Old Bones

by Trudy Nan Boyce

  “That bird’s gonna shit right on her face,” observed Pepper.

  Salt, mobile phone to her ear, walked a little ways from the group. “’Lo,” Felton answered, sounding the same as Salt felt.

  “You know how they say most crime is committed by the same small percentage of criminals?” she said.

  “Hold on. I just walked in the door.”

  Salt, too tired to stand and too chilled to sit on the cold, hard curb, leaned against the base of the statue, waiting for Felton to come back to the phone. Just as she began to think he’d forgotten her, he came on the line. “Home at last,” he said exhaling. “Should I drink wine or coffee? Never mind, I’ve already got a pinot. Now, you called with a sociology question?”

  “We may be partnered, like it or not,” she said.

  “You’re full of riddles this morning.”

  “It’s ’cause my brain is riddled. In the middle of a riot last night, Big Fuzzy’s condition unknown, burning cars, looting, traffic gridlock . . .”

  “I was there,” Felton said.

  “Jim Britton called me.”

  “What?”

  “I reminded him that it’s your case, but I think his calling me has something to do with my being from here—our roots. He thinks I understand about his ancestors, or something.”

  “Salt.”

  “I’m getting to it. He said Flash Daddy Jones had the access code for the quarry and that he’d seen the mayor there with him.”

  There was silence on his end.

  “I’m really tired,” she said. “Close call for Big Fuzz.”

  “Salt?”

  “Yeah.”

  “We’re partnered on this one because it looks like our cases are linked, but I’d like to make it permanent.”

  “Partners?” she asked, listening close to what sounded like him taking a sip of his pinot. “That may be the wine talking, and you’re tired.”

  “No, I’d been thinking about it. What say you?”

  The sky had gone to a slightly lighter gray. “That would be—um . . .” she began.

  “Weird? Queer? Gay?” he joked.

  “Awesome,” she said.

  • • •

  In the parking lot behind Dr. Marshall’s office Salt took off her loaded gear belt: gun, CS gas, baton, radio. It weighed forty or more pounds. She’d been wearing it now for more than fourteen hours, and for the last four it had been digging into and pinching her skin, chafing its way to her hip bones. She threw on an old fleece zip-up and carried the belt in with her.

  The hour was early and Marshall himself was waiting behind the receptionist’s counter. “You look tired,” he said, leading her down the hall. “Coffee?”

  “No, I don’t need caffeine. I need to sleep.”

  “You smell like smoke,” he said, wrinkling his nose as he sat down at his desk. “That’s one way to share your experience.”

  “I’m not sure I even know what I’m saying. I am physically exhausted—out all night on the demonstration. I’m also worried, really worried, about a young woman who may be in danger.”

  “Yet here you are.”

  “Did I have a choice?” she asked.

  “You could have rescheduled. Are you angry?”

  Here in Dr. Marshall’s clean citrus-smelling office, the chemical and burning garbage odor of smoke coming from her uniform, hair, and skin rose to prominence. The fleece that she’d put on had been in her trunk and smelled of engine oil and car exhaust. She exhaled slowly. “Last night—no, night before last”—she shook her head—“Wills and I went up into the attic. He helped me break the lock on an old steamer trunk that had been there, unopened, since before I can remember.”

  “Were you looking for something in particular?”

  “I don’t even know why I told you that.” She turned toward the window. “It’s not related to my fitness for duty.”

  “Salt”—Marshall leaned forward—“at this point in my evaluation, I’ll tell you, I’m not at all worried about whether or not you’re overeager to pull the trigger, which is what the department is really worried about—liability. What concerns me is that you keep getting yourself in situations where you have to defend yourself with deadly force.”

  “I have a duty . . .” Her voice trailed off, the thought unfinished.

  “To what? To Whom? Sarah, to whom do you feel you have a duty at the expense of your own safety?”

  She shook her head. “I don’t know. I’m too damn tired.”

