Black & White

by Lewis Shiner

  “Greg? When were you talking to him?”

  “I went out to the farm today. That’s when I learned about Orpha.”

  “You’ve had a busy day.”

  “The lies have to stop, Mother. It’s all coming out now anyway. Please, tell me what you know.”

  After another short silence, the phone beeped to tell him she’d hung up.

  Tuesday, October 19

  Michael worked until 5 a.m., until he was nodding off at the board, then put his tools away and collapsed into a restless sleep. The phone woke him after what seemed only a few minutes, though the clock said 9:22.

  It was Tommy Coleman. “I just talked to that policeman,” he said. “They want me down to the overpass at 11. They going to see can they find that body.”

  *

  Michael parked on the access road north of the freeway. The temperature had dropped overnight and had only made it up into the 40s. The sky was cloudy and the wind danced around him, snapping the legs of his jeans and stinging his eyes.

  From where he stood, at the top of the grassy bank, he could clearly see the vévé on top of St. Joseph’s. Twenty feet below, the police had blocked one of the two westbound lanes of the freeway with orange cones, backing traffic up over the horizon.

  Michael climbed down the slope and made his way through a crowd of onlookers. A WRAL news truck had parked in the breakdown lane and cranked up its broadcast mast. Shout it from the housetops, Michael thought. Get everybody who knows anything about this out of the woodwork.

  A handful of uniformed cops milled around, eyeing the civilians and the passing traffic suspiciously. Sgt. Bishop, in khaki pants and a corduroy sport coat, stood with Coleman in a cluster of official-looking people directly beneath the overpass. They both had their hands in their pockets. Somebody, probably Coleman, had marked the outside corners of a search area in red chalk on the surface of the embankment.

  They were watching a middle-aged man in jeans, navy windbreaker, and billed cap. He was setting up a device that resembled a lawnmower; four solid rubber wheels supported a yellow box the size of a small, flat suitcase. On top of the handlebars was a smaller yellow box with a color LED screen.

  Coleman saw Michael and waved. Bishop’s expression was neutral. A cop stopped Michael at the line of yellow crime scene tape that they’d strung from more of the orange traffic cones.

  “I’m here to see Sgt. Bishop,” Michael said.

  The cop looked at Bishop, who gave a grudging nod and beckoned Michael over.

  Michael shook hands with both men and said, “What’s that thing?”

  “Ground-penetrating radar,” Bishop said. “Known as GPR in the trade. They use it to find pockets—’voids’ is the term they use, I believe—in concrete.”

  “Like bodies?” Michael asked.

  “That’s the idea. We got lucky. Nobody in the Triangle has one of these rigs. I remembered that these folks tried to sell us a system a few years ago to find buried dope or what have you. I managed to talk them into driving down from Roanoke.”

  “Who are all these people?”

  “It always turns into a circus when it’s this public,” Bishop said. He gestured to the slim young woman next to him. She had light brown skin, golden cornrows, and a black leather jacket over her skirt and sweater. “This is Leticia Townsend. She’s an Assistant District Attorney. Leticia, Michael Cooper.”

  “Hi,” Michael said. “Are you going to press charges against my father?”

  Townsend looked in confusion to Bishop, who said, “She’s here to keep an eye on the chain of evidence. Makes things go smoother if we do end up in court.”

  Michael nodded and Bishop went on. “That woman is from the Medical Examiner’s office. The guy next to her is a structural engineer from NC DoT. He’s supposed to let us know how much we can tear up if we have to.”

  Michael nodded. “So what did my father tell you?”

  “You know I can’t answer that.”

  “You’re here. He must have said something.”

  “I get the idea you two have had some problems. I had a hard time with my old man, too. Really, the only way to deal with it is to talk to him.”

  “I’ve tried that.”

  “You should keep trying. He doesn’t have a lot of time left and he really cares about you.”

  “People have told me before that he cares. I can’t tell you what it makes me feel like. Cheated, I guess. He won’t show it to me, no matter what I do.”

