Sonny started to cross his arms, then remembered his precious twenty-dollar bill. He hooked his thumb on his pocket instead. “You’re not going to tell him nothing?”
“No,” I said.
“That white guy, he’s not going get you, is he?” Apparently Sonny was beginning to realize the seriousness of what he’d done.
“I don’t know,” I said. “I hope not.”
Jimmy was shaking with anger. I kept my hand on his shoulder.
“Do me a favor though,” I said. “If you see him again, come get me or Marvella. Remember? The woman who gave you cookies?”
He studied me for a moment, then his gaze passed over Jim, as if he couldn’t quite face him. “I was waiting for him,” Sonny said quietly.
“What?” Jimmy nearly shouted the word. I tightened my grip on his shoulder slightly.
“What do you mean, waiting?” I asked, hoping that this boy knew more than he’d been willing to say.
Sonny’s fingers curled over his pocket. “Leon Gantz and some of the guys said that this white guy in a new green car gave them all five bucks to take a note to some guy’s house on your block. They showed me where they saw him and I kinda been hanging out there all week.”
“For the money,” I said.
He nodded.
“Did he offer you five or twenty?” I asked.
“Five, but I told him I knew he paid four guys five each, so he could afford to pay me twenty if I done it all by myself.”
“You son of a bitch!” Jimmy launched himself at Sonny, but I still held Jimmy’s shoulder. I pulled him back.
“Go outside,” I said.
“He set us up, Smoke.”
“Go outside, Jimmy. I’ll finish here.”
“No.” Jimmy lowered his shoulder, moving it away from my grip, then crossed his arms.
I looked at Sonny. “Just let us know if you see him again.”
“Okay.” Sonny bowed his head, his cheeks flushed. He was blinking hard, and I suspected he was fighting tears. He’d seen easy money and he had been thinking of the upcoming holiday, not of us. “I didn’t mean nothing, Jim, really. I’m sorry.”
“You’re a dork,” Jimmy said and stomped out of the building.
“Thanks for talking to us,” I said.
Sonny snuffled, nodded, and backed into the apartment. I followed Jimmy outside.
He was leaning against the rusted iron railing. It bent sideways with his weight, threatening to collapse. I put my hand on his back to let him know I was there.
“I thought he was my friend,” Jimmy said without turning around.
“I know,” I said. “I think he still is.”
“Friends don’t do stuff like that.”
“Jim, you know what it’s like to have to make choices. I don’t think he even considered us—”
“I don’t need no stupid lecture!” Jimmy whirled and faced me. “I don’t care what you think. He was supposed to be my friend. Friends don’t do stuff like that!”
Then he crumpled the note and tossed it to the icy ground with the force of a basketball player trying a slam dunk. He kicked the note once as he started down the sidewalk, walking so fast that I would have to run to catch up to him.
I didn’t try. I knew this was just one more betrayal for Jimmy in a whole lifetime of betrayals, and there wasn’t much I could say to make things better.
I bent down, picked up the note and smoothed it out.
Grimshaw!!! Stay out of stuff you don’t understand.
What stuff? If this came from a white man, as Sonny had said, then it had nothing to do with the Blackstone Rangers, like I’d initially thought. The boys who’d found Louis Foster’s body had seen a white man in a blue car drive away from the scene, but not a lot of people knew I was working on that case.
Besides, the note-writing didn’t fit. Foster’s killer had shown he had no compunction against killing large black men. If he thought I was too close, he would come after me, not leave me notes.
That left only one other case, a case so unimportant I’d almost forgot about it.
I put the note in my pocket and went back to the apartment to call Laura.
TWENTY
“I DON’T UNDERSTAND, Smokey,” Laura said, her voice amplified through the phone’s receiver. “Why would they threaten you?”
I was sitting on the arm of the couch in my living room. Jimmy was in his room with the door slammed shut. I had checked on him when I’d come in and he’d told me to go away.
“They want to isolate you, Laura. They still don’t believe that you’re the threat. They think that if McMillan and I leave you alone, you’ll drop this whole notion of participating in the company.” I unzipped my jacket and struggled to get it off while cradling the phone between my ear and shoulder.
“I’m not going to participate,” she said. “I’m going to run it.”
“I know that and you know that. They haven’t figured that out yet.” I tossed my jacket on the couch. The apartment was still hot and the radiator was clanking beside me. “But they are scared. They’re scared of what you could do.”
“You mean kick them out?”
“Maybe,” I said. “Or maybe they just don’t want you to see the various things they’ve been involved in. I’m pretty sure that Sturdy’s above board these days, but that doesn’t mean it always was.”
“Who do you think these guys are?” she asked.
“You mean the people threatening me? I don’t know.” I slid onto the couch, crossed my legs, and rested my feet on the coffee table. “But so far they’re only doing rinky-dink stuff.”
“Do you think it’ll get worse?”
“If you lay low until the board meeting, no, I don’t think it will.”
“They still haven’t delivered the information I asked for,” Laura said. “I’m going to go back to court on Monday.”
“That’s not laying low,” I said.
“I told them I’d do that. I can’t back down now.”
“What does McMillan say?”
