American Static

by Tom Pitts

  “Kick his ass, Frank!”

  “Shut up, Tony.”

  “Yeah. Shut up, Tony,” Elliot said, as he looked around at the other inmates. All were too miserable to get involved.

  “Let me see if I can tell it. Sixty-six runs right up through Yazoo. You two jackasses steal some shoes and make the trek on up to the big city. Ain’t that many pigs to stick up this way, so you opted to break the law. That’s how you in heah. That ’bout right?”

  “Fuck you,” the big man said. Tony finally fell silent.

  “See here, Big Black,” Elliot said. He squeezed his fingers tighter around the bully’s neck. “Instead of wastin’ ya time pickin’ on folks—Lord knows who you tryin’ to impress—y’all need to get your stories straight. In a minute, them ofays gonna slide some confession papers in front of you. As I doubt you know how to read, there’s a good chance your black ass gon be puttin’ his X on somethin’ someone else did, on top of your own mess.”

  “You fo’ real?”

  “Happens all the time. They’ll string you up and have ya mama pay the shippin’ on your body. She’d have to take up a collection for your big ass. Better stop makin’ hay and start makin’ friends, Big Black. Somebody gonna have to write to yo’ mama about how her big, dumb baby boy wound up hangin’. Or you could write it yourself. If’n you know how to write. Okay there, Big Black?”

  Frank attempted a struggle. Elliot put more weight behind his knee.

  “Okay, Frank Fuquay. All the way from Yazoo County, Miss-sip?”

  Elliot glared into the Big Black Mountain’s eyes.

  “Gotcha, boss.”

  “What?! Teach this yella nigger a lesson, Frank!”

  “Shut up, Tony,” Big Black said.

  Elliot let his hand go slack. He lowered his voice to a whisper.

  “We’s all afraid up in here,” Elliot said. He allowed Frank Fuquay up off the disgusting floor. “And get rid of the little guy. He’s trouble.”

  “Fuck you, high yella!”

  Elliot took to his cot. He was content to rest after getting himself through a scrape without anyone coming up dead.

  For once.

  CHAPTER 2

  Even in the din of the jail, he was tired enough to sleep away the headache were it not for the memory of Izzy Rabinowitz’s voice, as clear as if he were in the cell with him.

  “The straight path ain’t for you, kid. You’re neither fish nor fowl. You’re meant to play the margins.”

  Truth told, the longest he stuck with anything was when he collected for Izzy’s outfit, which was from the time he was twelve until he went off to college at twenty. Since he took his first steps, he was resentful. An abandoned baby, bequeathed all of his parents’ piss and vinegar. A city boy trapped in farm country. Father meets Mother in Chicago, makes her pregnant. Dies in the race riots. Mother finds Father’s brother to abandon her bastard. Doc Shapiro, there at bastard’s breech birth, takes him under his wing to keep him out of trouble. Shapiro’s cousin, Izzy Rabinowitz, the loan maker, shows up at the back door of Doc’s small office. Out in the car was a thumb-breaker suffering six stab wounds to the torso. Bastard cleans up the blood without a flinch. Asks a lot of questions about what happened. Finally, bastard finds purpose. No more overnight stays in the Southville County jail for mischief and mayhem. No more beatings with the mule strap in Uncle Buster’s barn. Belonging. Acceptance. Praise. He was good—great—at doing dirty work for the most powerful Jew in the Midwest. That he never had the stomach for it was his little secret.

  Yet Bradley Polytechnic Institute was his choice. He applied. Passed the entrance exam. Made the grade for an entire year. At an advisor’s suggestion, he allowed himself to join the forensics team. He even made a friend: John Creamer of the Lincoln Park, Chicago Creamers. It was a funhouse mirror pairing, as John was far too much of everything that Elliot lacked altogether—money, charm, good social standing. At least they shared some whiteness. They studied together. Ran together. Allowed each other into their respective worlds. Their friendship almost made Elliot forget how much he hated college.

  In the south, it was Jim Crow. In the north, an understanding. Upward past the Mississippi, outside of farm country, it was hard to find anything as explicit as a hung sign or body. A Negro needed to know his place. Though Elliot knew, he really didn’t give a shit.

