“The wife and daughter expect me home,” Daniels said.
“Family got names?”
“Why you asking?”
“Next of kin to notify,” Batiste snickered.
“I ain’t done no wrong by driving here.”
“I ain’t done no wrong by driving here.”
“Your daughter’s name!”
“Glenda,” Daniels answered. “She works in town, but she ain’t got nothin’ to do with me bein’ here.”
It was the first piece of information coughed up by Daniels. There would be more if Batiste proved successful.
“By the way, you’re the KKK, shithead. That’s serious fuckin’ wrong.”
Batiste was goading the Klansman into talking.
“You talked to me like you was some goddamn king. You looked at a black man and saw nothin’ worth a shit.”
“It didn’t mean—it was a joke.”
“Not that simple. You think you can go at me for the fun of it?”
The detective considered his next move.
“Why you driving around Mooretown anyway?”
“No reason.” The Klansman bent down in the seat like he was trying to hide.
“Bullshit.” The detective realized he had hit on something. “Why you in Mooretown?”
“Gettin’ on home.”
“Do I need to ask again?” The detective slowed his car and pulled over to the side near a vacant corner lot. A light drizzle threw a thin blanket of wet over both the car and the street. The day, cold and damp, was closing in on the Klansman.
“Why’d you stop?” Daniels asked.
“Tell me why you were in Mooretown. If you don’t, I’ll give you to less friendly folk.”
Batiste was improvising. He needed Daniels possessed of a more immediate, primal fear.
“You gonna wear that white clown outfit so my kind knows what you think of them.”
“You got rules,” Daniels protested. “You can’t do that!”
“Can’t do what? Arrest a bigot? Does it look like I’m having a problem? Tell you something—a secret just for you. No one’s ever gonna know you even been arrested.”
The robe and hood had stirred in the detective a visceral hatred. The gut rage propelled him forward without knowing how the ride would end. He didn’t have a real plan, but he had a bona fide Klansman completely off the grid.
The detective watched Daniels squirm in the back seat, trying to break free of both the car and his fate. The detective’s apparent amusement made the Klansman squirm even more. Batiste sensed his prisoner would surrender at some point, and he was far too deep into the ride to release the Klansman without a significant bounty being paid; how far it would go, the detective hadn’t decided, so he kept the ride going.
“You in Mooretown to visit your grandmama? Yeah, that must be it. I’m sure you got some dark, black blood in your woodpile somewhere, so let’s go find them.”
The detective glanced at the driver’s side mirror to confirm that no one was milling around the sidewalk, and pulled off the street into an open garage bay. The building was some sort of decrepit warehouse, empty except for pieces of furniture looking like stray dogs and an assortment of tools including a blowtorch piled in a corner. A series of small rooms with milky glass windows lined the wall opposite the bay door.
“Don’t do this.”
“Do what? I ain’t goin’ to do shit. I’m gonna share—you in that white, stupid-ass robe of yours—and human nature will determine what happens next.”
With the car’s engine shut off, the detective reached into the box on the passenger seat. He raised the hood, turned, and yanked it down over his prisoner’s thrashing head. The white slits of the hood didn’t line up with the prisoner’s eyes. Daniels stomped his feet on the floorboard in protest.
Batiste got out and pulled the back door open. He released the waist belt and grabbed Daniels, who suddenly appeared to want very much to stay in the back seat.
“Leave me alone!” the Klansman cried out.
The detective found Daniels’s pressure point just behind the ear and pulled him away from the relative safety of the Grand Marquis.
“Don’t!” Urine—mixed with dirt and sweat—spotted Daniels’s pants near the crotch.
“You ain’t in a position to demand.”
Batiste ratcheted the arm of his second set of handcuffs around the first so both cuffs together functioned like a short leash. Then Batiste saw the metal chair nearby and secured the sole remaining free cuff to it.
Daniels now was attached to the chair, but he could neither stand nor sit. He twisted his head back and forth under the hood.
“Hey!” Daniels shouted. “Help!”
No response.
“Help me!”
Several big trucks rumbled through the intersection, all but smothering Daniels’s pleas.
As Daniels continued to scream, four men wandered into the bay area through a door to one of the adjacent rooms.
They glanced at one another, then Daniels, and finally Batiste. All the men had the permanent call sign for the Crips. Batiste didn’t need to see it, as he’d had many dealings with them before that day. They all had grown up together.
“What the fuck,” said one of the men.
Daniels straightened up as far as he could. He pulled against the cuffs and dragged the chair around the bay in brief, uncontrolled bursts of movement like he was trying to figure his way out or at least away.
“What’s this shit goin’ down?” the same man asked the detective.
“Got somethin’ for you.”
Batiste pulled the hood off to reveal Daniels grimacing like he had just been caught in a sex act with an animal.
At first, Daniels crouched. After a moment, he stood and started to groan as if he had already been punched.
“Why he here?” the man asked Batiste.
“He was prayin’!” another of the group answered for him.
“What’s this?” The new interrogator took the wet, white hood from Batiste.
Daniels didn’t answer, and he started to shake.
