Trip Wire

by Charlotte Carter

  “Oh?”

  “No. He’s at the Drake. Until we can decide what our future will be. Whether we have different futures, I should say. You don’t have to stand in the doorway, either. Come in. You have something for me, I believe.”

  With no further explanation, I took out my mammy-made sketch, handed it over. “Is that something you recognize?”

  It took her a minute. “I believe so. But what on earth is the meaning of this?”

  “What does it open, Mrs. Mobley?”

  “This is too much.”

  “Please tell me.”

  “A kind of safe house. A bomb shelter my father insisted we install up at the house in Kent. My God, that was years ago. But how do you know about this key?”

  “Wilton had it.”

  “Wilton had it? But why? I mean, he couldn’t have. There are only two copies of this key. Mine is in a bureau drawer somewhere and Oscar’s is in his desk.”

  “I bet one of them is missing.”

  She took a step away from me then, suspicious. “Whose secrets are you trying to get at, young woman—Wilton’s or Oscar’s?”

  “I don’t know. Maybe both. I’m not out to trash anybody’s memory. But I’m not going to stop until I know what went down.”

  “No, I guess you won’t. But isn’t it time you let them rest—my son and the girl?”

  “You think they’re resting? They’re not.”

  I couldn’t stand the look on her face, and hated myself for putting it there.

  “Go and look for the keys,” I said. “Please.”

  2

  Sim drove steadily and fast, at least fifteen miles over the limit. Hunched over the wheel, he was an odd mix of relaxation and attentiveness. More like a fighter pilot than a guy ferrying a lady to the country.

  For a few minutes I let myself pretend I was Hope Mobley in better days, when her prosperous, lucky family was young and together. A lovely young wife on a leisurely car ride to her country place.

  It was one in the afternoon when we left the highway and pulled onto the road heading north. We stayed on that until we reached the rough, rock-strewn one that led to the house.

  The Mobley place stood at the end of the path; it was big and lonely looking. The wood on the upper story was splintering from wind damage, and the place needed a paint job.

  “She said it’s past the house,” I told Sim. “About a half mile west of here. This way.”

  He followed in my footsteps. “Why is it so far away from the house?”

  “They told Oscar Mobley it should be built near some natural shelter, so he had it installed close to the dunes. To dilute the shock waves from the nuclear blast—would you believe? I guess that’s how people were thinking then. They expected Russia to try to wipe out the state of Illinois. Hope said she told her father it was preposterous, but he wouldn’t listen.”

  The terrain became hilly, and soon we had entered what looked like an old creek bed. “There,” I said. “It should be about a hundred yards from here.”

  I started to walk fast, and within five minutes we were staring at two moldy steel doors lying flat to the ground.

  Oscar’s key. Hope’s key. The issue was moot now. We didn’t need one. The doors were flung open. We looked at the gaping blackness they bracketed.

  “What you think is down there?” he said. Neither of us wanted to be the first to descend into the unknown.

  Finally Sim made a move. He took the first step down the wet stone staircase. Once we were at the bottom of it, we could see nothing.

  “There’s gotta be a light,” I said. “Feel around for it.”

  All at once, a string of lights popped on. He’d found the switchplate.

  The inside of the chamber was like an oversize sardine can. The space was rectangular. Two doors at the far end—toilets, maybe. Cabinets on the wall. A camp stove. Bottled water in one corner. Propane canisters. Fire extinguisher.

  And on the ground, close to the stairs, was an upended Mosler safe. The door to that was open, too, and the safe was on its side.

  “That belong to the husband?” Sim asked.

  “Good bet.”

  Sim bent to inspect it. “Yeah, look,” he said, pointing to three small holes near the tumbler. “This sucker been drilled open. Wonder how much green was in this mother.”

  Only then did I begin to notice the trash on the floor. Beer and soda cans and balled-up waxed paper, a dozen cigarette butts. There was also a folding table and a few wooden milk crates that had obviously been used for seating.