  The night of Elliot’s first speech competition he won his debate. John pulled him away to celebrate. That meant they’d both be white that night. The two found a union hall speakeasy in Champaign where they could drink and dance with white girls from the University of Illinois. At the height of the party, they found themselves surrounded by angry white boys.

  “Lookin’ colored tonight, I guess,” Elliot said, with a cackle.

  Creamer was plucky when drunk, so he took off his tie and put up his dukes. Elliot pulled a snubbed-nose .32 from his ankle, concealed just how Izzy taught him. Saved them both a lot of trouble. Once the mob dispersed, Elliot ordered another bourbon from the bar. John Creamer pleaded to dangle, but Elliot paid him no mind. The snowflakes were dazzled by their show of joie de vivre.

  Officers of the Urbana Police Department arrived.

  “Give me the gun,” Creamer said.

  Something in the way Creamer took it upon himself bothered Elliot. The insistence. The eagerness.

  “They won’t search me. Give it to me, now.”

  The pistol was out of Elliot’s hands for three seconds before John Law was upon him. He was dragged out to the squad car. Behind the police station, he tasted paving gravel.

  “The colored part of me tries to follow the rules,” Elliot said. “Only the white boy in me figures they don’t apply to him.”

  He was sober by the third boot heel to the ribs. Silent by the fourth blow of the nightstick. Creamer finally arrived when he was unconscious.

  They were halfway back to Bradley when Elliot told John Creamer to take him back to Southville. Once the car pulled in front of the Caprice family farm, they exchanged handshakes. John returned Elliot’s gun. The moment was somber, yet hollow. Whatever commonality the two shared was trumped by the reminder from the college town dicks. The most they’d ever be able to do was stick up for one another. Moreover, Elliot knew stashing the gun for his colored friend made John Creamer feel good.

  That made Elliot feel as if he owed the wrong white boy a favor.

  It was late, five hours until morning. Elliot didn’t have his key. There was no waking Uncle Buster once he was asleep, so Elliot let himself into the barn, the place where he once took his beatings. The discomfort of hay on hardpan was buffered by the return of his most dependable friend.

  Resentment. It never left him. Not for a second.

  The only clue that morning had come in that windowless cube of misery was the sound of wood on iron. Fat and Skinny had returned.

  “When do we get grub?!” one voice said.

  “I wanna talk to a lawyer!” went another.

  This triggered a cacophony of pleas, all of which would be ignored. Elliot saw his jailers had been joined by a third man dressed in a suit. This was what cops referred to as a barrel check—once suspects in a crime are identified, the investigating detectives first search the lock-ups for faces matching descriptions. Depending upon the detective, near matches worked as well as exact.

  “Shaddup, you mooks!” No one complied, so Fatty attacked the bars once more.

  “Shut up! Or Christ on tha cross, I’ll turn the boiler on!”

  “This is Detective Sergeant Molak from the Chicago Police Department,” Skinny said. “He’s looking for two suspects wanted for narcotics trafficking.”

  Tom. Molak. The Polak.

  Elliot remembered him from the Chicago Police Academy. Spoke fluent Polish. Politically connected uncle in the Hegewisch community. Too weak to pass the fitness test. The sort everyone figured would quit. Or wind up superintendent. He was slight of build, had hunched shoulders, smallish eyes, and a Sephardic nose t
hat he stuck everywhere it had no business. No way he was in St. Louis for the department. Not by himself. Elliot hoped he wouldn’t be spotted. His number might be up.

  “I’m looking for two men—one colored, one white—both known narcotics traffickers. They were last seen Thursday evening in the Clifton Heights neighborhood,” Molak said. “Anyone sharing information leading to their arrest will be looked upon favorably.”

  “We have a bunch of new shines as of Friday,” Fatty said.

  “That’d be a good start, Andy.”

  “My name isn’t—”

  “The Negroes, yeah, pally?”

  Fear crossed the minds of even the recidivists. Frank Fuquay, only just prior so cocksure, now sweated bullets.

  “Say, Big Black,” Elliot said, in a hushed tone. “You one of the fellas they lookin’ for?”

