The Triumph of Evil by Lawrence Block Read Free Book Online

paper. What you don’t know was that he was a friend of mine. They didn’t put that in the paper. ‘Jon Yerkes, 20, who was shot through the wrist and is expected to lose the use of his right hand, was a friend of Jocelyn Perry.’ Is a friend. He’s still alive. He just doesn’t have a right hand any more. He played the guitar. Played. Not plays. You need two hands to play a guitar. God, I can’t relate to that. I was up all night. We were all up all night. Kids went around smashing windows because they couldn’t think of anything else to do. Nonviolent kids went around the campus smashing windows. I can’t relate to any of this. Look, Ma, no hand. Oh.”
    She got to her feet. “I said I was all right. I’m not. I think I have to throw up.”
    Was it one of Heidigger’s? Or did it just happen?
    A confrontation. Students and National Guard. Some students broke the demonstration’s nonviolent code, shouted insults, hurled rocks. (Student radicals? Or plants?) A couple of guardsmen used their rifle butts on demonstrators. (Because it was necessary? Because they couldn’t take the pressure? Or because they were following private orders?) More students responded with rocks. A shot was or was not fired from the crowd. (Was there a shot? Was it a student who fired it?) A guardsman fired a shot in return, killing a student. Then there was definitely gunfire from the crowd, from several points in the crowd, and the guard returned fire. Fourteen students dead, dead. Thirty-five wounded. Look, Ma.
    It could have happened by itself, Dorn knew. As it had happened before, as it would happen again. Spontaneously, a flash flood, a fire in a hayloft.
    Or it could have been handled by three men after a scant hour’s planning.
    Which?
    He didn’t know that it mattered.
    “I might have been standing next to Jon Yerkes. We would have been together. I could have been between him and that bullet.”
    “You could have stayed here and walked in front of a bus. Don’t torture yourself with hypotheses.”
    “I can think you saved my life if I want to.”
    (“Then I owe you my life, Eric. Eh?”)
    “I found the different reactions of public officials interesting,” Dorn said. She was calmer now. They had chatted in German about assorted trivia. She had looked at the baby robins—it was surprising how quickly they grew—and accepted a cup of mint tea. “It interests me how everyone prominent has something to say, and how they can all find such different lessons in the same incident.”
    “Like the President,” she said bitterly. “Our great leader. ‘We must all work together to repair this tragedy. There must be mutual disarmament. Students must not throw rocks, and the Brownshirts must use smaller-caliber rifles.’”
    “And the Vice-President.”
    “Sweet old Theodorable. According to him, this proves that protest is self-defeating. In other words, if somebody’s jumping up and down on your back, you’d better lie there quietly so you don’t get him really mad. Oh, God, I hate that man. When I see him on television I want to kick the screen in. Somebody ought to put a bullet through that head of his.”
    He started. “Do you mean that? Or is that rhetoric?”
    “I don’t even know.” Frowning, “I’m nonviolent. I mean I’ve always been nonviolent. I don’t like window-breaking or any of that. I mean, how can you protest violence by hurting people? But I keep feeling myself going through changes. It’s weird, like I’m being led through things. That man is tearing the country apart, and the more he does it the more the idiots applaud. I think he’s a dangerous man. I think—I don’t know.”
    “And yet the Vice-President sounded moderate enough compared to Governor Guthrie.”
    “That rotten fascist bastard.”
    “Did you hear what he was quoted as saying?”
    “I don’t think I want to hear. I can imagine. Oh, tell me.”
    “I won’t get the words right, but the essence was that if any Red