“He says we can wait, but he’s willing to do what I ask.”
“McMillan and I are both counseling the same thing, Laura. I say leave it go until January.”
Jimmy’s door opened just a crack. He was listening.
“And let them think they’ve scared us off? What does that gain us, Smokey?”
“It doesn’t matter. The tables turn in January. Tell McMillan not to file on Monday.”
There was a long silence. I saw a movement behind Jimmy’s door.
“He filed today,” she said softly.
“Damn,” I said. “Can’t you cancel the suit?”
“It’s not really a suit,” she said. “We’ve notified the court that they’re not complying with the judge’s orders. Now that the judge knows about it, I don’t think it’s something we can take back.”
I sighed, closed my eyes, and leaned my head against the back of the couch. “I wish you hadn’t done this, Laura.”
“Why? What do you think will happen?”
“I don’t know,” I said, opening my eyes and peering down the hallway. Jimmy’s door was open wider. “I don’t like the threats. That implies something I really don’t want to think about.”
“Implies what?” she asked.
Jimmy stepped into the hallway.
“It implies that they have something to protect and they’re willing to use muscle to do it.”
“I wish I’d known about these notes before,” Laura said. “I thought all they were doing were strange legal games.”
“That’s all I thought,” I said. “I hadn’t realized they were behind the notes until this afternoon, and even now I’m not one-hundred-percent sure.”
Jimmy reached the edge of the hallway and leaned against the wall beside the TV.
“Has anything else been happening?” I asked Laura. “Anything out of the ordinary?”
“What do you mean?”
“Have you gotten an
y notes, had any conversations that could be perceived as threats? Has McMillan?”
“No. Besides, no one could leave notes on my door. They’d have to get past building security,” Laura said. Then her breath caught.
“What?” I asked, knowing her well enough to recognize that sound. She had remembered something.
“Nothing,” she said. “It’s nothing.”
“I’m asking you to be paranoid, Laura. Nothing is not nothing at the moment.”
“All right.” She sighed. “I’ve had a few hang-ups.”
“Hang-ups?”
“The phone would ring, I’d pick it up, and there was clearly someone on the other end. I’d say hello a few times and they’d hang up.”
The equivalent of notes. “Do they make you uncomfortable?”
“I think they would if I didn’t live in such a secure building.” She sounded uncomfortable still. Last August, she had nearly died in her secure building. Although she’d fixed the problems, I knew she no longer felt safe there. She’d talked about moving in the fall and I’d talked her out of it. She wasn’t going to find a safer place to live in the entire city.
“Well, take notes about the calls. Keep accurate records of anything that bothers you. And don’t go anywhere alone.”
“Smokey—”
“Laura, you’re threatening some important people here and they have shady connections. Don’t be complacent.”
Jimmy’s mouth thinned. I recognized the look. He was scared.
“If you can,” I said, “get McMillan to do some kind of legal trick to make it seem like you’re backing down on getting those materials. If—”
“But, Smokey, these people have known me all their lives.”
“They may not want to hurt you,” I said, “but you have no idea who they’re in bed with. There were rumors that your dad was connected to the mob.”
“That’s not true.” She sounded like the defensive woman I’d met in Memphis.
“You’ve always said that, but have you checked on it? He was a small-time crook in Atlanta. People like that don’t change just because they moved to a new city.”
She was silent again.
“I haven’t been in Chicago very long, Laura,” I said, determined to make this point, “but even I know that the mob has its fingers in several big construction firms around town.”
“Sturdy’s legitimate,” she said. “We’ve got stockholders. We have to make our records public.”
“All of them?” I asked. “Even for the subcontractors and all the corporations in which Sturdy has a controlling interest? What about the smaller businesses that funnel jobs to Sturdy? Do you know who is in charge of those?”
“That’s why we want the records, Smokey.”
“Doesn’t the fact that they’re fighting you so hard on even the simplest stuff tell you something, Laura? Yes, they don’t want you to have a hand in, but you’re going after them with an out-of-town attorney. What did they do? They answered to your dad’s attorney, an old Chicago boy who knows what’s going on. They’re sending you messages. Through me, through McMillan, and even through your dad’s attorney. They’re warnings, Laura. Back off.”
Jimmy sank down the wall, folded his arms over his knees, and hid his face. I wanted to go to him, but didn’t.
“You’re scared, aren’t you, Smokey?”
Worried was probably more accurate, but I answered, “For you, yes.”
Another silence. Jimmy didn’t move.
“January second isn’t very far away, Laura,” I said. “Once you take over the company, they can’t touch you. Just be patient.”
She sighed. “I’m not good at patience.”
I smiled. “I know that. But you have to be, and you have to be cautious, too.”
She didn’t say anything for a moment, and I thought she was going to argue with me. But I said nothing more. If she didn’t agree to my suggestions, I would call McMillan myself. Maybe she would listen to him.
“Smokey,” she finally said, “do you ever feel like the world’s a place you no longer recognize?”
“I’m not sure I ever recognized it, Laura,” I said and hung up. Then I went and joined Jimmy on the floor.
“Them notes are for her?” he asked, not lifting his head.
“I don’t know for sure,” I said.
