Darktown: A Novel

by Thomas Mullen

  Dunlow stopped the car and got out. Boggs was lying on the ground. Nothing looked broken or bent the wrong way, yet. The colored officer was trying to get to his feet, but his body wasn’t moving as fast he probably wanted it to.

  There was a bottle in Dunlow’s hand, and he swung it at Boggs’s thick skull. The bottle shattered—Boggs’s skull did, too, maybe—and then Boggs was flat on the ground and his eyes were shut.

  He patted Boggs down, assuming the man at least had a knife on him, but he was clean. What a fool. He grabbed Boggs’s feet and dragged him to the Ford. The keys were still in the ignition, so Dunlow had to leave the body there on the road while he walked back to retrieve them. Another car passed in the other direction, but Dunlow eyed it good and slow and the car didn’t stop.

  He popped open the trunk and lifted Boggs, pieces of glass falling all around. He dumped him into the trunk and shut it.

  As he walked back to the front of the car, he saw an old black man standing outside the entrance to a shoe store. The light had been off, but the door was open, as this must be the proprietor on his way home after cleaning up for the night. The Negro was tall and gaunt, his hair mostly white, his eyes wide but shrinking fast, realizing he’d been caught watching.

  “Get your black ass home, uncle, and be quick about it.”

  The cobbler muttered a quiet “yes, sir” and his head bowed as he walked off quickly. Dunlow smiling, easing back in the car and hitting the gas.

  35

  RAKE COULD NOT have planned it better: Silas Prescott was drunk.

  “Officer. Hello.” His cheeks were red and already Rake could smell the booze on his breath, seeping through the man’s pores. He wore a white dress shirt and slacks, the tie only a memory.

  “I’m sorry to bother you again, Mr. Prescott.” Rake was not in uniform, yet he was not surprised Prescott had recognized him so quickly in his civvies. Manners would normally dictate that Rake ask if now was a bad time, but the last thing he was going to do was squander such an opportunity. “Won’t take but a minute.”

  Again Prescott was either too polite or stupid to resist inviting Rake into his home. As before, a jazz LP was circling a record player. The house was no more furnished than last time. Rake wondered if Prescott drank alone like this every night, and the only difference between the two visits was that Rake had come by earlier that first time, whereas now it was nearing ten.

  Prescott seemed too preoccupied to ask why Rake wasn’t in uniform. Which was fine. Being in plainclothes made Rake look like a detective, he knew. He could get into all kinds of trouble for what he was doing right now. But a man is inclined to draw his own ethical borders on a day when his partner had actually aimed a weapon at his head. Dunlow hadn’t pulled the trigger, but he’d silently mouthed Bang, and the expressionless way in which he’d done so left Rake with little doubt that Dunlow was warming to the idea of ridding himself of his troublesome young partner. Rake was tired of playing by rules that had been written in a way to empower bastards like Dunlow and made his own life difficult.

  “I just wanted to ask why you lied to me, Mr. Prescott.”

  The jazz was still on, a slow kind of meandering thing not at all like the swing and big band tunes Rake was used to. This must be what the college boys played now.

  “I’m sorry?” A lonely bottle of whiskey stood on the table of the kitchenette behind him.

  “Lily Ellsworth did not steal from your parents. Not money, anyway. Not anything tangible.”

  An awkward smile. “I’m afraid I don’t know what you mean. She stole jewelry from us.”

  “That’s what your parents told you? And you believed them?”

  “What are you trying to say?”

  “Did you know she was your sister?”

  Prescott’s face could not have been more pale. “That’s not true.”

  “It is true. Your father slept with her mother a long time ago, and she was born nine months later. That’s how it works.”

  Prescott was shaking his head. Something in the man’s eyes conveyed horror but not shock. It was more like he was confronting the awful realization that the world is indeed as twisted as he had been warned. A sense of rueful confirmation.

  “You fucked your own sister.”

  Prescott backed up a step. Then he turned and ran, bumping into the table the record player was on. The needle jumped to the middle of another song, much faster, a saxophone firing off sixteenth notes while cymbals crashed.

