“Well, he was plenty nervous,” said Walker. “But it wasn’t from talking to me. I think that we can say it was from the mob of folks gathered out on the walk, all set to string him up.”
“What’s that?”
“When I got there, Brunell was holed up inside, had all the shades drawn, you know. There was a mob of colored folk there, I guess they had got to talkin’ among themselves. A regular character from the Valley named Willie Tompkins was firing them up—bug-eyed fella, been brought in drunk and disorderly many a time, but generally harmless. Excitable. He’d been pushing them all to smash in Pops’s windows, not wanting to do any of it himself. Now, Willie Tompkins isn’t much, on his own. But some of those men, if they get lathered up, they’ve been known to listen to some pretty paltry ideas. I guess all the men down there had some real complaint. They figured out it was something in the soda pop Brunell was selling that was making them all—” Walker glanced at Johnson, who pressed back a smile. “They were all having problems in the bedroom, if I’m getting it right, and they were steamed enough about it to want to burn Pops out of his place.”
“Something in the soda?” I turned it over in my head, and then I turned it over some more. Something in the soda was giving the men problems in the bedroom. “That strikes me funny,” I said.
“Well, Detective,” said Walker, “you don’t let a laugh get away from you, do you?”
I guess I just stared at him. “No,” I said.
“I’ll tell you, though,” said Walker, “from the way those boys were swarming around Brunell’s store, you could see they weren’t tickled any. Some men take a lot of stock in that sort of thing, and just the sort that would be hanging around on the corner and drinking soda pop all day. They had been drinking that soda pop for months, and now just lately it seemed to hit them all in the same way, down in the pants.”
Johnson said, “It seems like more than a coincidence with all this other trouble we’ve been having.”
I could see that Walker was trying to get something from me. “Johnson,” I said, “did the rationing boys come and pick up all that sugar from Bobby’s place?”
“I phoned,” said Johnson, “and we hightailed it out of there. I never said who I was. But I guess they ran down to pick it up pretty quick.”
“Well, don’t say anything to them about it.” I liked the thought of the rationing boys going limp from skimming tainted sugar. The way it might spread out, that big pile of sugar, it made me wish I’d thought of it.
“They were after Pops because he’s what they call high yellow, you know,” said Walker. “They figure that since he could pass for white if he wanted to, he’s in with the white folks somehow, trying to kill off the colored folks by hitting them at home, you see? I can tell you, they weren’t any too happy with me helping out old Pops. If they weren’t all a bunch of cowards, I’da been in it pretty thick.”
I was nodding at Walker’s words, just nodding.
“So you can see that Pops doesn’t have much to say about all of it?” Walker said.
I fixed my eye on him. “You didn’t bring him in?”
“I brought him in for a time,” Walker said. “Just to keep his head attached to his shoulders. Then I let him go. I expect he’s halfway gone by now.”
“Jesus Christ, Walker! How are we supposed to find out what’s going on if you keep letting go all of our witnesses?”
Walker said calmly, “It was clear to me that Pops didn’t know anything, and it wasn’t in our best interest to hold him here. He’s a prominent businessman in the Valley, after all.”
I glared at Walker’s presumption for a time, but it just made my head throb even more. It occurred to me for the first time that Walker might already know about Pease and Noggle and the fire at the shack. Was he closing up ranks now, setting himself in opposition to me?
“Pete,” Johnson said, trying to cool things down. “The captain wants to see you upstairs. He says if you try to duck out, it’ll be your head.” He looked at Walker and then said to me, “Maybe I shouldn’t ask, but why aren’t we looking for Pease anymore?”
I eyed them both. “Because I said we aren’t. Is that all right with the both of you? Do you think we ought to take a vote on it?”
The patrolmen averted their eyes. “That’s all right,” said Johnson.
“Because we can vote if you want to,” I said. “All those in favor of replacing Pete Caudill in charge of the investigation, raise your hands.”
