appreciative laugh followed his words. “The stores are going to sell out and board up, we’re taking care of that, but we can’t control the markets the same way. The only food on sale in this city will be there, and people are going to realize it soon enough. Keep your eyes open and if anything starts — stop it before it can spread. You’ve got night sticks and you have gas, use them when you have to. You’ve got guns and they’re best left in their holsters. We don’t want indiscriminate killing, that only makes things worse.”
There were no more questions. Detective Dwyer left before they had been given their assignments and they did not see him again. The rain had almost stopped when they went out, but had been replaced by a heavy cold mist that swept in from the lower bay. There were two canvas-covered trucks waiting at the curb, and an old city bus that had been painted a dull olive drab. Half of its windows were boarded up.
“Put’cher fares to the box,” Steve said as he followed Andy into the bus. “I wonder where they resurrected this antique from?”
“City Museum,” Andy said. “The same place they got these riot bombs. Did you look at them?”
“I counted them, if that’s what you mean,” Steve said, swinging heavily into one of the cracked plastic seats next to Andy. They both had their satchels of bombs on their laps so there would be room to sit Andy opened his and took out one of the green canisters.
“Read that,” he said, “if you can read.”
“I been to Delehanty’s,” Steve grunted. “I can read Irish as well as American. ‘Grenade, pressurized — riot gas — MOA-397…’ ”
“The fine print, down at the bottom.”
“ ‘…sealed St. Louis arsenal, April 1974.’ So what, this stuff never gets old.”
“I hope not. From what our political officer said it sounds like we might need them today.”
“Nothing’ll happen. Too wet for riots.”
The bus shuddered to a halt on the corner where Broadway passed Worth Square and Lieutenant Grassioli pointed at Andy and jerked his thumb toward the door. “You’re interested in markets, Rusch, take the beat from here down to Twenty-third. You too, Kulozik.”
Behind them the door creaked shut and the bus pushed slowly away through the crowds. They streamed by on all sides, jostling and bumping into each other without being aware of it, a constantly changing but ever identical sea of people. An eddy formed naturally around the two detectives, leaving a small cleared area of wet pavement in the midst of the crowd. Police were never popular, and policemen in helmets, carrying yard-long, lead-filled riot-clubs, were to be avoided even more. The cleared space moved with them as they crossed Fifth Avenue to the Eternal Light, now extinguished because of the fuel shortage.
“Almost eight,” Andy said, his eyes moving constantly over the people around them. “That’s when the Welfare stations usually open, I suppose the announcement will go on TV at the same time.”
They went slowly toward Twenty-third Street, walking in the street because the clustering stalls of the flea market had pushed outward until they covered most of the sidewalk.
“Hubcaps, hubcaps, I got all the best,” a merchant droned as they passed, a small man who was almost lost in the raveling folds of an immense overcoat, his shaved head projecting above the collar like a vulture’s from a ruff of matted feathers. He rubbed his dripping nose with cracked knuckles and appeared to be a little feebleminded. “Get’cher hubcaps here, officer, all the best, make good bowls, pots, soup pots, night pots, make good anything…” They passed out of earshot.
By nine o’clock there was a different feeling in the air, a tension that had not been there before. The crowd seemed to have a louder voice and to be stirring about faster, like water about to boil. When the detectives passed the hubcap stall again they saw that most of the stock had been locked away and the few hubcaps left on the counter were rusty and scarcely worth stealing. Their owner crouched among them no longer shouting his wares, unmoving except for his darting eyes.
“Did you hear that?” Andy asked, and they both turned toward the market. Above the rising hum of voices there was an angry shout, followed by others. “Let’s take a look,” Andy said, pushing into one of the narrow paths that threaded through the market.
A shouting crowd was jammed solid between the stalls and pushcarts, blocking their way, and only stirred without moving aside when they blew their whistles. The clubs worked better, they rapped at the barricades of ankles and legs and a reluctant opening was made for them. At the center of the mob were three crumb stands, one of them knocked off its legs and half overturned, with bags of weedcrumbs dribbling to the ground.
“They been jacking the price!” a thin-faced harridan screamed. “Against the law jacking the price. They asking double for crumbs.”
“No law says, we can ask what we want,” a stall owner shouted back, clearing the area in front of him with wild swings of an old connecting rod. He was ready to defend with his life his stock of broken bits of weedcracker. Weedcrumbs, the cheapest and most tasteless nourishment ever consumed by man.
“You got no rights, crumby, those prices don’t go!” a man called out, and the crowd heaved and surged.
Andy blasted on his whistle. “Hold on!” he shouted above the voice of the mob. “I’ll settle this — just hold on.” Steve stood and faced the angry crowd, swinging his club before him, as Andy turned to the stall owner and talked in a low voice. “Don’t be stupid. Ask a fair price and sell your stock out…”
“I can ask any price I want. There ain’t no law—” he protested and broke off when Andy slammed his club against the side of the stall.
“That’s right — there’s no law unless the law is standing right here. Do you want to lose everything, including your own stupid head? Fix a price and sell out, because if you don’t I’m just going to walk away from here and let these people do whatever they want”
“He’s right, Al,” the crumby from the next stall said, he had sidled over to listen to Andy. “Sell out and get out, they gonna walk all over us if we don’t. I’m knocking the price back.”
“You’re a jerk — look at the loot!” Al protested.
“Balls! Look at the hole in my head if we don’t. I’m selling.”
There was still a lot of noise, but as soon as the crumbies started selling at a lower price there were enough people who wanted to buy so that the unity of the crowd broke up. Other shouts could be heard, on the Fifth Avenue side of the Square.
“This’ll keep here,” Steve said. “Let’s get circulating.” Most of the stalls were locked now and there were gaps between them where the pushcart owners had closed up and moved shop. A tattered woman was sprawled, sobbing, in the wreckage of her beanwich stall, her stock, cooked beans pressed between weedcrackers, looted and gone.
“Lousy cops,” she choked out when they passed. “Why didn’ you stop them, do something? Lousy cops.” They went by without looking at her, out into Fifth Avenue. The crowd was in a turmoil and they had to force their way through.
“Do you hear that, coming north?” Steve asked. “Sounds like singing or shouting.”
The surging of the crowd became more directed, taking on a unity of movement heading uptown. Each moment the massed chanting grew louder, punctuated by the stentorian rasp of an amplified voice.
“It’s the Eldsters,” Andy said. “They’re marching on Times Square again.”
“They picked the right day for it — everything is happening today.”
As the crowd pressed back to the curb the first marchers appeared, preceded by a half-dozen uniformed patrolmen, their clubs swinging in easy arcs before them. Behind them was the first wave of the elderly legion, a gray-haired, balding group of men led by Kid Reeves. He limped a bit as he walked, but he stayed out in front, carrying a compact, battery-operated bull horn: a gray metal trumpet with a microphone set into the end. He raised it to his mouth and his amplified voice boomed over the noise of the crowd.
“All you people there on the curbs, join in. March with us. Join this protest, raise your voices. We’re not marching for ourselves alone, but for all of you as well. If you are a senior citizen you are with us in your heart because we’re marching to help you. If you are younger you must know that we are marching to help your mother and father, to get the help that you yourself will need one day…”
People were being pushed in from the mouth of Twenty-fourth Street, being driven across the path of the marchers, looking back over their shoulders as the force of the crowd behind them drove them forward. The
