He’d already confirmed what Dale had learned, that there was no one in the area named James or Jimmy or even J. Whitehouse. Not in Atlanta, Coventry, or the surrounding counties. And APD’s Records Department didn’t have it listed as a known alias.
A Coventry deputy forwarded his call to the surprisingly gentle-voiced Sheriff Marone.
“One of my colleagues happened to be up there yesterday and heard about it,” Rake lied, “and then last night I had a drunk in the tank who mentioned something about a roadhouse beating. Made me wonder if he maybe knew more about it.”
He couldn’t let them realize he was calling for any but official reasons. He had, in fact, arrested a drunk last night, and the man had said nothing of the sort, but Rake didn’t mind dangling the wino like this. Cops were used to chasing false leads. He gave Marone the name and address of the drunk, whom they’d released already.
“Interesting,” Marone said. “You know that the man who was killed was from Atlanta, I presume?”
“Yes, sir. Walter Irons.” Rake had checked Irons’s police record: three priors, two for bar fights and one for assaulting a woman in front of a passing beat cop. Just another fellow who was more muscle than brains, more temper than thought, more bad luck than good.
“I’ve already spoken to detectives in Atlanta about him,” Marone said. “We’re looking into it.”
“What do you know about the man Irons beat?”
“Martin Letcher’s a banker, for First Regional of Coventry. As was his old man. We haven’t yet determined why a group of roughnecks from Atlanta would see fit to show up at an out-of-the-way spot like that, but we will.”
Rake tapped a pencil, staring out the kitchen window at their small backyard. Two cardinals alighted on the lowest branches of an oak whose trunk Rake had painstakingly cleared of ivy two summers ago, and below them Denny Jr. reenacted violent crashes with his toy trucks. They’d owned the house nearly five years, since shortly after Rake returned from the war.
“You don’t think it was just a barroom brawl got out of hand?”
“Didn’t have that look.” Marone’s tone hinted at knowledge he was not going to disclose.
“What can you tell me about Letcher?”
“Got beat half to death and nearly the other half, too. Fella that was on top of him did it with his bare hands.”
“Is Letcher still in the hospital?”
“I expect he will be for several more days.”
“He the kind of fellow that makes a lot of enemies?”
“I imagine most bankers have enemies, but that doesn’t mean they’re in the habit of being beaten like that. Coulda been angry folks who got turned down for a loan or lost their house, or Communists who hate bankers, for all I know. But his father, who’s retired now, is well respected. His was one of the only banks around here that stayed open through the Depression.”
“Were Letcher or the barmaid able to describe the attackers?”
“Nah, she was too far away, and all he saw were fists ’til he blacked out.” So the Coventry cops weren’t letting on that it was the Klan, not even to other cops. Marone was keeping that information to himself, but why?
“How’s the barmaid doing?”
“Ah, she’s tough as hell. Not the first fellow she had to take down like that.”
“Really? First she’s killed?”
“You don’t need to worry about her. Or any of this. I do appreciate the call, Officer . . . Rakestraw.” The pause like he was looking for Rake’s name, which meant he’d written it down. Shit. “But I think we’ll be all right on our own up here.”
Martin Letcher’s pretty eyes were so light blue they seemed to glow, like the sunstruck surface of Caribbean waters in some vacation magazine. Many a woman had no doubt lost herself in those eyes, Rake figured, but right now they were just the merest sparkle in a face that looked destroyed.
Dark shiners still hadn’t quite faded. Tape stretched across the bridge of his nose, so swollen it was hard to assess how well the doctors had reset it. Bandages covered both cheekbones, and at least two teeth were missing.
“Sorry to bother you, sir, but I’d just like to ask you a few questions.”
A few hours before his shift, Rake was not in uniform, had not even displayed a badge. Hoping to make this as informal as possible. He’d made his way to the room without incident and had been fortunate to find Letcher alone. The small room held one bed and a tiny table of medical implements. Propped up on a small mountain of pillows, Letcher had been reading the newspaper. His right hand had been replaced by an enormous club of a cast, so he gripped the paper with his relatively unscathed left hand. He was barefoot and had two of the cutest little callus-free soles Rake had seen on a grown man.
