“Those people are vultures, Cassie. They’re just trying to scare you.”
“I don’t scare easy, but others do and that’s what worries me. The Bartletts and Caseys are about ready to sell—I had lunch with the ladies the other day. Folks who bought most recently, like them, are more willing to pull up stakes. We’ve only got four years into the mortgage, so we should think about it.”
“I can’t believe you’re considering this. We just got the bedrooms and the kitchen the way you wanted them.” He had spent hours rebuilding cabinets with his father, had stained and repainted furniture they’d inherited from her grandmother, had planted two trees in the front after a century-old oak had fallen last spring, barely missing the house. All that sweat and time had made the house feel like an extension of himself, not something that could be so idly shucked off due to vague fears.
“Hopefully those Negroes will take the offer from the neighborhood and will sell their houses back, and soon,” she said. “But if that doesn’t happen, we do need to consider leaving.”
Denny Jr. wandered over to tell them something his imaginary train conductor had done, asking Daddy to come play. Rake promised to be by shortly and shooed him away.
He hadn’t grappled with the big picture, he realized. From his time as a soldier to his time as a cop, he’d operated a certain way: get orders, execute them, move on to the next task. He realized he wasn’t as good at stepping back and considering all the angles, the tectonic shifts under his feet that determined which orders he was even given. When the Negro families had first moved in, and people like Dale had dropped hints about violence, he had been hoping the neighborhood would settle again into some sort of equilibrium. The Negroes would stay put, but they weren’t on his block, so he didn’t mind. Which was ridiculous, he understood now, because if three Negro households were able to live safely here, those three would become six, then twelve—Cassie had been right about that. He’d agreed to help Dale not just because Dale was family but because Rake hoped that, if he’d solved that mystery, he could root out the instigators and contain the violence. He had eventually capitulated to her and gone along with CAHP’s money-raising scheme, even though he’d feared it was just a different finger on the same hand that would inevitably strike out against the Negroes—and he believed that now more than ever.
So he said to Cassie, “I want to tell you something, but you need to keep it between us.” She nodded. “What those burglars stole was the neighborhood money, what Thames had been collecting. It’s gone. So no one’s going to be able to buy the Negroes out.”
She brought her hand to her mouth. “Oh my Lord. They got all that money?”
“Supposedly.”
“What do you mean, supposedly?”
“I think there’s more going on here than anyone realizes.” He was afraid to say more, afraid what her reaction would be. He needed proof first, otherwise his accusation would risk tearing a deeper fissure between them. “I just need to figure a few things out.”
“You’ve got to find it, Denny. You’ve got to get it back before they blow it on booze or whatever and then we’re all out of luck.”
“Cassie . . .” He tried to proceed carefully. “The neighborhood is going to be fine, and we aren’t going anywhere. But in the meantime, please do not repeat any of this. I need to find that money before anyone else hears it ever went missing. Otherwise . . .” He didn’t want to even imagine it. “In the meantime, just, don’t talk to any Realtors, all right? Give me a day.”
Thinking, how much worse could things get in one day?
He needed to talk to Dale again. It had been only yesterday when the GBI had spoken to him in the park; he’d planned on heading over to Dale’s that night after the kids went to bed, but the robbery and subsequent chaos had quashed that plan. Then, of all things, he’d seen Dale chumming it up with the goddamn Columbians.
Wary of leaving any phone records the state cops might be able to trace, he headed outside without bidding Cassie good-bye, driving to a pay phone three blocks away. He called Dale’s mill. Told that Dale was unavailable on the floor at the moment, he claimed to be a neighbor and said Dale’s wife was very ill and needed him immediately.
Three minutes later, Dale was on the line, out of breath. “Hello?”
“Dale, it’s Rake, but don’t say my name out loud. Sue Ellen’s fine. I lied. But you and me need to talk immediately, in person.”
Twenty minutes later a rather steamed Dale got into Rake’s Chevy, where Rake had pulled over at the northern end of the park that lent Hanford Park its name. He slammed the door.
“That wasn’t a very nice stunt, Rake. You like to have given me a heart attack.”
“You need a heart for that.” Rake pulled away, eyeing the mirrors carefully. He’d taken a circuitous route here to make sure he wasn’t being followed.
Five blocks from the mill, Rake pulled into the narrow alley that ran between a restaurant that had recently closed down and a bar that wasn’t open yet.
“Why are we talking here?” Dale asked as they got out.
Ignoring the question, and confident they were alone and unobserved, Rake asked, “Has anyone from the Klan gotten in touch with you?”
“No. You told me to lay low, so I’ve—”
“The Negro that got beat up the other day, what if that was in payment for what you did up in Coventry?”
“I thought that, too. But if that were the case, they woulda said something at our last meeting.”
“What last meeting?”
Dale looked sheepish. “Our Klavern. We met the other day—”
“I told you to stay the hell away from them.”
“If I skipped a meeting that woulda looked suspicious, wouldn’t it?”
He hated the fact that his brother-in-law might actually be right. Perhaps Dale’s being at the meeting was good—it was like having a spy there, if a moronic one. “What did you hear at the meeting?”
