Death of a City

by Lionel White

  The only trouble was that this time the technique didn’t seem to work. When the chief finally looked up to stare coldly at the man standing by his desk, he realized at once that the fellow was anything but nervous. He was just about as cool as they come. A tall, reedy man in a rumpled tweed sports coat over a blue-striped button-down shirt and scuffed brown loafers. He had a pipe in one hand and his other hand was sort of half-caressing his lantern jaw. The steel-gray eyes were as cold and distant as the chief’s own washed-out blue eyes and were without expression as he stood there, completely relaxed, waiting for the chief to acknowledge his presence.

  “Well?”

  He took his hand away from his face and reached into his inside breast pocket and took out a card case and handed the chief a printed card.

  “Name’s Gail," he said. “Thomas B. Gail. With Bankers’ Security. You’re Chief Partridge, Del Partridge?”

  The chief barely glanced at the card and nodded.

  “Right.”

  “I’ve heard of you,” Gail said. “Thought I’d stop by. Just got in town this evening. Checked in at the Oakdale Hotel. Me and three of my men. We came up this afternoon from Charleston. Going to be here the first part of the week checking security at the local banks.”

  Partridge grunted and nodded.

  “The way things are going in Oakdale tonight," he said, “there may not be any local banks by the first of the week.”

  “That bad is it?” Gail said. “I could see that you are having a little trouble.”

  “We’re having a hell of a lot of trouble,” the chief said. “But not that bad, of course. All hell has broken loose and I don’t know where it’s going to end, but I think we can contain it, keep the rioting and the fires in the black sections. They knocked out the power station and set a fire at the airport, but I don’t think it is going to spread into the white districts or the business part of the city. I sure hope it doesn’t.”

  Gail nodded. “Yeah," he said, “that’s the way it usually is. They only burn the stores they been dealing with, burn out their own landlords.”

  The chief grunted again. He hesitated a moment and then said, “Well, what’s on your mind? What can I do for you?” He picked up the card he had dropped to the desk and studied it again fora moment.

  “Can’t do anything for me,” Gail said. “But I thought the boys and I might be able to do something for you. We heard about that church being bombed, of course. Later on, we went over in that direction and saw that they were beginning to set a few fires and all. Didn’t need a blueprint and we didn’t have to be fortune-tellers to guess what might be going to happen. So I thought I’d just stop by. Thought maybe you could use a few extra men. The boys and I—well, security is our business. Banks are our specialty. We don’t want to get involved in local problems or troubles, but we did think maybe we could sort of help out by taking over the patrolling of the banks and it might free a few of your own men to go where they might be really needed.”

  Partridge looked at the other man for several seconds and then again studied the card in his hand.

  “You checked in with the officers of any of the banks yet?” he asked.

  Gail shook his head.

  “No,” he said. “We just got in shortly before dark. We're planning to check in, starting with the Oakdale First National, on Monday morning. Then we cover the Columbia Savings and lastly the Citizens Trust.”

  “Just what sort of security checks do you ...”

  “The usual thing,” Gail said. “Personnel first. Interviews with any new employees since the last time we were around. Then the physical equipment, alarm systems, electrical circuits, locks, combinations, that sort of thing. Anything at all which has to do with general security. We don’t do any auditing or anything like that, of course."

  Partridge nodded. “I see.” He hesitated again for a second or two and then reached for the cigar humidor on the desk and held it out.

  “Have one,” he said. “Sit down.”

  Gail declined the cigar, indicating his unlit pipe, but pulled a leather-upholstered chair toward the desk and slumped into it.

  “You say you got three other men with you?”

  “That’s right. Four of us.”

  “Well, I can certainly use men,” the chief said. “Use everybody I can get hold of. I got a captain over in nigger town right now who's screaming for help. He hasn't got enough men to protect the firemen who are trying to control the blaze over there. You know this town at all?”

  Gail shook his head.

  “No,” he said. “Just the downtown area in general, sort of. We were here a couple of years back and I know the location of the banks, of course. As I remember, the three of them are all bunched up together in the center.”

  “That’s right. I got one patrol car stationed at the intersection there of State and Green, keeping an eye on things, although I don’t really expect any real trouble to develop there. Biggest danger is some young punks might drive by and toss a firebomb at one of the buildings. But if I could release that car and the two men in it to go where they could be of some real use, it would sure help.”

  He stopped talking for a moment and looked thoughtful.

  “Yeah,” he said. “It would help. You fellows don't have any sort of uniforms I don’t suppose, do you?”

  Gail smiled and shook his head.

  “Hardly,” he said. “Maybe your sheriff could swear us in temporarily as deputies and let us have badges for identification.”

  “If I knew where that Goddamned sheriff was, I’d have half the male white population of this city sworn in as deputies by now," the chief said. “Haven’t been able to reach the son of a bitch all evening. Not that he’d be worth a damn if I did. Sheriff down here isn’t really a law officer. All he does is serve subpoenas and eviction notices and I usually have to send a man along to protect him when he does that. No, the sheriff, even if I could find him, would just be another person to protect. But I tell you what I can do.”