“Ask away. Surprised an Atlanta cop would care, but sure, the more help the merrier. I want those sons of bitches in jail or dead.”
There was nothing for Rake to sit on, so he stood, glancing for a moment out the window at the perfect autumn sky. The drive here had been postcard gorgeous, windows down all the way.
“From what I understand of the incident, sir, you weren’t able to get a clear look at your attackers?”
“Course not, they had hoods on.”
So the Coventry cops were going out of their way to conceal the Klan connection, but the victim had no such agenda.
“Do you have any idea why the Klan would come after you?”
“No and hell no. I’m with them all the way, a hundred percent.”
“Ever wear the robes yourself?”
Letcher paused. “Most fellows know not to ask that.”
Rake realized there must be some code with which Kluxers identified themselves. He’d just exposed himself as a nonmember.
“I’m just trying to find out who did this to you, sir, but if you aren’t interested in my help I can be on my way.”
“Okay, look: I do what I have to do to keep up appearances, you get me? But I ain’t out there running around all night dressed like a fool. I got other things to occupy my attentions in the evening, if you get my drift.” He grinned, the jocularity all but overshadowed by those missing teeth. “The thing of it is, many folks in the Coventry Klavern are friends of mine.”
“Have those friends been able to shed any light on what happened?”
“No. That’s what’s so damned odd. It’s like some splinter faction or something. I have friends in the right places, you hear me? My bank owns a quarter of the mortgages in this town, and a hell of a lot more besides. We do business down in Atlanta, too, matter of fact. So if the Klan had a problem with me, I’d know it.”
It was a risk to come here. For all Rake knew, Letcher would tell Sheriff Marone everything they discussed, leaving Marone to wonder why this Atlanta cop was so incredibly interested in the beating. The Coventry police might then look into Rake and find their way to Dale.
“I apologize if this is talking out of turn, but what if I told you that they did what they did because of how you carry yourself? The women and drinking, that is.”
“I’d say the hell with you. How’s that?”
Rake smiled. “I’m not judging you. I’m saying, what if the people who did this to you were trying to teach you some lesson because they thought a small-town banker should be home with his wife at night?”
“First, I’d say you’re crazy. Second, I’d say, who the hell says I’m not home with my wife at night? And third, or whatever the hell number we’re on now, I’d say that if that’s why they came after me, why didn’t they goddamn say so? They didn’t say anything. Not a word.” Rake wasn’t sure if Letcher was always this flippant and off-color or if pain medication had taken the wheel. “They just started beating the hell out of me for no reason. Feel like I’ve been having the world’s worst hangover ever since.”
“How about jealous husbands?”
“Why are you so interested in who I may or may not be screwing?”
The cussing braggadocio was not what Rake had exp
ected from a man of Letcher’s station. He rather liked the fellow.
“I’m just looking to confirm or rule out some rumors I’d heard.”
“What goddamn rumors? Who you been talking to?”
“Does the name Jimmy Whitehouse mean anything to you?”
“Not a thing. And I’m getting tired of the questions.”
“Just a couple more. You mentioned you do business in Atlanta. What kind?”
“Little of everything. Loans to small businesses, real estate, even own a stake in some mills down there.”
“Is Sweetwater Mill one of them?”
“How you know that?”
“Lucky guess.” Whoever had sent Dale to beat up Letcher was someone who knew them both. The person pulling the strings wanted to teach Letcher a lesson, and he knew Dale would eagerly do so with minimal prompting. Rake was looking for something that could connect the two men, and he’d found it. “How long have you owned it?”
“Don’t own it, just bought a big stake. An investment. I felt it was undervalued after the war ended, and textiles is one industry that isn’t going anywhere. People aren’t gonna start walking around naked, are they? We’ll always need clothes, and Georgians are damn good at making ’em, and they do it cheaper’n Northern union folk do.”
Sure, Rake thought, and it helps when the Klan attacks union organizers like they did in the thirties. “During the course of buying in, did you find yourself making any enemies?”
