Lightning Men

by Thomas Mullen

  “I was in jail. Didn’t feel nothing but being in jail.”

  Boggs leaned closer. “Do you have anything on that man? Anything that could help put a dirty cop away?”

  Jeremiah watched him carefully, as if he expected Boggs to bust out laughing at some practical joke, or pull a weapon. Boggs had played this badly, he realized; surely Tommy would have known a slyer way to ask.

  When the silence finally grew too heavy, Boggs said, “No, I figured not. If you had anything on him, he would’ve killed you like he killed the others, right? Like he killed your brother?”

  “Man like Slater isn’t someone to trifle with, Officer Lucius Boggs. Man like that . . . can do things.”

  Boggs tapped the table. “So can I. If you do one day decide you can help get that devil off the streets, you call me. Otherwise, you stay very, very far away from Julie. You hear me?”

  No reply. Boggs wasn’t going to ask a second time. He was about to stand up when Jeremiah finally spoke.

  “You think I want to hurt her, Officer Lucius Boggs? If I wanted to hurt her, I wouldn’t need to use my body.” He lifted his hands up, palms out, in a way that attracted attention from a couple sitting at another table. His tone had always seemed odd but now something had shifted. The door opened behind him as a man walked in and Boggs felt a cold breeze in his face, a chill up his neck. Smith was still out there, watching. “I wouldn’t need to use these hands,” Jeremiah said—then he let his hands fall back into his lap and out of view.

  “I said keep your hands where I can see them,” Boggs said through gritted teeth. Not wanting to yell in here but not wanting to make a grave mistake.

  “But I don’t need to use them.”

  Boggs moved his right hand into his lap, placing it on the handle of his revolver.

  “Show me your hands, now!”

  “All I’d need to use is my mouth, Officer Lucius Boggs.” Jeremiah lifted his hands back onto the table, slowly. They were empty. “If I really wanted to harm that girl, all I need to do is tell the truth.”

  Boggs still gripped the handle of his revolver but hadn’t drawn it yet, so deeply confused by those empty hands, the calm tone that still seemed to be voicing threats, everything all wrong. “What are you talking about?”

  “I’d just tell the truth and Julie would be put away for a long, long time. I coulda done that before, but I didn’t want to.” Staring straight into Boggs’s eyes. “You think I should change my mind?”

  Behind him, the door opened: Smith entering, hand by his pistol handle as well. Alarmed by the look on Boggs’s face and Jeremiah’s movements. Boggs shook him off, not wanting Jeremiah to stop but also not wanting Smith to overhear whatever was coming.

  Jeremiah continued, “I made myself the sacrifice for her. Because that’s what love is, Officer Lucius Boggs. Love is five years and one month and six days so my girl could walk free. If I lost that love, she could lose that freedom.”

  No.

  Jeremiah smiled as Boggs understood, the realization no doubt scarring its way across his face. “See? I don’t need no gun to hurt you. All I needed was the truth.”

  Boggs glanced up at Smith, still standing a few feet behind Jeremiah. Had he overheard?

  “You’re lying,” Boggs insisted.

  Jeremiah seemed to be marveling at Boggs’s expression. He didn’t know Smith was lingering a few feet behind him. “The truth can do so much damage. Ask her yourself. My brother, you see, he was a man of appetites. They got him in a lot of trouble. He treated me mean sometimes, but he was my big brother, he taught me things, too. That’s how family is.” Tears welled in his eyes. “He didn’t respect no boundaries, no lines. What was mine was his. I wish I’d been there to protect her that time. It was just the one time, she said. And I’ll always blame myself for not being there. He did what he did, didn’t care that she didn’t want it. Only he didn’t see that he’d left his gun right beside the bed when he did it. So she did what she did.”

  “I don’t believe you.”

  “I helped her move the body, that’s true, and I made up a story for her. That’s what a man does; he makes sacrifices for his woman and child.”

  Boggs felt dizzy, hot. Sick to his stomach.

