Read Online The Bridge by Solomon Jones - Free Book Online

poison to their neighbors; mothers too young to finish middle school.
    What he saw was enough to reinforce the beliefs he’d tried so
hard to forget after growing up in the city’s largely white Northeast: Niggers live like animals. And they should be treated like animals. All of them.
    He knew that hating them was wrong. But it was hard for him not to do so. Especially when he saw children like Kenya disappear in the abyss, dying while their parents, aunts, and uncles smoked their lives away.
    â€œFriggin’ idiots,” he mumbled to himself as he made his way toward the middle of the roof.
    He walked past the first vent and stepped over the torn tar paper that Sonny had passed just a few minutes before. He passed the second vent, absently wondering if he would get overtime if the search stretched past eight. He walked toward the chimney, and paused as the stillness of the morning seemed to thicken.
    He stood there for a moment, feeling like something was wrong. As he passed the chimney, he found what he had sensed. Or rather, it found him.
    Sonny reached out from behind him, throwing both arms around the officer’s neck and squeezing. The officer struggled mightily, and managed to plunge an elbow into Sonny’s midsection.
    Sonny let out his breath in a great whoosh, but refused to let go. The officer’s finger tightened around the trigger of his gun. A shot rang out. Sonny pushed up from his legs and forced the officer’s head into the brick wall. Then he ran.
    The other officer spotted him as he ducked between the metal vents.
    â€œStop!” he said.
    Sonny kept running, reaching back and shooting in the direction of the cop’s voice.
    The officer shot and missed, and Sonny dived toward the metal door at the end of the roof. The officer shot again as Sonny slithered along the ground and reached up toward the metal door. He pulled
it open and crawled through, then struggled to his feet, ran down the steps, and popped through the twelfth-floor fence.
    The cop started to give chase, then thought about his partner. He ran toward the brick chimney in the middle of the roof and found him—his head covered in blood and his breathing ragged.
    â€œSix-eleven, officer down. Get me some help up here,” he said into his radio.
    â€œSix-eleven, what’s your location?” the dispatcher said.
    â€œWe’re on the roof of the goddamn building!” he said, growing angry as he watched the blood trickle down his partner’s face. “Send me some help!”
    â€œEast Bridge Housing Project. Assist the officer, police by radio,” the dispatcher said over all bands before calling Fire Rescue.
    â€œSix-A, I’m on location,” the sergeant said into his radio, running out of his car and heading into the building. “Six-eleven, where’s that male we were searching for?”
    â€œHe just left the roof. Shots were fired and he escaped on foot through the door that leads to the twelfth floor.”
    As cops listening to the transmission scrambled to get out of morning roll call, and the sergeant went in through the front of the building, Sonny made his way down to the first floor.
    Then, as sirens wailed in the distance, he disappeared out the back entrance of the building and ran toward the morning sun.

Chapter Five
    The streets surrounding the Bridge were in chaos. Though the assist had lasted only a few minutes—long enough for the injured officer to be brought down to a waiting Fire Rescue- vehicle—police still drove with swiveling heads and eyes stretched wide, desperately searching for Sonny.
    Dozens of them rolled through the streets, riding slowly and then accelerating, cruising to the end of one block and turning recklessly onto another.
    The people in the projects watched the drama from behind closed doors and windows, waiting with bated breath for the other shoe to drop.
    They knew in the back of their minds that something was missing