Days of Rage: A Smokey Dalton Novel

by Kris Nelscott

  It was dark here — nighttime dark. The rain stopped suddenly, but the trees around me continued to drip, the sound as irregular as footsteps.

  A few blocks away, the Ford Motor Plant rumbled and clanged. The noise had to be loud there if I could hear it through my still-clogged ears. The air smelled of rotten eggs and sewage; the stink was so thick it made my eyes water.

  For five long minutes I sat in the car, staring out the windows, checking the rearview mirror, hoping no one had followed me here. That feeling that I’d had all month, the feeling of being watched, hadn’t left me. But now I assumed it was because I felt like a giant target, with a blazing neon arrow pointing to the trunk.

  When I could wait no longer, I took off the hat and tossed it onto the floor, rubbing my hands through my hair to get the feeling of someone else’s sweat from my skin. Slid the gloves on. Picked up my gun, made sure the safety was on, then shoved it through my belt and covered it with my shirt.

  Finally I got out, closing the door carefully so that no one could hear it slam. I could see my breath. My head ached, and blood trickled down the side of my face. One of the wounds hadn’t closed.

  More stitches after all.

  I swiped at it with my arm, staining the sleeve of my coat.

  I walked down the dirt road to the construction site. The rain had made the dirt soft, masking my footsteps. Only the rustle of my clothing and the harshness of my breathing seemed out of place. Spindly trees rose up around me, their leaves scattered on the road.

  Equipment sat along the edge of the canal, ghostly shapes against the darkness. I stopped short of the edge.

  They had finished dredging this section, I recalled, because someone had deemed the canal deep enough.

  I hoped that unnamed someone was right.

  The water glinted, black and filthy, its depth impossible to see in the darkness. Some lights from the nearby industrial plants echoed thinly on the water’s surface, revealing a gasoline slick and bits of wadded-up paper.

  I let out a small breath, hating this moment, seeing no other choice.

  This was my dumping ground.

  I hoped I would only have to use it once.

  I went back to the cop car and pushed on the trunk, making sure the latch held. Then I opened the back passenger door and rolled down the window. I did the same with the front passenger window. I saved the driver’s window for last.

  I crawled back inside the car just as the radio crackled, startling me. The thin voice coming across the static talked about a fight at the Kinetic Playground — a concert venue for modern bands, this weekend it was supposed to be — the Who? Led Zeppelin? I couldn’t remember with all the strange names.

  Not that it mattered to me. I was as far as a man could get from the Kinetic Playground and still be in Chicago.

  I started the car. It rumbled to life, the powerful engine ready to go.

  I was shaking.

  I kept the car in park, then I pushed the emergency brake. I reached across the seat and picked up the bloody nightstick.

  I released the emergency brake, got out of the car, and leaned inside the door. Carefully, I wedged the nightstick against the accelerator, making sure that thing flattened against the floor.

  The car’s engine revved, sounding even louder in that grove of too-thin trees.

  I prayed no one heard it.

  I braced my left hand on the car seat, grabbed the automatic gear shift, and shoved the car into drive. Then I leapt back — I was knocked back, really — sprawling in the cold, wet dirt as the car zoomed down the road.

  I pushed myself up, my fingers slipping in the mud. The car disappeared over the bank and I braced myself for a crash of metal against concrete — a crash that meant I had failed.

  Instead, I heard a large splash. I ran to the edge of the road and stared down the embankment.

  The car tipped, front end already lost to the canal. The brackish water flowed into the open windows, sinking it even faster.

  The trunk went under last, disappearing in a riot of bubbles. I could almost imagine it popping open at the last moment, Faulds and Strom bobbing to the surface like a bad dream, revealing themselves much too soon.

  But the bubbles eventually stopped, and the car vanished into the canal’s depths. I tossed the gloves in after it.

  If I couldn’t see the car, I doubted anyone else would be able to either, even in broad daylight. The water in the Calumet industrial region was the filthiest in all of Chicago, which was saying something.

  The cop car and its secrets would remain hidden.

  Now I had to.

  Somehow I had to get out of there — and I had to do it quickly, without getting caught.

  FIFTY-FIVE

  This was the part I hadn’t thought through: the walk. More than seventy blocks on a rainy fall evening. Alone, through good neighborhoods and hostile.

  I walked due north because that took me through the best neighborhoods, the safest neighborhoods. The riskiest section was near the Ford Plant. What would someone think of a black man walking alone here, away from the houses, away from stores, away from everything but the secrets of next year’s model cars?

  But no one bothered me. No one even noticed me. The darkness, which came on fast and made me realize I had been near the canal longer than I thought, hid me better than I could have planned.

  My trouble came near a strip mall just south of Avalon Park. A car filled with white teenagers started to follow me, all of them shouting at me in broad Chicago accents, calling me names.

  My fingers itched to go to the gun. I was still raw, still ready to defend myself, and I knew that revealing that gun was the worst thing I could do.

  So I bowed my head like a defeated, overworked family man and kept going, ignoring the taunts and hoping the situation wouldn’t get worse.

  It didn’t. The boys got bored. The car veered off and I was alone again, just as the rain returned.

