Darktown: A Novel

by Thomas Mullen

  “What I know of Brian Underhill is that he is not a murderer.” A freight train blew its lonesome wail. “He’s a former cop. Worked fifteen, sixteen years or so.”

  Rake knew this part already—he’d looked the man up. Wanting to know a few of the answers before Dunlow offered any, so he could note discrepancies. “What happened?”

  “Damned lottery sting.”

  Four years ago, a state-led investigation of the city’s sundry lottery schemes had turned up plentiful examples of police corruption. Numbers running was one of the biggest businesses in Atlanta—some journalists figured it was possibly third only to trains and textiles. The not-so-little, not-so-secret dirty little secret was that Atlanta’s finest were often involved, protecting the numbers runners, taking orders, receiving their cut.

  Nine cops were fired after the investigation was splashed all over the Journal’s and the Constitution’s front pages, no doubt furthering the career of some district attorney or other. From the police’s perspective, those nine cops were scapegoats taking the fall for senior officers. Rake had been in Europe then, but he still heard enough stories about the sting from aggrieved cops who complained about it the way they griped about a similar operation against the Kluxers a few years back.

  “You know him?” Rake asked.

  “Well enough. He was a detective on Homicide, and I’d occasion to work with him a few times. Didn’t make all that much of an impression, tell you the truth.”

  “He made enough of one for you to say pretty certainly that he isn’t a murderer.”

  “Are you interrogating me, Officer Rakestraw?”

  Rake tried to use a sincerely surprised tone, which he realized he wasn’t very good at. “I’m just asking a few questions. He’s the last person to be seen with this girl, and he’s—”

  “According to the monkeys.”

  “—the only lead anyone’s got, so it seems worth pursuing.”

  “And why is that? Educate me on your thought process.”

  “Well, you yourself just said there’s reason to believe she was sleeping with a white man. Maybe it was Underhill. Maybe they had a spat, or he thought she was cheating.”

  “Best not to let a fellow like him hear you say that.”

  “Why not? Because he’s the kind of fellow who might shoot someone and throw the body out like garbage?”

  “You think you’re very clever.”

  “Just trying to figure a few things out.”

  “The report—which, by the way, you aren’t the only person in this car that’s read it—says she was shot with a .22. People may say some bad things about Underhill, but him carrying a little .22 ain’t one of them.”

  “What are some of the bad things people say about him?”

  Dunlow shook his head. “Giving me a goddamn headache.”

  At ten o’clock the next morning, Rake staked out the last known address of Brian Underhill, a four-story brick apartment building in Mechanicsville, south of downtown. The neighborhood had become overcrowded during the war, with so many men needed at the rail yards, and had remained overcrowded afterward. There was just enough foot traffic for Rake to feel slightly conspicuous there in his parked car but not so much so that he gave up.

  He needed to know what this man’s story was. The fact that Dunlow had all but warned him off only made this more necessary. Some basic research had revealed Underhill’s address, a copy of his photograph (four years old now, but good enough), and a brief outline of his truncated career. If Rake had been a detective in Homicide, he would have had more resources at his disposal, and a legitimately helpful partner. But he was just a beat cop, and besides, it was clear now that Lily Ellsworth’s murder would never be investigated. Eventually some Negro arrested for some other murder would “confess” to hers as well, and presto, the crime would be solved. No one would ever know, or care, who killed Lily.

  Did Rake care? Yes, he did. He didn’t think a girl of any color should be killed, dropped in an alley, and forgotten. He took his responsibility to enforce the law seriously, even if others did not.

  Not that he was motivated solely by pure intentions. What motivated him was this: the inkling, the strong hint, the tingle on the back of his neck that his partner knew far more about the murder than he was letting on. His partner, who had already tried to get one of the colored cops fired for drinking based on zero evidence and who delighted in provoking them. Rake had never asked to be assigned to a corrupt cop, and he’d hoped he would eventually be reassigned. But waiting around for a transfer felt like a luxury he could no longer afford.

