Nickel City Storm Warning (Gideon Rimes Book 3) Gary Ross (most popular novels txt) 📖

buzz of reaction. I caught sight of Bobby, angled so he could look at the speaker. His lips were parted in what seemed to me distress.

“Once encounters like this were isolated and became anecdotes shared with family and friends,” Drea continued. “Now smartphone cameras capture these expressions of white privilege for all the world to see. The man who feels entitled to confront Black people in an apartment complex and demand to know why they’re there. The teenage boys who presume the right to tear a hijab off the head of their Muslim classmate. The woman nobody deputized screaming at a Latino truck driver to show her his papers. Technology has pushed privilege into even more unexpected places. Pick your favorite recent blockbuster movie with a diverse cast, say something based on a comic book or with Star Wars in the title. Bounce around the internet long enough and you’ll find a pirate version with people of color or women or LGBT characters edited out—you know, the people finally making it to lead roles. You can’t help thinking, In the Twenty-first Century? Two hundred years ago this was ignorance. Now it’s arrogance clinging to stupidity. Maybe we can embarrass it out of existence.”

“Maybe it’s not stupidity!” the man called out sharply, voice raised enough to silence the nascent chuckles and applause. All eyes turned to him. “Maybe it’s an underappreciated effort to get out of Clown World!”

Similarly dressed, two men to his right and two to his left rose and slid something out of their pants pockets. Each unfolded and pulled over his head what looked like a white rubber clown mask. Each mask sported a bulbous red nose, wild synthetic hair—blue, green, yellow, or orange—and a bright red mouth forming a smile, a frown, a surprised O, or a line that revealed vampire fangs. Each forehead bore a different painted flag—Stars and Stripes, Stars and Bars, a swastika above the number eighty-eight, a KKK blood drop cross.

Rory Gramm shot to his feet. “Gideon, that’s C.J. Lansing!”

As I began to move through the crowd, I saw my godfather get to his feet, Phoenix rising beside him, as if to steady him as he pointed at the cluster of men. “Gideon, the clown on the right!” As I processed Bobby’s shout, Pete’s voice crackled in my ear: “G, I’m—”

“Hold positions! Might be a diversion. Bishop, give me a read on Drea.”

“Stunned but okay,” Bishop said. “The door is still secure.”

I reached Lansing and his clowns before I heard my team respond. The men made no move toward me or to surround me. Even if I had five pairs of plasticuffs instead of three, I would need my gun to make them comply with any order I gave. Too risky in this crowd. Too public. Tripod still up, Dobbins snapped pictures as Corso scribbled notes. Phones came out of purses and pockets.

“Sir, you need to leave,” I said. “Right now, you and your clown posse.”

“Insane!” Lansing’s laugh was almost a cackle. His lips pulled back to reveal large incisors flanked by unusually small teeth. “Look, my fellow nine-percenters! The armed HNIC we saw at the door. Wassup, dawg!” He held up a hand as if about to slap my palm.

I glared at him. The eyes behind his black glasses looked like chips of green ice.

“You gon’ leave me hangin’, dawg?” he said. “You here to harass us for exercising our first amendment rights?” He surveyed the crowd. “You all see we’re unarmed!” he shouted. “You see us standing still. We never threatened this Gideon dude, this thug hired by liberal money men to stop us from calling the lying bitch at the microphone a lying bitch.”

As chatter and tension rose around me, I slid my right hand inside my jacket. I needed them to go before things got out of hand. Maybe I could scare him. Yeah, right—damn it.

“Ooh! G-Money is reaching for his gun!” Lansing bellowed, silencing the crowd. “He could shoot us, me brethren. Shoot us dead in front of all these people. All these cameras.” He pivoted, looking into face after face. “You’ll witness a murder. You, you, and you too. Will blind devotion to a liberal agenda let you speak truth on the witness stand? Or will you leave it to your cell phones to tell the tale, that this silverback gorilla shot us when we didn’t even threaten him?”

“Temporary insanity, and we’d back him up, fucker!” That voice sounded like Sam.

“You’re trespassing!” Zulema’s voice, coming through the speakers. “Go, now!”

My eyes never shifted from Lansing. “Pete,” I said calmly, “call Captain Richmond. Tell him we need transport for five men we’re arresting for trespass, menacing, disorderly conduct, and incitement to riot.”

“Who the fuck is—oh!” Lansing and the clowns couldn’t hear Pete’s lowered voice in my ear. “Richmond Ave is around the corner. Gotcha. But if they don’t go, I will call this in.”

“Copy that,” I said.

“You got a thingie in your ear, G-Dawg? Talking to your guys out front? Calling for backup ‘cause you can’t handle us on your own? So which one is Pete, the pretty boy spic or the tall chink?”

“Don’t let someone like that provoke you, son,” someone said. “He’s not worth it.” I didn’t recognize the gentle voice but it carried an accent and sounded as if it belonged to a very old woman.

“Time to go, lads,” Lansing said. “Goodbye, Gideon Rimes.” He sang my name as if trying to do an Elton John impression and ended with a fleeting laugh. His hand shot out from his chest in a Nazi salute. “Weiss Macht!” Had PAUSA not been as crowded, he might have goose-stepped out of the back room. His clowns fell into line behind him, their voices muffled by rubber as they echoed his chant. “Weiss Macht! Weiss Macht! Weiss Macht!”

“Let them out, Pete,” I said. “Then lock the door.” I looked at the table where my loved ones sat. Bobby seemed agitated, with Phoenix and Kayla holding his hands and talking