Chapter 16.

A lit cigarette dangling from his lip, the bartender rushed to Frank as he hung up. “You said those animals burned a black Caddie on Seventy-Seventh?”

Frank nodded. “Nice one, a classic.”

“In an apartment’s parking lot?”

Frank nodded.

The bartender snarled and slammed the flat of his fist on the bar, the tendons of his thick neck visible. “My brother’s car… No respect for a man’s property.”

Frank nodded. “Amen. Mindless thugs destroying that beauty. No respect.”

The bartender stewed for a beat, gazing out the window with his jaw clenched tight, and said under his breath, “Fucking thugs and criminals.” And then he exploded into fiery motion, snagging a rifle and rushing towards the door. “Wait until Zac hears about this shit.”

Frank drank, astonished by the violent reaction. As the bartender burst through the door, though, street noise roared through Club Seventy-Nine. Frank did a double-take and shot upright, gazing through the front windows.

His jaw fell open, shocked.

The mob had swelled to several hundred colored rioters strong. He sensed their anger. They chanted, yelled, and threw bricks and stones across Hough Avenue at the businesses, focusing the brunt of their fury on the bar. A handful of police and armed partisans held them at bay. The bartender and Zac bustled from the alley, bolting up Hough to East 77th, where Zac’s shoulders slumped as he gazed at the burning car.

Frank sighed, shaking his head. “I feel your pain, boss.” He turned to grab his drink as his ears perked.

He stopped, snapping to attention because something sounded… it just sounded off. He opened the door. Over the roaring crowd, he heard faint scratches and voices from the alley Zac had been guarding. Blood singing in his ears, Frank darted through the door. In the alley, he surprised two black men with a can of red spray paint tagging the wall with graffiti.

“Hey, stop,” Frank said, his baritone bellowing. Startled, two heads whipped around, and, seeing him, the vandals bolted into the dark, Frank straining to see them in the gloom.

No dice.

Several white partisans converged on the alley, probably hearing Frank, waving their flashlights. A beefy, slovenly man sneered, saying, with a deep Appalachian accent, “Eenie, Meenie, Miney, Moe, catch a n****r by the toe.”

The men howled in laughter.

“Come out, boy,” another partisan said, sneering. “We ain’t gonna hurt you… much.”

Again, cold peals of laughter as flashlight beams ping ponged off the alley’s walls, searching. Eyeballs glinted, and the beams converged on the vandals hiding on a fire escape landing. The vandals jumped to the ground, darting towards the chain-link fence bounding the alley’s rear.

“Git that n****r,” the beefy slob yelled, raising his rifle and running as the vandals leaped a fence into an adjacent backyard, whooping like a pack of hounds trailing prey.

Frank joined in, jumping the fence and fanning out in pursuit, thinking: Goddamned vandals, destroying stuff for kicks, idiotic followers emboldened by the mob mentality, lashing out for…

Frank’s brow knit, realizing he did not know what had set off the rioters. He had seen Walter Cronkite talking about police brutality in Watts and Bedford–Stuyvesant, but doubted Cleveland cops were that thuggish.

Well, not the cops he knew….

But he couldn’t think because the slob called off the hunt. Enlivened by the chase, the partisans hooted and talked trash as they marched to Club Seventy-Nine.

Outside the front door, Frank wiped his damp forehead with his kerchief. Zac and the bartender returned, and the slob briefed the brothers about the vandalism as the others retook their posts. When beefy finished, he followed suit.

Zac cleared his throat, elbowing the bartender in the ribs, pointing to Frank. “Check this citizen, Jon. The guy don’t know us from Adam, but rushes in, unarmed. Did they have guns? Didn’t matter to this soldier. Nothing phased him.” Zac clapped Frank on the back. “You got a serious pair, soldier. I mean, stones the size of Gibraltar.”

They shared a laugh.

Zac smiled, saying, “Joking aside, thanks. We appreciate it, soldier. You’re a real-life GI Joe.”

Frank laughed a clipped, nervous laugh, unconvinced he’d done anything special. “Just doing my neighborly best. Besides, I finished soldiering years ago, and left that glory hound nonsense in Germany.”

Zac took Frank’s measure. “But you’re a war vet, ain’t you?”

“Yup. Served in the big one.” Frank’s chest puffed with pride. “Staff sergeant, Third Infantry Division in France.”

Zac nodded, as if impressed. “Nice.” He pulled a flashlight from its belt clip. They rounded the corner to assess the damage, which could be worse, like the firebombing Frank had feared. Instead, graffiti in red paint said, “NO WATER FOR N****RS.”

“Well, back to the trenches," Jon said.“Thank God it’s just graffiti.”

Frank snorted in disgust. “Just graffiti?” Jon stopped as Frank said, “What the hell did you guys do to deserve this? And them firebombing the Caddie? Nothing. Goddamned vandals. Street trash. No respect for people’s stuff.”

“Got that right,” Jon said, slipping through the door. "But what you gonna do?"

The door shut.

Zac turned to Frank with a gleam in his eye. “Say, old timer, you want to help us? We ain’t the Rockefeller brothers, but we’ll make it worth your while.”

