Lightning Men

by Thomas Mullen

  The fuzzy objects in Dewey’s vision resolved themselves and he saw Smith completely ensnared in women’s elbows and hair like some epic Greek statue come to life. Then he saw Thunder Malley grab Smith by the neck and slug him twice in the face. Barbers’ scissors resting in glasses ten feet away shook from the force. The women’s interlocked limbs held Smith up for an extra second before realizing he was unconscious. Then they let him drop.

  Dewey ignored the front door in favor of the gaping hole he’d made in the window. And perhaps a gun at that point would have been advisable. But McInnis had given them strict rules of engagement regarding firearms. The very reason the Negro officers had been hired was because of community outrage over years of police brutality, endless beatings, and more-than-occasional shootings. It wouldn’t do if the Negro officers were as trigger-happy as their white counterparts.

  Another way of looking at it: the lives of Negro officers weren’t worth much, so the Department would appreciate them relying on their billy clubs, thanks, and only unholster their guns if they saw a subject reach for one first.

  So it was a billy club that Dewey removed as he jumped down from the windowsill.

  “Thunder Malley, you’re under arrest.”

  Malley took one stride toward him, halving the distance. Lord God he was big. At the moment his foot came down, supporting his generous center of gravity, Dewey swung the billy club into the side of Thunder’s knee.

  The big man screamed in a way he perhaps never had before. Tendons tore and the knee buckled. He reached for it with his hands, cradling it with those massive fingers, and even down on his knee, he had maybe an inch on Dewey. The women standing over the fallen Smith were frozen in place as if realizing they needed to precisely record this historic event.

  Dewey drove the club butt-first into Thunder’s solar plexus. Thunder doubled over, his head nearly butting Dewey aside.

  But when Dewey moved in for a final blow over the back of Thunder’s head, something hot seared his forearm. He pulled back, his fingers instinctively releasing the club, and saw one of the women before him, gripping a straight razor. The only reason none of his blood was on it was because she’d cut him so fast.

  She swung again, this time for his chest, and he backed away fast enough for it to miss him, though not entirely—he’d later see that she’d torn a perfectly diagonal stripe across his uniform shirt.

  Without enough time for him to even debate the ethics of hitting a woman, which he’d never done in his life, he stepped forward and threw a jab at her nose and she was down.

  Behind her was the other woman, whom he pointed at. “Don’t even th—”

  Then his head was thrown to his right a few inches, his neck reluctantly following. He crashed into a chair, leaned on it, and it swiveled around, which was good, because otherwise he would have hit the ground again, but was also bad, because after he finished a full revolution he was facing Thunder, who had just hit him with a right hook and whose fist was already moving back toward Dewey’s face.

  The second punch was just as hard. Maybe harder, aided by the fact that the chair swung Dewey square into it. This time he stumbled back and crashed into the hairdresser’s table, the back of his head shattering a mirror.

  The only thing more terrifying than seeing Thunder Malley readying to throw a punch was seeing two Thunder Malleys readying to throw a punch. But that’s what Dewey saw, his brain addled by the blows.

  He moved away in time, then told himself to remember his footwork, all those old lessons and drills coming back to him. He nearly stepped on Smith and the fallen woman—he didn’t usually have obstacles like that in the ring. The other woman had backed up, giving the men some space.

  Dewey squinted and the two Malleys resolved back into one. His billy club still dangled from his wrist strap but he decided to go with the skills that had brought him this far, sticking the club into his belt and holding his fists in position.

  “You’re making a mistake,” he said to Thunder.

  Who laughed. “You’re the one making the mistake, little man. You in the wrong weight class.”

  Malley threw another right, which Dewey dodged again.

  “And what you gonna do, throw me in jail for a night? Last time you put one of my boys away, he was out by morning. Y’all can’t touch me.”

