Days of Rage: A Smokey Dalton Novel

by Kris Nelscott

“No,” I said, “I don’t. I understand joining the Southern Christian Leadership Conference or the National Association for the Advancement of Colored People. I understand marching. I understand protesting. I don’t understand how Till brought you here.”

  Minton sighed, then nodded toward the door. “Let’s get to your van before someone shows up for work.”

  With his free hand, he grabbed a gurney and wheeled it toward the small freight elevator. When we reached it, Minton pressed a button, and the doors opened. We stepped inside. I helped him bump the gurney over the gap between the doors and the wall.

  The elevator smelled of damp and rot, just like the Queen Anne did. No formaldehyde here, no pretext, no made-up corpses. Just the smell of death, old death, decaying, half-forgotten, and never completely gone.

  He pressed the top of two buttons and the door slid shut. “I went to school with Emmett. He was a good kid. Quiet, but fun. His eyes always twinkled, you know?”

  I wanted to ask if Minton thought Till had actually whistled at that white woman. But he continued before I could say anything.

  “He, ah —.” Emotion I hadn’t heard from him before, the kind a little boy felt for the loss of a friend, strangled him. Minton shook his head as if shaking off the feelings, then started again. “Did you see him?”

  “After he was dead?” I asked.

  “Yeah.”

  I shook my head. “I hadn’t moved here yet.”

  The elevator bumped to a stop, then bounced for a moment before releasing us. I glanced at Minton, who seemed unconcerned by the malfunction.

  He grabbed one end of the gurney, pushing it out of the elevator and onto the ground floor near the freight doors. I wondered, for just a moment, if funeral homes called those wide double doors freight doors, then decided they probably didn’t. They probably had some euphemism, something that sanitized even the transportation details of death.

  “What made Emmett’s death so powerful,” Minton said as he headed toward those doors, “wasn’t his youth or what he did. It was how he looked. And what they did to him.”

  Minton paused, his hand on the red switch that would automatically swing the freight doors open.

  “You couldn’t look at Emmett’s body and believe that his death was easy. Everything those bastards did, everything, was imprinted on him. His eye was coming off, for God’s sake. His face was smashed. He barely looked like Emmett at all.”

  Minton slammed his fist against the switch, activating it. The doors creaked as they started to move.

  “My momma, she made me get in that line of people coming to view his body. I didn’t want to, and my dad said I was too young. ‘The boy needs a childhood,’ he said, but my momma said, ‘Emmett Till had a childhood and they stole it from him. Our boy needs to know what could happen to him.’”

  “That’s harsh,” I said, even though I understood both impulses. If I could hide the filth of this world from Jimmy, I would have. But I would have had to have gotten him when he was an infant. By the time he was two, he’d seen a lot. By the time I met him, he’d probably seen more depravity than I could even imagine — and not much of it came from whites. Whites were the great unknown in his life, until he met me.

  “It may be harsh, but my mom was right.”

  The doors had opened. Rain pounded the parking lot, huge fat drops that sounded like they were landing with the power of hail.

  Minton grabbed the gurney and shoved it out the door. I hurried ahead of him and opened the back doors of the van. Together we lifted the gurney inside.

  “I expect you want me to wear one of those coveralls,” he said, nodding toward mine.

  “Yeah.” I set down the body bags and grabbed one of the last of the coveralls, handing it to Minton. He nodded.

  He set his equipment inside, then we closed all the doors and ran to the front of the van.

  I started it up, shut off the radio, and turned on the wipers. Then I drove out of the alley and onto the street.

  “I still don’t get why you didn’t become an investigator,” I said. “Or even a reporter. It was the journalists covering that funeral who really got the nation’s attention.”

  “No,” Minton said. “That was Mrs. Till. I’d never seen anyone so angry. She wanted the world to see what happened to her son, and by God, the world saw it.”

  In still black-and-white photographs. A lot of the Southern papers didn’t carry the story, but I saw the photographs in the Defender, which a lot of people subscribed to in Memphis.

