Rake wasn’t sure whether Thames had been planning all along to use the neighborhood collection as a ruse for his own enrichment, or if he simply had proven unable to resist temptation, especially with the neighborhood going to hell.
Six in the evening, dark had fallen and Boggs was not walking the streets.
It felt so odd. He’d only had one night off a week for the past two years, with two weeks’ vacation, but still, this was different. Right then Smith and the others were walking without him. He felt guilt not just for his decision but for the fact that he hadn’t told them yet, hadn’t done them that courtesy, which he realized was because of his all-consuming anger at Smith. He would need to drop by tomorrow, say a proper farewell.
He sat in a rocking chair on his parents’ porch. Crickets revved their engines, and he wondered if they sensed they would all be dead in another week or two.
His mother, sister-in-law, fiancée, and future mother-in-law sat inside, sipping iced tea (no wine from Mrs. Boggs, no sir) and discussing the upcoming nuptials. Reginald’s wife, Florence, had brokered the meeting, which Reverend and Mrs. Boggs had no doubt hoped would never occur, and Lucius and Julie had been afraid to propose. After an icy start, though, the ladies had gotten to talking (the reverend and Reginald, as usual, were running late). As the conversation ran to wedding colors and favorite Bible passages on love, Boggs had felt that his presence was less than necessary, so he’d stepped outside for a smoke, glad to see that they seemed to be treating Julie with respect.
He’d smoked most of the cigarette when a squad car pulled up in front of the house.
“Enjoying your freedom, Boggs?” Out stepped McInnis, skin ghostly in the streetlight. He walked up to the porch, glancing into the windows, perhaps impressed by the Boggs family estate but not one to comment on it.
“It’s a lovely evening. What brings you out here—shouldn’t you be at the precinct?”
“So should you.” He gestured to the rocking chairs, Boggs nodded, and they both sat down. “I’m here to inform you that I’ve considered your resignation, and, after giving it careful thought, I’ve decided to reject it.”
“You’ve— Excuse me?”
“You’re still a police officer, and I’ll expect you at the precinct tomorrow. Enjoy this night off. Have a nice dinner, clear your head, and I’ll see you at tomorrow’s roll call.”
“Sir, I was serious. I am serious.”
“So am I. And it so happens that at about the same time you turned in your notice, so did Officer Smith.”
“What?”
“That’s right, two resignation letters on the same day, expressing many similar sentiments. How you both feel you can’t continue to work with one hand tied behind your backs, how you don’t have proper institutional backing to do your jobs the way they need to be done. And how you’ve both made some mistakes you’re having a hard time living with.”
Boggs was stunned. “Tommy wrote that?”
“Yes. And let’s just say that I found his letter much more believable than yours.”
“But . . . why?”
“I know how desperately you want to be a good cop, Boggs. I see it in everything you do, the way you polish those buttons in the morning. The way you crumple up a report and start over if you hit the wrong key halfway through. I see it in the way you talk to the people we police, even when they drive you crazy. Especially when they drive you crazy.”
He wasn’t used to being complimented. By his sergeant, or his father. Or anyone but Julie.
“And guess what: you are a good cop. You will do more good, far more good, by continuing to serve in that uniform than you will if you walk away.”
“I just . . . I’ve made some mistakes, and I—”
“Yeah, you wrote that. We’ve all made some mistakes. Welcome to life. I’ve made mine, too, as you know.”
“What else did Smith write in his note?”
“I won’t go into it all. But he felt his actions did not reflect well on the police department, and that it was best for him to step aside. I’m inclined to agree.”
Boggs thought for a moment about the vastness of the responsibilities he himself had walked away from. Or tried to walk away from. “What about Slater?”
“He seems to have gotten our message. He lost his link to one operation when we busted Thunder Malley, and he can see that it’s too much trouble to pick up where he left off.”
“You think he’s just going to go straight?”
“I don’t know what he’s going to do. But I think he realizes now that causing trouble in our precinct would be extremely foolhardy. You should feel good about that.”
“It’s hard to feel good with a man like that walking free. And wearing a badge.”
McInnis rocked in his chair, hesitantly, like he’d never used one before and didn’t entirely trust it. “That burns me up, too. But there will always be cops like him, and you’re going to have to get used to it. That’s why it’s so important to hang on to as many good cops as I can find.” He gazed out at the night. “You can’t rid the world of snakes, Boggs. But you can do everything possible to make your property inhospitable to them.”
Even though he didn’t like everything McInnis was saying, it felt good to talk about this, to strategize, to make plans. To imagine a better city than the one he’d inherited.
