Underbelly by Gary Phillips

response.
    â€œMotherfuck,” Boo Boo hollered, squinting then going wide-eyed at the sight of the evilly grinning vet. “That’s your ass, old man.”
    He lunged for Magrady, who immediately dropped to the ground and went into a fetal position. He yelled, “Oh my God, he attacked me. Help! Help!” His plastic bag of strawberries smashed into gooey red pulp beneath him.
    Boo Boo was dependable. “Shut the fuck up,” he bellowed, aiming the points of his too-clean Jordans towards Magrady’s stomach. Anticipating such, the other man had X’d his forearms in front of his body. Three of the VA’s security guards who were weaving about in the farmer’s market ran over.
    â€œHe just went crazy,” Magrady avowed, “I’m a veteran and he hates vets, he said.”
    â€œHey wait,” Boo Boo started as one of the guards, who’drecently taken the Sheriff’s exam and was anxious to learn the results, tackled him.
    Magrady scooted out to the way. He had to give Boo Boo his props. At first as the guards swarmed him, he went on instinct and fought back. But even in what passed for a mind atop the hoodlum’s thick neck understood the hole he’d been placed in, and further action on his part was only sucking him down deeper. He became compliant.
    Problem was the guards were amped and as Double B declared, “I give,” the would-be deputy Tasered him in the side of his neck. His legs and arms convulsed and he swore a string of profanities, with some particular illustrative language aimed at Magrady and his kin. They got him to his feet, his legs the consistency of overcooked pasta.
    â€œMister, you okay?” one of the earnest young protectors asked. He was taller than Magrady with a country-boy Norman Rockwell look about him.
    â€œYes, I think so.” Magrady iced the cake. “For some reason he singled me out. I think he’d seen me here before, he knew I was a Vietnam vet.” That would set him in solid with these guys. “Walking around mumbling about how the marines wouldn’t take him ’cause of some sort of criminal charge.”
    â€œYou lying shitfaced bitch-ass punk,” Boo Boo screamed. “I’ll fix you for this.”
    â€œKeep quiet,” the deputy hopeful said as he used metal cuffs on the bargain-store gangster. They bent him over a table with boxes of mushrooms on it and patted him down.
    â€œLook, we’re going to take him in and see if he has any priors,” the embodiment of all-Americanism said. “We saw him attacking you.”
    â€œSo did I,” a woman in pedal pushers holding a plastic sack of tomatoes said. “He simply went Rambo on this poor man.” She looked about, embarrassed. “Sorry, I didn’t say that right.”
    The guard continued, “Look, you might have to swear out a complaint for the police, so we’ll need to get in touch with you.”
    â€œNot a problem.” Magrady gave him the address and phone for the Urban Advocacy offices. He shook the earnest guard’s hand and went in search of Floyd Chambers. At the start of the trouble,he’d wheeled away. Magrady figured they’d come in Boo Boo’s car, and that he’d be able to track him on foot in the vicinity. He hoped too that Boo Boo did have unanswered charges or bench warrants for traffic tickets so the cops would keep him locked up at least for a few days. Once he got out… well… that was once he got out. Too bad the roughneck hadn’t brought his heater with him. Guess he wasn’t that stupid, Magrady concluded.
    Huffing it out to Wilshire Boulevard, Magrady spotted Chambers on the other side of the street heading east, away from the VA and the soldier’s graveyard where several of Magrady’s comrades were buried. This part of the thoroughfare was wide and given the entrance and exits of the 405 freeway, the traffic was steady with assorted