Frank shrugged. “Sure, if you need.”

“We do. Here.” Zac offered Frank the small-caliber rifle he’d been carrying. Frank grabbed it, and a wry grin sprang to his lips. Because it was a freaking squirrel gun, miles short of the man-stopping carbine he’d used in the War.

He suppressed a shrug, not wanting to seem glib.

But still… a twenty-two? To hold off a mob? Are you serious?

Zac didn’t catch Frank’s cynicism, though, because his serious demeanor didn’t crack as he said, “Back in a flash.” He disappeared into the bar, emerging a few seconds later toting a Springfield thirty-ought-six rifle.

Impressed, Frank leaned back on his heels. Now THAT would stop a man.

Zac assigned Frank to watch the rear of the alley and handed Frank an ice-cold Coke he’d brought for him. Thanking Zac, Frank grabbed the bottle and looked for a safe perch with a comfy seat, things that made along, dull watch bearable in his experience.

After a careful survey, he settled on a sealed-off doorway, recessed eight inches into the wall, with a clear view of the back. He looked around, pleased. This would do. He smiled, pulled a milk crate from the detritus in the alley for a chair, and sat, tickled that Zac had given Frank a purpose.

And Frank relished purposeful action and teamwork.

He swigged the cola, its chilly sweetness refreshing in the heavy summer air with the faint whiff of foul smoke on the breeze. He knew where the smoke came from. The rioters. They’d torched a sharp-looking classic car restored with painstaking precision, and the small grocery up the street. Such petty violence seemed pointless.

Scumbags.

#

Frank settled in for the long-haul, seated and half-camouflaged by the doorway’s shadows. At the alley’s other mouth, Zac leaned against the wall, jacketless and tie loosened, chain-smoking Marlboros and cursing under his breath as the hook and ladder arrived to extinguish the smoldering remains of his car.

Zac seemed too exposed to Frank’s tooth, but the rioters had gone silent, retreating again. So maybe Frank was being too cautious? Regardless, they had to protect the bar, a vital asset in the Partisan Empire.

Not that Frank understood what made Club Seventy-Nine so vital, but so it goes. He was a mere Staff Sargeant, a non-com, and what he didn’t know dwarfed what he did a million to one.

As usual, watch duty proved boring as watching concrete cure. It was hot as hell, and even though Frank stood stock-still, he sweated like a stuck pig. So he removed his jacket, excusing himself to drape it over a barstool inside. Frank resumed his post, protecting the rear flank of a God-forsaken dive bar in the God-forsaken Hough neighborhood on a steamy, God-forsaken night.

But he’d promised, and his word was his bond.

#

Ninety minutes past last light by Frank’s reckoning, the Vandals attacked. Three, maybe four hundred colored men emerged from the shadows, swarming across the street, heaving flaming Molotov Cocktails, lit rags doused in oil that threw off a putrid black smoke, and stones and Club Seventy-Nine. They came nowhere near hitting the bar, but the oil smoke choked Frank, so he pulled on his gas mask.

He looked to Zac, his CO and the ranking Partisan officer in this hell-hole, for orders. But the ballsy bastard wasn’t paying attention to Frank. Nor was he cowed by the onslaught. Instead, he stood tall, undeterred by the smoking oil that burned the eyes and smelled like scorched asphalt, his thirty-ought-six trained across the street to keep the Vandals at bay. The other Partisan soldiers took courage from him, because they all held, despite the threat of actual violence.

The Vandals’ first charges proved ineffectual. They’d advance, toss projectiles, and retreat to safety. Lob after lob, their tosses fell short.

But they outnumbered the Partisans twenty-to-one. And Frank saw a desperate determination in their eyes, reminding him of the French Maquis, the deadly guerillas who pestered the Vichy fascists, armed with hunting rifles, Molotovs, and second-rate military equipment, often WW1 castoffs.

Both GIs and fascist soldiers were tough, trained, and well-armed, but they were doing a job while the Maquis had a soul-deep mission: defending their way of life. Fired-up, those glorious bastards fought like the Devil himself. No conscripted army could defeat that level of passion. You just can't pay people that much.

The Nazis tried for a decade. It was like playing Whack-A-Mole. They’d put down a Maquis uprising in one village, and the guerillas would pop up two villages away, dynamiting train tracks and opening fire on barracks before melting into the rural terrain.

Pests, no doubt. And the Maquis could never win outright, without major help. But they didn’t care. They were fighting for “Liberté, égalité, fraternité,” for God and family and their villages, not dull abstract concepts, like a nation.

And definitely not for a paycheck.

Frank sensed that in the Vandals. An experienced soldier, he knew the Partisans could never hold their fortified position despite being better armed and with law enforcement backing.

Doesn’t bode well.

So, while keeping his eyeballs peeled to the rear alley, he scurried over to Zac and motioned to the handy-talkie radio strapped to his side, asking, “Should I call in air support, sir?”

Without flinching or taking his stony, smoke-reddened gaze from the Vandal horde, Zac nodded. “Show these boys what we’re made of, soldier.”