McInnis said, “I’ll camp out on this porch until you change your mind. You’ve always been hard on yourself, and I like that, but this time you’re wrong. What you had to do out there was difficult, I know. Your head might not be right for a while. But we’ve got work to do yet, and walking away doesn’t become you.”
The front door opened and out walked Mrs. Boggs. “Lucius, stop hiding out here and . . . oh, I’m sorry.” She looked flustered, only for a moment, as that was not the way she normally presented herself. Her dress and hair perfect as always, her jewelry sparkling from the light over her head. “I didn’t know we had a guest.”
Boggs himself was flustered—he hadn’t yet told his parents about his resignation. With the wedding itself such a touchy subject, unemployment would have sent them over the edge. Julie he’d told, and she’d sounded supportive, but only because she’d thought it was what he wanted. When he was honest with himself, he realized she’d been disappointed in him.
“Sergeant Joe McInnis, ma’am,” the uniformed officer said, removing his cap and nodding to her as he stood. “I work with your son. Sorry to intrude, I just needed to tell him something that couldn’t wait.”
“Felicia Boggs,” she introduced herself. “I’ll be out of your way, then.”
“Not at all, we’re finished,” McInnis said, smiling. Boggs had rarely seen him so polite.
“Can I offer you some dinner while you’re here? We’re still waiting on my husband, but there’s plenty.”
Oh Lord. It was not unheard of to entertain white people at the Boggs residence, but he couldn’t imagine McInnis at that table, getting a glimpse inside his private world. Please say no.
“Thank you, but I should be at work right now.” He shot Boggs a look that said, and you should, too. “Good meeting you, ma’am. You’ve raised a fine young man, and you should be proud. Officer Boggs, I’ll see you tomorrow.”
No question mark on the end of that sentence. Yet he stood there an extra moment, awaiting Boggs’s response.
“Yes, sir. I’ll see you then.”
To walk through the hallways of the Atlanta Daily Times was to court disaster. Stacks of newspapers rose knee-high in some spots, shoulder-high in others, allowing such narrow passage that Tommy Smith had to scoot sideways as he sought out Jeremy Toon’s office. Some of the papers were new, ready to be sent out by newsboys to local subscribers and stores, or shipped to Terminal Station, where vendors would hawk them on the trains. Those copies would circulate across the country, but especially throughout the South. Porters, after reading every page, would leave them behind at small stations in South Carolina and Mississippi and
Arkansas, like long-ago subversives scattering literature across the vast tundra of tsarist Russia, flickers of knowledge that might one day start a bonfire, ignite the masses, and smoke out their overlords.
Judging from the yellow borders, many of these papers were weeks or even months past. The Daily Times lacked the staff to clean up, so the papers accumulated like striations of some vast canyon, where future historians might plot the slow death of Jim Crow by excavating the layers: a story of a falsely accused young man here, a lynching there, a law passed here, a labor strike there, until finally at the top, please, Lord, flowers of a better day might grow.
“Officer Smith,” Toon said, surprised. He sat in a tiny office in which two desks unhappily coexisted. He looked like he wanted to stand and greet Smith but was pinned in place by stacks of his past reporting.
Smith didn’t bother correcting him on the “Officer.” It was only the day before that he’d left his resignation letter on McInnis’s desk, not standing around long enough to realize Boggs had already laid one there.
“To what do I owe—?”
“Your paper is terrible.”
“Excuse me?” Toon favored tweed jackets, which with his tortoise-shell glasses made him appear like an academic, which he perhaps would have been if professorships for Negroes hadn’t been as rare as six-toed bobcats.
Smith grabbed a copy off the nearest stack.
“You get some good stuff from the wires, and you’re solid on Washington developments, I’ll give you that. Got some smart people in the other Southern capitals, too. But here in town, where you should be cleaning up? C’mon. White papers get better info from city hall and the police station than you ever will. And don’t get me started on your crime beat, Jeremy. You write about crime like a man who’s never sinned in his life.”
Toon stared for a silence that lasted a good five seconds, likely longer than he’d ever needed to respond to a professor’s question.
“So you came in here today just to tell me this to my face?”
“I’ve come to offer you a bit of news. I resigned yesterday. And it seems to me, you could use another reporter. One who isn’t afraid to put himself in tough spots.”
Toon shook his head, slow to catch up. “You . . . what?”
“I need a job, and you need a reporter with some spine. So let’s talk.”
Five weeks after the shoot-out, Hanford Park had transformed.
