Free Sons of the City by Scott Flander Page A

Doc had a crowbar in his hand, and Lanier said, “OK, Sergeant, pop it.”
    Doc bent down with the crowbar, and a woman in the crowd shouted, “It’s show time!”
    The street was suddenly quiet, like someone had pushed down all the city sounds, so that even the traffic passing at a nearby intersection seemed to glide by in silence. The crowd, hushed, strained forward toward the Lexus. Even the guy with the lawn chair had shut off his car radio and was now standing on his car.
    Doc worked the crowbar for a moment, and then with a loud creak and a thump the trunk popped open, and the crowd gasped at what it saw and heard.
    What it saw was a thin, nattily dressed black guy, half propped up between two large stereo speakers, his dead waxy face looking out over the astonished crowd. On his chest was a white placard, with the words, in black Magic Marker, “COP KILLER.”
    What the crowd heard was music, somehow set to start playing when the truck was opened, blasting from the two speakers.
    It was the rock anthem by the group Queen, heard at every sporting event: “WE WILL … WE WILL … ROCK YOU!! (Stomp-stomp clap. Stomp-stomp clap.) WE WILL … WE WILL … ROCK YOU!!”
    The music was so loud that Doc and the other cops staggered back a few steps, and then a huge cheer went up from the crowd, and they were all clapping and whistling and yelling approval.
    “WE WILL … WE WILL … ROCK YOU!! (Stomp-stomp-clap. Stomp-stomp-clap.) WE WILL … WE WILL … ROCKYOU!!”
    Doc reached into the trunk and ripped the wires from the speakers and the music went dead. The crowd booed, but then cheered again, louder than before. They were whistling and clapping in appreciation—it was a great show, and they had gotten their money’s worth.
    I glanced at Michelle. Her face was ashen. She just stood there, staring at the body, staring at the placard. The moment I saw it, I thought about what Bravelli had said on the street—about how we were going to get help finding who shot Steve. This was it. This was what he had been talking about.
    Doc came over to us, embarrassed. “I’m sorry you had to see this,” he said to Michelle. “We had no idea.”
    “It’s all right,” she said.
    Doc turned to me. “Eddie, you know who that is in the trunk, don’t you?”
    “Never seen him before.”
    “Well, I have. That’s Ru-Wan Sanders.”
    “No shit. You sure?”
    “I don’t know too many of those guys,” said Doc, “but I do know him.”
    “One of what guys?” Michelle asked. “Who is he?”
    “Black Mafia,” I said. “Ru-Wan over there was—what, Doc, second-in-command?”
    “Something like that. They’re always switching around.”
    Michelle looked at us. “I don’t understand, what does this mean?”
    “It means,” I said, “that there’s something going on here we don’t know about.”
    “But why would the black Mafia …” began Michelle.
    We were all silent for a moment, taking it in. It was just too hard to believe.
    “Maybe we should ask Mickey Bravelli,” I said, and told them what he had said that afternoon.
    Doc tilted his head and squinted, like he just had heard that a neighboring farmer was growing giant tomatoes.
    “Bravelli sure found out awful fast,” he said in his Texas drawl. “We didn’t have a hint, not even a hint of a hint.”
    “Tell you what bothers me,” I said. “The black Mafia doesn’t have anything to do with the crackhouse where Steve got killed. It’s just a place for pipers—the street dealers don’t even go inside.”
    Doc saw where I was going. “So there’d be no reason in the world for Ru-Wan Sanders to ever be in there.”
    “Well, one reason,” I said. Doc thought for a moment, then nodded.
    “What?” said Michelle. “You guys aren’t going to tell me?”
    Doc and I looked at each other. He was about to say it, then hesitated, so I took over.
    “Maybe Ru-Wan was there because he knew Steve was going to be knocking on that door. Maybe he was the one