  He shook his head, lost in his memories. “My momma took me to that line, and we threaded past that casket to pay our respects. That was the first time I saw anyone dead, and it was a boy I knew, and he hardly looked human any more.”

  I wanted to close my eyes against the images that rose. I’d seen victims of southern “justice.” That was how I’d learned some of these behind-the-books techniques in the first place.

  “I didn’t just learn about death or excessive cruelty that day, Mr. Grimshaw. I learned that bodies talk.”

  I glanced at him. He was staring at the buildings going by, places with their own secrets, filled with people who lived mostly quiet lives.

  “Emmett Till’s body didn’t just talk. It screamed. And because it screamed, the white world finally listened.”

  A little. They listened a little. Not enough to stop all the racism and prejudice and cruelty. But enough for some folks to say that the violence was unacceptable. Loyce Kirby, my old partner, had been teaching me the detecting business during the Till uproar.

  He said it was kinda like white folks had just discovered their neighbors were beating their dogs. You had to stop the cruelty because you saw it. But they never did see blacks as human. Just dumb animals who couldn’t defend themselves.

  “So you went into the body business,” I said.

  “At first I thought I wanted to heal them,” Minton said. “But then I figured out that you couldn’t step in. A woman could come in, beaten by her husband, and you could patch her up. But then she’d go home to the same bastard who hurt her in the first place, and you couldn’t do a damn thing.”

  I shook my head. “Waiting until he killed her so that he could be brought to justice isn’t good either.”

  “I can’t stop people from killing other people,” Minton said. “I can help prove that they’ve done it, and maybe stop a future crime. And that’s all I can do.”

  “That’s enough for you?” I asked.

  He glanced at me, his eyebrows raised slightly. “Solving old crimes for a white woman? That’s enough for you?”

  “Touché,” I said.

  We pulled onto the Queen Anne’s block.

  “She’s doing good works,” I said of Laura, not wanting Minton to back out of this. “Like I told you—”

  “I know what you told me. I investigated it as best I could, and I agree. But I also hear she’s someone special to you. And she’s high-profile. So I don’t get your argument on the Soto case.”

  “You should if you think about it.” I pulled the van into the back and shut off the ignition. “Laura’s been high-profile for a long time. Because she’s white, she gets invited to luncheons for her fame. The Soto brothers were high-profile for — what? Three months? And for their efforts, they got gunned down.”

  “Fred’s been high-profile longer than that,” Minton said sullenly.

  “And he’s been arrested—”

  “For stealing ice cream. They called it a felony, and he didn’t do nothing. He wasn’t even there.”

  “—and his offices have repeatedly been broken into, and his friends have been killed. Do you have a family, Tim?”

  “My folks,” he said.

  “A wife? Kids?”

  He shook his head.

  “Then you’re free to act on this stuff. Me, I gotta pick and choose. Because if the cops gun me down, my little boy’s got no one. And if the cops want to get to me without killing me, guess who’ll they’ll go after?
I don’t want to see my son on your table.”

  Minton sighed. “It’s just that everyone says you’re the best, man. Everyone.”

  “Maybe I am. But I can’t help on this one. I can recommend a few folks. But that’s all I can do.”

  “Fred won’t trust just anyone.”

  “That’s smart,” I said.

  “Maybe we’ll just look into it ourselves,” Minton said. The “we” and the “our” unnerved me a little.

  “You’re a Panther?” I asked.

  “I don’t wear the leather or carry the guns,” Minton said. “But I believe in Fred. I’m gonna help at the Free Clinic when I can. I have enough pre-med to do some basic first-aid. He’s right about community first.”

  “Family first,” I said. “Community second.”

  He grabbed the door handle. “You know, Mr. Grimshaw, for all your talk of family and non-violence, your body says something different.”

  I glanced at him, surprised.