  “Detective?” the man in the cap said. “I think we’re ready.”

  *

  The uniformed cops moved everyone away from the embankment, including Michael and Coleman. Bishop, the woman from the ME’s office, and the ADA huddled with the machine operator for a minute or so, handed him a piece of chalk, then left him to his business.

  The man muscled his machine up the steep incline and then let it roll down again, keeping a slow, even speed. Around the middle of the designated area, he stopped and thumbed a button on a keypad at the bottom of the screen. The image—nothing but wavy lines as far as Michael could see—shifted forward and back, and the man made his first chalk mark on the concrete.

  It took him five minutes to go over the area Coleman had marked, and when he finished he connected the dots he’d made. They formed a shape like a rounded arrowhead, pointing up and away from the road. Then he came back to talk to Bishop.

  “The instrument shows a good-sized void there, down in among the steel. Closest point is maybe twelve inches below the surface, furthest point less than three feet.”

  “You think it’s a body?” Bishop asked.

  The man shrugged. “I’ll send you a full report, with a lot of fancy charts and graphs you can take to court. But between you and me, if there’s a body in that concrete, that’s where it’s at.”

  Bishop made a call on his cell phone. Townsend, the ADA, was on hers as well. Civilians were holding digital cameras and cell phones over their heads and shooting anything that came in their viewfinders. The TV news reporter spoke into a microphone with hushed urgency, awash in the glow of portable lights. Michael’s entire body hummed. He had unleashed a juggernaut, and he was sure that answers would be exposed in its wake.

  Bishop closed his phone and turned to the Department of Transportation engineer. “Marvin?”

  The engineer shrugged. Michael saw that the stretch of concrete in question carried no load, simply followed the upward slope of the hillside between a set of load-bearing Ts and the point the overpass began its reach across the freeway. “Break out the jackhammers,” the man said.

  There were three of them, and six men to take turns. All wore hard hats, though Michael was at a loss as to why. Insurance reasons, most likely. Once they began drilling, the noise in the confined space was unbearable, and the crowd quickly moved away.

  Coleman was the only one who hadn’t caught the excitement. Michael put a hand on his massive shoulder as they walked out onto the grassy slope. “You’re a hero, you know.”

  Coleman looked at the ground. “Hope you still feel that way in a week or a month. Hope I feel that way.” His gaze shifted to the dust billowing out from the overpass. “It’s cold. I’m going home.”

  *

  The work crew made good progress, stopping every few minutes to clean chunks of concrete out of the hole. The crime scene unit, in earplugs and clear plastic goggles, sorted through the rubble and periodically looked at the hole itself. A separate worker with a cutting torch stepped in twice to burn through sections of rebar.

  Still they were unable to finish by nightfall. As they began to pack their gear, an unmarked Crown Victoria, lights flashing from its grille, crunched to a stop on the access road above. A beefy white man in a cheap suit and a flattop haircut got out, frowned at the muddy slope, and picked his way carefully down. Once under the highway he paused for a quick, unhappy look at the wreckage in progress, then headed straight for Bishop.

  Michael circled around behind them.
They both faced the embankment and didn’t see him.

  The big man was saying, “—thought about what you’re going to do when you get him out?”

  “I’ve got some ideas.”

  “Was that six men you had balling those jacks?”

  “We need to get the body to a secure location.”

  “Well, now, that’s well and good, but don’t go hog wild over this.”

  “I’m thinking,” Bishop said, “that when it gets out that it’s Barrett Howard under there, the media is going to be all over us.”

  “I give a crap about the media. Whoever did this is no threat to my city tonight. Maybe we need to do a better job of keeping the press out of this.”

  As badly as Michael wanted to butt in, he willed himself to be invisible, turned slightly away, and pretended to look at something on the ground.

  “Dave,” Bishop said, “you can’t block traffic and start tearing up part of the freeway without anybody noticing. And we’re not going to dress up like DoT workers if we want this to hold up in court.”

