Darktown: A Novel

by Thomas Mullen

  Dodd said, “If you think you are deserving of special treatment because you’re the only sergeant here that has to deal with nigger officers, you are mistaken. As I believe I’ve demonstrated over the years, I give no special treatment to anyone. We have jobs to do and we do them. Part of my job is to determine who killed that bootlegger, and if the evidence suggests that one of your boys did it, there will be a reckoning for that.”

  Which McInnis interpreted as: You will be to blame, Mac. If one of your boys killed a man and covered it up in his logs, it’s on you. This whole damned Negro cop experiment will go down, which the rest of us will be quite thrilled about. But your career will go down with it.

  “If your detectives muster up anything beyond Dunlow’s word, I’ll listen,” McInnis said, standing back up. He grabbed the doorknob. “ ’Til then, my boys have jobs to do, and so do I, sir.”

  That afternoon, before roll call, Boggs made his return visit to the doctor to have the stitches removed. When he gazed into a mirror, he was disappointed by the result. Halfway between his right eye and his hairline was a two-inch scar, the skin the slightest bit whiter and redder than the rest, though the doc claimed the coloring would change with time. The scar would still be visible, though.

  “It’s manly,” the doc said, putting Boggs’s money in his pocket. “Makes a statement.”

  Yeah, Boggs thought. It says, I’m a fellow people throw things at.

  At the Butler Street precinct, after roll call, McInnis invited Boggs into his office.

  “Have a seat.”

  Boggs obeyed, glancing at the two rivulets of water that were running down the wall. It had rained that afternoon, nothing torrential, but it didn’t take much to make the walls run. When they’d first started using this basement as their office, they’d put rags and old towels at the base of the walls to prevent the water from spreading on the bad days. But then the rags started to reek of mildew, so they pitched them. They had to choose their battles.

  McInnis seemed very interested in some paperwork on his desk. Time passed without a word from the sergeant, and Boggs realized that McInnis was deliberately waiting until the basement was clear of the other officers. When they heard the last pair of footsteps recede up the old wooden steps, McInnis finally looked up. He had small eyes, an icy clear blue that Boggs figured some white girls had once swooned over.

  “What would you like to talk to me about, Officer Boggs?” Hands folded neatly on the desk, neck hunched just the slightest bit like he was preparing to pounce.

  “I’m . . . I thought you called me in here, sir.”

  “I did. There’s something you want to talk to me about.”

  Lord, Lord. White men and their games. How they loved to draw things out.

  “I’m sorry, sir. I don’t understand.”

  “Officer Boggs. You’re probably the sharpest one I’ve got. I see that. And a preacher’s son to boot. Not the officer I would expect something like this to be happening to.” A pause. “In general I would say that I have, top to bottom, a downright passable octet of officers. But I’m disappointed in you, Officer Boggs.”

  Boggs had been bracing for a dressing-down about the Poe beating. He’d had time to rehearse his reaction, figure out the most believable lies. He and Smith hadn’t conferred as much as they probably should have, hadn’t made anything resembling a plan. Nothing beyond their terse conversation, immediately after the beating, that neither would discuss it.

  He knew his partner had crossed a line, and surely there would be repercussions. They were both under pressure, yes, and the moments when Boggs considered leaving the force were outnumbering the ones when he felt good about his job, yes, but still—Boggs had never snapped like that. He told himself he never would, that it wasn’t his nature, that he was better than that.

  He wondered if that was true.

  Maybe the beating wasn’t such a big deal. Boggs had seen a few white cops administer beat-downs like that. If they were here to be cops, to learn how to do the job and do it well, what was the harm in emulating the veteran cops? Did they want to be better than them, or become them?

  But what McInnis asked was, “What in God’s name did you think you were doing at the station?”

  Boggs relaxed, a bit. He knew he would be in trouble for this, but at least it was an infraction he could tell the truth about. “I’m sorry, sir. I felt that if the deceased’s father could see a Negro officer’s face, it might have made the process—”

  “The rules about your presence in that building could not possibly be clearer.” McInnis spoke slowly but he’d upped the volume. “I don’t care to hear your flawed reasoning. If you ever show your face there again, you will be suspended, at least. And that’s if the white officers don’t decide to make a lesson of you first. You’re lucky that didn’t happen already.”

  “Yes, sir.”

  McInnis stared him down for a moment. “Now, what else have you done wrong lately? . . . Oh, that’s right: Tell me about Chandler Poe.”

  “What about him, sir?”

  “You see him a few nights ago?”

  “The last time I saw him he was being acquitted by a judge.”

  “After all that hard work you and Smith put into building a case against him.”

  “Yes, sir.”

  “I never did get a chance to discuss that with you. But I imagine you were rather sore about that.”

  “Rather sore doesn’t begin to describe it, sir.”

  “And so I’m wondering what might have happened if you and your partner had chanced upon him late one night.”

  Sweat was running down his back. He hoped it wouldn’t trickle down his brow or shine on his forehead. He tended to get a shiny forehead, he knew. He didn’t have enough experience at lying to authority figures.