“Take it easy, Detective,” said Walker. “We’re just looking after our own selves a little bit.”
I stared at Walker, not angrily, but with relief that the colored man should talk to me frankly.
“Fair enough, I guess,” I said. “Let me say it this way: Pease is somewhere where he won’t be found any time soon. And I know for a fact that he couldn’t tell us anything we need to know about the men we’re really after.”
Both men looked up at me briefly, then set their jaws and adopted a slack expression. Their eyelids lowered, and they began working bits of their breakfast from between their teeth.
“Okay, Pete,” said Johnson, “but maybe you can tell us a little more about what’s going on here. Just for our own sakes, like Walker says.”
“Been talking, eh? Good. I don’t want you talking to anyone else about any of it. Not anybody, see? And Johnson, I don’t want you running up to Mitchell with anything unless you pass it by me, see?”
He shrugged his shoulders as if dumbfounded.
I drew up a chair and leaned close. “Maybe I’m too dumb to put it all together. It looks like somebody’s trying to rustle things up with the colored boys down in the Valley and in Black Bottom. Somebody’s killing people, white folks, colored folks. Lloyd’s mixed up in it somehow. So you can see it’s something heavier than just a few crackers with a grudge. That ain’t all of it, but it’s enough to tell you that you better watch your backsides. I expect that some real heat is in the works.”
“What would anybody stand to gain in all of it?” asked Johnson.
“Even when things get burned to the ground, somebody makes a profit,” said Walker.
“I don’t give a damn about any of that,” I said. “My aim is to put a stop to it however I can. It won’t be pretty. Now, you all can figure out for yourselves how wrapped up in it you want to get.”
There was a long silence. The men looked each other over and finally nodded.
“Now, Johnson, I’ve scribbled a few things down here for you to look into.”
“Not the library again?”
“Library, city hall, whatever. It’s important. Did you come up with anything about Sherrill?”
Johnson shook his head. “Nothing in the papers, no property records, nothing. I think it must be an assumed name.”
“All right,” I said, “that’s going to have to do. I’ve got something else, a little more personal. If either one of you catch wind of my nephew Alex, if you see him, you bring him in here to me. Just hold him in a cell till I can have a word with him, even if it means he has to spend a night or two here. I’ll probably be back here again later today.”
“Pete,” said Johnson, “the captain did tell us to send you up to see him. Important, I guess. He said to mention the word ‘noggle,’ but I’m not sure that is a word.”
My mouth notched toward grimness. I wondered when Johnson had decided it was all right to call me Pete. “Listen, Johnson,” I said. “No matter how far down in the gutter it looks like I’m getting, no matter how stupid you think I am or how unprofessional my police work might get, you don’t call me by my given name. You can keep calling me Detective. How does that sit with you?”
“I apologize,” he said. “I was just—”
“You were just thinking that the captain’s nephew can do what he wants, is that it?”
“You should give me more credit, Detective,” he said. “It’s not easy duty.”
“All right,” I said. I knew that the pain from all
the lumps and cuts was making me meaner than I needed to be, but I decided to keep at it anyway. “Now, Walker,” I said, “maybe we didn’t settle this before. You are a Negro.”
“That’s right.”
“And that means you can get into some places I can’t, some places young Johnson here would blush to go into, right?”
“I’ll go along with that.” Walker’s face was a mask. He was waiting to see how things would go before committing himself to any set emotion.
“Correct me if I’m wrong, Walker, but I’m guessing that when colored folks get together and there ain’t no white folks around, the talk swings around sometimes to the general mood in the neighborhood, and how the white folks maybe don’t treat people like they ought to, am I right?”
Walker nodded.
“I want you to go down to the Valley, down to Black Bottom for the next couple days, keep your ear to the ground. Just go around in your street clothes. Probably they’ll know you’re an officer. If you want to, you can tell them stories about how bad we treat you down here. Get what you can.” I paused and clenched my stomach muscles to clamp down on a sharp pain of hunger. “Take your gun.”