  “That case ain’t officially closed yet, is it?” Jeremiah said. “Ain’t no statute of limitations on murder, right? I suppose if I did talk, I could get in trouble, too, for, what do you call it, accessorizing after the fact. But, you know, I’ve done time before. I could do it again.” He leaned closer. “Do you think Julie could?”

  Boggs stood up, feeling even dizzier. People other than Smith were watching him, first on account of his shouts and now due to his spastic motions, the horror in his eyes.

  He pointed at Jeremiah and said, “Stay away from her,” his voice robbed of its former power, his heart robbed of its illusions. He grabbed his cap, then stumbled past Smith and out into the darkness.

  47

  DALE WAS VERY distracted indeed as he ate dinner with his family. Sue Ellen chided him for having his head in the clouds. He smiled and tried to joke with the kids, but his world was spinning.

  He hadn’t wanted to believe Rake—who, after all, had assaulted him a few hours ago. But the more he considered what Rake had told him about Coyle, the more sense it made. He’d heard Coyle rant about the Klan many a time, which Dale had figured for a misplaced, territorial thing—clannishness, no pun intended, one group jealous of another. Now he understood, burning with shame at how easily he’d been manipulated.

  They had just finished supper when Dale got a phone call. A voice he did not recognize asked, “Is Mr. Ayak in?”

  Klan Kode, Ayak being an acronym for Are you a Klansman?

  Dale found himself staring at his two boys as he responded, “No, but there’s a Mr. Akai.” Meaning, A Klansman am I.

  “Good. A car is going to pull up at the corner of Spruce and Myrtle in exactly ten minutes. Please be there.”

  Ten minutes later, Dale stood at the intersection a short walk away, almost dizzy with fear. He’d manufactured an excuse for Sue Ellen, claiming he needed to run an errand. He had kissed each boy on the top of their heads, the kids barely noticing, as he hadn’t wanted to overplay things, afraid of broadcasting to his wife his suspicion that he was about to walk a plank.

  If they were coming for him, they wouldn’t call first, right? Surely they just wanted to talk.

  A small black Ford pulled up at the opposite corner. The sun had set and the neighborhood was quiet but for the occasional dog. The driver rolled down his window as Dale approached, wary but relieved it was only one man. And an old one at that, white hair and pocked cheeks, some survivor of smallpox from long ago.

  “I have a friend in Rockdale,” the man said in code. Another car was approaching from the opposite side, so Dale drew closer to the man, getting out of its way.

  “Yeah, yeah, I’ve been meaning to ask about him. What can I do for you?”

  “Well,” the man said slowly, as if speech hurt, “you could stand there just a moment longer.”

  He hadn’t quite noticed the footsteps but he felt hands at his shoulders and then darkness shrouded him. Something was covering his face. He reached for it but someone reached under his armpits and lifted him. Someone else punched him in the stomach, and he squealed because his abdomen still ached from Rake’s blows only a few hours ago. He heard a man whisper “Careful” even as his forehead banged into something, then a hand pressed his head down and someone pushed him from behind and he heard metal sounds and then the world itself shifted violently beneath him.

  “Get the hell off me!” he yelled.

  He reached again for whatever was on his head. This time he pulled it off, and he saw that he was in the backseat of a large sedan. Flanking him were two people, and in the front seat were two more, and they all wore the hoods and robes.

  “What the hell’s going on? I’m with you boys.”

  “Shut up.” That voice seemed to come
from the man in the passenger seat, but honestly it was hard to tell. “We don’t want that much noise out of you, so if you can’t hush yourself up, we’ll do it for you.”

  “What’s this about?”

  “You know damn well.”

  Oh hell. Were they just going to wait him out? Or start beating it out of him? “I’m sorry, fellas, I don’t.”

  “We want to know why you were part of that group in Coventry that beat up Letcher. And we want to know how it all happened.”

  “I didn’t do any such thing.”

  Their silence implied they found this answer unacceptable and not worth arguing.

  He hadn’t recognized anyone’s voices yet. He looked from one side to the other, hoping to get a glimpse inside their masks, but it was too dark. Driving in a hood was usually not advised, and the tip of the driver’s hood was bent down sideways by the roof of the car, like a nightcap.

