Old Bones

by Trudy Nan Boyce

  She lowered the heavy binoculars and rubbed her eyes, then quickly raised them back, the image jittering, in time to follow Flash Daddy’s Bentley pulling in. She watched him get out and go into the Blue Room. The door handle of the excavator door squealed. Startled as the door was pulled open, she leaned back and put her hand on the 9mm at her waist.

  “What the—” the man said, stopping mid-sentence when he saw where her hand had settled. Heavyset and dressed in an orange quilted jumpsuit with the pocket logo of an Asian construction company, he looked like he belonged with the excavator.

  She showed her badge and ID. “I work Homicide.”

  “Ain’t no murders been done with this hoe.”

  “I believe you, sir.” She swung her legs toward the door. “This is an innocent hoe.”

  “I get it—hoe, innocent.” He offered his hand as she stepped out. “Billy Williams, they call me . . .”

  “Let me guess . . .”

  “Williams.” He grinned big. “Gotcha. Naw, ’course it’s ‘Billy Bob.’ I see you got your spy glasses there.” He nodded to the binoculars hanging from her neck.

  “Thanks for the use of your cab, Billy Bob.” Salt smiled, shook his hand, and headed up the hill to her car.

  The action dwindled quickly when she drove up and parked beside Man’s vehicle. The runner kid halted mid-stride when he recognized her. She made a show of speaking into the Handie-Talkie before clipping it to her waist, letting them know she’d reported something to dispatch.

  Johnny C got out of the beater. “Yo, wass up there, Detective?” He nodded his chin at her.

  She straightened the fedora, tipping the brim down slightly over her forehead. “Hello, Johnny. I’m just taking a trip down memory lane—reminiscing.” She looked at each of Johnny’s crew. “You know, I don’t take this War on Drugs personal. I’ve always kind of understood that you and I are both a part of the ninety-nine percent.”

  Stone got out and stood stiffly beside Johnny.

  “Really? This is getting to be like old times.” She stepped back with her right foot, turning her gun side away from them just as Man and Flash Daddy came out of the Blue Room. Although she hadn’t asked dispatch for them, both a patrol unit and the Things roared into the parking lot, their tires loudly churning and crunching the gravel. The beat officer got out of his car, dust clouds swirling around his knees. Barney and Daniels exited their vehicles. They all converged, no one with anything to say. Billy Bob’s hoe clanked and rumbled on the bank across the road.

  Barney broke the ice. “We heard you pull out with radio and thought we’d come by.”

  “I saw a chick and all these dudes,” said the uniform.

  Sam and Lil D appeared in the doorway between the shack and the Blue Room. A city bus stopped at the corner and remained there idling, exhaust fouling the air. Salt asked the uniform if the exterior mic in his car worked. She went to his patrol car, sat down, and picked up the mic. “Testing. One. Two. Three.” Amplified, her voice carried for blocks; people on the corner and nearby turned their heads toward the sound. “Someone sells flex around here.” She paused. “This is Officer Salt.” The Homes residents knew she didn’t lie.

  Dust blowing, settling, on his suit and the shiny surface of his vehicle, Flash Daddy stood at the door of his car, arms crossed, watching the unfolding drama. Man looked on from the doorway.

  Johnny C came over to the open door of the patrol car. “This ain’t right.”

  The young patrol officer joined him. “I heard of you,” he said to Salt. “This used to be your beat.”

  Salt depressed the mic button again. “Sometimes flex is sold from this corner. You take a chance now if you buy from here.” She let up on the mic. “Do I lie, Johnny?”

  The runners folded shop, drifting back to the beater, as the Things strolled to the chicken window. Stone, arms hanging, lifted his face toward the sky.

  “Johnny, remember what I said about cooperation? And here I am again, asking nicely.” She settled the mic back in its bracket. “I’d like a private word with you and your brother.” She nodded toward Man. “Thank you, Officer . . . ?” She tried to read his silver-tone name tag.

  “Nguyen.”

