(September 2011)
Miraculously, Inspector Saad was in his office and willing to see me immediately, which probably made me a prime suspect. “I was going to come over to see you today,” he said, motioning for me to sit down. “I have news.”
“Did you notice the marks too?” I said, without preamble. “I didn’t see them until I got out the magnifying glass yesterday.”
Was it yesterday or the day before? The days were starting to run together. Sleep, the usual demarcation, had been scarce.
“Suddenly, they leaped off the paper,” I said in a rush. “I don’t know how I missed them.”
“What marks?” Saad looked completely baffled.
So no one in the police department had spotted the ankle tracings on my prints? Maybe they were still working from the contact sheets or their own pictures. Maybe no one had printed them out, blown them up. I pulled the photos out of my handbag and handed them to him.
He looked at them blankly. “Guess I don’t have your eye for detail,” he said, looking up. “Could you help me out?”
“The marks on his ankles,” I said, jabbing at them in my excitement. “I think he may have been wearing an ankle bracelet as crazy as it sounds. What man wears an ankle bracelet? And a man with ankles as thick as his—who’d want to show them off?” Saad looked at the photo closely now. “I’m almost positive those marks were gone by the next day—when your photographer took his pictures,” I continued. “Like the marks a wristwatch makes? They disappear pretty quickly.”
He continued to stare blankly at the shots. Did he get it?
Saad finally looked up. “Nice piece of evidence, Miss Hart.” For the first time, he seemed pleased rather than wary of me. “Very nice.”
“Maybe there’s a man who wore an ankle bracelet in your files.”
He smiled. “I’m going to share some information with you, Miss Hart. You were kind enough to bring this in and now that we know you couldn’t have murdered Derek Olsen, I’m gonna let you in on it. We’ve been busy too.”
“You know how Derek died?” I felt like the breath had been knocked out of me. I’d forgotten about Derek’s death in my excitement over the photo.
“He was strangled by a person with brutal strength. Broke almost every bone in his upper neck and jaw. Popped two teeth out of his mouth as well.”
I cringed, thinking of his fragile physique. The word overkill came into my head. That’s what it literally meant. It was horrible to think about it.
“Plus the geobag covering Derek weighed over one hundred pounds,” Saad continued. “You’d have to pump up pretty good to handle that kind of weight. How big are you? One thirty-five, five-ten? We can rule you out.”
The image of an enormous ogre coming up on Derek and lifting him off the ground suddenly swept through my head. The pounding in my ears took my breath away. I tried to tell myself again he’d have found and mounted the hands and feet anyway, that I hadn’t sent him off to his death. But I couldn’t persuade myself and never would.
“You okay?” Saad asked, rising. “Looks like you’re gonna keel over. Let me get you some water.” He motioned to an officer outside the door,
“I’m okay,” I said, waving him away, but gulping down the paper cup of water when it was handed to me.” I slowly recovered. “Any idea who?” I asked.
“Catch your breath first. For an olive-skinned girl, you went dead white.”
“I’m fine. Tell me what you think.”
“Okay,” he said, picking up the clearest of the photos again. “This photograph you’ve brought me is a good start in identifying the victim—where he came from.” He handed it back. “Those marks on the ankle are from a bracelet, and I recognize what sort of bracelet it is.” He paused, theatrically dramatic. “A little history here, Miss Hart?”
I nodded.
“A few years back,” he said, settling back into his chair, “paroles were given to gang members on the condition they wear an electronic ankle tag after their release. The bracelet ensured they wouldn’t return to the gang since parole officers could track them through the tag.” He cracked his knuckles. “Had other uses too, of course, but keeping parolees away from the gangs was its biggest asset. Especially in cities like LA—ones with heavy gang activity. Chico State pioneered the idea, I believe.”
“That’s what was on his ankle? Marks from an electronic bracelet?”
So Di had gotten it right. It was puzzling though because the marks looked too delicate. Not like a mark an electronic tag would make. That kind of tag would probably show up as a rectangular mark, an indent almost.
