Smoke-Filled Rooms: A Smokey Dalton Novel

by Kris Nelscott

  “September.”

  “How’d she die?” Franklin asked.

  “Cancer.” His voice shook. No wonder he resented Daniel Kirkland. While Kirkland concentrated on his studies, Malcolm was dealing with the terminal illness of his only parent.

  “So who’s taking care of you?” Franklin was the one asking the questions. I’d remind him of that later.

  “I’m old enough to be on my own.” Malcolm raised his head, his expression defiant.

  Old enough, but still having troubles. “You made an alliance with the Machine so you’d have a place to sleep, didn’t you?”

  He glared at me. “What’s it to you?”

  “I told you before,” I said, “I’m not going to be responsible for forcing you onto the street.”

  He shrugged. “You wouldn’t have approved of those guys anyway.”

  Probably not, but I knew that gangs weren’t always a bad thing. They helped each other, sheltered each other, and in some instances, contributed to the neighborhood. I didn’t know enough about the Machine to know if they did that.

  “What I think doesn’t matter,” I said. “What you think does.”

  Malcolm gritted his teeth so hard I could see his jaw working. “You said you’d pay me.”

  I had almost forgotten that. “Yeah, I did, didn’t I.”

  I reached into my back pocket and removed my wallet. I pulled out the last of my cash. Franklin was shaking his head, certain that we made eye contact. He did not approve of me giving Malcolm money. Was he afraid Malcolm would spend it on drugs? I had spent over eighteen hours with the boy and saw no sign that he used.

  I handed Malcolm the cash. He pocketed it and headed for the door.

  “Wait!” Franklin said. “If you have no place to go, then…”

  His voice trailed off. It was almost as if he couldn’t bring himself to offer.

  “Then what, man?” Malcolm asked. “Then I could stay here? But you don’t want me here, do you? Afraid I’ll bring my gang buddies to rob you? You’re so fucking rich that you have stuff we might want?”

  “Malcolm,” I said, trying to calm him.

  “And you, Mr. Mystery Cop. You think you’re such a goddamn hero, but what did you do? You didn’t save Brian, did you?”

  He yanked the door open and stalked out. Franklin started after him, but I caught his arm.

  “You sure you want him to stay here?” I asked.

  “Where else is he going to go?”

  “Churches provide shelter. There are some other places.”

  “He needs more than a bed for the night.”

  I nodded. “If you go after him, you better be sure you can offer more.”

  Franklin stared at me. I was getting past his Good Samaritan impulse and speaking to his brain. His own family was coming home soon. That had to be a consideration.

  “The kid was real solid all night,” Franklin said.

  “Yes, he was,” I said. “Don’t you think that means he can handle this on his own?”

  “I think he’s been on his own too long,” Franklin said, and headed for the stairs.

  ELEVEN

  I CLEANED UP the last of the dishes, waiting for Franklin to return. I had given Malcolm quite a head start. I didn’t expect Franklin to catch him. I almost hoped he wouldn’t.

  Malcolm had proven himself the night before, and I sensed the same need, suppressed and hidden, that Franklin had. But I was already being pulled in too many different directions, and this apartment was not my home. Even if I had wanted to, I hadn’t had the right to ask Malcolm inside.

  So I had given him money, and hoped it would help. I shook my head. Throwing money at a problem, then ignoring it, was very uncharacteristic of me, and a sign that I was feeling overburdened.

  I dried my hands, grabbed my keys, and followed Franklin into the hallway. I still had a lot to do before I slept. I wanted to check on the Kirkland boys, and I needed to call Jimmy. Not for him—my call wasn’t anywhere near overdue yet—but for me. I needed to reassure myself that he was all right.

  I wondered if Franklin had already called Milwaukee, giving into the same impulse. Or was his sense of loss manifesting in his need to take care of Malcolm? Probably both.

  The door to Brian’s mother’s apartment was closed and her place was silent, eerily silent. I couldn’t quite comprehend what she was going through. I had experienced devastating loss when my parents were murdered, but I had a feeling that the loss of a child was worse. The death of hope, maybe, as well as the end of possibilities.

