Smoke-Filled Rooms: A Smokey Dalton Novel

by Kris Nelscott

  “Sorry, Bill,” Lavelle said.

  I glanced at him.

  He shrugged. “When that creep started asking about you, I knew there was gonna be trouble.”

  “What creep?”

  “That guy. You seen him, didn’t you, Duffy?’

  “I didn’t see no one,” Duffy said, apparently still annoyed that I could quell him with a glance.

  “What’d he look like?” I asked.

  “Undercover, that’s what I think,” Lavelle said.

  We had reached the locker room. I went to my locker and fiddled with the lock. I wanted to hear what Lavelle had to say.

  “Better clock out,” Duffy said.

  “Do it for me,” I said.

  “I ain’t your ni—” He stopped himself just in time.

  I glared at him again. Hitting him would have been a pleasure. Apparently that registered on my face because he slunk toward the time clock.

  I stopped diddling with the lock. “What did he look like?” I asked Lavelle again.

  “Afro,” Lavelle spoke softly. “Scarred face. Big guy.”

  A scarred face. Thomas Withers had acne scars so bad that his face was pockmarked.

  I swallowed. “What kind of scars?”

  “Acne, I think.”

  I didn’t like how this was going. “Did he give his name?”

  Lavelle shook his head.

  “How tall was he?” I asked.

  Lavelle raised a hand above my head. Withers was taller than me by about that much.

  “Was he my age?” I asked.

  Lavelle nodded.

  “No real discernible accent.”

  “Yeah,” Lavelle said. “You know this guy?”

  “I just might,” I said.

  It would explain a lot. How he managed to seem one step ahead of me. Why he had designed that torture chamber. It hadn’t been set up by some intelligence operative responding to a legend. It had been set up by Withers, settling a personal score.

  The last time I’d seen him, in Memphis just before Martin died, Withers had said to me, Knowledge is power, Smokey, And sometimes the right fact can be mighty useful.

  He was right. Knowledge was useful. I had to use mine carefully. I had to remain clearheaded. But I’d been thinking of Withers all day. I couldn’t continue to ignore this sense. If Withers was here, I had to act, and act quickly.

  Thomas Withers was one of the few people in the world who knew about my connection to Laura. It would only be a matter of time before he figured out where Jimmy was.

  “Ain’t you got your crap yet?” Duffy came down the row of lockers, swaggering. “You boys plotting something?”

  I didn’t answer him. Instead, I made the last twist on the combination lock and pulled it open. My street clothes and my pass were hanging on hooks. Before Duffy got a peek at the pass, I tucked it in my shirt pocket, then grabbed the clothes and pulled them out.

  “I ain’t waitin while you change,” Duffy said. “There’s some serious shit goin down, and I’m not about to miss it. So let’s get you out of here.”

  I clutched my clothes to me and staggered forward like a drunken man. Lavelle gave me a strange look, but I ignored him. It felt as if my mind had stopped.

  But it hadn’t. It was remembering Withers.

  Withers and I had hated each other since Korea.

  In San Diego, he had been supposed to practice verbal interrogation techniques on me. Even though the torture chamber had been set up just like it had been in that basement, the brass were aware that they were attempting a form of mind control on their own men.

  Withers thought he could break anyone. He had wanted to break me.

  Duffy frowned at me, then shoved me into the service elevator. I glared at him again and he shrank back, but not as far as he had before, as if he knew that my heart wasn’t in it.

  I’d met Withers toward the end of the war. Withers was supposed to have brought Korean refugees across the line. Instead, he had arrived alone, claiming the Koreans were dead. I hadn’t believed him and had been clear about it.

  My disbelief fed my sergeant’s, which then trickled to Withers’s boss. Withers got sent to San Diego, where I encountered him nearly a year later.

  In that torture chamber in San Diego, he’d tried to make me pay for his demotion. Instead, he’d gotten demoted again.

  “Bill?” Lavelle asked.

