Darktown

by Thomas Mullen

  “I don’t know the name.”

  He described her appearance and background, but Mama Dove’s very poised expression showed she wasn’t ready to share any epiphanies with him.

  “And what makes you think I know her?”

  “A few weeks before she died, she sent two letters with this as the return address.”

  “Maybe she lived somewhere else on this street, got the numbers mixed up.”

  He was used to being lied to by now, but still, something about her blithe manner dug into him. He pressed, giving something away he hadn’t been planning to: “She also sent quite a lot of money to her family before she died.”

  “I don’t know nothing about that!” She half-laughed when she said this. In a way, that made her more believable. Which was strange. He had the feeling he’d told her something she hadn’t known.

  “You’re sure you don’t know her? See, when someone’s leaving a brothel as a return address and sending a lot of cash through the mail, I can’t help but put one and one together.”

  “Son, I don’t have the foggiest where you’re going with this.”

  “Might could be she didn’t work here, but she stayed here? She’s friends with one of your girls? Or you took her in or something, felt pity on her?”

  “That’s so nice, son. You think a lady like me knows how to feel pity. Been a good while since that was true.”

  He was tired of her calling him “son” and he wanted to correct her to “Officer,” but it wasn’t worth the effort. She’d only call him “son” again, pretend it was accidental. Or maybe it wouldn’t be accidental—it was precisely that difficult for her to fathom a world in which a man with skin like hers could outfit himself this way.

  “You have quite a way of not answering questions directly.”

  “Well, a woman in my station needs to be direct so very often, it’s nice to do the opposite now and again. Come on, preacher’s son, I don’t know why you’re troubling me about some dead girl. I don’t know why I haven’t seen you or your fellow Negro officers in my fine establishment.” He was about to tell her not to hold her breath on that, but then she corrected herself. “Oh, wait, yes, there was that one, but he’s the only one! And there are seven more of you, I don’t know why you insist on hurting my feelings by not coming here, too.”

  She was baiting him. Surely none of his colleagues came here. Yet, even though he was 95 percent sure it was just a ploy, the other 5 percent of him was dying to hear her dirt.

  He tried to ignore the comment and stay focused. “A girl was here for at least a couple of weeks, and then she got herself shot. Her body was dumped in an alley three blocks from here. That same night, she’d been riding in a car with a white man who’d assaulted her earlier, a man named Brian Underhill. Now, if you know anything at all about either of those people, you’d best tell me now instead of me finding out later it was a john who met her in this very goddamn house, which could make you an accessory to murder.”

  Her eyes were as wide as a silent movie actress’s. “I wasn’t expecting such words out of the mouth of the preacher’s son!”

  “I’m the minister’s son, ma’am. I’m no minister myself.”

  “And thank goodness for it. I like my men with a bit of dirt to them. The grime of living is so much more interesting than the shine of eternity, I’ve always thought.”

  He put the notebook back in his pocket.

  “Ma’am, allow me to give you a piece of advice. You should start looking into relocation. The white cops you pay off may be protecting you now, but they won’t always be the ones working this neighborhood. And when they’re gone, we will shut you down. I think it would be better for everyone if you just moved on now and saved us the trouble.”

  Her smile was gone yet her eyes had a way of retaining their twinkle. “You’re very confident that you’ve found a permanent line of work, aren’t you?”

  “I will be in this neighborhood longer than you. I promise you that.”

  “You aren’t as cute when you get all full of yourself. Now, do you know what the difference between you and me is?”

  “I can’t wait to hear your take on it.”

  “There is no difference. Not to them. We’re both just niggers and you know it. How much longer you think they gonna let you parade around in that uniform, preacher’s son?” She looked him up and down with a smirk, as if he were a twelve-year-old, too old to be playing dress up but too small to take seriously. “So let me give you some advice. You might want to drop this whole pompous nigger act, because when they do take away your badge and your gun and your paycheck, and you start feeling down and out and lonesome, we both know there’s one place you’re gonna turn. Same place all the ones turn. Mama Dove’s.”

  He handed her his card. “Call me when you decide that a girl getting shot and thrown out like garbage is something you aren’t in favor of.”

  She made a show of waiting an extra second before taking it from him.

  He turned to leave, and just as he did so a white man stepped into the foyer. Early forties, overlong forelocks combed across a bald spot at the front of his head. He wore a brown suit jacket and a red tie and a look of horror to have stumbled upon a policeman, and a Negro one at that.

  “What are you doing here?” Boggs barked at him.

  The man backed up a step, and would have tripped if the door hadn’t been behind him.

  Boggs grabbed the man’s left hand and held it up, squeezing the palm so that the fingers stuck out, including the adorned ring finger.

  “Get back to your wife, now!”

  The man’s eyes were wider still, glancing back and forth between Mama Dove and this horrible vision of colored moral rectitude.

  Then the white man was gone, running down the steps.

  Mama Dove was laughing harder than ever as Boggs made his exit.

  “Oooh, that man’s look was worth the money you just cost me, preacher’s son!”

  “We need to go to Peacedale,” Smith said.

  They were five blocks from Mama Dove’s now, her words still stinging. Boggs had found her indifference to Lily’s fate more insulting than he’d expected.