  I walked the remaining few miles in a downpour, heading to my apartment instead of the hospital. I couldn’t show up looking like this, especially with the gun. Someone would notice. I was already exhausted. I would make a mistake.

  It wasn’t until I turned onto my own block that I remembered Jimmy. I was supposed to pick him up around five. It was much later than that and I hadn’t even called.

  A lump formed in my throat. I hoped that Faulds and Strom hadn’t thought of going after families and friends like Rice and Dawley had. I hadn’t even thought to check.

  My keys were on the van’s ring. When I got inside, I had to knock on Marvella’s door and ask her for the spare I had given her for moments just like this.

  She started to ask what happened, but caught something on my face.

  “Can you give me a ride to the hospital in about fifteen minutes?” I asked.

  “Car accident?” she asked. I must have looked worse than I thought.

  I shook my head. “Loaned my van to a friend trying to save someone who got beaten up. I promised him I’d meet him there.”

  “What’d you do, finish the fight?” she asked.

  “Yeah,” I said, and went inside my own apartment.

  I closed the door, leaned on it, and let out a small sigh. I took off my ruined shoes and my wet clothes, leaving them in a pile on the entry rug. When I was about to leave, I’d bag them and toss them into the trash.

  Then I went to the phone and called the Grimshaws.

  Althea answered. “You’re late,” she said without even waiting to see who was calling.

  “I know,” I said. “Some trouble at my job. Can Jimmy stay the night?”

  “Can you bring him clothes?”

  “No,” I said. “Let him borrow Keith’s.”

  “Smokey, this’s got to stop,” she said.

  “I agree,” I said, and hung up. I stood there a moment, feeling every bruise, every ache.

  Then I took a long, hot shower, wishing I could wash the memories of the entire day away as easily a
s I washed away the dirt and the blood.

  FIFTY-SIX

  What followed was the longest month of my life.

  Laura met me at the hospital — apparently Marvella had called her (I wasn’t sure if I liked them being friends) — and immediately took charge. LeDoux had a concussion, several broken ribs, a dislocated shoulder, and a cracked elbow. The blow to the head had knocked him out — a mercy the doctors said, given the pain.

  When I arrived, Minton was already in surgery. They were trying to repair his cheekbone — they were afraid the bone fragments would damage his eye.

  Otherwise his injuries were superficial. Apparently I had arrived in time to prevent him from suffering the way LeDoux had.

  Figuring our cover was already broken, Laura had hired security guards for the Queen Anne, forbidden them from going inside. She also called Cronk. She told him she knew what he’d been hiding. She told him that his secretary had left memos, implicating him in all of it. Then Laura told Cronk if he took her on, she’d destroy him.

  Apparently he believed her.

  I talked with Minton, and we decided we could handle the remaining work — there was no way, after finding out who ran the dumping ground, that we were going to bring any of this to trial any time soon.

  We told LeDoux we had enough from him for a dozen trials and, when he was well enough, sent him home. Laura paid all his medical expenses and then some, because she felt so very guilty. He was relieved he didn’t have to go back there, and so was I. We never did clean up that crime scene.

  But we cleared it. Minton and I, with guards outside. We took body after body out of that basement, some skeletal, some still decaying, many as old as the first three, with just as little identification. The newer ones mostly had purses or wallets, although the identification wasn’t always readable. After the late 1940s, the wallets and purses held no cash either.

  Hanley again. The bastard stripped the corpses of any real worth they had.

  During November, at least, my job was to clear that basement. Once we were done with that, we would be notifying relatives — and identifying the dead — for months to come.

  My greatest fear was that Faulds and Strom weren’t working alone — that their team included at least one more police member. I asked Sinkovich to check if Faulds and Strom were partners, and if they were ever seen in the company of someone else.

  He did, and said they weren’t — they never trusted anyone else — and added: odd thing, no one had seen them in days.

  I told him that was why I needed him on the police force, to look these things up for me and ask no questions.

  “Is that your decision?” he asked.

  “Right now, yeah,” I said. “Things are too complicated to make such a large change. But maybe in a few months we can talk about it again.”

  I hoped he would forget it, but doubted he would.

  Still, even knowing that Faulds and Strom trusted no one else didn’t make the work easier. Laura kept the guards on the house, but no other police showed up.

  Twombly did, once, looking for money, but I made sure I was nowhere near him. The guards handled him, and that relieved me. It meant he had no one else to report to, no one else to offer our information as a payout.

  Laura gave Kaztauskis a generous early retirement. She bitched about it throughout the entire process, and finally, at my suggestion, had Drew draw up an agreement. Kaztauskis would get to keep his pension, plus the bonuses she added, only if he agreed never to talk about Sturdy or any connected business ever again.

  That shut him up for good. Laura stopped bitching and we tried to move on.

  The world continued its insanity: Black Panther Bobby Seale insisted on his constitutional right to a lawyer of his own choosing, and because he kept interrupting court business, asking for something most folks took for granted, Judge Hoffman had Seale bound and gagged during each session.

