I dug into my pocket and handed them to him with some reluctance. His car had spoiled me.
He kissed Laura again, a casual, husbandly peck on the lips, and headed back up the corridor. My stomach clenched, and Laura’s cheeks were flushed.
“G-Guess I’d better double-check the gate,” she said, opening the ticket folder and looking at the ticket. It was handwritten in blue ink. On top, the gate was listed and underlined.
We were nearly there, but neither of us moved.
“I’m going to keep an eye on you,” I said, “but I’m not going to sit with you. That would be a bit too memorable.”
She nodded. “I don’t want to go.”
“I know. But it’s best, and you’ll be back soon.”
“Strong until the last.” She grabbed my hand and squeezed it, hiding our fingers beneath her coat as she did so. “I’m going to miss you, Smokey.”
“I’ll miss you too,” I said. More than she would ever know.
TWENTY-THREE
BY THE TIME McMillan dropped me at my car in a parking lot near the Loop, it was almost three-thirty. Because of traffic, I didn’t get home until four. I was feeling out of sorts and frazzled, and very happy that I had asked the Grimshaws if Jimmy could stay for dinner.
I had no idea when I’d be through that night.
I had to meet Delevan in an hour. I changed clothes so that I didn’t look like someone’s hired man. I didn’t have time to look through the photographs, so I locked them in the bottom drawer of my desk. Then I made myself a quick snack because I knew I’d need all my strength to face that neighborhood again. Before I left, I opened the glove box of the car, pulled out my gun, and tucked it under my jacket, just in case.
I arrived at Delevan’s old house at five. It was full dark and the streetlights were on, creating pools of light in the mostly empty street. Driveways were still vacant, but neighboring houses had lights on inside. The white paint on the FOR SALE signs cast eerie reflections up and down the block.
The lights were on in Delevan’s house as well, but they only emphasized its lack of occupancy. No curtains covered the windows, and the empty rooms were visible from the street. A light over the front door revealed a man standing on the enclosed porch. He was tall and balding, with sloped shoulders and the bulk of a former college wrestler. When the car shut off, he opened the screen door and started down the stairs to the sidewalk.
I got out and walked around the car toward the house. As I did, the man said, “What can I do for you?”
He was abrupt, his tone cold. Even though the words were warm, the emotion behind them wasn’t. He didn’t want me there.
“I’m Bill Grimshaw,” I said. “I have an appointment with Oscar Delevan.”
“You’re Bill Grimshaw?” He stopped where he was.
“Yes,” I said, knowing the reason for his surprise. From our conversation the night before, he had expected a white cop in uniform, not a black man in plainclothes.
“You’re investigating a murder?”
“Yes.” I stopped on the curb. At this moment, it was prudent to stay close to the car.
“I take it this Foster fellow was a ni—Negro?”
“He was black,” I said.
Delevan nodded once, then sighed. “All right.” He seemed resigned. “What do you need to know?”
“Can we go inside?” I asked, not wanting to stand here with my back to the street.
“I suppose.” He climbed the stairs and went inside the enclosed porch. He walked over to two folding chairs that stood beneath the picture window and sat on one of them. As I entered the porch, he kicked the other chair toward me.
I didn’t sit down. Instead, I leaned on the picture window’s external sill, determined to make it seem as if his hostility didn’t bother me at all.
“Louis Foster was as tall as I am,” I said, “but thinner. A real estate agent named Jane Sarton brought him here the Friday afternoon before Thanksgiving.”
“Jesus, Sarton,” he said. “She’s half the reason we’re in this trouble.”
“Trouble?”
He waved a hand toward the street. “This used to be a good neighborhood. Families lived here for generations, handing the houses down to the kids. But for some reason, bitches like Sarton think a place like this don’t have an identity. You live with people who’re like you. That’s the American way. You know that.”
I didn’t answer him. Across the street, a car pulled into a driveway. A man got out. He was wearing a suit and carrying a briefcase. He walked into his garage as if he were exhausted.
“But this Sarton woman and a handful like her seem to think that just because someone can afford the house, they deserve to live in it. She don’t think of community, she don’t think that people should be with their own type. She just wants to make a buck.”
My hands gripped the wooden sill so tightly paint chips bit into my palms. “Did you tell her this?”
“Oh, I let her know. I put the house on the market about six months ago because I get a company house as one of the perks of my job. I say I don’t want no niggers, pardon my French, moving into my house, and she says then maybe I should rent the place so I can control who’s in and out. Like I got time for that bullshit.”
“Did she offer to manage the place for you?”
“Hell, no. She don’t do stuff like that, and the people who do charge an arm and a ball, so I wouldn’t make no profit anyhow. And they couldn’t promise me they wouldn’t rent to no coo—Negroes. Said they couldn’t make that promise by law, though they’d try to do what I wanted.”
“I’m sure they wouldn’t have had a problem,” I said, anger creeping into my voice despite my best efforts. “They don’t elsewhere in the city.”
