These people who are gathered here together to face the Inferno did not come with their families. They are not interested in unity. They are not protesting at a government building or exploiting a teachable moment at a place of higher learning or community worship. This is a crowd of bitter, misinformed people who want to extract the cold hearts of white supremacists who decorate their Harleys with Confederate flags.
No one is holding a placard.
Irv estimates the crowd at thirty to forty and judges the general mood as dour. There are no children and few women. They form a line, three deep, a hundred feet from the bar. They would probably be closer, Irv figures, were it not for his emergency response team, who are lined up between the crowd and the Inferno.
The bikers hang around by their Harleys pointing at the protesters and shouting well-practiced obscenities and the usual racist epithets from behind the protective barrier of fifteen white and heavily armed police officers.
Irv is surprised to see the SERT in full riot gear with the men carrying military-grade submachine guns as though they’re preparing to go door-to-door in Bogotá. Irv authorized none of this, but there are standard operating procedures he still hasn’t memorized because of how much there actually is to learn as a sheriff and because, well, this doesn’t come up much.
Unless it isn’t standard procedure and all this paramilitary shit is Pinkerton’s idea.
Pinkerton: the macho weenie who’s in charge of the local SERT.
Irv has always been suspicious of Joe Pinkerton. He grew up in a tough part of Brooklyn, was sent to the navy to get straight, turned himself into a SEAL, and didn’t so much get straight as master the skills to be a grade-A asshole. He retired from the SEALs earlier than most of them do, but Irv doesn’t have full access to his service record so doesn’t know the reason. He has always assumed it was because everyone hated him and either didn’t want Joe backing them up in a dangerous situation, or because they didn’t want to back him up because—well—Joe is an asshole.
In the six years Irv has known him, Joe has always been training for something: a marathon, a triathlon, one of those Iron Man things. He doesn’t do it quietly; everyone needs to know about it. For each completed event he’s had his finishing time tattooed on his arm—someplace visible so people can ask about it. Like most narcissists he has an insatiable appetite for something that comes from crowds. Irv would fire him, but the guy is part of the union; he’s going to have to wait until Pinkerton seriously fucks up before he can get rid of him, and Irv’s worry is that by then it’ll be too late.
Irv swings his arm over the passenger seat and again whacks his elbow on the glass.
“God damn it.”
The reverend doesn’t blink.
“Here’s what you need to know, Fred. The Nazi biker dicks over there didn’t do it. Whatever happened to Lydia had nothing to do with them. That woman on the news—the mug shot—she’s a Norwegian cop. And she doesn’t look like that. She’s actually quite . . . Anyway. I’ve seen her credentials, I know her, and I trust her. Mostly. The point is, this whole circus here . . .” says Irv, nodding toward the standoff by the motorcycles, “is media created. It’s not real. I mean, it is now, but it didn’t need to be, because the new reality is built on sand. What I can’t figure out is how things built on sand never seem to sink anymore. Sign of the times I guess. So here. You and I need to make sure nothing really bad happens as a result.”
“You really have no idea what’s happening here, do you,” Fred Green says. It is not a question.
“I think I just described it perfectly. I need your help to calm things down. A little teamwork. Church and state, hand in hand.”
“You think those people are angry because of one news report?”
“I think flammable things burn when you light them on fire, so yeah.”
“You murdered a black child because he was black. Try and think back, Sheriff. Miami after Arthur McDuffie. L.A. after Rodney King. St. Petersburg after TyRon Lewis. Cincinnati after Timothy Thomas. And now little Jeffrey Simmons. Right here. How much more of this can reasonable people take? If black cops were killing white people—beating them to death, strangling them, shooting them when they’re unarmed—how long would it take before other white people reacted? Would you have described that as a castle built on sand? A reality anchored on lies? I doubt it.”
“I didn’t murder anyone,” Irv says, “and I’m not here to hurt people, Fred. On the contrary. I’m looking to keep us off the list of federal disaster areas like the ones you just mentioned. And you’re going to help me.”
“I’m supposed to tell people—black people, and black people only—that violence isn’t the way. How long can that message remain credible, do you think?”
“Reverend, we’re looking at an imminent problem, right over there—”
Fred Green raises a hand and interrupts: “The police murdered Jeffrey Simmons. I don’t know and I don’t care if those bikers were involved. What I do know is that there’s a line of cops over there with rifles facing black people and protecting those . . .” Green does not choose a word. “Those black people, Sheriff, are American citizens. Their taxes bought the bullets in those guns. Some of those people elected you, Sheriff. Why do you think that is?”
“This isn’t a damn game, Fred. Now let’s go mingle.”
The reverend doesn’t move.
Irv holds his temper but his voice is not steady enough to conceal his anger. “Please, Fred. Those people are not gathered to protest police violence. They are there to extract justice from those bikers because Roger Mandel reported that Sigrid is a white supremacist and her brother might have killed Lydia. The facts are, she’s a Norwegian cop here to find her broken-hearted brother who probably
