“Let’s go,” said Vaughn.

“Aren’t you gonna say good-bye to your son?”

“What, you kiddin’?”

“Tell him you love him. Hug him, Mr. Vaughn.” Alethea made a motion with her chin, pointing it toward the second floor. “Go ahead. I can wait.”

Something in her liquid brown eyes told him not to protest. He went back up the stairs and knocked on Ricky’s door.

DOWNTOWN GOVERNMENT WORKERS and private-sector employees, hearing the ongoing reports of escalating rioting on the radio, getting panic calls from spouses, and seeing the smoke drifting toward them from the eastern portion of the city, began to leave their jobs in numbers. Retail employees on F Street and in the rest of the downtown district did the same. Massive uptown and crosstown traffic jams ensued. Some citizens stepped into four-ways and tried to direct cars through gridlocked intersections. Others abandoned their automobiles and walked, trying to relieve the anxiety they felt at being trapped inside their vehicles.

On Georgia Avenue, the northbound lanes were at a virtual standstill. Vaughn drove his Polara south with relative ease, Alethea Strange beside him on the big bench seat. They had passed through Shepherd Park and Sheridan, where there had been scattered window-breaking and looting at places like Ida’s department store, but nothing of the magnitude of 7th Street below. The sky had darkened and the smell of smoke grew stronger as they drove deeper into the city.

Vaughn lit a cigarette and kept it in his left hand, hanging it out the window so as not to bother Alethea. He turned on the radio and tuned it to a middle-of-the-road station just as the DJ began to introduce a song: “And here’s one you’re gonna like, Frank and Nancy Sinatra doing ‘Somethin’ Stupid.’ I’m Fred Fiske, and you’re listening to twelve six-oh, WWDC.”

Vaughn sang the Frank parts under his breath and let Nancy do her thing without his accompaniment. Alethea had to marvel at Vaughn’s nonchalant attitude in the face of the ongoing events. But then, that was Frank Vaughn all over. Single-minded, unchanging, stuck in a time that never was and that existed, perhaps, only in his mind.

“Did you talk to Ricky?” said Alethea as the song came to an end.

“A little,” said Vaughn, keeping his eyes on the road.

“He’s a good boy.”

“Yeah, he’s all right.”

“It’s important to tell them that you love them,” she said. “Every time they leave the house, or you leave… You just don’t know if you’ll ever have the chance again. Only the Lord has that kind of knowledge.”

“Amen,” said Vaughn clumsily.

He was sweating a little under his collar. He knew she was reflecting on the death of her firstborn son and her own regrets. He had never been comfortable with these kinds of conversations.

When he’d gone into Ricky’s room, their brief exchange had been awkward and forced. Ricky hadn’t even turned down the music, some guy singing about his “white room,” something to do with drugs, most likely. Vaughn had given his son a hug before he left, as Alethea had suggested, the first one he’d given him in years. It felt as okay as an embrace could feel between two men. What he hadn’t done was tell Ricky that he loved him. He didn’t understand why you had to say you loved your kid or, for that matter, put your arms around him to show it. Hell, he’d been feeding him, clothing him, and buying him things his whole life. For Chrissakes, wasn’t that enough?

“Thank you,” said Alethea.

“For what?”

“Looking after Derek yesterday during that robbery. He told me the whole story.”

“He…” Vaughn searched for the word. “He acquitted himself well. He’s a fine young man. Gonna be good police.”

They drove into Park View and neared her street.

“I’m worried about him,” said Alethea. “Out there in all this.”

Vaughn could feel her eyes on him directly.

“I’ll look after him,” said Vaughn as casually as he could. “I’m goin’ down there now.”

Down there, thought Vaughn, to find the one who murdered your son. I have fucked up everything good in my life, but there is one thing that I still do right.

“Thank you, Frank,” she said.

He felt himself blush as he heard her say his name. He turned left onto Princeton and went slowly up the street. He stopped at her row house, where her husband, Darin or whatever his name was, stood out front. He turned to look at her. She nodded at him once and smiled with her eyes. Vaughn thinking, She’s no Julie London. But, damn, that is a woman right there.

Vaughn watched husband and wife embrace on the front stoop of their row house before he turned the Dodge around. He felt an unfamiliar stab of jealousy as he drove down to Georgia Avenue and hung a left. He put this feeling from his mind and punched the gas. At Irving, a group of kids stood on the sidewalk yelling things at southbound cars. A kid screamed “white motherfucker” at Vaughn as he passed.

Vaughn flicked his cigarette out the open window and laughed.

THIRTY-THREE

THE TROUBLE ON H Street in Northeast started later than the trouble on 7th and 14th, but it came intensely and all at once. Sometime after one p.m., more than a thousand people rushed onto the strip, burning and looting twelve city blocks of commercial businesses, the longest continuous shopping corridor in black D.C. When the riot erupted, only two dozen police were on the scene.

Police decided to protect the major stores as all available men from the Ninth Precinct sped to H. Shotgun-wielding cops patrolled the front of the neighborhood Safeway. Patrol cars blocked the front of the area Sears. But they couldn’t stop the damage occurring in the form of fire between 3rd and 15th, where H Street met Florida Avenue and Bladensburg Road.

In alleys, looters collected their goods and made further plans of assault. Molotov cocktails were filled and ragged, tossed by men who were no longer interested in stealing liquor or merchandise. These arsonists went methodically from one store to the next, throwing their bombs. In this way, the Morton’s clothing store at 7th and H, one of the largest employers of blacks in the area, was destroyed. A teenage boy was later found inside the ruins, charred beyond recognition and never to be identified. At the I-C Furniture Company at 5th, a thirty-year-old man was crushed to death when a burning wall collapsed on him. Police arriving on H did not hesitate to fire gas grenades from launchers into the crowd. It deterred the rioters briefly. But by then, the entire corridor appeared to be on fire.

Kenneth Willis walked down H with purpose. He had left his apartment and gone down to the strip, urging on the young men who were carrying the last of the beer and wine from the liquor store beneath his place, slapping others five who had gathered on the sidewalk. But Willis wasn’t interested in liquor or anything that small. He had seen a nice watch, looked like it had diamonds around its face, in the window of this jewelry store up a couple of blocks from where he stayed. Could have been fake diamonds pasted on that watch; he wasn’t sure. But a woman in a dark bar wouldn’t know the difference. A woman would want to get with a man who wore a watch like that on his wrist.

Willis walked on, hoping these people out here hadn’t got to that jewelry store before he could.

EAST OF THE Anacostia River, looting had become widespread. Police from the Eleventh and Fourteenth Precincts, showing less restraint than their fellow officers in other areas of the city, and fearful for their lives, began firing their guns over the heads of looters to scare them off. By the end of the day, in Anacostia, police had shot and killed two young men.

Police officials and Mayor Washington conferred with LBJ. Schools were officially closed, as were government offices. Sixty-four District fire-engine companies were deployed or put on alert. A like number of engine companies from Maryland, Virginia, and Pennsylvania headed for D.C. Troops from the Sixth Armored Cavalry were called in from Fort Meade, Maryland, as were the Third Infantry troops of Company D from Fort Meyer, Virginia. The Third would guard the Federal City and police 7th Street; the Sixth would stage at the Old Soldiers’ Home on North Capitol and proceed to H and 14th. The 91st Combat Engineer Battalion from Fort Belvoir, Virginia, was ordered into Far Southeast, Anacostia. The D.C. National Guard, now ready at the Armory, headed for Far Northeast.