“Someone broke into a neighbor’s house last night,” the cop said. “Stole quite a lot of money. Two Negroes, one of them the break-in man and one of them driving a getaway car, who mighta been a woman. So the two of you had best have a better alibi than keeping each other company, or we’re gonna have a few more questions to ask at the station.”
“Why would we steal from a neighbor?” Malcolm asked.
For all Hannah knew, these were the very men who’d beaten Malcolm. Nearly killed him.
“Oh, I can think of a few motives. Fellow whose house got broken into was a man you had a bit of an altercation with recently. And that—”
“It wasn’t an altercation,” Hannah said, “we just said we—”
“Hush your mouth, girl!” the bulldog called out.
The lead cop asked Malcolm, “Are you gonna let her keep talking or are we gonna have to hush her next time?”
“Hannah,” Malcolm said, eyes down. “Just let me . . . let me talk to them.”
The lead cop smiled. “You both knew that Mr. Thames had quite a bit of money in his house, and you decided that instead of selling your place for it, you’d just up and take the money instead. Ain’t that right?”
Contradict them, and they’ll snap. Admit a wrongdoing you didn’t commit, and you go to jail. Stay silent, and they’ll be just as furious.
Malcolm said, “I was discharged from the hospital yesterday at ten in the morning. We haven’t left the house once since then. I can barely move around, let alone break into a house.”
The lead cop stayed motionless for a spell, watching Malcolm. “Well, Officer Barnwell, it appears the subject is unwilling to confess his crimes here. We’ll be able to get the truth at the station. Cuff him.”
The bulldog, Barnwell, grabbed Malcolm by the shoulder and spun him around. He was pulling Malcolm’s wrists behind his back when Hannah screamed, “You can’t do this! My brother’s a policeman!”
“I can’t do something?” the lead cop barked, stepping closer to her now. “Are you telling me what I can and cannot do, you black bitch?”
“Don’t you call her that!” Malcolm snapped. His hands not yet cuffed, Malcolm tried to shake Barnwell off, turning to face the one who’d insulted his wife.
Things were moving too fast for Hannah to follow, but to the lead cop this must have been an all-too-predictable response to his comment. He turned to Malcolm and did not seem the least rushed, surprised, or even bothered as he calmly punched Malcolm in his barely mended cheek.
“Don’t touch him!” Hannah screamed.
There was another sound, one she didn’t yet understand, as she screamed at them and Barnwell leaned Malcolm into the sofa and grabbed his wrists again, this time cuffing him. The other cop slapped her in the face. Not since she was eight or nine, fighting with a friend she’d never speak to again, had she been struck. Her cheek felt hot and there were tears in her eyes and her whole body had shifted a few feet to the right. When she was able to look up again, she saw through watery eyes that the lead cop was crouched on the floor and holding a gun.
“Well, look what we have here.” Malcolm’s revolver had fallen from its perch when the cop had slugged him. The cop stood all the way up, gripping it by the handle.
“I have papers for that,” Malcolm said, still bent over the sofa.
“Brother’s a policeman, huh? Well, there’s yet another motive. You’re getting all uppity, thinking your family’s above the law. Thinking you can bust into houses and steal from the good white people of this neighborhood.”
Then, in a motion that would be seared into Hannah’s memory forever, in a pose that would wake her in the middle of countless nights, he pointed the gun down, to the back of Malcolm’s head.
“No!” she screamed, so loudly she wet herself, so hard the muscles around her ribs would ache later.
He held the gun there and smiled. Malcolm couldn’t see what was happening, and he started to say “Hannah” just as the lead cop laughed.
He put the unfired gun into his pocket and nodded to Barnwell.
“Cuff her, too.”
39
JUST PAST NOON, after Rake’s tussle with Dale, he had just finished roll call when his partner, Parker, told him the latest on the Thames robbery.
“Helton made an arrest a little while ago. It was one of the Negro couples who’d just moved in, Malcolm Greer and his wife.”
