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the Central Ward were starting to keep score of the city’s blatant indiscretions, the most egregious of which was the proposed demolition of countless homes in the ward to make room for a 150-acre medical school and hospital complex that would bisect the black community. While the city council praised the projects as urban renewal, opponents such as Mose Odett decried it as “negro removal.” Whispers of dissention were turning into war cries. Newark was balanced on a knife’s blade. No matter which side the situation fell, somebody would get cut.
    “Hey. You see that?” Edward pointed at a photo of Elvis Presley and his pregnant wife, Priscilla, on the opposite page. “Elvis is gonna have a baby.”
    Presley’s impending fatherhood was more exciting to him than the riot. The violent clash was yesterday’s news, literally. For Emmett, the shock was still fresh, still vivid.
    “You believe that? Congrats to the King, man.” In his enthusiasm, Edward had spoken too loudly. He winced in pain.
    Emmett cleared his brother’s dish and retrieved a bottle of aspirin from the medicine cabinet in the bathroom. “There’s ice in the freezer if your head hurts. I’ll do my best to get home early.”
    “Cool. I’ll be here,” Edward replied, his sarcasm undulled by the hangover, then he picked up the Ledger and flipped to the sports section.
    The newspaper article hadn’t done the damage outside the Fourth Precinct justice. The brick front was scorched from the Molotov cocktail, and the broken windows were boarded up. Along Springfield Avenue, storefronts were replaced by gaping voids. Wet trash littered thesidewalks. The charred remains of the abandoned car hulked on the curb, the sweltering morning air preserving the stench of burnt rubber.
    Patrolmen were posted on the streets to prevent further looting, temporary security for storekeepers who were dredging through what was left of their stock and starting repairs. One man was hammering plywood to replace a broken door. Another was sweeping glass chips into the gutter. The uneasy peace between the neighborhood and the Jewish store owners had been replaced by a palpable anguish and disgust. Decades earlier, the Central Ward had been home to a sizable concentration of immigrant and second-generation Jews, many of whom had recently been decamping to the suburbs of West Orange and Livingston at a head-spinning pace. They weren’t the only ones. Property taxes, the city’s chief source of revenue, had reached an all-time high, driving employers and homeowners into the hills. Newark’s population was over 400,000 and another 500,000 commuted in every day to work at the manufacturing plants, banks, or business conglomerates like Prudential, however, the exodus was beginning to rival the influx. At the current rate, the city would be a ghost town in a matter of years. The local motto had become: Newark was open eight hours a day. That was the duration of Emmett’s shift. For a city, eight hours was the blink of an eye. For Emmett, it might as well have been an eternity.
    The Records Room was uncomfortably quiet that morning. It was as if he were in a bomb shelter and the bomb had already gone off. The file Nolan delivered was lying on his desk. Emmett had no interest in reading it. He paced the aisles, running his hands across the folders as he went. The hushed flicking of paper lulled him to distraction, then the telephone rang, tugging him into reality. For as long as he had been in the basement, Emmett had never heard the phone ring. He wasn’t sure how to answer.
    “Records.”
    “Can you come up?” Lieutenant Ahern’s voice was hoarse, the strain of a sleepless night. He hadn’t forgotten that Emmett was alive as pledged. Ahern forgot nothing.
    “Your office?”
    “The roof. I’ll meet you.”
    That would be another first for Emmett. He had never been up to the station’s rooftop and had to resist the urge to cross himself as he opened the trap door into