  The main door to the building was open. Malcolm and Franklin were standing on the porch, the stairs before them blocked by police tape. Franklin had his arm around Malcolm’s shoulder. Franklin’s instinct had been surer than mine. Malcolm’s shoulders were shaking, the tears that had been suppressed for a long and frightening time finally breaking through.

  Franklin seemed to know what to say, what to do. Any attempt I made to join them would be an intrusion. I hesitated for just a moment, feeling oddly excluded, then turned away. They needed their time and I had things to do.

  I went out the back door and cut across the yard to the Kirkland’s.

  As I walked, I scanned the dry brown grass for anything unusual. I had a hunch the killer hadn’t come back here, but I didn’t know that for sure. I had no idea how he had found the boy and conned him into leaving with him.

  I did know that Brian hadn’t remained a willing participant in his death. He had rope burns around his wrists. He had been tied while he was being tortured—and if he was conscious when he’d been knifed, he wouldn’t have been able to sustain any defensive wounds. He would have been unable to fight back.

  The ground was so hard that footprints didn’t register in it. The grass was so trampled—either by the kids over the last month or the cops last night—that individual prints were impossible to distinguish. There was no blood back here, although bits of glass sparkled in the early morning sunshine.

  I crouched near one pile, a broken Coke bottle, but the glass was dusty and caked, probably from the last rainstorm weeks ago. Nothing new here. At least, nothing obviously new.

  I left the glass—I wasn’t going to touch anything at this point—and continued on my way. The morning air was cool, almost refreshing, but it had a heaviness to it that I was beginning to recognize. It would be another scorcher today.

  The neighborhood was quiet. I was rarely up and about this early; I had no idea if this was normal. I didn’t see my shadow. I didn’t see anyone else on the street at all. If I turned back, I would probably see Malcolm and Franklin still on the porch, but even that felt like an invasion of their privacy.

  I went inside the Kirklands’ building and knocked on their apartment door. I heard nothing from inside. For a moment, I felt a horrible fear that I’d let the killer follow them home. But I knew that was the effect of too little sleep and too much going on. It had been a long night for them too, and they were probably in bed.

  Then the door opened. Grace stood before me. She was fully dressed, and she had a glow, a strength that she hadn’t had when I first met her.

  She smiled and I realized what a stunning woman she was. “Bill.” For a moment, I thought she was going to hug me. Instead, she slipped a hand around my elbow and pulled me inside. “I was hoping I’d see you today. I owe you so much.”

  Her voice trembled just a little, and I knew what she was thinking. If I hadn’t found Elijah, he might have ended up like Brian. Only what had happened to the two of them were very different things.

  Brian hadn’t had a chance.

  Grace hadn’t let go of my arm. “Would you like something?”

  I shook my head. “I just came to make sure everything was okay here.”

  “Come on in.”

  I followed her into the living room. Elijah was on the couch, wrapped in a blanket despite the heat, his head on a pillow. His eyes were open, but bleary. He’d clearly fallen asleep at some point during the
night. Two empty cups sat on the coffee table, and two bowls with some milk at the bottom and cereal still floating in it sat beside them.

  Obviously Daniel and Grace had been talking all night.

  Daniel was in the kitchen, closing a coffee can. The percolator was on the stove, and the scent of coffee grounds filled the air. He kept his back to me.

  “You come to tell us about Brian?”

  “There’s nothing you don’t already know.”

  “Who would do that?” He turned. “Brian was just a normal kid, you know? He wouldn’t hurt anyone.”

  “No gang ties?” I asked.

  “Hell, no.”

  “Daniel.” Grace was admonishing him for language. Apparently she’d forgotten that he was an adult now.

  “Parents involved in anything they shouldn’t’ve been?”

  Daniel looked at his mother. So did I. She shook her head. “I hadn’t heard anything. I didn’t know them well.”

  “There’s been weird guys all over the neighborhood.” Elijah’s voice was scratchy and muffled, tired. He sounded as if he hadn’t spoken in days.

