Jimmy went noticeably pale. “I didn’t say nothing to nobody.”
“I know,” I said. “But it’s only a matter of time before they start asking you questions. That’s how these groups work.”
“But I said I’d join.”
I nodded. There wasn’t an easy way out of this.
“They won’t do nothing to me,” Jimmy said. “I’m just a kid. They won’t pay attention.”
My mind flashed to the photographs of Louis Foster. He had died the same way two little boys had—boys who were Jimmy’s age. Boys who, according to the cops, had been killed by gangs.
“Who approached you?” I asked.
He shrugged and looked down, picking at a thread on the bunched-up blanket.
“Jim, who asked you to be in the gang?”
“Different guys.” He was mumbling.
“What made you say yes?”
He shrugged again.
“Did Keith join?” Keith was one of Franklin Grimshaw’s sons. He was Jimmy’s closest friend and they were about the same age.
Jimmy didn’t respond.
“Jim?”
He shook his head, the movement so small I almost missed it.
“What did he think of you taking the tam?”
Jimmy picked at the blanket.
“I can just ask him,” I said.
He looked up. “Don’t.”
“Why not?”
“He’ll get in trouble.”
“Because he joined?”
Jimmy shook his head.
“Then why?”
“He don’t know nothing about this,” Jimmy said. “Please, Smoke. Don’t say nothing to Keith.”
He seemed almost frightened.
“What’s Keith got to do with this?” I asked.
“Nothing,” Jimmy said.
“Are you sure?”
He nodded. “He don’t understand how I got to blend in and you said not to tell nobody. But I got to join, Smoke. There’s only me and Keith and a couple other guys who don’t got suns, and everybody gives us crap about it. They pick on us all the time, and call us names and stuff. If I got a sun, nobody’ll pick on me no more.”
“No,” I said. “They’ll just make you run drug packages like you used to do in Memphis.”
“I won’t,” he said.
“You’ll say no to these guys?”
“Yeah.”
“Do you know what they do to people who say no?”
“That’s lies, Smoke. You know it.”
“Oh?” I asked. “Did they tell you that?”
He didn’t answer.
“Did they also tell you what they do when they want someone dead? The word on the street says they get the twelve-year-olds to do it. You’ll be eleven in what—January? That’s close enough.”
“Smoke—”
“It’s all a test, Jim. You graduate to higher and higher levels until you become someone the Main 21 can trust. Unless you die first.”
“You’re making that up.”
“Have I ever lied to you?”
“No.” His voice trailed off. He picked at the blanket as if he were trying to pull a thread loose. I wanted to take his hand in my own and hold it still.
The anger was gone, replaced by a sadness that I hadn’t expected. All I had ever wanted for him was an opportunity at a good life. It seemed, since Martin’s death, like that was impossible.
“What’m I gonna do, Smoke?” Jimmy’s fingers still picked and he hadn’t looked up.
“Give the tam back.” I wasn’t going to call it a sun. I wasn’t going to honor the gang name for the hat.
“I can’t.” His head bent even lower. “They’ll beat me up.”
Of course they would. “Did they beat you up before?”
He shrugged. It was a yes, then. How had I missed that? What else was he hiding from me? I had been so preoccupied with simple monetary survival and starting the new business that I had let the wrong details go.
Only it wasn’t just monetary survival. Since last summer, I’d been distant from everyone, trying to deal with the fact that I had killed someone because I had seen no other choice.
I still didn’t, even though I went over the details every single day.
“I got to be a member now, Smoke,” Jimmy said. “I’m sorry.”
I shook my head. “You’re giving the tam back.”
“Do I get to stay home then?” For the first time, he looked at me, and there was hope on his face. Did he hate school that much then?
I gave him a faint smile. “I thought of that. I don’t think running and hiding is the answer.”
Although it was what I had taught him—at least in the death of Martin. And I had learned in August that even though standing and fighting could be necessary, they didn’t feel any better than running.
“I don’t mind,” Jimmy said. “I can help you. We can be a team.”
“We already are a team,” I said. “But you’ll keep going to school. Remember what I told you about education. It’s how you get ahead.”
“You got lots of education,” Jimmy said. “You ain’t no better than Teddy Louis’s dad and he didn’t graduate high school.”
He was as good at pulling my strings as I was at pulling his. “I had a good education and a lot of opportunity. I chose to use them differently than most people.”
“I don’t know nobody here who’s gone somewhere because they went to school.” Jimmy had let go of the blanket. He was watching me now. I could hear his desperation. He wanted me to tell him it was all right to stay away. He clearly hated school, which was a change from Memphis. There, he had loved his education. He just hadn’t had a chance to attend as often as he wanted to.
“Going to school is not up for debate,” I said.
“I’m not learning nothing.”
“I’m beginning to realize that,” I said.
“You got schooling. You can teach me.”
“I can’t,” I said. “I have to work.” And even if I didn’t, I wasn’t sure I could provide the kind of education a ten-year-old needed.
