Rake rose from the table when he heard the wheels of Dale’s car crush twigs in the driveway. He looked out the window and noted the way his brother-in-law walked, hands deep in jeans pockets, shoulders hunched as if quite a bit colder than he should have been.
A brief handshake, a terse conversation about the health of the kids.
“So, uh, yeah, you’re probably wondering what it is I wanted to talk about,” Dale said as he sat on the couch. Rake didn’t reply, just waited as he sat opposite Dale in one of the chairs. Since earning his badge, he’d learned the importance of providing empty verbal space for suspects and witnesses to fill with facts and suspicions, clues and admissions.
“Look, you know I’m not a fellow who likes asking for help on anything.” Dale was looking away. Elbows on knees, tension compressing him. “But I got myself in a scrape, and, uh, I’m okay but one of us didn’t come out too well. Not too well at all.”
He started scratching at some invisible guilt near his right eyebrow, until finally Rake had to prod him, calmly, with “Why don’t you just tell me what happened.”
Dale recounted the sordid events of his “night ride” in Coventry. The more Dale said, the warmer Rake felt, sweat at the base of his back despite the crisp fall air blowing through open windows.
“The thing about it is,” Dale said, “I’ve been looking into the newspapers, and I ain’t seen much. The Constitution had a couple lines about a local man being shot up in Coventry, but that was it. It gave Irons’s name but didn’t say anything about it really, didn’t mention the Kluxer attire he was wearing.”
Rake seethed. His mind focusing on Kluxer attire, gunshots, dead man. “Jesus Christ! What were you . . . ?” and he shook his head. “Why in the hell are you telling me this?”
“The man that asked me to do the job, Whitehouse, he’s up and vanished. I never had his number to start with, but when I called the operator to try and track him down, it’s like he don’t exist. My buddy Mott, he’s okay, his shoulder wasn’t hurt too bad and he just told the hospital he’d been cleaning his gun after having a drink and it went off. My taillight got shot off and my fender got dented, but I got ’em both fixed already.”
“Dale. I don’t give a damn about your fender. You just confessed, to a police officer, that you were party to a killing.”
“But I didn’t kill him, it was the lady who—”
“And you didn’t go to the local police, you didn’t tell anyone, you just ran off?”
“What else was I supposed to do?”
Rake let a few seconds pass, each of them filled with the infinite other options Dale could have chosen. “You had a hood and cloak on the whole time?”
“Well, no . . . The hood fell off at one point. I was running for my life, so I had to leave it there.”
“Jesus. Did it have your name or initials stitched into it, any tailoring at all?”
“Course not.” Dale dared to scoff at that, mocking Rake’s ignorance about Kluxer attire.
“You’re sure? No merit badges for learning how to tie a knot or beat up old Negro ladies?”
“No. And I don’t care for the way—”
“Do you have any goddamn idea how much trouble you’re in?” He struggled to keep his voice down lest he wake the kids. “Someone might have seen your tags. Was it a dirt drive? If so, you left tread marks. You left shell casings. And who else knew you were going there?”
“It was just the three of us: me, Mott, and Irons. I didn’t tell nobody.” His squirrelly tone implied otherwise.
“That’s really all? You’re sure?”
“Yes, that’s all.”
Rake ran his fingers through his hair, which, sadly, was thinning before his thirtieth birthday. With this job and this family, he would surely be bald in a few years.
“Goddamn it. You stupid son of a bitch.”
He was furious not just at Dale but at himself for not having slapped some sense into Dale before something like this happened. His best opportunity had been two years ago, after a cookout one night, when Dale had tried to recruit Rake to do “something” about a Negro family that had moved to their neighborhood. Dale had been on his third or eighth beer at the time, and the “something” had not been discussed in detail, mainly because Rake had dodged it, trying to end the conversation as quickly as he could but also delicately enough to avoid offending his brother-in-law. It was damned challenging to maintain pleasant family relations when one of your relatives proposed such things. A couple weeks after that conversation, the Negro’s house was torched, but the arsonists were both teenagers, not linked to Dale. Fortunately the Negro homeowners had been away that night. They soon sold the lot and moved elsewhere.
