War at Home: A Smokey Dalton Novel

by Kris Nelscott

  “They don’t,” I said.

  He sat down cross-legged, apparently tired of crouching. “Once I got in the college, I found six guys smoking weed under one of the trees. Like no one cared if anyone saw them. I was freaked.”

  His language was looser than usual, so he probably inhaled some of that weed. I didn’t say anything, though. Jimmy munched on his ice cream cone, his gaze going back and forth from me to Malcolm.

  “I made like I was interested in buying, but I didn’t have any cash on me. I strung them on for a while, but these guys were so focused on money. They almost didn’t talk to me when I told them I’d have to come back to my apartment to get some.”

  “But they did talk to you,” I said.

  “A little.” He ran a hand through his hair. “They knew Daniel.”

  That caught my attention. “They did? Did they know where he is?”

  “They haven’t seen him since winter break, whenever the hell that is.”

  “Christmas,” I said. “Sometime in there.”

  “They didn’t like him. He liked weed now and then, but he didn’t buy, and he wasn’t into the other junk.”

  “What other junk?” I asked.

  “These guys sold some acid, too, and some ludes. The stuff looked better than the stuff I’ve seen in Chicago.”

  I decided to let that pass.

  Jimmy crunched the last of his cone, then licked off his fingers. He wiped them dry on his pants. He kept his gaze on us, looking worried.

  “Daniel was pretty straight. Most of the guys hadn’t even seen him drunk, which I guess is unusual here. And he’s righteous — their word, and they didn’t mean it nice. They meant it like he was holier-than-thou. They thought he was a real jerk.”

  We agreed on that, then, but probably not for the same reasons. “What did they tell you?”

  “That there was some trouble with a girl. Rhonda or Rhondi or something like that. Back in the fall.”

  “What kind of trouble?” I asked.

  Malcolm shrugged. “They wouldn’t say. Something about Coeducation Week.”

  “That master guy talked about that,” Jimmy said.

  I nodded. “I heard about the week, just not Daniel’s involvement in it.”

  “Sounded pretty heavy, but no one knew exactly what he was doing. Said he flirted with the SDS but left it for some other organization. Said he got real militant, too, by the end, screaming about rights and privileges and the way that the system had to change before anybody got the rights they deserved, which didn’t play well with these guys.”

  “You’d think it would,” I said, “given what they were doing.”

  Malcolm shook his head. “I got the sense that they weren’t into any kind of revolution except the one going on in their own heads. They were doing more than weed because they forgot about me after a while. Except one guy, who really wanted his money. He started screaming at me, and I got out of there.”

  “So we can’t talk to them again.”

  “I can’t talk to them again,” Malcolm said, “and I doubt they’d let you get near them. But I think I got most of what I needed from them. They haven’t seen Daniel since he left campus. But they gave me a few partial names. The girl’s and a couple of other people’s. They think some of the guys are still around, so I’m going to see if I can find them.”

  “Smoke don’t like drugs,” Jimmy said softly, as if he couldn’t keep silent any longer.

  “I’m not real fond of them either,” Malcolm said, “but they have their uses. Those guys are pretty plugged in because they have to be. But I didn’t expect to find these guys so easily. I thought it would take a couple of days. It sure would’ve at home.”

  The differences between our lives and those of the privileged class. “Let’s get back to the van,” I said. “I’ll explain what happened to us along the way.”

  * * *

  We rode back with the windows open. I took one of our duffels inside the motel room to use as a laundry bag. Malcolm wasn’t wearing those clothes again until we had a chance to wash them.

  I showered first, though, and changed into something cooler. I was going to head to the Crow on my own. I wanted Jimmy and Malcolm to rest. Besides, I wanted the freedom to go to a few places I didn’t feel comfortable bringing an eleven-year-old.

  Jimmy complained, but I promised I’d be back for dinner. I told Malcolm to use the phone book, see if he could track down any of the names that the Yale students had given him.

  He was in the shower when I left, and Jimmy was watching an old movie that seemed to feature women in scanty costumes and men dressed up as giant bugs.

  I got into the van and headed toward Goffe. It didn’t take me long to find the Crow’s offices. They were in an old building that looked like it was about to fall down. The rents here were obviously cheap, and judging from a sign on a nearby corner, the buildings would eventually vanish.

  The sign promised a firehouse here, along with some more housing and some townhouses. A design map of the plan was enlarged, along with the slogan “New Haven Working For You,” which I highly doubted.

  I parked near a building that announced itself as the Goffe Special School — whatever that was — and walked the half block toward the Crow’s building. The Crow shared the building with other businesses. I would have driven right by if it weren’t for the address painted in black letters above the door and a small crow sign in one of the windows.

  As I got close, I realized that the crow sign was actually a hand-painted reproduction of the newspaper’s logo. Beneath the name and the crow drawing were these words: The Crow Will Speak the Truth and the Truth Will Make Us Free.

  I certainly hoped so.

  The door stood open, letting in the warmth of the day. A large desk sat right near the entrance, and in back were smaller desks, two of them with manual typewriters, one of the desks with just a phone. In the very back were drafting tables, probably for layout. The place had the sharp smell of printer’s ink.