“They were right upset about what happened to Irons, and they asked if anybody knew anything, but I kept quiet. They barely mentioned what happened to that Negro here.”
“Who have you talked to about that night in Coventry?”
“Nobody. You told me to keep quiet and I have.” Rake was about to say Good when Dale added, “The only people who know other’n me and Mott are Iggy and Pantleg.”
“Who?”
Then Dale sketched an even worse picture, explaining a part he’d left out before: originally five Kluxers had ventured to Coventry, but then two had abandoned the plan, not wanting to beat up a white man, instead choosing to cause even yet more trouble elsewhere.
Rake was agog. “There were two others? You forgot to mention this before?”
“I . . . I guess I thought I told you.”
“No, no you did not fucking tell me. So there are three people who know you went up there that night? Jesus. Who else have they told?”
“Nobody, Rake, they know better.”
Rake couldn’t believe what a fool he’d been. There had been a clear option when Dale had first asked for his help: turn him down. Better, Rake should have taken Dale to the station himself. Referred him to a decent lawyer, told him to explain things as accurately as possible to the Homicide detectives. Dale might have gotten off with aggravated assault, perhaps less if he’d convinced a prosecutor he was a good ol’ boy enforcing Christian virtues. Jesus, Rake had failed such an obvious ethical test. Despite being so sure of his moral compass, and thinking himself so much better than crooked cops like Helton or his ex-partner, Dunlow, he’d botched things, horrifically. He knew better than to be motivated by greed or lust, to accept bribes or take advantage of helpless women. That’s not where his faults lay. He had been trying to aid his sister, which he’d thought lent his actions a certain nobility. So he had failed to report a crime and he was in danger of losing his job once word got out, which, he now understood, it inevitably would.
“Dale, this is goddamn hopeless.” H
e hoped his tone of voice did justice to what he was about to say. “You need to turn yourself in.”
“What? I can’t do that.”
“You have no choice.”
Dale looked terrified. Worse than the first day, when he’d still been in shock. “We can keep quiet about it, Denny, I swear.”
“You cannot keep quiet. It’s not in your nature.”
“Denny, I swear to you—”
“Even if you could, those other two have less to lose. They weren’t part of the actual attack where a man was killed. If they get leaned on, they’ll point the finger at you.”
“They’re my friends.”
“Your best friends in the whole wide world? They love you so goddamn much they’d go to jail for something they didn’t do while keeping their mouth shut so that you could stay free? Do you realize how crazy that sounds?”
Tears in Dale’s eyes now. He put his hands together in prayer. “Denny, please.”
Seeing him like that, broken down and desperate, defenses long gone, this was the best possible time to ask, “And what were you doing chumming it up with the Columbians last night?”
Dale shook his head, thrown by the change in subject. “You mean Coyle?”
“You know him?”
“Yeah. You know I almost got mixed up in that once, but, Jesus, that was years ago.”
“What was he up to last night?”
“Same as everyone else, I expect. I just saw him out there and said hi. I hadn’t even known he was out of prison.”
Dale looked too pathetic to lie convincingly right then, but Rake had been wrong before. “Stay the hell away from them.”
Dale wiped at his eyes, regaining control over his emotions now that they weren’t discussing his inevitable imprisonment. “They’re just trying to help the neighborhood.”
“Help how, exactly?” Rake stepped closer. “Were they the ones who attacked the Negro the other night? Or broke into Thames’s house?”
“I don’t know! Look, I felt like they were speaking a lot of truth when they stood up for white neighborhoods a few years ago, but when they got arrested for treason or whatever it was, I kept my distance. I don’t wear the uniform or go to their secret meetings, okay?”
“They have secret meetings?”
“It was just a figure of speech! Lay off, goddammit.” He shook his head, his fear as usual turning quickly to anger. “You really want me to turn myself in? Tell the truth and all? Then I’ll have to tell the whole truth so help me God, and that would include how I talked to my brother-in-law, Officer Denny Rakestraw, and told him all about what happened in Coventry, and he advised that I keep my mouth shut. So I obeyed.”
Rake kept very still. He could hear children playing, recess beginning a couple blocks away, a gentle breeze carrying the sound.
“Are you threatening me, Dale?”
“I would never threaten a cop. I’m just saying, if it ever got so I had to tell the complete and whole truth, well, I guess I’d just have to go and do that.”
Rake punched him in the stomach. Only the slightest amount of better judgment restrained his hand from punching much higher, from breaking Dale’s nose and leaving his face with evidence of this encounter. Dale doubled over and Rake caught his shoulders, lifting them up and pushing him against the wall. Then he hit him again in the same spot.
He backed up so Dale could fall to his knees and start coughing. He thought Dale might throw up but he didn’t. Rake got down on one knee, from where he was still inches above Dale, who was barely holding himself up, hands on the alley floor.
“If you even think of implicating me in any of your nonsense,” he said quietly, almost whispering in Dale’s ear, “I will beat you to death. Slowly. I’ll do some of the things the Nazis did over there. Things we had to copy sometimes. So keep your goddamn mouth shut.”
Back in the Chevy, keys in the ignition, he reversed all the way, giving Dale one last glance, still facedown in the alley like he’d been beaten into a quadruped.
