White River Burning. John Verdon
statements burst into flying shards, replaced by a video of a nighttime street scene—an angry crowd chanting, “Justice for Laxton . . . Justice for Laxton . . . Justice for Laxton . . .” Demonstrators with signs bearing the same message were thrusting them up and down to the rhythm of the chant. The crowd was being contained by waist-high movable fencing, backed up by a line of cops in riot gear. When the video source was switched to a second camera angle, Gurney could see that the demonstration was taking place in front of a granite-faced building. The words WHITE RIVER POLICE DEPARTMENT were visible on the stone lintel above the front door.
At the bottom of the video screen, the words BATTLEGROUND TONIGHT—ONLY ON RAM-TV were flashing in a bright-red stripe.
The video shifted to what appeared to be another demonstration. The camera was positioned behind the demonstrators, facing the speaker addressing them. He spoke in a voice that rose and fell, paused and stretched in the cadences of an old-time preacher. “We have asked for justice. Begged for justice. Pleaded for justice. Cried for justice. Cried so much. Cried so long. Cried bitter tears for justice. But those days are over. The days of asking and begging and pleading—those days are behind us. Today, on this day that the Lord hath made, on this day of days, on this day of reckoning, we DEMAND justice. Here and now, we DEMAND it. I say it again, lest there be deaf ears in high places—we DEMAND justice. For Laxton Jones, murdered on this very street, we DEMAND justice. Standing on this very street, standing in the place anointed by his innocent blood, we DEMAND justice.” He raised both fists high above his head, his voice swelling up into a hoarse roar. “It is his sacred RIGHT in the sight of God. His RIGHT as a child of God. This RIGHT will not be denied. Justice MUST be done. Justice WILL be done.”
As he spoke, his dramatic pauses were filled with loud amens and other cries and murmurs of approval, growing more insistent as the speech progressed. An identifying line was superimposed on the video like a foreign-film subtitle: “Marcel Jordan, Black Defense Alliance.”
The group standing in front of the Gelters’ TV, holding colorful cocktails and little hors d’oeuvre plates, had grown larger and more attentive, reminding Gurney that nothing attracts a crowd like aggressive emotion. In fact, that one nasty truth seemed to be propelling the race to the bottom in the country’s political discourse and news programming.
As the demonstrators began to sing the old civil rights anthem “We Shall Overcome,” the video scene changed again. It showed a crowd outdoors at night, but very little was happening. The people were loosely assembled with their backs to the camera on a grassy area just beyond a treelined sidewalk. The illumination, evidently coming from overhead streetlights, was partly blocked by the trees. From somewhere out of sight came bits and pieces of an amplified speech, its rhythms indistinctly captured by the camera’s microphone. Two patrol officers in modified riot gear were moving back and forth on the sidewalk, as if to continually vary their lines of sight around the trees and through the crowd.
The fact that nothing of significance was happening in a video selected for broadcast could mean only one thing—that something was about to happen. Just as it occurred to Gurney what it might be, the video frame froze and a statement was superimposed on it:
WARNING!!!
A VIOLENT EVENT IS ABOUT TO BE SHOWN
IF YOU WOULD PREFER NOT TO WITNESS IT
CLOSE YOUR EYES FOR THE NEXT SIXTY SECONDS
The video continued, with the two officers again moving slowly along the sidewalk, their attention on the crowd. Gurney grimaced, his jaw clenched in anticipation of what he was now sure was coming.
Suddenly the head of one of the officers jerked forward, and he fell facedown onto the concrete, hard, as though an invisible hand had slammed him down.
There were cries of shock and dismay from the guests around the TV. Most continued watching the video—the panicky movements of the second officer as he realized what had happened, his frantic attempts at first aid, his shouting into his cell phone, the spreading awareness of trouble, the confused milling and retreat of many of the nearest onlookers.
Two key facts were clear. The shot had come not from the crowd but from somewhere behind the victim. And either the shooter was far enough away or the weapon was sufficiently silenced for the shot not to be picked up by the camera’s audio system.
Gurney was aware of the bathroom door sliding open behind him, but he remained focused on the video. Three more officers arrived on the run, two with weapons drawn; one of the other officers took off his own protective vest and placed it under the man’s head; more cell phone calls were made; the crowd was breaking apart; a distant siren was growing louder.
“Goddamn animals.”
The voice behind Gurney had a rough scraping quality that sharpened the contempt conveyed by the words.
He turned and came face-to-face with a man of his own height, build, and age. His features were individually normal, even ideal; but they didn’t seem to go together.
“Gurney, right?”
“Right.”
“NYPD detective?”
“Retired.”
A shrewd look entered the eyes that seemed a bit too close together. “Technically, right?”
“A bit more than technically.”
“My point is, being a cop gets in the blood. It never goes away, right?” He smiled, but the effect was chillier than if he hadn’t.
Gurney returned the smile. “How do you know who I am?”
“My wife always lets me know who she’s bringing into the house.”
Gurney thought of a cat announcing with a distinctive meow that she was bringing in a captured mouse. “So you’re Marv Gelter. Nice to meet you.”
They shook hands, Gelter eyeing him as one might examine an interesting object for its potential utility.
Gurney nodded toward the TV. “That’s quite a thing you have over there.”
Gelter peered for a moment at the big screen, his eyes narrowing. “Animals.”
Gurney said nothing.
“You had to deal with that kind of shit in the city?”
“Cops being shot?”
“The whole thing. The circus of bullshit. The entitlement.” He articulated the last word with vicious precision. His eyes narrowed as he stared at Gurney, apparently waiting for a response, an endorsement.
Again Gurney said nothing. On the screen, two talking heads were arguing. One was contending that the current problems were part of the endless price being paid for the moral disaster of slavery, that the destruction of families had wrought irreparable damage, carried from generation to generation.
His opponent was shaking his head. “The problem was never the enslavement of Africans. That’s a myth. A politically correct fairy tale. The problem is simpler, uglier. The problem is . . . Africans! Look at the facts. Millions of Africans were never enslaved. But Africa is still a total disaster! Every country, a disaster! Ignorance. Illiteracy. Lunacy. Diseases too disgusting to describe. Mass rapes. Genocides. This isn’t the result of slavery. This is the nature of Africa. And Africans!”
The talking heads froze in place. Jagged triangles of color came swirling in from the edges of the screen, forming the letters of the words that earlier had blown apart:
EXPLOSIVE NEWS—HAPPENING NOW
SEE IT ALL ON BATTLEGROUND TONIGHT
THERE’S NOTHING AS REAL AS RAM-TV
Gelter nodded appreciatively before speaking, his eyes still on the screen. “Killer point about all the slavery bullshit. And he nailed the truth about the African cesspool. Refreshing to hear a man with the balls to tell it like it is.”
Gurney shrugged. “Balls . . . or a mental disorder.”
Gelter