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Other protesters giggle and snort.

“To show he cares about the environment?”

“Because he’s such a good guy.”

I smile and nod approvingly. What a bunch of dipshits.

“What’s the plan?”

“When Julius tells us, we head up the hill. St. Luke’s is on the right. The kids will just be getting out.”

“Is there security at the school?”

“This is Portland, Darcy.”

“Okay, but what about Laumann’s son?”

“Alex?” Megan says the name as if she’s somehow claimed it.

“How’s he going to react?” I ask eagerly.

Darcy craves action. Excitement. Blood on the walls.

“Nobody wants to hurt a child, but hopefully Laumann will be so humiliated in front of his son that he’ll finally get the message.”

Her cell again. She looks up with eager eyes. “Julius is at the school. It’s a go.”

A swell of anticipation sends people rushing to their cars to retrieve homemade signs and lock up watches and rings and wallets in the unlikely event of arrest.

Laumann rolls down a fogged-up window and sets the hot coffee mug in the cup holder. He makes sure to flash the BLM logo every place he gets a refill, eager to set an example of earth-friendly recycling. As deputy state director, he is the government—not an easy role these days.

Just this week, the psychos at FAN accused him on its Web site—and it made the legitimate press—that he has been stealing the horses he’s supposed to protect. Since then, the phone and fax lines to his office have been jammed with threats of violence against anyone who supports the Wild Horse and Burro Program—including secretaries, suppliers of tack and hay, even veterinarians. He thinks he kicked that poser Bill Fontana’s ass pretty good at the animal rights convention, calling the story “a fabricated radical conspiracy,” but in truth, Herbert Laumann needs the money. His civil service pay grade is way out of line with tuition for a private Catholic school, and Laumann and his wife want the boy to have a good education, and to be safe. Even in this transitional neighborhood, where angry white youth patrol the streets, Laumann (who grew up in a farming community) believes his son is less likely to come into harm’s way than in the public schools.

St. Luke’s is on a hill, protected by wrought-iron gates—a shabby plot of dull redbrick buildings and a couple of elms. The bright spots on campus are a Romanesque Church built in 1891 and the indoor tennis courts. Laumann’s twelve-year-old son is a talented player, and St. Luke’s has a good team, which makes it almost worth the price tag. Waiting for scrawny, long-legged Alex to come through the gates in his blue plaid uniform, toting his racket in a junior varsity bag, yakking it up with scores of red-cheeked, cheerful friends, allows Laumann to believe, for fifteen minutes in the car-pool line, that his insanely overstressed, overburdened, slightly criminal life might be worth something.

Carrying signs but silent still, we reach the entrance to the school. The gates pull back automatically, right on time, and the sidewalk becomes alive with the random energy of a couple hundred bouncing children in blue plaid uniforms. The engines in the line of waiting cars fire one by one, and Laumann sits up with anticipation. They have a new baby girl at home who isn’t doing well—respiratory problems, underweight, and waking in the night. Whenever he stops moving, even for a minute, he falls into an exhausted daze. The weather is still soupy and the wipers make it worse, so Laumann hasn’t turned them on. Looking through the watery glass, he never sees us coming.

At first, we mix in with the crowd—all of us with the same greasy hair, grungy denim, and attitude as the neighborhood types. Many of us are not much older than the miscreants on the corner, or the seniors at St. Luke’s. Moving in clusters of three and four, we wave our banners: MURDERER! WE KNOW WHAT YOU DID LAST SUMMER!

The schoolchildren slow down.

“Save the wild horses!”

“Save our American heritage!”

Chanting in unison, we, the protesters, bulldoze through