My choices were limited. The schools in the Black Belt were old, overcrowded, and decaying. A handful of students was being bused to white suburban schools, but that was so controversial that white bigots picketed outside and the news cameras were there at even a whisper of trouble. I didn’t dare let Jimmy’s face appear on television, even if I wanted to subject him to that kind of hatred. And I wasn’t sure he’d get a better education in that environment.
I couldn’t afford private school and, I suspected, he’d run into the same problems there that he’d face in the white suburban schools. Moving wasn’t an option, either. We couldn’t go to a small community where we’d be noticed, and as much trouble as Chicago’s schools had, schools in other major cities were as bad or worse.
“I goofed up, didn’t I?” His voice shook. He was close to tears.
“No.” I got up and crossed to the couch, sitting beside him. My weight on the cushion made Jimmy fall toward me and I used that moment to put my arm around him.
He didn’t struggle like I expected him to. Somehow, when I’d taken him from Memphis, I had thought this would be easier. We had an affinity, and he was a good kid.
But he needed time and attention. I hadn’t had much of either in the last year.
“It’s my fault,” I said. “When I told you to blend in, I didn’t think about things like the Stones. I had forgotten how hard it is to be ten. Blending in isn’t always the right thing to do.”
“But now we’re in trouble again.” He was shaking. “You gonna send me to Laura’s?”
That was what I had done in August. I had hidden him as deeply as possible, and still I had nearly lost him.
“No,” I said.
“She’s got schools there, right?”
It would be so easy. Let him stay with Laura and go to a fancy school in the Gold Coast—where he’d stick out as badly as he had in her upscale high-ris
e apartment building.
“Yes, she does. But she’s got her own worries right now. I’ll help you through this,” I said.
“How?”
“I’m not sure yet,” I said. “But I’ll figure it out by Sunday night. I promise.”
“I don’t want to get beat up,” Jimmy said.
“I know,” I said. “That’s what the Stones are counting on.”
FOUR
THE NEXT MORNING, I was up early. Sometime during my restless sleep, I’d realized that Franklin’s son Keith would also be required to attend the Black Christmas parade. Franklin usually did things like that with his family; if he planned to go, then he could keep an eye on Jimmy for me.
When I called, Franklin agreed to take Jimmy with them. I mentioned the problem with the Stones, not going into detail. He made me promise not to say anything to Althea, because losing her kids to the gangs was one of her greatest fears.
By 9:00 A.M., I had fed Jimmy and left him at Franklin’s. Jimmy’s tam was locked in my desk drawer, and it was going to stay there until I figured out what to do with it.
I had a lot of legwork to do before I picked up Jimmy at four o’clock. I hoped I could get it all in. I needed to answer Mrs. Foster’s questions about her husband, and I needed to start with the photographer and the teenagers who had discovered the body. The newspapers had no idea who the teenagers were, and I didn’t want to go to the police, not yet anyway.
But I was willing to bet that the photographer knew. Some of his photographs had clearly been taken before the police arrived. The same name and address was on the back of all of them. I assumed the name belonged to the photographer. He wasn’t listed in the Chicago phone book, but that didn’t mean much. I wasn’t either, although I knew that when the next book came out, it would list the name Bill Grimshaw across from my phone number.
The morning was gray and overcast. The air had an icy crispness that made it an actual presence. A parade in this weather seemed ridiculous. At least it wasn’t snowing.
Even though nothing was supposed to start until 10:00 A.M., people were already lined up on the parade route as I drove past. Most of them were wearing thick coats and huddled together against the cold.
I took the expressway north. I figured the expressway would be a quicker way to Rogers Park than dodging the parade route. It also kept me out of dangerous areas, where the mere presence of a black man in a rusted car would threaten the white residents.
More than any other place I’d lived, Chicago was a city of neighborhoods. Each one had its own character—and you could tell when you’d moved from one to another even though all you’d done was cross a street. It was almost as if invisible walls divided them, walls you’d learned to sense once you’d spent enough time in the city.
I’d been to Rogers Park only once, and that had been by accident. I’d been heading to a meeting in Uptown, which was just south and east of Rogers Park, and I’d gone a little too far west. Suddenly I found myself in a neighborhood with old, stately trees and once-elegant three-story apartment buildings that dated from the 1920s.
This time, I entered Rogers Park on purpose. The area was as well-tended as I remembered. The address on the back of the photographs was in West Rogers Park, and I was becoming familiar enough with Chicago’s particular brand of segregation to know that I was heading into a Jewish neighborhood so old that it made Hyde Park look new.
The address was just off Howard, a two-story house that looked like it dated from the previous century. An ancient oak tree spread its roots onto the sidewalk, and the brown lawn was hidden beneath decaying unraked leaves.
A Studebaker without a spot of rust on its blue exterior sat in the driveway. The one-car garage door was open, revealing a maze of gardening equipment, children’s forgotten toys, and rusting tools.
I parked in front of the oak. My heart was beating harder than I wanted it to. I felt out of place on this quiet street with its middle-class homes. Unlike other white neighborhoods in Chicago, no one watched me from the windows and I didn’t get a sense of external threat. Instead, the feeling of unease came from me—and I didn’t like it.
