The Prospects section was insulting, and if I hadn’t known that Laura had already looked through the report, I would have ripped that section out.
…If the information in his service record is accurate, Dalton received an excellent education before he went to Korea. As noted in the Education Section, he graduated from college at the top of his class. Upon graduation from his Master’s Program, again at the top of his class, he received job offers, including a teaching offer from a prestigious Negro college in Atlanta. He turned all of the offers down.
Like so many of his race, he lacks the ambition to use that education in any constructive way. Instead, he has become an odd jobs man. He is too lazy to apply for a detective license, although most of his work is in that area. He does not advertise his service and often goes weeks without paying customers. As a result, he cannot make ends meet.
My sources throughout the Negro community like Dalton, but none seem to understand him. Why a man with such a background would return to the South, do odd jobs work, and not try to use his advantages to improve his lot in life is inexplicable.
Dalton’s behavior has been like this for several years. I cannot see it changing. An influx of money at this time would only encourage him to work less and to contribute even less to society. He has not been offered a real job in years, and the longer he continues as an odd jobs man the less employable he becomes.
Once Dalton left the service, his days as a valued member of society ended. He is a smart Negro whose unremarkable life and lack of desire will make him a drain upon society as he ages.
Dalton, while a curious subject, has no prospects at all…
Of course, Mrs. Hathaway had hired a white detective who hadn’t seen past the surface. Yes, I had gotten half a dozen job offers when I left school, all of which required me to move and none of which would have paid my bills. The man who graduated second in our class, a white man, received three dozen job offers, from think tanks to major corporations, and all of them paid a good salary with moving expenses. He had started to discuss them with me when he had seen from my eyes that I hadn’t received any of those offers.
He had had the grace to blush and turn away.
Being self-employed in Memphis meant I controlled my own hours and regulated my own pay. Sure, I could have gone on to law school and become the next Thurgood Marshall. And perhaps I did lack the ambition for that. But I did well for who and what I was.
At least, I thought I had.
I almost closed the report at that point, but I made myself continue. The next section, Local Contacts, listed eight Memphis lawyers who were willing to take on black clients. Apparently the detective didn’t consider coming to the lawyers in the black community. It was typical of his attitude and, after just reading his assessment of me, pissed me off more than it should have.
Shelby’s name was fourth on the list. Apparently three others had been called and, hearing the nature of the work, had said no. I made a note of the names. Most were familiar to me, and all but two were still practicing. One had retired, and the other was on the mayor’s staff, actively involved in the strike negotiations. That made a certain sort of sense, I supposed.
I sighed, and with a trembling hand, turned the page to the Recommendations section. I had vowed I wouldn’t read it again, but of course I did, my gaze stopping on the same phrase as it had before:
…If you are intent upon giving money to him, you might be better served placing the money in trust in case he has heirs. Otherwise, I would recommend that you give the money to a charity of your choice. Dalton will simply spend it and be no better off. If the money must go to a Negro veteran, I’m sure that with time and consideration, we can find a better prospect….
But Mrs. Hathaway didn’t search for a better prospect. She searched for—and found—me. And then she sent money to me, and did so again when she died.
And there wasn’t a single reason in the report. Not even a clue there, although I had the feeling I was overlooking one.
I went back to the piles on the floor, sat near the 1960 pile, and found the financial notebook. The early entries were in Earl Hathaway’s cramped handwriting, shaky in the way of the ill or the elderly. By the middle of January, though, there was nothing. And it wasn’t until the middle of February, according to a note in the margin, that Mrs. Hathaway had straightened out the financial records enough to continue the books.
I stared at that note for a long time. It looked like a personal note, or one made to remind oneself of the lapse at tax time. It didn’t look like something meant for someone else’s eyes.
But it was a strange note nonetheless. To my inexperienced gaze, the Hathaway financial records appeared to be in order. Earl Hathaway had been using a double-entry bookkeeping system, and he kept track of every expense from his property tax payments to the pennies he put daily into parking meters. If the man were that organized, what financial records did Mrs. Hathaway have to put in order?
That was a question to be answered later in the investigation. I thumbed through the ledger until I found the notation I was looking for: check number 3110 made out to Billy (Smokey) Dalton in care of Shelby Bowler, Attorney at Law, Memphis Tennessee, in the amount of $10,000. Check No. 3111 was made out to Shelby himself, and covered his expenses, plus a bonus for continued confidentiality. A later notation showed that Shelby had returned the bonus. I smiled. It had probably offended his sensitivities. A lawyer, Shelby would have said, didn’t have to be paid extra to do something that was already part of the job.
So one of my questions was answered definitively, the one I already had deduced for myself. The Hathaways had given me money after Earl Hathaway died. But nothing in the report told me why.
The report. I picked it up and dialed the phone number off the label in the front. It was late on a Friday afternoon, but someone might still be in the office.
If the agency was still in business.
The phone rang twice before a woman answered. “William Kowolski Detective Agency.”
“Edward Levy please,” I said in my best white voice.