  He reached down, pulled open a drawer of the desk and rummaged around in it for several seconds.

  “I can give you and those three men of yours regular police badges—detective badges—and you just pin ’em on your jackets. You drive over here to the stationhouse?”

  Gail nodded.

  “Good.” The chief handed him four detective badges. “Take these,” he said, “and pick up those men of yours. Then go on over to State and Green. I’ll give you a note to the driver of the squad car on duty there telling him you and your boys are taking over and relieving him. You give him the note and tell him to get his ass over to that trouble Parker is having on Central Avenue as fast as he can. He’ll know where to go.”

  The tall man in the tweed jacket stood up and reached for the badges.

  “Glad to help you out,” he said. “You just write that note and I’ll find your squad car all right. By the way, I don’t suppose those banks have their own guards on duty, do they? Last time we were through here they only kept a man in the lobbies during banking hours as I remember.”

  “We have a private agency in town which patrols the main business section nights,” the chief said. “Couple of men walk around and check the doors of the merchants, but that’s about all.

  They find anything wrong, all they do is call us here, and we send out a squad car. They aren’t much use or I would have already put them to work where they could do some good.”

  “Well, I’ll be moving along,” Thomas Gail said. “We’ll relieve that squad car of yours. Glad to do it. Bank security is our business after all. Any trouble starts that we can’t handle, is there any way of getting in touch with you here?”

  "The telephone system has been shot for the last hour or so,” Partridge said, “and the only way we have been able to keep communications open is through the police radio system. Don’t know when the telephones might get back into service. I’ll tell you what I can do, though. I have extra keys to the front doors of each of the b
anks and I’ll give you a set. In case the phones start working, you could go inside and call us here, but I don’t know how much good it might do. Of course, either I or one of my boys will be holding down the desk and we might or might not be able to get hold of a couple of cars to send if you should really need them. Do you men have weapons, by the way?"

  Thomas Gail smiled and shook his head. “We hardly need them in our work,” he said. “Bankers’ Security doesn't operate as armed guards. Our job is to stop trouble before it starts, not check it afterwards.”

  “Then you better let me give you a few canisters of Mace, some nightsticks and a thirty-eight for each of your men. I don’t think there is a chance you’ll have to use them, but you might as well have a little protection as long as you’re willing to go out on a limb to help us out.”

  “I certainly hope we don’t have to use them, myself,” Gail said, “but I will admit we’ll feel a little happier if we do have something to protect ourselves with.”

  He stood up and tapped his pipe out in the ashtray on the table. “You get the stuff together and I’ll be on my way,” he said. “You can count on us for the rest of the night. Appreciate it if you could have someone stop by tomorrow morning, though, and relieve us.”

  “I’ll do that,” the chief said. “And I appreciate your helping out.

  Glad you thought to stop by. We sure can use all the help we can get.”

  5 THE clubhouse had turned out to be a compromise. Not, of course, that Caroline Vargle had not had to fight tooth and nail to get it. But in winning that hard-fought battle, in finally arranging for the clubhouse, she had not only won her greatest single victory since coming to Oakdale as the paid director of the Youth Welfare League, she had ironically enough also suffered a bitter defeat.

  The victory lay in the fact that at last the children of the colored ghetto of Oakdale finally had a meeting place of their own, a rickety loft on Central Avenue which was barely habitable, but at least a place where they could meet, where they could take arts and crafts courses, play games. A place which made it possible for them to find some sort of recreation secluded from the streets and back alleys of the district in which they lived.

  The defeat lay in the fact that this new youth center which she had fought so hard to obtain was as completely segregated in its own all-black way as was the YMCA, which was patronized solely by white children on the other side of the city. It was not a matter of rules or law or anything of that sort. The Youth Welfare League had been set up to work with the poor and the underprivileged of Oakdale. Certainly there were plenty of white families and white children who could have qualified. But one doesn’t change the mores and the customs of a town or city overnight and, although the Welfare League did work in several isolated cases where white children were involved with the law, no white children ever went to the Youth Center after it was organized and functioning.

  The two-story building which housed the Youth Center was crowded on a thirty-five-by-hundred-foot lot between an empty warehouse and the brick skeleton of a burned-out tenement which had gone up in flames some years back when the boiler in the basement exploded at the cost of a half dozen lives.

  The Youth Center had at one time been a private home; later it had been converted into a grocery store downstairs and a rental apartment on the second floor. The grocery had finally gone into bankruptcy and for a time the first floor was used as the meeting place for a colored evangelical religious group. The apartment on the second floor was vacant more often than it was rented. The building was owned by the Oakdale First National Bank and shortly after Caroline Vargle came to the city to work with the Youth Welfare League and started looking around for a place for a clubhouse, the bank, tired of paying taxes on a property they could neither rent nor sell, gave it to the League, glad to take the legal tax writeoff allowed.