I got out of the car and headed up the walk, moving with purpose so that I didn’t look like a drifter. I had dressed carefully that morning, knowing I was going to be talking with people from various parts of the city. I wore dark pants, a white dress shirt with a button-down collar, and an expensive sweater that Grace Kirkland, one of my neighbors, had given to me after her employer had told her to take it to Goodwill.
I had learned during the fall that dressing down slightly—no suit coat, no suit—made it easier to talk to whites. They didn’t seem to think I was trying to step out of my place. I’d stopped wearing a jacket on interviews after I’d been searched by doormen more than once as I’d entered a building.
Someone had recently chipped ice off the steps; broken shards of it littered the ground beside the thin iron railing. The door to the enclosed porch was open, revealing stacks of newspapers and magazines, and boxes of old, mildewing books. Even though it was clear that visitors were supposed to go inside and knock on the main door, I didn’t. Instead, I stayed outside the open door and rang the rusted doorbell.
A large chime echoed through the neighborhood. After a moment, the inside door opened. An elderly woman stood there, her right hand, clutching a handkerchief, pressed against her heart.
“You gave me a start, young man,” she said, and I resisted the urge to smile. No one had used that tone with me in more than a decade.
“I’m sorry, ma’am.”
“It’s all right.” She pulled the door wide. “Come in, come in. You must be one of Saul’s friends.”
I didn’t move. Her friendliness had unsettled me more than her enmity would have. “Actually, I don’t know Saul. But I would like to see him about some of his photographs.”
“Well, I’d still like you to come in,” she said in a tone that brooked no disagreement. “We’re heating half of Chicago, and I simply can’t afford it.”
“Yes, ma’am.” I stepped onto the enclosed porch. It smelled of mildew and wet newspapers. The screen door closed behind me.
She turned around and walked into the house. I had no choice but to follow her. The house had been decorated fifty years ago and not much had changed. A console television stood next to a claw-footed couch, and a transistor radio sat on top of a bookshelf. Otherwise, I saw little evidence of the 1960s in the main room.
“Come on,” she said, heading into the kitchen. “I don’t bite.”
“No, ma’am,” I said as gently as I could. “But have you considered that I might?”
She laughed, a youthful sound that made me see how beautiful she must have been decades ago. She was lovely now, with skin as fine as parchment and brown eyes that twinkled with merriment.
“I’ve never been afraid of anyone, young man, and if that gets me in trouble someday, so be it. I’ve had a good long life.” She waited until I joined her in the kitchen and then she closed the kitchen door behind me.
This room was hot where the others hadn’t been, and I realized she was conserving on her heating bill by keeping the heating ducts open only in the room she was in.
“I suppose you should tell me who you are just in case someone asks.” She stopped at the stove and picked up an ancient coffee pot. “Want some?”
“No, thank you, ma’am.”
“Well?” she asked and I blinked, realizing I wanted to tell her my real name. I hadn’t felt this comfortable with a white woman before. She made it seem easy.
“I’m Bill Grimshaw, ma’am. I’m here about some photographs that your son—”
“Grandson,” she said.
“—left with the Chicago Defender.”
“Well of course you are,” she said. “I knew you weren’t with the Tribune.”
Her eyes twinkled even more at that and she swept her hand toward the table. “Are you sure I can’t offer you something?”
“No, ma’am. I really can’t stay.” I found I was oddly flattered by her attention. It wasn’t the needy attention of a lonely person, but the warmth of someone who was interested in others.
“Are you going to buy something from my Saul?”
“No, ma’am. I’m just following up on a story.” I knew that made me sound like a reporter, and I didn’t care. It was easier to let people assume they knew what I was doing than actually explain my work. “I’m interested in some photographs he took in Washington Park.”
The smile left her face and she nodded. “The murder.”
“Yes,” I said.
“It upset him something awful.” She leaned on a kitchen chair as if she suddenly needed support. “I told him he has to get used to that sort of thing if he wants to be a real reporter, but he said the best reporters were still people, too. Is that right, Mr. Grimshaw?”
“That’s a hard one, ma’am.”
“It is,” she said. “He doesn’t want to be just any reporter. He wants to break that really big story, be a man who makes a difference. I say there are rungs to the ladder, and he just shakes his head. Says all he needs is something to hang his hat on. Is that how you got started, Mr. Grimshaw?”
“My experiences aren’t typical, ma’am.”
“Mrs. Weisman,” she said. “You ma’am me and I feel a hundred years old.”
I smiled because she sounded so annoyed. “When will Saul be back, Mrs. Weisman?”
“Who knows?” she said. “He’s an adult now, makes his own schedule. We barely see each other.”
“Perhaps I could call him, then.”
“Perhaps,” she said. “But it might be easier if you just go to the speech.”
“The speech?” I sounded like a parrot, but I felt a bit like Alice in Wonderland. “What speech?”
“Oh, I don’t know. Some young man who’s making quite a ruckus with his political statements, I understand. Saul’s taken a fancy to him, wants photographs, a record. Says it’ll be important.” She sighed. “Young men are always making a ruckus, it seems to me. If it’s not about one thing, it’s another.”
I was about to speak but she raised a finger at me. “Don’t yes-ma’am me.”
Thin Walls: A Smokey Dalton Novel Page 5