“The man in the car refused to get out,” one of the officers responded in a near shout.
“No, I said I would get out and I agreed to comply, but I also wanted to show you my badge.” Becker corrected from inside the car. “I was taking off my seatbelt and pulling my ID when the first officer drew his weapon instead of waiting.”
“Why the hell would he need to get out?” I asked, moving to the driver’s side window so he no longer had a clear shot at Becker.
“Don’t move!” the cop warned me.
“Miro, stop!” Ian ordered, and I heard the edge of fear in his voice.
“You need to put down your weapons,” Dorsey bellowed at the cops. “We’re federal marshals, you asshole!”
But the cops weren’t buying it—as they shouldn’t have, without ID—but wouldn’t let any of us reach into our coats. Since we weren’t about to let them take Becker or Ching out of the car, we were at a standstill.
It felt like we stood there for hours, with more helicopters and more policemen, and of course the crowd that formed. And it didn’t need to be any of those things, but as far as I could tell, Becker and Ching had gotten pulled over for no other reason than Becker being black.
Ching was livid. I could hear him swearing. Both he and Becker still had their hands on the dashboard, but with the four of us around the car, the cops couldn’t even see inside anymore.
“I’m still convinced that not all of these guys are racist or stupid,” Becker said from beside me as I was standing at his window. “I just think that a few of them who perform these stop-and-frisk searches are, and they’re the ones who end up looking like fuckups on the nightly news.”
“Or do worse than look stupid,” I said angrily.
“Yes,” he agreed solemnly.
“And if they weren’t racist, they wouldn’t be targeting African-Americans,” I griped, squatting down beside the window so I could look him in the eye.
“Shit, stop moving,” he cautioned as there was a barrage of yelling behind me.
“Miro, freeze!” Ian demanded from the other side of the car.
“They’re not gonna shoot me,” I assured him before refocusing on Becker. “Tell him they’re not gonna shoot me.”
“I can’t say that with any real conviction,” Becker replied. “The only reason they didn’t shoot me and Wes was because four white men surrounded the car.”
“I don’t believe that.”
“Because you’re white,” he said pointedly and then grunted.
“What?”
“You said African-American before,” he replied.
“Yeah? And?”
“It’s very proper, very PC, very careful of you to say.”
“What do you mean careful?”
“It’s just, that’s how I can tell whose report I’m reading—yours or Doyle’s—when I see them even without looking at your names.”
“You lost me.”
He chuckled. “He’ll put race down as black or white or Hispanic, you’re all fancy and you say African-American, Mexican-American, Italian-American… it’s fuckin’ exhausting.”
“It’s correct.”
“It’s careful, and I get why you do it, but Doyle’s in the military so it’s different for him. The rank is important but not much else.”
I thought about that. “I just never want to be disrespectful to anyone. I think because I don’t know what I am exactly, I’m always careful with what other people are.”
“Which makes sense,” he agreed. “But you can say black and I promise you no one’s going to lose their mind.”
“So endeth the lesson?” I teased.
“Yeah.”
I groaned. “I wish whatever the fuck this is could end too.”
He snickered. “At least The Befuddled Owl is out.”
“You didn’t want to go either?”
His scowl made me smile in spite of everything else. “Nobody wanted to go, especially not Ryan.”
I looked around, taking in the deadlocked scene. “Man, I had other plans for tonight, I swear to God.”
“Well, just don’t reach for anything like your phone, all right? I don’t wanna get shot because they’re aiming for you.”
“No, come on, it’s gone on too long already. They’re just posturing now. They’re committed to this, and now they can’t back down until someone with power shows up.”
“I hate to be the one to break it to you, Jones, but lots of people have been killed who were much less threatening than the six of us are at the moment.”
I knew that too. I watched the news just like everybody else.
“And I don’t mean just here, but all over.”
“Yes,” I agreed. “And now, these cops, they could be scared too, right?”
“True.”
“For all they know we’re mob enforcers packing Micro-Uzis.”
“In the giant red Hummer you guys all came in and this piece of shit Olds we’re driving?”
“It’s the suits and trench coats,” I teased.
He scoffed. “How does Ian’s uniform fit in?”
“Oh God,” I groaned. “I don’t think anyone noticed his beret.”
“I’m going with no.”
“If he takes off his coat—Christ.”
“Yeah. That’d be brilliant on the front pages of the Sun-Times and the Trib tomorrow.”