  The service elevator doors opened to reveal the parking garage. Screams and shouts from the street, the sounds of running feet, and cries of Sieg Heil! Sieg Heil! floated down from above.

  We got out of the elevator. Duffy looked toward the street level with longing. Lavelle’s lips thinned. He wanted no part of this.

  The air still had the sting of tear gas, although I couldn’t see it here. Something crashed above us, followed by a chant of Hell, No! We Won’t Go! and the sounds of a police bullhorn, ordering people back.

  “Hurry up, Grimshaw,” Duffy said.

  I didn’t have to be told twice. We hurried to my car. I unlocked it and threw my clothes in the back. By the time I reached for the driver’s door, Duffy and Lavelle were already heading toward the hotel.

  I got inside the car and made myself think. Withers had found me, somehow. Maybe accidentally. He’d been working undercover in Memphis, trying to disrupt Martin’s marches from the inside. If he was the man I’d heard called the Professor—and I had no reason to believe otherwise—he probably had a similar undercover job in Chicago. I’d already suspected that carload he’d brought to town were undercover agents. This might have gone deeper than I suspected. He had been posing as Black Panther in Memphis—and there were Panthers in my neighborhood here in Chicago. Maybe that first sighting had been accidental.

  The rest hadn’t been, though, and he’d tried to figure out, in that mass of children, which one was Jimmy.

  He’d guessed wrong.

  I reached for the glove box, stopped myself, made myself breathe.

  He had stopped following me, figuring I wouldn’t lead him to Jimmy, and he’d started talking to my friends. Withers hadn’t put Laura into the equation then. He hadn’t known where Jimmy was. He’d called the hotel, told them I wasn’t who I seemed. He’d figured out that Grimshaw was the name I was using. Then he’d gotten inside the hotel somehow and questioned my co-workers for names of friends and family. He’d go through them first. Maybe even try to figure out where Franklin’s kids were, or who Franklin’s friends were.

  But at some point, Withers would remember Laura, and when he did, he would know where Jimmy was.

  I had to go one step at a time, just like Withers was doing.

  Another bang sounded around me, followed by more screaming and the squeal of brakes.

  First, I had to warn Laura, get her to leave town. Then I’d talk to Franklin.

  Finding a pay phone in this mess was going to be a problem. The closer I got to the Gold Coast, the less chance I had of finding one that I could use.

  I was better off going back into the hotel if I went quickly. With the protest going on, no one would notice if I was in the hotel. No one would probably even care.

  I ran for the service elevator and let it take me back inside.

  * * *

  The closest bank of telephones was on the first floor, around a corner. It was also the most hidden.

  I still wore my uniform. No one questioned me as I walked across the marble floor and ducked behind the rows of valet carts. There were new payphones, side by side and in the open, but I entered the old one. It was a wooden booth with a door that closed and a seat worn smooth by time.

  I plugged the machine, dialed Laura’s number, and listened to the rings. Usually she answered on the fourth or fifth. I let the phone ring ten times and got no answer at all.

  My stomach churned. She had said she and Jimmy were going to stay in. She had said she hadn’t wanted to expose him to all the violence going on around him. She had said they would spend a nice, quiet day at home.<
br />
  I hoped she had lied.

  I hung up and the dime clattered into the coin return. I plugged the phone again, dialed again, and let the phone ring.

  Nothing.

  Finally, I called the front desk to her building, and identified myself as someone connected with Sturdy Investments.

  “I’ve been trying to reach Miss Hathaway all day,” I said. “Do you know if she has left her apartment?”

  “I haven’t seen her leave, but that doesn’t mean that she hasn’t,” said the cultured male voice on the other end of the line. “We don’t keep track of our residents here.”

  “This is a matter of some urgency,” I said, “and given what’s going on in the parks, I don’t want to drive across town unless I know she’s there.”

  “Let me ring her, sir. Just a moment.” And then I was put on hold.

