Darktown: A Novel

by Thomas Mullen

  McInnis used his flashlight to beam the ground, looking for a blood trail, evidence she’d been dragged, anything. But the area was so unkempt that the search was useless. If she’d been dragged and bled somewhere, the blood was long since washed away.

  Clock-out time was supposed to be two, but it was nearing seven and Boggs and Smith were still filling out paperwork on their Negro Jane Doe in the basement of the Butler Street YMCA.

  The Y was a six-story brick structure that, in addition to serving as a gymnasium, rooming house, neighborhood meeting place, and political headquarters for the colored community, had for the past three months also become the de facto precinct for Atlanta’s eight Negro police officers. The same city fathers who had finally extended the badge to Negroes still could not imagine a world in which colored cops sat beside white cops, or ate with them, or showered and dressed in the same locker rooms, or defecated in the same toilets. Surely a riot would ensue.

  The fact that the Y was their HQ had spawned a range of slang terms among the officers. Walking a beat was “running laps.” Being chewed out by McInnis was “getting benched.” Doing paperwork was “lifting weights.”

  The Y was managed by Herm Eakins, an older man who’d come down from New York ten years earlier. He told people he wasn’t a political sort, but he’d been spurred into action by the white cops, who frequently busted his door down and demanded that he admit them into the rooms of his various boarders, whom they suspected of having committed some crime or another. The cops never had a warrant and seldom even had a name, and Eakins seldom seemed to have any rights. He had reinstalled his door twelve times after cops had kicked it down, the story goes, one for each tribe of Israel. After the twelfth time he’d had to replace it—had to painstakingly rebuild the entryway and put in new screws and chisel the side of the wall and install new anchors—that twelfth time was the last. He reached out to Reverend King, Reverend Holmes Borders, and Reverend Boggs, informing them that whatever they needed from him to help get some Negro cops in this neighborhood, he was their man.

  That’s when Lucius first met him, more than a year ago, at one of the Citizenship School sessions Reverend Boggs helped organize. The white primary had just been abolished by the Supreme Court, which meant white people could no longer bar Negroes from voting in the Democratic primary, the only election that mattered. At least, in theory white people couldn’t bar them (the ruling didn’t stop Governor Talmadge from proclaiming that the best way to keep Negroes from voting was “with pistols”). Mayor Hartsfield, a moderate on the race issue, had promised the colored community leaders that he would hire colored cops only if they registered enough voters to make an impact in the municipal elections.

  Lucius had been back from the war for a year and a half by then, working at the same black-owned insurance company as his brother Reginald and still seeking his purpose. At the Citizenship School, he had stood in front of nearly a hundred people of varying ages and explained to them how voting worked, where they needed to go to register, what they had to bring. Which nasty questions to anticipate and how to deflect them. How to dress and conduct themselves, what not to say.

  Twenty thousand registered Negro voters later (countless pamphlets and endless meetings and long speeches and miles of shoe leather worn down all across the colored neighborhoods of Atlanta) the community had their officers. And because those officers needed a place to change into their uniforms and file their reports, Eakins offered them the Y’s basement.

  White officers had proven quite uninterested in knocking down—or even knocking on—the Y’s door ever since. They grumbled that the Y’s boarding rooms were no doubt a hive of illicit activity with nothing but Negro-quote-cops-unquote to stop them, but Eakins didn’t mind the chatter. At least he didn’t have to hang another gotdang door.

  The ramshackle precinct consisted solely of this subterranean space, badly heated in the winter (so they had been warned) and so humid in the summer that the concrete walls actually sweat. Eight desks were crammed in the room like some rural Negro elementary school. The concrete floor was cracked in places, dirt from below seeping upward, so much so that no matter how well Boggs shined his shoes, they looked dusty when he hit the streets. In the back some Sheetrock and a thin door had been installed to create an office for McInnis, who had asked his own superiors repeatedly if this cup could pass from his lips, but no, someone had to be the martyr and oversee the Negro cops, and it was him.