Later, when his adrenaline faded and his anger slightly cooled, Rake would realize he had accomplished nothing, worse than nothing, because he honestly had no clue what Dale might do next.
38
HANNAH ROSE FROM the bed gingerly, head pounding, as if sleep were something that had assaulted her. The clock read half past nine. The headache wasn’t from sleep, it was from too little. She, Malcolm, Tommy, and Boggs had traded shifts throughout the night. She’d never held a gun before, had never wanted to. But last night, Lord, that gun in her hand, its cold hardness, its undeniable power, may have been the only thing that kept her from breaking down.
She stretched, her back sore. Sleep had grown difficult enough due to the baby, even without the fear of death. She used the bathroom, which she needed to do every hour or so now. She sipped some water and could feel already the heartburn in her stomach; nothing would taste good today.
Apologizing, but needing to get home and check in with his colleagues, and maybe nap before his shift, Tommy had already left. With the sun up, he believed, they were safe. She wished she agreed, but it wasn’t vampires or werewolves that were hunting them. The white people stalking them were all the more terrifying because they could strike at any time.
She and Malcolm had both crawled into bed soon after Tommy left—at first they’d been afraid to, but something about the morning’s unceasing echo of neighbors’ front doors opening and closing, and the attendant parade of automobiles winding their way out of driveways and down the road to this office or that factory, the sheer normalcy, made the call of their warm bed irresistible. They’d lain down in their clothes, asleep in seconds.
Malcolm was still snoring, so she crept silently into the kitchen to fix herself some coffee. The floor cold on her bare feet, she felt crumbs that she’d been too distracted to sweep last night. And what would happen tonight? How many midnight vigils would they need? Tommy’s one night off was a few days away, so again he wouldn’t be able to join them until past two in the morning. He had said another Negro officer would help, but what if that cop decided it wasn’t his problem? How long could they hold out?
She thought about the white couple who had visited them not long ago, offering to buy back the house “on behalf of the neighborhood.” As if “the neighborhood” were a thing separate from her and Malcolm. “The neighborhood” so wanted them gone that it would do them this favor, if they knew what was good for them. They had dared to decline. Then the white couple, without issuing any epithets or overt threats, nonetheless left the clear impression that the easiest, safest route had just been closed off, and only dangerous roads remained.
The coffee not yet finished, her head still pounded when it was joined by a more physical pounding—the front door. Three heavy knocks accompanied by “Police! Open up!”
She tried to both whisper and scream—“Malcolm!”—to wake him without being overheard outside. Were they really police? And did it matter? She hurried into the bedroom, shaking her husband by the shoulder. “Someone’s knocking on the door! Says they’re police.”
First he was as hard to rouse as a dead man, then he sprang up as if electrocuted, grabbing the revolver from his bedside table before his feet had touched the floor. He popped out the chamber to double-check the rounds—quintuple-check was more like it, as both of them had done so many times last night—then stuck it in his pants, his flannel shirttails concealing it.
“If you don’t open right now, we’ll kick it down!”
In the front parlor, Malcolm’s Winchester lay on the sofa. He moved a few of the cushions to conceal it. Then, positioning himself beside the sofa, told her to open the door only a few inches.
She realized her hand was shaking as she turned the bolt, then the knob, so overwhelmed by even these most rote of tasks that she forgot to offer a quick prayer to the Lord, not that the Big Man hadn’t been hearing from her plenty of late.
She opened the door just enough to let them see her—un
washed, hair a mess, great with child, terrified. Two white policemen. She didn’t get a chance to ask what they wanted when the one in front demanded, “Where’s your big buck, girl?”
He pushed the door open, almost hitting her belly. The officers walked into the parlor as if it were theirs, like they’d celebrated holidays here, said their prayers and raised their children within these walls.
“Well, hello there,” the lead officer said. He was perhaps forty-five, tall and ruddy, gray hair visible beneath his cap. His partner was younger, and something about his doughy cheeks and fast-moving eyes reminded Hannah of a bulldog, as did the thickness of his chest and neck. Tommy had told her to always try and get the names of officers who spoke to them, but they didn’t wear nameplates and she could only imagine how they would respond if she dared ask.
“Morning, Officers,” Malcolm said. The cops fanned across the room, into and out of his personal space, but he stayed cemented in place.
“Malcolm Greer, correct?”
“Yes, sir.”
“Where were you last night, boy?”
Hannah felt the bulldoggish one watching her.
“Here. We were here all day, all night.”
“How about around six, six thirty last night?”
“We were eating dinner together.”
The lead cop stepped closer to Malcolm. “Anybody else can vouch for that?”
“I can,” Hannah said. Both cops stared at her, stunned that the woman dared speak.
“Someone other than the two of you, I mean.”
“It was just us,” Malcolm said.
The cop looked him up and down. Hannah imagined what he saw: an exhausted Negro still bearing the marks of a severe beating, the bridge of his nose crooked and the skin above his right eye lower than it should be. He was missing two front teeth—the dental work was going to cost a fortune—and it lent him a slurred speech his own wife barely recognized.
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