Smoke-Filled Rooms: A Smokey Dalton Novel

by Kris Nelscott

  “I know,” I said.

  “You don’t think…?”

  “It was the first thing I thought.”

  Franklin glanced at me. “Sounds like you ruled it out.”

  “Not entirely. But Truman Johnson says there’ve been two other deaths just like it.”

  “When?” Franklin asked.

  “I don’t know the details. I’ll find out.”

  Franklin bowed his head. “I keep thinking we should have warned the neighbors, maybe helped them get their kids out when we got ours out.”

  That thought had crossed my mind as well, and I didn’t like its implications.

  “I’m going to figure this one out, Franklin, before the kids come home.”

  He stirred the batter halfheartedly, then stopped and let the spoon drop. “I’m not sure what I want it to be—some crazy out there going after our kids or—God, Smokey. I am so out of my depth.”

  I nodded. It felt like I was too.

  * * *

  Franklin’s waffles were light, fluffy, and golden brown. I ate four of them, covered in butter and syrup. Malcolm ate more, but only because it was the first good meal he’d had in days. Franklin hardly touched his.

  We avoided the topic of the dead boy during the meal, but we couldn’t seem to manage idle conversation either. The cops’ voices filtered through the window from the street below as they finished their gruesome work.

  I couldn’t make out the words, but I knew they were as unsettled as we were; the death of a child was easy for no one.

  Franklin poured me coffee, I gave Malcolm more orange juice and, when it was clear we were all finished, Malcolm took the plates off the table. Favors and politeness seemed to be the only currency we had.

  The knock on the door startled me. I hadn’t heard anyone come up the stairs.

  Franklin frowned and then glanced at the clock built into the stove. 6:00 A.M. Too early to be a courtesy call.

  I was amazed he had a handle on the time. I had been going since the previous morning and so much had happened during that very long day and even longer night that it seemed as if a week had gone by. At that moment, it actually felt as if it were still night and we were getting ready for bed.

  The knock sounded again.

  I stood before Franklin did, and went to the door. Through the peephole, I saw Detective Johnson. I sighed and pulled the door open.

  His gaze met mine. If anything, he looked even more tired than he had earlier. His features were rumpled and his clothes were stained. “Took me a few minutes to find you.”

  “Marvella knows where I live.”

  “She’s busy.” There was a weariness in his voice. Apparently Marvella was still downstairs with the dead boy’s family. “You gonna let me in?”

  I stood aside, and Johnson entered the apartment. He gave it what seemed like a cursory glance, but in those brief moments, he seemed to take in everything.

  The apartment had gotten messy in the short time that Althea had been gone. Newspapers were sprawled on the couch. An empty beer bottle sat on the floor beside Franklin’s favorite chair, and dishes were piled in the sink.

  Malcolm stood on the edge of the carpet. It seemed like Johnson’s presence alarmed him. I mentally willed the boy to sit down and pretend everything was normal.

  I closed the door behind Johnson. “So, you’re on the case after all.”

  “For the moment.” He ran a hand through his tight curls. “I told them I could interview you better.”

  “They didn’t mind?”

  “You could hear this boy being shuffled to the bottom of the pile even before the sun rose.”

  “I thought you said this would be an FBI case.”

  He nodded, then walked to the table. “Mind if I eat the leftovers?”

  “There’s some batter left,” Franklin said. “I’ll make fresh.”

  Johnson sat down in what had been Malcolm’s chair. Malcolm leaned against the sink.

  Franklin tapped him on the shoulder. “Pour yourself some orange juice and sit down. We’ll worry about dishes later.”

  Malcolm did as he was told. Johnson ran a hand over his eyes. I knew the trick though. I had a hunch he was still assessing the room.

  “These guys, they’ll do the paperwork,” Johnson said, answering my earlier question. “But they won’t pursue, you know? When they get back to the precinct, they’ll rationalize it. After all, who cares about little black boys dying in the ghetto?”

  Malcolm grimaced.

  “You do,” I said to Johnson.