  So he sat in the car and waited. He had lied to his wife and told her his shift was earlier than it was, all so he’d have two precious hours to follow Underhill before roll call.

  The car radio on, he listened to the latest from the Democratic National Convention in Philadelphia, where delegates had narrowly approved a civil rights plank, no doubt encouraged by Truman’s surprising decisions to desegregate the armed forces and set up a federal Committee on Civil Rights. The vote outraged Southern Democrats; now the Mississippi and Alabama delegates had stormed out of the convention hall and were said to be forming their own States Rights Democratic Party, with Strom Thurmond their nominee. Some were dubbing them the “Dixiecrats” and said this splintering would all but hand the election to Dewey. Rake turned off the radio.

  Sitting there in the hot car, nothing to occupy his mind, he found himself thinking about his brother. Curtis had been the joker in the family, the schemer. The one convinced they could make a fortune selling lemonade on the sidewalk, or by digging for treasure. One of his favorite tricks was to tackle his younger brother from behind, preferably when other people were around to see it. Rake’s head was on a swivel from a young age, always aware that an ambush was possible, yet always surprised when it happened. Curtis’s ability to plan an entire day around being in the right place at the right time was uncanny. The ambush/tackling phase had faded by the time Curtis was old enough to drive, and cause worse trouble. Curtis no doubt would have loved being a cop on a stakeout, waiting patiently for the subject to emerge, so long as there was someone beside him to tell jokes to for hour after hour. The realization made Rake miss him all the more.

  Underhill did nothing of interest that first day, other than walking five blocks to a diner, eating a very late breakfast, and then walking home.

  He did nothing of interest the following day, either. Yet Rake kept at it.

  The third time Rake kept watch was at night, three in the morning, after his shift ended. He had expected Underhill would be asleep, but the lights were on. He had slid into a parking space, a block away from the building, when he recognized one of the cars parked on the other side of the street.

  Dunlow’s.

  Rake got out of the car, closing the door silently. Dodging puddles from an earlier shower and walking on the grassy strip between road and sidewalk to be as quiet as possible.

  From the car Rake had been able to see that the blinds were down in Underhill’s second-floor apartment, the windows cracked open for some air. He squeezed between two holly bushes as he positioned himself along the side of the building, leaning on the damp wall beside a window.

  This part of the city was remarkably quiet at night, other than the locusts. At first all he could hear was someone snoring in the first-floor apartment. Then he heard men’s voices, just short of intelligible. Dunlow’s voice. Another voice, which must be Underhill’s. Was there a third? No, he didn’t think so.

  Then the voices got louder. He heard Underhill say, “This isn’t your goddamn problem,” but Dunlow’s response wasn’t as clear, though he caught the word “problem” again. Dunlow must have been farther from the window, or had his back to it.

  “Smartest damn thing you’ve ever done,” Underhill said. The next exchange he couldn’t make out. Then Dunlow said something incl
uding “inside man.” The voices ranged in and out of clarity, though a few times Rake thought he heard them refer to “the Trust Division,” whatever that was.

  “Because I want more,” he heard Underhill say. “I’m tired of taking the bones they toss. Got something worth a whole lot more now.”

  Then quiet again. Rake felt less tired now, charged to be on the verge of discovering something.

  Lügen haben kurze Beine, Rake thought. Lies have short legs. Dunlow had acted—twice now—like he barely knew Underhill, yet clearly that wasn’t the case.

  He’d lost track of how long it had been quiet when he heard the front door open. Shit. Dunlow was leaving already. The holly bushes on either side of Rake were taller than he was, and the nearest streetlight wasn’t enough to reveal him. He squatted down all the same. After a few seconds, he could see Dunlow sauntering toward his old Dodge, opening the door, getting in. Driving away.

  Whether Dunlow noticed Rake’s car just across the street from his own was something Rake would have to wonder about.