  He touched his left cheek with one finger. “That scar you have right here? It’s fresh, less than a year old. It came from a knife, and it was sewn up by a professional. Family men, they’d find a way to cover it up. You wear it like a badge. It says, ‘Don’t fuck with me because I’m mean enough to survive anything.’”

  He saw me a little too clearly. I needed to push him away.

  “So don’t fuck with me then,” I said, and opened the van door.

  TWENTY-EIGHT

  The tension between me and Minton increased as we walked into that awful house. He took a sniff of the foul air as we stepped into the back entry, and said, “Someone died here not too long ago. I thought these were old bodies.”

  “The manager died here in September and didn’t get found for a while,” I said. “That’s why we’re here in the first place.”

  He nodded, waited for me to open the door at the top of the steps, then followed me down. Halfway to the basement he muttered, “This’s creepy as shit.”

  I’d felt that way from the beginning, but I didn’t say anything. He’d have to work in here same as I did, same as LeDoux was doing.

  We went through the open cabinet doors into the hidden room. Minton was looking around like a kid at his first visit to a carnival’s haunted house, almost as if he expected someone to jump out of the shadows at any moment.

  LeDoux was inside the first section we’d found. He was crouched over one small corner, a pair of tweezers in his gloved hands. “It’s about time,” he said.

  “Christ on a stick.” Minton was staring at everything, eyes wide. “What’d you think happened here?”

  “I don’t know, but I certainly don’t appreciate the language,” LeDoux said primly.

  Minton shot me a can-you-believe-this-guy? look. I ignored it, and swept a hand toward LeDoux.

  “The first body we found was in here. The rest are in those opened areas.”

  “And there’s probably more behind them,” LeDoux said. “This is a big room, and we’ve only scratched the surface.”

  Minton winced.

  “You done?” I asked LeDoux.

  “Yeah,” he said, coming out, a flashlight in one hand, an evidence bag in the other. He must have put the tweezers in the pocket of his coveralls. “It’s all yours, Mr.—?”

  “Minton.” Minton extended a hand. “Sorry about the language. Grimshaw told me there were some long-dead folks here, but he didn’t explain much more. I wasn’t prepared.”

  LeDoux looked at his hand, and I prayed that he’d take it. The last thing I needed was a fight between my acting coroner and my acting criminalist.

  “I don’t think anyone could be prepared,” LeDoux said after a moment, and then shook Minton’s hand. “Something awful happened here, and the worst of it is, I don’t think it happened all at once.”

  Minton nodded in just the same way LeDoux did when I made a statement before he’d had a chance to examine the evidence.

  “Body’s in there?” Minton asked, then didn’t wait for an answer.

  He slipped inside the hole that we made, careful not to touch anything. He had to duck to avoid hitting his head on the lower bricked-up ceiling. He crouched near the skeletons, poking one of the skulls with his fingers.

  “You guys move anything?” he asked.

  “Not around the bodies,” LeDoux said. “I’ve taken some bits of fabric, paper, and small hairs from the area near your feet. I also took many items from around the opening, and some scrapings off the walls.”

  “Fingerprints?” Minton asked, but he sounded distracted.

  “In the mortar, etched forever in time,” LeDoux said. “That’s the fortunate part. The unfortunate part is taking fingerprints off such rough brick. I only got partials.”

  “Hmmm.” Minton clearly wasn’t listening any longer. He was crouched over the bodies, touching them gently. “I’m going to need my camera, Grimshaw.”

  “I took photographs,” LeDoux said.

  “Department of Redundancy Department,” Minton said. “Grimshaw here hired me to be thorough. That includes pictures. No offense.”

  “None taken.” In fact, LeDoux looked happy that Minton wanted to take his own photographs. These two shared an attention to detail that made me feel as if I was careless.

  I went back to the van, grabbed a bag of Minton’s equipment, and slung it over my shoulder. The rain had lessened a little, but it was cold, and I was getting tired of moving around in it. The shoulders and back of my coverall were already soaked, and some of the water had worked its way through to my shirt.