South of Magnolia, every white resident had left. A mere two doors down from the Rakestraws’ old place, in a house where Rake and Cassie had once been dinner guests, Boggs and Julie gave a tour of their new home to his parents. They walked through the front yard on a gorgeous November morning, the air cool but the sun kissing their skin, the gentle breeze whispering promises. A maple in the front yard had turned deep red, the ground beneath it littered with confetti of burgundy and scarlet. Down the block, redbuds had gone yellow, and the orange crape myrtles and mustard oaks glowed golden in the sunlight.
Reverend Boggs managed to mask his disappointment that Lucius hadn’t bought a place in Sweet Auburn, asking if this meant they’d start attending another church. Lucius assured him that it was strictly a financial decision—the only homes anywhere near Auburn that he could afford sat on unappealing blocks.
But then again, these days no financial decision lacked politics, or history.
“It needs work, but not as much as my first place did, I can tell you that,” the reverend said. “Wasn’t a day I didn’t spend a few hours hammering something, tearing out and putting in.”
“That’s not my strong suit.”
“Next week I can help you with that sink, if you’d like.”
Boggs knew he needed to buy tools, likely from the nearby hardware store, owned by Mr. Gilmore of the neighborhood association. He wondered what that experience would be like, if Gilmore would recognize him. The store sat on the new official border, but would the border stay there long? Would the store?
The government had declined to offer Boggs a low-interest GI Bill loan, as south Hanford Park was now a Negro area and thus deemed high-risk. As Reginald had predicted, the house cost more than he’d wanted to spend. Simple market economics: many Negroes wanting to buy a respectable home in a safe area, few such houses available to them. Nothing unfair or prejudiced about it, other than the fact that thousands of houses remained off limits to the Boggses due to their skin color and dislike of bombs thrown through windows.
The wedding was two months away. It was hard to figure how he might afford a mortgage payment and a car, but hopefully he could swing something.
“I like it more each time,” Julie said, taking his hand as the reverend circled the house, inspecting the soffits and eaves.
Boggs asked Sage what color he’d like his room to be. Sage was still adjusting to the idea that he wouldn’t share a room with his mother.
Sage said, “Purple.”
“Purple, wow.” He would have to ask him again later, keep asking until he received an acceptable reply.
Oak leaves lay scattered across the lot, as well as some pods from a massive magnolia next door. He mentally added rake to his apparently endless shopping list. The sheer magnitude of this endeavor seemed overwhelming, so he reminded himself to break it into discrete tasks, one at a time. He could do this.
A jet streaked overhead, lower than usual, and Sage pointed at its contrails, mouth open in silent awe. Lucius picked him up so the boy would be that much closer to it, his free hand shielding his eyes from the sun as Sage’s tiny finger traced that line in the heavens.
ACKNOWLEDGMENTS
THANK YOU TO everyone I thanked on this page of Darktown (has it really only been a year?). Especially my family, from Mullen to Strickland, Comeau to Quant, Ruiz to Koenig, Menon to Newman; my editor, Dawn Davis, who did some especially heavy lifting with these pages; Judith Curr, David Brown, Yona Deshommes, and everyone else at 37 Ink and Atria; Susan Golomb and Rich Green for making this all possible; the many readers who have reached out to me and shared their stories and opinions over the last year; Atlanta police officers current and retired who have spoken with me about their experiences; booksellers everywhere; and Jenny.
Several books and articles were helpful in my research, too many to list, but I should point out in particular my debt to Kevin Kruse’s White Flight.
ABOUT THE AUTHOR
THOMAS MULLEN is the author of Darktown, an NPR Best Book of the Year, which has been shortlisted for the Los Angeles Times Book Prize, the Southern Book Prize, the Indies Choice Book Award, has been nominated for two Crime Writers Association Dagger Awards, and is being developed for television by Sony Pictures with executive producer Jamie Foxx; The Last Town on Earth, which was named Best Debut Novel of 2006 by USA TODAY and was awarded the James Fenimore Cooper Prize for excellence in historical fiction; The Many Deaths of the Firefly Brothers; and The Revisionists. He lives in Atlanta with his wife and sons.
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"The most compelling new series in crime fiction." - Michael Koryta, New York Times bestselling author
"A brilliant blending of crime, mystery, and American history . . ." (Stephen King), this intricately plotted crime saga follows the first black police officers in Atlanta who risk their jobs, and their lives, to investigate the brutal murder of a young black woman.
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Darktown
The Revisionists
The Many Deaths of the Firefly Brothers
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