  15

  TOMMY SMITH SAT at the back corner table of Ruffin’s Royal Hideaway. On the table before him was a loaded gun, and just beyond it, the two wide eyes of a man he’d very much like to give a third eye.

  The music from the trumpet and bass and drums was making everything seem dizzy, every now and again a cymbal crashed and the floor would shake, the gun bouncing a bit on the table, bouncing ever so closer to the long-fingered but folded hands of Alonzo, who, yes, damn well yes he deserved a bullet in the head, Smith thought. Yes.

  How had Tommy gotten here?

  Things tended to happen this way with him. He tended to make decisions after he’d made decisions, if that made any sense. His uncle had long commented on this trait, the impulsive way Tommy got himself into fixes and only later tried to invent explanations as to how and why. Sometimes those fixes turned out to be good things, like the day he walked up to City Hall and filled out an application to be a police officer despite the fact that he’d scarcely given thought to the occupation until that very moment. Sometimes those fixes were not terribly good at all, like when he’d beaten Chandler Poe half to death in that alley.

  And here, now, the gun on the table. Was this really the smartest thing he could be doing?

  It had started with him deciding to go hear some music. Innocent enough. He lived an easy stroll from Ruffin’s Royal, a dimly lit second-floor nightclub that sat over a hardware store. It absorbed the spillover crowds who couldn’t get into the Top Hat or Shim Sham a block away. Tommy had needed an escape, from the job and his troubles and even his partner. He liked Boggs well enough, but the man was so damned proper. Almost emotionless. A bit too skilled at retreating beneath his shell. Smith had a shell, too—what Negro in the Jim Crow South did not?—but he came out of it when he needed to. Men like Boggs, though, either became the shell—hollowed out, lacking a heart, reducing themselves to a performance for white folks—or got so bottled up by the pressure that they would one day explode. And that was a risky thing to be around.

  Tommy sat at the bar, exchanging some friendly words with Ruffin, the owner and barkeep, a man who seemed pleased with Smith’s efforts to put away all the moonshiners. Legal providers of alcohol, like Ruffin, were no fans of the way moonshiners from the North Georgia mountains drove the hundred miles south with barrels of illegal and often dangerous concoctions that working men could buy at random houses, the buyers never needing to walk into a tax-paying establishment like this. Ruffin had shook Smith’s hand and thanked him for stopping by, as if Smith were some politician and not just a fellow who needed to hear some music. Ruffin told Smith that the first drink was on the house, but Smith graciously refused, opting instead to pay for his Co-Cola.

  Over the last few days, Smith had asked Ruffin and nearly every bartender near Auburn Avenue if they’d ever seen a girl matching Lily Ellsworth’s description. But with no photo—Otis still hadn’t provided them with one—he’d gotten no leads.

  Smith had sought out Ruffin’s because the joint had air-­conditioning. This being Wednesday, Smith hadn’t thought it would be crowded, but he figured wrong. Every table was packed and clusters of people danced before the band, delighted to be someplace where they could move like that and not drop dead from heat exhaustion.

  He was wearing his lightest gray jacket over a blue shirt, the sleeves rolled up, a gray tie loosely knotted. He felt a fat drop of sweat roll down his back as he glanced across the room and saw three women sitting in one of the booths. He recognized one from high school, Delia Something. Friendly, he’d remembered, and pleasant enough to look at, but whoever was sitting to her left demanded attention.

  She had a thin, narrow face, like some Egyptian princess, eyes small and jewellike against that smooth skin. Her hair was pulled back in a ponytail and she wore a sky-blue blouse that matched his shirt, a thin gold necklace two inches above her heart.

  The air-conditioning and music and Coke were nice, but it was company he had ventured out for. He’d caught her eye twice by the time he found himself wandering over to their table.

  Delia smiled warily, having seen him from the moment he’d left his stool, his casual jaguar gait not disguised in the slightest.

