War at Home: A Smokey Dalton Novel

by Kris Nelscott

  After we hung up, I kept my hand on the receiver. The phone spit back some coins, but I didn’t dig them out of the coin return.

  I was shaking. That had gone better and worse than I had expected. Gwen was the first person from my past I’d spoken to in a long time. But I knew she was safe. We hadn’t been in contact for several years, since I’d called her in 1960 on a trip to New York, just after I’d inherited some money.

  Gwen had still been married then, and she had whispered into the phone that seeing me wouldn’t be a good idea, that Lionel was jealous even of the mention of my name. He tore up my letters to her — not that they’d been very personal or informative — and he didn’t want her to have contact with me, not then, not ever.

  So I’d honored that request until now, knowing that of all the people I had known, Gwen Cole was one who wouldn’t have shown up on the FBI’s list. If old friends or my family had even mentioned her, they would have called her by her maiden name, Gwen Daines. But I didn’t recall ever telling anyone much about her. When I’d known Gwen, I hadn’t been talking to people at all.

  I stayed awake for hours that night. I took first guard duty, figuring if anything was going to happen, it would happen around midnight.

  I sat in darkness, watching the parking lot. I would be happy to leave New Haven. I hated this place. Both Memphis and Chicago had had communities that would have adopted me, Malcolm, and Jimmy in a moment.

  From what little I’d seen of New Haven’s, it was repressed and frightened, and only peripherally aware of how to fight back. Those that had the power to fight, like Whickam, had convinced themselves that racial problems happened elsewhere, not in his comfortable little corner of the world. I wondered how Freeman was doing on his story about the police and hoped I hadn’t gotten him in too far over his head.

  About twelve-thirty, a bevy of sirens rushed by, their sounds magnified by the silence around me. I stiffened, watched the parking lot for multicolored lights, and, as the sirens faded, relaxed only slightly.

  From that point on, the silence grew. I finally woke Malcolm around three for his turn at watch, then fell asleep myself.

  The nightmare brought its usual chill, only the dream ran backward. Instead of carrying my friend out of the trench, his hot blood dripping all over my hands, I carried him into it. I was still covered with blood, which steamed in the cold Korean night.

  We stood in the trench and watched as a sergeant showed us how to use grenades. Only he wasn’t using grenades — not real ones. He was making Molotov cocktails. He was going to have me stuff cloth into the liquid-filled bottles, until he saw that my hands were covered with blood. So he gave me the matches instead.

  I couldn’t light them, but somehow the cloth caught fire anyway. The bottles blew, and I woke up, a scream caught in my throat.

  Malcolm was watching me as if he had never seen me before. “You okay?” he asked.

  I nodded, got up shakily, and went into the small bathroom. I grabbed the only clean terrycloth washcloth, flowed cold water over it, and slowly bathed my face, trying to slow my heart.

  These days, Jimmy usually had the nightmares. Now I was the one whose dreams revived the horrors of my past, and I wasn’t sure exactly how to stop it.

  THIRTY-ONE

  We checked out of the hotel just after dawn and drove out of New Haven. Just outside of town, I stopped at a space-age Mobil gas station. It had a round umbrella-like roof over the conical gas pumps, and the square concrete building had a red Pegasus painted on the sign.

  The boys waited while I used the pay phone to call the New Haven police. I gave them the address of the Barn, said I’d been inside, and that I had found components for making bombs.

  Then I hung up and headed out as quickly as I could, disappearing down the road toward New York City.

  The day promised to be muggy. Even though the sun was out, a haze hung over everything. I had to squint as I drove. The diffuse light was brighter than it seemed.

  Jimmy bounced on the seat across from me, happy to be leaving New Haven. Malcolm hugged the window, his knees pressed against the dash. He looked nervous and uncomfortable. I remembered how frightened he had been to drive through Pennsylvania, and I wondered how frightened he was now.

  “I think it’s good that we’re leaving New Haven,” I said to him.

  “I was getting tired of that room,” Jimmy said. “Kinda felt like my mom’s place, that last one, you know.”

