Rough Trade

and Jeff’s driveway, the streets were lined with people. They were dressed in Monarchs colors, and many held hand-lettered signs bidding farewell to Beau Rendell. The communications directed at Jeff were significantly less pleasant. We passed more than one sign that read BURY JEFF INSTEAD! From the underpass near the Art Museum someone had dressed a dummy in a Monarchs uniform and hung it from the bridge so that the funeral procession passed directly beneath its dangling feet. There was a knife stuck into its back and a sign around its neck read JEFF DID THIS .
    The funeral mass was to be held at the Cathedral of St. John the Evangelist, the seat of the archdiocese of Milwaukee. Like the German settlers who’d erected it, it was a structure more stolid than elegant, stern rather than inspiring. Once the center of a prosperous neighborhood, over the years changing demographics had left it on the fringes of downtown while earnest urban planners had turned an adjacent vacant lot into a small urban park. It was on this swatch of green, aptly named Cathedral Park, that a crowd of several hundred people now milled angrily, ringed by a cordon of mounted police decked out in full riot gear.
    I looked out through the smoked glass of the funeral limousine at the church, dark and forbidding under the oppressive ceiling of low clouds that marked the day. Broadcast vans blocked the curb, electrical cables snaking out through their open doors, up the steps and into the vestry of the church. I caught a glimpse of Harald Feiss talking to a leggy woman with network hair, but I couldn’t tell whether they were arguing or getting set up for an interview.
    As our car edged closer to the crowd Chrissy shifted nervously in her seat, no doubt saying a prayer of thanks that she’d decided to leave the baby at home with the sitter. Jeff, hidden from view by the limo’s mirrored windows, craned his neck to get a better look at the crowd. I examined his face expecting to see fear and was surprised to find something else burning in the back of Jeff’s eyes, something very much like satisfaction.
    At the sight of the hearse the crowd suddenly heaved and surged like a living organism, pulsing until it had built up sufficient momentum to break through the police line. The officers pulled out their nightsticks, wheeled around, and dug their heels into their horses’ flanks in pursuit. I don’t know which was more terrifying, the screaming mob or the horde of journalists who thundered after them wielding their microphones like clubs.
    Sometimes you don’t understand the danger until it has already passed. Events move so fast that their significance can’t be absorbed as they happen. It is only afterwards that you realize what might have been, what has been so narrowly averted.
    I saw it all in snapshots: the half-eaten cheeseburger that struck the window and slid down the glass leaving a trail of mustard and a disk of pickle in its wake. The man with the big nose and flapping jowls, his Monarchs cap askew, lunging for the door handle. Then the look of surprise on his face as a cop on horseback grabbed him by the scruff of the neck and yanked him away.
    There was yelling and the sounds of scuffle all punctuated by the ominous thunks of objects hitting the car. We sat frozen, helplessly watching the mayhem of which we were the center. In the front seat, our driver sweated and crossed himself, mumbling something under his breath— whether curses or prayers I could not tell.
    Chrissy screamed as the windshield suddenly seemed thick with blood. It took a minute before we realized that it was ketchup. The driver, with a giggle of relief, switched on the windshield wipers, which smeared the thick liquid grotesquely across the glass.
    Suddenly we heard the sound of impact as something heavy landed on the hood. The Jester, the bandy-legged member of the Monarchs’ court, dove across the hood of the car, his bug eyes staring at us through the pink streaks of ketchup. He banged his hands against the windshield in a fury, shouting out some piece of demented gibberish. But he disappeared almost as quickly as he’d materialized, pulled back by strong hands and leaving us with the memory of his pockmarked face, gap-toothed and filled with monumental rage.
     

CHAPTER 14
     
     
    Sirens heralded the arrival of reinforcements, and slowly the tide began to turn. As soon as the threat of getting a ride downtown seemed credible, demonstrators took off on