“Look, buddy, I’m in the business of making money, not friends. I told Sheriff Marone the same thing: if he wanted a list of everybody who’d want to see me taken down a peg, it’d be a long goddamn list and I wouldn’t know half the names. There are people I’ve never heard of probably hate my guts. That’s the cross I bear. But which of them hates me enough to throw on a robe and try and kill me? Hell, that’s another question entirely, and I don’t know the answer yet. Do me a favor and come back when you’ve figured it out, all right?”
Back in Hanford Park, the birds seemed especially talkative as Rake walked Charles Dickens, the golden retriever Cassie had insisted they buy shortly after they bought the house. Rake had been less than thrilled with the idea of an additional responsibility, their two kids plenty disruptive enough, but he’d come to enjoy the excuse for long walks. He tried to determine his next move.
He’d been out only a few minutes when something caught his eye: a flyer taped below a stop sign. Printed in large block letters were the words “Zoned as a White Community.” Exploding across the center of the page was a lightning bolt, just like the ones sewn onto the sleeves of SS troopers he’d seen in Europe.
He cursed under his breath, then looked behind him. Empty lawns and a clear street. He tore the flyer off the post and stuffed it in his pocket. “This isn’t good, Charles Dickens.”
The Columbians were back.
8
NEARING SEVEN O’CLOCK that night, Boggs and Smith lingered outside Kato’s Gym, which had produced most of Atlanta’s great Negro boxers over the last twenty years. It sat a block north of the tracks that ran along Decatur Street, near some of the seediest bars and brothels.
Winning the respect of their community was one of the most important jobs Atlanta’s first Negro officers had set out for themselves. The best way to do so was to demonstrate without question that they made the neighborhoods safer. First they took the drunks off the street, the men who’d start drinking at sunrise and would be staggering across the street by noon, or passed out in doorways. They moved the craps and dice players off the sidewalks, so little kids wouldn’t have to step past them on their way to school anymore. Then came the small-time madams and moonshiners, drug dealers and thieves, gamblers and extortionists who had run rampant in Sweet Auburn and the other Negro neighborhoods before ’48. They had taken most of the worst offenders off the street, either catching them in the act or convincing some brave civilians to file charges against them. But they had never managed to catch the man who loomed largest, both literally and figuratively: Thunder Malley.
Story was, Malley had established himself as an enterprising acquirer of illicit goods while living in some of the labor camps that sprouted outside Savannah’s shipyards and factories during the war. He and a small gang had sold smokes, moonshine, reefer, and opium to the exhausted laborers whose lives consisted of long days in factories or docks, then short nights in hastily constructed shacks lacking heat or plumbing. Once the war wound down, Malley, like so many, had hopped the trains for the greater splendor of Atlanta—he was wanted for a couple of murders, supposedly, but when Smith had placed calls to the Savannah police for more information, he was told otherwise. Murderer or not, Malley and his associates were known to demand money from small-time colored businessmen as a “cost of doing business.” Malley also loaned out money at fierce rates, with fearsome penalties for delinquency. Everyone was too terrified of him to tell the cops anything on the record.
Which made Bartholomew’s eyewitness account so intriguing. Talking to Boggs and then McInnis, Bartholomew had described Malley perfectly, down to his attire and the license plate of a brown Ford that turned out to be registered to one of Malley’s cousins. Yet McInnis shared their lack of confidence in Bartholomew as a witness worthy of being called to the stand. If they wanted to arrest Malley, they needed more.
So Boggs and Smith stood beneath the unlit awning of a pawnshop when a man in a newsboy cap and a slim-fitting houndstooth blazer emerged from Kato’s Gym, his wooden soles tapping double-time on the sidewalk.
Smith stepped out of the shadows. “Hey there, champ.”
Spark Jones stopped and was very still for a moment. Boggs could sense the man’s power in the way he held himself; even at rest he seemed capable of doing severe damage in the time another man would need to blink.
“Officer Smith. Why so close to my office, man?”
“I don’t know which girl you’re crashin’ with these days.”
