Johnny Get Your Gun (13 page)

Virgil thrust the public address microphone into Rasmussen’s hands. “That does it,” he said abruptly. “Put out the riot act—fast.”

Rasmussen gulped air and held the microphone before his lips. “This is Sergeant Rasmussen speaking,” he declared. “I am a peace officer of the State of California and of the City of Pasadena. I declare this to be an unlawful assembly and command you in the name of the people of this state to disperse immediately. All those remaining present will be subject to arrest.”

The speaker heard and understood the formal words, but he had worked himself into such a condition that he no longer cared. “An’ is it lawful,” he roared back, “to commit cold-blooded murder? You go catch that white boy and leave us alone.”

“Take care of your men,” Tibbs said. “I’m going in after him.”

“No!” Rasmussen said.

Virgil laid a quick hand on his shoulder. “Thanks, Ted, but in my case it’s different—I’ve got a black face. Stand by.”

He began to weave his way into the mob. As he worked forward he heard the speaker’s voice cutting through the air. “Now there’s a white man back there who says that we all gotta go away. Just because
he
said so. Have we got rights, or haven’t we?”

As he worked forward as fast as he could, Virgil Tibbs tried to understand what the speaker was feeling. Raw in his own mind were memories of his childhood in the deep South when he had been called a pickaninny among other things, of his growing years when he had had to be afraid, particularly at night, of cars filled with three or four young white men just because he had a black skin. He remembered bitterly the hundreds of times he had been made to step off the sidewalk because a white man wanted to pass and then he could see himself in the position of the man who was still talking, seeking to escape from the trap into which his racial heritage had thrust him.

As he moved he tried to block out of his mind the risk he was taking, and the limited chance that he would come out of this rebellious crowd with both the man he was after and a whole skin.

He wormed through the tightly packed front row of listeners, walked to the side, and climbed up onto the small platform from which the speaker was still talking. His voice
was beginning to fail him now and a decided hoarseness tinged his words. When he sensed that he was no longer alone, he turned, faced Tibbs, and said, “Whadda
you
want?”

“I’ll take over,” Virgil said. “Your voice is gone.”

“You think you can?”

“Damn right.” Without knowing yet what he was going to say Virgil Tibbs took over the microphone and faced the crowd. He sensed at once that to reason would be out of the question; he would have to pick up where the other man had left off and somehow direct things from there.

He raised his own voice, therefore, and deliberately put a bite into it. “How many of you come from Mississippi?” he demanded.

He got a small wave of response.

“Alabama?”

Some hands shot up, some voices answered.

“Georgia?”

Again, a limited reaction.

“Well that’s where I come from. That’s where we locked the doors nights, not because we had anything worth stealing, but because we were afraid of white men.”

A bigger reaction this time—a swelling volume of sound and motion.

“I know what it means, brother,” Virgil went on, “because I’ve been there! I washed cars for three years and saved my money so I could come to California. I heard I could go to school here and they’d let me. I wanted to come; we lived
in a shack where my mother cooked our food, when we were lucky enough to have any, over a wood stove. A white man built the house for us colored to live in and he didn’t bother to put in any bathroom.”

They were listening to him now. Very few who heard his words had any idea who he was, but they knew that he had taken command in a decisive manner, and that he was black. So they waited to find out what he would do or say next.

“Willie Orthcutt was a wonderful boy,” Tibbs went on. “I never met him, but I know all about him and I can tell you this—he would have made his mark in the world.”

He leaned forward until the tension now in his being could be seen and felt. “I don’t know the white boy who shot Willie Orthcutt, but I’ll promise you something—I’m going to find him. And when I do, justice is going to be done and you can depend on it!”

He was an enigma to the crowd; he was telling them what they wanted to hear, but he was speaking to them with the voice of an educated man—a man who might have been white. He could easily have put a Southern slur into his speech, he had talked that way all through his childhood and had never forgotten how. It had taken him long hard work to overcome it. But he would not do it; he talked to them as he was now and made no apology.