  “And undefended. Listen. Here’s another concern: I worry that in a confrontation with one of these folks that you feel so much empathy for, you’ll hesitate or make a move that puts you in harm’s way.”

  “I think it’s hard for citizens to understand. Even feeling how I do—feeling what they feel—I can still kill them if they put me in that position.” She did not break eye contact. She wanted him to know.

  They sat back in silence.

  “I needed to go into that steamer trunk because I’m going to leave the house.” She felt like that was what she’d come here to say, that she was going to leave the place that she’d grown up in, her father’s family home. She put her hand to her throat.

  “I would guess that wasn’t an easy decision,” Marshall said softly.

  She hadn’t even said that to Wills. Determined not to cry here, she couldn’t say more about leaving the house. After a painful silence, she said, “Last night, a friend came close to being killed by a stray bullet. We’d been ordered to the line without helmets.”

  Marshall said, “Let’s call it a wrap for today. You’re tired. That’s enough, Salt.”

  SHOES FOR LATONYA

  Lil D had found Man in his SUV stuck in traffic gridlock like everyone else, on one of the side streets not too many blocks from the shoe store. “Man, Stone done lost it. He’s going to jail,” he told Man as he climbed in the passenger seat.

  “You go shopping?” Man asked, nodding at the shoebox in Lil D’s lap.

  “Naw, man, these for Latonya.” He laid the box on the floor. “Them boys broke open Walter’s. Stone in front of the store, all crazy, no shirt or coat, holdin’ a big piece of glass on his chest. Pepper might had to shoot him, but Salt, she done spray gas in his face.”

  Man leaned his head back on the headrest, turning to look out his side window, quiet, like he didn’t want to try to say anything, like he was tired.

  “He be all right,” Lil D said.

  “Yeah, maybe Salt send him to Grady. He’ll be back out in a day.” Man just grabbed the gearshift and bullied his way into the big intersection, where they sat with all the other cars, trapped for hours until the cops untangled the streets.

  • • •

  Lil D wished he had birthday paper to wrap the shoes in, but he didn’t want to ask Man to stop. JoJo being there, it worried him that Man might want to come in the apartment. But Man just let him off like always.

  He held the box behind his back as he unlocked the door. Latonya was in the kitchen putting some of their little stuff in the empty cabinets. Danny T was sleeping in one of the beanbag chairs. JoJo, always on the lookout for Man, especially when Lil D was due home, was not in the kitchen or living room in case Man might decide to come in. He set the box down out of sight behind one of the unpacked bags near the door. “How you doin’, La?”

  Tall enough to reach the top shelves, Latonya came down off her toes, cheeks rounded from the smile she gave him. The light on her buttery skin always reminded him of fresh-out-of-the-oven browned yeast rolls. He came on in the kitchen and put his arms around her skinny body, pulling her close. “You still sad?” he asked. She let him hold her for a minute, then pulled him closer, hanging her arms over his shoulders, laying one cheek on the top of his head. “I got something,” he said, his lips close to her breastbone.

 
“What you got, Lil D?” She laughed, relaxed, happy swaying there, just the two of them.

  “Lemme go,” he said.

  “Naw.”

  “Come on, girl. You gone like what I got.”

  She put her lips, warm, soft, and smooth on his neck, right where his birthmark was darkest. When they were kids, the first time she did that, he’d squirmed away, ashamed of the mark. But now and for a long time he’d gotten used to her doing it. “I already like what you got, Lil D.” She giggled.

  “Not that.” He took her hand and led her to the back bedroom where there was only a mattress. Latonya had found the mismatched sheets and pillows and put them, still smelling of the old place, on the mattress. He sat her down and, leaving his jacket on the floor, made her wait while he went back and got the shoes.

  When he came back, he closed the door of the bedroom before she could get a look at the box, before she squealed with her hand covering her mouth, eyes turned up and wide with surprise.

