“But who called you?” Adam asked the officer.

“The fella said he was your driver. He said to tell you the ambulance keys are under the seat.”

The two policemen drove them back to the hospital. In the lobby, Spurgeon turned to thank them. He was as amazed as they were when he spoke.

“Don’t you ever call me a shine again, you thick bastard,” he said.

He slept late, awaking to bruises and stiffness and a feeling he had forgotten something.

The riot.

But the radio informed him there had been no full-fledged riot, no Newark, no Detroit, no sniping. A few stores torched, a minimum of looting. Jimmy Brown was in town and the Mayor had asked him to put on a telethon from Boston Garden. The people who would have been burning were staying home and watching Jimmy on the television. The other people were already holding meetings, working to cool it.

He stayed in the shower almost an hour and was toweling between the bruises when the hall telephone rang.

The police had picked up Meyerson. He could be freed on two hundred dollars bail. He needed twenty dollars, the ten percent for the bail bondsman.

“I’ll come down,” Spurgeon said.

At Police Headquarters on Berkeley Street he paid the money and got a receipt.

“You look tired,” he said when Maish came out.

“Lousy mattresses.”

The morning held a first hint of spring warmth and the air was lemon-tinted with sunlight, but they walked through it in uncomfortable silence until they were crossing Park Square.

“Thanks for calling the cops,” Spurgeon said.

Meyerson shrugged. “I didn’t do it for you guys. If they had killed you I would have been an accessory.”

That had not occurred to him.

“You’ll get your twenty bucks back,” Maish said.

“No hurry.”

“I got money tucked away in my room, my seein’ an’ raisin’ money. They were waiting for me last night when I went to pick it up. I’ll mail you the double-saw.”

“You’re going to jump bail, aren’t you?” Spurgeon said.

“There’s another thing that happened long ago. This time it would mean a term.”

Spurgeon nodded. “Some philosopher,” he said sadly.

Meyerson looked at him. “I’m a bum. I told you. But if you were really a nigger you wouldn’t have said that.”

They had been walking down Boylston Street toward Tremont. Now as they stopped and stared at one another a bearded, barefoot prophet approached them off the Common and announced that unless they gave him a dollar he would eat no breakfast.

“Starve, shmuck,” Meyerson said, and the boy wandered away without offense.