  “Hopefully the arrest scared him enough, sir, that he’ll move on.”

  “You haven’t seen him?”

  “No, sir.”

  “And you never will see him again. Because he’s dead.”

  Boggs had been trying to appear relaxed, but now he clenched his abdomen, his neck stiffened. All his muscles seizing tighter now, his brows low. “What happened?”

  “All I know is he was beaten and stabbed, but I was hoping you would tell me the details.”

  “Sergeant, I have no idea. I can make a list of his enemies and his acquaintances and we can go from there.”

  McInnis was watchful. Signs of trust nowhere near that calm, pale face.

  “I certainly hope that’s true, Officer. For your sake. Your reports for the past few evenings say nothing whatsoever about you coming into contact with Poe. I would hate for them to be anything less than accurate.”

  Coming into contact with Poe—even with Boggs’s nerves firing so wildly, he was impressed by that line. “They’re accurate, sir.”

  McInnis unfolded his hands, drummed some fingers on the desk. “Like I said, Boggs. You’re probably the smartest one I got. But you aren’t that smart. You understand?”

  “I’m sorry, I don’t.”

  “You aren’t so smart that you can get away with being incredibly stupid. That clear enough for you? And that reverend daddy of yours will be awfully disappointed if the colored police squad he worked so hard to build falls apart because of something his should-have-known-better son did. Is that clear enough?”

  “I haven’t done anything wrong, sir.”

  “Or your partner?”

  “My partner’s a good cop.”

  “Uh-huh. And you’d stand up for him even if it hurt your own standing?”

  “I’m . . . I guess I’m not that smart, sir, because I really don’t know what we’re talking about.”

  Silence. McInnis’s eyes small and serpent-still. “Go walk your beat, Officer.”

  Boggs stood up. The fear was already leaving him, a
nd in its wake he felt an anger that surprised him. He had turned toward the door, but now he faced McInnis again.

  “Filing an inaccurate report. You’ve drilled it into our heads, how bad that is.”

  “I’m so glad it made an impression.”

  “And I’ve always assumed it applied not just to beat cops,” Boggs said, hoping he wasn’t making a mistake, “but to everyone.”

  “Are you trying to ask me something, Officer?”

  He wished he could have done that, yes. Wished he could have said, Why did you alter my report about Lily Ellsworth’s body? Why did you cut out the reference to Underhill? What are you covering up?

  Instead, he said, “No, sir,” and took his leave.

  Boggs was able to hold the news inside him long enough to walk two blocks with Smith before finally letting it out: “Chandler Poe is dead.”

  “Dead?” Smith stopped.

  “And McInnis thinks we did it.”

  They had been passing a couple of small storefronts at the corner of Auburn, so they turned up a side street to avoid any pedestrians. It was hot and nearing the dinner hour.

  “What happened?” Smith asked.

  “I don’t know. McInnis said he was stabbed, but that’s all I got. So is there anything else you need to tell me?”

  “What? I did not stab the man. Hell, you were there.”

  “I was there when you beat the hell out of him. I wasn’t there later on.”

  Smith’s eyes widened, as if he was stunned his partner could believe such a thing. “I did not kill him.”

  Part of Boggs enjoyed seeing how panicked Smith was then. You and your damned temper is why we’re in this mess, so you damn well better be panicked.

  “Well,” Boggs said, “someone sure did.”

  “They’re trying to frame us. It’s probably Dunlow. First he tries to frame Bayle for drinking, it don’t work, so he kicks it up to murder.”

  “Whoever it is, I was in there lying to McInnis for you.”

  Smith was having too much trouble thinking through all the angles to bother with a simple thank-you. After a moment, he said, “Wonder why McInnis didn’t talk to me yet.”

  “I would expect that’s coming. He probably wanted to light a fire under me and see if it would smoke you out.”

  “You think he knows?”

  “That’s probably coming. You beat the man in front of two witnesses.”

  “Two drunks.”

  “That doesn’t matter! To them a drunk nigger’s word against a nigger cop’s word is just two niggers, and they’ll believe the one they want to believe. Most of the force has been looking for any excuse to fire us, and you’ve handed them one on a silver platter!”

  Smith stared out at the street as if refusing to even look at this truth.

  “It’s perfect—this way they get to throw us in jail, too, a lesson to everyone about what happens if you give an ounce of power to a colored man. Thank you so much, Tommy, you’ve set us back about eighty years.”

  “Don’t,” Smith put up a hand. “Don’t put this all on me. You may have the goddamn weight of the people on your shoulders, preacher’s son, but I’m just trying to do my job. Hell, you were there. You could have stopped me if you’d wanted to.”

  “What?”

  “You got a gun in your holster. You got two fists at the end of your arms. Unless you don’t know how to use them? All that mopping and sweeping at Fort Bragg made it kind of hard to learn to fight, huh? You just turned the other cheek and let me do the dirty work that you damn well wanted to do yourself. That way you could see it done and stand back and judge me at the same time.”

