Catawba Point

by Colin Campbell

  He let out a sigh and stood up. There was nothing more to learn here, so he turned the light off and climbed the stairs. The wooden structure groaned under his weight. The sunlight blinded him as he came out of the hole. It wasn’t until he reached to close the hatch that he realized he wasn’t alone.

  “Breaking Leroy’s neck ain’t enough for you, huh?”

  One of the black guys who’d been with Leroy coming out of the woods stood with a semi-circle of bigger men.

  “You got to go breaking and entering as well?”

  THIRTY-TWO

  Grant turned to face the threat. The threat was six men fanned out either side of the guy from the woods. They were standing at the foot of the embankment like targets on the firing range that this most certainly was. Now that Grant had seen the gun cabinet he recognized the familiar divots in the parched red earth of the backstop. Fairly tight groupings behind holes where the targets had been jammed into the ground. He hadn’t seen the targets down in the cellar; they must have been in the firearms locker.

  The embankment gave them cover from the road, good deployment, and with their backs to the sun, even better. Grant squinted into the sun and looked at the not-so-magnificent seven. They all had short hair and a military bearing and looked as if they kept themselves fit. Their clothes were clean but frayed at the edges, not new. The designated spokesman stepped forward.

  “Them’s Leroy’s things down there. Not yours.”

  Grant let the hatch go. The heavy wood slammed shut, sending clouds of dust flying around his feet. He waved at the cellar.

  “Things he put together to help returning veterans?”

  He moved two paces to his right to move the sun out of his eyes.

  “Well, I’m a returning veteran.”

  The spokesman shook his head.

  “You’re not one of us.”

  Grant moved to his right again, then took one step toward the group.

  “Because I’m not black?”

  “Because you’re not American.”

  The six men spread out to the sides and began to encircle Grant. Grant kept his eyes on the main man but flexed his knees, ready for action. This was going to turn ugly fast, and when it did, the spokesman was going to be the first man down.

  “Leroy isn’t Leroy either. Didn’t disqualify him.”

  The spokesman stepped forward.

  “Breaking his neck disqualifies you.”

  Grant braced his shoulders.

  “I didn’t break his neck.”

  The spokesman kept coming.

  “And I’m not going to break yours.”

  Grant took another step to his right but changing the angle of the sun only moved him closer to the men circling round his back. It was time to use the policeman’s most important asset: his mouth. He put a twinkle in his eye and lowered his voice.

  “Is that some kind of cryptic message?”

  He held a finger up for the man to stop, and the man did.

  “Saying you won’t break my neck when you mean that you will?”

  Grant wagged the finger.

  “You see, that tells me you’ve got enough smarts to know right from wrong. And if you think about it, I think you’ve got enough sense to know if I’d broken your friend’s neck, I wouldn’t have made it look like he slipped in the shower. I’d have said he came at me and I had no choice. Self-defense. A much-overlooked argument in court.”

  He lowered his hand.

  “You do know I’m a cop, don’t you?”

  The spokesman glowered at Grant.

  “Not from around here.”

  Grant stared back.

  “You think that makes me less dangerous, or more? Since I’m not being paid to turn a blind eye.”

  He shrugged and waved a hand to encompass the seven men.

  “Same applies here as what I said at the underpass. I’m going to take a beating. No question about that. But I’m ex-military too, so at least two of you are coming to hospital with me.”

  He settled a little at the knees and relaxed his shoulders. His arms hung loose at his sides and he flexed his fingers ready to turn them into weapons. Not fists, because punching breaks too many bones in the hand, but open palms ready to deflect blows and strike back.

  “Now, I’ve already got a friend in the hospital.”

  The spokesman’s expression softened. Grant continued.

  “And if I thought you’d put her there, we’d be going at it right now. So, it’s make-your-mind-up time.”

  The six men had completely surrounded Grant. The spokesman took a different stance to Grant, not relaxed and flexible but solid and hard. He balled his hands into fists. Grant turned his palms upwards.

  “We going to fight or talk?”

  It turned out Denzel Washburn was intrigued enough by what Grant said that he decided to talk. At least for now. He ushered Grant over and the group settled into the shade of the embankment, the not-so-magnificent seven plus one. Grant started the conversation with a compliment, always a good opening gambit.

  “He must have loved his brother. To go around using Leroy’s name.”

  Washburn sat on an indentation in the sloping hill like a chair. The other six knelt or sat or crouched on the ground. Grant didn’t want to sit. This could still turn ugly. He’d given Washburn the opening, now he let the new leader run with it.

  “We all served with Leroy. He was a good man. His brother aspired to be like him. The name was a good way to start.”

  Grant hadn’t forgotten the first time he’d met Leroy Junior.

  “Turning Nona out at the Sleepy Nook wasn’t the best way to honor that.”

  Washburn rested his elbows on his knees and looked up at Grant.

  “No doubt. But these are hard times.”

  He waved to include the surrounding land.