“Not quite. Let me finish,” Saad said. “The device uses GPS software to monitor movement, and the parole officer can sit at his desk in a remote place and follow the parolee’s activity. These babies were worn by sexual predators long before anyone came up with this new use.”
“Must be expensive to monitor every paroled gang member?”
“Yeah, one of the problems. But it does work if a department’s flush. Before the economy went south, the feds were willing to cough up the necessary dough to subsidize it. More than a few of those jokers are back in the slammer because of the program. Thanks to this invention, gangs were frustrated in reclaiming their most lethal members. See, these guys migrate back to their gang like homing pigeons if there’s no penalty—no way to stop them. The gang’s their family—their lifeline. Their best chance of survival unfortunately. An ex–gang member doesn’t get much slack with rival gangs. But we slapped them on these head bangers when we could, and they had to keep their distance, stay out of trouble. Not that they couldn’t get in touch through other means, of course, But not face-to-face contact.”
“Another electronic success story?”
“Let’s return to our guy. Or to the ankle, at least. We don’t have a specific suspect yet. The marks you see on this ankle are not from a GPS monitoring bracelet.”
“Then—” I began.
“Then why am I telling you about them?” He rose and went over to a file and pulled out photos of his own. Several showed the ankles of men wearing bracelets, but not electronic ones. “Gang bracelets,” he said. “The little fuckers, pardon my French, are mimicking the GPS ankle monitors by wearing jewelry they designed.” He shook his head in disbelief. “Like they adopt prison garb, the prison haircut, prison lingo.”
“What are they made of?” I asked, frowning at the prints. I didn’t see the skulls from my photo on any of the bracelets in this batch.
“This particular gang uses bracelets made from actual dog’s teeth. Nice, huh?” He stiffened. “Whenever we find a dead dog in certain neighborhoods, his incisors are missing. Another gang makes their ankle bracelets from human hair. Girls dragged into alleys and assaulted for their hair. Nice how our boys find a way to make group endeavors inclusive of neighborhood women and animals as well as violent. And all of it to mock our attempt to interfere with their activity.” He paused. “Or it was at first. Now it’s taken on a life of its own. We see new bracelets all the time. Each competing with the others for goriness, cleverness, mockery.”
“What gang was this?” I motioned to my photos.
He shrugged. “New one on me. Maybe not local.”
“But this guy, our Big Ankles, was probably killed by a rival gang and chopped?”
“And Derek was most likely killed because whoever took out Big Ankles, as you put it, thought Derek saw it happen. Or at least saw part of it. They might’ve seen Derek’s mounting of the body parts as a sort of warning. Gangs like to mount warnings with graffiti. Derek’s work comes a little too close perhaps.”
“Well, he didn’t witness a crime. He found those hands and one foot on the beach. The other he had to swim after.”
“Means the murder probably took place on Belle Isle or it wouldn’t worry them. Or the murderers themselves probably dumped the body parts there if it happened elsewhere.” Saad stood up, finished. “Thanks for coming in today, Miss Hart. We do appreci
ate your help, your skill as an observer. Probably would never have noticed those marks on our own. You’d make a good crime scene photographer.”
“So I’m cleared?”
“Unless you get yourself into trouble again.” He smiled. “You were never a serious suspect. But you do see how you set this into motion? At least some of it.”
“I don’t think that’s fair,” I said, bristling. “Even if Derek’d never met me, he would’ve still found and hung those hands and feet. He was looking for crazy stuff when I met him. Had a dog’s jaw up long before he came across me.” I tried to believe what I was saying—if other people believed me maybe I would too.
“I can’t persuade you to stop taking those pictures.”
I shook my head. “I don’t want to take up your time with an explanation, but it’s important to me. Really important. I’m nearly finished—if that’s any help.”
“I guess I can’t completely cross you off our list in that case. Taking those pictures means you’ll be awfully close to murders. You bear watching.”