“They did let me into school, as I was promised, and I washed dishes in a fraternity house until I graduated.” At
that moment he sensed that he must make his move. “Now I’m working for you,” he went on without a break. “I’m going to catch that boy; take all the bets you can get on it. I’m a police officer
and that’s my job
!”

The man who had been speaking thrust himself forward and took possession of the microphone. “You know who he is?” he demanded. “He’s a white man in a black man’s skin!”

Before Tibbs could respond to that a youth darted out of the crowd and leaped up onto the platform. He had a fanatical glint in his eye, but he seemed to know what he was doing. Virgil recognized Charles Dempsey. The crowd was on the fence now and it could go either way. He decided to let Dempsey go ahead—because to prevent him from doing so might be fatal.

With a self-possession well beyond his years the teenager faced the microphone and the crowd. “Hey,” he shouted. “Ya all know me. If ya don’t, you heard about me. I’m Sport. You see all these cops around here? Well this here is their boss,
and he’s a black man
!”

He swung his arm wide to arrest attention.
“I was there when Willie Orthcutt was killed
,” he yelled at the top of his voice. “
He was with me. I saw the white kid do it. And this here black man’s gonna ketch him. He’s gonna make that white kid hate the day he was born. Now let ’im go do it!
”

Virgil read the crowd’s reaction and quickly took command. “OK,” he announced. “The party’s over. If you go cool now, no one will get hurt and you won’t get arrested.”

It didn’t quite take, so he resorted to dramatics. Over the microphone he called to Rasmussen. “Call your men back. Let these people through. Let them go home, however they want.”

Ted Rasmussen knew, as every experienced police officer does, that acting is sometimes a vital part of law enforcement. He understood at once what Virgil was doing and he used his own public address system to respond. “Whatever you say, sir,” he came back.

It was enough. Even amplified the words came out respectful and subservient, as he intended them to. Some of the people sneered at him a little as they began to go past where he was standing, but he did not mind. He was glad to let Virgil take all the bows, he had earned them.

On the platform Tibbs took down the name and address of the speaker and then spoke to him quietly. “I know how you feel,” he said. “I’ve felt that way more times than you can count. But don’t ever call me a white man that way again—I’m a Negro, I know it, and I’m proud of it. I had to work two times harder than any white man to get where I am, now don’t you try to take it away from me.”

“All right,” the man said.

Virgil snapped his notebook shut. “You were het up,” he went on. “I told you I can understand that. Have you ever been arrested before?”

Worried now, the man shook his head. “Traffic tickets, that’s all.”

“Then go on home and don’t get involved in any mess
like this again. Inciting to riot is a serious charge, you could do time for it.”

The ex-speaker decided not to push his luck. “Thanks,” he said.

“Good enough. If your record is as clean as you say that it is, then you can forget about today. If it isn’t…” Tibbs tapped his notebook and then slipped it into his pocket.

The show was over, the crowd was flowing away. When the area had cleared enough Virgil walked calmly back to where the station wagon was still standing and said, “Let’s go.”

On the way back into his office Tibbs encountered Captain Lindholm in the corridor. “I heard what happened,” the captain told him. “You did a good job. Now please get back onto that problem about the McGuire boy before something a lot worse happens. Try to get that youngster back today if you can—take him into protective custody if you have to. Get the gun away from him. I know what I’m asking, but there isn’t any alternative.”

“I’ll do my best,” Virgil promised, and went to his desk. Before he could sit down Bob Nakamura intercepted him and indicated that he had some news.

“I’ve got a lead for you. While you were out a call came in from a filling station attendant who works nights near Orange Grove Avenue. He had just gotten out of bed and heard a newscast. He phoned in to say that a boy of about nine or so, who looked as though he might have been out
all night, came in and asked to use the washroom about six this morning. He didn’t have a red jacket, but he was carrying a shoe box.”

“A shoe box?”

“Yes, now get this: after he used the head he asked for directions to Anaheim, by road and by bus. He said that his father was going to take him there. The attendant briefed him and gave him a map. When he asked the boy why he was up so early, he said that he had a paper route.”