  “Blind the son of a bitch,” someone in front said.

  One of the men beside him moved to put the sack over his head again, and Dale blocked his arms. Then something hard pressed into his side.

  “Blindfold or bullet?” a man asked. Dale chose one darkness over the other.

  Twenty minutes later, the last two of which were very curvy and bouncy indeed, they shut the car off and pushed him out. They told him he could take off the sack now, and when he did he saw he was being marched down a dirt path toward a creek. He couldn’t even be sure which creek it was; given the length of the drive there were plenty they could have taken him to, and all he could see was woods.

  He felt very, very far from anyone or anything.

  “Now, look, fellas, this is all a big misunder—”

  This time they hit him in the face. Twice, and then he was on the ground. He pulled himself to his knees, muddy from the dirt by the creek bed.

  “Don’t say a word unless it’s to answer our questions.”

  They encircled him. Some were taller than others but basically they were as indistinguishable as ghosts. Except for when they hit him.

  He started to stand, but one said, “You try and get up, we’ll only knock you down again.”

  He tasted blood. “Fellas, please. I’m a Kard-carrying member, for crissake.”

  “You are part of a conspiracy to bring disgrace on the Brotherhood.”

  He heard the unmistakable sound of a chamber being loaded into an automatic pistol. Some of the men’s sleeves were quite long and he couldn’t even tell which of them held the gun.

  “Ah, Jesus, I swear it, I don’t know what y’all are talking about!”

  “Confess. And explain yourself, or we leave your body here to rot before the devil’s creatures.”

  “Look, I . . .” He was crying, his voice thick. He could feel the memory of his hand on his boys’ heads, feel the knots in their ever-mussed hair. “Please. I got kids. I just, I didn’t want to get in trouble with the law, all right?”

  “The law ain’t something you have to worry about. We are the law. In every possible way.”

  Oh Jesus, they were right. He realized too late that he’d been thinking about this all wrong. He’d been afraid from the start that he’d be arrested for Irons’s murder, but in truth, he’d never had to fear the local cops; they were nearly synonymous with the Klan.

  It turns out the Klansman on Dale’s right was the one with the pistol, which he now aimed at Dale’s head.

  Dale shouted, “It was my brother-in-law!”

  The gun didn’t move. “Keep going.”

  “He’s a cop, too. Denny Rakestraw. He . . . He told me he needed to borrow my car, all right? Wouldn’t tell me why, just said he had to do a favor for someone. Then late that night he comes back with it and he’s all panicked and he tells me I need to get the fender changed because there were bullets in it, like evidence. And he tells me Irons got killed.”

  “What else did he say?”

  Think. What else? Jesus, it was sheer brilliance that Dale had even managed to say this much. A complete heat-of-the-moment gamble, but one worth making, as he knew they would have killed him if he’d told the truth. Of course, it was possible that one of these men was Rake’s damned partner or best friend or something, and now they’d kill him for the lie. But maybe, just maybe, this was genius.

  “He told me I couldn’t tell nobody, that’s why I didn’t say anything at my Klavern. Said he was supposed to beat a white man up there, some banker, a relative of Delmar Coyle, one of the Columbians. Said they were doing it together, to stop the banker from turning Hanford Park into a black neighborhood like they did in some other part of town. But things went sour and Irons got shot.”

  Silence for longer than Dale would have thought possible.

  One of them said, “That’s crazy.” Another said, “Bullshit.” A third noted, “Hell, it explains a lot.”

  “He said they had to do it secret-like because the Klan wasn’t doing nothing to help Hanford Park,” Dale said. “Said they had to take the law into their own hands, and the Columbians knew how to take care of business.”

  “Rakestraw and a Columbian?” one of them said, disbelieving.

  “One thing they have in common,” another said, “is they both hate us.”

  “Son of a bitch.”

  “He told me I couldn’t say nothing,” Dale ranted on, “and he’s my brother-in-law and a cop so I tried to protect him, even though I know I shoulda turned him in to you boys sooner. I mean, how do you turn in a cop? And family besides?”

