“Whatever’s gonna happen’s gonna happen,” said Nick with a shrug. He looked across the counter at Mike, carrying twenty pounds he didn’t need, sweating, breathing hard from walking down twenty feet of rubber mats. “You can’t stop it, patrioti, so don’t waste your time worryin’ about it. You’re gonna make yourself sick.”

Mike waved his hand. “Goddamn, you know me, I don’t worry about nothin’.”

“Looks like you can use some help. Where’s your grill man today?”

“He don’t work Sundays. Between me and my boy and Ella, we can handle it all right.”

“Take it easy, Michali,” said Nick, reaching over the counter to shake Mike’s hand.

“You, too.”

As Nick Stefanos and his grandson left the store, the two cops dropped some change on the counter, got up off their stools, and walked to the register. The boys who had been staring at them so boldly looked down at their plates as the tall men crossed the room.

“How you like it, boys?”

“I’m gonna be dreamin’ about those half smokes tonight,” said the white cop, who had the South in his voice.

“That’s my signature,” said Mike, catching the black cop’s eye. “I learned it from a pro.”

“How much, Mr. Mike?” said the black cop.

“Two dollars for both,” said Mike, charging them two dollars less than he would have charged civilians.

“Have a blessed day, young man,” said the waitress, Ella Lockheart, as she passed behind the black cop, who was in the process of returning his wallet to the back pocket of his slacks.

“You do the same.”

At the door, the young black cop, broad shouldered, dark skinned, and handsome, turned and called to Billy Georgelakos, standing at the colds station.

“Yasou, Vasili.”

“Yasou, Derek.”

The black cop, Derek Strange, and the white cop, who was named Troy Peters, walked out of the Three-Star and headed toward their squad car, parked out on the street.

STRANGE KEYED THE mic and radioed in to tell the station operator that he and his partner were back on duty. They cruised west down the strip, Peters under the wheel. A few kids were lining up for the matinee at the Kennedy; its marquee read “Joan Crawford goes Berserk!” Bars, cleaners, and other shops were shuttered. A couple of young men dipping down the sidewalk cold-eyed Strange as the squad car passed.

“Go on, fellas,” said Peters. “Wave to Officer Friendly.”

“Don’t you know the po-lice is your buddy?” said Strange. Peters chuckled, but Strange could not bring himself to smile.

This was the part of the job, the open contempt, that got under Strange’s skin. Wouldn’t have been so bad if he only got it while he was in uniform. But he was reminded of it even when he was not on duty. Once, at a party near Florida and 7th, a woman told him in front of Darla Harris, his date, that what he was doing was a form of betrayal, that, in essence, he was a traitor. But he felt that he was not. He was protecting his people. He was doing a job that few were willing to do and that needed to get done. He had convinced himself of this early on so he could get through his day-to-day.

It was true that he had been warned by the experienced black officers to expect this kind of attitude. But he didn’t know it would continue to bother him as deeply as it did. He talked about it with his friend Lydell Blue whenever he could, because he could not talk about it with Troy Peters. Lydell had also become an MPD cop, straight out of the army. He knew.

Wasn’t everybody. Plenty of people showed him respect. Older folks, mostly, and little kids. Still, as he got into the poorer neighborhoods, he was looked upon as the enemy by everyone, especially by the young. Sometimes he caught it from his own blood. On the afternoon of Strange’s graduation from the academy, his brother, Dennis, high on something, had congratulated him, then said, “You a full-fledged member of the occupying army now.” Strange was tempted to tell his brother that he had no call to be cuttin’ on anyone who had a job, but he held his tongue. Dennis didn’t mean anything by it, for real. He had always been against anything that smelled like the system. His parents, at least, had looked at him with pride.

“You hear those two old birds in there, talkin’ about Dr. King?” said Peters.

“I heard ’em,” said Strange.

“They’re afraid, is what it is.”

Strange looked across the bench at his blond-haired partner. “Now you’re gonna tell me you’re not.”

“Not in that way. Look, if these people out here don’t get some kind of relief, it’s all gonna boil over. I don’t look forward to that kind of violence. I’m afraid of it, okay? But those old guys, what they’re afraid of is the change itself. I’m talkin’ about how their world is gonna change forever when all of this gets settled once and for all. Me, I welcome that kind of change.”

“You welcome it, huh?”

“You know what I mean.”

“Okay. But here’s something for you to remember while you’re bein’ so broad-minded. Come revolution time? You go out there and greet these people with open arms? Yours is gonna be the first throat they cut.”

“Something’s coming, is all I’m saying. You can’t deny it. It’s like trying to stop the sunrise.”

Strange nodded tightly. Living conditions had deteriorated as poverty had grown throughout the decade. At present, only one out of three students in the city graduated from public high schools, resulting in a huge unskilled workforce released into a white-collar, government-industry town that yielded few jobs and little in the way of prospects. For many, the promise of the civil rights movement seemed broken. And if the ghetto was thought of by its residents as a kind of prison, then its police force was seen as the prison guard. This perception was exacerbated by the fact that, in D.C., roughly three out of four citizens were black, while four out of five police officers were white. No wonder that crime, civil disobedience, and unmasked hatred were on the rise.

The government, meanwhile, was making eleventh-hour efforts to ease the tension. President Johnson had appointed Walter Washington, longtime head of the National Capital Housing Authority, to be D.C.’s first black mayor. Mayor Washington then brought in Patrick V. Murphy, former chief of the Syracuse police, and put him in the newly created position of director of public safety. Murphy, who was perceived to be more sympathetic to the race problem than Police Chief John Layton, was charged with overseeing both the MPD and the fire department. Immediately, Murphy promoted blacks to higher ranks and stepped up efforts to recruit rookie black police officers. This did not make Murphy popular with senators and congressmen of a certain stripe, who feared that blacks were getting too much power in the federally controlled nation’s capital. Nevertheless, a new opportunity had presented itself, and black men and women began to sign on in numbers for the uniform, badge, and gun. Derek Strange and Lydell Blue were two of many who had heard the call.

Disenfranchised Washingtonians, however, considered these efforts to be too little, too late. The race divide remained the nation’s powder keg, and its ultimate explosion seemed destined to occur in D.C. In August of ’67, arson and minor riots had broken out along 7th and 14th Streets, with rocks and bottles thrown at firemen attempting to extinguish the flames. Since then, unrest and disorder had become almost weekly occurrences. Stokely Carmichael, the high-profile former spokesman for the Student Nonviolent Coordinating Committee, had moved to town. H. Rap Brown was being extradited from New Orleans to Richmond and ultimately to Maryland ’s Eastern Shore, where he faced charges of arson and inciting a riot in the town of Cambridge. Black Panthers and other Black Nationalist factions had become active and entrenched around the city. And Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. was promising, some said threatening, to bring his Poor People’s Campaign, a massive rally, to Washington on April 22. But first he had to deal with Memphis.