“The one who got beat half to death? He’s cousins with Negro Officer Smith.”
“I didn’t know that. How did you?”
“Just heard it around.” Rake shrugged, working a fake dose of nonchalance into his very real anger. “But why them, what’s the motive?”
“For a burglary? The motive was money. They knew he had a lot of cash lying around because he’d offered some of it to ’em to buy their house back. Pretty stupid move, robbing from one of your neighbors. Don’t shit where you eat, but maybe Negroes don’t know that expression. Anyway, the victim positively identified Greer in a lineup a few minutes ago.”
Helton had closed his case quickly and efficiently.
“Parker, that money wasn’t even stolen—at least, not the way Helton thinks. Thames staged it.”
Parker looked at him like he was crazy. “Come again?”
“I was first on the scene. There was a hell of a lot of glass outside his window, on the lawn, and just a tiny amount inside. He claims the intruders broke the glass to gain entry to the house, but it had been broken from the inside. Either Helton’s being played, or he’s playing along deliberately.”
“Maybe they broke it on the way out, too.”
“That’s not what he said. I was there, I could see it in his eyes.”
Parker tried to follow Rake’s logic. “So he ran a neighborhood collection to buy out the Negroes, then he pretended to rob himself so he could keep the money?”
“Yes. He claimed it was two Negroes, but I smelled shoe polish strongly in that room. I think he had two friends over, who came in and slathered on blackface, then one got into the car to act like the getaway driver.” Committing crimes in shoe-polish blackface was not unheard of, especially at night and in white areas, where people weren’t all that used to seeing Negroes and often couldn’t tell the difference from a distance. “Thames fires a couple shots into the wall to attract attention, then the accomplice runs off into the car, to confuse any witnesses. Thames was acting so damn strange, and I couldn’t help realizing how convenient it’d be for him if that collection of other people’s money just happened to vanish into his own bank account.”
“I don’t know, bud. You told me you didn’t much like that fellow, remember?”
“Yeah, there was something about him that didn’t wash, and now I’ve figured out why. Think about it: Helton’s pinning this on those Negroes. Why chase them out of the neighborhood when you can jail them for a trumped-up crime? And as an added benefit, it’ll probably scare the other two colored households away, too.”
Parker shook his head. “You’re basing this on how glass fell and the scent of shoe polish in a man’s bedroom. A man who has every right to polish shoes in his house. What Helton has is a Negro couple with reason to be vindictive against the victim,” and he counted on his fingers, “reason to suspect he had a lot of cash, and, oh yeah, the victim has positively identified them.”
“To frame them and cover his tracks! I bet if someone looked into his bank records, they’d find something—for all we know he has gambling debts or a drug habit, or he’s about to go buy a bigger house with his sudden windfall.”
Parker frowned like a sage father who was through indulging his son’s well-argued but futile case for more allowance. “Glass falling isn’t strong enough, and a judge would never okay looking into the man’s finances. Even if Thames does have money problems, that kind of case would take far too long to work out, and time is the one thing we don’t have. You know it, just like Helton does: if the sun had set one more time on Hanford Park witho
ut an arrest, folks would riot. Houses would get burned down and maybe someone would get lynched. Do you want that? You want to explain to your little boy what that body hanging in the tree is? Maybe fate dealt this Greer boy a bad hand, but busted for burglary beats being barbecued and having his dick chopped off.” He paused at the image. “You may not like it, but Helton did what he had to do to stabilize the neighborhood and restore order.”
“What if a crowd gathers tonight for vengeance against the other Negro houses? The arrest doesn’t solve anything if Greer’s innocent. No matter how well Thames lies, that money needs to turn up, or we’ll still get that riot.”
“Nah. If anyone complains about their missing money, Helton and his boys’ll assure them that the perpetrators are in custody and that the slow gears of justice are moving. By the time Greer’s found guilty, months will have passed and no one will be so incensed about having lost twenty or fifty bucks that they’ll do anything rash.” He adjusted his cap. “Like you said, those other Negroes will get the message and clear out, so folks will be happy, no matter what the hell really happened with their money.”