  “You can’t buy all this on a disabled pension and handouts.”

  Grant looked at the scorched earth.

  “All this hasn’t amounted to much except a hole in the ground and a firing range. Is that the legacy his brother had in mind?”

  Washburn’s eyes looked tired.

  “You can’t build until you’ve got something to build on.”

  He indicated the concrete foundations up and down Angel Way Court.

  “We can put twenty-four houses on this street alone. No groundwork. Just bring ’em in and set ’em down. That’s twenty-four vets can bring their families and start to rebuild their lives. There’s too many didn’t make it back. Even more didn’t make it out of the shit in their heads.”

  Grant sighed.

  “I know. More U.S. servicemen have died at their own hands than were killed in the conflicts. I heard that.”

  Washburn nodded.

  “And some made bad choices trying to drag themselves up.”

  He looked at Grant.

  “You telling me you never made any bad choices?”

  Grant softened his stare.

  “I don’t think throwing him off the balcony was my best move.”

  Then he hardened it again.

  “Because putting Nona in the hospital is down to me.”

  Washburn stood up and brushed dirt off the seat of his pants.

  “That wasn’t Leroy. And it wasn’t us.”

  Grant nodded.

  “I’m going with the pimply-arsed white guy she was tricking. You got any ideas about that?”

  Washburn stood face-to-face with Grant.

  “One of them white boys over at Catawba Point. Don’t know who. They don’t usually hold with laying down with black girls.”

  Grant looked him in the eye.

  “But Nona was an equal-opportunity trick?”

  Washburn didn’t back off.

  “She did what she had to do. Only handout you get in this world is a pension and a folded flag.”

  Grant looked at the ground. He’d been to too many funerals.


  “You were there? With his mother?”

  Washburn paused for a moment, then gave the faintest of nods.

  “When he died. And when they buried him.”

  He nodded at the men sitting around him.

  “It was us folded the flag.”

  He braced his shoulders.

  “Us and his younger brother.”

  Grant sensed a change in the atmosphere. Ugly was coming. He’d made the fatal mistake of being lulled into a false sense of security. Washburn put a hard edge in his voice.

  “You might not have broken his neck.”

  He started to move forward, balling his hands into fists again.

  “But this is for throwing him off the balcony.”

  The punch came out of the sun and caught Grant by surprise. It was short and sharp and went straight for the chin. Grant saw it too late and only managed to turn his head to one side. The blow brought stars to his eyes. His head snapped sideways and all the pain he’d forgotten from the accident came rushing back in one massive attack. The second blow was a gut punch that made Grant throw up on his shoes, but he didn’t go down. In a situation like this, you needed to stay on your feet because once you were on the ground you were dead meat.

  Grant’s head spun in the bright afternoon sun. He tried to bring his arms up to protect himself but Washburn stepped back instead.

  “Let’s call it a draw. Honors even.”

  The sound of guns being cocked spun everyone around, the six men on the ground as well as Grant and Washburn. Shadows broke the skyline atop the ridge, and a dozen men pointed guns down the embankment.

  “Well look at this. Looks like the cavalry came just in time.”

  THIRTY-THREE

  Two things went through Grant’s mind in quick succession. The first was Bruno Morris and the Blind-Eye cop warning him not to get caught between the rival gangs. The second was, I’d rather be lucky than good. Because the pimply-arsed white guy was part of the white supremacists from Catawba Point, and Grant was guessing that’s exactly who was standing atop the ridge. Being saved from the nasty black men put him in a good position to find out who the guy with the laptop was. Grant straightened up and rubbed his jaw.

  “Glad you boys happened to be passing.”

  He jerked a thumb toward Washburn but gave the black ex-soldier a barely noticeable shake of the head.

  “Things were getting out of hand.”

  The leader came down the banking in slow, lazy strides. The dry red earth crumbled into narrow landslides that followed him down. The rest of his men kept their guns trained on the black men at the bottom of the slope.

  “You got to be careful what neighborhoods you hang around in. There’s rough elements in this neck of the woods.”

  Grant looked at the woods that bordered the northern edge of the Wilderness Estates. The treeline started at the cul-de-sac turnaround at the end of Angel Way Court and continued over the embankment. No doubt where the white supremacists had snuck up on them from.

  “I’ll try and remember that.”

  He waved a hand around the empty streets.

  “Who’d have thought you could run into so many fellas in the middle of nowhere?”

  The leader stopped at the bottom of the embankment.

  “Middle of nowhere’s where their kind belong.”

  He gave Washburn a hard stare.

  “I see Leroy got no further with this than his returning veterans bullshit.”

  Washburn glanced at Grant then back to the leader. Grant could see he was seething inside but held it in check. You had to choose your battles. There was no point starting a fight you couldn’t win. Grant considered him with growing respect that made it harder to say what he had to say.

  “Yeah. This place is full of nothing and dog shit. Guess you need more than a couple of brain cells and pimp money to become a property tycoon.”

  The leader smiled.

