1Chapter Four
Harding eyed the prisoners warily. There were thirteen of them, sitting sullenly on the metal benches that ran the length of the paddy wagon. Bedraggled, weary and beaten, they sat in silence and stared at him--some with fear, some with disgust. In one dim corner of the van a dreamy-eyed flower child sang "Blowin' in the Wind" but kept mixing up the words. "How many times can a man look up, and pretend that he just doesn't see?"
As Harding turned to leave, the prisoner who was seated closest to the door lurched to his feet. Harding sized him up; almost six-six but lanky, tie-dyed shirt and beaded suede vest hanging loosely on his frame. His long black hair was pulled back into a ponytail and his bushy beard was in need of some serious grooming. The prisoner stood there silently, his hands cuffed behind his back, his hazel eyes cold with anger. He opened his mouth as if to say something, then spat at Harding's face. He continued to glare, his jaw hanging slack as if he were considering further action, until Harding planted a beefy hand on his chest and shoved him back onto the bench. Taking one last look around, Harding climbed down to the street.
A rookie was waiting for him on the street. "You didn't find the guy you're looking for?"
Harding pulled a plain white handkerchief from his pocket and wiped the spittle from his chin. "Nah."
The young officer swung the door shut, then slapped his hand roughly against the side of the truck as a signal to the driver. As the paddy wagon pulled away from the curb and sped away toward the Central District station, Harding looked up into the night sky and tried not to hear the sounds of battle on Michigan Avenue, where police had been clashing with protesters for the last two hours.
When he first arrived on the scene, Harding had wasted almost forty minutes out there on the urban battleground, eyes streaming from the drifting clouds of tear gas, searching for Wilson among the milling mob. The Yippies' parade of triumph had degenerated into a cattle drive, as a thousand blue-helmeted cops used their nightsticks to herd them toward. . . toward where?
God only knew what the police were trying to accomplish! They certainly couldn't arrest all ten thousand protesters, there weren't enough jail cells in Chicago to hold them that night. They weren't letting them back into the park (although Harding guessed that a majority of the protesters would happily return there if they could escape the police). Letting them proceed south toward the convention center was out of the question; borrowed troops from the Illinois National Guard stood as a second line of defense in that direction.
If the overall police strategy was a mystery, the objective of individual police officers was quite plain. Again and again Harding watched as his fellow officers used their nightsticks to apply a primitive form of justice to protesters, bystanders, and journalists alike.
Near the corner of Michigan and Balbo he had watched as three cops, anonymous in their identical helmets and uniforms stripped of identification, took turns using their nightsticks on a hippie who wouldn't (or couldn't) move quickly enough to satisfy them. The young man struggled to get to his feet, to run or at least to defend himself, but each time he regained his feet another cruel blow drove him back to the pavement. At that sight Harding had veered off onto Balbo Street where he quickly located a storm drain to vomit into. Then he willed his heart to stop racing, and his eyes to stop watering, as he decided to stop acting on his instincts and to start using his brain instead.
There was no way he could locate Wilson in these conditions. But right here on Balbo Street the cops had brought in a fleet of paddy wagons and other trucks for transporting prisoners to the Central District for processing. Harding calculated that the worst possible place for Wilson to end up tonight would be the holding cells at Central. So here he stayed, checking the occupants of each paddy wagon before it headed into town.
"Who are we looking for, again?" The rookie wanted to be helpful.
"Twenty-one year old white male, five-nine, one seventy-five, very short light-brown hair, blue eyes. . . ."
"Name?"
Harding gave him a hard look. "No name. Just let me know if you see somebody fitting the description, and I'll come eyeball him."
"Who is this lucky sonofabitch?"
"NOBODY!" Harding's mind raced. "He's nobody. His father's a close personal friend of my lieutenant, and that's all I'm gonna say."
The young officer nodded wisely. "Ahh. So that's what you're doing down here, so far from your district." He gave Harding a conspiratorial wink and headed over to start loading the next group of prisoners. Harding hung back, his attention caught by a small drama unfolding at the other end of the block.
A squad of National Guardsmen stood watch over the intersection of Balbo and Michigan, charged with the duty of steering the riot away from the paddy wagon operation. Harding watched as the young soldiers were being harassed by a short, dark-haired young woman in a bright yellow dress. She had her hands locked tight on one Guardsman's arm, and she was struggling to pull him away from the hastily-erected sawhorse barricade, out into the chaos on Michigan. He shook her off, and laughed as one of his fellows shoved her roughly toward the curb. She stumbled, recovered, then charged again. She could move fast, for such a little thing, and she grabbed another Guardsman by the hand and tried vainly to pull him toward the Avenue. The others stood back and watched with amusement while a burly Chicago police officer loomed up behind her. Harding's gut twisted in revulsion as he watched the man swing his nightstick sadistically across the woman's buttocks. She cried out in pain, and kicked savagely at her attacker, catching him just below the knee with her low heel, then doggedly renewed her efforts to pull the Guardsman away from the line.