  The showers were three floors up, the toilet was one flight up, and there was often a line for both. Lack of paper and paper clips was a problem. Rats were a larger problem.

  On one wall, thumbtacks denoting crimes and suspects’ addresses adorned a map of their district. Even at this early hour, Boggs could hear a basketball bouncing on the first-floor courts.

  That there were eight Negro officers did not alter the way the Atlanta police department went about identifying Negro Jane Does. The first step was shipping the body to the morgue, in the basement of the white headquarters, far removed from the colored officers. The second step was waiting for someone to show up asking where his girl was. If that didn’t happen, the third was throwing away the body when space was needed for another dead Negro. The coroner had finally shown up in his wagon to take the body, but, as McInnis had predicted, Homicide never showed.

  Most of the bodies Boggs had dealt with were found at crime scenes where the perpetrator was still present, or where the victim lived, or at a venue with several witnesses. This was the first time any uncertainty had been involved. There was no missing persons report matching her description. The yellow dress she’d been wearing and the simple necklace—­steel cord and a silverlike heart-shaped locket, empty—were the only things on her person that might prove identifying, other than a birthmark on her right shoulder.

  “You done with that report yet, Boggs?” McInnis asked. He was not a fan of Boggs’s report-writing. During their first week, he had read one of Boggs’s reports to the others during roll call. “The subject vehemently defended himself,” he read, with sarcastic emphasis, and “the witness’s aquamarine blouse had become translucent from spilled moonshine,” and “the hilt of the blade protruded at a ninety-degree angle.” Then the sergeant had tossed the report in the trash, saying, “You’re not impressing anyone with the ten-dollar words, Boggs. Fewer adjectives, please. No one’s giving you a PhD for this.” Since then, Boggs strained to be as succinct as possible so as not to offend his GED-holding boss.

  As he typed, he thought of the facts he wished he knew, information a white cop easily could acquire by going to the Records department. If the Negro officers needed to access files that were stored at headquarters, they needed to place a call asking for the file, since they weren’t allowed on the premises. The file would then be added to a stack that was picked up daily by McInnis, who frequently complained to his officers about that chore. I am not your errand boy. Which made them that much more reluctant to make such requests.

  Boggs didn’t even know what charges Dunlow and Rakestraw had cited Underhill with the evening they’d pulled him over. But he had a feeling McInnis didn’t want him to bother with finding out, as it would have only made the paperwork take longer.

  Boggs was nearly finished when McInnis excused himself to use the john, which was one flight up. (The Y had been paid by the police department to turn an existing closet into a small, whites-only restroom for McInnis’s sake.) Boggs picked up the phone. He identified himself to the police switchboard operator and asked for Records. Muffling the receiver, he turned to his partner and asked, “Cover for me, Tommy.”

  Smith shook his head, but he walked over to the stairs, in better position for a warning whistle if McInnis approached.

  The voice of a middle-aged woman came over the line: “Records.”

  “Yes, I need the arrest record for Brian Underhill on July ninth.”

  “Who’s speaking?”


  He gave her his name and badge number, which included the suffix identifying him as a Negro officer. He was put on hold for a while. At least she hadn’t hung up on him. McInnis better have slow bowels, he thought. Finally, she was back on the line. She told him there was nothing to be found.

  “Not even a traffic citation?”

  “Nothing. No record of anything involving that name.”

  “I’m sure that’s a mistake. Could you check the logs for Officers Dunlow and Rakestraw? They would have made the arrest.”

  She sighed loudly into the phone and put him on hold again. Minutes passed. McInnis was still in the john, poor bastard (or maybe he’d fallen asleep on it?), when her voice finally came back on.

  “Nothing in the recent logs for those officers about any Underhill.”

  So not only had Dunlow and Rakestraw not cited him for striking the lamppost, they hadn’t even made note of the fact that they’d pulled him over.

  “While I have you,” Boggs said as politely as he could before she hung up on him, “I was hoping you could pull Underhill’s records. Does he have any priors?”