  We all turned toward him.

  “What kind of weird guys?” I hadn’t come here to interrogate the family, but I wasn’t going to lose my chance at gaining information.

  “I don’t know. White guys. People watching everybody.” Elijah rubbed his eyes with his fists. “Can I have some cereal?”

  Grace went into the kitchen. The coffee was boiling and she moved it off the burner, a simple, habitual movement that spoke of routine.

  “White guys?” Daniel was looking at me. “Like that cop last night?”

  “Like that cop,” I said.

  Elijah leaned against the pillow. Something in his expression—an exasperation with grown-ups, a sense that maybe he hadn’t been heard—crossed his face.

  “Why’d you bring that up now, Elijah?”

  He shrugged and closed his eyes.

  “The man asked you a question, Lij,” Daniel said.

  “I don’t know.”

  “Yes, you do.” Daniel sat in the chair next to the couch and shook his brother’s shoulder. Elijah opened one eye and glared at him. “This could be important.”

  Elijah sighed. “Last week, there was a guy watching the kids play in the fire hydrant.”

  “White guy?” Daniel asked.

  “No.” Elijah sounded irritated. “Black guy with a ’fro.”

  I felt cold. “Where was he, Elijah?”

  “Across the street, hidden kinda. He moved when he saw me.”

  “Moved?”

  “Walked away. Like he hadn’t been doing nothing. But he had. It was creepy, you know.”

  I did know. “Did you see him again?”

  Elijah shook his head.

  “Could you recognize him?”

  “I don’t know. I didn’t see him real good. It was kinda quick. And weird. I wouldn’ta remembered if it hadn’t been weird.”

  “You should have told me.” Grace put the cereal in front of him.

  “Tell you what, Mom? I saw some guy on the street? Nothing happened.”

  “We don’t know that, do we?” Grace sat in her chair. I remained standing, not willing to sit on that blanket-covered couch.

  Daniel grabbed his cup and walked into the kitchen. He poured himself some more coffee and didn’t offer anyone else any. “This is where you get in trouble, Mom. You worry too much.”

  That felt like the continuation of a conversation I hadn’t been part of.

  Grace’s hands clenched. Elijah ducked, turning away from her. It was the only warning I had before I felt the force of her anger—however indirectly.

  “Too much worrying?” She didn’t yell. It probably would have been better if she had. All that pent-up rage wouldn’t have felt so powerful. “A little boy gets murdered on our block and you tell me I worry too much? You lie to me, your brother runs off, and you tell me that I worry too much? Don’t you know there are cops everywhere? They’re just looking to start something and you boys would have been in the middle of it.”

  They had been in the middle of it, even though the radio this morning had called the events in Lincoln Park peaceful.

  Daniel brought his coffee back into the living room. He didn’t seem distressed by her anger, although Elijah clearly was. “I’m going back this afternoon.”

  “No, you’re not.”

  “Yes, I am.”

  “I didn’t send you to a good school so you can play at white-boy politics.”

  “White boy politics?” Daniel had also mastered the art of speaking softly while angry. “It’s our people who are dying over there, Mom. White boys get out of it. I’m lucky. I’m in school, so I get a deferment. Most guys from my high school class are heading over there or are there. They couldn’t get a scholarship. I’m not fighting for some white boy’s vision of the future. I’m fighting against it.”

  Elijah set his bowl down. It was empty. He hunched against the corner of the couch as if that could take him out of the conversation.

  “You’re better off getting a good job when you’re out of school. That’s how you show the white man he’s wrong. You show him you’re as good as he is, right, Bill?”

  I wasn’t going to get involved, not in the middle of an argument that had clearly been going on for a very long time.

  “Mom, we’re not talking about me and jobs. We’re talking about guys dying for no good reason.”

  “Yes,” she said, crossing her arms. “We’re talking about you dying for no good reason.”

  Daniel harrumphed and flopped in his chair, somehow not spilling his coffee.