  “Win?” she repeated.

  “Close enough. You got balls, I’ll say that for you.”

  “Not really.”

  • • •

  In the Blue Room, Man was agitated, pacing beside the table where she sat. Johnny seemed to have disappeared, evidently deferring to Man in regard to their relationship with her. The Things had stayed, making themselves at home, eating their boxes of chicken in a corner. Any gravitas they’d brought to the scene had dissipated, perhaps because of their seeming lack of interest in anything other than the contents of the loaded Styrofoam clamshells. She began to suspect that Man’s agitation was a result not so much of her public accusations but of Flash Daddy’s witness of the drama. She sat quietly, waiting for him to vent and come to the conclusion that it was in his best interest to deal with her. She was willing to listen, for a while. It was the truck, the cheated white boys, she was after.

  “Fuckin’ with my business . . .” At the bar he peeled the wrapper off a blunt, lit it with a tall flame from a Zippo, and filled the air with one furious puff after another. He slammed the lighter on the counter and went to the window, where he stood stiffly staring out, his back to her. “The fuck . . .” he muttered, then abruptly turned to face her. “Why you couldn’t just call me? Ask me private? I’m tryin’ to negotiate a deal here.”

  She looked at him, tights under black basketball shorts, loose-tongued athletic shoes, quilted hoodie, and thought she understood his position. She sat forward. “Part of my problem, Man, is that to say to you ‘I’m sorry’ is to run the risk of having you take that as weakness, especially coming from a woman. Am I right?”

  Barney and Daniels held their wings mid-bite.

  Man turned his back on her again, grinding the cigar under his heel. He stomped over to where she sat and pointed his finger in her face. “You, you and all the police like the plantation overseer—the hand of the man. You know that?” He bit his words between pinched lips, eyes squinting, forehead in tight wrinkled folds.

  The Things wiped their fingers and pushed back from the table.

  “Yes,” she said. “And we still have someone running around free who shot those young Spelman women and another someone who shot Lil D’s sister.”

  He picked up her hat from the table, her Homicide fedora, the one given her by the squad on the occasion of solving her first murder. Man held the crown in his left palm and ran his fingers over the inner brim.

  “Don’t push it, Man.”

  He handed the hat to her, drew up another chair, and sat down. “We ain’t on the same side.”

  “You’re so binary.” She winked and took out the cigarettes she always carried but rarely smoked.

  “I never seen you smoke.” He looked over at the Things. “Them goons gotta be in this?”

  “It makes the bosses happy to know I’ve got backup. Lighter?” she asked, opening the pack.

  Man went in his pocket and handed her the Zippo.

  “I see Johnny’s running the trap now,” she said, lighting the smoke.

  “I told you I’m gettin’ out of the street business.” He leaned back. “I’m tryin’ but you hurtin’ my chances, all this frontin’.”

  “Here’s the problem—word is somebody in your, make that Johnny’s, trap sold flex to the yahoos who shot those Spelman girls. The video of the truck has been all over the TV and somebody recognized it. Those boys fired into the demonstrators right after being flexed in your and Johnny’s trap.”

  Man crossed his arms on his chest and lowered his chin.

  “You don’t seem surprised,” she said.

  “I ain’t,” he mumbled without raising his
head.

  “Also, it wasn’t a random drive-up, according to the people talking about it. The rubes had called ahead to make the deal, no weight but also not just for their personal use, either. Their number is in somebody’s phone.”

  “Sheeite.” Man cursed between his teeth.

  “I need that number and I need it now. The city is on the edge of another meltdown.” It was her turn to be emphatic, voice rising, stabbing her finger toward Man.

  “It was your boys in the trap that duped the guys in the truck and that’s the truck on the news.”

  “How they know it’s the same one?” he asked, as if knowing but wanting her to prove how she knew.

  “Come on, Man. There’s nothing that happens out there you don’t know, but here’s what we know—same time frame, two white boys, an old black Blazer, Confederate flag in the back window, what looks like a gun-rights bumper sticker—the lab is still working on enhancing the tag. People saw the truck here, same as the truck in the video.”

