Stone Cribs: A Smokey Dalton Novel

by Kris Nelscott

  When I finally got to Monroe Street, it was empty. I was beginning to wonder how many of the buildings were inhabited. The cars also had an abandoned look. Most of them still had the flyers on the windshields. Several of the flyers had found their way to the gutters, where they waited, along with last fall’s leaves, for someone to clean them up.

  I parked in the same spot that I had the day before, and returned to the house. This time I brought the Polaroid that Laura had given me, so that I could document some of the things I found, particularly the foundation. The fact that this place was so solidly built intrigued me; I wanted to have the pictures to convince Laura that she needed to find someone else to confirm my findings.

  I hung the camera around my neck, attached the flashlight to my belt, and grabbed my clipboard. I had been here two days in a row without seeing any locals. I figured if they were bothered by an official presence, I would have learned that already.

  Then I locked up the car and went inside the house. I spent nearly three hours in there, marking each crack in the wall, each rotted floorboard, on my chart.

  I found a dead rat on the floor of one of the apartments upstairs. The rat was so old that it was mostly bones and fur. The smell of decay had seeped into the carpet and the room, and stayed there, like a bad memory.

  But I didn’t find anything worse than things I had found in other empty Sturdy buildings. Each one seemed to have a long and impressive list of damaged ceilings, clogged toilets, and scorched stoves.

  Still, I believed that this building’s frame was solid enough. Its interior needed gutting and rebuilding, but once that was done, the exterior would probably survive an inspection from a trained building inspector—one who hadn’t been bought off.

  When I went back outside, the air was still muggy, but cooler than it had been inside. A light breeze had kicked up, not enough to blow away the humidity, but enough to swirl it around.

  A large dog that looked like it was part Lab and part Greyhound dug in the makeshift flower bed in front of the basement window. The dog was big and skinny, but his coat had a shine to it, and he wore a collar.

  He wasn’t a stray, then, but he was big enough that I didn’t want to interrupt him.

  I walked down the steps, keeping my distance from the dog, and stopped in front of the other basement window.

  Some teenage boys, who looked young enough to still be in school, sat on a stoop across the street, smoking cigarettes and watching me. Two young men wearing black leather jackets despite the heat, and the berets of the Black Panthers, walked down the sidewalk.

  A middle-aged woman stepped out of a car down the street. She wore a maid’s uniform, and carried her little white cap in one hand. As she walked toward the front door of a small red building, she whistled.

  The dog’s head went up. His muzzle was brown with dirt. He whined, as if in protest.

  She whistled again, then called, “Here, Star. C’mon, boy.”

  The dog whined again, louder this time, and looked at the mess he had made in the dirt.

  “Star! Here, Star!”

  The dog shook himself, then ran at full lope toward the woman. Apparently the call of the person who fed him was a lot more important than whatever he had been seeking in the dirt.

  I made my way around the building, using up one expensive roll of Polaroid film as I did. I asked Laura for a real camera with real film, but she said she preferred Polaroids. They were more immediate, they couldn’t be “gussied up”—her words—in the development process, and they had a shabby veracity to them—not exactly her words, but her sentiment at any rate.

  The dog barked and I looked up, startled. The dog was jumping around the woman, tail wagging. She had a hand on its head, trying to keep it down.

  “All right, Star.” Then she shook her head. “God, you stink. That’s why I never let you run like this. If I figure out who let you off your leash…”

  I smiled. Sometimes Jimmy begged me for a dog, but we couldn’t have one in the building. Even if we could, it wouldn’t have worked with my job and his schooling. I barely had time to take care of him.

  The last Polaroid turned colors in my hand as it developed. I had five more packages of film in the car, and I would get them before the afternoon was done. I carried one extra in my pocket. I stopped in between the buildings, clipped the photographs I had already taken to the clipboard, and loaded the new roll of film.

  I circled around to the front, the camera to my eye, looking through the lens at the stone foundation. As I did, something crunched beneath my foot.

  I let the camera drop to my chest and looked down. The dog had scattered the small bones of a dead animal all over the brown lawn. I lifted my foot, saw that I had stepped on one of the bones, snapping it in half.

  Something about the bone made me stop. Flesh still clung to it—flesh that didn’t appear to have any fur on it.

  My mouth went dry. I stepped around the trail of bones the dog had made and walked to the area where it had been digging.

  The dog had been digging in the dirt someone had used to fill the stone gutter, the dirt where I thought, with one quick glance the day before, that someone had planted a makeshift flower bed. But the dog had shoved the dead plant on top aside, and I saw no roots. Instead, someone had placed that plant there, the way a person would lay flowers on a special spot.

  On a grave.

  My breath caught. I hoped I was wrong. Still, I crouched and, careful not to touch anything, peered into the hole the dog had left.

  The first thing I saw were small curved bones that were so recognizably a rib cage that my stomach turned. Dirt had fallen between them, but there was still some meat there, and some bug activity. But the bones went all the way around, like a tiny circle, and ended in a spine.

  The dog had shoved the dirt aside, apparently trying to get to whatever was in the middle of those ribs. Instead, he had gotten to an arm, pulling it apart.

