over, and the department has placed officers accordingly.
“The affair’s sponsors, however, have reason to believe attendance may be well in advance of expectations. And you, gentlemen, we, are their insurance.
“I repeat: intelligence only. Circulate, observe, reconnoiter, report. Police officers both in uniform and plainclothes will be on watch for legal violations or for any possibility of violence. Federal agents are also present. We are here expressly as their helpmates, an early warning system. And the lower profile we keep, the more effective we can be.”
Walking up Broad on my way here, I’d seen stragglers as far back as Canal, then as I approached Esplanade, more and more, until they were everywhere: stapled to telephone poles, abandoned storefronts and boarded-up houses, impaled on ironwork fences, stuck beneath the wipers of cars sitting on bare wheels at curbside.
CORENE DAVIS
TONIGHT!
COMMUNITY HALL OF
REDEEMER BAPTIST CHURCH
8 P.M.
HEAR THE TRUTH
“Who’s Corene Davis?” I asked the guy I got paired with. He was as thin as Sam Brown was broad. He could lie down, you’d think he was the horizon.
He shrugged with shoulders a sparrow would fall off. “Big shot in Black Rights, I guess. From up North somewhere. Man said your name was Louis?”
“Lew.”
“James. You worked this before?”
“Not for SeCure Corps. Usually work on my own-freelance.”
“Oh yeah? You ever need help?”
“Only finding customers.”
“I know what that’s like. Used to do sales, myself. Fine men’s clothing. Only trouble was, no fine men ever came in to buy it, and I was on straight commission.”
“What about you?”
“What about me.”
I gestured around us.
“Oh. Yeah, I score a job with them a couple, three times a month. SeCure’s good people. Pay a decent wage, never try to hold back on you. I’ve been trying to get on as a regular, but it’s a long list.”
The community center had already filled. Earlier in the day speakers had been set up outside, and now a huge crowd was forming, spilling off the sidewalk into the street and sidewalk opposite. It looked like Carnival had touched down. Most had brought food: bags of fried chicken, picnic baskets and cardboard boxes, coolers, poboys in white butcher paper.
“Brown did say federal agents, am I right?”
We had our backs to the wall across the street, keeping watch on new arrivals.
“Word is,” James said, “there’ve been threats.”
“What kind of threats?”
“The death kind.”
“Against Corene Davis.”
He nodded. “They’ve kept it quiet. One of the regulars I worked with before told me.”
“Who made the threats? How were they made?”
“That’s been kept even quieter. Someone said by letter-white ink on black paper. I don’t know. Yoruba’s been mentioned. So has the group that wears purple shirts and berets. The Black Hand seems to be a current favorite.”
Around the corner to our right came a group of young men, sixteen of them marching in formation, four-by-four. They wore black jeans and shirts and their heads were shaved. The leader, front left, called out the rhythm as they advanced. They executed the turn in finest drill form, at crowd’s edge made a perfectly coordinated right-face and marked time as the leader counted down cadence. Then they stood erect and still, feet slightly apart, hands clasped in the small of their back, eyes forward.
“Don’t you just love watching the little childrens play soldier?” a voice said to my left. As I turned that way, Leo Tate stepped up grinning, Clifford close behind.
“Yeah, get themselves some cool hats like yours, they’d really look sharp.”
“Such a romantic soul, Lewis.”
“I try. Had no idea you guys were interested in Corene Davis, though.”
“We’re interested in anyone who tries to tell the truth about being black in this country.”
“You happen to know anything about threats against her life?”
The two of them exchanged glances. Clifford shrugged, shoulders moving maybe a quarter-inch. Leo nodded back in kind.
“We heard that, yeah. Mostly why we’re here.”
“Any idea who could be behind it?”
“You want the long list or the short one? Short one’s almost as long as the long one-know what I’m saying?”
“Of course, there may be nothing to it all,” Clifford said.
Static crackled on the walkie-talkie, and Leo looked down at my hand.
“Man, everybody’s playing soldier today. They give you your official decoder badge too?”
“Friends of yours, I take it,” James said after they had stepped off into the ever-thickening crowd. I looked at him. He just shook his head. “Takes all kinds.”
I looked around us again. “Which is about what we’ve got here.”
“For sure.”
We made our way along the rear of the crowd, which by now had expanded well into the next block. People still streamed in from every direction. James called to report, cupping his hand over the walkie-talkie and all but shouting to be heard against the din.
We had turned to start back across when a hand fell on my shoulder and someone spoke behind me.
“Lewis. I can’t help but notice that you seem to be taking a sudden, decided interest in black affairs these days.”
“Working,” I said. I held up the walkie-talkie.
Hosie looked at it, back at me. “That may be even more intriguing.”
“Leaping to conclusions again?”
“Peering cautiously over the edge of one, anyhow. Go on about your business, Lewis, whatever it is. We can talk later.”
We started across to check out the other side, noting that a half-dozen hardcases had grouped around the men in black with shaved heads. The hardcases were tossing insults and taunts at them. The sixteen men stood in formation looking straight ahead, making no response.
I glanced at James. He nodded and bent his head close to the walkie-talkie to call it in.
Cackles shot from the speakers outside the hall, then a loud, shrill peal before they were again shut down. After a moment a steady sizzling sound came back on. Several taps-of fingers? A clearing throat.
“Ladies … and … gentlemen.
“Brothers.
“Sisters.
“It is a great honor tonight to be called upon to introduce the young lady sitting here beside me. Rarely has the voice of our black nation, rarer still that of its youth, been heard so clearly, with such honesty and …”
Static obliterated the voice. There were further thumps. A murmur started through the crowd.
Momentarily the voice resurfaced: “… testimony to an enduring people.” Then more static and, after a bit, speakers chopping his words into hiccups: “Ladies and gentlemen, please bear with us.”
Static.
The crowd’s murmur grew both in pitch and intensity.
“… a minor technical problem, I’m told, now resolved. And so, with no more preamble or presumption, I present to you: Miss Corene Davis.”
But apparently the technical problem wasn’t that minor after all. Even as he spoke, speakers were cutting in and out, swallowing words and syllables.
“I would like to begin tonight,” Corene Davis said once the applause had died down, “by quoting Andre Breton:
“ ‘Beauty,’ he said, ‘will be convulsive, or it will not exist.’ ”
It was then that the speakers cut out once and for all.
The crowd’s murmur built to a roar. I could hear, from every corner, shouts and curses, raised voices, breaking glass. Fists went into the air. Tidelike surges shuddered through the mass of bodies around me. I watched as the sixteen men with shaved heads, as though on order, broke rank all at once and tore into the hardcases who had been heckling them.
Ten minutes later, we had a full-scale riot on our hands.