  The one that she had abandoned him in. The one his brother had left him in as well. The one that had locked him out when the rent money hadn’t been paid, the one that nearly made him live on the street.

  I hadn’t wanted him to remember that. But his past was as vivid for him as mine was for me.

  I wondered how Daniel felt about his past. Disconnected from it? Empowered by it? I couldn’t tell from the few clues I’d found. He had become more of an enigma to me in these last few days.

  I hadn’t called Grace to tell her we were leaving New Haven. I wasn’t sure how to talk to her. The evidence in the Barn put me at odds with my initial mission.

  Finding Daniel was no longer enough. I had to stop him. I had to do everything I could to keep one of those bombs from going off.

  The road twisted past a junkheap of discarded train parts. Old cars with holes through their sides, torn-up track, and warning lights were mixed in with old tires and piles of organic garbage. Gulls picked through the wreckage. Beyond it, one of the rivers glistened.

  “Chicago’s not this ugly,” Jimmy said.

  “Chicago’s bigger,” I said. “You haven’t been to all parts of the city.”

  He frowned at me, as if he didn’t want me to contradict him, and then rested his arms on the dash, peering out the windshield.

  Malcolm said, “I heard New York is the worst.”

  “The worst for what?” I asked.

  “Dirt,” he said. “Garbage. Crime.”

  “I’ve always liked New York,” I said, and that was the truth. I always felt hopeful in Harlem. The first time I’d climbed out of a subway platform onto 125th Street, I stopped and stared in awe, knowing that this was the place where Langston Hughes had lived, the place where Duke Ellington had gotten his start, the place where W.E.B. Dubois published the Crisis. W.C. Handy, father of the blues, left Memphis to come to Harlem, where he made his name, and played with Eubie Blake, among others. Once upon a time in Harlem, on any given afternoon, you could see Zora Neale Hurston or Madame C.J. Walker or A. Phillip Randolph. And then there were the nightclubs — Small’s Paradise, the Rhythm Club, and Connie’s Inn.

  Harlem was also a place of scandal—a place where blacks performed for slumming whites at the Savoy Ballroom and the Cotton Club (which didn’t integrate until long after its heyday). Riots happened here, and assassinations — Malcolm X got shot at the Audubon Ballroom only four short years ago, even though it felt like a lifetime had passed.

  Like most people who’d spent time in Harlem, I loved it and I hated it, and still it called to me. I had nearly settled here once. Only that horrible breakup with Gwen, which left me adrift and wandering, led me to Memphis, my odd jobs, and the first real home I had ever had.

  When I’d been at Boston University, I’d come down to New York almost every weekend — at first to get away from Boston, and later to see Gwen. We had been intense for nearly two years. Then I’d moved to Harlem for one brief summer, and everything changed.

  Malcolm was looking at me. I felt my cheeks heat, as if he had seen each memory, each thought pass across my face.

  “Give New York a try,” I said. “And don’t believe everything you hear.”

  He grunted, and I left him to his silence. He would have to make up his own mind about the city.

  I certainly had.

  * * *

  I parked the van in one of the lots at the Newark Airport. We took our small bags, hid everything else under a blanket, and locked the van up tight. Then we headed into the terminal as if
we were going to fly somewhere.

  Malcolm had never been in an airport terminal. He looked at the milling people, the ticket counters, and all the luggage as if it were a miracle. Jimmy kept close to me. He hated official buildings and the crowds inside them. So far, we hadn’t seen any security guards, but there had to some, and we knew, by virtue of our color, that we’d be instantly suspect.

  We took the stairs down to baggage claim and followed the brown signs that led us to public transportation. A number of cabs were parked along the curb, but I wasn’t even going to try to take one. When I had lived in New York in the 1950s, cab drivers refused to pick up blacks. If you were somehow lucky enough to get a ride, the driver would deposit you at 110th Street rather than enter Harlem.

  Instead, we took a bus. I paid the fare for all three of us, and we sat in the back, mostly to avoid trouble. We kept our suitcases on our laps like shields. Jimmy peered out the window, but Malcolm stared straight ahead, ignoring everything around him.

