3rd Degree - James Patterson [55]
There was part of me that liked seeing Lemouz’s slick, superior veneer crack. “I want to know one more thing. And this stays between us. Okay?”
Lemouz nodded. “Of course.”
“The name August Spies. You know it?”
Lemouz blinked. The color came back to his face. “That’s what they’re calling themselves?”
I sat down and pushed myself close to him. We had never let the name out before. And he knew. I could see it on his face.
“Tell me, Lemouz. Who are the August Spies?”
Chapter 74
“HAVE YOU EVER HEARD of the Haymarket Massacre?” he asked me, talking as if I were one of his students.
“You mean in Chicago?” I said.
“Very good, Lieutenant.” Lemouz nodded. “To this day, there is a statue there. To mark it. On May first, 1886, there was a massive labor demonstration up Michigan Avenue. The greatest gathering of labor to that point in the history of the United States. Eighty thousand workers, women and children too. To this day, May Day is celebrated as labor’s official holiday around the globe. Everywhere, of course,” he said with a smirk, “but in the United States.”
“Cut to the chase. I don’t need the politics.”
“The demonstration was peaceful,” Lemouz went on, “and over the next couple of days, more and more workers went out on strike and rallied. Then, on the third day, the police fired into the crowd. Two protestors were killed. The next day another demonstration was organized. At Haymarket Square. Randolph and Des Plaines Streets.
“Angry speeches blasted the government. The mayor ordered the police to disperse the crowd. One hundred seventy-six Chicago cops entered the square in a phalanx and stormed the crowd, wielding their nightsticks. Then the police opened fire. When the dust settled, seven police and four demonstrators lay dead.
“The police needed scapegoats, so they rounded up eight labor leaders, some of whom were not even there that day.”
“Where is this heading?”
“One of them was a teacher named August Spies. They tried and hanged them all. By the neck. Until dead. Later on, Spies was shown not to have even been at Haymarket. He said, as he stood on the scaffold, ‘If you think that by hanging us you can stamp out the labor movement, then hang us. The ground is on fire where you stand. Let the voice of the people be heard.’”
Lemouz stared deeply into my eyes. “A moment barely recorded in the history of your country, Lieutenant, but one that would inspire. One that apparently has.”
Chapter 75
PEOPLE WERE GOING TO DIE here soon. Quite a lot of people, actually.
Charles Danko sat pretending to read the Examiner underneath the giant fountain in the sparkling glass atrium of the Rincon Center just off Market Street, downtown near the Bay Bridge. From above him, an eighty-five-foot plume of water splashed breathtakingly into a shallow pool.
Americans like to feel awe, he thought to himself—they liked it in their movies, their pop art, and even their shopping centers. So I’ll make them feel awe. I’ll make them feel in awe of death.
It would be busy here today, Danko knew. The Rincon Center’s restaurants were getting ready for the surge of the lunch crowd. A thousand or more escapees from law firms and real estate trusts and financial advisers around the Financial District.
Too bad this can’t stretch out a little longer, Charles Danko thought, and sighed, the regret of someone who has waited such a long time for the moment. The Rincon Center had proved to be one of his favorite places in San Francisco.
Danko didn’t acknowledge the well-dressed black man who picked out a place beside him facing the fountain. He knew the man was a veteran of the Gulf War. Despondent ever since. Dependable, though perhaps a little high-strung.
“Mal said I could call you ‘Professor.’” The black spoke out of the side of his mouth.
“And you are Robert?” Danko asked.
The man nodded. “Robert I am.”
A woman started to play on a grand piano in the center of the atrium. Every day at ten to twelve. A melody from Phantom of the Opera began to fill the gigantic space.
“You know who to look for?” Danko