  Mercifully, I couldn’t see the skull or the rest of the body, but what I could see was bad enough: the tattered remains of a jumper, once white, which closed with snaps and was decorated with tiny blue bunnies.

  A baby.

  Someone had buried a baby out here in a grave shallow enough to let a dog dig up the remains. That someone had also cared enough to place flowers on the surface.

  I put my face in my hands, and didn’t move for a very long time. Then I got up, and went to look for a phone so that I could call the police.

  THIRTEEN

  I HATED to have contact with the police. I felt like every time I did, I exposed myself and Jimmy. There were a few officers I could trust to a small degree—Truman Johnson and Jack Sinkovich—but I didn’t want them to ever suspect I was anyone other than Franklin Grimshaw’s cousin, Bill.

  I wasn’t sure if I should call one of them. Johnson had his own concerns at the moment, and Sinkovich, while he was a good detective, was unpredictable.

  Besides, I wasn’t sure I wanted a good detective on this case—at least, not until I had spoken to Helen and her little boy, Doug.

  Those were the thoughts that haunted me as I looked up and down the street for a phone. I suppose I could have knocked on doors, asking to use a phone, but I didn’t think I would be welcome company with my camera and clipboard. I also could have driven away, made the call from somewhere else, but an irrational part of me didn’t want to leave that baby alone a moment longer.

  I didn’t see a pay phone. This block was residential, and so were the next few. I had no choice but to go to West Madison, which was a commercial block.

  As I crossed Monroe, the teenagers sitting on the steps stood. They signaled to the Panthers who had been pretending to stroll by.

  I ignored them. They were just protecting their neighborhood. I had more important things to deal with.

  The alley between the two streets would have dead-ended into storefronts with apartments on top, but most of them had been burned out over a year ago. The blackened ruins o
f these buildings remained, not even roped off to warn children away.

  The city was going to let this section of town fall apart until they could bulldoze it and start all over again. Sometimes the Panthers’ rhetoric about keeping white folks out of the ghetto made a lot of sense.

  If I called the general police number, uniforms would show up, probably black officers, since white ones hated working this part of town. No matter who I called, though, they would probably log in the complaint, get the coroner to come take the body, write it up for the white papers as something expected in this part of town, and forget about it.

  If I called Sinkovich, he would do his best. He would also draw attention to Helen. She would be back in the system, this time as a murder suspect, and someone would take her children away.

  But someone did want to keep that baby’s death secret. With just bones and bits of clothing, I wouldn’t be able to tell if the child was murdered or not. But I had seen enough babies to know that a ribcage of that size occurred in a newborn. This baby wasn’t a fetus. This child had been alive and breathing at one point.

  I reached Madison, and stopped. Directly across from me stood the party headquarters with the two black panthers flanking a sign that read ILLINOIS BLACK PANTHER PARTY. Posters littered the windows, and the main door was open.

  The pay phone stood in front of the Scientific School of Beauty Culture, which didn’t look like a school at all to me. A single door led up a flight of stairs, and another sign with the same logo—a black woman’s sculpted head next to the word “beauty”—graced the upper windows.

  The last thing I wanted to do was call the police from a phone in front of the Panther offices. I didn’t want any Panthers overhearing me talking to the people they called Pigs.

  Instead, I turned left and jogged to the end of the block, following a neon sign that pointed to a liquor store. Just as I suspected, there was a pay phone outside.

  I grabbed the plastic phone. It was grimy. I fished in my pocket for some change, then set the money on the metal surface beneath the phone.

  As I did, the Panthers who had been patrolling Monroe came out of the alley. They looked both ways, as if searching for me. I leaned against the liquor store window.

  They didn’t seem to see me.

  I stuck a dime into the machine and listened to it cling-cling its way down. After a moment’s hesitation, I dialed Sinkovich. I didn’t want this case hushed or dismissed as another way that blacks treated their families. I wanted that child taken care of.

  Someone had cared enough to bury this child. The least I could do was make sure that, once the investigation was over, the child got a proper burial.

  The dispatch picked up right away, and I asked for Detective Sinkovich. His line rang for a long time. I was almost ready to hang up and call for a squad when he picked up.

  “What?”

  “Jack, it’s Bill Grimshaw.” I spoke softer than usual. The Panthers had seen me and were walking down the sidewalk. “I’ve got a problem.”

  “Yeah,” he said. “What is it with women calling me, asking if you’re a decent man? Can’t you get dates on your own?”

  “Not that kind of problem,” I said. “Hang on a minute.”

  The Panthers walked past, and one of them raised his eyebrows, as if he were amused by me. I didn’t recognize him. The other Panther slid his hand back, revealing a gun beneath his leather jacket.

  A car sped past, honking its horn.

  “What the hell’s going on?” Sinkovich’s voice sounded tinny through the receiver.

  I said, “One more second.”

  And then the Panthers were out of listening range. They crossed the street and lounged against a discount loan office. The taller man pulled out his gun, holding it with the muzzle toward the sidewalk as he watched me.

  They thought I was a cop, and here I was, acting like one. All the rhetoric I had heard from them came back—slogans like “Off the Pigs,” and how the Panthers had the right to shoot any representative of the law who ventured into Panther country, out of self defense.