  If this kept up, by the end of the day I’d be drenched.

  I went back inside, handed Minton his camera, and moved out of the way. LeDoux watched for a few minutes, then turned his attention to the next section that we’d opened.

  “What can I do?” I asked, hating to be idle.

  “Nothing for a while,” Minton said. “There are at least three bodies here. I’m going to have to do some preliminary work before I can move them.”

  “I’m sure this isn’t the only thing taking your attention,” LeDoux said to me. “I can help Mr. — Minton, is it? — until it’s time to load the van. Then we’ll need you.”

  I probably could have examined the files in Hanley’s apartment, but I didn’t want to, not until LeDoux had gone over the entire area. Or at least, that was my rationalization. I knew, deep down, I didn’t want to spend my day in that stink.

  “Everything I have is off-premise,” I said. “When should I be back?”

  “How many others are there?” Minton asked.

  “We’re not sure. But you have eight different areas to examine at the moment,” LeDoux said.

  “Jesus,” Minton said, and then he looked over his shoulder. “You’re just going to have to put up with the language. I’ve never had a scene like this before.”

  “None of us have, son,” LeDoux said softly.

  I glanced at him. Minton gave me a shaky smile, and then shrugged his shoulders.

  “How about four, five, maybe six hours,” Minton said. “I’d like to finish today. I have a lot to do at the Poehler’s tomorrow, not counting the extra work this’s going to be.”

  “I’ll be back in five,” I said, figuring that would give me enough time to load the van, transport these two, and pick up Jimmy.

  Then I fled the basement.

  By now, Laura should’ve gotten some of that information on Hanley. I also wanted to investigate his death a bit closer.

  And to do all those things, I needed my phone.

  I headed home, even though I knew I’d pick up the tail once again.

  TWENTY-NINE

  I pulled over and took off my coveralls halfway home, throwing them and the painter’s cap into the back of the van. Then I drove to the apartment, noting with no surprise the black sedan parked halfway down the street.

  I almost saluted the driver, but thought the better of it. I’d spent the morning convincing him I was an average Joe going abo
ut my day. I didn’t want to blow that image by letting him know I’d spotted the tail.

  The apartment was excessively warm. The landlord had turned on the heat, probably inspired by the rain. I sighed in irritation. The radiators had never worked properly in this apartment, and throughout the winter I usually had to have a window open. I didn’t want to do that on such a stormy day, but I knew I had no choice.

  I opened the window in the living room, made myself a corned beef sandwich, and ate the first bite in full view of the street, just so that the tail could guess why I’d come home.

  Then I went into my office and started to make calls.

  First, I called Laura. Her secretary put me through immediately, which had become unusual.

  Laura sounded harried. But she had managed some of the investigating I’d asked for. Apparently she’d done it on Sunday, while Jim and I watched the game.

  “I’ve a packet of materials for you,” she said. “I’ve double-sealed it, marked it confidential, and left it with Judith.”

  Judith was her secretary.

  I opened my mouth to protest leaving documents for this investigation with someone else, then realized it was already too late.

  “I would give them to you myself,” Laura said, “but I’m still working with the Model Cities people. It’s a mess, Smokey.”

  It seemed like everything was.

  “Can you remember off the top of your head the date that the manager was found?” I was being deliberately vague.

  “You started, what? September twenty-second or so?”

  “Something like that,” I said.

  “Then it would be a week before that. Whatever that was.” Her tone had shifted, become more guarded. Someone had come into her office.

  I ended the call as quickly as I could. Then I dialed another number I knew by heart, a number for a police officer at a nearby precinct. Jack Sinkovich wasn’t a friend, although he might call himself one. I’d met him during an investigation more than a year ago. He had proven himself to be reliable on more than one occasion, and his willingness to buck the dominate culture of the police department had gotten him two warnings and a reassignment to the desk.