  Sim was motioning to me. I joined him at the far corner of the chamber, where he was using the toe of his boot to poke at the three duffel bags lined up next to one another like mushrooms at the base of a rotted tree.

  “Army issue,” he said.

  I tipped one over, undid the elaborate rope knot that fastened the duffel and began to shake out the contents. The clatter was so loud I jumped away in alarm. But then I could see they were just rods of metal and wood. “What is this junk?” I said.

  Sim seemed to be intrigued with the stuff. I went about opening another duffel while he got down on his haunches. When I looked up a minute later, Sim was no longer squatting. He was on his feet, and he was raising the business end of a semiautomatic.

  I fell away from him, shrieking. “What the fuck are you doing? Where did that come from?”

  “What you called the junk in this bag. I just put it together. Nothing to it.”

  “How do you know how to do that? You were in the army?”

  “My brother was. Korea.” He spread the bag open for me to look inside then. “There’s five disassembled carbines in there. Plenty of ammo, too. Even a few smoke grenades. Somebody was expecting company down here.”

  There weren’t any guns in the second bag. What we saw when we emptied it were telephone books for a variety of American cities, road maps, manila folders with densely scribbled notes inside them.

  I opened one of them, spread the pages out. I saw the word COPY stamped across most of the sheets. Sim was reading over my shoulder. “This doesn’t make any sense,” I said.

  “Yeah, it does. It’s a DD-214.”

  “A what?”

  “A soldier gets one when they discharge him. That’s your service record. You need it to get a job after you get out of the army.”

  “Like I said, this makes no sense.”

  One of the maps was for Lincoln, Nebraska. There was another for Shreveport, Louisiana. But not all the maps were for your typical American town. I was holding a hand-drawn one, done in colored pencil, almost childlike. It was shaped like a giant fantail shrimp. Here and there on the map were crosses and notations.

  “You know what that is?” Sim asked.

  I nodded. “Yeah, I do. It’s Vietnam.”

  That third bag was the kicker. The end. When Sim turned it over and shook it, nothing came out at first. So I reached in. I felt the slick surface of the material, pulled at it. A dark blue jacket with a heavy zipper and a fake fur collar plopped out of the duffel. The collar wasn’t the only fake thing about the garment. A badge was on the front of the coat. I wasn’t an expert on police gear, but the metal seemed too lightweight to be real. A fake Chicago PD shield.

  I was holding it in my hands, but I could feel the slick, wet surface of that jacket on my neck and face, scent the breath of the big man who’d mauled me in the apartment that night. And I felt the powerful hand in the small of my back as I was shoved into the closet.

  I flung the coat onto the ground. Sim was now shaking other items out of the duffel. A couple of dozen pamphlets featuring the August 4 logo flopped out. And there were several photos of white men, some young, others older, some in uniform, some in civvies. But the notes written on the back of each shot told me all the men had been U.S. Army officers: name, rank, length of service, company, unit, date of discharge, where in ’Nam each had seen action, last known address in the States.

  I had them all spread out, lookin
g in vain at each face for a clue as to why they were in that bag. One of them began to speak to me a little. I flipped his photo over and looked at the data on him. And yes, there was a DD doohickey for him, too.

  A sourness shot up from my stomach then. I could feel the poison in my throat. I leaned forward, sick and rattling like a teacup on its saucer.

  3

  “Drive faster,” I said.

  “No, I’m not gonna drive no faster. You better get a grip on yourself.”

  “I’m in a goddamn grip,” I said. “I’m just about being strangled.”

  “Dig, Cassandra. The guns, that writing and stuff—looks to me like you found proof everything the police say is the gospel truth. Your boy Wilton was in with those people. They had ah arsenal in there. Of course they the ones who took all the money his daddy had in that safe. Of course they woulda offed him if he was gonna inform on them. Just like the cops announced.”

  “Yep, so it seems.” I was not going to argue with him. “As a matter of fact, I was wrong to blame the department for a lot of the stuff that’s happened. They’re just a bunch of choirboys really, trying to keep the city safe.”

  “What you looking like that for? You sad ’cause it turns out your boy was a bad motherfucker?”

