Death of a City

by Lionel White

  Five months, and he could remember that first meeting as though it had taken place an hour ago.

  He had tried to palm her off on one of his assistants, having in the past had experiences with ladies from the Youth Welfare League, but his secretary had said, “Miss Vargle insists that she see you personally, Mr. Asmore. She says that she is going to sit out there in the reception room until you do see her, if it takes all spring and half the summer. I really think she means it. She has that look in her eye.”

  He had smiled.

  “What look?”

  “Well, you know, a sort of determined look. Like these kids get. You know ...”

  “Kids? I thought you said she was one of the directors of the Youth Welfare ..

  “She is. But frankly, she doesn’t look more than a teenager herself. From out of town I think. Has a rather strange way of talking. But she has that really determined look. You know, like those student demonstrators we’ve been seeing on TV and, although she isn’t much bigger than a mouse, there is something about her..

  “Well, send her on in, then,” Asmore said, laughing. “We can’t afford to have our reception room taken over by foreign agitators, can we?”

  She had stalked in and the second he had raised his eyes to see her standing in front of his desk he had known he was going to have an argument on his hands although he hadn’t the faintest idea of what it might involve. The cornflower eyes were cold and furious, the rather large mouth under the small, turned-up nose was a straight line and he could see that her chin was quivering

  just slightly. She held her hands to her side and leaned slightly I forward as she glared at him.

  “I want you to release Nettie Harrison into my custody immediately,” she said. “And then I want you to withdraw the charges against her. A fifteen-year-old child is not a criminal and treating her like one is hardly the solution to a problem which people like you are too negligent or too cowardly to . . .”

  “Whoa up," Asmore said. “Slow down a little, Miss Vargle. It is Miss Vargle, isn’t it?”

  “It is. But that is not the point. I want you to...”

  “Now, please.” He had stood up then, half-smiling. “Why don’t you just sit down and take it easy, Miss Vargle? Tell me your problem. I may be negligent and even cowardly, but after all, I don’t know what you are talking about. I don’t know who Nettie Harrison is and in fact have never even heard of her. Why don’t you just tell me ..

  “Nettie Harrison is a child who is being detained in the city prison. A child who has been arrested and thrown in jail with prostitutes and hardened criminals. A little, underprivileged girl who..

  Asmore threw up his hands and lifted his shoulders in a defensive gesture.

  “Please. Please, now, Miss Vargle,” he said. “Just take it easy. When and why was this Nettie Harrison arrested?”

  “She was arrested yesterday afternoon and she has been held ever since. I understand she is being charged with larceny. Now, I want you to release ..

  “Just one minute, if you will bear with me,” Asmore said. “Let me get the record.” He rang a buzzer and, when his secretary poked her head in the door, he said, with a straight face, “Miss Belding, there is a hardened fifteen-year-old criminal by the name of Nettie Harrison who was arrested yesterday afternoon and is being held, I understand, on a larceny charge. Will you be good enough to get me the file.”

  He winked at her as she turned and closed the office door.

  Caroline Vargle looked at him furiously and said, “I fail to see

  anything amusing in a typical case of police stupidity. If you people, you policemen, would spend a little more time trying to clean up the crime in this town ...”

  “Now, just a minute,’’ Asmore said. “I am not a policeman. I am a prosecutor. I have nothing to do with arresting people. I only come into the picture after a crime..

  “You are the man who is going to send that child to prison,” Caroline said. “You are the one who ..

  Again Asmore raised a hand in protest.

  “Now, please, Miss Vargle,” he said. “I am not going to send anyone to prison, at least until I know the facts. And even then, I don’t send people to prison. The judge or the jury does that.”

  “You bring the charges, isn’t that so?”

  “I do if the facts warrant it,” Asmore said. “But why don’t you just let me see the file on this case before you make up your mind what I may or may not do? In the meantime, while we are waiting, perhaps you could tell me what your interest in this particular case is.”