  “I know, but—”

  “No ‘buts.’ You’ve been putting it off. Let’s go. Tomorrow.”

  “It’s not that simple.”

  “Didn’t say it was simple. First, we need a car. How ’bout the reverend’s?”

  “Whoa, whoa.” Boggs was stunned by his partner’s confidence. He assumed it was mostly a front, but as he looked in Smith’s eyes, he questioned that assumption. “The white cops out there killed him.”

  “I know. So we go armed.”

  “Tommy, we aren’t in France. And you’re not in a tank.”

  “And we ain’t in no South Carolina training camp either. You aren’t on the sidelines. We stood and waited, and someone else got killed. I’m done waiting. I’m going there tomorrow. You coming with me, or do I have to steal a car?”

  Later that night, Mama Dove picked up her phone and made a call.

  An unfamiliar voice answered. “Hello?” A boy not yet a man. That awkward phase, the one she had always loathed, though she saw it in her brothel so very often.

  “Yes, may I speak with Lionel, please?”

  “He’s not here, ma’am,” Dunlow’s kid said. One of Dunlow’s kids. And the “ma’am” again, the kid not noticing her voice was that of a Negress, or not caring. “He’s working. Can I take a message?”

  She said there was no need and hung up. She hated calling his house, hated the risk that she’d hear one of those boys’ too-deep voices. The wife’s voice she didn’t mind, though they never spoke long enough, Mama Dove always feigning apologies for the wrong number.

  But the son’s? Abominable. That corn-fed, testosterone-dazed mul­ishness. They had his same stubborn whit
eness, she could tell from the way they mumbled into the receiver.

  Oh, but she would be in a foul mood the rest of the night.

  28

  AT TWENTY MINUTES ’til three, Rake drove to Mozley Park, as the mysterious caller had instructed him. He had hoped that being early might give him the drop on the caller, but he wasn’t so fortunate. A blue Ford pickup waited in the small parking lot; its tailgate was open, and a portly, mostly bald man who looked to be past fifty sat on its ledge. He wore denim overalls and a white T-shirt and his large eyes seemed owlish in Rake’s headlights.

  The fact that the caller had asked Rake to come at three, which was one hour after his shift ended, gave Rake the strong feeling that the caller knew his schedule. If he’d said midnight, that meant Rake would have come in uniform, in a squad car with a radio. He’d clocked out and changed into his civvies, though he had known enough to bring along his revolver. He had thought about leaving a note of some kind, so that if anything happened, Cassie would know where he’d gone, but had decided against it.

  He parked across from the pickup and got out of his car. “You the mystery caller?”

  “That I am. I appreciate you dropping by.”

  “You picked quite a popular place for us to talk, Mister . . . ?” and he let that hang for the man to fill in the blank, but the man did not.

  Instead what Rake heard was the unmistakable sound of a shotgun being pumped behind him.

  “Put those hands up, rookie.”

  Rake slowly lifted his hands, feeling stupider than ever. His stomach seemed to drop a couple of inches as the bald man hopped out of the pickup and walked toward him. He was a few inches shorter than Rake but broad as a barn door.

  “Whatever you gentlemen are trying to pull here ain’t worth the trouble it’ll cost you.”

  He could hear footsteps behind him as the man with the shotgun drew near. He braced himself for a blow to the back of his head. Instead, he felt hands from behind remove his revolver from his pocket. Then the bald man slugged him in the gut.

  The wind rushed out of him, but he wasn’t altogether surprised and he’d certainly had worse. As he drew himself back up, though, the blow to the back of his head finally came, and he stumbled forward. Someone very large pinned him down and his right cheek dug into gravel while his hands were yanked behind him. He thrashed as best he could but two blows to the back of his ribs diverted his mind plenty and then he heard another unmistakable metallic sound, this time that of handcuffs.

  They pulled him to his feet and threw him forward. He was flung smack into the open doorway of the Ford’s bed, like another blow to his gut. Someone put a hand on his head, pinning him against the dirty metal floor bed.

  “What the hell do you think you’re doing? I’m a cop.”

  “No shit you’re a cop. What we want to know is why you killed Brian Underhill.”

  “What?”

  The bald man took something from his pockets with a theatrical flourish. He held a rusty set of metal pliers before Rake’s eyes. “Why’d you kill him?”

  “I didn’t kill him!”

  Rake could hear the bald man step behind him, where the other one was holding Rake firm. With his arms behind his back and his center of gravity over the Ford, he couldn’t wriggle or kick away. He felt something metal and cold clamp itself on either side of the base of his pinkie.

  Rake’s own hands had never felt so far from his body, while at the same time so horribly attached to himself.

  “You want to maybe open up a little more, rookie?”

  “I’m telling you the truth!”

  The pliers clamped harder. Rake gritted his teeth.

  “Last chance, Rakestraw.”

  “Fuck you!”

  The muscles in Rake’s shoulders and arms and fingers could not possibly have been more taut or bursting with all his strength yet the pinkie finger was yanked nearly from its base and he felt the snap and he hated himself for making as much noise as he did.

