America Rising by Tom Paine Read Free Book Online Page B

maybe we should go talk to those people in their nice hotel, maybe we should tell them that we’ve had enough of their million-dollar bailouts, their million-dollar bonuses, their million-dollar arrogance. We should tell them that we are not serfs, we are not pawns for them to push around on their own private chessboard. We are Americans. And this is our country too. We should tell them that their millions cannot buy us, their millions cannot buy our government, cannot buy our country.
Because America is no longer up for sale!
I say right now we should walk across that bridge and tell them. What do you say?”
     
    The sound that rose from thousands of throats was a huge, angry, inarticulate cry that could have rattled the clouds drifting overhead. A phalanx of bodies surged along the Intracoastal towards the bridge, moving inexorably like the tide. The young man was carried along in their wake but pushed forward, surrounded by a group of men and women who helped him cleave through the crowd and position himself at its head. Sirens wailed louder, almost drowned out by a rhythmic chanting:
     
    “Enough, enough, enough!”
     
    The authorities made their stand at Flagler Bridge. Every available man and woman, every piece of equipment from local police, sheriff’s office, Highway Patrol was massed at the foot of the bridge, an immovable object intended to halt an unstoppable force.
     
    No one knows who fired the first shot. The multitude of law enforcement agencies present denied all responsibility, and there was no evidence of weapons fired from the demonstrators’ side. For a time, suspicion centered on several bands of beefy, black-uniformed men originally thought to be SWAT teams but the matter received little play in the press and soon faded away. A special commission appointed to investigate took a few days’ worth of testimony, then retired with a bureaucratic shrug of its shoulders.
     
    Whoever was responsible, what is known is that twenty-two people died that day, seven by gunshot, thirteen trampled to death in the frenzy to escape that followed, and two by drowning when they were forced off the Flagler Bridge and into the water below. One of those seven gunshot victims was the young man whose speech had set wings to the crowd, his head exploded like a ripe melon from a high-velocity bullet fired from somewhere behind police lines. He carried no ID, and his fingerprints and dental records matched none in the system. Days later he was given a perfunctory burial to which no one came.
     
    That evening it rained hard, a cold, driving rain that lasted until dawn and left the air clean and palm fronds glistening. But it didn’t wash away the red-brown stains that lay like stigmata on the pavement.
     

Chapter 5
    S ometimes, when you pull on a thread, an entire tapestry can unravel. Armando Gutierrez was that thread, but before I could start pulling, I needed to know more about him. What kind of person was he, really? Was he loved, respected, feared, despised? Was he a good son, mate, neighbor? What were his likes, dislikes? What pushed his buttons? He was my chance to unravel a tapestry of intimidation, violence, even murder that made a mockery of our small-d “democratic” ideals.
     
    Armando Gutierrez’s condo was in an area of South Beach known as “SoFi”—South of Fifth Street. It was an area that came later to the upscaling of South Beach than the streets to its north—Ocean Drive with its lineup of gaudy Art Deco hotels, Lincoln Road with its array of shops and restaurants on a broad pedestrian mall, Collins Drive with its massive four-star hotels and Washington Avenue’s tony boutiques and eclectic mix of eateries. I didn’t have the patter or brass balls to bluff my way past the guards at the front door, but there was no reason I couldn’t get in through the back. Or the side.
     
    On my way into South Beach I stopped at a supermarket and bought a bag of groceries—lots of cans and jars and