“He freak’n?”
“More like answerin’ for his sins.”
Batiste took the hood back from the man and pulled it down over Daniels’s head.
“He’s your long-lost cousin,” Batiste said matter-of-factly. “Don’t he look like it?”
Everyone laughed except Daniels.
Daniels started to move again, except this time the men surrounded him like he was in a pen. Daniels stumbled into one of them and beat a retreat, all the while dragging the chair with him. Twice more, he hit a living blockage and got pushed back in to the center.
“You got business for us?” the talkative one asked the detective.
“Might,” Batiste answered.
Batiste leaned close to Daniels. “Should I leave you here?” Batiste asked.
“No!” Daniels pleaded. “I’ll tell you why.”
“Why what?”
“If you take me out of here, I’ll tell you.”
“Tell me what?”
“Mooretown and the Klan.”
The detective didn’t respond, but he waved the men away with a nod.
The four walked out of the bay and disappeared without giving Daniels another look, as if a man chained to furniture while wearing a white Klan hood over his face was just another moment in their day.
Batiste released the cuff from the chair and reinstalled his prisoner in the car’s back seat.
He returned to the ride. They passed under a red light and through an empty intersection. The detective knew he’d won, but not what spoils would come his way. As he covered a three-block grid, he took slow, exaggerated turns. Daniels remained mute and motionless even after Batiste pulled the hood off. Batiste took his time, like he was simmering meat in a sauce.
“Ye shall know the truth, and the truth shall make you free,” Batiste said.
“What?”
“John 8:
32.” It was the detective’s standard line when extracting confessions from suspects. “Now, tell me the truth.”
They passed through several intersections, and the tire treads ejected thin strands of rain back onto the streets. The heavy breathing from the back seat fogged up the car’s windows.
“So, what business the Klan got in Mooretown?”
“No business.”
“I don’t mean fuckin’ normal business. Now talk.”
“Klan did the crosses ’round town.”
“I don’t need to be no black-ass detective to figure burning crosses are Klan.”
Truth was, Batiste had forgotten about the crosses. He’d been busy with other extracurricular activities when the crosses were lit up around Lynwood, and up to that very moment, he hadn’t made the connection. He was embarrassed by the lapse, but he’d never let on.
“You in the Klan, right?”
Daniels nodded.
“How long?”
“It’s just social.”
“Social. You convince yourself of that?” He looked around for a place to pull over. “Who’s the leader?”
“I am.”
Batiste was amused that Daniels had to brag even when handcuffed in the back seat of an undercover police car, mere minutes after pissing his pants from fear.
The detective raised his eyebrows. “So, you’re the duke or some shit?”
“I’m the grand dragon.”
The detective considered the announcement coming from the back seat. “I really don’t care if you’re the stinkin’ grand Pooh Bah or some other crazy shit.” He waited, and then prodded again. “Why a grand dragon?”
“I only answer to the imperial wizard.”
Daniels hadn’t answered the question, but no matter. “If the Klan did them crosses, and you’re the Klan leader, then you did the crosses, right?”
Batiste was still driving along his interrogation route. He knew once the coercive mix of fear and isolation evaporated, the Klansman would stop negotiating by admission. For several more turns, the moment would remain the detective’s. He stopped the car at the red light and waited for an answer.
“You lit up that cross in Mooretown?”
“Yeah, with—”
“Little motherfucker,” the detective muttered.
He reconsidered the plan to take Daniels to the station. Maybe beat him senseless or shoot the bastard. To Batiste, this guy was beyond the scum he encountered every single day; he was more than worthy of the special version of justice he meted out with regularity. Who would know? More importantly, who would care?
Working narcotics, Batiste had developed and refined his talent for inflicting pain on dealers and street urchins. Why not apply the same treatment and more to this unrepentant racist with a fat head? A dead Klansman would be justice for all victims of bigotry and oppression, and who knows what evil acts wouldn’t happen because the creep was gone. Batiste could go back to the gangbangers on Eighth, and they would take care of the final disposition. He’d give the crew a pass on their next robbery, maybe more, as long as the task was handled.
However, he also realized the circumstance was more complicated than the usual bad guy situation. They weren’t totally off the grid, and Daniels’s car would soon be impounded, creating a paper trail. Turning Daniels over to the Crips was tempting, but the death of an outsider might upset the balance of cops and robbers within their insular world. Too much reverse-engineering would be needed to account for such a thing.
The light changed to green, and Batiste decided to bring the Klansman to the station still breathing. The truth was that with a confession, something would stick. Not even a weak-kneed prosecutor in the DA’s office could ignore this asshole’s sins. But with Daniels’s arrest, the story of the traffic stop had to fit neat and tight long before the case file hit intake.
“How many of them crosses did you set on fire?” he asked.
“Four or five.”
“Who burned them with you?”
“Brothers.”
“Their names?”
“Can’t remember.”
“They’re nameless brothers? A name.”
“Fred.”
“Fred what?”
“We don’t use real names.”
“Where’d you plant them crosses?”