  “I am, I believe your secretary explained, connected with the Youth Welfare League. The child, Nettie Harrison, happens to be a girl with whom I have been working for some time now, several weeks. She is a very good girl and has never been in any sort of trouble. She is a child who comes from a very unfortunate background, but a bright, cheerful youngster who, in spite of some terrible handicaps, has been showing steady improvement and who ..

  “Just why was this girl arrested?” Asmore interrupted.

  “She was picked up in one of the downtown department stores. It seems, or at least the police say, that she was shoplifting. I believe she was supposed to have had a transistor radio and some silk stockings in a bag she was carrying.”

  “You mean she was shoplifting?”

  “This child comes from a home which is completely poverty-stricken. Nettie and the other children don’t even have enough to eat. Why, if it wasn’t for the free school lunch each day ..

  “I believe you said she was picked up for taking a transistor

  radio and some silk stockings,” Asmore said. “Now, really, Miss I Vargle, we might understand if a starving child were to steal food,

  but radios, silk stockings ..

  “I would hardly expect you to understand," Caroline said. “I am afraid that it would take more than an academic legal training and intelligence to realize why a child brought up in utter poverty and deprivation might possibly be tempted to ...”

  Again Asmore smiled and raised a hand in protest.

  “Now, really,” he said, “you are not being quite fair. I may have only a legal training and I may even be a little more than average stupid, but will you at least let me get the facts before you make wild accusations. After all, until you walked through that door I had never even heard of any Nettie Harrison and I certainly didn’t arrest her.”

  “You will be prosecuting her.”

  “Not necessarily. Why don’t you just sit back and relax for a moment until I can see the file?”

  He picked up a pack of cigarettes from the desk and held them out.

  “Cigarette?” He looked at his wristwatch and saw that it was ten to five. “Perhaps,” he suggested, “I could give you a drink. It is about that time.”

  Her frown relaxed a bit and she looked at him quizzically for a second.

  “Do prosecutors have bars in their offices?” she asked with faint sarcasm.

  Asmore laughed.

  “I keep a bottle of bourbon in my top left-hand drawer and there is branch water in the cooler. No ice. I know that you Yankees —you are from the North, aren’t you, Miss Vargle—prefer Scotch on the rocks or cold drinks, but perhaps...”

  “I am from the North and I do prefer Scotch, but I don’t take ice in whiskey and”—she smiled for the first time, sitting back and letting her body go lax—“and I am anything but chauvinistic about my drinking. Bourbon and branch will be just fine.”

  Asmore smiled back at her and pulled open the drawer of the desk, taking out the bottle of bourbon.

  “Good," he said. He stood up and walked to the water cooler and took two paper cups from the tube at its side. “Then, we are friends after all, eh?”

  “We are friends if you release that girl and drop your charges against her,” Caroline said.

  “You Yanks drive a tough bargain,” Asmore said. “Why don’t we do this? We’ll have a drink now and Miss Belding will be back with that file in a m
inute or so. Then, well, then perhaps you would let me take you out to the country club for dinner and we could go over the facts and, well, see what can be done. How about it? You don’t have another date, I hope...’’

  “I don’t have another date,” Caroline said, cocking her head and looking at him speculatively for a moment. “But I must say you Southerners drive a hard bargain. Suppose, well, suppose we just do this. Release Nettie into my custody while you make up your mind about what can be done with her. I will then go to dinner with you at your country club. But first I want you to do something.

  I want you to stop by with me and get her out of that city prison where you are holding her. Then I want you to drive her to her home with me. I just want you to see that place where she lives. Spend about five or ten minutes there. Talk to the child yourself for a few minutes. You say you have to have the facts. Well, why not get all of the facts? Not just that she was arrested while taking something from a department store—assuming, of course, that she did—but the other facts, the facts which might make it possible to understand why she did what she is supposed to have done. If you want facts, then you should have them all, motives as well asdeeds. Isthatfairenough?”

  “Fair enough,” Asmore said. “Of course, even before I can release her in your...”

