City of Endless Night

58

Marsden Swope looked on with a kind of passionate, benevolent grace, feeling an almost paternal love for the murmuring, chanting, singing throng that surrounded him.

Although he could not help feel a little disappointment in the actual number of believers that had shown up on the Great Lawn — in the dark it was hard to say how many, but it certainly wasn’t the countless thousands he had anticipated. Perhaps that was to be expected. Many had fallen by the wayside, like the rich man who wanted to follow Jesus and went away saddened when Jesus told him to give away all he owned first.

But there was another problem. The pile had grown so quickly, and with so many non-burnable items, that it had overwhelmed the fire that was meant to consume it. Swope had exhausted his supply of jerrycans and now the massive heap was simply smoldering, sending up coils of foul-smelling black smoke. Swope had sent one of his disciples — no, that was wrong, one of his brethren—out to get more fuel, and he hoped he would return soon.

The crowd around him was now swaying gently back and forth, singing “Peace in the Valley” in low, earnest voices. Swope joined in with a glad heart.

The one thing that really surprised him was the lack of police presence. Granted, the initial blaze had died down, but even so a crowd of this size, massing on the Great Lawn late at night with no permit, would surely have attracted the quick attention of law enforcement. But there had been no sign of them. Oddly, this was a disappointment to Swope, because it was his intention to confront the powers of the state and prevent — with his very life, if necessary — any interruption of the bonfire. A part of him yearned for martyrdom, like his hero Savonarola.

There was a jostling to one side, and then a woman approached through the crowd. She was in her late thirties, attractive, dressed in a simple down jacket and jeans, and in one hand she clutched something that had the gleam of gold. The woman held up the item, as if to toss it on the pile, then turned to Swope.

“Are you the Passionate Pilgrim?”

For the last ninety minutes, people had been coming up to shake his hand, embrace him, thank him tearfully for his vision. It had proven a most humbling experience.

He nodded gravely. “Yes, I am the Pilgrim.”

The woman looked at him a moment, awestruck, holding out her hand to shake his. When she did so, she opened her hand to reveal, not the piece of gold jewelry or watch that Swope expected, but the gold of a police badge. In that moment, she grasped his hand with her other and he felt the cold of steel latch around it.

“Captain Hayward, NYPD. You’re under arrest, shitbird.”

“Wha—?”

But the woman, who did not appear particularly strong or fast, suddenly grabbed him with some kind of martial arts movement, spun him around, pulled his hands behind his back, and cuffed the other wrist. It was all done in a second.

All of a sudden, the Great Lawn blazed with light. High-intensity lamps hidden in the trees along its perimeter had snapped on, illuminating the bonfire. And now, a large battery of official vehicles — police cruisers, SWAT vans, fire trucks — began rolling across the grass toward the group, light bars flashing and sirens whooping. Other police in riot gear trotted forward on foot, talking into their radios.

The brethren around Swope, looking around in surprise at the sudden raid, wavered, broke — and then began to back off and scatter. The police let them go.

It all happened so quickly that Swope could not process it at first. But as the woman pushed him forward through the chaos, toward the line of police, he began to realize what had happened. The cops had gathered themselves, quietly, in the trees. Instead of provoking a riot by moving in force to arrest him, they sent in one undercover officer, in plainclothes. And now, with him in cuffs, the cops were at last coming out, with bullhorns, calling on everyone to peaceably disperse, while a fire crew came over, dragging a hose, and sprayed water on the heap of smoldering valuables, putting it out.

Ahead loomed a wagon of the kind used to transport prisoners. Its rear opened and the plainclothes cop grabbed Swope by the elbow and lifted him onto the metal step. As the woman cop helped put him into the paddy wagon, she said: “Before we leave, you might want to have a good look at your followers.”

Swope turned to give them a farewell gaze, but what he saw shocked him. What just moments before had been a peaceful, prayerful assemblage had suddenly escalated into bedlam. Despite the police bullhorns, a large number of his followers had not dispersed: they had become looters, clustering around the pile, pulling things out and pocketing them, while the cops, surprised, yelled and chased them. Hundreds, perhaps even a thousand, followers now surged onto the dead pile of vanities, so many that the cops were temporarily overwhelmed. They grabbed fistfuls of money and silver bars and bearer bonds and jewelry and watches and shoes, frantically looting the very heap of vanities they had come to burn, and then scuttling away into the darkness of the trees with their swag, hooting in glee and triumph.