“A Jew place, where the Arabs train, a nig—a house in Mooretown, the coloreds’ lawyer’s office.”
“That all?”
“And the courthouse.”
Batiste had heard enough to know Daniels was good for all of them, and probably a lot more. He now had to keep the Klansman buttoned up long after the fear of the ride was gone, when the high-voltage current of the unknown was reduced to the hum of a distant streetlight. That’s where Daniels’s white pride and outsized ego would prove essential.
“We’re gonna keep this goin’ at the station. You gotta own up again.”
“I just told you I done it. But it’s only trespassing, so we don’t need to go nowhere near any police station.”
Daniels was trying to weather a storm while wrapped in a blanket of ignorance. Batiste wasn’t in the business of educating suspects, and taking advantage of this racist’s stupidity was better than anything he had done so far as a cop. He wondered what he’d been missing these years working narcotics.
He pulled into an alley and got out of his car. He walked back and lifted the trunk. He thought for a moment as he allowed the drizzle to cleanse him like holy water. He rummaged through a bag hidden in the spare tire well. He retrieved two objects—one hidden in a small bag, and the other a Polaroid camera. He went around to the passenger side, opened the back door, and placed them on the seat. Without a pause, he pulled his Glock and pointed it directly in Daniels’sface.
“Don’t!” Daniels’s eyes were wide and white as enamel, and then they disappeared behind lids clamped tight. “Oh, God!”
“I ain’t goin’ to shoot unless you move. If you do, I’ll fuckin’ kill you.” The detective’s expression was cement-hard.
He removed a chocolate-brown silicone shaft from the small bag and shoved the head end into Daniels’s mouth.
“Like I said, not one muscle.”
Daniels gagged on the dildo but otherwise remained still. The detective took two close-ups with the Polaroid, so it appeared Daniels was performing oral sex on a black man. After the photos, he pulled the offending object out of Daniels’s mouth.
“Stop!” Daniels screamed after he drew a breath.
Batiste waved the Polaroid prints with their white borders in the air as the obscenity in full color emerged on the treated papers.
“You say one fuckin’ thing ’bout this ride—to your lawyer, your God, anybody—and this gets sent to your family and friends and everyone else you’ve ever known. We clear?”
Daniels nodded.
“And if that ain’t enough, I’m gonna make sure your friends back there know where your family lives.”
Daniels kept on nodding, and Batiste knew it would stick.
13
GOOD NEWS
A full season now had passed since the titan’s secret summit with the feds. The titan’s surprise call and the subsequent clandestine meeting had raised the agents’ expectations that the case would be solved with minimal fuss, and it only deepened their disappointment when nothing came of it. The window for the titan to come in from the cold had closed, and the agents now faced a slow slog of following up on leads, often to nothing. Obtaining the Klan member list was the next-best hope, but that too proved to be a fleeting gust of wind. Without more than chalkboard scribbling, the agents couldn’t get warrants to search suspected Klan homes, and no candidates emerged for another chance to flip someone. Their early efforts had provided only a temporary reprieve from the bureaucratic shuffle.
. . .
The FBI receptionist dialed Mercer’s extension.
“Mercer,” Mercer answered while rearranging piles of 302 reports and subpoenas on his d
esk.
“I have some lieutenant from Lynwood PD on the line asking for the cross burnings case agent. That’s you, right?”
“That would be me,” Mercer answered with more than a hint of resignation. “You got a name?”
“Want me to find out?”
“Just put him through.”
“Coming now.”
“Hello?” asked the voice on the phone. “Hello?”
“This is Agent Lee Mercer. Who’s this?”
“It’s Lieutenant Dan Wilson from Lynwood PD.”
“What can I do for you, Lieutenant?”
“It’s what I can do for you.”
“That would be something new, wouldn’t it?” Mercer wasn’t in the mood for games.
“Those cross burnings. I realize the bureau’s the lead.”
“That’s right,” Mercer said. “It’s a federal matter.”
“Federal or not, I got some news for you.” The lieutenant sounded particularly enthusiastic about his call to the bureau. “One of our detectives from violent crimes picked up some prick, and you’re not going to believe who he is.”
“I don’t know.” Mercer couldn’t decide how short to be with this guy for wasting his time. “But you’re about to tell me—”
“The guy’s in the Klan.”
“OK.”
“He’s the Klan’s big Pooh-Bah.”
Mercer was catching up with the lieutenant’s words. “He know anything about the cross burnings?”
“Knows? Christ, he confessed to it.”
“What?” Mercer was out of his chair. “Say that again.”
“The guy confessed—”
“—to burning the crosses?”
“I thought you might like that. You might not remember, but I worked the case early on.”
“If what you say is true—who is it?”
“Who is what?”
“The guy who confessed.”
“Hold on,” the lieutenant said, pausing to read from his cribbed notes. “One Frank Daniels, white male—obviously. Last known address of 667 Hickory Wood Lane, Lynwood. Hickory Wood—that’s outside of town, southeast, I think.”
“Sorry, could you tell me that again?” Mercer scribbled the name on the top sheet of his paper mountain. “Where’s he now? He in custody?”
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