Two years later, Negroes had again breached the Beacon Street border into Hanford Park, so history was repeating itself. Or perhaps this time history had a new twist in store.
“Look, Denny,” and Dale stood, perhaps to establish some authority as the senior of the two. “I understand you’re upset and that’s why I’m not gonna take much offense at how you’re talking to me, but—”
“Sit back down.”
“No, I don’t care to be lectured to and looked down on.”
“Dale, if you’re up at my level it makes it a lot more likely that I’m going to swing at you, so, for your own protection, sit the hell down.”
Dale looked into Rake’s eyes for a few charged seconds. Whatever pride he’d tucked away to come here had insisted on emerging again, but now he appreciated the soundness of Rake’s advice. He sank onto the couch.
Rake asked, “What in the hell were you even doing up there?”
“I told you, I thought I was helping out their Klavern so they’d help mine. Jesus, Denny, you can’t be blind to what’s happening: we got three families of coloreds here in our own neighborhood and I’ve heard tell there are more looking to buy. Kluxers need to step up the way we used to, only too many are scared by what happened a few years ago.”
What had happened a few years ago was that the state Bureau of Investigation had helped prosecute a number of high-ranking Klansmen on the heels of some particularly severe beatings that made headlines (the beatings of white labor unionists had especially incensed people). That old-school violence no longer seemed to be appreciated by the kinds of folks who spoke fondly of a New South, and the state legislature even passed an anti-mask ordinance, discouraging the kinds of Klan rallies that had once been commonplace. Most Klaverns were reluctant to raise hell at the moment, for fear of spies and more indictments.
Yet from what Rake understood, the Klan was still alive and well, if quiet. He had learned since taking his oath that a shocking number of Atlanta’s finest wore the white robes. Some joined out of family tradition, some did so simply because they felt it was required to get promoted on the force. And many joined because it gave them license to conduct the sorts of activities that were now frowned upon when wearing a badge. When the law became too constraining, a cop could trade one uniform for another. And the reform-minded governor who’d launched that GBI sting proved to be a one-termer, so the winds were shifting again.
“Either Whitehouse is hiding out because of how wrong things went, and he doesn’t want to get blamed,” Dale said, “or maybe he wasn’t who he said he was. I tried getting his number from the operator, but there isn’t a single Whitehouse in Coventry or the dozen other towns I tried.”
“Is it like the Klan to use aliases like that?”
“Not usually.”
“So you and some pals drove out of town to beat up a complete stranger you don’t know from Adam, a white man, at that. And you did so at the word of another man you don’t know from Adam, who may have been lying about who he was.”
“I realize it sounds odd after the fact.”
Rake could call the Coventry police and find out what they knew, read the report, see if the woman had been charged or was the shooting ruled self-defense. Was the fellow they’d beat up in the hospital somewhere? The f
act that Dale’s abandoned Klan hood hadn’t been mentioned in the newspapers was not surprising, but it set Rake’s mind working. Had the responding officer hidden it when he’d found it, to protect the Klan’s reputation? If so, was it just to keep the Klan out of the papers, or was it because the local police had been involved somehow?
“Tell me more about Mott and Irons. I want their phone numbers, occupations, addresses, family, churches.” He found a pad and paper. “Did any officers drop by to check out your buddy’s story at the hospital?”
“No. He just told the doctors that his gun misfired.”
“And you’re sure the fellow you beat up isn’t dead?”
“Well, no, but I’ve been checking the papers. It’s not like I was going to call the hospital and ask. And again, for the record, I never laid a hand on him. It was all Irons.”
“Oh, sure, you just stood there egging him on with your gun. Speaking of which, get rid of that gun. Forever. You left shell casings on the ground and bullets in the side of the building probably.”