  “Yeah,” he said. “Like it’ll do me some good. I’ve gotta deal with the damn Democrats just like everybody else. Daley’s people did a briefing with the black cops, you know that? Wanted us to keep ‘our people’ in line. He’s afraid we’ll have a riot here. The National Guard is mobilizing. They’ve been training all summer on how to handle public disturbances. We’ve got new cans of mace and teargas and brand new gas masks. No one’s thinking about dead kids. They’re planning for war.”

  Franklin poured batter into the still-hot waffle maker. The batter sizzled. It was the only sound in the room.

  Malcolm sipped his orange juice, keeping the glass in front of his mouth as if he could hide behind it.

  “What will you do?” I asked.

  Johnson sighed. “Whatever I can.”

  I poured Johnson some coffee, then topped mine off. The food had revived me enough to feel up to this conversation. I also wanted Malcolm to remain silent.

  Franklin put the finished waffles on a plate and brought it to Johnson. He put syrup on his waffles without buttering them first. He cut the first piece, put it in his mouth and closed his eyes as if he were tasting a little bit of heaven. Then he set his fork down, opened his eyes, and looked at me.

  “Quick thinking you did last night.”

  I put a sugar cube in my coffee, and used my spoon to stir it.

  “You knew a lot about procedure.”

  I tapped my spoon on the side of the coffee cup, then set it on the table.

  “You a cop?”

  Malcolm raised his eyebrows in an I-told-you-so gesture.

  “Nope,” I said.

  “Former cop?” Johnson wasn’t looking at me. He had focused most of his attention on the waffles. Franklin got up and went into the kitchen. I was thankful for that. He was beginning to look worried.

  “Nope,” I said.

  Johnson grunted, as if he didn’t believe me. “You’re not from here.”

  “My family’s in Atlanta.” Truth. My family was in Atlanta. I hadn’t lived there since I was a child.

  “So why aren’t you in Atlanta?” He was better than I wanted him to be—at least while he was questioning me.

  I shrugged. “Atlanta’s changed. It’s not the place it was ten years ago, let alone thirty.”

  “You think Chicago’s better?”

  “Not at the moment.”

  That got a grin from him. He ate some more waffles as if they were the only thing that mattered to him. He washed down the food with coffee. The rest of us sat in silence, much as we had when we ate.

  Franklin started rinsing the dishes. The running water, the clank of the plates, was comforting.

  “There’s a flyer at the station,” Johnson said. “Two of them, actually. Came in April. Kinda curious, I thought. Memphis police and the FBI sent out different requests for the same thing.”

  I took a sip of my coffee, pretending nonchalance. Malcolm was frowning.

  “Wanting us to be on the lookout for a forty-year-old black man and a ten-year-old boy. Didn’t say what they were wanted for. In fact, the whole thing was vaguer than usual. I was round-filing that crap in June when I remembered Marvella describing her newest neighbor. Some Southern black man and his son, and I wondered: any connection?”

  “I don’t think I look ten, do you?” Malcolm snapped.

  I almost spilled my coffee. I wanted to tell him not to do that, that Marvella knew who Jimmy w
as, but anything I would say would only make this worse.

  “You’re his son?”

  “In all ways that count.”

  Good boy, I thought.

  “You don’t share an accent.”

  “He didn’t come to Chicago for the weather.” Malcolm was a better liar than I liked.

  Johnson grunted again, as if he were satisfied. I hoped he wouldn’t revisit this. I didn’t want to repeat the lie.

  “You had Marvella keep an eye on me,” I said.

  Johnson shrugged. “She gets in trouble with men. She mentioned someone new. I wanted to find out about him.”

  Franklin glanced at me over his shoulder.

  “I’m not involved with her.”

  “She was interested. When she gets interested, I get worried.”

  “Worried enough to check the police blotter?”

  He grinned. “You haven’t met her former husbands, have you?”

  I didn’t say anything. After a moment, Franklin’s rinsing started up again. I hadn’t realized it had slowed down until that moment.