  Even aiming a punch at Malley’s head was out of the question, he was so much taller. But the big son of a bitch wasn’t used to fighting, Dewey could see. He usually didn’t need to, only needed to stare hard at someone. He clearly didn’t like using his left hand, and he was limping on his injured leg, so Dewey cheated to that side.

  He could feel blood trickling warmly down his forearm.

  Malley’s reach was damn near double Dewey’s. So when Malley threw another right and Dewey slipped under it, he moved as fast as he ever had to get inside and unleash a 1-2-3 combination to the same spot he’d billy-clubbed earlier.

  Malley groaned, and Dewey backed the hell out of there before Malley could wrap his massive arms around him. Malley punched again, but off balance, unable to catch up with his faster opponent, and he seemed shaky, the knee giving him trouble.

  Again Malley threw a right, but Dewey ducked, his lack of size an advantage now. Malley’s fist found nothing but air and he swayed like a heavy bag mid-workout. Dewey delivered another three punches and could smell a ham sandwich Malley had eaten for lunch.

  Now Malley was the one staggering backward into a mirror.

  Dewey took his club back out and swung it into Malley’s knee again. The big man screamed and fell onto his other knee, one hand planted on the ground to keep him up.

  Malley’s head now in striking distance, Dewey jabbed him twice with his left, breaking his nose. Then a roundhouse right, made awkward by the trailing billy club but still true enough to make that big head roll on its neck as if trying to escape the body that had gotten it into so much trouble.

  Yet the head rolled back again, still tethered by the thickest neck Dewey had ever squared up against. He saw big Thunder Malley’s eyes go white, eyeballs rolling so high that Dewey knew to step back to give the Goliath room to fall. He landed flat, right next to Smith, whose body actually bounced from the force.

  The impact roused Smith. He opened his eyes and found himself staring, from two inches away, at Malley’s knocked-out face.

  “Thunder,” he said, slowly. “Damn. You’re under arrest.”

  Twenty minutes later a crowd had gathered outside the salon, kept back by McInnis and six other officers, two of them colored and four of them white cops who had heard on their car radios that an officer was down and that Thunder Malley was actually being arrested. They couldn’t resist seeing this for themselves. The whites cops stood there like guests at a party who wouldn’t dream of helping with the dishes but were happy to be entertained.

  Smith felt lightheaded but had refused to let an ambulance take him away, not that one would have made its way to this part of town all that quickly. They were still waiting for the wagon that would drive Malley and his two accomplices to jail—it was still unclear whether the women were in fact accomplices or victims of his extortion, but their stories were changing so fast that the officers decided a jail cell might be the perfect truth serum.

  Malley lay facedown on the salon floor, conscious but handcuffed and under strict orders to not so much as roll over. Dewey stood beside him, uniform shirt torn in the back from when he’d destroyed the glass window and torn in front from the razor. He wasn’t bleeding as badly as he by all rights should have been; the slash in his arm wasn’t deep, patched up with a first aid kit from McInnis’s squad car. He could use a few aspirin but didn’t feel any worse than he had many other times in the ring. Champ Jennings stood beside Officer Sherman Bayle, both of them smiling as they asked Dewey to retell it for a fourth time.

  Finally the wagon that would ferry Malley away appeared, lights flashing and horn honking to part the crowd. As it neared the curb, McInnis leane
d toward the open passenger window.

  “Not here. Park five blocks that way.”

  “What?” the driver asked. “Dispatch said he’s in there.”

  “I said I want you to move this wagon and park it five blocks east. And if that’s too complicated, maybe you can try driving a garbage truck instead.”

  “Yes, sir.”

  The driver shifted into reverse and turned around. As he drove away, Smith said, “I don’t understand, Sergeant.”

  “Just watch.”

  McInnis stepped into the parlor. “All right, Thunder, your chariot awaits.”

  Dewey tugged on the cuffs, pulling Malley to his knees, and then the juggernaut stood, McInnis and Bayle making brief eye contact to acknowledge the awesomeness of the man’s size.