  Prescott pushed open a side door and Rake thought Gun. He’s going for his piece, the paltry .22 he’d used on Lily. Rake’s gun was in a holster in the small of his back, and he reached for it now, but then a sound informed him that Prescott was not going for a gun at all. He was throwing up.

  Rake walked up to the open doorway and turned on the light that Prescott had been in too much of a rush to get to. The son of a U.S. congressman and grandson of a Georgia state senator was kneeling before his toilet, letting loose all that whiskey, the stench foul even from a few feet away.

  “Oh God,” Prescott said as he panted, spittle hanging from his lips. “Oh dear Lord.”

  “And when you found out she was your sister, you snapped. You killed her.”

  “No. No.” It was hard to tell if that was a denial or if there was something else Prescott wanted to say, but couldn’t, because he was throwing up again.

  When Boggs woke, his head was screaming all kinds of cruel things and his body was being bumped up and down and left and right. His head ached through a dull fog, and he still felt the dreary awful vestiges of his dream, a car racing toward him, and then Dunlow swinging at him.

  He realized he was in a car. The trunk of a car. He tried to move and his heart told him not to. No, not his heart, his ribs. Something was broken or fractured or at the very least pointing in the wrong direction. He was able to move both arms, but not very much, since he was crammed in there. He tried to roll onto his back and he felt something on his chest, lots of somethings. He used his hand to try to figure out what they were—then bam, the car hit a pothole and he sucked in his breath from the stabbing in his chest.

  The things on his chest were shards of glass. The bottle Dunlow had broken on his skull. He picked at the pieces, some of which had torn through his shirt and were half lodged in his skin from his having been thrown on top of them. One of the pieces was big, smooth on one side—even rounded—and jagged on the other. The neck of the bottle, shorn in half. Sharp as a razor and just as long. Delicately, he clasped it in the palm of his hand.

  Then he prayed.

  He prayed to Jesus for forgiveness for all he’d done wrong. Which was a lot, lately. He prayed for forgiveness for the envy and scorn he felt toward his cousin who had fled Atlanta for Chicago. He prayed the Lord forgive the way he had not been honoring his father much lately, for the anger he’d shown the reverends, for talking back to the group of wise men who had handed him that letter to give to the police chief. Lord, there is so much I don’t know and don’t understand and as I try to grow into this world I want to do the best I can, and sometimes I think I know what I’m doing, but I see now that I know nothing, and I should have done what my father asked and I should be selling insurance or even preaching your gospel at the reverend’s side, though, as you know very well by now, Lord, I wouldn’t make a very good preacher and you probably wouldn’t have me anyway. Forgive the pride that allowed me to try to “solve” what had happened to Lily Ellsworth, for making everything so much worse for her family, for leading to the death of her father and now the loss of their home and—please, Lord, make sure that the others are safe, please ensure her two brothers are not hanging from branches or beaten half to death in some forsaken Peacedale cell. If it’s your will to take me now, you may do so, but please spare them, please let those two Ellsworth boys grow old, and Dunlow can have me in their place.

  That last
part of the offer vanished from his mind the moment the trunk popped open. Dunlow was aiming a .45 at Boggs’s head. What Boggs felt toward this man was hatred so intense it didn’t seem possible it could coexist with a loving God.

  “Wake up, nigger.”

  Boggs didn’t say anything.

  “You killed Chandler Poe. And I’ll hear you say it.”

  “I didn’t kill anyone.” Moving his jaw made the top of his head hurt.

  “You’re a damned liar. I’ll give you one more chance.”

  They were in the woods somewhere. Full boughs hung behind Dunlow, though what kind Boggs couldn’t tell. Dark. The night crawlers were loud and there was no other sound, no traffic or music or shouting or breaking bottles or anything at all human. He didn’t know how long he’d been unconscious or how far they’d traveled.

  “I don’t know what it is you think of me, Dunlow. But I’m not a killer.”