  Finally Hoffman decided that was too big a disruption, and severed Seale’s trial from the others. The Chicago Eight became the Chicago Seven, and every white person in the area seemed to breathe a sigh of relief. No one seemed to notice that Seale was shipped off to New Haven to stand on federal charges for a murder he couldn’t have committed, since he wasn’t in town when it occurred.

  The Weathermen, feeling persecuted, went underground. The local Panthers, who were persecuted, remained above ground and suffered yet another raid to their offices.

  The fighting in Vietnam continued, unabated. The Strategic Arms Limitations Talks got underway between the U.S. and the U.S.S.R, presumably to make the world safer, although I doubted it. Apollo 12 landed on the moon and the entire nation acted like it was old hat already, only a few months after the first time.

  Thanksgiving seemed outrageously late, even though it fell on the fourth Thursday, like it always did. That day I had a quiet dinner at my apartment with Laura and Jimmy. After he went to bed, she snuggled in my arms for the first time in months. She told me she’d been doing some thinking about things I used to say back when we first met.

  “Like what?” I asked.

  “A family has many different meanings,” she said. “It’s not just blood relatives. When you first said that, I thought you said that for Jim.”

  “I said it because it’s true. The people who’ve loved me the longest have no blood ties to me at all, yet they’re my parents in all the ways that count.”

  “I know,” she said, and burrowed in closer. “I realized, in my pouty last few months, there are only two people who matter to me. You and Jim.”

  “Laura—”

  She put a finger over my lips, stopping me. “We have a non-traditional relationship. I don’t want to be traditional. Do you understand that?”

  I did. It solved a lot. It left a lot open, but it solved a lot.

  And the rift between us closed — at least for a little while.

  FIFTY-SEVEN

  And now it’s December, December seventh, to be exact — a day that shall live in infamy, Franklin Delano Roosevelt said twenty-eight years ago. That infamy was long gone, defeated, but new infamies have arisen, and I stand in line at one of them, trying not to freeze to death in the mid-morning cold.

  Althea is angry at me: I’ve brought the oldest four children here instead of taking them to church. Jimmy stands beside me. Lacey is subdued for the first time in months. Jonathan shifts from foot to foot, his hands shoved in his pockets, and Keith leans against me, frightened by this strange new world.

  We’re on the 2300 block of West Monroe, only one street up from the Black Panther offices. We’re in a line that stretches down this block, around the corner, back to West Madison, and down it as far as the eye can see.

  About five houses away from me, Bobby Rush stands on the front porch of 2337 West Monroe, a blue building that I hadn’t even noticed last year when I was inspecting some houses on this block. Bobby Rush is now the Illinois Black Panther Party Chairman, because on Thursday morning, December fourth, the police murdered Fred Hampton in his sleep.

  The police have lied about it. Their story is what their story is. They raided his home at five in the morning, they say, because they heard he was storing weapons there. Hampton and his cohorts returned fire, and the police, in self-defense, fired back. Hampton and another Panther, Mark Clark, died. Four others were injured.

  The surviving Panthers say the police showed up while everyone was asleep and came in shooting.

  The Panthers have the evidence to back their claim up.

  I’ve seen the evidence; it’s grisly. The police failed to close off the crime scene, so the Panthers are giving tours of it. I went through the apartment yesterday.

  Today I came back — this time with Jimmy, Jonathan, Lacey, and Keith. I wouldn’t have brought them if it weren’t for Tim Minton.

  “They have to go, man,” he said to me, with that lisp he’s developed while his cheekbone is healing. “They have to know what they’re up against.”

  “I’d like
to see that they don’t,” I said.

  But he was right. I knew that he was right.

  So I’m taking two eleven year-olds, a thirteen-year-old, and a fifteen-year-old on the tour of a massacre site. They’ll walk in the front door and see hundreds of bullet holes. They’ll go into the second bedroom — the one where Fred Hampton slept through the entire gun battle — and will see a mattress so blood-stained that even an untrained eye knows that the person who bled like that could not have lived.

  His girlfriend did. She had been in bed with him, nine-months pregnant, so convinced she was going to die that she clung to him, and somehow the bullets missed her.

  The police dragged her out of the room, and then someone said, “He’s still breathing,” and she heard two more shots.

  Fred Hampton isn’t breathing any longer.

  I want to pull him aside. I want to take him back into my apartment on that day in October and explain to him the folly of what he was doing. It was custeristic, I said to him then, using his word, meaning: you’re going to die.

  And Hampton, barely twenty-one, didn’t believe me. He didn’t have the premonition of his own death the way Martin did. He didn’t have the certainty, even though he knew it was a possibility.

  The Panthers are saying he was drugged. His girlfriend says he fell asleep in the middle of a conversation with his mother the night before.

  With his mother.

  Such a dangerous revolutionary that he fell asleep talking to his mother, the mother of his own child beside him.

  And I have a wager on who drugged him. That bodyguard he brought with him when he visited me. The only person who could have could have tipped off the FBI to our meeting. O’Neal. He’d been in the apartment that night. He’d given Hampton a glass of Kool-Aid.

  The police don’t need dumping grounds anymore.

  They’re murdering children in their sleep.