"That's why I asked you to tell me what assurances you want for your safety. Just tell me what guarantees you want, and I'll pass them on. We don't want any slipups here. You tell us what you want, we'll tell you what we're going to do. That way you'll know what we're doing and we'll know what you're doing and nobody'll get hurt, what do you say?"
Come on, she thought.
"How do I know there'll even be a limo. I let the girl go, you come in here with a fuckin' army …"
"No, we'll bring the limo up before you send the girl out. You can check to see it's there."
"Where?"
"Wherever you want it. I thought outside the door on the left side of the house. Where there's that little porch there. Would that be okay?"
"Tell your boss I want whiskey in the limo."
Good, she thought, he's ready to cut a deal.
"No," she said, "I can't get you whiskey."
"Why not?" he said.
"Well, we don't want anybody getting hurt. I know you'll keep your promise, Mr Whittaker, but whiskey doesn't know how to keep promises."
Inside the house, she thought she heard him chuckle again.
"So what shall I tell him?" she asked. "If I get you the limo, will you send the girl out?"
"Suppose I see the limo out there …"
"We'll bring it right up to the door there. All you have to do is step down from the porch there, and get right in the car."
"But suppose I see the car out there, and I let the girl go, like you said, and you blow me away 'fore I even get a chance to climb in that car?"
Working out all the details. Knowing in his heart of hearts that no one was going to let him board a jet to Jamaica, no one was going to let him sip pina coladas in the sun on a tropical beach. But bargaining anyway. Hoping against hope that maybe this would be the big payoff, after all. Let the girl go, climb in the limo . . .
"Well, how would you like us to work it?" she asked. "The bottom line is my boss is going to want to make sure the girl's safe before he lets that limo …"
"Ain't no way a limo's gonna be safe," he said. "I get in that limo, you blow me an' Sonny an' the car to hell and gone. No way, Red. Tell your fuckin' boss I want a chopper. I don't care where he gets it, but that's what I want. Tell him the girl comes out with me to the chopper, I let her go after Sonny's inside an' I'm climbin' in. That's when you get the girl. Tell your boss he's got five minutes to make up his mind. Otherwise he gets the girl, all right, but he gets her dead. Five minutes. Tell him."
On the street outside, the crowd behind the barricade was getting restless. This was already three o'clock in the morning, but no one was thinking of sleep. The only thing on anyone's mind was Showdown at the OK Corral. Toward that end, and with the seeming purpose of rattling everyone in sight so that the only possible outcome would be a loss of blood, a loss of life, further fuel for the inevitable fire to come, The Preacher took up his bullhorn yet another time and started a catchy little chant that had nothing whatever to do with the circumstances at hand.
"No More Jogger Justice!" he shouted in a voice worn ragged and hoarse. "No More Jogger Justice!"
He was referring to the raped and brutally beaten young woman who had captured the attention of the entire world. He was referring to the guilty verdicts brought in against her attackers. It didn't matter that the young white hooker and the two black killers inside that house could not by the remotest stretch of anyone's imagination, least of all The Preacher's, be identified with the jogger and her brutal assailants. What mattered to The Preacher was that he place himself at the heart of wherever the action was, creating action if there didn't happen to be any, and presenting himself on television as the lone and lonely voice of black sensibility -whereas in reality most black people knew he was nothing but a rabble-rouser dedicated exclusively to self-promotion.
"No More Jogger Justice!" he shouted into the bullhorn. "No More Jogger Justice!"
And the crowd - not a moment earlier lulled almost to sleep by this endless chess game with its black-and-white pieces being maneuvered on a black-and-white board that seemed to stretch off to a vanishing point somewhere all too far in the infinite distance - the crowd picked up the catchy little chant, "No More Jogger Justice!" and amplified it without benefit of bullhorns, "No More Jogger Justice!", beating out the words in a four-four tempo that all but cried for foot-stomping, "No More Jogger Justice!", the litany spilling out over the barricades to cascade onto the front porch of the house where Dolly Simms sat white-faced and stunned at the window.
