Chiefs

by Stuart Woods

  “I am, sir.”

  “You were an orderly room clerk in the army, a buck sergeant, is that right?”

  “Yessir.”

  “Then maybe you have, at one time or another, made out a duty roster?”

  “Yessir.”

  “All right, I want you to make out a duty roster for the six men on this force. I want one man in the station to handle the phone and the radio, and I want two cars in motion at all times, is that clear?”

  “Yessir.”

  “Until I come on full time duty, every man will work seven eight-hour shifts a week, with thirty minutes for lunch—no coffee breaks. Shifts will rotate—every man will pull both day and night duty. All leaves are canceled. Anybody who calls in sick had better be in the hospital. You got all that, Strickland?”

  “Yessir.”

  “And make sure that information is communicated to the two officers not present, who I assume are home sleeping because they were on duty last night. If there’s any deviation from those instructions, I’ll have your ass, boy, and the ass of the deviator. I’m going to be floating in and out of here for the next couple of weeks, and around town, too. Don’t any of you let me catch you in an unguarded moment. Is that understood?”

  “Yes, sir!”

  “Now, I’m going down to the hardware store and buy a bucket of paint, and I’m coming back down here at noon sharp. Strickland, you take the first station shift and schedule the others from there. When I get back I want to see that roster posted and this place looking like an army orderly room, and everybody else better be on the street.”

  Holmes heard footsteps crossing the squad room and Tucker’s voice again, quieter.

  “Now, you. Which one are you?”

  “Murray, sir.”

  “Newton Murray?”

  “Everybody calls me Tub, sir.”

  “Well, Newton, that nickname is soon going to be a thing of the past. What do you weigh?”

  “About two-fifty, sir.”

  “You’re a liar as well as a bad police officer, Newton. You weigh closer to three hundred. Well, Newton, I want you to see your doctor today and ask him for a diet and a prognosis on how much weight he thinks you can safely lose per week. You bring it to me here tomorrow, with a note from the doctor. I’ll give you an exercise program at that time. We’re going to make a new man of you, Newton.”

  “Yessir.”

  “And another thing, gid rid of that .357 magnum you’re hauling around. The standard sidearm on this force is now a .38 service revolver with a four-and-a-half-inch barrel, and I don’t want to see any pearl handles, either. You’re lucky I didn’t take that cannon away from you and feed it to you, Newton. That little patdown you gave me was no body search, and you never even knew about the .38 in my glove compartment. And when you bring a citizen in here on a speeding charge you better have something to back it up.”

  “Yessir.”

  Holmes winced. Had Tub Murray arrested Tucker Watts? Good God!

  “Any questions?”

  Silence. Holmes strolled into the squad room. “Good morning, Gentlemen. I see you’ve met your new Chief. Officer Strickland, would you please telephone the Messenger office and ask Bob Blankenship if he could come over here with his camera right away? Thank you. Chief Watts, I’ve had the telephone connected at your new house.” He handed Tucker a piece of paper. “Here’s the number. Worth has accepted your offer on the place.”

  “I’m glad to hear it, Mr. Holmes. The wife is just delighted.” He looked at the phone number and handed it to Strickland. “Memorize this, and see that everybody else does.”

  Holmes and Tucker chatted briefly; then Bob Blankenship arrived. He took a photograph of Holmes shaking hands with Tucker, with the patrolmen in the background. “Bob,” said Holmes, “if you’d just run that in Thursday’s paper I think that would communicate some additional information about our new Chief. You might just mention, too, that Chief Watts paid his first visit to the police station today to meet his force, and that a good time was had by all.”

  8

  EARLY on the morning of the fifteenth of November, Billy was awakened by a telephone call from the Associated Press in Atlanta, which was closely followed by calls from Time, Newsweek, the three Atlanta television stations, a Columbus station, the Washington Post, and the Los Angeles Times. After that he persuaded Patricia to take all the calls, except one from Hugh Holmes.

