The leaflets appeared on telephone poles and car windshields in my quiet Washington, D.C., neighborhood on Friday before the three days of protesting that reached its crescendo with Trump’s infamous walk from the White House to St. John’s Episcopal Church. No one saw who put them up — plain pieces of copy paper printed over with simple slogans in bold lettering: “KILLER COPS WILL NOT GO FREE” and “A MAN WAS LYNCHED BY THE POLICE. WHAT ARE YOU DOING ABOUT IT?” Or more to the point: “F— THE POLICE.”

Monday morning, after two days of protests in the city, I decided to go to the White House to see what there was to see. I borrowed my daughter’s camera, a digital Nikon I didn’t know how to use, and fashioned some makeshift press credentials for myself out of an old driver’s license and the perp shot on the ID bracelet they’d attached to me during a brief stay at the D.C. Central Cell years ago for an offense involving alcohol. A Washington police officer I had talked to earlier had advised me to bring my press credentials if I planned to be out after Mayor Muriel Bowser’s 7 p.m. curfew. Of course, they don’t give novelists press credentials.