Virgil nodded, thinking as he did so. “That was Johnny all right, and you know what was in the shoe box. Anaheim! It fits.”

“And Orange Grove is where you catch the bus into L.A.”

Tibbs became aware of a visitor and looked up to see Charles Dempsey framed in the doorway.

“I didn’t mean to listen, honest I didn’t,” Sport said.

“Don’t worry about it,” Virgil answered. “I’m glad you’re here, it gives me the chance to thank you for what you did down in the park. I’ll mention it in my report.”

The young Negro flushed with pride and satisfaction. “You better make me look good now, heh?”

“I’ll certainly try.” He turned to his partner. “Help me out. Call Anaheim and tell them that I’m coming into their jurisdiction. Kill the jacket ID, it’s been recovered, and advise them about the shoe box—that ought to be fairly easy to spot. I’m going over to get the boy’s father and take him
down there, we may need him before we’re through.” He looked up sternly at Sport who was still in the doorway. “You heard this accidently, that’s understood, but I’m telling you now not to breathe a word about it to anybody, I don’t care who he is. Can I trust you?”

Instead of answering the lanky youth spread out his hands in appeal. “Please, can I come with ya? I won’t do nothin’, but I figure I got that comin’.”

Tibbs made a fast decision; he would have given a great deal if the teen-ager had not heard what had been said and he blamed himself for not having been more careful. “I can’t take you down in the official car, that’s absolutely out. Under no circumstances do I want you to follow me after I leave here—and that’s an order. If you want to drive to Anaheim on your own, then that’s your privilege.”

Bob Nakamura understood perfectly; if Dempsey got in the way down there, Virgil would handle it. “I’ll pass the word that you’re on your way,” he said, then his voice became grim. “Enjoy the ball game.”

As the bus rolled smoothly down the Santa Ana Freeway, Johnny McGuire sat staring out of the window. He had escaped now from Pasadena, but he knew that within a matter of hours he would have to go back. He was on his way to see the Angels in person and meet Tom Satriano face-to-face, but he was also moving farther and farther away from his mother and father who offered the only real shelter, protection, and love that he had ever known.

The vehicle he was riding in was taking him to Disneyland, an almost unbelievable place of enchantment, but so deep was his preoccupation with his troubles, he was hardly aware of that fact. Instead he saw before him, repeated like the rotating patterns of early moving picture devices, the fearful image of the boy he had shot. He saw him standing there;
he felt the gun go off in his hand. Then with terrible clarity he saw the boy fold his arms across his abdomen and slump to the ground.

He, Johnny, had done that terrible thing with his father’s gun. And what was the worst part, he could not say that he was sorry and help the boy to get up again. A horrible, ice-cold chill seized him as he realized once again the paralyzing fact that the boy was dead. His mother had told him so—he had killed the nigger boy.

His chest began to tighten and he wanted to cry. If he could have done so, he would have gotten off the bus right then and started back to Pasadena, back to his mother who would shelter him. He was ready to face the punishment he knew he would have to accept, from the cops for killing the boy and from his father for breaking his radio and then running away. The radio part was not too bad, his mother had told him that his father knew that it had not been his fault. But he had taken his radio to school and he knew that that had been wrong. It had started the whole thing.

The bus edged into the right hand lane, went up an exit ramp, and turned right onto a main surface artery. Towering before him he saw the mighty form of the Matterhorn. Presently the slim outline of a rocket poised on its pad came into view and he knew that this was indeed the magic kingdom, the fabulous Disneyland. But even more than that, it meant that he was in Anaheim!

The gas station man had told him that the Angels baseball stadium was less than a mile away. Excitement began
to build up within him. This might be his last day before he would have to go to prison, but this one precious day would be the greatest one of his life.

The bus turned off the highway into the immense Disneyland parking lot. Overhead a helicopter was just settling down onto the pad provided for air travelers. Up on an embankment an enthralling, old-fashioned steam engine was slowly pulling a string of cars into a station. The bus drove up before the main ticket gates and stopped.