  “Billy, all hell has broken loose,” said the banker.

  “I know, they’ve been calling me, too. I talked with three or four of them and then stopped taking calls. The story was in the Constitution this morning, I’m sure you’ve seen that, but it was the New York Times story that attracted all the attention, I suppose.”

  “I haven’t talked with any of them, yet. What do you think I should do?”

  Billy thought for a moment. “Mr. Holmes, I think the best thing to do would be to call the Associated Press in Atlanta and announce a press conference at, let’s see… say, one o’clock. They’ll get it on the wire right away. That’ll give the TV people time to make the six o’clock news. I’d do it at the police station with you and Watts, and I’d make sure that all the patrolmen are out on duty. It’s hard to say how they’d react having a microphone stuck in their faces and asked how they like their new Chief.”

  “All right, but I want you there, too, Billy. I hope it goes well. The council members are going to be pretty nervous about this.”

  “I’ll be there, and I think you ought to present this to the councilmen as an opportunity to get some favorable publicity for Delano. That’s what it is, you know. I had no idea it would stir up as much interest as this, but now that it has, you should make the most of it. Tell you what, why don’t you get the secretary of the chamber of commerce to put together some press kits—just a brown envelope with one of those brochures that Bob Blankenship printed up, and a map of the city. Hand them out to whoever shows up. Don’t forget to call Blankenship. He can do a story for the Messenger about all the attention Delano is getting.”

  “Sounds like a good idea. Anything else?”

  “Might be a good idea to instruct all of the patrolmen to politely decline to answer questions and to refer the press to you, just in case some reporter hunts one of them down.”

  “Right. Why don’t we meet in the Chief’s office about 12:45.”

  “Fine.” Billy hung up and turned to Patricia. “This thing has mushroomed into something a lot bigger than I ever expected.”

  “Is that good or bad?”

  “We won’t know until we see what sort of press this generates.”

  “Good luck.”

  At the police station Billy shook hands with Tucker. They had not met since Tucker had signed his contract.

  “I hear you’re getting settled in real well, Chief.”

  “Yes, sir, our furniture’s all down, and we’ve done a little redecorating. The wife can’t wait ‘til spring to get a garden started.”

  “Have you met many people yet?”

  “Mr. Holmes took me up and down Main Street this morning, and we met all the merchants. Lot of people on the street, too.”

  “The TV people are already at work,” said Holmes. “One crew followed us the whole way and interviewed whoever they could get their hands on.”

  “I understand you had an unexpected introduction to your men.”

  Tucker smiled. “I guess you could put it that way.”

  “Any problems with them?”

  “One or two haven’t decided yet whether they can handle it, but most of them seem to be getting used to the idea.”

  “I saw Tub Murray in the drug store the other day. Looks like he’s lost some weight.”

  “He’ll be losing some more, I expect, if he stays with us.”

  Holmes looked at his watch. “Well, it’s one o’clock. The squad room’s full of folks. We’d better get out there.”

  Billy was delayed in town giving personal interviews at his
law office, long enough to miss the six o’clock Atlanta news, but he got home in time for the NBC network report. He watched as Chet Huntley gazed into the camera and said, “There has been much turmoil in the South as old laws and customs have given way to the new and court orders have enforced integration of schools and public places. But one small southern town has taken an unexpected step, entirely of its own accord. Delano, Georgia, a town of about six thousand people just a few miles from Warm Springs, where Franklin Roosevelt vacationed and, finally, died, today hired a black Chief of police.”

  Tucker’s face filled the screen, filmed at the press conference, as Huntley’s voice continued: “Tucker Watts, a Georgia native who recently retired from a thirty-year army career, became the first black Chief of police in any town of the Old South. He seemed to think it was pretty routine.”

  “I’ve received a courteous welcome from the people of Delano that I’ve met, and I don’t anticipate any special difficulties in doing my job here,” said Tucker, in response to a reporter’s question.

