Echoes of Sherlock Holmes: Stories Inspired by the Holmes Canon(80)
“Brothers and sisters, friends and allies,” he began, several microphones taped in place before him. Various television news crews were covering the presentation, more than one news van close to the stage. Several cameramen were stationed about with their bulky video cameras harnessed to their bodies and porta-packs like an astronaut’s oxygen tank strapped to their backs. There were also several others still using 16mm film cameras and didn’t have to be tethered to control panels. Cables of various gauges were strewn everywhere, leading back to news vans double-and triple-parked up and down the packed street. Agile radio reporters, mobile with their light-weight microphones plugged into cassette decks, easily eddied through the crowd as well.
“This is a troubling day for us, for the movement.” A palpable wave surged through the crowd. “Our beloved Doctor Professor Lincoln Mills Barrow has been cut down savagely, cowardly.” As one of the uniformed police who stood about tensed at these words, Martin X paused and gazed at his audience.
“That it was murder is obvious. That this heinous act is meant to dishearten and subvert the long march we have been on is all too evident as well. Like the bombing of those innocent children in their church in Birmingham and the kidnapping and brutal murders of Schwerner, Goodman, and Chaney in Philadelphia, Mississippi, fear and terror are the twin instruments of repression visited upon us,” he continued, his voice rising in accordance to the import of his words. “These forces are out to deter our inevitable and irrevocable advance to freedom and equality. But we will not be dissuaded, we will not be intimidated nor stopped. No sir. Not today, not tomorrow, not any day.”
Applause and yells of support went up from the gathered. Martin X gripped the podium on either side, rocking the thing slightly. “I stand today before this magnificent house of worship not to implore the powers that be to bring our beloved Lincoln Barrows’s murderers to ground. No, I say this city, this state, has no choice but to drag these villains into the light and wherever the truth lies as to who put the gunman in motion, so be it.”
“Tell it,” several exclaimed loudly as the murmuring grew. More than one police officer tightened his grip on their sheathed nightstick, wiping the tip of their tongues across dry lips.
“There is no choice but accountability in this regard,” Martin X declared, sweat prominent on his brow. “Too long have we peacefully demanded justice for the wrongs waylaid against us, and too long have we had to grin and bear it.”
There was more clapping and whoops of approval. Dock Watson scanned faces, cops and civilians, as he stood behind Martin X, but not on the small stage. Oddly, situations like this didn’t cause him to have flashbacks to this or that firefight he’d been in, going on a decade ago. Rather, he found himself centered, his heart rate and pulse slowed, errant sounds as distinct to him as glass bursting in slow motion, so he heard the tinkling of each shard. Off to one side he zeroed in on a cameraman who had just tilted his device upward. What the hell?
Watson craned his head around. “Dammit,” he muttered, looking for his short-barreled .44 revolver in its rig under his jean jacket.
“Then we must not wait any longer,” bellowed a figure from the roof of the church. He was dressed in a colorful dashiki and black pants. But this wasn’t just some rogue rabble rouser suddenly piggybacking on Martin X’s thunder. People gasped as word spread through the crowd like sub-atomic particles: the man up there looked like the recently murdered Lincoln Barrow. “We must show the system we can’t be fooled,” the figure shouted. “There must be retribution in blood.”
As if in reply, gunfire exploded from the WZIX news van near the stage. But Dock Watson was already in motion. He tackled Martin X as bullets splintered the podium into firewood. A round nicked the back of his calf as the two men landed hard on the sidewalk. All around him people were panicking and there was the squealing of tires and the continued thudding of gunfire as the news van tore away, a police car roaring after it in pursuit.
“You okay?” Watson demanded.
“Yes, yes I think I’m fine, John,” said the civil rights leader. He was shaken but not coming unglued.
“Rasheed, Elliot—get Martin inside the church,” he told two of the security team. They rushed to the man as Watson was up and running.
The news van bounced off the side of a double-parked station wagon, tearing loose the vehicle’s front bumper. The van’s back doors banged open and a machine gun on a tripod streamed gunfire in all directions. Bullets peppered the chasing police car’s windshield. Blinded, the wounded driver crashed into a junk cart. A discarded toilet on the cart skidded along the sidewalk while sections of copper pipe and loose girly magazines flew through the air.
A man on a Triumph motorcycle zoomed into view. He adeptly weaved and maneuvered in such a way that the machine gun, operating by a pre-set electrical-mechanical device, shot impotently at the rider. As the weapon swung left, he went right and vice versa. Dock Watson was running and, when possible, given the density, jumping from car rooftop to rooftop in pursuit as well. The news van rounded a corner and bore down on two movers carrying a couch out of an apartment to their truck. The two cursed, dropped the couch, and scrambled for safety. The van slammed into the couch then fishtailed into a lamppost on the sidewalk. This was in front of Peoples Clinic No. 3.
Snapped loose from its moorings, the lamppost’s live wires snaked and sizzled about on the street. The Triumph circled the corner, and the rider intentionally laid it down in a flurry of sparks. The motorcycle slid under the rear of the van, the ruined machine wrapping around the rear axle, immobilizing the vehicle. Gas spurted from the Triumph’s gas tank onto the roadway. The rider had rolled when his bike went down. Now he was up and running toward the van. He flung open the driver’s door.