  “I’m not letting you go back there,” Grace said.

  “You can’t stop me.”

  “Bill can stop you.”

  I raised my hands. “I brought Elijah back. I just came to make sure everything is all right. I am not getting involved in this.”

  “Because you agree with my son?” Grace’s voice was as cold as her eyes. All her gratitude appeared to be gone.

  The hell of it was I agreed with both of them. I saw the numbers coming back from Vietnam and could read them as plainly as anyone else. When I joined up for Korea, it was because I thought I’d find equality in the service. Truman had desegregated it just a few years before.

  What I hadn’t realized was that they’d find a new way to segregate us, to make us the ones who did the dying while the rich white boys got off, just like they always did.

  “Bill?”

  I looked at her. I knew, just like she did, that the number of police, the National Guard, the kids would all make a bad combination. I knew that someone was going to get hurt this week, and I had a hunch it wouldn’t be white kids. It never was.

  “I’d like to use your phone,” I said. “I need to make a call. It’s local.”

  Grace stared at me as if she hadn’t heard me correctly. I certainly hadn’t responded the way she thought I was going to. Daniel’s eyes narrowed. I had probably lost a bit of respect in his eyes—zealots always hated it when someone failed to agree with them.

  But I would gain nothing from entering this argument and I’d only make matters worse.

  “It’s over there.” She waved her hand toward the wall phone beside the refrigerator.

  “Thank you.” I walked over to the phone and picked up the receiver.

  “You’re still my son,” Grace whispered. “I still decide what you do.”

  “I’m eighteen, Mom. Old enough to be drafted. Old enough, I think, to make my own choices.”

  I leaned against the refrigerator, wishing I could shut out the voices, and dialed Laura’s number. No one would trace this call. I was safe, for the moment.

  “Let’s go outside,” Grace said.

  “Mom—”

  “Let’s give Bill some privacy. Outside.”

  The phone was ringing. Grace stood, and so did Daniel. Only Elijah remained, huddled on the couch. Grace glanced at him. He stood rel
uctantly.

  “Hello?” Laura answered, her tone fresh and cheerful. I clung to the receiver. I hadn’t realized until that moment how much I needed to hear her voice.

  “Laura.”

  The Kirklands stepped through their patio doors into the garden. I could hear their voices, muffled, Grace and Daniel still arguing.

  “Smokey! You’re early. Is everything—”

  “Is Jimmy there?”

  “Yes, you want to talk to him?”

  I leaned against the wall, feeling a deep relief. “In a minute. I need to talk to you first.”

  “What’s going on?” Her tone had changed. The cheerfulness was gone.

  “A ten-year-old boy was murdered in the neighborhood last night.”

  “Jesus, Smokey. Do you think they were after Jimmy?”

  “I thought so at first. Now I’m not sure. There seems to be something else going on. But I had to call. I had to—” My voice broke. I cleared my throat, swallowed, got control again.

  “He’s right here, Smokey. I’ll get him for you.” She set the phone down. I couldn’t even tell her to wait. I wanted to talk to her, to make sure the security was going well, that she hadn’t seen any suspicious men with afros hanging around the building. I wanted to make sure that nothing was going to happen there.

  “Smoke?” Jimmy. He sounded so normal. “Can I come home?”

  “Not yet,” I said.

  “You sound funny.”

  So much for my ability to mask my emotions. “I haven’t slept all night.”

  “You find the guy?”

  “No.”

  “Then why did you call?” To the point. Jimmy was always to the point.

  “Just to talk to you. I miss you.”

  “I miss you too. I want to go home.”

  “In a week or so, Jim. No one’s home except me and Franklin right now. Everyone’s in Milwaukee.”

  Voices rose outside, followed by a loud shush. I leaned around the wall. Elijah was standing near the fence, his hands in his pockets, staring away from his family. Grace and Daniel were arguing in low tones now, their faces inches apart.

  “Where’s that?” Jimmy asked.

  It took me a moment to come back to the conversation. “Milwaukee? Just north of us. Althea took the kids to visit family.”