  He looked intimidating, but I knew, just from the set of his body, how terrified he was.

  The Port Authority Bus Terminal in midtown didn’t help matters much. We got out on a lower level filled with garbage and smelling of diesel exhaust. I led us along a vaguely remembered route, trying to find the subway trains that would take us to Harlem.

  The walls were filthy and covered with graffiti. Junkies shivered near garbage cans, and more than a few had their hands out for money. A busker played his guitar a few yards from a newspaper kiosk. His guitar case was open and dotted with scattered coins, probably his own, to encourage other people to add some. He was playing some rock tune so badly that I couldn’t figure out what it was, and I hoped he wouldn’t start singing until we were past him.

  The train ride to Harlem was uneventful. The farther north we went, the darker the faces became in the car. That helped Malcolm relax just a little, but he still clutched his suitcase as if it were the only weapon he had.

  When we got off, we we climbed up to the street level. The city’s noise hit me first, then the smell of diesel and exhaust, and finally the sidewalk, surrounded by buildings.

  We stepped away from the subway entrance. Malcolm stood beside me, biting his lower lip. He wasn’t looking at the skyline in the distance, but at the graffiti-covered buildings beside us. He looked like he had never seen poverty before in his life.

  “Think Daniel’s here?” he asked quietly.

  “I do,” I said.

  Jimmy stood on his toes beside us, turning slowly, taking it all in. “Looks like Chicago.”

  I didn’t think it did. The cities had different energy, different looks, different layouts. But the red brick and graffiti were the same, at least in certain sections of both cities, and so were the tall buildings off in the distance.

  Only here, a wide body of water didn’t dominate like Lake Michigan did in Chicago. The rivers and the bridges were a presence, but they were overwhelmed by the city itself.

  “It’s nothing like Chicago,” Malcolm said. “Nothing at all.”

  Jimmy looked at him, surprised. Apparently Jimmy hadn’t noticed how much trouble Malcolm had had on the trip to New Haven. But Jimmy was noticing now.

  I picked up my suitcase and Jimmy’s and headed down the sidewalk.

  “Do you know where we’re going?” Malcolm asked.

  I nodded. “I lived in Harlem for a while. It’s a pretty easy place to get around in.”

  He didn’t answer me, but he had stopped biting his lip. He followed, as if he were covering our backs.

  The stench of urine was strong, and someone had strewn garbage all over the sidewalk. This was not at all like Chicago, and I waited for Malcolm to say so. Instead, he wrinkled his nose and kept walking, following me to the cross street.

  Harlem did look different. It was dingier than I remembered. A number of the nearby buildings had broken or boarded windows, but still showed signs of habitation.

  Jimmy moved up beside me, pretending to want his suitcase, when I actually believed he wanted my protection.

  “This a bad part of town, Smoke?” he asked quietly.

  “It depends,” I said. “Harlem has neighborhoods just like the South Side. I haven’t been here in nine years, so I’m not sure which neighborhood is good or not anymore. I’m sure we’ll be able to figure it out, though.”

  Malcolm didn’t say anything. He frowned and kept walking, his head up, his eyes scanning for any sign of trouble. I did the same, seeing loiterers and people going about their business.

  Our suitcases branded us as outsiders, and the quicker we got rid of them, the happier I’d be. At least here, however, we blended in, and that made us less likely targets for anyone who was thinking of mugging us.

  I softly explained to both boys how to get around in the city, the way that natives spoke of cross streets and main streets, and how New York, outside of certain areas, was pretty logical — the numbered streets running east-west and the avenues, also numbered, going north-south.

  We were going to Lenox Avenue, between West 120th and 121st Streets. Lenox was the name Sixth Avenue got north of Central Park. Jimmy thought the information fascinating, especially after having learned Chicago’s convoluted streets. Malcolm didn’t venture an opinion at all.

  The rental agent operated out of his own home, half a block from Mount Morris Park. The agent’s apartment was in the center of a group of brownstone row houses that had distinctive mansard roofs. I’d loved those buildings when I’d first seen them years ago, and I loved them still, despite the grime that time and the city had deposited on them.