  Dunlow waited for what felt like a very, very long time.

  “Well, that makes one of us.”

  With the hand that wasn’t holding his gun, Dunlow reached forward and then the trunk lid slammed the scant amount of light away.

  A minute or so later, Boggs heard the digging.

  “Enough,” Rake told Prescott, backing up a step to get some air. “Get yourself together.”

  Prescott leaned back, wiped the spit from his mouth, and slowly went about getting to his feet. He washed his mouth out at the sink. Rake walked into the parlor and turned off the jazz. When he turned back around, Prescott was leaning his elbows on the sink and staring into his own eyes.

  “It’s not like you said.”

  “It is. Your mother won’t let you around the new maid because you took too many liberties with the last one. That’s something of a family tradition, apparently.” He didn’t know this, but it was a guess—Boggs had told him the new maid, Lily’s replacement, had realized she was always sent home before Silas was expected at his mother’s place. “You forced yourself on Lily—at the time she was just the maid to you, because your father was still in Washington and she hadn’t confronted him yet. After what you did to her, she probably wanted to run, but she felt she’d come too far, she had to meet your father. Or maybe you hadn’t raped her yet at that point, I don’t know.” Prescott was still staring at himself, not denying anything or shaking his head or even seeming to breathe. Rake continued, “When he did come back for just a weekend, she and he had a conversation. I imagine he panicked, and he paid her off to keep quiet. But then something else happened. Maybe he’d told her never to come back, but she came back anyway. Maybe you were home that night, but he wasn’t, because he’d already gone back north. Maybe she caused a scene in front of your mother, shouted or something, and that set you off. So your mama called your old man in Washington and then he called some people in Atlanta who knew how to clean up messes for important folks like you all.”

  “She was sweet,” Prescott said, nearly a whisper. “She was a very sweet girl. We spoke a lot. I was around a fair amount then. One of my restaurants had gone under. . . . I didn’t have much to occupy myself. Mother never liked it when I spoke to the help. I did it anyway, to spite her. Lily, she seemed like a smart girl.” He spat into the sink again. “The kind of Negro that makes you think the things my father says about them maybe aren’t true. People like my father say what they need to say to get what they want. It’s a curious thing, to look up to someone like that.”

  “I’m sure you’ve suffered a great deal.”

  “I liked her. She even told me about this . . . group she’d joined. The sort of thing my father never would have tolerated, so of course I encouraged her. And one night, maybe I’d had a bit too much to drink . . .”

  He didn’t fill in the blanks, which Rake appreciated.

  “Only the one time. Just a few days later, my parents told me she’d stolen and they’d fired her.”

  “You really didn’t know?”

  “I was angry. Angry at my parents, at first, for what they were telling me and the way they’d driven away this girl I rather liked. I tried to find her, I drove all through Darktown, but she’d vanished. Then I realized she’d duped me. She’d made me think she was a sweet girl, she’d let me have a little fun, but it was just so she could get her hands on our money.” The more he spoke, the less Rake liked him. Did Prescott really believe she’d enjoyed herself? Was he still telling himself it wasn’t rape? When she knew all along they were siblings? “She’d waited for me to get my guard down, then she’d stolen from us. My father was right about them, you see. It’s not very pleasant to be deceived by a Negro, Officer. And it’s even less pleasant to realize a father like mine is right about anything.”

  So the congressman wasn’t as friendly to Negroes as Boggs had wanted to think. Rake wasn’t surprised. “Your father is wrong about quite a bit, actually.”

  “Then one night some men I didn’t know were at Mother’s, talking to her privately, but I put a few things together. They were police, and they’d taken her somewhere. I was so angry, I wanted to confront Lily, ask her who she thought she was to steal from us. At one point Mother stepped out and I heard the men talking amongst themselves, and they mentioned a brothel I’ve . . . heard of. A few days later I went there and the madam told me she wasn’t there, but I knew she was lying. I waited in my car, and not more than an hour later one of those same men parks in front, walks in, and takes her away.”