  “Help you?” The woman at the desk was about my age, with a pair of cat’s-eye glasses around her neck instead of a necklace, and her dark hair in a modified beehive. Her lipstick was an incongruous orange, and she wore false eyelashes.

  “I’m not sure,” I said. “I’m trying to find out some information.”

  “About the paper?”

  “No.” I glanced around. A man in the back was studying me. “I’m new to town, looking for someone, and a man suggested that I talk to you.”

  “Is this about a news story?”

  “Maybe,” I said. “I’m just trying to get—”

  “Can I help you?” The man had come up from the back. He was slender, his hair short and natural, his face covered with a neatly trimmed beard.

  “I hope so,” I said. “I’m kind of at a loss. My name is Bill Grimshaw. I’m from Chicago.”

  I extended my hand. The man took it.

  “Reuben Freeman.” He shook my hand once, then let go.

  “Pleasure,” I said. “Is this your paper?”

  He shook his head. “Mostly I just report. What can we do for you, Mr. Grimshaw?”

  “I’m looking for someone. He’s been missing since last fall, and his mom hired me—”

  “You’re a private detective?”

  “More or less,” I said.

  “The mother hired you, so I assume you’re looking for a college student?”

  I nodded.

  “South Central, Southern Connecticut State, University of New Haven, or Yale?” he asked, listing three schools I hadn’t heard of.

  “Yale,” I said.

  “Black, I assume,” he said. “Else she would have hired someone local.”

  Meaning most of the private detectives here, if not all, were white.

  “Yes,” I said.

  “Missing since last fall.” He led me through the desks to the one he was using in the back. It also had a phone, but that phone had been hidden by stacks of paper, another
manual typewriter, and three legal pads. “That’s a long time.”

  “I don’t know exactly when he went missing. I’m trying to figure that out.”

  “Kids nowadays, they don’t take things as seriously as we did.” He shoved some of the papers aside.

  “I’ve met this boy. Seems he took things too seriously.”

  “But she only sent you now,” he said again.

  “Yes,” I said. “She didn’t find out he was missing until she got notification that his scholarship was going to be revoked if he didn’t sign up for this fall’s term.”

  Freeman frowned. He sat in the metal chair behind his desk. “Pull over a chair.”

  I grabbed the nearest one, a heavy wooden chair that was probably as old as I was.

  “What’s his name?”

  “Daniel Kirkland,” I said.

  “It’s not ringing any bells. So he wasn’t in the news much.”

  “You can check for me, though, right?”

  “Do we look like we have a standard morgue? You’re better off going to the Register or the Journal-Courier for that.”

  I sighed. “All right.”

  Freeman rubbed that beard of his, a slight frown marring his forehead. “Mom and kid weren’t in close contact? I mean, how can she not know he was gone for half a year?”

  “Long distance is expensive.”

  “But he sent her letters?”

  “Not after his first semester,” I said.

  “He’s what? Junior?”

  “Sophomore,” I said. “If he’d taken his spring semester, he’d be a junior.”

  Freeman sighed. “You don’t know how many parents we get here, looking for their kids. The cops won’t help. They’re not even helping the white folks anymore. Unless, of course, the folks are from money.”

  “I hadn’t heard that.”

  “You live here with a bunch of colleges in town, and even more in the neighboring cities, and you learn real fast what the kids are doing. Right now, they’re dropping out and living their own way, not communicating with their parents, and throwing away their lives. You sure this kid wants to be found?”

  “I’m not sure of anything,” I said. “I talked to some folks from Yale before I came out here, which made me nervous enough to make the trip. Now that I am here, I’m finding that New Haven isn’t as peaceful as it seems.”

  Freeman grinned. “Don’t say that too loudly, especially in this building.”

  “What does that mean?”

  “Meaning that we believe in bootstraps and entrepreneurial equality and working for the betterment of the community from within the community.”

  “In other words, don’t stir things up.”

  He smiled. “You said it. I didn’t.”

  The phone rang. The woman at the reception desk answered it, then put her hand over the mouthpiece. “Moxie Baker wants an ad for this week.”

  “Okay,” Freeman said. “I have to take this. Why don’t you look at a few back issues.”

  He waved his hand toward a stack of papers leaning against the wall. I had no idea how a newspaper could survive with that many copies still inside the building. Nonetheless, I picked up the top issue, with Saturday’s date.

  The paper was thin and had too much empty space, suggesting that the person who did the layout wasn’t a professional. Most of the articles seemed to lack depth, and referred to people without describing who they were, apparently assuming the reader knew.

  I scanned the editorials, which referred to more things I didn’t understand, and nearly set the paper aside before an article caught my eye.

  AIM Announces Drive to Explain Panthers

  The American Independent Movement has announced an education program on the Black Panther Party to explain the purpose of the BPP. AIM believes that the BPP is an important and positive force in the efforts of working Americans to control their country and their lives. The Panthers’ work is not racist but racism has been used as a powerful weapon against them, especially in the rumor-filled unproven press coverage of the recent arrests, AIM says. It is—

  “Sorry about that,” Freeman said. “It’s mostly a one-person show around here. You just happened to catch me running it.”