  I tapped my foot, leaning against the wall of the phone booth. There was no one down here. It seemed eerie, given what I knew of the rest of the hotel and the crowds outside. I couldn’t hear anything except the clicking of the line, telling me we were still connected, and my own breathing, harsh and ragged.

  “Sir?” the male voice said. “She’s not answering our pages, but none of the doormen has seen her leave. As I said, we’re not obligated to keep track of our residents. If you would like, I can continue trying to ring her and then call you when she returns.”

  “No, no. No thanks,” I said. “I appreciate your time.”

  And then I hung up.

  I didn’t like how this sounded or how it felt. I had to go up there. Now that I knew who I was up against, I at least had a chance.

  First, I called Franklin.

  He answered on the first ring. “Smokey! The radio says there’s all kinds of disturbances going on around you.”

  “Listen, Franklin,” I said. “I need you to do me a favor.”

  “All right.”

  “I want you to call this number —” and then I gave him Laura’s phone number—“until someone answers. If the person who picks up the line is a woman, tell her not to open her door to anyone. You got that?”

  “What’s going on, Smokey?”

  “Just tell me you’ll do that, Franklin.”

  “Sure. I got it. Tell her not to open her door. Is she in danger, Smokey?”

  “I’ll tell you more tonight,” I said. “Just do this for me.”

  “All right.”

  I hung up, and let myself out of the booth. As I rounded the valet carts, two security guards got off the service elevator. I turned away from them and went up the half staircase that led to the lobby.

  It had grown dark outside. The hotel lights were on, but it was almost impossible to tell. Tear gas had wafted inside the hotel mixing with the cigarette smoke, giving the air a filmy haze. There wasn’t enough gas to make people ill, but everyone was coughing and wiping at their eyes.

  Young people, bloody and battered, were lying across the marble floor, being tended by hotel guests. The concierge was on the phone with one of the hospitals, requesting an ambulance. Guests stood, horrified, near the windows, watching the display outside.

  I could barely see it over their heads—bright lights shining down on the road, cops chasing after kids, battering them with nightsticks. National Guard troops held rifles with bayonets on an advancing line of protestors and everyone seemed to be screaming.

  I was torn for just a moment, ready to go into the fray, to help the wounded, pull people back, but I couldn’t. If I delayed here any longer, Withers might get to Jimmy.

  I sprinted across the lobby and caught a down elevator. A man wearing a press pass held his hand over his eye. He was shaking his head. Beside him, another man clutched a broken Nikon. They shrank away from me as if I were the enemy, and it took me a moment to realize that it wasn’t me or my color that worried them. It was my uniform.

  They got off at the first parking level. I got off at the bottom. I ran to my car, and climbed in, starting it before I had the door closed. Then I backed out of the parking garage, and headed for the Gold Coast.

  SIXTEEN

  OR TRIED TO.

  The riot was going on in front of the hotel, on Michigan and in Grant Park. But a lot of the problem had spilled onto the side streets, streets the authorities had to leave open to get the candidates and delegates back to the hotel.

  I pulled out of the parking garage into chaos. Demonstrators ran in front of my headlights, followed by police, their nightsticks raised. Cops were hitting people and throwing them aside. Others stopped and pummeled them. Demonstrators hit back and were clubbed. A blue-and-white squadrol was parked in the intersection, blocking traffic heading east. The cars still moved west and north. My car was pointed west, and I tried to go in that direction, thinking it would probably be my only way out.

  Blue-helmeted cops dragged bloody protestors inside the squadrol, hitting them as they went. Screams echoed around me, screams that would occasionally unite in chants: The Whole World is Watching. The Whole World is Watching. Bright lights from television vans mingled with the klieg lights brought by the police. Cars heading toward Michigan Avenue were stopped in the intersections and National Guard troops wearing gas masks bent toward the car windows, yelling at the people inside.

  Behind me, I heard singing mixed with more shouting and the sound of sticks hitting heads. A rock bounced off my windshield, and a young white woman, blood streaming down her face, rolled across my hood. She reached for me as two policeman grabbed her by the feet and pulled her off my car.

