War at Home: A Smokey Dalton Novel

by Kris Nelscott

  If he wanted to check on me, he could. I’d give him the numbers if he doubted me. “This is a far cry from Chicago.”

  “Yes, it is,” I said. “Grace didn’t have anyone else to turn to, and I had some time coming to me, so I took it as a vacation, to see if I could find her son.”

  “This Grace,” he said, “she single?”

  “Why the third degree, officer?” I asked.

  “Detective,” he said, correcting me like I knew he would. Then he sighed, relaxed his shoulders, and extended a hand. I was relieved to see it. Many white Chicago cops would never have shaken the hand of a black man. “Detective Mackey O’Conner.”

  “Bill Grimshaw,” I said, shaking his hand.

  “You know that June D’Amato was shot.”

  I wasn’t quite sure how to play this. “I knew she was injured.”

  “Shot,” he said. “Right outside the Army Induction Center yesterday. Some friends of hers brought her to the emergency room, then took off. This Kirkland, I take it he’s colored?”

  “He’s black, yes,” I said, adding a correction of my own.

  “He might’ve been the one who brought her in. One of our guys talked to a black kid for a minute before he ran.”

  “But why are you here today?” I asked again, hoping I wasn’t pushing too hard. I was trying to play the insurance investigator who did claim fraud and was out of his depth in the big city. I hope the act convinced. “Is she in trouble?”

  “I suspect so. She’s the fourth person in her circle of friends to get shot.”

  I started. I knew nothing about this. “Was Daniel shot?” I asked, even though I knew he hadn’t been.

  O’Connor shook his head. “The victims are Ned Jones, Victor McCleary, and Joel Grossman. Names ring any bells?”

  “No,” I said, making a note of the names. “Were they all shot this week?”

  “Over the summer,” O’Connor said.

  “They die?”

  “No.”

  “You have any idea why they were shot?”

  He shrugged. “They’ve been associating with some unsavories. Protesting — which ain’t against the law — but this group — D’Amato’s group — it’s starting to get violent. There’ve been some assaults, and some threats, and one unexploded bomb.”

  “June has a group?” I asked, sounding as naïve as I could. “And it’s violent?”

  “We think so,” O’Connor said. “We’re watching a number of these militant antiestablishment groups. Your girl here, she just might’ve gotten some of her own medicine.”

  “You think someone she knew shot her?”

  “I don’t know what to think,” he said. “First, there’s the location. There’s a lot of military folk down there, even on the Fourth, and not all take kindly to these kids, you know? But that’s a long way between shouting at some kids and shooting at them. You got any military background, Mr. Grimshaw?”

  “I served in Korea,” I said.

  “So no sniper training,” he said.

  That was an interesting statement. He sounded almost disappointed. In that statement was an assumption I had heard before. The younger vets seemed to believe that snipers were only used in Vietnam. I wasn’t going to dissuade him.

  I thought again of the echoing rifle shot, and that figure, standing on the steel girders outlined by streetlights. A sniper had crossed my mind yesterday. O’Connor simply confirmed one of my own suspicions.

  “You think I’m a sniper and I came here to finish the job?” I asked, pretending an affront I didn’t feel. “I came here to talk to her, just like I told you.”

  “I figured as much, but it doesn’t hurt to check,” he said. “Where were you yesterday?”

  “With my son and a friend, walking through Harlem,” I said. “My son’s eleven, so if you want to verify my alibi, I suggest you talk to him before I do.”

  “No need,” O’Connor said. “Have to ask everyone, you know.”

  “What makes you think a sniper shot her?” I asked. “Did you find a nest?”

  His eyes met mine for half a second, measuring, evaluating. After a moment, he said, “What we found is police business.”

  I shook my head, as if I were out of my depth. “If June is involved with a group,” I asked as if I were trying to get things straight, “does it have a name?”

  “We think so, but we’re not sure,” he said. “These kids change their allegiances as fast as they change their clothes. Initially, we thought we had an offshoot of the Students for a Democratic Society. Then we hear about Black Panthers, but most of these kids are white. Then we hear about the War at Home Brigade, dedicated to bringing Vietnam to America.”

  I thought of that graffiti we had found in the Barn in Fair Haven.

  “You know something about that?” he asked.

  “I’d heard it,” I said. “Up in New Haven, something about bringing the war home. It never made sense until now.”

  “I thought these college kids were local,” he said. “D’Amato’s going to City College. But we get lots of wackos down here in the Village. This’s become some kind of gathering place. It’s hard to keep track of all of them.”

  “That’s why you can’t tell me if she’s been with Daniel,” I said.

  “All I know is that in the last month or two, I’ve seen more coloreds in her group. It’d been pretty white before that. But we’ve been having mixing, if you pardon the expression, ever since the Panthers got arrested.”

  “The Panthers in New Haven?”

  He squinted at me. “Here. They call themselves the Panther 21. You don’t know about this?”

  “Actually, I don’t.”

  “They threatened to bomb some department stores, the Botanical Garden, and a few police stations.”

  More bombs. I didn’t like this.

  “The Botanical Garden?” I asked, struck by the incongruity.

