War at Home: A Smokey Dalton Novel

by Kris Nelscott

  “I was at the early meetings,” he said, “and I thought it was stupid. We want to stop the war in Vietnam, so we shut down a building on campus? What does that mean? So I gathered up some like-minded people, and we went our own way, publishing a newsletter, leafleting, giving speeches.”

  “But that changed,” I said.

  “Gradually.” He propped himself up on the sill. “Some of the guys got caught in the glamour. They rejoined Mark Rudd and those guys — the true SDS they were calling themselves. We were just the other guys for a while. We didn’t really have a name. I dropped out — we all did — and worked on stopping the war full-time. I was writing for the Voice and for Rat and some of the other underground papers, going to marches, you know the drill.”

  “What changed?” I asked.

  “Everything,” he said. “Bobby got killed, then the Democratic National Convention, then Nixon got elected. Some of our people began thinking nonviolence wasn’t the way — it sure wasn’t the way to get noticed any more — and we kept losing people. The new folks coming in had a different agenda.”

  “Which was?”

  “Fight the war at all costs. That’s what we were arguing about that afternoon. They wanted to escalate — bring the war home, stop the exploitation of the third world, all that crap. They wanted to work outside the system, and I said I believed in the system, even though it could get really fucked sometimes. You gotta change things from within, you know?”

  “Sometimes it takes a while,” I said.

  “Everything of value is hard,” Jones said. “But these new kids, they didn’t understand that. And to be fair, no one’s talking like that anymore. You been hearing about the fires in Providence? I’m convinced that’s some student group, trying to make a point. I met a few of their people. They’re just as radical as everyone else.”

  I hadn’t head about any fires in Rhode Island, but I didn’t want to admit it and get him off track. “So you dropped out of the organization.”

  “It’s not for me, man, and the gunshot proved it. It was karma.” He grinned at me as he said that last, and tipped his beer my way. He took a long swallow.

  “Do you know Daniel Kirkland?” I asked.

  “Know him? Hell, I was arguing with him when I got shot. Bastard.”

  The strong negative reactions to Daniel no longer surprised me.

  “He was one of the ones who wanted to move toward violence?” I asked, as if I didn’t know.

  Jones nodded. “Said he had everything they needed. They just needed a plan.”

  “Everything?”

  Jones shrugged. “I didn’t ask him to explain. I got out before I could be implicated. But I’d check out his place. You’ve gotta find something there.”

  “What kind of violence was he talking about?”

  “What does anyone talk about? Blowing stuff up, mostly.”

  “Did he have any plans?”

  “I don’t know. I was stuck on the violence-nonviolence thing. The minute they started talking about bombs, I was outta there.”

  “But you said that you left because you were shot.”

  “No, I said I was thinking about leaving before I got shot. In fact, I was telling Daniel I was going to leave. I didn’t much like him. And then he’s screaming about discrimination, when he came down from Yale, of all places. He wanted to add black issues to the Vietnam stuff, and it just didn’t fit — no offense, man.”

  “None taken,” I said.

  He tilted his beer at me again, then took another long drink. “I’m just glad to be out. I think I hung around too long as it was.”

  “Why?” I asked.

  His smile became rueful. He balanced the beer on the sill. “I don’t know exactly. You give yourself heart and soul to something, you’re reluctant to give it up, I think. There was a camaraderie in the early days that I still miss, but it’s long gone. It just took me a while to realize it, I think.”

  “Plus your political differences,” I said.

  He sighed. “On one level, these guys are right. The marches and the pickets and the newsletters aren’t getting us anywhere. But holding people hostage on campus or bombing a building downtown? Seems to me that makes us just as bad as the people we’re fighting against.”

  “Dr. King would’ve agreed with you,” I said.

  His gaze met mine. “I always admired him. I think that was the beginning of the end when he died.”

  It was certainly the end of one phase of my life, and it definitely put the country on a new path.

  One bullet.

  “What are you going to do now?” I asked him.