  “Yes,” I said. “And no.”

  4

  Sim parked in front of our building.

  “You’d better not come upstairs with me,” I said.

  “Why? I thought—”

  I saw the disappointment on his face. He had been expecting another afternoon of dynamite sex, dynamite reefer, and Motown sounds.

  “I know. You thought you’d be grooving with me. Not this time.”

  “Oh. Okay. But why you was in such a hurry to get back?”

  “A funeral,” I answered. “I didn’t get to go to Wilt’s. Wouldn’t want to miss this one.”

  “Say what?”

  “Nothing, Sim. I better go.” I kissed him then. “Thanks for all your help.”

  “Cassandra, you are one crazy broad.”

  “Bye, Sim.”

  “Look here. Where can I get some smokes around here?”

  “Turn left at the corner. There’s a store next to the Cuban restaurant.”

  After he was gone, I stood in the street, looking up at the apartment window above the commune. The room where Wilt and Mia died. It was just as Cliff had said: Soon we’d all be leaving the big noisy apartment on Armitage. No matter what was waiting for me down the line, I knew that the six months in the Armitage Avenue apartment would loom large, stay with me for all my life. I ached and sorrowed for my friends Wilton and Mia, and even for Barry.

  The apartment was warm and friendly-feeling when I finally went inside. Cliff and Jordan were drinking cocoa and playing dominoes at the kitchen table.

  Cliff rose to give me a kiss, proprietary hand running down my arm. He even unbuttoned my coat for me. “I missed you. Why’d you take off like that, before I got up?”

  “I was shopping for your Christmas present,” I told him. “It’s a surprise.”

  “You’re kidding.”

  I shook my head. “No,” I said, and placed the glossy photograph of Lieutenant Cary Tobin, Cliff’s older brother, on top of the domino game.

  I watched the smile on his lips fade to nothing. “Where’d you get that?”

  “What happened, Cliff? Why did you do it?”

  “Jordan,” he said woodenly. “Go back with your dad now, okay? I’ll come get you in a while, buddy.”

  I watched in silence as he argued and cajoled and finally barked at the kid to make him go. Jordan was blubbering, but finally he did leave, the front door slamming shut behind him.

  He wasn’t the only one crying. Cliff was leaking tears as well.

  I walked over to him and slapped him with all my strength. “You killed them, didn’t you? You slit their throats. And somehow it’s all tied up with your brother. Isn’t it?”

  When he didn’t answer, I walloped him again. “You fucked me, Cliff. You killed my best friend and then you fucked me.”

  “I love you.” Voice atremble.

  “You say that again and I’ll kill you. Tell me what this is all about. Now.”

  “They murdered Cary,” he said.

  “August 4, you mean. They killed your brother.”

  “Yes. He didn’t die in ’Nam. They killed him at home, in Bristol, four weeks after he got out of the army.”

  “Why?”

  “There was a racist group among the officers in ’Nam. Some of them were in the Klan. They had this conspiracy to get black GIs. These officers would send them on suicide missions. Some of the black troops were out-and-out murdered, but the white guys made it look like they were killed in action. All kinds of horrible things were done to those soldiers. Out of hate. Resentment and hate.

  “Alvin Flowers was over there. He knew what these white officers were doing. When he got out of the army and came home, he started this movement, August 4. They were trying to get black servicemen to desert, refuse to fight for America. That’s what they said they were about. But they were also tracking down the racists—and paying them back.”

  “Jesus. And your brother was one of the racists?”

  “No.”

  “What do you mean, no? If he didn’t do anything, why should the August 4 people kill him?”

  Cliff began to laugh then, hopelessly. “They made a mistake. Alvin Flowers and his people had to have inside help. Somebody who could send them army records, keep them up-to-date with who was getting sent home, where people lived, and all. There must have been a mix-up somewhere, though. Cary got marked as one of the racists, and the August 4 people killed him. They killed him for nothing, Sandy. For nothing. My mom didn’t raise us to hate anybody.”

  It was an ugly story. I figured any explanation was going to be ugly. But this was the worst.