  “City council chairman, and one-time Roosevelt confidant, Hugh Holmes, said that Watts was by no means a last resort.”

  “Quite to the contrary,” Holmes said to a reporter, “Mr. Watts was the most highly qualified candidate we could find for the job. We have a very high-quality community in Delano, and we want the best public servants we can attract, just as we want the best new industry we can attract.”

  Billy started as his own image filled the screen and Huntley talked on: “This all came about, apparently, because of this man, William H. Lee, the lieutenant governor of Georgia, a likely candidate for governor next year who has a reputation as a moderate and an active peacemaker in racial matters. Delano is his home town, and it was he who suggested that Watts be hired.”

  “Chief Watts came highly recommended and was obviously well qualified by his experience in the military police, and I was very pleased to recommend him to the city council,” Billy heard himself say.

  Then there were quick cuts to other faces, shot on Main Street, and their comments.

  “I read in the paper that he has a lot of experience, so I guess it’s all right.”

  “He has a fine war record, from what I hear, and he was an MP for a long time. I think we ought to be glad to have him.”

  “If he can do the job, who cares?”

  Then Patrolman Bobby Patrick’s face appeared. Someone had hunted down a cop, after all. His expression was sour. “I don’t have nothing to say about that,” he said, and drove away quickly in his patrol car, the camera catching his hurried departure.

  Huntley came back onto the screen. “The White House Press Office issued a statement today commending the Delano City Council for its hiring of a black Chief and hoping the town’s action would serve as an example to other communities, both southern and northern, surely the first time the White House has ever taken note of the hiring of a small-town policeman. More news after this.”

  Billy turned to Patricia. “I don’t believe it,” he said. “I just don’t believe it. I spent the afternoon with a reporter from Time, and with John Howell, the fellow from the New York Times who was down here a couple of weeks ago. It was his story that kicked all this off, and he wants to do an article for the New York Times Magazine, to run after Tucker has had time to do the job for a while.”

  Patricia snuggled up to him on the couch. “All this should be a big help in the governor’s race, shouldn’t it?”

  “It seems that way, now, but all this favorable stuff is just going to harden the resistance of the people who are against me, anyway, and make them tougher to beat. I’d sure like to know how this is sitting with the undecided voters.”

  “It can’t hurt with the White House, though, can it?”

  Billy slumped into the leather cushions. “Not unless it goes sour in some way.”

  “In what way?”

  “I’m not sure. But the whole situation, as good as it looks, makes me nervous.”

  9

  TUCKER’S second morning on his new job was quieter. As soon as he had checked the roster and confirmed that all his men were at their assigned duties, he turned to the filing cabinets along the back wall of the squad room. He had planned to wait before going through the files, but he had an unreasonable urge to look through them for a piece of paper with his old name on it. He had no idea if Will Henry Lee had kept records of arrests, but he had to find out. If it existed, such a document would be the only written record anywhere that Willie Cole had ever lived, and for his own peace of mind he must destroy it. Patrolman Wendell Bartlett, known to all as Buddy, was doing his tour as radio operator.

  “Chief, was there something special you were looking for?”

  Buddy Bartlett was a fair-haired, sunny-faced man in his mid-twenties, who looked younger. Of all the patrolmen, he alone had shown something most resembling a desire to be helpful to his new boss, and Tucker was grateful for it. Of necessity, though, Tucker felt he must keep some distance until he was sure of all his men.

  “No, Bartlett, nothing special. I just want to see how they’re set up.”

  Bartlett rose and crossed to the cabinets. “I’m afraid they’re pretty much a mess. There was a fire here six or seven years ago, and stuff just got thrown out the windows, and a lot of it got wet. Whoever rescued it just threw it into the new filing cabinets any which way. The files after about 1950 were in colored folders, so they were easy to find and sort, but everything before that was in plain manila folders, and there it sits, right back to the beginning of the town, I guess. If we ever needed to find something specific we’d have a real hard time doing it.”