  “Try again!” one of the men yelled. “Why’d you kill him?”

  The pain from his broken finger was already shooting straight through to his shoulder and past it, to the base of his neck. His other fingers still possessed enough sensation to inform him that the pliers were now being applied to the ring finger.

  “I beat the shit out of him but I didn’t fucking shoot him! If I’d shot the son of a bitch, I would say so! I almost wish I had, but someone beat me to it!”

  The weight leaning on him seemed to lessen ever so much, and though he couldn’t quite hear their voices he could feel one of them, the vibration coming through that body that was pressed against his own.

  Then one of them was just a bit louder. “Ah hell. I do, too.”

  The weight was lifted from him, and his feet were finally able to gain purchase on the ground and he pushed himself away, spinning awkwardly and landing on one knee. He could see them now, the bald man with his arms folded as if faced with a vexing problem, the pliers dangling from one of his hands, and the other man, unseen until now, tall and broad-shouldered and younger than his partner by many years, blond hair disheveled. The first thing Rake noticed was that the man wasn’t holding a shotgun. Rake scanned the area before seeing the shotgun on the ground a few feet away.

  The bald man slid his pliers into his overalls pocket and, having noticed Rake’s glance at the shotgun, removed Rake’s revolver from another pocket.

  “Now just calm down there a minute.”

  Rake hadn’t realized he was panting as loudly as he was. He gritted his teeth again, embarrassed and thankful they hadn’t actually yanked the finger clean off but mostly goddamn enraged.

  He slowly rose to his feet. He was still cuffed but he didn’t feel like asking them for any favors just yet. Jesus his finger hurt.

  “Who the hell are you, and what is this about?” he asked.

  “We needed to be sure you didn’t kill him,” the older man said.

  “I’m a cop.”

  “That don’t mean shit. We would know, rookie.”

  They had seemed rather skilled at getting him into cuffs. “You’re cops?”

  The younger one said, “Not for a few years now.”

  “So, what, you worked with Underhill?”

  “Yeah,” the bald one said. “And he knew you were following him. Told me so, so’s in case anything might happen to him, I’d know who to come after.”

  “Yeah, I was following him. As I believe I just mentioned, I’m a police officer, and we on occasion follow suspects. You might remember that.”

  “Except he ain’t no suspect, and you know it.”

  If they weren’t cops anymore, how were they so certain Underhill hadn’t been an official suspect? Rake was so tired of playing against people who seemed to be peeking at his cards.

  “So what happened to him?” the older one demanded.

  “I followed him that night to an old factory in Pittsburgh. He was there to meet someone, I’d bet. But whoever showed up, showed up with a good bit more than he’d been expecting.”

  The two ex-cops were exchanging looks.

  Rake continued, “But before that happened, it was just me and him. He got the drop on me and we tussled a bit. He wouldn’t tell me anything, no matter how I tried. Though it did not occur to me to try breaking his fucking finger with a set of pliers. I suppose I should have considered that. We fought to a standstill and when I realized he wasn’t going to spill, I finally left.”

  “Underhill would never spill,” the younger one sneered. “Anyone who’d been paying attention in ’44 would know that.”

  “I was a tad busy in ’44. There was a war on. I suppose you got two clubfeet? Or you get the no-balls exemption?”

  The younger one took a step and Rake was trying to decide between launching into a head butt or maybe kicking him in th
e no-balls, given his lack of arms, when the older one said, “Christ, Chet, you take bait quicker’n a starving bass. Just shut the blazes up and let him finish his story.”

  Chet stood stone faced. “Finish your goddamn story.”

  Rake paused a moment so as to demonstrate that he wasn’t just following this lummox’s orders but was in fact enjoying the telling of his tale. “I’d barely made it back to my car when I heard two shots. I ran back and there he was.”

  Chet said, “We gave up on the pliers too early I think.”

  “Take me out of these cuffs and see how far you get.”

  “Dammit, Chet, I said I believe him and I do. He don’t know shit.”

  “He knows more’n I’m comfortable with him knowing.”

  “You two were kicked off the force the same time he was, weren’t you?” Rake guessed. Their cold stares confirmed it.

  The pistol in the older one’s hands was still pointing at the ground. The shotgun was another three paces behind them.

  “So you’re his friends, and he told you he was afraid someone was out to get him. Who?” The two ex-cops looked at each other again. Rake pressed, “I know he killed that black girl, and I’m willing to bet whoever he was running from had something to do with it, too.”

  “He didn’t kill her,” the older one said. “We ain’t fuckin’ assassins.”

  “More like garbage men,” Chet said, kicking at a stone.

  “Damn right.”

  Rake waited. He was confident they wanted to tell him more, but asking about it too directly would just annoy them and make them hush up.

  The older one started talking again, this time slipping the revolver back into his pocket. That motion alone was enough to get Rake to stand a bit straighter, free from his defensive crouch, and it was enough to cause Chet to step to the side as if he was about ready to get in his truck and drive off.

  “We got reason to think that Underhill was killed on account of a job he did recently. It wasn’t anything worse or bigger than the sort of jobs they give us these days, but for some reason someone—he didn’t tell us who—seems to have panicked.”