“So watch me.” I flashed him a half-hearted smile, more out of habit than pluck. “Being watched isn’t the worst that could happen.”
“One more item—before you take off.” Saad opened his attaché and removed a file folder. “Over the last week, we’ve talked about your mother a bit. Waitress, right?”
What now?
“But your father’s not local—as far as you know.” I nodded. “Turns outs though it’s got nothing to do with any of these deaths, I looked into him too—before I knew you weren’t a suspect. Seemed like you were evasive about him up at your flat and that always gets me interested. Lots of blind alleys and rabbit holes, but once in a while…. And it’s pretty simple with the Internet and the systems we have access to. The Patriot Act and the associated legislation have been useful to cops.”
“My father?” I felt a bristle of anger as it registered. “I haven’t seen him in more than six years.”
At our last dinner together, he’d called me Bunny twice and never realized it. He never once looked me straight in the face, flirting with the waitress instead. Both of us were thankful when the check arrived, fleeing quickly in our eerily similar cars—two blue Saabs: his ten years old, mine eight. We’d also both ordered steak rare.
“I can tell you two are related,” the waitress had said that day, smiling. “Spitting image of each other.”
Again my father looked away. I shivered now, remembering it. What was it about me he loathed? What had I done as an infant to send him away? Why did he hang around after Daisy’s birth but take off after mine? It was a short piece of film I ran in my head when I felt especially brave. The entire library of Hal Hart films probably would run less than an hour.
“Hal Hart. Trumpet player, right?” Detective Saad rifled through the papers in his hand. “Mother met him in the Berkshires in the late sixties?”
I was completely blank on where this was going. Last I’d heard, he was on the west coast polishing his horn. I nodded.
“You never told me your father was partly black. Is that what draws you to black men? Why you’ve been focusing on them in your work?”
The words came out of Saad’s mouth in a rush, like he hadn’t been able to come up with a way to say it more indirectly.
“Or did you even know it?” He looked me in the eyes. “Didn’t know, did you? What got me to thinking,” he continued, probably seeing I was unready to open my mouth, “was that although you indirectly admitted to sleeping with a black man, and more than one black man, and although you took pictures of black men—you never said you were partly black yourself. Which would’ve explained a lot about your... habits. I thought you’d have told me if you knew. But maybe I’m wrong.” He kept trying to rephrase it as I sat and stared at him. “It seemed likely you would’ve mentioned it. Or am I mistaken?” He raised his shoulder, asking. “Violet?”
I sat still for half a minute more and then blurted out, “My father’s not black. How did you even come up with this idea?” The chair squeaked with my quick movements and we both jumped. “Hal Hart’s a fairly common name.” I knew that from my years of searching for him as a teenager.
“So you didn’t know. I thought not. Did you know that after a while he started spelling his name H-o-w-l instead of Hal?”
“What?”
“H-O-W-L.” He spelled it—like the Ginsberg poem. “Guess because he was a musician”—Saad handed me the papers—“and liked the artsy tie-in. Made his name memorable. Or something like that.”
The file was mostly newspaper clippings, flyers for musical events, that sort of thing.
“Look at this picture in the Philadelphia Bulletin, for example.” He poked the pile with his index finger, shaking his head impatiently until I came up with the right one. “And he didn’t just change Hal to Howl. It’s Howl Heart. H-E-A-R-T. Changed the spelling of his surname too. Took an ordinary name, a very ordinary name, and made it memorable. Looks great on a marquee or in a newspaper headline.”
“This is ridiculous.”
Surely I’d have heard if he’d changed his name. I saw him a few times after his long absence following Daisy’s death. And Bunny—she’d have to have known.
“Not so ridiculous. Think of Count Basie, Cab Calloway, Dizzy Gillespie, Jelly Roll Morton, Fats Waller. Names chosen for their bang. Picked for their memorability—of how they’d look on a marquee, an advertisement.”
I looked at the first clipping closely, a grainy, black-and-white photo of a band called The Jazz Daddies. My father, trumpet in hand, was in the back row. He didn’t look black—wasn’t black. It was ridiculous.