“Just a moment.” And then silence greeted me as I was put on hold.
My heart was pounding even harder than it had earlier. So the opinionated Mr. Levy still had his job at the agency. I wondered how many other black men he had hurt over the years. How had he conducted himself in cases with black suspects? I had a hunch I knew.
Then the silence ended and a gruff voice said, “Levy.”
I almost introduced myself and asked him about his prospects. But while that would make me feel better, it wouldn’t get me any answers.
“Mr. Levy,” I said. “I’m Robert Hayworth. I’m a private detective in Memphis. How’re you, today, sir?”
“Fine.” He sounded impatient. Ready to go home to the wife and kids. Or out on a Friday night, have a few too many drinks, and tumble into bed before dawn.
“I have here in my hand a report you wrote eight years ago for Mrs. Dora Jean Hathaway.” I knew just how to talk to this man. Sometimes my ability to sound like a good ole boy alarmed me. “It was about a Negro fella named Smokey Dalton. Do you recall this report?”
“I’m sorry,” Levy said. “Who did you say you were working for?”
“I’m doing some side work for Mrs. Hathaway’s daughter, Laura. I can’t say much more than that our case also deals with Mr. Dalton. Your report, while thorough, does not mention how Mrs. Hathaway chose Mr. Dalton for her benevolence. Did she know him?”
“It’s an eight-year-old case,” Levy said. “I have no memory of what I wrote in that report.”
Funny, I thought. I knew I’d remember what he wrote for a very long time.
“I expected as much,” I said. “I would have the same difficulty. But you do remember Mrs. Hathaway?”
“She’s hard to forget.” He sounded bitter. “She’s the first client who ever laid into me for being thorough.”
“Come again?”
“I wrote her the r
eport and she almost didn’t pay us. My boss had to get involved. She said she didn’t want anything on paper and that I had disobeyed her instructions. My boss assured her that we always wrote reports and I had done nothing wrong. She took the report and all the copies and still stiffed us half the fee.”
Very bitter. So the case had caused him grief as well. Good.
“What did she want if she didn’t want a report?”
“Simply that boy’s name and address and a contact so that she could give him money anonymously. I had to do a month’s worth of digging to find the fellow and then I put a lot of work into that report. She didn’t like any of it.”
Interesting. “So you don’t have the report?”
“No,” he said. “but I have my notes. I’ll have to review them. What did you saw you wanted again?”
“I wanted to know how Mrs. Hathaway came to choose Mr. Dalton for her benevolence.”
“You should ask her,” he said.
“I would if I could.” I made my voice very smooth. “But she passed on a few months ago. It’s her daughter who would like to know this time.”
“So she left him money in her will, did she?”
I didn’t answer that. Levy wasn’t as dumb as the report had made him sound.
“Tell you what,” Levy said after my silence gave him the answer he wanted. “Give me your number and I’ll check my notes. I may not have the information you want, but I might. I just can’t remember after all this time.”
I gave him my phone number—which hadn’t changed in eight years—and hoped he didn’t compare across when he found his notes.
“I don’t have the time to check tonight,” he said, “but I’ll call next week.”
“I’d be much obliged,” I said.
“It’s no problem,” he said. “I’m just glad to hear that the old bat is dead.”
His words took my breath away. I hadn’t heard about Laura’s mother from anyone but Laura. Somehow I had thought her mother had been a sweet downtrodden thing. Instead, she had been a dynamo who made a man hate her when she was crossed.
I thanked him for his time and hung up. The anger I’d been suppressing during the conversation came to the surface. I clutched the receiver against its cradle, using all of my strength to prevent myself from flinging the phone across the room.
Pompous ass. He hadn’t even done what his client had asked him to do. He probably thought that Dora Jean Hathaway’s judgment was suspect when she chose a black man for her bequest. He hadn’t listened to her instructions and he hadn’t followed them.
All she wanted was an address and a contact. And nothing on paper. Only one copy of the report remained in the boxes. I wondered where the others had gone.
Nothing on paper. What an unusual request. She had gone to a lot of trouble to find me, and I was still no closer to finding out why. But it was becoming clearer that the connection was not above board.
That didn’t narrow things down for me. In fact, it made them even more complex.
TEN
CLUB HANDY was on the second floor of Pantaze Drug Store. The entrance was on the Hernando side of the building. A small neon sign advertised the club, which started almost accidentally in the 1940s.
In those days, black entertainers got stranded in Memphis for lack of work. Andrew “Sunbeam” Mitchell opened the third floor of the Pantaze Building as a hotel for those down-on-their-luck entertainers and let them pay for room and board by performing in the second-floor lounge. Eventually these jam sessions with local and out-of-town entertainers started drawing crowds.
Over the years I’d heard everyone from Little Richard to Lionel Hampton in that lounge. It was one of the few local blues watering holes that still remained on Beale.
I got there early and ordered a beer while I waited for Roscoe. The entire day had unsettled me.