  “Don’t ask me to explain these nutballs,” O’Connor said. “I just read about them. But I did notice after they got arrested, lots more Afros down here, folks trying to get involved, I think, you know, fight for something I guess, even if it is a bunch of criminals.”

  “So you think June is somehow involved with militants.”

  “We know she is,” O’Connor said. “That’s why I’m here, seeing who comes to visit her.”

  “Do you have anything on them?”

  “Not enough to arrest most of them,” he said. “Just some suspicions. But a few questions might get to the bottom of that dud bomb. You let us know if you find this Daniel. We’ll want to talk to him.”

  “All right,” I said. “If you answer me one question.”

  “Go ahead,” he said.

  “If you found a sniper’s nest, why did you think she was shot by one of her own?”

  His smile was slow, almost as if he found my question amusing. But his gaze had some respect in it. “Didn’t say we found a nest. But suppose we did, a what-if, if you will, we can’t trust it to be accurate. These kids are good at street theater, and we sure know that they’re not above using one of their own to make a point. After all, they want to bring the war home.”

  That chill ran right through me. This sounded very familiar. It was the same technique Daniel had used at Yale. He had falsely accused someone and attacked him, trying to make his story more believable. That had backfired. Yale hadn’t kicked out the people Daniel wanted, but it had also worked in an odd way. Daniel had learned that he could upset an entire group of people with a big lie.

  “This ring some kinda bell to you?” O’Connor asked.

  “It certainly makes me wonder,” I said, “what these kids were doing at the induction center on the Fourth of July. You think they were trying to bomb the place?”

  “Possible,” O’Connor said, “but more likely I think they were scouting, looking where they could make the most ruckus during the week, where they could cause the most trouble and get the most attention.”

  “Then your
street theater theory doesn’t make sense,” I said. “Why call attention to themselves yesterday? Why not wait until these offices were open?”

  “They might’ve been practicing that, too. These kids aren’t trained. A real sniper would’ve hit that girl and killed her right off, but she’s gonna live through this. All four of these kids have survived. Either that’s one bad sniper, or someone who’s playing at it.”

  I wondered if O’Connor had ever tried to shoot like a sniper. Firing a rifle over a long distance, adjusting for wind velocity and trajectory, was an advanced skill not many good shots could manage. The fact that the shooter had actually hit someone, not the street or the building, led me to believe that the shooter was not playing.

  “If I were you, I’d watch your back,” O’Connor said. “In fact, I’d go home to Chicago, tell that woman you’re interested in that you couldn’t find her kid, although you’ll probably get tons of points for trying, and then let it go. If he’s involved at all — and it sounds like he very well might be — then you’re in way too deep. Let us professionals handle this.”

  He pulled a small notebook out of his pocket, flipped the notebook open, and grabbed the matching pen from the protector in the breastpocket of his white shirt. He scrawled Daniel’s first name, then asked me how to spell Kirkland.

  I told him.

  “How’s about the names of those companies you freelance for?” O’Connor asked.

  “I’ll give you two,” I said, and gave him the contact names, the address, and the phone number for Bronzeville Home, Health, Life and Burial Insurance, and the address, phone number, and Laura’s name at Sturdy. Just saying her name made me long for her. I missed her more than I wanted to admit.

  “You never told me what division you work for,” I said to him.

  “Homicide,” he said, and flipped the notebook closed.

  “Someone’s died, then,” I said.

  He shook his head. “We handle attempted murder, too, and that’s this case. Then there’s the War at Home Brigade. We think we got a badly beaten security guard at a construction site we can tie to them. The feds want to take this, but we’re holding them off.”

  “The FBI?” I asked, hoping that my sudden feeling of panic didn’t come out in my voice. I had just given my address to this man, and he might have ties with the FBI. I didn’t want them to notice me ever again.

  “Not the febbies, but the Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco, and Firearms. The night the security guard got attacked, someone stole a lot of dynamite. That gets regulated by the feds, and they want a piece of this. We’ve been giving them evidence, but they’re busy enough. Kids are setting off bombs all over the country right now, and the ATF oversees a lot of those investigations. They’re shorthanded — they weren’t designed for this kind of long-term warfare.” O’Connor shook his head. “I’m not sure what this country’s coming to, but I have to tell you, it’s not the place I was born in.”

  It wasn’t the place I was born in either. In that world, I never would have had this conversation with a white cop. I would have been arrested on suspicion of something immediately, maybe even the shooting of June D’Amato.

  But O’Connor wasn’t making a move against me. He seemed to take me for the man I had presented myself as, although I knew he would go back to the precinct and check my credentials.

  “You find this Kirkland,” O’Connor said, “you let us know.”

  “I will,” I said.

  “And don’t get involved in the D’Amato investigation,” he said. “It’s a police matter now.”

  “Can I at least go down to the site?” I asked.

  “What’re you, ghoulish?” he asked.

  I shook my head. “I’d just like to see if anyone saw Daniel there.”

  “You got a picture of the kid?”

  I fished in my pocket. I hadn’t had to use Daniel’s pictures through most of this investigation, but I had put it in my wallet after needing it a few times. I took out the shot. It didn’t look much like Daniel now: the eyes were calmer, happier, his face thicker, his hair tamer. He looked like a wild-eyed revolutionary these days.

