Off duty that night, Grip was at the wheel of his DeSoto—all four windows down to get some air—creeping through a neighborhood of low buildings with heavy doors. It was twilight here, a jaundiced light rendering every color false. Two men accompanied Grip. Ole Koss rode shotgun, working a toothpick, listening to some preacher on a Christian radio station. He was a big, muscular vet, close-shaved head, weird scar on his mouth that made his upper lip move a little funny when he talked. Grip wasn’t sure what Koss did for work, but he always seemed to have time for these things. Grady Filkins sat in the backseat, a corporate geek on his first time out, looking to get his thrills. Grip had picked up that Koss didn’t like Filkins; the geek physically frail, a desk zealot still in bow tie and straw fedora.
Koss read off street numbers as they eased along through sparse traffic. Grip saw cops every few blocks, walking with their hands on their truncheons. Campaign posters for the mayor were plastered onto brick walls along with posters for his opponent, Vic Truffant, and anticommunist propaganda: giant, vaguely Asian eyes captioned THE ENEMY IS AMONG US; shady, Semitic-featured men lurking under the hammer and sickle. Above them, the night clouds were lit red and purple from below.
On the radio, the preacher was going on about the Antichrist or something; Grip hated that shit, but there was never much profit in arguing with Koss. Filkins chain-smoked in the back, nervous as hell. He wasn’t the type of guy you’d peg for rough work.
“Yeah, up here,” Koss said, indicating a cinder-block building with a cargo door and an entrance to its right.
Grip glided to a stop at the curb. Koss pulled a sack from under his seat and produced two guns. He secured one in the back of his waistband and tossed the other to Filkins, who recoiled as if it were a live grenade landing in his lap.
“Put it in your pocket,” Koss said. “We’re going to leave you at the bottom of the stairs. Someone shows up, you stick the gun in his face and bring him to us. Don’t be weak with the piece. If someone gets his hands on it, I’ll have to kill them and that would be too bad.”
“I don’t …”
Koss sucked in his lips.
“You won’t have to do anything,” Grip said gruffly, trying to head this off before it turned into a disaster. “Stand at the door, maybe have your gun out. Don’t talk, just stand there. Nobody’s going to show up. We’ll only be up there for a couple minutes.”
Filkins seemed uncertain. Koss turned in this seat and shot him a withering look. “You going to get it together?” It came out like a question, but it wasn’t.
They waited in the car for ten minutes, listening to Christian radio while Filkins made humming noises in the backseat, trying to get his nerves under control. The wall was peppered with Truffant posters—maybe the Reds thought this was some kind of camouflage.
A heavy guy in a white shirt padded down the street and approached the door to the cinder-block building. He stopped, pulling keys from his pocket with a surreptitious look both ways. Grip was out of the car quickly, moving on the guy with practiced efficiency—a cop move. Koss followed him. The guy turned, surprised, and Grip stuck a pistol in his ribs.
“Open up, real quiet.”
The man’s eyes were wide with fear, but he unlocked the door and Grip followed him through. They left Filkins, hands shaking, on the ground floor while Grip pushed the fat guy up the stairs with a pistol in his back. Koss followed, gun drawn.
At the top of the landing they listened; heard a sliding sound that came at long intervals, and muffled conversation. Grip motioned the guy to go in, the guy looking as if he were going to be sick. Grip moved his pistol up to the man’s head and he swallowed hard and opened the door. Grip pushed him into the room and followed tight behind.
Inside, three men looked up, stunned. They were working a small printing press, churning out commie posters: crude block prints of Mao; a blond guy with a scythe looking heroic in front of a field of wheat; WORKERS UNITE. Two wore Lenin beards; they were all small, wiry. Grip thought Koss could probably take all three of them at once, no problem.
“What the hell?” one of them sputtered as they instinctively retreated to the far side of the room. Koss pushed the fat guy toward them. Grip covered them with his gun, closing the distance. They didn’t look to have the nerve or the ability to put up any resistance. Still, you never knew.
Koss took the press, flipped it on its side, and began stomping on it, splintering the frame, red ink pooling on the floor, the chemical smell filling the room. One of the guys began to protest, but Grip sighted the gun on his forehead and he backed down. The fat one was sitting on the floor, shaking.
The press in shambles, Koss gathered posters, throwing them on the shattered press. He paused with one, a block portrait of a wide-browed Negro above the slogan THE UHURU COMMUNITY MUST LIVE! Koss showed it to Grip. Grip shook his head in disgust.
Koss asked the Reds, “You in bed with the Uhuru Community?”
They looked back at him, intimidated into silence. Koss laughed—a nasty sound. Koss threw the whole stack of Uhuru Community posters on the pile. He pulled a tin of matches from his jacket pocket.
One of the Reds said, “Don’t.”
Grip turned on him. “Shut it.”
Koss lit a match on the sole of his shoe and tossed it on the pile of paper.
Then he tossed another. And another. The posters caught, flames rose. The small, scattered flames began to find each other and the fire grew.
Koss’s face was neutral. “Come on,” he said, and walked toward the exit.
Grip nodded at the flames. “Good luck with that,” he said to the Reds.
Later, Grip sat with Ed Wayne at a bar called Crippen’s, chasing whiskey shots with beer in sweating glasses. A dozen or so men—and one woman—smoked and drank balefully. Filkins sat at a separate table with a Mexican prostitute, leaning into her and speaking quietly in her ear. Koss, an alleged teetotaler, had gone home.
From somewhere came the sound, half static, of someone ranting on the radio. This bar was a headquarters of sorts for anticommunists, run by a World War I vet below a seedy Italian joint.
Grip recounted for Wayne the incursion on the printing press, embellishing a little; the Reds needing more physical coercion in his telling. Wayne nodded along to all this drunkenly. He was a stupid prick, but their shared politics made conversation tolerable.
“Shit, I nearly forgot,” Wayne said, nearly slurring his words, “I saw your boss this morning.”
“Yeah?”
“Yeah. Restroom at the station. Making himself pretty.”
“Okay, Ed. Whatever you say.”
“Whatever I say?” Wayne laughed. “How about this? I say your boss is an asshole.”
Grip reddened. “Know what, Ed? Shut the hell up about shit that you don’t know about, all right?”
“Get fucked,” Ed growled.
Grip stood up, leaning over the table. “Fuck you.” They locked eyes, Grip daring Wayne to stand up and do something about it.
Finally, Wayne broke and returned to his beer. “He’s still a bastard,” he muttered.
“Jesus,” Grip said, holding up two fingers for a shot and a beer.
Filkins and his whore got up from their table holding hands. In a weird euphoria driving back from the press, Filkins had babbled on about rewarding himself for his night’s work with this girl—Grip couldn’t remember her name now—until Koss had finally snapped at him to shut it and Filkins had spent the remainder of the ride huddled in the corner with a little grin on his face. Grip wondered if he could somehow work it out so that he’d never have to see Filkins again.