  PAYBACK

  The tag of the suspects’ vehicle was traced back to a sort of recluse who turned out to be the uncle of two cousins, Paul Locklear and Lawrence “Larry” Owens. Then, shortly after the tag registration came back, Sugarman called and confirmed the uncle’s name and presence at the supremacists’ meetings, all too late to have satisfied one of the chief complaints of the protesters, an arrest of the suspects, but not late enough to accuse the group of conspiracy.

  When Wills called, the uncle immediately professed eagerness to come in and give a statement. And as soon as he was seated in the interview room and Wills prompted, “You must know the guys who had your truck pretty well,” the uncle unloaded. “Them boys’ daddies just took off when the Ford plant shut down,” he quickly volunteered.

  “How are you related?”

  “They daddies are my brothers. We didn’t have no dad, either, so I was kinda like one.”

  “What are their full names?”

  “Paul Locklear and Lawrence, he’s called Larry, Owens.”

  Wills wrote the names on his legal pad, tore off the sheet, and handed it to Huff out in the hall.

  The uncle kept talking. “I bought the truck last year, added the flag and bumper sticker them rights’ group boys give me. Larry and Paul went with me to meeting a few times. But they’d got into meth or something, talked nuts, said they was gonna pull a Charleston. They all the time listening to some radio guy talked about Mexicans. They was always kinda slow. Nothing ever worked out. Never could hold no job.” He hung his head and looked down at his hands twisting together. That night he’d left the assault rifle in the truck.

  Probable cause had been established with the fuzzy video from the building across from the park, the uncle’s statement that he let the two men use the truck that night, and the phone trace from Paul Locklear to one of the flex kids.

  • • •

  Paul and Larry were brought in by a lawyer. In their early twenties and not bad-looking, they were, as the uncle had said, slow, like whatever they were hearing and seeing took them two beats longer than normal to process. Otherwise they seemed average; Locklear was five nine with medium-brown hair already thinning, and Owens was five ten with the same brown hair, buzz cut. Both were thin, likely because of the meth and crack.

  Huff had asked the task force FBI agents to conduct the lineup, to escort the witnesses and document the results. It was a “double blind,” a procedure in which the agents wouldn’t know which of the men in the lineup were suspects and therefore couldn’t, overtly or covertly, transmit the desired outcome to the witnesses.

  Salt waited in the reception area for Man and the teen dealers. Rosie was at her desk, her first week back post-surgery. “They’re still pretty sensitive.” She looked down at her prominent cleavage. “Thank you for the camellias.” The buzzer for the double entrance announced Man and the boys. Rosie hit the lock release.

  Man, smooth-walking his bowleg side-to-side glide, was followed by the two teens, wary and hitching their crotches. Salt recognized them as two of the boys that had been running the trap for Johnny C at the Chicken Shack corner. “How long this gone take?” Man asked without preliminary greeting, not even a nod of his head.

  “Shouldn’t be more than an hour,” Salt said. “But if you’re in a hurry I can bring them back to Sam’s.”

  “Nah, I’ll wait.” He slumped down into one of the upholstered chairs against the wall, as did both boys, one on either side of him.

  “Here’s how it works.” Salt began explaining that each of the boys would view the lineup separately. “And I need you to fill out these forms.” She handed them clipboards. “Are your parents or guardians available to give their consent?” she asked, not expecting an answer, but in order for them to make formal statements, possibly incriminating themselves, she had to ask the question, required by juvenile law.

  Man took the clipboard from the smaller of the boys and began checking the boxes, then pointed to where the boy should sign.

  • • •

  “Revved up by haters. Then shat on by black kids,” Gardner said, shaking his head. “They were looking for a target.”

  Salt, sitting next to the window in their booth at the Cuban place, said to herself, “Shame.”

  “What?” Felton said.

  Six blocks up from the office, on “The River Ponce,” as the avenue was known, just the four of them were having their lunch after having a successful finish to the lineup.