  “It’s all right.” I folded the paper, but kept hold of the article about the Panthers.

  “I’m not sure how I can help you on this,” he said. “I’ll do what I usually do. I’ll give you the names of some contacts locally, let you know where the kids hang out, but that’s about all I know.”

  I nodded. “You don’t get police blotters or anything like that?”

  His smile faded. “We’re not doing that kind of news. You think he might be in legal trouble?”

  “I don’t know,” I said. “I’m hearing rumors about Coeducation Week, and something that happened there. Yale says they mutually parted company with him, which seems odd to me.”

  “Yale mutually parts company with students who don’t fit the mold.” Freeman sounded bitter.

  “But there are enough black students for them to form an organization,” I said.

  “BSAY?” Freeman sighed. “BSAY used to be the right kind of organization, but it’s going the wrong way, too.”

  “Right kind?” I asked.

  “Put together to help black students help each other. In the last year, it’s gotten pretty militant, which I think is a risk. There’re only about 250, maybe 300, black students — graduate and undergraduate — at the school. That’s not even one percent of the total enrollment. It’s supposed to get bigger next year — applications from blacks tripled when the university announced it was going coed, but tripled means they got 525 applicants.”

  “Interesting statistics to have at your fingertips,” I said. “For someone who doesn’t rock the boat.”

  He grinned at me. “Didn’t say I didn’t rock the boat. Said that the paper doesn’t. Yale enrollment is a hot topic right now, with the women coming in. I’m doing articles for a variety of places all over the country. Most of my income is freelance. You just caught me on my volunteer day here.”

  “Volunteer?”

  He shrugged. “We’re trying to get this thing off the ground. What little money that comes in goes right back out to pay for typesetting and printing. Only a few people get paid, and that would make a pittance seem like a fortune.”

  I shifted the paper in my hand, keeping my finger on the Black Panther article. “Seems to me that New Haven is more than one percent black.”

  “Yep, and the other colleges around here reflect that. But Yale is not a local school. New Haven’s a lot more diverse than our greatest industry would let on.”

  “Are there black professors?”

  “A few,” he said. “Haven’t paid attention to the statistics on them. Not relevant in this year of the women. But no need to go to the professors. They won’t tell you much about the black students. The key to survival at Yale is pretense — and getting involved with a militant black group won’t help.”

  “You think BSAY is militant.”

  “By Yale standards, yes,” he said.

  I opened the paper to the Black Panther article. “You know what’s amazing about this article? It’s the stuff it doesn’t say. It doesn’t say that New Haven has a Black Panther office, just that some Panthers were arrested here. It doesn’t say whether any locals were involved in that arrest, or even what the arrests were about.”

  He templed his fingers. “Your point?”

  “The Panthers are militant. Are they associated with BSAY?”

  “God, no,” he said. “BSAY wouldn’t get its Ivy League fingers dirty with the Panthers.”

  “But BSAY protested the arrests.”

  “No, they didn’t. Where’d you hear that?”

  “From Ludlow Robinson.”

  Freeman let out a small breath. “And that got you out of his office, didn’t it?”

  I nodded. “It also got me here. I talked to bailiff at the courthouse. He told me ab
out you, and he said that BSAY did picket when the Panthers were arrested.”

  Freeman looked down. “I told you, we don’t handle the cop beat. So there’s probably a lot I don’t know.”

  “So why’s this article here?”

  “Talk,” he said. “There’s been lots of fear talk about the Panthers, afraid they’re going to bring the wrong element to town. Then with the murder—”

  “Tell me about it.”

  “We don’t know a lot. Just that a young man was found murdered in a swamp near Middlefield. He’d been tortured, and soon we find out he was a member of the New York City Black Panthers. Rumor has it that he was going to inform on someone — I’ve never quite figured out who — and these eleven Panthers murdered him for it.”

  “So the Black Panther Party is active here,” I said.

  He shook his head. “Never really was. Just some misguided kids, you know.”

  “I’ve met some Panthers,” I said. “I don’t know if I’d use the word ‘misguided.’ ”

  “Here? In New Haven?”

  “Chicago. They have a different perspective on the world. Not one I believe in, but they seem convinced.”

  “You sound like you respect them.”

  “You sound like you don’t.”

  He shrugged, clearly unwilling to answer.

  “Where’s their offices?” I asked.

  “Shut down,” he said. “With the arrests. I have no idea where they are located now. You think this boy you’re looking for is with them?”

  “I’d heard that he got militant in the last few weeks of his stay at Yale, but I don’t know what that means. You tell me BSAY is militant, so maybe that’s all it was.”

  He sighed. “You survive in this town by rumor. And even though I heard that BSAY has been talking about getting some black studies courses at Yale, that’s about as militant as they’ve been getting.”

  “Which is too militant for you.”

  “They’re rocking a pretty big boat. They’re representing us in there — the more folks who get into these power networks, the better for all of us.”