  Still, no graffiti decorated the building’s sides, and no garbage cluttered its walks. Someone spent time keeping this place cleaner than the other blocks we’d walked down.

  I took the steps to the main door two at a time. Malcolm and Jimmy waited on the sidewalk while I pushed the bell. When I identified myself through the intercom, the door buzzed open. I held the door as Jimmy and Malcolm hurried into it.

  The air was cool inside, and the hallway was narrow. A secretary sat in a small room to the side. She smiled at me, had me leave my “companions” and our suitcases in her room while I met with the agent.

  He was a small man with tight curls and a fake smile. His suit cost more than I’d earned all spring. He shook my hand like we were old friends and told me that Gwen had contacted him, begging him for a good location, not some place filled with hookers and junkies.

  “The problem is,” he said to me, “my weekly apartments aren’t in the best neighborhoods. To do a favor for my friend Gwen, I need to put you in a boardinghouse or set you up as lodgers. Maybe even get you a suite at the Olga Hotel. What do you say?”

  Boardinghouses wouldn’t work for us. We’d have to stay in separate rooms and eat at a set time with the other boarders. Lodgers were in even tighter quarters. While we were in the city, I didn’t want that kind of scrutiny.

  “I’ll take the hotel if that’s all you’ve got,” I said. “But I’d prefer an apartment. We may be here all summer, maybe even into the fall, but I won’t know that for a few weeks.”

  His eyes twinkled for the first time. I knew I had caught him exactly where he could be caught — in his pocketbook.

  “Tell you what,” he said. “I have one apartment on West 114th , between Seventh and Eighth, not far from the Twenty-eight Precinct. I won’t lie to you. The neighborhood is in transition. But it’s transitioning upward. It got model cities money five years ago, and six million dollars later, respectable families are taking the place back over. All the apartments on that block have been fixed up at government expense. It even has air-conditioning. And the cops patrol regularly. It couldn’t be safer.”

  The muscles in my back tensed, but I didn’t move. I didn’t like the idea of cops patrolling, but I also knew that a lack of police protection in this part of the city was just as bad. Besides, the New York police had no idea that Jimmy and I were on the run. The APB went out over a y
ear ago, and I was certain that if anyone had looked at it, they had round-filed it long ago.

  My silence must have seemed like rejection to him. He said, “Tell you what. You stay there a couple of weeks and find out you’ll be staying longer and need a real place, you call me and I’ll give you a great apartment in a better section of Harlem for a rent-controlled price. I’m not supposed to do that — when an old-timer moves out, we’re supposed to let the apartment go to standing rates — but we have ways, you know. And my good customers, they benefit from it. I’m one of the few black landlords in this part of the city, and I help our people.”

  I wished I could believe him. He probably did better than the anonymous white landlords who owned so much of Harlem, but that wasn’t saying much.

  “I’ll tell you what,” I said, mimicking his tone. “We’ll take the apartment on 114th sight unseen, and if we don’t like it, I’ll come back here for something better without any penalty. We can talk about the future later. What do you say?”

  The twinkle left his eye, but his smile remained. “If that’ll make you happy. I have an agreement right here.”

  He walked back to his desk and slipped a paper forward. On it, he wrote the address at 114th Street. “Name?” he asked.

  I felt relieved that Gwen hadn’t told him everything, just that a friend of hers was coming. “Bill Grimshaw.”

  “Permanent address?”

  “Here,” I said. “Let’s make this easy.”

  I took out the driver’s license that I’d bought in the name Bill Grimshaw.

  When he’d finished filling out the form, he slid it toward me along with a pen. I read it, saw that the rent could go up each week if he so chose, that we could be evicted without notice, and decided to sign it anyway.

  I paid him twenty-five dollars for the week in cash, along with a twenty-dollar security deposit that was supposed to be refundable. I got my receipt and carefully put it in my wallet.

  The agent went to a full board in the back room, and returned with two keys to the 114th Street apartment.