  “Never saw this kid, but I’ll keep my eye out,” O’Connor said. “Can I keep this?”

  “It’s the only one I have,” I lied.

  He handed it back to me. “One more thing. I need a local contact address for you.”

  I had hoped he would forget that. I gave him a fake address, and told him I didn’t have a phone.

  “We need you, there are other ways to get you,” he said with a grin. “Don’t get in trouble now.”

  He tapped his notebook against his hand, then walked back into the main area of the hospital.

  My heart was pounding. I hadn’t noticed that during our discussion. But I had been concentrating on the words and my half-truths instead of on how I felt.

  A sniper nest. Probably with some shell casings, so the police knew that the nest had been used when June was shot. Which meant that the police had the trajectory of the shot, as well as some secondary evidence to lead them to the place where the shot had originated.

  Someone trained, shooting at a militant group of college kids, wounding four of them.

  I had three other names, three more places to go.

  O’Connor had given me more of a gift than he realized.

  FORTY-THREE

  I left the hospital, and went to the New York Public Library on Fifth Avenue. I loved the huge building with the stone lions guarding the entrance. It was, to me, everything a library should be: grand, and gorgeous. I went inside, enjoying the coolness, and then went to the periodicals room.

  O’Connor had given me the names of three victims, implied they were all students, and told me they’d been shot over the summer. It was a limited time range.

  I skimmed the New York Daily News, which seemed to adore shootings, going backward from July third to the beginning of summer.

  Gradually, I got the information I needed. Victor McCleary had been shot near a bar on Christopher Street on June 27, during something the Daily News called the Queer Riot. Joel Grossman had been shot in Washington Square Park earlier in the month, during a meeting about the Lower Manhattan Expressway. Ned Jones had been shot in Central Park, at a protest rally just after Memorial Day. No one at the paper seemed to think the shootings were related.

  Obviously O’Connor had information that the police hadn’t given to the media.

  The Daily News listed all three men’s addresses. I wrote the addresses down on some scrap paper, pocketed it, and left, feeling better than I had in hours. Those three might tell me more about Daniel, give me a hint as to his plans, and perhaps, have information about the shooter.

  Before I talked with them, though, I went back to Battery Park. I wanted to see the shooting site up close, to see if there was anything I had missed.

  The neighborhood looked like a completely different place. People filled the streets. The barbershop across the street from the army building had men in both of its chairs and more waiting against one wall. Even the haberdashers next door had a few customers. Cars drove tentatively along Whitehall, most of the drivers looking toward the park and the Upper Bay, probably trying to figure out how to get there, through the double-parked cars and past the DO NOT ENTER signs.

  The main doors to the induction center were open. Two military police stood guard, their uniforms crisp, their heads straight ahead, as if they were statues. A number of military personnel went in and out: soldiers, their uniforms wrinkled with the heat, showed their degree of experience in the way they moved. Most had crewcuts and carried their caps under their arms.

  Several young men, their hair so freshly mowed that their skulls shone, went inside carrying paperwork. But there were no recruits standing in line. Either they had already gone in to begin their day-long wrangle with the U.S. government, or the main part of the induction center was closed on this holiday weekend.

  I remembered how it felt to go to an induction
center that first day: the strange commands, the harsh sergeants, the unexpected humiliation. My strongest memory was standing in a bland room with fluorescent lights, stripped to my underwear, a bunch of skinny white boys — also nearly naked — standing beside me, a few of them swearing at me under their breath because they felt embarrassed and had to take it out on someone.

  I moved a little farther down the street, looked up, and scanned the rooftops. If O’Connor had been right, and there had been a sniper, any one of the roofs on these nearby buildings would have made a perfect nest. The nearby stores would have worked as well. If the sniper gained the proper access, it would have taken little to shoot from one of the doorways or an upstairs open window.

  But I hadn’t seen anyone in those places, just on that partially finished skyscraper to the east. I faced it, saw that the level where I had seen the man was visible, even from this spot.

  One of the military police saw me and, with a slight movement of his right hand, beckoned someone from inside. An officer came out, his uniform crisp despite the heat. He was black and had that official don’t-fuck-with-me attitude that I had taken for confidence before I joined the service.

  “Help you?” he asked.

  “Yeah,” I said, deciding I had nothing to lose. I had already given my information to the police, and O’Connor knew I’d be down here. “My name’s Bill Grimshaw. I’m a private detective from Chicago. I’m looking for a young man who might have been here yesterday when that girl was shot.”

  The corners of his eyes narrowed, and I hoped he wouldn’t ask for my PI license.

  “That young man wouldn’t be here today,” he said, not denying there had been a shooting, as I had expected.

  “I thought maybe he might be. I was playing a hunch. I figured he got his notice to report. I figured he might have been here yesterday to plan something to shut the place down so that he wouldn’t have to.”

  “If that’s what they were planning, those kids weren’t here long enough yesterday to get anything done.”

  So the officer had been here. Good. He might be able to give me more information than O’Connor, provided I didn’t ask too many leading questions.