Rake asked about Whitehouse, what he looked like, what car he drove, what they discussed, funny turns of phrase, anything at all that might help. Dale had nothing. Or next to nothing: “He had, well, he had an awful lot of nose hair.”
Rake stared. “He had a lot of nose hair. Great, Dale, thanks, I’ll put out an APB for a man with a lot of nose hair. How hairy was his back?”
“I’m just trying to help.”
Rake quizzed him about Irons, then let out a deep breath and marveled at the enormity of this problem he’d been handed.
“I know I fucked up, Denny.” His voice small and thin, almost breaking. “I can barely afford the mortgage on our place—I didn’t get no GI Bill loan like you did, and when I didn’t get named foreman last year . . . We’re barely scraping by, all right? I can’t have this neighborhood turn into Darktown.”
Rake waited for Dale to put himself back together.
“Tell absolutely no one about this conversation.” Though he greatly distrusted Dale as a keeper of secrets. “Not even Sue Ellen. If anyone talks to you about that night, whether it’s your buddy Mott or a relative of the dead man or God forbid another cop, tell me immediately.”
“I will. Absolutely.”
“Jesus Christ. I cannot believe I have to help a group of Kluxers.”
“We prefer ‘Klansmen.’ ”
“I prefer ‘goddamn idiots.’ ”
Dale took his medicine in silence this time.
“Understand this: whatever blackmail you pulled on Sue Ellen to con her into marrying you is the single smartest move you’ve ever made. Because if not for that, I would drag your ass into jail right now. For criminal assault at the very least, accessory to murder as a bonus. But I don’t want my nephews to deal with that, let alone my sister. So I’m going to try to help you out of this. But if you do anything remotely that stupid again, if you even float the idea of messing with the new Negroes in Hanford Park, then Brooks and Dale Jr. will grow up without you, one way or another. Understand?”
Dale stood and walked to the door. “Take your shots, Denny. A man’s down in front of you, so stomp on him all you like. Enjoy it.”
“I don’t enjoy putting my job at risk to help you. I need you to be smart in the meantime.”
“Yeah, well, Sue Ellen’s probably looking for me, so I need to get back.” And without so much as a thank-you, Dale closed the door gently behind him.
6
DINNER WITH LUCIUS’S family had always been a stressful experience for Julie.
The Boggs patriarch lived in a large bungalow, complete with a second-story addition, just a few blocks down Auburn Avenue from the Irwin Street Baptist Church that, legend had it, he’d built from near nothingness into what it was today, one of the largest churches in Atlanta. The house had always seemed perfect to her, or at least unattainable: its well-shined floor, the artwork on the walls, the furniture that wasn’t worn or in disrepair or covered in bedsheets. The sheer lack of problems, the absence of the sort of blemishes she was so very used to tolerating. As a maid, Julie had worked in such houses, but she’d never been entertained in one, never seen one owned by colored folk.
The family even had their own maid, a silent older lady named Roberta, who did the cleaning and most of the cooking for Mrs. Boggs—Julie hadn’t even realized that was possible, had assumed some law forbade it. The flat look on Roberta’s face when she served the family their dinners was one Julie knew all too well, and she wished there’d been some way to commiserate with her, some secret wink or signal, yet the one time they’d made eye contact Julie had seen an iciness there that made her tongue stick to the roof of her mouth.
Her first dinner here, at a surprisingly formal Sunday dinner a year ago, Reverend Boggs had asked her if she’d understood his earlier sermon or if it had been difficult for one who hadn’t been raised on the Good Book, what with all those superstitions and African rituals that persisted along the Georgia coast where she was from.
“I enjoyed it quite a bit, sir,” she’d responded. “My family came to Atlanta when I was six, so I don’t recall much of those times.”
“I’m sure they’ve brought enough of that with them, though,” he’d replied. “Voodoo dolls and snakes and whatnot.”