“I know that.” He hooked the metal leg of the other folding chair with his left shoe and dragged the chair toward him. “I just figure we’d have a nice arrangement, then some federal investigator would stick his grimy nose in and things would get messed up all over again. I’d be paying that arm and a ball and still not getting what I wanted.”
“Why would you care?” I asked. “After all, as you said, you have a company house in Lake Forest now.”
And it had to be rather grand. Companies around here didn’t give small houses to their executives.
“I grew up here. I hate the changes going on, and I’m not going to be a part of them.”
“Yet you let Mrs. Sarton show Louis Foster the house several times.”
“She’d been bringing in all kinds of folks to see this place. Started spouting something about Fair Housing regulations and talking to her lawyer. I told her what I wanted and that’s when she said I should rent the place.”
It sounded like she had been angry. I had a hunch it took a lot to make Jane Sarton angry, especially over an issue like this.
“She told me that you were going to meet Mr. Foster and show him around,” I said. “It sounded like you had an amiable relationship with him.”
“I didn’t have no relationship with him.” Delevan put his feet on the folding chair across from him. It creaked under their weight. “I only met him the once.”
“Then why were you willing to introduce him to the neighbors?”
He shook his head. “You don’t get it, do you, boy?”
The word made me stiffen. Somehow that one was worse than all the others, maybe because he had used it deliberately. “What don’t I get?”
“I thought he was white. It wasn’t until he walked up the walk, sure as you please, that I realized my mistake.”
Just like I had done.
“But Jane Sarton said she left him here with you.” I was no longer resting on the sill. My hands were braced there, ready to launch me forward if I had to move quickly, my feet firmly beneath me. “She said you were going to introduce him around and she was pretty convinced she’d get a sale out of this.”
“Shows you just how dumb that bitch truly is.” He wasn’t looking at me any longer.
He was staring at the street. The streetlights were so bright that the shadows around them seemed even darker than they should have. “She wasn’t going to get no sale.”
“Because he died.” I said that softly, every muscle in my body taut, prepared to move if he so much as turned toward me.
“Hell no,” he said. “I was real polite to that boy. He was a smart one. Had a good job, seemed pretty decent, you know. That’s what made him perfect.”
“Perfect?” My mouth was dry.
“For proving my point.”
“Which was?”
“You people don’t belong here.” He kicked the second chair away and it clattered against the porch. I stood up, hands down and open at my sides, but he didn’t get out of his chair. I didn’t even think he saw my change in posture.
“How would Foster have proven that point?” I asked.
“I figured he’d go talk to the neighborhood association and they’d let him know him and his wasn’t welcome here. Then he’d go back to Sarton, tell her that his Friday night maybe wasn’t the most pleasant one of his life, and she’d get the idea.”
“What exactly did you think they’d do to him?” I asked.
Delevan sighed as if he were dealing with a recalcitrant child. “Why, put the fear of God into him, of course.”
“The fear of God,” I repeated, shaking my head. “And in doing that, they accidentally killed him?”
“You’re awfully quick to make accusations.” He put his hands on his thighs and twisted his elbows outward. “These are people I’ve known all my life. Good, decent people who have good, solid jobs and live good, quiet lives. All they want is a nice home with like-minded neighbors. They don’t kill to get that.”
“How would they get it then?” I asked.
He pushed himself up and turned to face me. I tensed. “By talking to you people,” he said, emphasizing each word. “By letting you know that you do not belong, that your family would not be welcome, not threatening any physical harm, but making it clear that life here would be unpleasant.”
I let out a short humorless laugh. “That sounds so reasonable and we both know it isn’t. We also know it’s not effective. There are black families living in this neighborhood now. They must have had the fear-of-God talk. They moved in anyway.”
He walked toward the screens and stared into the street. “After the riots in April, people down here got scared. They thought we were next because we’re not far from your damn ghetto. Some folks just left. They sold their houses to anyone who’d buy. They didn’t care. They wanted out. I don’t think most of them met the buyers. I don’t think they knew they sold to Negroes, or they just didn’t care.”
“Oh?” I said. “Shouldn’t your vigilantes have protected you from the black invasion? Didn’t they know who the buyers were ahead of time?”
He didn’t move. “I don’t like your mouth, boy.”
“I don’t like yours either,” I said. “But you can answer my questions or you can go to the police station to do so.”
I figured Johnson or Sinkovich would back me up on this if I needed them too.
“You know, you never showed me no identification.”
“No, I never did, and I don’t plan to now. We’re a little past that. You’ve answered enough questions to make me suspicious of you and your friends. You may as well keep talking to clear their names.”
He looked at me over his shoulder. I couldn’t see his face in the thin porch light, only the shape of his head.
“None of us did anything,” he said.
“That’s not what you told me,” I said. “You said you threatened a man so that he wouldn’t move into this neighborhood. I’m just trying to figure out the extent of that threat.”
Delevan turned back toward the street. “I don’t know. I wasn’t there.”
“You just told me you took him to the meeting.”