  One of the Klansmen leaned toward another, whispering. Another nodded.

  “We know who your brother-in-law is, Dale. He’s no friend of ours.” This speaker, whoever he was, spoke in a rasp, as if to disguise his voice. This wasn’t a one-hand-washes-the-other arrangement—these boys were local, come to clean up a mess that had a great deal of personal interest for them. They were his neighbors, men from his own Klavern, maybe even cops. They were lit fuses, and Dale’s mouth was spewing kerosene.

  Then he saw that one of them had taken a leather strap out of his pocket, and another held a length of rope.

  48

  RAKE REALIZED HE’D made a terrible mistake shortly after he finished dinner. The chicken casserole seemed to fester in his stomach, as if he’d consumed it raw. All through the meal Cassie had told him about this neighbor who’d spoken to a Realtor and decided to sell, and that neighbor who was going to call a Realtor first thing tomorrow. Apparently the arrest of the Greers had not allayed anyone’s fears; it justified them, proved that Negroes were lawless and that their presence in Hanford Park had rendered the area toxic.

  Coyle was being proven correct.

  Rake wanted to tell Cassie about all he’d been doing to preserve the neighborhood, but how could he tell her without explaining the Dale problem and so much else that reflected poorly on him? He felt it like a glass wall sitting between them.

  “We need to call a Realtor, Denny,” Cassie insisted.

  “I know things look bad right now. I just . . . don’t want to do anything rash.”

  “I think waiting any longer would be rash.”

  He told her to wait until morning and see if the panic had faded, and she rolled her eyes.

  After dinner, he placed a call to Dale. Only hours ago, telling Dale about Coyle had seemed a good idea. He would set the two against each other, see who won, and then deal with what was left. Now it didn’t seem so wise. He might have a body on his hands. And as much as he loathed his brother-in-law, he didn’t want him dead. If Dale came at Coyle late at night, there was a strong chance Coyle would be expecting it, and have accomplices lying in wait. Had he sent Dale to his death?

  His sister answered the phone. “Dale’s not here.”

  “Do you know when he’ll be back?”

  “No. He doesn’t like it when I ask him too many questions, so I let it go.”

  Imagining the day-to-day aspects of that marriage pained him. “Okay, well, just ask him to call me when he gets back.”


  “He left his car. I just noticed that. I don’t know, maybe he just needed to take a walk and blow off some steam or something.”

  “Yeah, that sounds like Dale,” he said, trying to make sense of this. “How are the boys?”

  “Yelling at each other.”

  He let her go, then told Cassie he had to run an errand of his own. Giving his own wife an equally vague explanation, he realized.

  Dale wouldn’t have been able to walk to Coyle’s house, so surely he hadn’t set off to confront the Columbian. Unless he’d hit the local watering hole to get a buzz going first, work up the courage. Rake checked the two taverns that were within walking distance, but no Dale. Then he drove out to Coyle’s neighborhood again, killed his lights, and rolled slowly down the street until he was in front of the shack. The place looked empty, no lights emanating from it. No signs of a recent struggle.

  Where the hell was Dale?

  Later, he drove by Dale’s place again, but the fact that Dale’s car was in the driveway wasn’t helpful if Dale was on foot. He parked a few doors down, then knocked on the door, knowing that he would only alarm his sister.

  She looked haggard, another tough night getting the kids to bed. “What’s wrong?” she asked.

  “Have you heard from him?”

  “He doesn’t always check in, Denny. He’ll probably stumble into bed smelling like booze in a few hours.”

  Maybe he’d gone to one of his friends’, Rake hoped. Drinking there rather than at a bar. He didn’t believe it.

  “You’re scaring me, Denny. What’s going on?”

  “I just wanted to talk to him about the neighborhood stuff, that’s all.”

  “Yeah. We’re thinking about selling.”

  “Jesus, you, too?”

  “I don’t like it, either, but this has gone too far. A burglary like that, and half the neighborhood running around at night ready to lynch those Negroes?”

  “That wouldn’t happen here.” Wishing he believed himself.