Harding charged down the street as the officer braced to strike again, reaching him just in time to grab the business end of his nightstick on the upswing. He twisted it sharply, so the attacker would be forced to turn away from the woman. "For Christ's sake, stop it!" he yelled, as he came face to face with the enraged cop. Harding saw in the man's pale blue eyes a reflection of his own anger and fear, twisted around one another in an endless knot.
"Harding!"
The face of his own father.
"What the hell are you doing here?"
Something frightening passed between them at that moment, as if neither man had ever seen the other before. Art Welsh looked for a cowed, hesitant rookie, but saw instead a seasoned officer, strengthened by righteous anger and grim purpose. Harding looked for wisdom and reassurance, but saw instead his father's bloodshot eyes and dilated pupils, and smelled the liquor on his breath. That his father had a drinking problem was no surprise to Harding--that ugly fact had been a carefully unspoken secret in the family for as long as he could remember--but he had never, not ever imagined that his father would be soused on the job.
"I said, what the hell are you doing here!" Sgt. Welsh bellowed at his son.
"Protecting. Serving." Harding stared defiantly at his father. "I'm doing my job."
The older man grabbed his son by the elbow, and steered him a dozen yards up the street from the intersection--out of the way of the National Guardsmen who were still trying to pry the tiny woman away from their colleague. "Like hell you are. You're suspended!" He jabbed his nightstick into Harding's chest, stopping him in his tracks. "Or didn't you think I would hear about what you said to Ralph Molloy and the Captain this afternoon?"
Harding said nothing.
"You think I'm gonna come right in and fix this for you? Is that what you think?" Beery fumes washed over Harding's face as his father raged. "You got another thing coming, Mister! They'll have your shield for this, and I'll stand right there and help because no son of mine--do you hear me?--NO son of mine would ever be involved in behavior so disrespectful, so shameful, so despicable. . . ."
"Hey, Sarge!" came a cry from an officer near the line of paddy wagons.
"Not now!" shouted Sgt. Welsh over his shoulder.
"Sarge, Central says they can't take any more intakes right now! Whaddaya want us to do with these. . . ?"
The sergeant turned to his son and pointed a finger firmly at the ground at their feet. "Right here, do you understand me? You stay right here, and you wait for me. You don't move from this spot. Do you understand me?"
"Yes."
"I said, DO YOU UNDERSTAND ME?"
"Yes, SIR!"
The sergeant grunted in disgust, then headed up the street to rejoin his men. Harding stood rooted to the spot, and wondered what he should do next. He was painfully aware of the hostile stares of the other cops on Balbo Street; they had seen him dare to challenge their Sarge, and their loyalty belonged to him. He felt a gentle tug on his sleeve, but his patience was gone. "Get lost!" he snapped, before he even turned to see who it was. "I said, get lo. . . ."
It was the little woman in the yellow dress. She was pulling steadily, insistently, babbling all the while in what sounded like Spanish. Unable to follow her words, he watched her body language instead--hands waving expressively, wisps of her long dark brown hair escaping from her braids and falling into her eyes. Figures, doesn't it? Of the two brothers, Wilson was the one who could speak Spanish; Harding had barely managed to squeeze a passing grade in the course in high school. The woman kept repeating the same phrase over and over, her voice rising higher and higher with desperation. To Harding it sounded like, "Me a-feel ya! Me a-feel ya!"
"What?"
"Me a-feel ya!"
He finally remembered one of his handful of Spanish phrases. "¡Ingles, por favor!"
She blinked, then abruptly switched to English. "My daughter!" She grabbed his arm and turned him bodily toward Michigan Avenue. "My daughter!"
"Your daughter is out there?" He tried to imagine a child out there alone in the middle of a riot.
"How the hell did that happen?"
She realized that he finally understood what the problem was, and she gave a great wail of grief as she returned to pulling on his arm. If she could have propelled him physically down the street and into the fray, she would have. Harding grabbed her wrist with his free hand and pulled her off.
"How old is she?" No use, she was yammering in Spanish again. What was the damn word?
"¿Cuantos años. . . ?"
"Cosa hai detto?"
Hell. Maybe it wasn't Spanish after all. He held his hand at waist level as if indicating the height of a child, then moved it up and down a few inches to indicate uncertainty, then repeated, loudly and slowly, "How--old--is--she?"
"Quattro!" She held up four fingers for emphasis, then indicated a height just below her hip.
Four years old. Jesus H. Christ, she was hardly more than a baby. "What's her name?"
"Per favore! Mia figlia, é lá!"
"Name! What's her. . . oh shit. ¿Como. . .como, como se. . .?"
"Maria!"
"Good! Good, good." He summarized what he knew so far. "Maria. Four years old." He held up four fingers, then indicated the little girl's height. "This tall." He then brushed his hand across his chest, and asked, "¿Color?"
"Blu!"
"Got it." He raised his voice, as if his speaking louder would make it easier for her to understand. "You--WAIT--here. HERE. Don't move. Stay HERE." He headed for Michigan, and the woman followed.
"Mia figlia!"
As if that was any help! "STAY HERE!" He pointed angrily at the ground at her feet. "Here, dammit!"
She nodded miserably. "Sí."
"Good., good. Sí." You stay here, I'll find your little girl." He swallowed, found his courage, and headed back out into the battle on Michigan Avenue.