Rake and Parker were about to head out when Rake got a call.
“Why is my cousin in jail?” Smith demanded.
Rake motioned to Parker that he’d be a minute. Once he was alone, he said, “This is a delicate situation. I’m sorry for your family, but there’s a lot going on right now.”
“Tell me about it. I was up all night at his house holding a rifle.”
“What? Boggs told me you wouldn’t come around Hanford Park again—that was part of our deal.”
“The deal got revised when a mob of white folks took to the streets.”
“You standing around with a rifle is not a good idea. I don’t want things to escalate and—”
“Escalate? That was self-defense. We were in his house standing watch. Some other people were going to do it again tonight, but I guess they don’t have to since the Greers are in jail. Or maybe that was the plan all along? Get them in jail so you can torch their house and not have to feel guilty for killing someone?”
He couldn’t stand Smith. Boggs you could deal with, well spoken and polite, but trying to reason with this fellow was like juggling grenades. “I’ve been trying to help you, goddammit.”
“He’s been arrested. How is that helping?”
Jesus Christ. Especially after the attack on his brother-in-law, how could Smith fail to realize what he was dealing with? On one side were whites like Dale and the Columbians and the Klan, thugs who were itching to stomp the Smiths of the world into oblivion. People like Rake—outnumbered and not thanked—were barely holding those forces back, and what Rake gets in return is Smith’s outraged attitude.
“I’ve been sticking my neck out for you,” Rake snapped. “I’ve been asking uncomfortable questions and putting myself out where I shouldn’t. And I’m the one who kept that mob from spinning out of control last night. Rifle or no rifle, you wouldn’t have had enough bullets, trust me. All this has gotten me is a hell of a lot of dirty looks from my own neighbors and other cops.”
He was keeping his voice down, but still he worried others might overhear. It was like he’d been turned into a spy against his own race. How had he let Smith and Boggs do this to him?
Smith said, “I appreciate that you’re in a tough spot. So am I. I have people to answer to, and they’re wondering why my relatives, who aren’t thieves, are in a cell. We got a lawyer heading over there; I wish I felt confident that they’d be safe once they’re bailed out, but something tells me that’s asking too much.” Rake did not appreciate the acid tone. “Now, what can you tell me about the arrest? They got any kind of fake evidence whatsoever?”
“All I’m hearing is that the victim ID’d Malcolm in a lineup.”
“That’s crazy.”
“I don’t like it, either.” Rake could have told Smith his suspicions about Thames. But clueing a Negro in on the internecine conflicts of whites did not seem wise, especially now. And Smith’s tone during this conversation was not lending Rake an overwhelming desire to be forthcoming. “If you’re waiting for me to apologize for not finding out who roughed up your cousin, don’t hold your breath. Doing favors for you hasn’t exactly been good for me. If I find anything that helps your family, I will let you know immediately.” He hung up before Smith could criticize him again.
Next he put in an overdue call to an old buddy who wrote at the business desk of the Constitution, Chip Weathers. He’d called Chip a few days ago and asked him to look into Letcher’s business, which Rake wouldn’t have known how to research or even understand.
“Have you learned anything about Letcher?”
“Oh yeah, been meaning to call you. Interesting fellow.” But Letcher wasn’t interesting, at least not as far as Rake could tell; he’d already looked up Letcher’s legal records, finding little of note. “Owns quite a bit of property in Atlanta.”
“Including a stake in Sweetwater Mill just down the road from me.”
“Correct, but he’s been making out particularly well with residential real estate. It took some digging, but turns out he’s one of the owners of a firm that bought a number of properties in ’47 and ’48, all of which it resold within a year.” When Chip explained where exactly those properties were located, Rake leaned back in his chair.
“Those neighborhoods all went colored,” he realized, hating himself for having missed this, the connection that linked Letcher to Hanford Park. Letcher made a business of profiting off neighborhoods that changed color, buying houses low from panicked whites and reselling them high to incoming Negroes.