  Tucker grunted. “I guess we would at that.”

  “Everything from 1950 is cross-indexed by name and crime.” Bartlett pulled open a file drawer to demonstrate. “On every arrest we fill out the form in duplicate and file one copy by last name and the other one by the charge. If there’s more than one charge we file it under the most serious one.”

  “We really ought to have a copying machine so that we can file multiple charges,” Tucker mused. There was a footstep in the entrance hallway, and he turned. A tall elderly, heavyset man in tan gabardines and a Stetson hat was standing at the counter. He took off his hat and ran his fingers through a thatch of snow white hair.

  “Morning, Buddy.”

  “Morning, Sheriff. I don’t reckon you’ve met Chief Watts yet. Chief, this is Sheriff Willis.”

  Tucker would have recognized Skeeter Willis anywhere, in spite of his age. He was probably ten years older than he looked. “Nice to meet you, Sheriff,” he said, sticking out his hand. “I would have gotten up to Greenville to see you sooner or later, I expect, but I’m glad you dropped by. Can we get you a cup of coffee?”

  Skeeter shook the offered hand as briefly as possible. “No thanks, I’ve got business to tend to.”

  “What can we do for you?”

  “I hear you got a fellow, Wilkes, in your jail.”

  Tucker looked at Bartlett. “Yessir,” the young officer said. He went to a filing cabinet and retrieved a folder.

  “I want him on a liquor charge,” said Skeeter. “I found a still on his land, the other side of Warm Springs.”

  Tucker took the folder from Bartlett and glanced quickly at the record. “He got ten days from city court for reckless driving and damage to city property. He’s only done six. Have you got a warrant with you?”

  “Does that matter?” Skeeter was looking impatient.

  “Well, if you can show the justice of the peace a warrant, he might reduce the sentence to time served. Then I can release him, and you can arrest him.”

  “Look, why don’t you just turn him out here, and I’ll take him off your hands. I don’t want to have to make another trip down here to get him.”

  “Sheriff, I’d like to help you, but I can’t release him without the JP’s okay. That would be illegal. And if you took him without a warrant and got a conviction, he’d have a basis t
o overturn it on appeal—improper arrest. I think everybody’d be a lot better off if you got a warrant and then saw the JP.”

  Skeeter was now red in the face. He leaned forward and rested his palms on the counter. “Now, listen, boy, I don’t care how long you was a MP, you’re doing business in my county now, and if you don’t watch out how you talk to me you’re gonna find out just what that means.”

  Tucker said nothing for a moment; then he spoke quietly, and his voice dropped to a dark rumble. “Sheriff Willis, you’re welcome to a cup of coffee and a place to take the load off your feet. Any time. But if you want somebody in my jail, you’re going to have to show me some paperwork. That’s the way business gets done in my jurisdiction.”

  Skeeter’s face turned a darker shade of red. He turned on his heel and walked out without a word.

  “Whew!” whistled Bartlett. “I’ve never seen old Skeeter that mad before.”

  “He made an unreasonable demand. I couldn’t accommodate him.”

  “I know it, Chief, but that man’s been sheriff in this county longer than anybody can remember, and he’s somebody you want to get along with.

  “I’ll meet him halfway.”

  “Well, sir, I hope you get the chance. You can believe me when I tell you that he’s not gonna let that pass.”

  “I appreciate the advice, Buddy, I really do.” Tucker was impressed by the boy’s concern and found his statement easy to believe. Just to cover himself he telephoned the justice of the peace and casually informed him of Skeeter’s request, his own refusal and his advice to the sheriff. Then, after thinking carefully for a moment, he called Billy Lee and explained the incident.

  Billy heard him out, then said, “Buddy Bartlett is right, Tucker. You watch yourself. I think you were right to call me rather than Mr. Holmes about this. If you have any problem with Skeeter, you call me right away, whether I’m at a home or in Atlanta, hear?”

  “I’ll do that, Governor, and I appreciate your concern.”