  I wished I hadn’t left my own gun in the glove box of my car.

  “You okay?” The lighter tone had left Sinkovich’s voice.

  “For the moment,” I said. “I’m on West Madison, across from the Black Panther offices.”

  “Jesus H. Roosevelt Christ,” Sinkovich said. “How the hell do you get yourself into these places?”

  “I needed a phone.” I slid so that my back was now pressed against the brick between the two buildings. I didn’t trust the glass. Whoever was inside that liquor store could see the two Panthers through the window. If one of them gave a signal, I could have been shot without even realizing I was in danger.

  “Okay, spill,” Sinkovich said, “and then get the hell out of there.”

  Good advice, which I had already been planning to take. I glanced down Madison at Panther headquarters. So far, no one had come out. The two across from me appeared to be alone.

  “You know that I’m doing some inspection work for Sturdy Investments,” I said.

  “No, I didn’t know, but that’s okay,” Sinkovich said.

  “I go through recently vacated buildings to see if they need renovation.”

  A heavy set man wearing plumber’s green came out of the liquor store carrying a case of beer. He glanced at me, took in the Panthers across the street, and turned away from us, hurrying down the side street to Monroe.

  “You’re full of surprises,” Sinkovich said into my silence.

  “Sorry about that,” I said. “Don’t want to be overheard.”

  “No shit. Don’t want them to know you’re talking to the Pigs.”

  Somehow hearing my thoughts reflected Sinkovich’s words did not make me feel better.

  I lowered my voice even farther. “I’m inspecting a house on West Monroe, and—get out a pen. I’ll give you the address.”

  “I’m ready. Shoot.”

  I rattled off the address.

  The Panthers passed the gun back and forth, carefully keeping the muzzle pointed down. Whoever didn’t have the gun looked at me, the long, uncomfortable stare of someone issuing a challenge.

  “You need to come out here,” I said, “and you need to bring some investigators with you along with the coroner.”

  “What happened, Grimshaw?” Sinkovich was all business now.

  “I was taking pictures of the outside of the building when I noticed a dog digging in some dirt. I went to see what he was pawing at and I found a grave.”

  “As in a people grave?” Sinkovich asked.

  “As in a baby’s grave,” I said.

  “Son of a bitch. Murdered?”

  “Can’t tell. What I saw was mostly bones. I’m going back there now to wait for you.”

  “You know,” he said before I could move the receiver away from my ear, “you calling white cops ain’t gonna be that popular in that part of town. How come you’re bringing me into this mess? This one’s gotta go to Johnson.”

  “Johnson’s ex-wife is in the hospital. They say that each minute she’s still alive is a miracle.”

  “Crap,” Sinkovich said, and I couldn’t tell if he was referring to Valentina Wilson’s situation or his own, being stuck with this. “You sure this corpse is human?”

  “Ribcage looks human,” I said, “and so does the little jumper with its tiny blue bunnies.”

  “Holy fuck, this is just what I need. I’ll be there in thirty.” And then he hung up.

  Thirty minutes. That was a long time for me to stand alone in front of the Monroe Street house. But I would. I didn’t want that dog to get back into the gravesite, and I couldn’t just leave the child alone.

  I wasn’t sure where that irrational impulse was coming from. I knew it made no difference now, that the appropriate time to defend that baby had been when it was alive, not after its death.

  But I had been around long enough to know that logic didn’t always apply.

&
nbsp; I had also been around long enough to know that keeping information from Laura about her properties would also be a bad idea.

  The Panthers watched me hang up, then plug the machine again. The tall one stuck the gun back under his jacket. Either I wasn’t that interesting any more, or they had just changed the rules of the game.

  I dialed Sturdy, identified myself, and asked for Laura. The operator put me right through.

  “Laura Hathaway.” Laura’s voice had a this-better-be-important tone she used whenever she picked up the phone at Sturdy. It sounded nothing like her regular speaking voice, but I suspected it was effective—especially with people who didn’t expect the CEO of a major corporation to be a woman.

  “Laura, it’s Smokey.”

  “Hey, Smoke—”

  “I don’t have time for pleasantries.”

  One of the Panthers walked down the street toward headquarters. The one with the gun stayed. He leaned against the streetlamp and watched me.

  “I have a problem down at the building you sent me to on Monroe,” I said.

  “How bad?”

  “Bad enough that I just called the police. It’s going to be in the news, most likely.”

  “Smokey, are you all right?”

  “I’m fine,” I said.

  “Then what is it?”

  I told her. In quick, blunt terms, I told her about the baby and that I had called Jack Sinkovich, the other man who had helped me with the case last December. Laura hadn’t been involved—she had been out of town for most of it—but I had told her about it when she asked about my scar.

  I also told her about finding Helen and her children, something I hadn’t remembered to do the night before.

  “The thing is,” I said, “I don’t know if that family I found here yesterday is involved or not.”

  “You think that woman with the two children buried another one out front?” Laura sounded shocked. I suppose I would have, too, if I had had someone to talk to when I had found the body. But I had had some time to accustom myself to the idea now, and I realized there were a lot of possibilities.