  Boggs did indeed have two fists at the end of his arms, clenched tight.

  “I did stop you, and if I hadn’t, then you’d have killed him with your bare hands, and we wouldn’t be having this discussion unless I was visiting your ass in jail.”

  If that vision frightened Smith, he had an odd way of showing it: he smiled.

  “You want to be rid of me, Lucius? Then go right in there and tell McInnis the truth.”

  “Oh, I’ve been tempted. I have been strongly tempted. But at this point, that would be like committing suicide.”

  An awkward silence passed. A car honked on Auburn and they both realized they were abandoning their post as they bickered.

  “We are both going to jail,” Lucius said, “unless we start looking out for each other.”

  “They all want us to fail, like you said,” Smith said. “Even McInnis. Maybe that’s why he altered your report on Ellsworth.”

  “I’ve been looking into that, actually.” He told Smith about his visit to Representative Prescott’s house.

  “You acting like you’re a detective. You know that ain’t our job.”

  “Which is why I’m not going to put anything I’ve learned so far into any report that McInnis or anyone else can erase.”

  Smith smiled. “Ooh, Mr. By-the-Book is flying off the cuff! I like it.”

  “We both know the white cops aren’t investigating it and are just looking for a way to put it on her old man, or any other black man they can find. So I’m going to find out who did it, yes. And if I need help, or if I need someone to cover for me, I’m calling on you, because you owe me.”

  “Hell, you don’t need to blackmail me into it. I’m in. If we’re going to get fired anyway, let’s have it be for a good reason. What’s our next step?”

  Boggs took the list of Lily Ellsworth’s addresses out of his pocket. “House calls.”

  18

  IF DUNLOW HAD been a problem for Rake before, now he was a crisis. He had despised Boggs’s and Smith’s very souls from the moment they had taken their oaths, and now he was convinced they’d killed one of his favorite informants.

  Rake tried pointing out that he had no evidence and was going solely on the word of two Negro bootleggers who would also testify, if called, that they were drunk that night. Yet Dunlow was not to be reasoned with. He insisted he would find more evidence—finally, the man seemed motivated to do his job—but he also claimed they already had plenty. This wasn’t for a criminal trial, after all, it was just to get the Negroes off the force. Once that happened, it wouldn’t be Dunlow’s problem any longer.

  Rake felt his fate becoming ever more tightly entwined with his partner’s. He needed to cut himself free now, before things got worse. Which meant closing the case of the former Negro Jane Doe. Determining the link between Dunlow and Underhill. Either finding evidence that Dunlow had been involved in a murder or, at the very least, convincing his superiors to get him a new partner.

  So he continued tailing Underhill. Twice in one week he tailed him to Mama Dove’s brothel, two blocks from the Decatur Street tracks. It was located farther away from the bars and nightclubs than most of the whorehouses, which seemed part of its allure. It was still in Darktown, but in a slightly more upscale corner of it, so that the white johns didn’t feel like they were risking their lives to satiate themselves. The white cops had no problem with a brothel in Darktown, and in fact had a disincentive to shutting her down: Mama Dove paid them off handsomely.

  Rake hadn’t actually seen her pay Dunlow, but he’d gathered what was happening when it had occurred. It had been a couple of months ago: Rake had been ordered to stay in the car while Dunlow ran inside. Less than ten minutes later, Dunlow was back, and they were driving away. Rake had been tempted to crack a line about how speedy a lover Dunlow was, but he’d thought the better of it.

  The third time Dunlow had paid such a visit, he apparently decided Rake was worthy of his trust: he handed Rake a crisp ten-dollar bill, his cut.

  Rake had said no thanks.

  Dunlow had insisted, deeply insulted.

  Rake had said no thanks.

  They had not spoken much for the remainder of that shift, and Dunlow
had never again paid a visit to Mama Dove’s while Rake was with him. Rake had little doubt the visits continued. He told himself his rejection of Dunlow was noble and not stupid, hoping he’d not cost himself far more than ten dollars.

  Though Underhill was no longer a cop, his visit to Mama Dove’s the other night had been about as brief as Dunlow’s were. If he wasn’t visiting her to jump in bed with a girl, why was he visiting?

  Five nights after tailing Underhill to the brothel the first time, Rake had been in the middle of a shift—driving alone, as Dunlow was at the station and Rake was returning after assisting with an arrest—when he happened upon Underhill’s Buick at an intersection. They’d been across from each other, heading opposite ways on Ponce. When the light had turned green, Underhill had continued east, so Rake went west for a block, then pulled a U-turn and tailed him, from farther away this time, since he was rather conspicuous in a squad car. By the time he was a few blocks from Mama Dove’s, he’d figured out where the man was headed. He pulled the squad car over a block from the brothel. From there he saw Underhill pull over, get out, and walk up to the front door, not even knocking as he entered.

  He was there less than five minutes.

  Rake then headed back to the station. The final two hours of his shift passed uneventfully. After clocking out, but still in uniform, he drove back to Mama Dove’s.