Walker nodded glumly.
“I got nothing more to say to either of you,” I said. All along, I had been thinking about putting Johnson and Walker out of harm’s way for the trouble I knew to be coming, and now I wondered if it wasn’t stupid of me to send away the extra hands on idle errands.
Johnson stood up, his face still red. He picked up his hat from the table and the scrap of paper I had given him and walked out of the room. Walker sat slumped in his chair, his eyes out of focus on the floor, thinking.
I considered walking out. The days were numbered now. Captain Mitchell was waiting upstairs, I knew, and I was afraid that I might say or do something that couldn’t be danced around or ignored. I thought I might drop the whole thing and hop a bus out of town, take the five thousand dollars and cut it all loose. I could make it last a year, easy. Maybe, I thought, the game being played depends entirely on me playing the sap. Without me, it might all collapse. I picked up my own hat and turned toward the door; but before I could take a step, I felt Walker take hold of my elbow from the blind side. The twist and jerk it took to pull myself loose and face him sent pain raking down my spine.
“You oughtn’t to lay a hand on me,” I said, hardening up like a flash.
“I don’t intend any disrespect,” he said. “But it seems to me we’ve got some business to settle.” He didn’t betray any anger, but he seemed set on some kind of action.
“The only business we have is for you to do what I tell you. Now, I’ve given you a job to do. Will you do it or won’t you?”
Walker spoke slowly. “There was a boy got killed in the Valley some years ago.”
Though I had long hoped for Walker to speak so plainly, I could not find a way to respond. My anger petered away as I said, “He some kin to you?”
“No kin,” Walker said. “But that boy is still in the grave. He might have been a doctor by now, a scientist, a leader in the community. Who knows what you cut off that night?”
“Some day, Walker,” I said, “you’ll come up on a time when you have to draw your gun on somebody—”
“I’m not talking about any of that now.”
I wished that I still carried a nightstick, something to hold on to: a way to settle the jangling nerves that always seem to end up in your fists. “Don’t try to talk me down, Walker. I ain’t much for talking.”
“You know I have a wife and children who depend on me to be there day in and day out,” he said. “All I’m trying to get out of you is some feeling that you’re not ignorant to the human feeling there.”
“You can’t tell me what to do, Walker.” I wondered if a blush might be coming to my cheeks as it had to Johnson’s.
“You’ve got to choose for yourself,” he said. “What I’m saying is, for my own self and for my family, I need to know how you’re going. I don’t care if you don’t like me touching you. It doesn’t hurt my feelings. But if you’re the type of man that wouldn’t mind putting a colored man in harm’s way, I need to know that right now.”
I wondered if he could see how he’d shamed me. Could he see right into me, even through my one squinty eye? We were standing eye to eye, man to man, and it was like Walker was holding up a mirror to me. There it was in front of me, the picture of a decent man, and I could see—with this and all the rest of it—how I had failed to be decent for so many years.
Walker said, “I don’t want you to think that I’m afraid to go on. I can handle myself as long as I know that what’s coming is out front of me, not behind me. My family can get by if I happen to lose this job but not if I’m gone. Not if I’m dead. Now, Detective, I ask you: How would you feel about tearing apart a family?”
“You know my family is already torn apart,” I said weakly. “I don’t feel too good about it.” My stomach and my whole belly clenched and seized, and I thought I might start to well up with angry tears.
Walker stood for a few moments, watching. His look softened, and I felt smaller when he seemed to have something like pity for me. He said, “I guess that’s as close as I’ll get to a good word from you.”
“Just stay out of it, Walker, if you’re worried,” I said. “I’m willing to handle it on my own.”
“I can handle myself all right,” he said. “It’s you that’s got me guessing.” He turned slowly and walked out of the little room like he was tired in his bones.