  Jones held up a book that had been facedown on the landing. The Federalist Papers. “Majoring in government and international studies. The sooner we get those warmongering assholes out of power, the better off we’ll all be.”

  I nodded my agreement and silently wished him the best, while not holding out a lot of hope. He hadn’t even been able to control his small student organization. I had no idea how he thought he could make inroads in the government at large.

  But I knew better than to discourage him. I’d been surprised by people before. I was willing to be positively surprised again.

  “You sure you don’t know any of Daniel’s plans for the violence?” I asked.

  Jones shook his head. “Like I said, I didn’t want to know.”

  “Any ideas where he stored his supplies?”

  “I figure they’re in his girlfriend’s apartment,” Jones said with deep bitterness. “He brought stuff from New Haven around Memorial Day weekend, saying it was appropriate — a great way to remember the dead.”

  “Bombing supplies?” I asked.

  “That’s what I’m guessing. I made it a point not to know.” He turned the book over and over in his hands before finally setting it back on the iron landing. “But he was pretty jacked on Memorial Day. Said he found a local supplier.”

  “Supplier of what?” I asked.

  “I don’t know that either,” Jones said. “But if I had to guess, I’d say dynamite. Daniel was talking about going to some construction company’s headquarters that night. And I can’t think what a construction company would have that he’d need, except dynamite. Can you?”

  O’Connor had said that dynamite was stolen from a construction site. And the Barn had been filled with dynamite from various construction companies. That fit Daniel’s pattern.

  “If that’s what you thought he was doing, why didn’t you call the police?” I asked.

  Jones looked at me like I was crazy. “Pigs hated us, man. Going to the cops just wasn’t our way. It’s still kinda hard for me. Honestly, that’s why I didn’t invite you in. I’m trying to readjust my thinking. But after you’ve been teargassed a few times and hit on the head with a billy club, it’s hard, you know?”

  I did know. “I’m not offended. I just figured if you’re concerned that Daniel and the others are going to do something harmful, why didn’t you turn them in, even anonymously?”

  “I just wasn’t in that space, I guess.” Jones finished his beer and set the bottle down. “Lucky for me, nothing in the city’s been bombed in the last month. Then I might’ve thought of it. But until you came, it never crossed my mind.”

  “You gonna do it now?” I asked.

  He shook his head. “I told you about it. Now it’s your problem. I’ve done enough.”

  FORTY-FIVE

  I left Ned Jones feeling shaken. He seemed like a good, responsible kid, yet he didn’t think it his duty to report that people he knew were planning to bomb parts of the city.

  I’d wandered into another world, one that made no sense to me. If I had been in Jones’s shoes, I would have gone to the police. But at the moment, I had nothing new to offer. I knew that O’Connor was investigating the War at Home Brigade, and I knew that the military had reported the leaflets.

  And so far, that was all. All but my suspicions.

  I walked the handful of blocks to the p
lace we were calling home. The street itself felt unfamiliar. The nearby precinct made me nervous. Even though some children were in the middle of the street, playing stickball, a number of older kids were huddled in a corner, talking to two young men wearing the signature black leather jackets and berets of the Black Panthers.

  No one said hello to me as I hurried along the sidewalk. I took the steps two at a time, and let myself into the warm building. I made notes until dinner, trying to put myself in Daniel’s crazy head, and then I went to the restaurant where I was supposed to meet Jimmy and Malcolm.

  They were happy to see me, and we ate as if we were really tourists having a nice vacation.

  * * *

  A gunshot echoed through the neighborhood at three A.M. I scrambled awake, and was halfway out of my room before I even realized what I had heard. Malcolm and Jimmy hurried into the hall as well.

  We stayed there, away from the windows, as more gunfire rang outside. We waited until the shooting stopped, and then slowly, quietly, crept back to bed.

  * * *

  In the morning, no one discussed the shootings. I had to press a clerk in a nearby bodega before anyone acknowledged they’d heard anything.