  Other generous donors answered pleas for help and contributed both money and materials, and the young people of the Youth League gave their time and energy. Within a short time, the building was cleaned and fumigated, repainted inside and out. Separate bathrooms for each sex were installed on the first floor and the rest of the space was turned into one large hall which could be used as a general meeting place, a schoolroom or an auditorium. The upstairs was divided into two rooms, the larger of which contained a couple of Ping-Pong tables and an ancient billiard table (contributed by the Cosmos Club) as well as card tables for checker games and so forth.

  The upstairs back room served a double purpose. Here Caroline had her office and there were a couple of other desks, used by the series of women who contributed their time to the Youth League, as well as file cases and general office equipment. A large screen divided the room and one section contained a wall sink, a gas stove, an ice box and general kitchen equipment. At the present time the kitchen was used only to handle refreshments when the Youth Center held parties or dances, but Caroline hoped that sooner or later the organization would have sufficient funds to offer free meals to neighborhood children who really needed them.

  All in all, the Youth Center had to be considered a success. It did offer a sanctuary for a large number of the younger children, who were able to find supervised recreation. Older youngsters, between ten and fourteen, attended various arts and crafts classes, and a still older group, in their late teens, used the center for their dances and jazz sessions. It kept them off the streets, but unfortunately the center also attracted certain other elements which had made the streets dangerous in the first place.

  It was not unusual for Caroline to find dozens of beer cans on the premises after the dances, nor were half-empty pint and halfpint whiskey bottles unusual. She was sure that a number of the boys as well as the girls used the bathrooms for smoking pot and on one occasion federal narcotics agents had raided the place and picked up a couple of youths whom they charged with possession and selling of “hard” narcotics.

  A fourteen-year-old girl had spent the night in the place with a half dozen boys who had broken in after Caroline had locked up one Saturday night and she had been gang-raped. There had been other incidents. Several of the directors and founders of the Youth Welfare League had been indignant and wanted to go so far as to close the clubhouse, but Caroline had pointed out that the same things would have taken place whether the clubhouse was there or not and her reasoning had prevailed.

  After the club rooms had been broken into several more times by youths wishing to hold pot parties or use the rooms for assignations with their girls, Caroline had changed the routine and, instead of locking up the place at night, had enlisted the aid of a number of volunteers among some of the older boys whom she considered responsible. Each night a different boy stayed over at the clubhouse, acting as a night watchman.

  On the Saturday night that the Abyssinian Baptist Church was bombed, Buddy Thomas had been selected for the task of acting as night watchman. Buddy had been suggested by Shirley Candle and Caroline had rather suspected that the reason Shirley had suggested Buddy was because Shirley herself just might be planning on having a sort of private little party with the boy at the clubhouse. She had merely shrugged and dismissed the thought from her mind. After all, what would it matter? Nothing had been scheduled that Saturday night for the center and, after all, Shirley Candle was her most dependable assistant. Shirley, who had been up North to college, was smart and intelligent, anything but flighty. And Buddy Thomas, of course, was hardly a child. If the two of them wanted the privacy of the center for a date, they were old enough to know what they were doing. And Caroline could be sure that Shirley would hardly be the kind to be having a pot party or a general beer brawl.

  Caroline didn’t know Buddy very well and had only talked to him a couple of times; she considered him rather crude and quite stupid. She wondered what an intelligent, sensitive girl like Shirley could see in him.

  Whatever it was, it didn't matter. It was hard enough finding anyone sufficiently reliable to stay on the premises overnight and there had been no use i
n looking a gift horse in the mouth.

  It was only when she remembered about Buddy’s being at the center, recalling that Shirley would very likely be there with him, that Caroline Vargle made the decision to go to the Youth Center directly from the Cosmos Club after she had dropped Cass Asmore off there. He had, of course, insisted she come in with him while he found some adhesive tape and bandages for the cut on her forehead where the shard from the windshield had struck her after the rock crashed through it.

  Asmore had still refused to believe that there was actually rioting going on in the city, despite the thrown rock, despite the screaming sirens of fire trucks and police cars, despite the flames which were already lighting up the skyline a couple of blocks to the east over the colored districts of the city.

  “Incidents—isolated incidents,” he kept muttering. He had decided that it would be best to stay at the Cosmos Club, at least until the electricity was back in order and he could learn exactly what was happening. “This city will not riot,” he insisted, “but I don’t think you should go out on the streets. It is best that we stay right here until we can either get a police escort or contact..

  “I want to find Carlton,” Caroline said. “I want to know what is happening. And I should be over at the Youth Center. If there is real trouble ..

  “The last place in the city you should be is anywhere in the colored section,” Asmore said. “You can stay here and sooner or later...”

  She knew it would be pointless to argue. She would never in a million years make him understand. If there was a widespread

  riot going on, he would be the last person to become involved, while she felt she could be of some help. Why, she felt she had to

  I be involved.

  She looked up at him and half-smiled.

  “I’m still a little shaken, although the cut is really nothing. Just a scratch. But I do wonder if you might be able to dig up a drink. I don't see any waiters around, but perhaps you could take this candle here ...”