  “That whole Confederate flag thing—guys want to think they are the descendants of some noble cause. It’s pathetic,” Wills said. “Two groups of have-nots fuckin’ each other.”

  They all went silent when the waiter brought their sandwiches, beans, and plantains. All of them hungry, it was a while before anyone said anything. But the cousins were on their minds. “Not enough education, an economy that no longer rewards physical skills. That flag is what they fall back on for self-esteem.” Gardner couldn’t let it go.

  “Not that different from the boys who sold them the flex,” Salt said.

  “Those two kids were jam up, though. No question they both picked them right off. Once again our girl comes through. Here’s to Salt.” Wills lifted his glass and the others followed. Wills touched her foot under the table.

  Felton laughed. “Stop it, you two.”

  • • •

  Rosie followed Felton and Salt into the break room, and while they pushed back a table and turned chairs to face the muted TV, she unpacked a compartmentalized aqua Tupperware lunch box and set out matching utensils and a napkin on the table next to theirs. “I don’t understand why you’re not there,” Rosie said with an offended tone, nodding at the TV and snapping her napkin before placing it in her lap.

  Felton sat down and stretched. “That’s what I told her.”

  The omnipresent burnt microwave popcorn smell of the break room seemed more intense than usual, making Salt queasy as she leaned over to turn up the volume on the old tube TV.

  “Would you like an apple slice?” Rosie offered.

  Salt winced. “Blech! I’ve lost my appetite lately. My mouth tastes like copper.”

  On the screen the press conference was beginning. The FBI, the mayor, the fire chief, two PD deputy chiefs, the major over Homicide, and two lieutenants stood flanking the podium at City Hall, with Chatterjee, barely visible, looking uncomfortable behind them. The mayor stepped up to the bank of microphones. “Today we’re gratified to announce the arrest . . .” Chatterjee looked tired, the whites of his eyes prominent between the shoulder-to-shoulder commanders, his usually hangdog look made more so by his having to come in early for the press conference. His droopy blue blazer hung on his slender frame.

  “I’m glad I’m not there,” Salt said.

  “You need to think about the long term, career-wise,” Rosie lectured.

  “Cochise doesn’t look
too happy,” said Felton.

  “Well, he’s not as photogenic as Salt.”

  “Our teamwork . . .” one of the deputy chiefs was saying “. . . the arrest of Paul Locklear and Larry Owens . . .”

  “They’re taking credit. Why shouldn’t you?” asked Rosie.

  “They didn’t ask me,” Salt said.

  BIRDS OF A FEATHER

  She began making the rounds, going to the clubs late enough to catch most of the dancers: Magic Girls, Gold String, back to Toy Dolls, even to the Royal Peacock. She went to the top-drawer places and the bottom-of-the-line places.

  The Peacock wasn’t strictly a strip joint, but they occasionally had burlesque shows harkening back to the club’s glory days as the most elegant black club in the city. A bird, formerly outlined in neon, having displayed a colorful tail, had lost its glow and now appeared on the marquee above the door, tail feathers stick-like. It was the only peacock around and, with no color at all, could easily be mistaken for some other fowl.

  “You should have seen it in its day. Aretha tore this place down!” Leaning just inside the door, an old, heavyset uniformed cop, dark skin, circles under his eyes, and lower lids that drooped, revealing red rims, spoke from out of the shadow.

  “You’re Peachtree Harrison,” she said.

  “And you’re James Alt’s kid.” He pushed himself upright.

  The Plexiglas display case to the right of the door announced in crooked magnetic letters that Sunday night, tonight, was free ladies’ night. Auburn Avenue was cold and empty, its hoped-for revival slow to catch on.

  “You’re probably wondering why a place so poorly attended needs an extra-job cop.” Harrison motioned her inside from the cold.

  “Actually I’m speechless. You’re the only person who’s ever, by way of introduction, identified me as my father’s daughter.”