  “You’re not a cop,” Johnson said. “Yet you were clear-headed, and you managed to protect that scene. What is it that you do?”

  “I’m a security guard at the Conrad Hilton.

  “You’re the guy they wrote up in the Defender.”

  “’Fraid so.”

  “Why don’t you tell me what you did and saw tonight,” Johnson said. It was not a request. It was a command.

  “If we do an exchange.”

  Malcolm set his orange juice glass down. He looked like he wanted to bolt.

  Johnson gave me an appreciative look. “For what?”

  “Information.”

  “You know it’s against the law to interfere with a police investigation.”

  “I wasn’t planning on interfering,” I said. “But Brian wasn’t the only ten-year-old living in this building.”

  “Yeah,” Franklin said, rescuing me. “My wife and children are due home in the next week. I have boys that age.”

  “So?” Johnson pushed his plate away.

  “So I want to know about the other homicides. I want to know what the pattern was, and why you think the killer struck here.”

  “All these questions from a security guard, huh?” he asked.

  “Yeah,” I said. “All those questions from a security guard.”

  He shook his head. It was clear he didn’t believe me. I wouldn’t have believed me either, but to his credit, he didn’t push it. “You know I’ll only tell you what you need to know to keep those other children safe.”

  I nodded.

  He handed Malcolm his coffee cup. “How about a refill, son?”

  Malcolm glared at him, then took the cup with a swipe of his hand. Getting Malcolm away from the table wasn’t going to do a lot of good. He could hear from anywhere in the apartment. But the symbolic value of the gesture was probably enough to prevent Malcolm from sitting right next to us again.

  “First one happened in Washington Park,” Johnson said. “Some college students found the boy leaning against a tree. Knifed, like our boy here, posed, and left for someone to find him.”

  “Would a family member have found him in the park?”

  Malcolm brought Johnson’s coffee cup back, then beat a hasty retreat into the half kitchen. Johnson used the opportunity to think about his answer.

  Finally he said, “Never looked into that part,” and I could tell the admission embarrassed him. “He was the first, you know. We didn’t have a lot to go on.”

  “Same kind of entry wound?”

  Johnson nodded, cradling his cup. “One simple cut, right through to the heart.”

  Franklin stopped washing dishes and bowed his head. Malcolm bit his lower lip, then grabbed a towel and turned away.

  “The other marks the same?” I was purposely vague about those. I didn’t know how much the police wanted to reveal.

  “There were signs of a struggle, just like on this kid. But tonight’s looked like an escalation to me.”

  In other words, no. I nodded.

  “When was this?”

  “April sixteenth, day after tax day. I remember for a couple of reasons. I hadn’t had a lot of sleep that month. First there were the riots, then the cleanup. Then I had to stay up all night the fourteenth so that I could come close to having my taxes done on time.”

  Taxes. I hadn’t given them a thought. I obviously hadn’t filed mine this year. I sighed.

  Johnson didn’t seem to notice. He continued, “So I was exhausted and I remember thinking this was the last thing we needed, something like this, some animal carving up a kid. I thought it was a one-time thing. My captain thought it was connected to the riots.”

  “I suppose all the other white cops did too,” Franklin said. It was the first real indication—to Johnson at least—that he’d been listening.

  “Yeah. You got it.” Johnson sipped his coffee. “The second one was around the Fourth of July. Boy’s body found at the Forty-ninth Street beach. He was up near the grass, far enough away that the water wouldn’t get him. Posed again. The knife wound in the same place. Different kid, different neighborhood. No obvious connections. That’s when the chief filed the forms, just like he’s supposed to.”

  “But it was still your case.”

  “That one was never really mine, but I looked into it. I had to. It was related. And it happened on my turf.”

  “Defensive wounds?” I asked.

  He shook his head. “Bruises, just like the other one, but no other cuts.”

  “Both of them ten-year-old boys,” I said, confirming.

  “Ten-year-old black boys,” he said. “You can imagine the manpower we’ve expended on this one.”