  “Naw. We got picked up fo’ burglary.”

  In the strained light, Elliot could see youthful ignorance behind his eyes. His current predicament afforded him no opportunity to shepherd a young fool, but he couldn’t just let the kid twist.

  “We stole sum stuff from an ol’ lady after she paid us to haul rubbish out her cellar.”

  “Every colored, line up along the bars here! Don’t make me tell you twice!”

  The colored inmates lined up face front along the bars, enough for two rows. Elliot sidled next to Frank.

  “Listen here. You so big, you’d have been pegged before he came down here. It’s gonna be alright,” Elliot said.

  “Yeah?”

  “Line up, look straight ahead at the wall. Answer every question in an even tone of voice.”

  “What that mean?”

  “Just. Like. This,” Elliot said. “Yes. No. Name. Age. Whereabouts you were when. You wait until they ask. If they don’t ask, you don’t say. They’ll pass you by. Got it?”

  Frank Fuquay nodded.

  “How you know this stuff?”

  “Let’s go.”

  Frank Fuquay followed Elliot to the bars, where they took spots at the very end, Frank second to last. Elliot last. His ploy was to use the dichotomy to throw off identification. To the lazy of mind—Elliot remembered Molak as particularly lazy—all faces blur into black. Hues diffuse. Even the mélange is lost. Had he considered it, Elliot could have relaxed, as he completely let himself go. His clean cut, tip-top exterior on the force was now overgrown. Mass of ungreased curly hair. Dark farmer’s tan. Drunken red eyes. Shit, he could barely recognize himself.

  Unfortunately, Molak was uncharacteristically aggressive, demanding names, hometowns, whereabouts. The rat kept coming. Elliot’s ribcage felt like the floorboards in a Poe tale. Molak stopped, gave a slender, dark-skinned man the once over before he questioned him. Elliot was two places from being exposed. Frank Fuquay emulated Elliot’s body posture. Next, Molak gave Frank the up and down.

  “Name.”

  “Frank Fuquay, suh.”

  “What’s he in for?”

  “Burglary,” Skinny said. “You’re not lookin’ for a guy this big, are ya?”

  “Maybe,” Molak said. “Relax. You ain’t makin’ detective tonight, Andy. Where you from, country?”

  “Mis-sippi,” Frank said, using the tone Elliot suggested.

  “What’re ya doin’ up here in Saint Louis?”

  “Nuttin’ much, lately.”

  The other detainees snickered.

  “Shaddup!” shouted Fat. Molak looked up at Frank once more before he flipped the page on the clipboard.

  “Show me the whites.”

  “Alright, file out,” Skinny said. “Every white man up here, right now!”

  Frank hung close to Elliot as they returned to the crowd of blacker faces.

  “How was that, boss?”

  Elliot took back his cot. Frank Fuquay claimed the cot across from him. Elliot watched the bars, hoping for an opening as Molak checked for a white man of the description.

  “How you know so much?” asked Frank.

  “I’ve been through this before.”

  “You don’t seem like a crook.”

  “That’s ’cuz I’m not.”

  Elliot noticed Molak’s disappointment.

  “That scrape we had earlier? You coulda mussed me up good,” Frank said. “I couldn’t peg you fo’ a bad guy after that.”

  “Don’t be so sure.”

  The white detainees filed out, openly complaining about the accommodations. The difference in temperament was striking. The stratums of society functioned in white folks’ favor, even during incarceration. Any colored fella with the sense God gave him knew to count his blessings. The indifferent jaws of the machine could care less which colored man’s blood lubricated its gears.

  Elliot left Frank Fuquay behind as he hustled for the bars.

  “See here, constable!”

  “Yeah?”

  “How’s about that phone call now, boss?” Elliot faked deference of the white man’s nigger.

  “Later,” Skinny said.

  “Promise to make it quick.”

  Skinny paused to watch Fatty and Molak walk up the stairs.

  “Gimme your hands.”

  Elliot threaded his hands through. Once cuffed, Skinny opened the cell door. Elliot walked out. Skinny grabbed him by his collar.

  “Try anything, I split your head.”