  “I told C he need to keep on them young boys—they try to get over, flexin’ soon as you round the corner.” Man shook his head.

  “But this would have to be a contact, somebody they’d have done business with before or they knew somehow.”

  “Naw, not now days. They drive up, order, give their phone number and get a time to come back. Them meth-head white boys get short, they come lookin’ to score in the ’hood.”

  “So who has the number, Man?”

  “Probably one a the kids. He gonna get jacked up on this?”

  “We can find a way around it, especially if he’s a juvenile.”

  “Your word?”

  “I don’t control some things but, yes, I’ll do what I can.”

  Man stood, fished his phone from his pants, walked out of earshot, then came back to the table. “He’s talkin’ to them boys now. You gone owe me on this.”

  “How about you also tell me where I can find JoJo and Glory and we’ll call it even?”

  “You crazy. You just used up any owe, and you ain’t had none to begin with.”

  “What’s the deal, Man? As long as we’re at the table, why is it that you don’t want me talking to those girls?”

  “You gettin’ on my nerves now.” He stood, picked up the phone again, and answered as he walked away from the table, “Yo.”

  Salt took the cigarette butt to the door, threw it out, took a small notepad and pen from her coat, and set them on the table. Man came over and wrote down a phone number. “They got the tag, too,” he said, writing it as well, pushing the pad back to her. “Don’t be comin’ back fuckin’ me up again.”

  As soon as she was back in the car, the Things in theirs, she phoned Huff and read him the phone and tag numbers. “I told them I’d try to keep the flex kid out of it. He’s probably a juvenile anyway.”

  “Fuck ’em, they’re assholes.”

  “Maybe, Sarge, but they’re my assholes.”

  • • •

  “She was identified—Our Lady of the Quarry.” Felton stood beside her desk. “It’s your girl, Glory.”

  The chill ran up from her feet.

  “Salt?”

  “I was looking for her and JoJo. I put the word out.”

  “Come on.”

  “No, Felton. Sometimes this job stinks.”

  “Salt, whoever killed her—”

  “Cause? What was the cause, Felton?”

  “Gunshot.”

  “Head?”

  “Yes.”

  Salt reached for her coat.

  THE FIRE NEXT TIME

  Another of the Spelman girls had died, and another had taken a critical turn. More protests were planned. The truck from which the shots had been fired was located, its owner having belatedly reported it stolen. Negotiations were ongoing to get him in for an interview and to be in the lineup for the as-yet-to-be-identified drug boys to view. Unconfirmed, none of this could be released to the media.

  Salt was anxious about JoJo, but she’d been ordered again to report for the demonstration detail. “Sarge, please.”

  “No can do,” Huff said, sucking in his stomach and buckling his own gear belt. “All the detective units have cases that need personnel ASAP. But they’ve had to assign bodies to the ‘occupation,’” he said, pausing to swipe the air with finger quotes.

  • • •

  “What she doin’ here, La?” Lil D dropped plastic bags of groceries on the counter between the kitchenette and the living room/dining room where Latonya sat in one beanbag chair and JoJo in the other, the two of them sharing a pint of ice cream with Danny T.

  “She helpin’ me, D. I ain’t know nobody over here and JoJo say she need to stay away from The Homes for a minute.”

  JoJo sat up. “I got some money, D. I ain’t seen Glory in a week. I think she in trouble. Man done told us both to stay hid, but Glory, she can’t stay still. She go to the Gold String on the north side thinking nobody there will know her. I ain’t seen her since. That ain’t like her.” JoJo wiped the back of her hand under her nose. “I think she dead.” She lifted the hem of her T-shirt to her eyes. “Please, D. I’m scared.”

  “Damn.” Lil D hung his head. “This some fucked-up shit.”

  “Who after us, D? Why Man say we gotta stay hid? I don’t even know who to be scared of. Even you?”