  At the sink, Franklin shook his head.

  “In other words, you’re the only one who’s been paying attention.”

  “And now it looks like you are too.” Johnson put his hands on the table and pushed himself up. He moved like an elderly man; he wore his weariness as if it made him one hundred pounds heavier. “Just do me a favor. Don’t make me regret telling you this.”

  “You haven’t told me much more than what I can find in the papers.”

  “You expect to find this in the papers?” Johnson asked. “You are an optimist.”

  I knew he was pushing me away from the case. The Defender would cover this even if no one else did.

  “I’m confused,” I said. “Brian’s the only child killed in a residential neighborhood.”

  Johnson shrugged. “It’s an escalation.”

  “He was dumped. Were the other bodies dumped?”

  Johnson stared at me for a moment, as if he was debating. Then he nodded.

  “It seems odd that the killer would know to dump him here,” I said. “If it were a random pickup and murder, then why would he leave the boy on his mother’s front porch? Why not put him in Jackson Park or some other public place?”

  “I find myself wondering the same thing,” Johnson said. “Makes me wonder if he’s circling in on a target, maybe the kid he’s really angry at, the one he really wants to get. Or maybe his impulses are too hard to control. Maybe he took someone he knew because the kid was convenient.”

  I was silent for a moment. If Johnson’s theory was correct—and I had no reason at the moment to doubt him—the killer knew this neighborhood.

  “Have you spoken to Brian’s mother yet?”

  “The woman’s hysterical. Husband walked out on her last week, and now she’s lost her only kid.” Johnson sighed. I did not envy him his job. Then he pointed a finger at me. “You leave her alone, you hear?”

  “I promised not to interfere with your investigation,” I said. “I meant it. I simply wish you could give us all more reassurances, more ways to avoid this guy.”

  Johnson looked at Franklin. Franklin had turned, a towel draped over his arm as if he were a maître d’ at a fancy restaurant.

  “You warn those kids of yo
urs to stay away from strangers,” Johnson said.

  “You’re implying that this guy isn’t a stranger.” Franklin’s voice was soft.

  Johnson’s lips pursed as if he’d swallowed something sour. He had no answers. None of us did. “You make sure those kids are never alone. Always keep ’em with an adult or an older kid or a group of kids. No going off without calling you or checking with you. Give them a curfew and have them meet it.”

  “That’s all?” Franklin asked.

  “It isn’t enough, I know.” Johnson shook his head. It almost seemed as if he were looking at something none of us could see, maybe something none of us wanted to see. And then, without saying good-bye, he let himself out.

  No one spoke. It was as if Johnson had taken what little energy there was in the room with him when he left.

  Then Malcolm set his towel down. “If you’re not a cop, what are you?”

  “I’m not your father,” I said, a little more harshly than I intended.

  “So?” Malcolm snapped. “You should thank me.”

  “Why?” I asked. “For making more trouble? Marvella’s his cousin. She already knows about me.”

  “And that ten-year-old kid of yours?” Malcolm crossed his arms. I was surprised. I didn’t realize he knew about Jimmy. “If she knows, you can bet that cop knows. He already thinks you lied to him. Why shouldn’t he think I’m your kid?”

  I shook my head. “It’s complicated, Malcolm. And if Marvella knows you, then she knows your history.”

  “So it should work just fine.” He said this so softly I barely heard it.

  “Your father’s not here, son?” Franklin asked.

  Malcolm’s back straightened. He hated being called “son.” Not that I blamed him.

  “Left before I was born,” Malcolm said. “Went south. Didn’t like Chicago.”

  “What about your mother?” I asked. “Won’t she object to her instant pairing with me?”

  “No.” Something in the way he said that word made me shiver. Franklin’s gaze met mine over Malcolm’s head.

  “Where’s your mother?” Franklin asked softly.

  Malcolm’s head bowed deeper. All I could see was tight curls forming a circle around his crown. “Died.”

  And recently enough to make it painful. “When?” I asked.