  “I’ve got just as much interest as you do in closing unsolved cases,” the big man said, “but not at the expense of this year’s murders.”

  “We can’t ignore the fact that this is going to be big. The papers—”

  “I give a crap about the papers,” the man said, walking away. “I’m not saying don’t investigate. I’m saying keep this under control. I already can’t afford the overtime I need to keep these goddamn kids from shooting my citizens.”

  When he was gone, Michael eased up to Bishop. “Who was that?”

  “That,” Bishop said, “was Sgt. Goetz, head of the Homocide squad. I hope you weren’t eavesdropping.”

  “I heard a little. What’s his problem?”

  “His problem is he’s a good cop in a tough job.” Bishop’s tone was patient and pleasant, as if giving driving directions. “Over in Raleigh, on the radio, they play a recorded gunshot every time they say the word ‘Durham.’ There are people over there who have never set foot in Durham because they’re afraid to. Yes, the crime rate is higher here—we’ve got a gang problem as bad as LA’s. We’ve got a lot more people living below the poverty line, and the whole idea of social services is out of fashion at the moment. We’ve got a recession, and we’ve got institutionalized racism that makes it harder for black people to get what few jobs there are. Which leads to people giving up. I wouldn’t want Goetz’s job.”

  “So does that mean you’re going to back off the investigation?”

  “It means I’m going to make time to do it, even if I don’t get to sleep much for a while.”

  Wednesday, October 20

  For all his exhaustion, Michael had another bad night. He worked late, then lay awake with his head spinning when he finally crawled into bed.

  When he got to the crime scene at ten the next morning, the workmen had the chunk of concrete loose. They’d cut a rough bowl shape out of the retaining wall and attached two massive ring bolts to the top side. A police cruiser, parked on the shoulder upstream from the overpass, had its lights flashing. The news team was back, set up east of the cruiser.

  Bishop was talking with one of workmen, a beefy white kid with a light brown beard. “…rule of thumb is 150 pounds per cubic foot,” the kid was saying, “so you’re looking at probably six to eight tons of concrete there. You wouldn’t want to drop that on your foot.”

  “I hate to shut down the freeway to bring in a crane in the middle of the day,” Bishop said, “but after what happened last night, I want that body out of here and under lock and key. Do you guys know where the impound lot in Raleigh is? Behind the surplus property agency there on Chapel Hill Road?”

  “Yeah,” the bearded guy said. “My brother-in-law buys his cars there.”

  “Call me when you’ve got it loaded, and I’ll meet the driver there.” Bishop turned and saw Michael. “Hey.”

  “What happened last night?” Michael asked.

  Bishop began walking Michael away from the site. “Somebody tried to blow up the body.”

  “What?”

  “Around two a.m. We don’t know if it was kids pulling a prank or something more serious. A woman walked up to the officer watching the site and told him she was having car trouble and needed help. He started to go with her and then thought better of it. When he turned around there was a pickup stopped under the underpass and there was a guy with a bundle of dynamite and a cigarette lighter, about to light the fuse. The guy saw him and jumped in the truck and drove away.”

  “What about the woman?”

  “She ran across the freeway. There was a car waiting on the shoulder there and it took off as soon as she got in.”

  “So at least two cars, three people, and some high explosives. That’s no prank.”

  “No,” Bishop said, “I suppose not. The TV stations had Barrett Howard’s name. From what I hear, he always had a way of getting people riled up. Even thirty-five years dead.”

  “What happens to the body now?”

  Bishop stopped walking. “Look, Michael. I know you want to help. There’s nothing you can do right now. Hang loose and let us do our job. I’ll call you if something comes up.”

  Michael hesitated, saw he wasn’t going to get any further. “Okay,” he said. He climbed up the slope and then, on impulse, turned left across the overpass toward St. Joseph’s and the Hayti Heritage Center.