  “Head’s already split, boss. I’ll be no trouble a’tall.”

  As Skinny kept watch near the stairs, Elliot picked up the receiver of the payphone. His request for a collect call made him shudder. To evade hell, he’d return to perdition in the land of string bean farming where organized crime was regularly done in the light of day.

  “Southville County Sheriff,” went the deep baritone.

  “George?”

  The other line made no sound. Only breathing.

  “Georgie…it’s me…Elliot…you there…”

  “I’m here,” George said, his voice trailing off.

  “Listen, Georgie. I can’t give it all to you on this call, but I’m in a tight spot. I’m locked up in St. Louis.”

  “St. Louis?”

  “In the Meat Locker.”

  “Good Lord.”

  “I didn’t have any ID on me. I’m in the docket as Nathan White.”

  More silence from George.

  “No one here has seen or heard from you in ages. Now you just call out of the blue—”

  “You gotta help me out, Georgie Boy.”

  George had to be the straightest man ever born of Southville, but no one could make him sin like Elliot Caprice.

  “What do you need me to do?”

  “Get me moved up on the docket. I’ll take my chances with the judge.”

  “Elliot, I’m the Southville County Sheriff. You’re in St. Louis.”

  “You’re the sheriff now?”

  “Long story. Which you would know, if—”

  “Look, fat boy. I’m sorry I whited on you,” Elliot said. “On everybody, but I’m gonna have to make it up to y’all later. Right now, I’m in the mother of all jams?”

  “All these crazy stories on the wire,” George said. “Some folk said you were dead.”

  “Well, Sheriff, I stay in here any longer, they weren’t lyin’.”

  Elliot never exaggerated his predicaments. His life was so wild, he lacked the necessary creativity for embellishment.

  “I’ll figure out something,” George said. “Stay dormy ’til I get there.”

  “Hey, Georgie.”

  “Yeah?”

  “Maybe bring a lawyer?”

  “You’re a trouble magnet, you know that?”

  “Ain’t neva been any different, Georgie.”

  Elliot replaced the receiver on the payphone carriage. The bars opened. He reclaimed his cot, where his new best friend Frank Fuquay still waited.

  “How’d it go, boss?”

  “How’d what go?”

  “Ya phone call? I figure you got an angle.”

  “I’m a
ll out of angles, big man. That’s how I’m here.”

  He prayed for the throbbing in his head to cease. He also prayed for his new shadow to leave him be. Both prayers went unanswered.

  “I on’t know whether to ask you how you got yose’f in heah or how you gon get out.”

  “The same, both ways,” Elliot said.

  “I don’t get it.”

  “Big Frank, you best to keep it that way.”

  Back to TOC

  Here is a preview of Jonathan Ashley’s crime novel South of Cincinnati…

  The low evening sun half-sunken behind the upward slope of pavement and skyscraper rendered downtown Music City rife for pillage in the dusky gloaming. The abysmal avenues of the broken suburb remained eclipsed in the faint shadow of the Parthenon’s irradiant arches. The Athenian wonder had been replicated to the last detail, reflecting not what crumbling ruins still stand in the birthplace of democracy, but that baronial resplendence that died with the ancient Greeks.

  Nashville, Tennessee, U.S.A, the Athens of the west, the rendezvous point for my first hands-on drug deal in six months, since the morning my friend and I, in a last-ditch effort to save our own lives and to dethrone our former employer, strapped on Kevlar vests and armed ourselves to the teeth, determined to, if not survive, at least ensure that our adversaries did not.

  The crooked detective leading us into battle, an endlessly brooding country gentleman who ranked prominently among my long list of criminal confederates, over the years had pilfered from dead or pleading suspects a vast array of weapons. Many of the smaller calibers I’m sure the sergeant intended to use as “drop guns,” what corrupted lawmen nationwide had unofficially christened the revolvers and semi-automatics hair-triggered cops carried in ankle-holsters and shoulder-rigs, .22s and rusted snub-nosed .38s, the serial numbers filed down until illegible, token street pieces perfect for squeezing into the grip of an unarmed suspect shot to death mistakenly or, depending on the officer involved, for motives more sinister.