“Well, I don’t always make those decisions in advance.”
Boggs envied his partner’s ability to rack up informants. When the two had started working together, Boggs had made note of Smith’s dropped gs and his propensity to cuss. He had read Smith’s file and saw that he’d attended Atlanta University for two years, whereas Boggs himself had graduated from Morehouse. Boggs had assumed, then, that he would be the leader of this partnership, but it had taken barely a day before he realized Smith was not a man who would be led. Boggs may have been the more comfortable of the two in a formal setting, like church, or a professor’s house on the West Side, or standing at a lectern before some Negro civic organization. But Smith moved effortlessly through the pool halls and gambling parlors and decrepit apartments where they spent most of their time. There, it was Boggs’s proper diction that seemed off, and he found himself mimicking his partner’s speaking style more.
“Let’s walk until you’re comfortable,” Smith said. He led Jones and Boggs into an alley a block away. Once there, he said, “Got a few questions about reefer and shine. Jars and joints.”
“I don’t put none of that poison in me. My body is my temple.”
“But you have ears and you hear things in that gym. I know some of those boys can’t help talking. You have any idea where we could find Thunder Malley?”
“You serious? Thunder Malley? I thank God I’m not privy to that man’s comings and goings.”
Smith said, “We just want to talk to him. We’ve heard he trains here a lot, but funny enough, no one’s seen him lately.”
“All I can tell you is that I ain’t seen him in, I don’t know, three days.”
“You hear any word that he’s taken a step up from shakedowns to drugs?”
“You trying to get me killed?”
“We never had this conversation,” Smith assured him. “I’m just trying to confirm what I’ve already heard.”
Spark made a show of looking to his right and left. Then sighed. “Man, that ain’t even new news. From what I
can tell, he been doing that for a while.”
“You know an alley bootlegger named Woodrow Forrester?”
“Why?”
“Got himself shot. Him one day, and a fellow named Lou Crimmons the next.”
Spark nodded. “Yeah, they were tight.”
“Part of Malley’s crew?”
“I think so. Couldn’t swear to it.”
“Why are so many dealers dying lately?” Smith asked. “Seems like the folks moving reefer and shine are getting a whole lot more violent.”
“There’s a turf war, and the turf’s moving every week.”
“How so?” Boggs asked.
“When there were solid borders between colored areas and white areas, everybody knew their territory, right? But now we got Negroes crossing lines for houses, crossing lines for apartments, and that means crossing lines for booze and reefer. Used to be one gang handled things for colored folk only, but now those colored folk have moved into what used to be white neighborhoods. Whose turf they on now? Ain’t like the boys on top pass out color-coded maps.”
“Shine comes from up in the mountains,” Boggs said. “And now it’s looking like more reefer does, too. Those are all white folks up there. For a Negro to try running an operation here, he’d need to get those hillbillies to work with him.”
“Them hillbillies ain’t as bothered by the color thing as most white folks. Only color they care about is green. They want to drive their load in, get a big wad of cash, then drive out fast.”
“You said turf war,” Smith noted. “If Malley’s on one side, who’s on the other?”
“You know the name Quentin Neale? Folks call him Q?” The boxer paused, saw their blank faces. He described Neale as very light-skinned, tall, thin mustache, and far stronger than he looked. “Scary fella, new in town after he was run out of New Orleans. I hear he’s butting heads with Malley. Things are about to get a whole lot messier.”
“Why’s that?”
“Word is, Malley has protection from white cops.” They had suspected this, hoping it wasn’t true. It explained why the white man Boggs had knocked out the other night had been released so quickly. “They get their cut and let Malley be. Y’all might not like that, but at least things had a certain equilibrium, you know? But now you Negro cops been arresting alley dealers and bootleggers, making it bad for Malley’s business. Between that and the color lines shifting, everything’s out of whack, and you got different groups fighting over turf and trying to keep their boys out of jail. You escalated things big-time the other night when you busted that drop. Made Malley look weak. I’d bet that’s why he’s killing his own men for ratting to you—gotta show he’s still the boss and ain’t afraid of you.”
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