  “Brian Underhill, an ex-cop.”

  “I never caught the gentleman’s name. I followed them, but he pulled some crazy U-turn and hit a light and got flagged down by Negro policemen. I had to drive away but eventually I found him again, then lost him, and then I saw her running through the streets.”

  The lid of the trunk opened again and Dunlow backed up two paces to give Boggs room. “Out.”

  “You’re making a mistake, Dunlow.”

  “I don’t want your blood all over my trunk but I’ll shoot you now if I have to. Out.”

  Boggs wondered how far away from Auburn Avenue he was. He had been hoping that perhaps by some miracle Smith might have been tailing Dunlow, that his partner was creeping through the woods to rescue him, but if so, that would have happened by now. It had taken Dunlow a good half hour to dig the grave that Boggs expected would be the last thing he’d ever see, and the white man was panting and sweaty and he smelled very drunk indeed even from a few paces away but the gun was steady in his hand.

  Boggs slowly got out of the trunk. He held one of his hands to his ribs, as if they hurt—they did hurt, actually, quite a bit, but the reason he held his hand there was to conceal the sheared bottle neck that hand clasped. When he braced himself against the lid of the trunk to lift himself out, the neck cut into his palm but he took the pain because he couldn’t drop the neck or let Dunlow see it. He stood and his head pounded, like the night he and Little had broken up a fight in the street. Lord God, twice already I’ve had bottles broken against my skull. The experience was not any easier to endure the second time.

  “Step over there.”

  He turned and took one step to his right, then slumped over as if falling. He braced himself against the side of Dunlow’s car and let his body go limp. His knees were buckling and he was about to hit the ground when he felt one of Dunlow’s hands at his neck.

  “Goddammit, nigger, don’t be falling on my car.”

  But he wasn’t falling, only pretending to. With Dunlow right behind him now, he swung around with his right hand, the sharp edge of the bottle neck facing out, and struck Dunlow. He’d spun around so fast he wasn’t entirely sure where he hit him. Then an explosion and the sound of shattering glass. Boggs swung again, and again, and with his other arm he hit at Dunlow’s right hand, the one with the gun in it, and there was another explosion and a cloud of gun smoke was hanging in the thick air between them. Boggs swung again with his right and this ti
me the bottle’s neck wasn’t in his hand anymore, he’d dropped it, and Dunlow fell back a step and Boggs heard a metal-on-metal sound that hopefully meant the gun had fallen against the car and was on the ground somewhere.

  Dunlow held a hand to the left side of his neck, then pulled it away and looked at it and his eyes were wide and white and now Boggs could see the darkness pumping out of his neck and flowing down his chest, like Boggs had simply reached over and opened the man up, turned a spigot. Dunlow was pressing his hand against his own neck as if trying to shut the spigot but there was no way. He tried to back up again and this time he fell.

  Boggs’s hands were shaking but he dropped to the ground and found the gun, which was hot because he touched the barrel first. He stood again and aimed it at Dunlow’s chest. It was rising and falling so fast, as though he was full of life and breath, as though he could never die.

  “Oh Jesus. You black son of a bitch.”

  The bottle neck had cut a four-inch gash in Dunlow’s artery.

  Boggs used his other hand to touch himself now, searching for a bullet wound, and though he felt the sting from some of the places where the shattered glass had cut him, nothing hurt enough to be a bullet wound.

  Dunlow’s chest was rising and falling less enthusiastically now. He was no longer looking at his foe, just staring into the sky.

  The thought of offering some final words to Dunlow never even occurred to Boggs. The shock was enough, as was the thought that Dunlow might remember that he had another gun in his pocket or somehow heal himself.

  Boggs was still aiming the gun at Dunlow’s chest even past the point it was clear that the chest wasn’t moving anymore.

  Then Boggs sank to his knees and, seeing the shallow grave only a couple of feet away, scrambled toward it and threw up. After he was finished, he coughed, spat again, then sat back.

  That’s when he heard someone approaching on foot.