  “I’ve done enough for you, boy. There was no arrest, there’s nothing for you to worry about, so go patrol your nigger neighborhood.” She hung up.

  Boggs held on to the receiver for an extra moment, his cheeks burning.

  A minute later, McInnis returned, and Boggs handed over his report. McInnis skimmed it, his eyes red above the gray bags in his skin.

  “I’ll take it over in the morning. Next shift, I mean.” He yawned. “Lord, it’s late. Go home, everyone.” He left without a thank-you.

  Boggs and Smith each showered upstairs for a good fifteen minutes. They saw garbage whenever they closed their eyes. Garbage and a body. They put on their civvies and stuffed their rancid blues into trash bags. They had only one spare each, so they’d need to get these washed immediately. Boggs had his mother—financial good sense and practicality meant that he still lived with his parents—while Smith paid a woman on his block to do his.

  Boggs was on his way out, nodding a good morning to Eakins at the front desk, when he heard the basement phone ringing. He stopped, considered for a moment, then jogged down and unlocked the precinct door. The phone was on its sixth ring by the time he lifted the receiver.

  “Officer Boggs.”

  “This is Records.” It was a woman’s voice, so hushed he could hardly hear her. “Did you call about Underhill?”

  “Yes. Yes, that was me.”

  “Well, we never had this conversation, but what do you need to know?”

  It had been hard to tell because of her whisper, but now he was sure of it: this wasn’t the same lady who’d told him off earlier.

  “I had thought he was cited for a traffic violation the night of the ninth, but she told me there wasn’t anything—”

  “I know, I heard that part. But what else? You’d best hurry, she’ll be back soon.”

  “His arrest record. Any priors. And his address, occupation. Anything.”

  “He’s ex-APD.”

  Boggs sat down. “When was he on the force?”

  “Until ’44 or ’45. Toward the end of the war, I remember.”

  The facts and ramifications were coming too fast for Boggs to assemble at once. If Underhill was ex-APD, then Dunlow must have known him. Which at least partially accounted for the easy rapport between the two of them that night, the way Underhill’s singing taunt had won a familiar smile from Dunlow.

  But also: McInnis likely knew Underhill. Which would explain the look on the sergeant’s face when Boggs had said the name a few hours ago.

  “He looked a little young for retirement,” Boggs said.

  “He didn’t retire. He was forced out.”

  “Why?”

  “Shoot, I gotta go. I’ll try and get you something.”

  “What’s your name, ma’am?”

  But she’d already hung up.

  5

  THE NEXT NIGHT, Rake was filing a report at headquarters when he heard someone say “Dead girl.”

  “What dead girl?”

  Girl used to make him think woman but now that he had a daughter the word had forever changed. He heard “dead girl” and thought of a toddler in a pink dress. A car accident, a stray bullet, a drowning. One little life ended and so many others permanently scarred.

  The other cop clarified: “girl” as in nigger adult female.

  Rake read the report. In a trash heap. Yellow dress, locket. One bullet wound in the chest. No name or ID, nothing physically distinguishing save for a birthmark on her right shoulder. Filed by Negro officers Boggs and Smith.

  “Anybody been to the brothels?” Rake asked out loud, to no one in particular.

  “Not tonight, but maybe later,” someone joked. Laughter from the others.

  “I mean, is she a whore or just somebody who got shot?”

  Another beat cop sighed as he walked past and said, “She came in all covered in garbage. I don’t imagine any detectives will be lining up to take that one, but I’m sure you’re welcome to sniff around.”

  “We are born naked and covered in shit, and so shall we exit,” someone else mused.

  “She wasn’t naked, according to this,” Rake said.

  “Well, she’s naked now.”

  Hours later, Rake and Dunlow sank into their chairs at the Hotbox, a diner two blocks from Terminal Station. It catered mostly to rail yard workers but became a de facto police cafeteria in these post-midnight hours, as it was one of the few places in the city legally allowed to stay open all night.

  “If it isn’t Grits Rakestraw!” Brian Helton’s voice called out.