After he left, I sat back down at the table. The scratched-up wood of the tabletop held my interest for a time, and it amused me to think of the heat pipes and the water pipes and the electrical lines in the little room, wondering where they went and how they worked. I fancied I could hear the gurgling and the ticking of water and steam and the hum of electricity waiting to flow; I guess I knew there was a cloud of doom coming my way. After what I had learned from the Hardiman woman, I knew I’d have to go out to the hideaway by the lake, and I knew I’d have to do it alone. It seemed funny. A man gone punchy like that can step as he likes, any way but the right way, but I had gone outside worrying.
I got up and left the little room and trudged up the stairs. I went up the final flight to the fancy offices, thinking, I’ll be damned if I’ll go on like this without at least the support of Mitchell. Passing the bank of secretaries, I set my jaw and rolled my shoulders. I opened the door to Mitchell’s office without knocking and stepped slowly inside.
Mitchell looked up. He was haggard and red-eyed.
“Yeah?” I said.
Mitchell leaned back into his leather chair. He brought his thumb and forefinger to the bridge of his nose and pressed hard, eyes shut tight. Then he opened his eyes and peered brightly at me. “Detective,” he said, “I want you to give me your badge.”
I felt blood spike up into my neck, throb at my temples, and push up into my scalp. “What the hell?” I said. I stepped forward till my thighs pushed against the desk.
“You heard me. I want you to give me your badge.” Captain Mitchell sat back in his chair, left hand pressed flat onto the desk.
I sputtered, “You—you—” I jerked forward in a spasm and placed both palms onto the desk.
Mitchell held up his hand. “Watch what you say, Caudill. Stop and think. All I’ve asked you to do is give me your badge.”
I stood up and stepped back, dizzy from the receding blood. “My badge,” I said.
“You’re a detective, you have a badge, haven’t you? You were issued one.”
“Sure.” I patted myself down but came up dry. “I don’t—”
Mitchell flipped the badge in its charred leather case onto the desk. We both stared silently at it for a moment, and then I picked it up, slid it into my pocket, and sat down.
“I’ve been making do with less sleep lately than I’m used to,” said Mitchell. “It doesn’t agree with me.”
“I been sleeping pretty good.”
“Reverend Jenkins tells me there was a fire during the night.” Mitchell placed his fingertips together gently and looked over them at me. “It seems Mr. Jenkins knows more about what you’ve been doing than I do.”
“I’ve been doing a few things.” I tried to parse the situation. I still could not tell what Mitchell had in mind. Jenkins knew I had burned down Noggle’s shack; and yet the badge was still in my pocket.
“One thing—was it necessary to burn down the man’s home?”
“I think so.” I looked dully at the gray hairs crossing the bridge of Mitchell’s nose.
“I’ll give you three more days to reel this whole thing in, Caudill. After that, I’m going to ask you to spill everything you know and we’ll let the rest of the department in on things.”
“Three days ought to do it,” I said, thinking of all the vague hints I’d heard about the beginning of summer—just two days away. “That should be plenty.”
Mitchell said, “That’s not the sort of attitude I was looking for. Have you given up? Do you honestly have such a lack of feeling for what’s at stake here?”
I squinted at him. “Pease is dead,” I said. “I killed him. Had to cut off his nuts and I still didn’t get much out of him.”
Mitchell’s fingers laced together tightly but his eyes did not flicker. He weighed what I had said for a moment. “We’ll tally all of it up at the end.”
“You and Jenkins?”
“Jenkins is a part of this because of our own shortcomings as a police force,” he said. “If you could pull yourself together as a man and as a detective, we’d be on better footing. As it is—”
“You’re only talking,” I said. “I don’t sit behind a desk.”
Mitchell looked to be fighting a wave of nausea. “Sit yourself down sometime and see if you can live with yourself, Caudill. My nails are clean, but—if I were willing just to cut out and let things fall to pieces, I would have done it by now. I’m here for the long haul, however it turns out. You’re just skating along like every other yellow pedestrian. You’re a coward, a moral coward.”
I could hardly answer. The badge in my pocket was like a gallstone.
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