  The door opened and Miss Belding silently entered and handed him a folder.

  Asmore opened it as his secretary again closed the door behind herself. He studied for a few minutes the several sheets of Paper in contained. Finally he laid the folder on the desk and turned to Caroline Vargle and smiled.

  “No sweat,” he said. “The girl has no record. This is her first

  (trouble with the police. It seems that she did pick up that radio and those silk stockings, however. Her story is that she stole them to give to her mother. It is quite possible that she did. Anyway, I will release her into your custody for the time being. I think I can assure you that she won’t be sent to prison. After all, she is under age. But if the store insists on bringing charges, and they usually do, she may end up being on parole. In any case, we can see about that when the time comes. In the meantime, let’s get out of here. We’ll pick up your protegee at the jail, drop her off at her house and then drive out to the club. Do you want to call your family or anything?”

  “My family, which is my mother, happens to be in New England and I hardly think that being taken to dinner is sufficient justification for the expenditure of a long-distance call,” Caroline said and stood up, smiling. “How about you? Your wife ..

  “Wife?” Asmore said. “Good God, do I have that predatory-married-man-misunderstood-husband look? You horrify me. I shall have to change my image. No wonder you thought I was the type who throws innocent young teenagers into dungeons. I just like to take them to dinner.”

  “I am not a teenager,” Caroline said. "I am twenty-two.”

  Asmore shook his head sadly.

  “Obviously much too old for a young fellow of thirty-four,” he said. “But come on anyway, I have already committed myself. We’ll pick up our delinquent..

  “I tell you she is not a delinquent,” Caroline said. “And really, I don’t know why I am going out with you anyway. First you ply me with your liquor...”

  “Right,” Asmore said. “And then I expose you to the risk of ptomaine and the questionable cuisine of our local social gathering place. Would you care for a short refill first?”

  Caroline shook her head.

  “Perhaps after dinner,” she said. “And after we take care of Nettie. I want you to see that child’s home, the conditions under which she lives. I don’t think you will believe it.”

  She had, of course, been wrong about that. He had believed it all right, had to believe it after he had seen the small two-room

  shack where Nettie lived with her unmarried mother and her seven illegitimate brothers and sisters on the small welfare check and food stamps they received once each month; had seen the two broken-down beds, without sheets or blankets, on which they all slept in the clothes they had worn all day; had seen the dirt-en-crusted, rat-infested outhouse behind the shanty where they had to go to relieve themselves. Until he had paid that visit to the Harrison home, Asmore had thought he had a pretty good idea of the poverty in which a good many of the colored families of the town lived. But the experience had been a rude and startling awakening.

  After leaving the child off and spending a few minutes talking to her mother, they had left and Asmore had almost told Caroline that sending the youngster to prison would have been an improvement. But he had been so shocked at the conditions under which they lived that he was really incapable of saying anything.

  The experience had shaken him deeply and had a profound effect on his later thinking and attitudes. It had an immediate effect on his attitude toward his companion. He at once ceased looking on her in a semidetached, amused way, as though she were merely some dreamy-eyed do-gooder who was playing at social work as a sort of game. He began to understand the indignation which motivated her, understand the reasons behind her willingness to make the personal sacrifices she did to devote herself to working with the Youth Welfare League.

  He still thought of her as a bit of Yankee fluff who would probably be very good in bed, assuming he played his cards properly. But that, too, was to change and the change didn’t take very long. It came about when he realized he was deeply and truly in love with her and that he wanted not only to take her to bed, but also to marry her and be with her forever. In and out of bed.

  four

  1 WHEN the naked bulb hanging over the scarred oak desk in the shabby office of the garage out at the north end of the city flickered and went out, Buddy was ready. He already had the two candles stuck in the necks of Coke bottles sitting next to him and it took him only a moment to scratch the kitchen match on his thumbnail and light the wicks.

  In the dim light cast by the sputtering candles, he could see a dozen or more black faces staring back at him out of the gloom from the corners of the room. He reached for the paper cup and poured it half full from the bottle of rye at his elbow and then he spoke.

