Wildcards

HARTMANN DEFUSES RIOT TALK WITH JJS LEADER GAINS REPRIEVE

The New York Times, July 18, 1976, special edition.

New York Daily News, July 19, 1976

The JJS rally returned to Roosevelt Park. Through the rest of the sultry day, Gimli, Sondra, and the others gave speeches. Tachyon himself appeared to address the crowd in the afternoon, and there was a strange festival atmosphere to the gathering. The jokers sat on the grassy knolls of the park, singing or talking. Picnic lunches were shared with those nearest; drinks were poured and offered. Joints could be seen making the rounds. In a sense, the rally became a spontaneous celebration of jokerhood. Even the most deformed jokers walked about openly. The celebrated masks of Jokertown, the anonymous facades behind which many of the Jokertown residents were accustomed to hide, were dropped for the time.

For most, it was a good afternoon, something to take their minds off the heat, off the paucity of their existence-you shared life with your fellows, and if your troubles seemed overwhelming, there was always someone else to look at or talk to who might make you feel that things were not quite so awful after all.

After a morning that had seemed doomed to violence and destruction, the day had turned gentle and optimistic. The mood was one of hilarity, as if some corner had been turned and the darkness was left behind. The sun no longer seemed quite so oppressive. Sondra found that her own mood was elevated. She smiled, she joked with Gimli, she hugged and sang and laughed with the rest.

Evening brought reality.

The deep shadows of Manhattan's skyscrapers slid over the park and merged. The sky went ultramarine and then stabilized as the skyglow of the city's lights held back full darkness, leaving the park in a hazy murk. The city radiated the day's heat back into twilight; there was no relief from the heat, and the air was deathly still. If anything, night seemed more oppressive than day.

Later, the police chief would point to the mayor. The mayor in turn would point to the governor, whose office would claim that no orders originated there. No one seemed certain just who had ordered the action. And later, it simply didn't matter-the night of the 18th exploded into violence. With a shout and a blare of bullhorns, the insanity began. Mounted police, followed by club-wielding lines, began to sweep the park from south to north, intending to drive the jokers onto Delancey and then back into Jokertown. The jokers, disoriented and confused at the unexpected attack and urged on by the frantic Gimli, resisted. A club-swinging melee ensued, hampered by the darkness of the park. For the police, anyone without a uniform was fair game. They ranged through the park striking anyone they could touch. Screams and cries punctuated the night. Gimli's attempt at organizing the resistance broke down quickly, and small groups of the jokers were herded toward the streets, any who turned beaten or maced. Those who fell were trampled. Sondra found herself in one of those crowds. Panting, trying to keep her balance in the jostling flight, her hands over her head to protect herself from the clubs, she managed to find temporary safety in an alley off Stanton. There, she watched as the violence spread out of the park and into the streets.

Small scenes drifted past her.

A CBS cameraman was filming as a dozen policemen on motorcycles pushed a group of jokers toward a railing that shielded the ramp of an underground parking garage across the street from Sondra. The jokers were running; some of them jumped over the railing. Lambent was among them, illuminating the scene with the phophorescent glow of his skin, a pitiful target unable to hide from the oncoming police. He vaulted the railing in desperation, plunging into the eightfoot drop beyond it. The police saw the cameraman then-one of them yelled "Get the fucking camera!"-and the cycles wheeled around with a throaty rumble, the headlights arcing across the buildings. The cameraman began to run backward away from them, still filming. A club lashed out as the police went past; the man rolled in the street, moaning as the camera tumbled to the pavement, its lens shattered.

A joker stumbled by the mouth of the alley, obviously dazed, holding a blood-soaked handkerchief to his temple though the cut gaped open down past his ear, soaking the collar of his shirt. It was obvious how he had been caught'-his legs and arms were canted at all the wrong angles, as if they'd been pasted on his trunk by a drunken sculptor. The man hobbled and lurched, the joints bending backward and sideways. Three cops came walking quickly alongside him. "… eed a doctor," the joker said to one of them. When the officer ignored him, he tugged at the sleeve of the uniform. "Hey," he said. The cop pulled a can of mace from its holster on his belt and sprayed the contents directly into the joker's face.

Sondra gasped and sank deeper into the alley. When the police kept walking, she fled the other way.

Through the night, the violence spread out in the Jokertown streets. A running battle raged between the authorities and the jokers. It was a spree of destruction, a celebration of hate. No one slept that night. Masked jokers confronted the lurking cruisers, overturning some of them; burning cars illuminated intersections. Near the waterfront, Tachyon's clinic looked like a castle under siege, ringed by armed guards with the distinctive figure of the doctor himself running about trying to keep some semblance of sanity in the night. Tachyon, along with a few trusted aides, made forays into the streets to pick up the injured, both jokers and policemen.

Jokertown began to come apart, dying in fire and blood. Tear-gas fumes drifted through the streets, acrid. By midnight, the National Guard had been called in and issued live ammunition. The SCARE offices of Senator Hartmann issued a call for those aces working for the government to aid in calming the situation.

The Great and Powerful Turtle hovered over the streets like one of the war machines in George Pal's War of the Worlds, sweeping the combatants away from each other. Like many of the other aces, he seemed to take no side in the confrontation, using his abilities to break up the running battles without subduing either jokers or police. Outside Tachyon's clinic (where by one A. M. the wards were nearly full and the doctor was beginning to bed down the injured in the corridors) the Turtle picked up a wrecked, burning Mustang and hurled the car into the East River like a flaming meteorite, trailing sparks and smoke. He prowled South Street, shoving rioters and Guardsmen in front of him as if he wielded an invisible, giant plow.

On Third Street, the Guardsmen had rigged jeeps with wire-mesh covers and attached large frames of barbed wire to the fronts of the vehicles. They used these to move crowds of jokers out of the main avenue and into the side streets. Spontaneous fires triggered by a hidden joker exploded the gas tanks of the jeeps, and Guardsmen ran screaming, their uniforms aflame. Rifle fire began to chatter.

Near Chatham Square, the sound of the rioting began to swell to immense, ear-shattering proportions as the Howler, dressed all in yellow, stalked the chaotic streets, his mouth open in a wail that contained all he had heard, amplified and redoubled. Where Howler walked, jokers flung hands over ears, fleeing from this torrent of noise. Windows shattered when Howler raised the frequencies, walls shivered as he sobbed in the bass range. "STOP THIS!" he raged. "GO