  “How did you find out about August 4? And where does Wilt come in?” I said. “How’d you know he was a member of August 4?”

  “He wasn’t.”

  “What?”

  “Not a real member, I mean. I came home one day, before you moved in. Wilt had a black guy up here. They were talking in his room. I didn’t know who he was, but I heard Wilt call him Alvin. After the guy left I saw some papers and a pamphlet that told about the so-called mission August 4 was on. I tried to get Wilton to talk about it, but he wouldn’t. And I never saw the guy again.

  “I followed Wilton all over the city sometimes. But I could never catch him with Flowers. I guess Flowers had gone underground. You were living here by then.

  “That weekend we went up to the farm, when Mia was doing all her cooking, she and Wilt thought they were alone in the house one afternoon. But I heard them talking. He told her everything. He said he wanted to join Alvin in the radical work he was doing, but he didn’t feel like he was enough of a man to kill anybody, even a racist bastard. So he was helping August 4 in the only way he could. He was letting them use his parents’ property and he was giving them money.”

  “Money he took from his father.”

  “Yes. Wilton said he’d found out his father had money hidden all over the property, a fortune. And he’d learned the money was dirty.”

  “Dirty how?”

  “I don’t know. But he said he was going to take it away from his old man and use it for something the old man would hate. He was going to make a fool of him. It would be poetic justice. He laughed about it.”

  Yeah, he did laugh.

  “What else did you hear, Cliff?”

  “That Alvin Flowers knew how hot he was. The feds were looking for him, the Chicago pigs, too. He was holed up in an apartment somewhere, and he and his men were going to be splitting soon. That’s when I knew; if I was going to catch him, kill him, I didn’t have long to do it.”

  “So. That day,” I said. “The day you murdered them.”

  “I didn’t exactly have it planned. But the time just seemed right. We all ate lun
ch together. Dan was out. Barry came and went real fast. You split to go see Nat. I told Wilt and Mia I was taking Jordan out sledding.

  “Mia had a class. That herbalist course that she went to. I knew it lasted two hours. I sat in the window at Jordan’s place, watched Mia leave the building. I knew Wilton was alone. I went back to the building and up to the vacant apartment. Then I called him up there. Just to look at the space, I said.”

  “He was kind of surprised when you tied him up and started slashing his throat, I imagine.”

  He looked away from me.

  “Didn’t he fight you at first? What? Did you have a gun?”

  He nodded. “It was the one he got for protection. But he promised Mia he’d get rid of it. He never did, though. He gave it to me to hide for him.”

  So Wilt also had a little taste of poetic justice before he died.

  “How could you do it, Cliff? How’d you get yourself to kill him? He was our friend.”

  He began to weep again. “I know that. I know that. I just wanted him to tell me where Alvin Flowers was. I had to make him tell me.”

  “He wouldn’t, though.”

  “No.”

  “And then it fell apart even more, right? When Mia came back unexpectedly.”

  “Yes. I don’t know what happened. Maybe she forgot something. Maybe the class was canceled. But she walked in on it, started screaming. I had to shut her up. Before I knew what was happening, she was dead.”

  “So then you had no choice. You had to go through with it and kill Wilton.”

  “That’s right. I had to.”

  I heard the insistent rapping at the front door then.

  “Beat it, Jordan!” Cliff screamed. “Go home like I told you.”

  “Cassandra? You okay in there?”

  It was Sim.

  Cliff was faster than I. He snatched a chef’s knife from the drainboard and then grabbed me up. “Don’t touch that door, Sandy.”

  “Why? You afraid of what he’ll do to you?”

  “I don’t give a shit about that. I hope he kills me.”

  “I hope he does too,” I said. It just came out of my mouth automatically. A second later, I knew I didn’t mean it. “Let’s end this now, Cliff,” I said. “I’m letting Sim in here. And you’re not going to do anything to stop me. Or are you? Are you going to hurt me, Cliff? Cut me up like you did them? What was all that shit about loving me and taking care of me and brown babies? All bullshit, right?”