  A procession of people was marching down Wabash and CTA buses stopped alongside them, disgorging police officers who ran into the crowd. The din was so loud I couldn’t hear the car’s engine.

  I eased onto Wabash, and people slammed into my car as they ran. A cop smashed my driver’s window with a nightstick, and the glass fell inward. The stick narrowly missed my face. Other cops surrounded the car and one reached for the door. They had pulled other drivers out of their cars, and were beating them on the street.

  As the cop bent toward my window, I hit him in the face with my fist, then stepped on the gas. The car sprang forward, and I prayed I wouldn’t run over anyone. People got out of my way. I made a zigzag onto Eighth and headed for the expressway.

  All along the streets, dazed hippies walked, hands to head. Some had sunk to the ground, leaning on buildings and lamp posts. Still others huddled in groups, arms around each other as if they were protecting each other from nightsticks.

  More tear gas wafted through the streetlights. I drove faster to get away from it, my eyes stinging, my nose running. More squadrols were arriving, followed by squad cars and police buses, as well as CTA buses filled with cops. It was as if they were all being drawn to the same spot, and it wasn’t until I passed a police motorcycle that I heard the code “ten-one” which meant, at least in Memphis—and I assumed in Chicago as well—officer needs help.

  The entire downtown was covered in gas. I could hear the shouts and screams even as I drove away from the mess. It wasn’t until I turned north that I let out a shaky sigh of relief.

  The radio jabbered about the riot, and I listened to hear what else was going on. I was taking a circuitous route to Laura’s, but I figured it would get me there faster than trying to take the mobbed streets in the Loop.

  As I drove, I reviewed the evidence as I knew it.

  A man with an afro had been watching me. He had probably driven a blue Oldsmobile with New York plates. He had arrived in Chicago’s West Side with a carload of young people who called him the Professor. One of the children I’d spoken to had heard someone else call him Tim.

  Maybe the child had been mistaken. Maybe the person had called him Tom.

  A man with an afro and acne scars, a man who was taller than I was, had interrogated my co-workers. Someone had told the hotel that I wasn’t who I seemed.

  Another FBI undercover agent wouldn’t have been thinking of me or Jimmy. We probably blipped off the me
ntal radar months ago. Undercover agents would have been concentrating on the mission at hand.

  But Withers would have recognized me. In fact, he had recognized me, then he had acted. And somehow he had managed to stay out of my sight.

  When I’d seen him in Memphis in the month before Martin died, Withers had been worried that I would screw up his mission. He’d done everything he could to keep me away from the young men he’d been trying to corrupt.

  At the end, I hadn’t been able to stop him. I’d seen him on Beale Street and he’d smiled at me.

  I gotta admit, Smokey, he’d said, I thought you’d be a more formidable opponent.

  That last encounter had made him careless. He was underestimating me this time.

  He didn’t expect me to figure out who he was until it was too late.

  I hoped it wasn’t too late.

  As I got to the Gold Coast, the streets were silent. All of the expensive buildings were closed up tight, as if they expected to be stormed by troops of angry college students. Security guards and doormen hovered around the front of each building, arms crossed, looking scared instead of tough.

  It was probably good that they weren’t allowed guns. Men who were scared were trigger happy.

  My heart was pounding harder than it had been in the riot. If Withers had found her, he wouldn’t have gone in the front door. He couldn’t have, not without displaying his FBI credentials. With all the violence in the city, no black man—with or without an afro—was going to get into a high security expensive building like that, especially at night.

  But Withers was smart; if he knew where she lived, he would be able to get in. All he had to do was go around back.

  No one expected trouble at the back doors of these high-rises.

  I parked behind Laura’s apartment complex and took my gun out of the glove box. If anyone caught me in that building with a gun, I’d be going away for life, but I didn’t care. I wasn’t going to face Withers unarmed.

  I got out of the car and loped to the service entrance. My uniform helped me—it looked official. The door had been propped open. I saw scratches near the keyhole. Someone had picked the lock.