  Laughter from all over the dining room. Rake willed that his cheeks not turn red, though they probably did, as Helton and his partner, Bo Peterson, walked in.

  Rake had been hearing a lot of the “Grits” line. Officers in his presence made a point of discussing what they’d eaten for breakfast, as if this was the funniest damn thing they’d ever heard.

  “They do serve grits here all night, I believe,” Helton said. He had short blond hair turning gray and he looked like the sort of fellow who might have once had a lot of promise, longer ago than he cared to admit. Perhaps he’d been skilled at throwing a ball of some kind and had married a cheerleader who was still distraught over the fact that they couldn’t afford to live in a better neighborhood.

  “Flavored with niggers’ tears,” Peterson added. With their similar manners and surnames, Rake saw Helton and Peterson as basically the same person, divided in half by some horrible accident. Though he changed his mind about which was which. Peterson had darker hair and a rounder face, but otherwise their differences appeared minor.

  They dragged another table over to join Rake and Dunlow for “lunch,” which Rake still thought was a strange thing to call a meal you ate at midnight when you worked the night shift.

  “They’re saying Henry Wallace is gonna try to give a speech here next month,” Peterson said.

  “I don’t care to discuss politics at work,” Dunlow said. Dunlow still had fading bruises on his face from his tussle with Triple James. “Nor anywhere else.” He belched.

  “Well, our esteemed former VP has made it his own personal policy not to give any talks before segregated audiences,” Helton explained. “So if he gives a talk here, that means some of us will have the honor of arresting him.”

  Wallace had served as vice president under FDR, one of the most hated men in the South, for one term before being unceremoniously dumped in favor of Truman in ’44. Now he was running, against the man who had supplanted him, as a third-party agitator. Wallace had gone hard left during his time in the political wilderness, attracting all manner of Communists and socialists, railing against segregation and doing what he could to cause trouble in the South.

&nb
sp; “They won’t let us arrest the ex-VP, you idiot,” Peterson said. “We’d just have to shut it down.”

  “Where’s it happening?” Rake asked.

  “Haven’t said yet. They’ll likely announce it as last-minute as possible.”

  After they’d eaten and the waitress had cleared all but their coffee mugs, Helton asked, “Y’all hear the latest on Nigger Bayle? He’s gonna be reinstated.”

  “Bullshit,” Dunlow said.

  “It’s bull but it’s happening.”

  Dunlow was the one who’d reported Negro Officer Bayle for consumption of alcohol. He claimed that he’d seen Bayle among a trio of Negroes drinking from flasks outside a bar. Rake had learned over the ensuing days that things hadn’t quite happened that way—it was actually one of Dunlow’s Negro informants who’d seen it, supposedly.

  “Next time you want to get a nigra suspended,” Helton said to Dunlow, “say you saw him doing something more lurid.”

  “Bad enough we got coloreds wearing the same badge as us,” Dunlow said, “but some of them are drinkers, too.”

  Though Rake was officially Dunlow’s partner, he had worked a handful of shifts with Peterson and Helton in his first few weeks, as the Department liked the rookies to learn from as many veterans as possible. Rake swiftly determined that he had little to learn from them. Like Dunlow, they were on the wrong side of forty for beat cops, and they were far more interested in getting cuts from gamblers and moonshiners than in enforcing the law.

  The first time Rake had met Peterson, the older cop had extended his left hand, saying, “I have a friend in Black Rock.” Rake had extended his right, puzzling over the comment. Their two opposite hands had hovered there like a couple of mismatched shoes. Peterson had repeated his comment and kept his left hand dangling. Who the hell shakes hands with his left? Rake had thought. Then Peterson had pulled his hand back and walked away without another word. It wasn’t until Rake saw Peterson have a similar encounter with another rookie cop that Rake put a few things together. That time, Peterson and the other cop shook with their left hands, the fingers loose, almost like two fish flopping against each other. They’d noticed Rake watching them then, and had glanced at each other, which was when Rake realized that the left-hand thing was a secret Kluxer greeting.