A man couldn’t read an analysis like that about himself without wondering if there were some truth to it. After all, I had grown up near Martin. We’d been boyhood friends, until I left Atlanta the day after my parents’ death. I didn’t see Martin again until graduate school. We went to Boston University at the same time as well, but we didn’t see each other much, not after the first conversation in which Martin recognized me, but not my name.
He stayed friendly. I was the one who pulled away. In those days, before he became the famous Dr. King, he simply served as a reminder to me of my parents’ death.
That night, B.B. King had come home to Memphis and was jamming with the local band. He sat at the edge of the stage, blending in with the musicians as if he were part of them and not a star in his own right. I met B.B. when he was still hosting the Sepia Swing Club on WDIA. It was at the station that the fans gave him his nickname, “The Beale Street Blues Boy,” which later got shortened to “Blues Boy” and then became B.B.
He was a skinny kid then, small and wide-eyed. But success had changed that. He wasn’t small any longer, and the look of innocence had long since left his face. Still, he loved the music and he loved Beale Street. He tried to play here whenever he could, and I considered myself lucky each time I heard him.
He raised my mood. Just listening to the wail of his guitar made me remember that there were good things in the world, things that couldn’t be touched by a man’s prejudice or a woman’s anger.
I ordered my second bowl of chili for the day—chili was Club Handy’s specialty—and had nearly finished it when Roscoe arrived.
Roscoe was a big man who’d made a lot of money in his youth as a boxer. He’d gotten badly injured in a rigged fight and decided to get out of the business. By then he had a family to support: four sons and his beautiful daughter. I’d known Roscoe for years. I’d been the one to hold him back when his daughter had been found at fifteen, beaten, bloody, and near death, when all she could remember of her attacker was the paleness of his skin and the onions and beer on his breath.
That was three years ago. The whole thing had added slowness to Roscoe’s movements and a visible weight on his mighty shoulders. I knew what it cost him to carry white people’s bags all day, to get their cars, and take their token tips. I knew he wouldn’t do it if it weren’t for the fact that he still had two children at home.
He sat heavily on the wooden chair, told the waiter he wanted a beer and some chili and then peered at me. His familiar round face looked tired, and the scar above his right eyebrow—the one from his long-ago fight—seemed paler than usual.
“You got some trouble, Smokey?” he asked.
“Not yet,” I said. “But Henry is getting to me.”
He folded his big hand around the plastic water glass and glanced at the stage. The musicians were talking among themselves while the drummer got another beer.
“The strike’s trouble,” Roscoe said. “There’s already been three meetings at work. Management wants us to know we don’t keep our jobs if we get caught marching.”
I swallowed hard. I didn’t want Roscoe to lose his security because he helped me. “I didn’t have marching in mind.”
Roscoe raised his eyebrows.
“Looks like COME is bringing in some national speakers. Henry wants me to provide security.”
“That ain’t your job,” Roscoe said.
“I know. He wants me to keep an eye out.”
“And you won’t, so you want me to do it.”
He was quick, my friend Roscoe. “I can’t go to every meeting. I want to spend the weekend training some strong men to look for troublemakers and stop things before they start. You don’t have to be part of it.”
“Except to help you find the suckers and train them.”
I nodded.
“Shit, Smokey, you know this ain’t gonna be good enough. If them ministers want security, they should get professionals.”
“From where?” I asked. “And with what budget?”
Roscoe sighed. “I can’t get many men for free.”
“And I don’t want someone who is only there for a paych
eck.”
He nodded. The waiter brought his order, and Roscoe dug in. The musicians were sitting down. B.B. was running his fingers along his guitar strings, but not making a sound.
“I’ll have people,” Roscoe said. “First thing tomorrow outside Clayborn Temple.”
Clayborn Temple was where most of the marches started. It was seen as a home for the strikers.
“No,” I said. “My office. We’ll find a place to go from there.”
* * *
The training went well. Roscoe brought eight people, including his twenty-year-old son, and I found five of my own. We instructed them in the art of calming a crowd, getting marchers to walk arm in arm so that no looters could break through, and how to guard doors once a speech was started. We told them techniques for seeing troublemakers in a crowd and ways of keeping those troublemakers at bay.
A weekend of instruction wasn’t worth a lifetime of training, but it would do. It would have to.
I spoke to Henry and he said it looked like Roy Wilkins would be speaking in Memphis on March fourteen. That gave me one more weekend to work with the team before the national news people arrived.
On Monday, I entered my office early. I wanted to be there for Edward Levy’s call, and sure enough, he called me collect at nine o’clock.
“Mr. Hayworth,” he said, “I’m afraid I can’t be of much help to you. I have no idea how Mrs. Hathaway chose that boy. She provided me with his name and location. She knew he was in D.C. during the war.”
I let out a small breath. “That’s helpful.”
“But she didn’t say why she wanted to send him money. In fact, that became a point of contention between us. I believed she should have found someone else to give the money to. That boy couldn’t have handled those funds. He could barely pay his bills. He probably squandered the money. There were other needy ni—”
A Dangerous Road: A Smokey Dalton Novel Page 11