“How come people hate her?”
“She’s doing something very risky,” I said, and explained what she was trying in as simple terms as I could.
“You’re helping her?” Jimmy asked.
“I’m guarding her,” I said.
“But you never see her. How can you watch her without seeing her?”
“I’m here when she calls me,” I said. “She’s safe most of the time.”
“That’s not what you said on the phone.”
“I was trying to scare her, Jim,” I said. “I want her to be as cautious as possible.”
“Like you want me to.”
“Yes,” I said.
He nodded, his head still buried in his arms. “You think that white guy who sent the notes is from Memphis?”
I kept my hand on his back. “No, I think he has something to do with Laura.”
“But he’ll tell all the police people about you and me.”
“No, he won’t, Jimmy.”
“But Sonny told him where we were!”
“Sonny thinks we’re Grimshaws. He doesn’t know who we are or where we’re from.”
“He—”
A sharp rap on the door made us both jump. Jimmy raised his head, eyes wide.
“Who’s there?” I shouted.
“Jack,” Sinkovich shouted back.
“It’s open.”
He came in, a duffel bag over his shoulder and a grocery bag in his arms. He pushed the door closed with his foot, then set the grocery bag on the counter.
“Figured I’d help a little,” he said.
“I thought you couldn’t get into the house,” I said.
“I still can’t, the bi—” He stopped himself when he saw Jimmy. “This stuff is from my locker. They let me in to get some clothes.”
“The groceries too?”
“I keep some money in my locker, just in case. Good thing, huh?” He dropped the duffel on the floor, then reached into the grocery bag. “I’m cooking tonight, if you don’t mind burgers and homemade french fries.”
“You don’t have to do that,” I said.
“And you don’t have to give up couch space.” Sinkovich put food on the counter, then he reached inside the bag and pulled out a six-pack of Old Style. “Besides, you don’t have the good stuff. Figured we needed something to take the edge off.”
“I can’t drink that stuff,” Jimmy said sullenly. He did not look happy at Sinkovich’s appearance.
“I know, sport,” Sinkovich said. “I got you a Coca-Cola. Unless you can’t drink that neither.”
Jimmy looked at me. I’d been trying to get him to drink milk with every meal. “This time,” I said.
“How long’s he gonna be here?” Jimmy asked, not even trying to lower his voice.
“Till Sunday, sport. Then I get to reclaim the family homestead.” Sinkovich took off his coat and hung it on the rack. Then he looked at Jimmy, his expression serious. “I’ll do my best to make this as pleasant as possible for all of us, okey-doke?”
“Okay,” Jimmy said, sounding unconvinced.
I wasn’t convinced either, but I was glad Sinkovich was at least making an effort.
* * *
Sinkovich hadn’t had time on Friday to do any research, so he got up early Saturday morning and went to the main library. I tried Delevan again and got no answer. Jimmy’s mood hadn’t improved, and since I finally had help on the Foster case, I decided I could afford one day off.
At my insistence, Jimmy and I went tree shopping. Amos Bonet had been right; most of the trees sold in the Black Belt were so old that the needles fell off. I knew we’d have trouble shopping in
the white areas, but just when I was about to suggest it, we stumbled on a black-owned tree lot. These trees were freshly cut that morning, small but pretty.
We bought one. That, plus the tree stand and two strings of lights, took most of my cash. I didn’t have decorations, so I had to rely on the old-fashioned methods.
After we got the tree up, I taught Jimmy how to string popcorn and make rings out of construction paper. The finished product wasn’t pretty, but it was festive—and it even made my little Grinch smile.
Sunday we returned to routine. I got Jimmy to the Grimshaws’ in time for church, then returned home for my meeting with Johnson and Sinkovich.
As I walked in the door, the phone was ringing. Sinkovich was hovering over it as if he wasn’t sure if he should answer it.
“Expecting a call, Sinkovich?” I asked with a grin. He flushed and he went into the half-kitchen, apparently to give me some privacy, not that it would work.
I picked up the phone. Mrs. Weisman was on the other end.
“I’m sorry to call so early on a Sunday,” she said, “but I had to speak to someone.”
I braced myself against the couch. I wasn’t sure I wanted to hear this news. “What is it?”
“Elaine’s sister. You spoke to that girl, didn’t you? She’s unreasonable.”
“What’s happened?” My voice must have sounded odd, because Sinkovich gave me a strange look.
“I finally reached the girl just a few minutes ago and she tells me there won’t be a memorial service.”
“That’s the family’s choice,” I said.
“Family. That sister doesn’t deserve to be called family. She came to Chicago, buried her sister, and left without telling anyone. She didn’t even put a notice in the papers. I’m sure Elaine’s friends don’t even know she’s dead.”
I sat down. It explained so much: Elaine’s attempts to be a free spirit, her utter devastation when Saul, whom she cared about, was hurt because of her. He was probably one of the few people who had ever really loved her.
“If I had only known, Mr. Grimshaw, I would have spent as much time with Elaine as I did with my Saul. But she seemed so tough. I thought she’d survive the attack. She was so strong.”
Thin Walls: A Smokey Dalton Novel Page 26