“They’re remarkably modern, actually,” Lucius had interjected. “They even have indoor plumbing.”
Lucius had meant that, she knew, as a shot at his father’s condescension, yet the reverend had happily taken it as a shot at her family, laughing at her perceived backwardness while the others all smiled uncomfortably.
She felt very aware of her ebony skin, noticing the lightness of Lucius’s mother and sister-in-law. They no doubt accentuated it with the kinds of skin-bleaching creams and lotions Julie couldn’t afford. She wasn’t the darkest person she knew, but damn close.
The conversation that first afternoon had been a verbal minefield, as Lucius’s parents prodded her this way and that, trying to make something explode. It’s too bad that darling child of yours couldn’t make it today, we were hoping to meet him. And, Is your father still searching for work, or has he landed something stable? Do let us know if he needs any leads, as we could probably help line something up. Even their favors dripping with insincerity. They had made a show of asking Lucius, as if Julie wasn’t sitting right there, how certain lady friends of his were doing, girls with names like Leila and Marion and Geneviève. Those lacey, embroidered names reminders to Julie that the privileged Boggs son was an eligible bachelor indeed, with scores of women to choose from. The parents seemed to think—or were desperate to pretend—that Julie was a mere friend, someone he was tolerating in a Good Samaritan kind of way, tending to her and her four-year-old son until he decided his good work was finished and then he could move on to marry a Geneviève. So Julie was pleased by the way he deflected their questions (I don’t know, I haven’t seen her, I’m really not sure).
She’d hated every minute of that first dinner, and she couldn’t imagine how the initial conversations between father and son had sounded, Lucius telling the upright minster about the fallen woman he wanted to bring into their sacred house.
The intermittent dinners had become slightly less awkward over time, but she had a feeling tonight’s would be the worst yet. She could only imagine how the reverend and his wife would respond to the big announcement.
One year after that first visit, she was back in their immaculate dining room, which had hosted so many important Negro business leaders and academics, and even a few important white folks whose names she didn’t know (Reverend Boggs dropped names the way hungry men dropped crumbs, littering the floor with them while he ate). Her four-year-old, Sage, sat in a chair across from Lucius’s nephew and niece, as if he belonged at this table, too. Because he did, or at least would, as soon as Lucius worked up the nerve to tell them.
She was lost in thought, fretting over when and how Lucius would say it. Failing to pay attention was da
ngerous with this crowd, as the conversation could veer anywhere so quickly. They seemed to be talking about relatives of Lucius’s partner, Tommy Smith—his sister and her husband had recently bought a house in a white neighborhood.
“It’s risky,” Reginald said.
“Are you saying they made a mistake?” Reverend Boggs asked.
“Not necessarily. But buying in a white neighborhood, you know what could happen.”
“I don’t think it will this time. I think the white community understands.” Housing for Negroes was scarce, after so many years of rural sharecroppers leaving their hoes behind and moving to the city in search of a better life.
“They do?” Reginald seemed to hold back a laugh. “Have they changed that much in two years, when the Calvins’ place was burned down?”
“I pray that they have.”
“Well, when you have to request divine intervention, that means it’s a risk.” Lucius’s elder brother was a manager at Atlanta Life Insurance, one of the largest Negro-owned businesses in the country. Lucius had briefly worked there after the war, he’d told Julie, but he wasn’t a numbers man and hadn’t taken to the work. “We wouldn’t even offer them fire insurance if they asked for it. They’re on their own.”
“How’s work going, Reginald?” Boggs asked.
“Good. We just closed a strong quarter. More folks seem to be getting work. It’s not as good as during the war, but it’s better than it’s been.”
“Well, I’m glad some coffers are growing these days,” Mrs. Boggs said dryly.
Lucius took the bait and asked, “How’s the Fall Fund coming, Father?”
“It’s coming along,” the reverend replied. “I’m still hoping to get enough to expand the church’s footprint, but we’ll have to see what the Lord has in store.”
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