Hard Revolution

In” as he entered the aisle of the meeting hall, some supporters running their hands through his hair as he passed. Later, McCarthy traveled to a north Hartford ghetto and spoke through a bullhorn to four hundred blacks, promising a “new set of civil rights,” detailing his proposals, but reminding them that the most important thing government should do is “find out what you think, what you want.” The reaction to his comments went unreported.

On Wednesday, in Washington, D.C., in the evening, five to ten thousand people attended a rally at the corner of 14th Street and Park Road, where Robert F. Kennedy arrived via convertible motorcade and stepped up onto a makeshift platform set on the back of a flatbed truck. Banners and signs reading “RFK, Blue-Eyed Soul Brother” could be seen in the crowd. A street party atmosphere ensued as Kennedy spoke of “Washington’s monuments to failure, to indifference, to neglect.” People stood in the street and on rooftops, telephone booths, and trash cans, cheering wildly. One blond woman fainted in front of Kennedy’s wife. Down the block, at a much smaller gathering, a couple of Black Nationalists spoke to their predominately black audience, urging them not to vote for “another whitey.” According to the Washington Post reporter on the scene, their comments drew “little attention.”

At the same time, in Memphis, Dr. King spoke to more than two thousand supporters. Friday’s march had been moved to Monday, but the city was still seeking an injunction against it, in part because of threats made to the reverend’s life.

“It really doesn’t matter what happens now,” said Dr. King. “I’ve been to the mountaintop.”

Very early that day, just around dawn, the body of Dennis Strange was discovered in the alley shared by Princeton Place and Otis Place, near the row house where he had lived with his parents, by a neighbor who was headed off to work. As the neighbor walked toward his Oldsmobile sedan, his tired eyes not yet focused, he saw starlings alighting on something heaped on the stones up ahead. The birds took flight as the man approached. He knew it was a dead body he was nearing, having seen much death in the Second World War. He recognized the victim immediately, though he looked very different in the grotesque freeze of violent death than he had in life. His head had been nearly severed from his shoulders; it rested at an unnatural angle to his body, as if hinged. His teeth, stained with blood, protruded from lips drawn upward, a grimace of agony common in slaughtered animals. His eyes were open, fixed, and bulging. And there was all that blood. The blood, a pond of it beneath him, had soaked into his clothing and turned much of it black.

“Lord,” said the man, his voice not much more than a whisper.

He went back to his house and phoned the police, then woke his wife and sat on the edge of their marriage bed.

“Poor Alethea,” said the wife.

“I know it,” said the man, shaking his head. Their words were minimal but mutually understood. He and his wife had grown children of their own.

“You think he was robbed?”

“Of what? Boy never had twin dimes.” The man squeezed his wife’s hand and got up off the bed. “I better get back out there. They’ll be wanting to talk to me, I expect.”

By the time the neighbor had returned to the scene, two squad cars had arrived, and soon thereafter came the meat wagon, photographer, and lab man. Last to arrive was a homicide detective named Bill Dolittle, who was working a double and had the bad luck to catch the case just an hour before break time. Dolittle was a slack-jawed alcoholic, prone to seersucker suits, whose stick never shifted past second gear. He had the lowest closure rate in his precinct. Other cops called him Do-nothing and laughed at the mention of his name. He didn’t mind. He was working for his pension and his next drink.

Dolittle dispatched one of the uniforms to talk to the old man whose house was behind the fence where the murder had occurred. The man, a gnarled-faced gentleman who went by R. T., said he knew the victim and nothing else. He had let his dog, Brave, back in the house at a late hour but had seen “not a thing.”

“Your dog stays out all night?” said the uniform.

“Usually he does. That’s my security guard right there. But he was barking at nothin’ last night. Leastways nothin’ I could see. I was up there on my stoop with the kitchen lights shining behind me. All’s my eyes could make out was the black of night.”

“Why’d you let him in?”

“Dog was barkin’ at a ghost, far as I could tell, and he wouldn’t stop. I was afraid Brave was gonna wake someone up.”

After getting a statement from the neighbor, Detective Dolittle went to notify the victim’s parents. He found the mother, Alethea Strange, drinking a cup of coffee at an eating table, wearing a uniform- style dress, preparing, she said, to head up into Maryland to her “Wednesday house,” where she worked as a domestic. The father, Darius Strange, had already left for his job as a grill man in a diner. The woman broke down briefly when Dolittle gave her the news, Dolittle standing before her, jingling the change in his pocket and staring impotently at the floor. She then composed herself, rose abruptly from the table, and phoned her husband. When she was done talking to him, she phoned her younger son.

FRANK VAUGHN HAD closed his fresh Petworth homicide the night before, the way most cases got closed: via a snitch. A parole violator brought in on a marijuana charge offered up the killer, with whom he regularly played cards, and cut a deal. Uniforms arrested the suspect at his grandmother’s apartment without incident. Vaughn interrogated the suspect at the station, but it was a formality, as he had already signed a confession he had written out, in pathetic grammar, before Vaughn arrived.

“Why’d you do it, Renaldo?” said Vaughn.

“Does it matter?”

“That’s up to your attorney to decide. But I just like to know. Off the record.”

Renaldo shrugged. “Man was fuckin’ my woman. I don’t even like the bitch, understand? But there’s some things you don’t do. I heard about it at a card game; all these boys I run with… everyone knew but me. Didn’t even bother me he was jammin’ this girl. He just shouldn’t have talked so free, is all it was. It shamed me. When a man don’t have his pride…”

He ain’t got nothin’ at all, thought Vaughn, tuning out Renaldo’s voice and finishing it off in his head. He’d only heard this story, in variation, about a hundred and fifty times. He had thought this might be the interesting exception here, something different to make his buddies down at the FOP bar laugh, but it was always the same. Now Renaldo, a triple offender, just like the solid citizen who’d ratted him out, was going to do twenty-to-life for defending the honor of a bitch he didn’t even like.

“Take it easy, Renaldo,” said Vaughn before leaving him in the box. At least you got your pride.

Now Vaughn was free to work the hit and run. He had pulled an eight-to-four and his plan was to pursue it all day.

At around nine, Vaughn was still in the station, drinking coffee and having a smoke, sitting at his desk, scanning the night sheets, when he read about the fresh victim down in Park View. Alethea’s oldest was named Dennis. Had to be the same man.

He picked up the phone, talked to Olga, gave her the news, listened to Olga’s theatrics, and got Alethea’s phone number. He phoned the Strange residence, and a man came on the line. He recognized the voice.

“Strange residence.”

“Frank Vaughn here.”

“Detective.”

“I just heard. It is your brother, right?”

“Yes.”

“My sympathies to you and your family. Please tell your mother that I was… that she’s in my thoughts.”

“I will.”

“Young man?”

“Yes.”