  “Delia,” Smith asked, one hand casually in the pocket of his high-waisted pants, “how is it that you always surround yourself with such beautiful friends?”

  “This is Tommy Smith, ladies. One of Atlanta’s new police officers. So hide that contraband in your purses.”

  He hadn’t spoken to Delia in more than a year, he figured, yet she knew what he did these days. Everyone seemed to.

  “I’m here in an unofficial capacity.” Turning to the girl on the left, he extended a hand and asked, “And you are . . . ?”

  “Susanna Jones,” and she let him take her hand, which was cool and clammy from clasping her drink. He lifted her hand to his lips. He ignored Delia’s rolling eyes, and he hoped it wasn’t too rude how he was ignoring the third girl. If she was Susanna’s friend, she was no doubt used to being ignored.

  “I would be delighted to share a dance with you.”

  “It’s rather warm for dancing,” Susanna replied, her head held at the slightest angle to the right, her left eyebrow raised.

  “It sounds to me like they’re getting ready for a slower number.”

  “Really? You can just feel that?”

  “I have finely honed senses of perception.”

  “Girl,” Delia said, “just go and dance so we don’t need to hear no more of his lines.”

  His sense of perception had proven correct, for he and Susanna had barely found a spot on the floor when the band slowed down with a bluesy number that honestly wasn’t so great for dancing, but they were together, and there was music, and it was Wednesday night and even though he wasn’t drinking he had managed, for a moment, to forget everything he’d wanted to forget.

  She was a teacher, she told him.

  “I don’t go out to places like this usually, and I certainly can’t do something like this during the school year.”

  “Parents keep watch?”

  “We need to keep up a respectable image.”

  “This place is perfectly respectable.”

  She’d responded only with an “mmm hmm,” so low he didn’t hear it so much as feel it.

  The trumpeter, horn at his side, was singing something to the effect of his woman having a backside so firm he could bounce a penny off it.

  “How do you like being a policeman?” she asked a few bars later.

  “I’m rather fond of the uniform.”

  “And that’s a good reason to take a job that puts your life in danger?”

  “It’s not that dangerous. And it really is a smashing uniform.”

  “You can model it for me next time I’m arrested.”

  “You would have to fal
l a very long way for that to happen, Miss Schoolteacher.”

  “Sometimes I do want to murder some of those children.”

  The next song was not a slow one, not by any stretch of the imagination, nor was the one after that, or the next one, and right around there Smith lost count. The girl could dance, better than him even, which was impressive, as Tommy Smith was a man who knew his steps.

  Later, he was at the bar, ordering another Coke for himself and a gin and tonic for her, when the evening managed to nearly get ruined.

  He hadn’t noticed Alonzo come in because he’d been so busy dancing. Yet there the man was, Alonzo Keller, cardsharp and flimflam man, known to his low-life associates as Zo. A man guilty of an offense that Smith could not forgive. Zo was walking toward the bar, having not noticed Smith.

  “Thought I smelled something funny,” Smith said.

  Zo was tall, had a couple of inches on Smith, but he was thin and certainly didn’t carry himself like someone worth fearing. His kind was all about outsmarting others, and being just smart enough to find the right kind of stupid people to cheat money from.

  His retort was disappointing. “Hey there, Officer.”

  “That’s all you got for me?”

  Zo had a friend beside him, shorter but thicker. Both were light-skinned and wore white shirts with their sleeves rolled up, Zo’s tie striped red and green and the other’s tie nonexistent.

  “I’m not looking for no trouble,” Zo said as he slunk off. His friend was a step slower, so when Zo walked away, the friend was suddenly right there in Smith’s line of sight.

  The friend stared back and then some. “You got a problem, pretty boy?” he asked.

  Then Ruffin appeared, two drinks for Smith in his hand. Tommy dropped bills on the bar without looking at the barkeep. This would have been an ideal opportunity to turn this into a very different evening, Smith realized. Yet he managed to hold himself back. For now.

  “No problem at all,” he said with a smile.