  “Saturdays,” said the young man running the place, “it gets crazy sometimes. You get used to it.”

  I wasn’t sure I’d get used to it, and I didn’t want Jimmy to. I took the fresh bagels and the newspaper I bought back to the apartment.

  I had another day of searching ahead of me. Malcolm and Jimmy had another day of finding things to do, away from the apartment.

  “I could help,” Malcolm said. “Maybe go talk to Rhondelle myself or head to this Rat place, see what I can learn.”

  “I don’t want Jimmy anywhere near that row house,” I said.

  “It can’t be worse than staying here,” Jim mumbled from behind the comics.

  I sighed. Shootings in Central Park, shootings on the block, shootings everywhere. Jimmy had a point.

  But I wasn’t going to give in.

  “If you want to help,” I said, “I have some tasks for you.”

  Malcolm glanced at Jimmy. “I have a hunch this isn’t going to be fun.”

  “You asked,” Jimmy said, folding the comics in front of him. “Whatcha need, Smoke?”

  “Newspaper work, which you proved so good at in New Haven.”

  Jimmy rolled his eyes in disgust. “It’s sunny. Can’t we go to a lake or something?”

  “There aren’t any lakes close by.” I didn’t tell them about the beaches at Coney Island. I didn’t want them to go that far today. “You’re better off going to the library again. It’s air-conditioned.”

  Jimmy brought up his paper. “I’m thinking I maybe’ll go to church. I can’t lie to Althea when I get home and she’s not gonna like that you keep forgetting its Sunday.”

  This time, Malcolm sighed. “Church.”

  I smiled. “It might do you some good.”

  There were a number of churches on Seventh Avenue, and the famous Riverside Baptist wasn’t that far away either. I mentioned that, much to Malcolm’s dismay. He knew that church at a strong congregation could last all day — with people coming and going as the spirit moved them.

  “Library’s better than church,” Malcolm said.

  “I promised.” There was a whine in Jimmy’s voice. “And I’m going even if you don’t.”

  Malcolm looked at me, like he expected me to get him out of it.

  I shrugged. “You guys have to stay together. I’m going to hunt for those bombing materials.”

  “And then we leave, right, Smoke?” Jimmy asked.

  I nodded. “When I find them, and report them to the police, that’s when we leave.”

  * * *

  After I left the apartment, I walked until I found a pay phone outside of the neighborhood. Sometime during the night, I had decided that keeping my suspicions to myself wasn’t a good idea. I had one more piece of information than the police did, and it was time they knew about it.

  I dropped a dime into the phone, and called the police station. I had to go through two precincts before I found O’Connor’s.

  To my surprise, he was in.

  “Look,” I said after I identified myself. “I found out yesterday that Daniel Kirkland may be the one who stole dynamite from a construction site. I suspect he might have it in a location out of Harlem, but I don’t know where that is.”

  “Why’re you calling me?” O’Connor asked.

  “Besides doing my civic duty?” I snapped. Maybe this was why Jones hadn’t called the police. “I’m telling you because if you have Daniel under surveillance — and I trust you do — now’s the time to watch him. Since I mentioned the dynamite to him, he might get scared and move it. Or try to use it.”

  “Figure he’s that afraid of you?” O’Connor asked.

  “I figure he’s that paranoid,” I said.

  “You heading home now that you found him? Or are you gonna try to play the hero and get him out of trouble?”

  This guy was good. He put together, just from one remark, that I knew where Daniel was. I had slipped up.

  “I’m past playing the hero with this kid,” I said. “I want to see him stopped. He’s dangerous.”

  “Yeah,” O’Connor said. “That’s my take on him, too.”

  “You didn’t tell me yesterday that you knew him.”

  “You didn’t tell me yesterday that you’d already found him. We saw you going into that row house on the third, Mr. Grimshaw.”

  I froze. I hoped they only saw me, not that they had photographed me. And I hoped they hadn’t seen me come out with that gun.