  “You got the coon part right anyway.”

  Grant laughed, that was hard too, but didn’t speak. The leader filled the void.

  “You got a close-up of that when you threw him off the balcony.”

  Grant walked toward the leader, dusting off his clothes.

  “Seems to be a story going round about that. It’s not strictly true.”

  The leader looked at Grant.

  “We ain’t the cops’, boy. Don’t need to make excuses to us.”

  He jerked a thumb toward the entrance on Amos Smith Road.

  “Not sure you should be driving a black man’s wheels though.”

  Grant stopped opposite the white supremacist.

  “Funny. Back when I was a cop in Bradford, this mainly black town in Yorkshire, they were always driving BMWs.”

  The leader frowned.

  “Them German cars?”

  Grant smiled.

  “Black Man’s Wheels.”

  The leader laughed. The men atop the ridge laughed with him. Grant thought he’d wandered into a scene from A Fistful of Dollars except these weren’t badly dubbed Italians. The sun had moved all the way west and was dipping toward the horizon. It was still hot and steamy. The situation was hot too. Grant had to decide whether to play along with these guys or head back to the motel. Part of that process was considering which faction had petrol-bombed his room and put Nona in the hospital and who was driving the panel van that tried to get her out.

  Grant looked at Washburn, then at the white supremacist. His money was on the white supremacist or part of his group. That said, the next thing to consider was the best way to prove that. That one was easy.

  “But I take your point.”

  He tossed the pickup keys at Washburn, then turned back toward the leader.

  “Don’t suppose you could drop me back at the Sleepy Nook?”

  The leader made a circling motion with one finger around his head, and the men atop the ridge came down the slope. The landslides raised dust behind them. They crossed the flat base foundations ignoring the hatch and gathered on the cracked tarmac of Angel Way Court. The leader guided Grant toward his men.

  “We can do better than that.”

  He clicked his fingers twice and the men headed toward the woods at the end of the cul-de-sac. He fell in behind them, keeping Grant at his side.

  “Got a barbecue planned. Why don’t you join us?”

  THIRTY-FOUR

  It wasn’t a long drive. The journey took in some familiar sights and a couple he’d only heard about. Catawba Point was directly south of Notebook Trail but driving directly south wasn’t an option. Grant traveled in the second car of a three-vehicle convoy. A pickup, an SUV, and a big square American car. Grant sat in the backseat of the big American car and watched the world go by. Using the map in his head and the angle of the sun, he managed to maintain his sense of direction. Passing the airport helped. The rest was common sense and having a general overview.

  The convoy drove south on the boundary road that paralleled Charlotte Douglas Airport’s westernmost runway then crossed a bridge over the I-485 heading west. The first half a mile of Walkers Ferry Road was dotted with houses and grassy knolls but then the houses dried up and the woods closed in. Grant caught a glimpse of Danga Lake through the trees, but the southern tributary of Little Paw Creek was all but invisible. The road crested a gentle ridge then curved south without any turn offs until they passed a broad, flat clearing and the reason they had the best phone signal in Charlotte.

  North Carolina’s most powerful cell phone tower was tall and solid and built around a central rotunda of brick and concrete. Not massive but big enough to need a door for access to the inner core. The tower grew narrower the higher it went and had all sorts of fancy antennas and satellite dishes and things Grant knew nothing about. Maybe Evelyn Cover could have explained, but she wasn’t here. The road continued down the slope, and a sign indicated that Walkers Ferry was straight ahead. The convoy didn’t go straight ahea
d; it took a sharp right up an unmarked road and was immediately smothered by trees that blocked out the sky.

  Several twists and turns later the convoy came out of the woods. The sun was low and straight in their eyes but it couldn’t hide the beauty of Catawba Point, the other place Grant had only heard about.

  “We ain’t fired up the barbecues yet, but you won’t be disappointed.”

  John Carter came over from the SUV once the convoy pulled in at the overlook. The leader had introduced himself before setting off from Notebook Trail, and Grant got the impression that stopping on the edge of the woods was purely to let Grant see the difference between the abandoned housing development of Notebook Trail and the most certainly not abandoned complex before him. Grant played along.

  “It’s not a disappointment so far.”

  Carter nodded his appreciation.

  “Life’s not all black and white. But this here’s what you can achieve when you’re organized and white.”

  He waved a hand around the clearing.

  “I’d say this proves we’re organized.”

  Grant nodded.

  “And there’s no arguing you’re white.”

  Carter smiled.

  “I knew you were a kindred spirit. Although I don’t advocate throwing black fellas off the balcony. We’re more of a peace-loving movement.”

  Grant looked at Carter.

  “That why you took the high ground with twelve armed men and the sun at your back?”

  Carter shrugged.

  “We didn’t shoot nobody.”

  Grant smiled.

  “I didn’t throw nobody off the balcony neither.”

  Carter laughed. The badly dubbed Italians didn’t join in this time. He slapped Grant on the back and moved back to the SUV.