“No I didn’t. I said I wanted them to put the fear of God into him, that he was the perfect person to do it to. He was respectable, you see. He’d tell his friends that this isn’t a good place to live, not for your people, that we didn’t want him here. I thought it worked, too, when he never came back.”
“So what happened after Jane Sarton left him with you?” I asked.
Delevan’s shoulders slumped further. “He went to the meeting.”
“Without you?”
“A friend of mine took him.”
“When was this?” I asked.
“That evening. Just after that real estate bitch left.”
“Then explain something to me,” I said. “If you weren’t there, how would you know these neighbors of yours carried out your plan?”
He reached down, grabbed the metal folding chair and sat on it, facing me. The anger seemed to have left him. I wasn’t sure why.
“I told them to,” he said.
“In front of Foster?”
“Hell, no.” He sighed. “That boy told me Sarton had warned him that we wouldn’t get along, and he laughed about it, said she probably misread me. He trusted me.”
There was no heat on the porch and the wind whistled through the screens. Goose bumps rose on my arms.
“You never said anything.”
“Not to him.”
“Then to who?”
“The friend who walked him to the meeting.”
“Who was that?”
He rubbed his hands along his knees, his head down.
“Who was that?” I repeated.
“I think I said enough.”
“If you believe your friends are innocent,” I said, “then there’s no harm in telling me. If you don’t tell me who they were, I’m going to assume that you believe they had something to do with Foster’s death.”
“You never told me how he died,” Delevan said.
“He was murdered,” I said, finding the timing of his question fascinating.
“I know, but how?”
I debated telling him. If I said nothing, he might not answer my questions. “What are you afraid of?”
He shook his head.
“Afraid that they got a little overzealous?” I asked. “Afraid that someone hit him one time too many, a little too hard?”
His head moved up as if he were beginning a nod, and then thought the better of it. “Accidents happen.”
“Is that what you think this was?” I asked.
He gave me a one-shoulder shrug.
“I can assure you, Mr. Delevan,” I said. “What happened to Louis Foster was no accident.”
His gaze met mine, his skin fishbelly-white in the thin light. I thought I read fear in his eyes, but I wasn’t sure. They seemed so pale that they were almost clear.
“These guys would never do anything deliberate,” he said. “And so far as I know, they’d never hurt anybody. They’ve used words you probably don’t like, and they would make it real clear that you don’t belong, but they’d never touch anybody. If he started something, sure, they’d defend themselves, but they’d never hurt anyone. Not willingly.”
Footsteps on the concrete made him stop. We both looked toward the street. A white man walked south, hands stuck in his pockets. He wore a uniform that looked familiar, but I couldn’t place it.
Delevan waited until he was gone before turning back toward me. “I don’t know who was at the meeting,” he said quietly. “I haven’t lived in this neighborhood for six months. The association elects new members in July.”
He glanced toward the street again, as if he wasn’t sure he wanted anyone to see us together.
“But I’ll tell you this. The guy who walked your friend to the meeting is Rudy Hucke. He’s a good guy. He’d never hurt anyone. I’m telling you this so you know that I believe he’s not involved with anything. I’m sure your boy went to that meeting, got the bejeezus scared out of him, then headed for home. Something happened to him somewhere else, not here.”
“Rudy Hucke,” I repeated. “How do I reach him?”
�
��I don’t got his number on me, but he’s listed.”
“I assume he lives nearby,” I said. “I can just walk over there.”
Delevan shook his head. “Call him first.”
“So you can warn him about me?”
“Someone’s got to. This ain’t the kinda neighborhood where you can knock on doors.”
I was trying to filter his words, trying to make sure I heard what he was saying and what he really meant. “You told me this was a good neighborhood.”
He kept staring into the street. Another man walked by, then turned into a driveway, obviously heading home.
“It is,” Delevan said. “For me.”
“But not for me?” So I had heard him right. “What would happen to me if I knocked on doors?”
His entire body tensed. The reaction was quick and involuntary. It took him longer to respond verbally. He was clearly choosing his words. “They would call the cops.”
“That wouldn’t bother me,” I said, still playing my role as a plainclothes detective.
“Really? That ain’t what I heard. I heard you people ain’t really part of the force, that you get beat up just like the rest of your kind.”
That had a grain of truth to it. I’d learned in the last few months that the African-American Patrolman’s League had been formed as a response to several such incidents.
“If you’re worried that the neighbors would call the police, I don’t consider that a threat. So you don’t need to call ahead and warn anyone.”
He leaned forward and put his head in his hands. He rubbed his face once, then he stood.
It was my turn to tense as he turned around. But he didn’t make a move toward me.
“Look,” he said. “I ain’t gonna lie to ya. Tension’s gotten really bad down here. I may get a few calls tonight because you’re here. Your kind’s not wanted down here at all, and these folks make that plain. They’re not the killing type, but they might rough you up a bit, make you remember that every time you come down here.”
“I can handle myself.”
“Maybe,” he said. “You’re a big guy. But even big guys don’t got a chance against a bunch of folks.”
A chill ran down my back.
Thin Walls: A Smokey Dalton Novel Page 30