  “I can walk him out,” Champ said, assuming the task should be his since he was the only one who came close to being Malley’s physical equal.

  “No,” McInnis said. “This is Edmunds and Smith’s collar. You two stay here with the ladies and see if they change their tune once he’s out of earshot.”

  Malley was too proud to keep his head down, even with the flashes from the camera held out by a photographer for the Negro Atlanta Daily Times, who stood beside reporter Jeremy Toon at the front of the crowd, Toon scribbling furiously in his notebook. Malley’s pride suited McInnis just fine, as it made it even easier for the witnesses to see the eyes of Thunder Malley, confirming it was really him. Dewey trudged a step behind the big man, one hand at the chain of his cuffs and another at what would normally be called the small of his back, except nothing about Malley was small. Two paces behind walked Smith, head still woozy but posture military perfect, eyes forward, resisting the temptation to scan the crowd’s reaction.

  He could hear it, though. Comments and whistles and murmurs as they walked past the bars and nightclubs, the sounds of windows opening so heads could poke out, porch boards creaking as second-floor onlookers peered at the sight. He heard a few people cheer, and as they made it a third and then a fourth block he even heard some laughter, as jokes at the expense of the great Thunder Malley could now be issued without fear of violent bodily harm. Smith wobbled at one point but he managed to right himself. It felt like the longest walk of his life, yet with every step and every gasp from the crowd he realized it was perhaps his most important. Even more people were in the street now, a borderline carnival breaking out as they watched the spectacle of Smith and the shortest police officer in the city of Atlanta marching their legendary subject down Edgewood.

  “Y’all are crazy,” Malley muttered under his breath. “You got nothing on me. I got friends who ain’t gonna like this.”

  “We got you for assaulting two officers, at the very least,” Dewey said. “You want to tell me the names of those friends of yours, so I can go after them next?”

  No reply.

  The wagon’s driver stood beside the opened back door and observed, “That there is one big nigger,” earning daggers from the eyes of Dewey but not Smith, whose eyes were still too foggy to issue a mean stare. Dewey pushed down on Malley’s shoulders until the big man was safely inside, then slammed the door.

  “What’s the charge, and where are they taking him?” Toon asked.

  Smith looked at the reporter and said, “We’re taking him to jail, where he belongs. And he ain’t coming back, people.” He stepped away from Toon and moved his dizzy eyes about the crowd, partly so he could address everyone and partly because he was still having trouble focusing on anything. “If that man’s leaned on any of you, if you been too afraid to say anything about it before, the time has come. Come to the Butler Street precinct and we’ll take down your report. Or call us and we’ll come to you.” He pointed to the wagon, which was now pulling away. “That man don’t own you anymore, understand? You don’t have to live in his shadow, or anybody else’s.” Then he nodded and walked back to the scene of the crime, ignoring Toon’s questions.

  “Well done, gentlemen,” McInnis told Dewey and Smith when they returned to the salon. The crowd was still watching, too amazed to leave just yet. McInnis’s eyes lingered on his bruised and bloodied officers. “You sure you don’t want an ambulance?”

  Dewey said, “I’m good,” and Smith agreed, “I’m sure, sir.”

  “Good,” McInnis said. “That would kill the mood.”

  17

  IT APPEARED TO be a vacant lot unless you looked real close. The land sloped steeply down from the road, weeds and scrub grass giving way to layers of Virginia creeper and kudzu, those leafy vines blanketing the ground entirely, and then farther down—almost invisible from the road—hid a ramshackle structure that only a very unfortunate soul might consider as living quarters. Perhaps it had been a large storage shed for one of the adjoining properties, back before the land had been parceled into smaller lots, or even the cover for a moonshine still before this narrow road was paved. No more than thirty feet long and with a slanted roof barely eight feet off the ground, it sat so close to the creek that Rake figured a hard rain might flood it. The odds of it having indoor plumbing were approximately zero.