  Lil D started taking groceries out of the bags and setting them on the counter. “Where you want these at, La?”

  “I don’t know. You cook much as me. Wherever you want.” She was going to be mad, Lil D knew, until he said JoJo could stay. People from projects being torn down all over the city had gotten vouchers for apartments in their east-side complex. But no one they knew from The Homes. Latonya didn’t have one other kin or play kin or friend here to keep her company or help with Danny T. And she’d been working on her GED, her books still in one of the black plastic garbage bags spilled around the apartment.

  Lil D measured out the rice, enough for four.

  IN THE ATTIC

  “I feel like I’m finally being admitted to the inner sanctum,” Wills said, standing next to Salt and looking up as she pulled the rope for the retractable ladder to the attic. He ducked as dirt and insulation fell from the opening when the ladder descended.

  “Not terribly mysterious, mostly dust, very little phantasmagoria.” Salt brushed debris from his shoulders. “You’re a good sport to help me with this, especially now that we’re going to the twelve-hour shifts again, maybe as soon as tomorrow.”

  Picking up the crowbar and shaking it, “Yeah, but I get to do my manly duty,” he said, voice lowered an octave. “Plus it’s not often a Yankee is privy to an excavation of the old gothic South.” He poked her playfully in the ribs with his elbow.

  “All right, Rhett, follow me.” They climbed up and through the opening, Salt tugging the cord for the bulb. She carried a small fluorescent lantern by which she led them across the beams to the corner and the trunk. “Careful.” Balancing on one of the beams, they squatted in front of the old steamer trunk. “I could probably have done this myself,” she said, “but it would have been tough going. This way I can hold it while you leverage the hasp.” She hung the lantern on a nail sticking out of an overhead beam.

  Wills wedged the chisel end of the bar into the lock. “Ready?”

  “Hold on,” she said, bracing the trunk with her feet and legs. “Ready.”

  Wills levered the wedge end of the bar into the mechanism, which immediately gave way, the entire latch tearing from the trunk and lid. “Well, that did it,” he said. “I hope it’s not badly damaged.”

  “It’s not the trunk that’s of interest to me. There are probably thousands of these old things in attics all over the South.” They turned their faces from the flying dust as she lifted the lid.

  Letters in their envelopes were p
acked in a tray that separated the top from a deeper bottom compartment. About half of the letters were addressed to James Alt, Salt’s grandfather, during World War II, and half were from him to family, his parents and wife, the grandmother Salt knew little about.

  They lifted the tray. Indeed, there was a wood chest in which Salt found the clichéd hidden silver, a badly tarnished full service for twelve, intricately patterned with roses and leaves, that Mr. Makepeace had alleged to be in her possession. There were also ledgers, old photo albums, portraits in frames with glass yellowed by dirt. Salt coughed. “Well, this will take a while.” She opened the silverware chest.

  “It will take a couple of trips,” Wills said.

  “Let’s just bring some of it down. Now that it’s open, I can get the rest when we’re not pushed for time.”

  “Okay. What do you want me to bring down?”

  “I’ll come back with a bag for the letters.” She handed Wills an album, picked out a couple of ledgers to take down herself, replaced the tray, and closed the lid.

  • • •

  “We’re pretty sure now that the perps belong to or attended meetings of the White Is Right Citizens, otherwise known as WIRC.” Wills took a sip of whiskey. “Informant says the head of the group, Lincoln Sugarman, knows the truck.”

  “Why not pull Sugarman in?”

  “They don’t want to burn the informant, so I called and asked him to come in as a good citizen.” Wills leaned back, stretched his legs out, and crossed his ankles.

  “So they are depending on your legendary interviewing skills,” she said. Wills had solidified some big and many not-so-big cases partly based on interviews in which suspects or witnesses gave up important information or disclosed damaging details.

  “I don’t know.” He threw back the last of his whiskey. “These guys, these hick Hitlers—I’d sooner interview an outright murderer.”