“I was talking about him the other day to a buddy of mine here, on the crime beat,” Chip said. “The Letchers have quite a bit of money—his daddy made a ton before the Depression, and managed to hold on to it—but they’ve had their share of kooks in the family tree. One of his cousins, matter of fact, was one of those Columbians got put away a few years ago. Let’s see, where’d I write that name?”
Rake’s mind raced. Letcher’s moneymaking scheme would not sit well with most Atlantans—and especially not with the self-appointed guardians of white Atlanta, had they realized he was behind it. Letcher was wise to have kept it a secret, buried behind complex financial relationships that only a journalist could ferret out. A journalist, or maybe a relative who happened to overhear something once.
“Sorry,” Chip continued, “I’m still looking for that notebook, it’s here somewhere . . .”
Rake guessed it, his voice dry: “The cousin was Delmar Coyle.”
“That’s the one.”
40
CLANCY DARDEN LIKED stripes, Boggs noticed. He wore a dark gray suit with thin pinstripes over a white shirt with black pinstripes, his red tie had black stripes, and when he smiled his forehead wrinkled in an undulating stack of horizontal lines. The vice president of the Negro-owned, million-dollar insurance company where Boggs’s brother worked, Darden smiled a lot, even though his smile appeared very nervous indeed.
Boggs sat with his father, Darden, and Reverend Holmes Borders of Wheat Street Baptist. They were the three wise men of the Sweet Auburn community who had been invited to sit down with the white leaders of Hanford Park to discuss the deteriorating situation.
Sitting opposite them were three white men. Don Gilmore, the hardware store owner, headed the neighborhood association, which had not existed until the Negro families started moving into the area. He had gray hair and the physique of someone who’d made his living building and fixing things; the plaid tie over his white dress shirt appeared to be a clip-on. Beside him sat Richard Puckett, silver-haired and bedecked in a gray business suit, meaning he was as well dressed as the Negroes here. He was a lawyer and former city councilman with an air of authority about him; surely he himself didn’t live in blue-collar Hanford Park. The third white man, John Vanders, a foreman at Sweetwater Mill, crossed his arms over his denim shirt and thick chest; unlike his colleagues, he
didn’t see the point in smiling.
They sat at a long table in a conference room in Puckett’s downtown law firm. Boggs had felt very conspicuous indeed as he and his fellow Negro ambassadors had entered the fine lobby a moment ago. The elevator operator, a Negro barely out of his teens, had seemed flummoxed when they entered his car. Several white people behind them had opted to wait in the lobby rather than share the elevator.
“Thank you for coming, gentlemen. I admit this is awkward timing,” Puckett said. “I understand there was a robbery in Hanford Park just last night.”
Boggs wondered exactly how much these white men knew about it.
“It’s very unfortunate,” his father said. “Sin certainly knows no borders.”
“Well, Hanford Park has been crime-free for years,” said Gilmore. Boggs very much doubted that: what area could ever be completely crime-free? “Look, I’m a businessman; I sell my goods to both races. I want no trouble in the neighborhood, I want no property damage, and I want no more nights like last night. Now, given that we’re already talking about three families, and given that the area a few blocks south has gone from mixed to mostly Negro over the past two years, it doesn’t seem likely we can get that genie back into the bottle.”
“We feel that restoring natural borders between the races is the smartest and safest strategy,” Puckett declared in his lawyerly voice as he removed a map from a folder and spread it before them. “What had been the border, Beacon Street, is no longer serving as such, as we now have three Negro families living north of it.” Beacon, a main thoroughfare that ran all the way downtown, flanked by businesses, had separated the races for decades.
“But this only works,” Vanders said, his tone a bit more forceful than his colleagues’, “if y’all respect the new borders we draw today. Doesn’t do any good to draw a new one and retreat and then a year from now three other colored families break the border.”
Lightning Men Page 30