  With no mailbox or number affixed to its unpainted door, it was barely an official address, but this is where two sources had told Rake he could find Delmar Coyle, former and perhaps present Columbian. Also former prisoner, released from Reidsville a month ago.

  Grant Park, a thickly wooded neighborhood southeast of downtown, boasted a swimming lake and stately Victorians in its northern half. This address, however, was in the less desirable southern edge, where petty crimes were more common. Untended vegetation grew far into this narrow, dead-end street; ahead was a small clearing for cars to turn around in, complete with recent tread marks. It did not seem an auspicious place to plot a revolution, Rake figured, but then again Coyle had plenty of solitude to hatch his next harebrained scheme.

  Rake had spoken to Knox Dunlow’s two friends, whom Knox claimed to be drinking with that night. They both backed Knox’s story, though it was possible they were lying and had all decided to beat up Malcolm Greer once liquored up. Or, it was possible Knox had finished drinking with them, driven home, seen Greer walking down the street, and had decided to pull over and teach the Negro a lesson himself. Rake certainly found that credible, though he had no evidence, and other cops would be extremely reluctant to charge Dunlow’s son with anything. Plus Knox was about to leave for Korea.

  Rake had read the report on Malcolm Greer’s assault—taken without any testimony from the then unconscious victim—and he noticed it hadn’t mentioned that the victim was related to Officer Smith. No evidence was noted, nor was there any record of an investigation beyond that first night. The cops in charge of the area clearly weren’t doing a thing.

  For all he knew, they were the ones who had attacked Malcolm.

  Rake loved living in Hanford Park, where men could change their car’s oil in their driveways while listening to the Bulldogs game, or just fall asleep on the back patio, which he did the morning after many a late shift. He wouldn’t have wanted to police such a dull area, where the chief complaints were the occasional break-in or gripes about a noisy neighborhood party or that fellow who mows his lawn before eight on a Sunday. Recent events were making him reconsider that assessment. His desire to learn what had happened was about more than just paying back a debt to a colored cop he barely knew. And it was about far more than his strong and oft-regretted favoring of underdogs. It was about the fear that his own power, that of his badge, would fade if they did nothing about the crime.

  He walked out of the car and descended the slope to Coyle’s place, pant legs instantly damp from the dew that clung to the vines even in the afternoon. Red oaks towered overhead; the yard probably got no more than an hour of sunlight when the boughs were full.

  A dog started barking. Rake’s right hand migrated to his holster in case something should come charging.

  He was ten feet from the door when it opened. The snout of some tawny mutt appeared, a h
and gripping its collar. “Hush, Max.”

  The dog downshifted to a growl. His owner had a military haircut and bony features, his sleeveless T-shirt revealing ropy arms veined with tension as he held the mutt back. Blue eyes beneath a furrowed brow.

  “Delmar Coyle?” Rake asked.

  “That’s me, and I done my time already. What’s this about?”

  “Just wanted to ask you a few questions. Without canine interference.”

  Coyle pushed the dog back as he stepped outside and closed the door behind him. Rake couldn’t get a look inside. The building had two small windows on this side but they were both so filthy they may as well have been painted black.

  “Enjoying the free life?” Rake asked.

  “I am, matter of fact.” No longer crouching, he was tall, with an inch or two on Rake, but much thinner. Perhaps he was only malnourished and made lean from the labor camp, but with his wary eyes and sharp chin it gave him the look of a hardscrabble survivor after some great disaster. “Man was meant to be free. Not tied down in a prison or anyplace else.”

  “You weren’t in jail very long, though, were you? Conspiring to overthrow the government doesn’t carry the kind of sentence it used to.”

  Coyle folded his arms, restraining himself physically as well as emotionally. “I served my time.”

  “Is this your official address, Mr. Coyle?”

  “What’s official mean? I’m not allowed to vote in your elections anymore, so it’s not like you need to send me a registration card. And I ain’t making money to pay taxes on, either.”