“I don’t get it. How does this photo or his new name make him black?” Some of the musicians looked black, but others didn’t.
“Read the caption.” He poked his interfering finger on the page again.
I read it aloud. “Billy Baldwin and his year-old group, The Jazz Daddies, will appear for six performances at the Latin Room on South Street over the Labor Day weekend. The all-Negro band plays jazz, Dixie Land, and be-bop.” I peered at the photo again, trying to see what Saad saw. “Maybe he was sitting in for the regular guy. Musicians do that all the time. Keeps it fresh.”
“Look at the Star Ledger.” I thumbed through the pile, hands shaking. “It’s the Newark paper.” I found it. It was dated earlier than the last one. 1962. Here the group was called The Dark Lords, and my father was again in the back row, trumpet held up.
“The story doesn’t identify the group as black. Or Negro. Whatever they were calling it that year.”
“Paper didn’t have to print it, Violet. The club was in a ‘colored’ neighborhood; folks in Newark would’ve known. There’s ten more news clips like these two.” He took the pile away. “Did you ever have an inkling growing up? No one dropped any hints?”
“He was gone nearly all of my childhood. I looked for him for years before I gave up. Haunted libraries and telephone offices with directories. Called strangers like a pathetic dolt. But no one ever told me he spelled it like that: Howl Heart.”
I could still remember sitting in those libraries, my index finger trailing down a column of Harts, but stopping long before I ever came to Heart. There would’ve been Hartleys, Hartmans, Hartwicks, Healeys, Hearns. Heart would have been in another column entirely. Suddenly I remembered the day a man on the phone had told me he was black. Had he been my grandfather or an uncle?
“Was it some kind of a stunt?” I didn’t know my father well enough to answer my own question. “Changing his name?”
“I doubt it. He finally changed his name legally to Howl Heart in the eighties. When a band he was with was nominated for an award. Guess he thought he’d established himself well enough under the new name to petition for a legal change. Probably why you never found him.”
I shrugged, speechless.
“And you can see why he never brought the name change up when he reappeared from time to time.” Inspector Saa
d sat up straighter, his chair creaked. “I thought you had the right to know—once I knew. And I have to say, I wrestled with telling you. Wasn’t sure about it. You should probably talk to your mother. She must’ve known her husband was half-black.” He paused. “Not that it’s a big deal, of course. But still, she should have mentioned it to you. Did you ever tell her you looked for him? Looked through those telephone directories?”
“She’d have gone crazy. I could hardly mention his name around her. Talking about him was a betrayal. Once Daisy died, and he didn’t even show up for the funeral…”
“Daisy?”
“I had a sister. I thought I told you. She died. Fell down the stairs when I dropped my roller skate on a step and didn’t pick it up quick enough.” I could see him swallow.
I wasn’t at all sure Bunny knew her husband was black. Suddenly, I got angry.
“Were you looking for a reason why I only photographed black men? Why I sleep with them? Are you making use of some police academy course in psychology?” I fanned my face with the pile of clippings, wondering if it was as red as it felt.
“It did occur to me,” he said. “But I’m no longer interested in the psychology of your lifestyle now that you’re not a suspect. Thought you deserved the truth. Do what you like with the information.”
Sure, throw it out on the table but deny any evil intention. But though the words were harsh, his voice wasn’t, and I knew he felt sorry for me. The poor fatherless girl.
I handed him the pile of news stories, lashing out at him. “Well, what should I do with this information? Take out an ad in the Free Press? Is it big news nowadays? And in Detroit?”
“I might think it was big news if it were about me. It must bring up some questions. Answer others.”
“Let me see the rest of those clips.”
He handed them back, and I went through them one after another. “Can I take these with me?” I said after a while.
“Well, that was my plan. Whether it was a good one, I’m not sure. They’re copies. You can have them.” He started to put a hand on my arm, but the look on my face must have stopped him.
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