By way of reply one of them hit him with a nightstick.

Walli managed to dodge, and instead of hitting his head the truncheon landed painfully on his shoulder. He yelled in agony and Beep screamed.

Grasping his injured shoulder, Walli backed toward the bed. The cop swung his stick again. Walli jumped back, falling on the bed, and the club hit his leg. He roared in pain.

Both cops lifted their clubs. Walli rolled over, covering Beep. One nightstick smashed into his back and the other his hip. Beep screamed: “Stop it, please, stop, we haven’t done anything wrong, stop hitting him!”

Walli felt two more excruciating blows and thought he would pass out. Then suddenly it stopped, and two pairs of heavily booted footsteps sounded across the room and out.

Walli rolled off Beep. “Ah, fuck, it hurts,” he said.

Beep knelt up, trying to see his injuries. “Why did they do it?” she said.

Walli heard, from outside the room, sounds of more doors being broken down and more screaming people being dragged from their beds and beaten. “The Chicago police can do anything they like,” he said. “It’s worse than East Berlin.”

• • •

In October, on a plane to Nashville, Dave Williams sat next to a Nixon supporter.

Dave was going to Nashville to make a record. His own studio in Napa, Daisy Farm, was still under construction. Besides, some of the best musicians in the business were in Nashville. Dave felt that rock music was becoming too cerebral, with psychedelic sounds and twenty-minute guitar solos, so he planned an album of classic two-minute pop songs, “The Girl of My Best Friend” and “I Heard It Through the Grapevine” and “Woolly Bully.” Besides, he knew that Walli was making a solo album in London and he did not want to be left behind.

And he had another reason. Little Lulu Small, who had flirted with him on the All-Star Touring Beat Revue, now lived in Nashville and worked as a backing singer. He needed someone to help him forget Beep.

On the front page of his newspaper was a photograph from the Olympic Games in Mexico City. It was of the medal ceremony for the two hundred meters race. The gold medal winner was Tommie Smith, a black American, who had broken the world record. A white Australian took silver, and another black American bronze. All three men wore human rights badges on their Olympic jackets. While “The Star-Spangled Banner” was being played, the two American athletes had bowed their heads and raised their fists in the Black Power salute, and that was the photo in all the papers.

“Disgraceful,” said the man sitting next to Dave in first class.

He looked about forty, and was dressed in a business suit with a white shirt and a tie. He had taken from his briefcase a thick typed document and was annotating it with a ballpoint pen.

Dave normally avoided talking to people on planes. The conversation usually turned into an interview about what it was really like to be a pop star, and that was boring. But this guy did not appear to know who Dave was. And Dave was curious to know what went on in the head of such a man.