  Inside the front door he found a gallery space and an exhibit titled “Common Cause: Collecting African American Art.” The small selection they had came from an impressive roster of artists: Jacob Lawrence, a painter Michael had always loved; Elizabeth Catlett, whose sculptures he admired particularly; and drawings by John Biggers, whose “Starry Crown” Michael had grown up with at the Dallas Museum of Art.

  Biggers was a particular favorite. He’d been born in North Carolina and had ended up in Texas, painting murals that tied the shotgun houses of Houston’s Third Ward to the Yoruba shogun house in Africa. That had led him to the symbolism of the triangular roof over the square frame, the triangle representing the heavens and the square the earth. The shotgun house originated in Haiti and had come to the US through New Orleans, just like the vodou that inspired the vévé on the steeple over Michael’s head.

  Roger had told him that vodou—that all magic—operated that way. It found the connections between things, whether in history or looks or wordplay, and expressed that connection in symbols. A change in the symbols was supposed to effect a change in the world. What was the connection between John Biggers and Michael Cooper, also an artist, also born in North Carolina, who also ended up in Texas?

  Michael sometimes thought his own inability to believe in God made it that much harder for him to disbelieve in hoodoo, bad luck, or the devil. He was a spiritual Belgium, occupied by one transient ideological army after another. All the invaders left behind was a vague sense that things were not what they seemed, a sense that his cynicism could never overcome.

  Idle curiosity took Michael through a walkway into the church itself. He found himself at the top of a steeply raked bank of seats that faced a proscenium stage. The room was dark and peaceful. He took a moment to soak it in, then crossed the gallery again to the information desk.

  The man behind the counter was in his late thirties, skin the color of dark khaki, wearing a knit cap in red, gold, and green. He was close to Michael’s size and, like Michael, didn’t look particularly fit. He was reading The Collected Poems of Langston Hughes, rather conspicuously, Michael thought.

  “Hey,” Michael said. “Can I ask you some questions?”

  “Sure,” the man said. “If I know the answers, I’ll tell you.”

  “I was wondering about the symbol on top of the steeple. You’d usually expect to see a cross there.”

  “As I understand it, that’s an African symbol. This is an African Methodist Episcopal church, after all.”

  “Can you tell me what it means?”

  “I
’m not much of an expert.”

  “Can you tell me how it got there? Whose idea it was?”

  “Sorry. There’s a picture of it on one of our brochures. You could take that to the library down the street…”

  “Well, what about the history of Hayti? Do you have any books about it?”

  “There are a couple of books, one by a woman who used to work here, Dorothy Jones. And there’s a book of photos that a professor over at NCCU put together. They should have those at the library too.”

  “You don’t have anything at all here?”

  “Well, there are a lot of papers and some audio recordings. I’m afraid it’s all in a bit of a mess.”

  “Is there somebody in charge of that stuff?”

  The man hesitated, his eyes shifting to Michael’s right. A woman’s voice said, “That’s okay, Charles, I’ll talk to him.”

  Michael turned around. She was about 40 and a foot shorter than he was, with lustrous straight black hair that curved to points under her chin. She had a crooked smile and, he couldn’t help noticing, a beautifully formed body. Her skin was the color of dark stained teak, and she had a cocky, bantering look that Michael liked.

  “Denise Franklin,” she said, sticking out her hand. “Can I help?”

  Her grip was firm. “Michael Cooper,” he said. “I’m trying to learn something about Hayti.”

  “Can I ask what your interest is?”

  “My father worked for Mason and Antree. He helped knock Hayti down.”

  “I see. Why don’t you come down to my office. Charles, you want to join us? Get Lateesha to cover the desk.”

  Her office was one floor down, an anonymous cube with windows at ground level of the parking lot. Cheap steel shelves were piled with black videotape storage cases, audio cassettes, stacks of photocopies. Michael picked up a stack of magazines from one of the metal chairs and added it to another pile on the floor.

  “I’m sorry for the mess,” Franklin said. “My predecessor spent nine years trying to get this organized, but she died last year. I just stepped in a few months ago and I am…overwhelmed.”