  “Time’s come,” he said. “Now.”

  He lifted the cup and drank its contents at a gulp.

  “Now, I’m goin’ over it again, you mothers,” he said, “and I want you should listen loud and clear. Then we get goin’. First,

  I got right here”—he hesitated for a moment and lifted the envelope so that they were all able to see it in the light of the candles got the registrations and the bill of sales for them Hondas out there in the garage. 'Morrow mornin’, when you all get back here,

  I’m handin’ ’em out to you all. One to each. That is, if you do what you know has got to be done. You each get a bill of sale, free and clear, to you bike. You get youself a hunnert-dollar bill. That clear?”

  There was a general grunt of assent from the darkened corners of the room.

  “Now, when you leave here on them bikes, you don’t have to worry,” Buddy continued. “They got plates but the plates is all phony. Once I give you the license, man, then those bikes is really yours for keeps. And you know what you got to do to earn them. I want each of you, each and everyone, to get yourself a cop. One cop for one bike!"

  Again he hesitated to let it sink in and a voice came from the left side of the room.

  “Goddamn, man, it ain’t a hell of a lot for killin’ a policeman.”

  Buddy swung quickly in the direction of the voice.

  “That sound like you, Rex, you dumb mothafucka. You always was stupid. You ain’t gettin’ the bike for killin’ a cop. You killin’ that cop because a what happened this evenin'. Where the hell you been anyway, man? Don’t you know those sons a bitches blowed up that church and killed all those black chillen? Didna’ you hear it on the radio? You got shit in you ears? Thas why you gonna kill yourself a cop. ’Cause them honky sons a bitches blowed up a black church. Chi I lens. Thas why. I’m just givin’ you the bike an’ the hunn
ert as expenses like, man. A bonus like.”

  “Thas right, Buddy. Thas right," several voices spoke at once. “Those honkies been killin’ our kids, then we kill them! Goin’ get those white pigs. Get youself a cop! Kill the mothers!”

  “Why jus’ a cop?” Rex asked, speaking above the sound of the other voices. “Why not every whitey?”

  “Why?” Buddy asked, yelling to make himself heard. “Why? I’ll tell you why. Because thas the way I want it. Thas why. Cops is the main enemy and we gotta take care of ’em first. You go around shootin' every damn honkey you see and, hell, you goin’ have every white man in this town reachin’ for his gun and cornin’ out shootin’. You jus’ hit the cops and the rest of the whities is goin’ stay safe inside their houses. Now you see?”

  “Well,” Rex began, “seems to me after we get ourselves our cop, 'stead of settin’ them fire bombs, we jus’ break into the stores an’..

  “Somebody hit that mothafucka,” Buddy said. “Maybe you knock some brains in his Goddamn head. That lootin’ is kid stuff. What you, some ten-year-ol’ punk you wanna pick up a two-bit radio or maybe a couple can beans from a grocery?”

  “But the liquor stores ...” a voice began and Buddy pounded his fist on the table and yelled for quiet.

  “Goddamn, you all stupid!” he said. “What you wanna do? Get yore ass shot off lootin’ a Goddamn bottle a cheap rotgut? We goin’ do the shootin’ tonight, not be the bastards shot at. You all startin’ out with a jug apiece in yo’ saddle bags. Run outta that”— he hesitated and pointed dramatically at the wall where several cases of whiskey were stacked—“run outta that and you come back here and git more. Fo’ free and without no son a bitch shootin’ at yo’. Now, less git it straight and fo’ the las’ time.

  “They twelve, thirteen of you'. I want one policeman apiece. But that don’ mean you can’t git two. ’Side from that, no shootin' 'less you have to. No lootin’. I wan’ you should toss them fire bombs. You got ’em all set in them saddle bags. Kill cops and set fires and thas it. Then come back here and collect you money and git the papers for them Hondas which is goin’ belong to each a you.”