  However, O’Connor had had a chance to arrest me the day before. He hadn’t done it, and he already knew I had a connection to Daniel

  “We’ll keep an eye out,” O’Connor said. “I can’t promise anything.”

  Then he hung up. I stared at the phone for a moment, then hung up too.

  He had obviously checked the references I’d already given him, and the Grimshaw identity had held up, at least for the moment. But I had screwed up. If someone else saw me, if someone else recognized me, I would be in real trouble.

  Jimmy would be in real trouble.

  I rested my head against the phone. I was shaking. First thing in the morning, we would go to the rental agent, turn in the keys, then take the train to the Port Authority. I’d make sure we weren’t followed, and then we’d take a bus to the van.

  I didn’t want to leave right after this phone call. I didn’t want to call attention to us by skipping out on the rental agent. I wanted to act like the man I had pretended to be, the insurance investigator who was in over his head.

  If we were lucky, O’Connor wouldn’t investigate us further.

  If we weren’t lucky, we wouldn’t be able to go back to Chicago, either. And I would have to evaluate if Jimmy and I had to change identities — again.

  FORTY-SIX

  The neighborhood where Joel Grossman’s parents lived was as different from my Harlem neighborhood as a street could get. Before I had taken the train here, I had called the Grossman’s and asked if I could come up to the apartment to talk to Joel.

  “We’re happy to cooperate,” Mrs. Grossman said. “My boy has had a rough time. Anything we can do to find the person who hurt him, we’ll do.”

  They promised to leave my name with the doorman.

  The apartment building was large and imposing — not a rehabbed mansion like some of the buildings facing the park, but actually built for apartments. The exterior, with its terra-cotta Egyptian accents and tapestry brick, made me guess the building had been built in the 1920s, not in the late nineteenth century like so much of the neighborhood.

  The doorman, who was white, smiled at me as if I were, too, and told me that I was expected. He held the door for me, something no one did outside of Laura’s place.

  The building’s interior was dark, done in red and golds. The golds were supposed to ad
d richness, the red warmth, or so I guessed. Both colors overwhelmed the real mahogany desk, set up like a motel check-in, and the heavy men’s club-style furniture.

  The doorman had directed me to the tenth floor. As I got onto the small elevator, the doorman picked up the phone. I assumed he was calling upstairs so that the Grossmans knew I was coming.

  The elevator opened onto a lush hallway, with red shag carpet, and ivory and gold wallpaper. The overhead lights were chandeliers, hanging every six feet like an interior decorator’s nightmare.

  At the end of the hall, a middle-aged woman stood in a doorway. She leaned against her open door, clasping ring-bejeweled hands together.

  “Mr. Grimshaw?” she asked.

  I nodded.

  “I hadn’t expected — I mean —” She interrupted herself and gave me an apologetic smile. She had obviously figured out halfway through her sentence that she had been about to insult me.

  “I take it you’re Mrs. Grossman,” I said, making my voice as warm as possible. My appearance — not just my blackness, but my size and my scar — intimidated a lot of people. Kindness sometimes got them past it. “I can’t thank you enough for taking time from your Sunday to see me.”

  She smiled. This time it was more relaxed. She had a round face, with dark eyes that had still held some of their youthful beauty. Her hair had gone gunmetal gray, and she wore it up, in an unflattering matronly style.

  “My Joel, we nearly lost him,” she said as she ushered me into a darkened cave of an apartment. “He just lies in his room, listening to that music and sometimes watching some news. Nobody visits, nobody calls. I think he feels abandoned.”

  She twisted her hands together as she spoke, the rings making a slight clicking sound as they touched.

  “Is that the detective, Mother?” A man came toward me. He was smaller than I was, with delicate gray curls that fell around his face. His features weren’t delicate, though. His eyes were heavy-lidded, his nose large. His face was lined, and I wondered if Mrs. Grossman didn’t keep her hair up and her style old-fashioned so that her age difference with her husband wouldn’t seem so obvious.