by Toby Ball
Eunice frowned. “We can pay or Father Womé can pay. We don’t need your money.”
Carla met her eyes for a moment, then nodded in acquiescence.
This led to a bout of gossip about particular people within the Community who were sick or feeling the acute effects of old age. Carla let the women talk, once exchanging a smile with Betty, both acknowledging the minor travails of trying to help the Community.
When the gossiping seemed to have run its course, Carla asked if they had any news about the night assaults over the past week.
Eunice’s two friends made tutting sounds and shook their heads, casting their eyes to the ground. Eunice’s face was a mask of contempt. “Those police don’t do from nothing; like back home. No police for the poor. I wasn’t expecting that here, in America, where everyone is equal.”
Feeling the need to respond to Eunice’s sarcasm, Betty Askins said, “It’s not supposed to work that way here,” but her dubiousness was clear in her voice.
Eunice snorted in disgust.
Carla said, “We have a friend in the police who’s working on getting the police back out here.”
Eunice said, “You going to save us, dear?”
Carla was stopped cold.
Eunice smiled. “Don’t worry about the police, Carla.”
“Okay, Eunice,” Carla said, tentative.
“When we make up our minds, the Community can take care of ourselves.”
Carla nodded, wondering what Eunice meant by that.
48.
Ed Wayne smoked a Camel and drank coffee from a paper cup, waiting for Westermann in a framed-out room on the unfinished seventh floor of the new police headquarters. Unfinished because the money had run out before the building was completed; too many palms to grease, too many people with too much leverage. Light shone through the windows, casting long shadows across the wall-less floor.
Art Deyna was waiting for Westermann on the steps of the police building, his fedora rakishly tilted, his eyes predatory. Westermann saw him, went tense despite himself. He walked directly toward Deyna, hoping with his aggressiveness to catch Deyna off guard.
It didn’t work.
“Lieutenant Westermann.” Deyna held his arms out as if delighted to see an old and dear friend.
“What do you want? I have things to do.”
Deyna laughed. “Down to business, right? Okay, why don’t you tell me why you’re harassing citizens down in Godtown?”
Westermann flashed on Mary Little’s panic; on Maddox’s obstruction; on being called back by the brass. “You know I’ve got nothing to say on that.”
“Suit yourself. How about this? Why are you meeting with Negro communists?”
“I’m not going to comment on an open case.”
“Are Mel Washington or Warren Eddings suspects?”
Westermann glared. “What did I just say?”
“What were you meeting with them about?”
“Do you have any questions that I might conceivably answer?”
Deyna licked his lips, barely containing a smile. “I don’t think you’re going to answer any questions, no matter what they are.”
“That’s right. Nice talking with you.” Westermann walked away to the sound of Deyna’s laughter.
Westermann sat at his desk, noting the time, already late for his meeting with Wayne. Let the bastard wait.
Westermann made some calls, leaving a message with Pulyatkin’s secretary at the coroner’s office, checking to see if Pulyatkin had ID’d either of the bodies and leaving a description of Vesterhue for him to check against John Does.
Westermann saw that someone had left the day’s Gazette on his desk, opened to a page in the middle of the front section. He saw a photo of himself in Godtown, jabbing a finger at a calm-looking Prosper Maddox. Jesus. He called Frings.
“What the fuck is this?”
“I know, Piet.”
“ ‘Mystery Sweep in Godtown’?” The headline.
“Piet—”
“Golden Boy Lieutenant Piet Westermann led a deployment of detectives into Godtown despite no crime report having been filed in this quiet, churchgoing neighborhood in weeks.”
“I know what it says, Piet.”
“It has a fucking quote from Prosper Maddox saying I’ve got some kind of vendetta against Christians.”
“Piet, shut the hell up for a second. I don’t run the paper. We’ve got a reporter—”
“Art Deyna.”
“Right. I don’t know how he got them, but he’s got photos of you—”
Jesus. “Not on the phone.”
“Right. Let’s meet tonight. Come by my building. We can talk on the roof.”
Westermann left his jacket at his desk, loosened his tie, damp with sweat, and grabbed a cup of coffee on the way to the seventh floor. It was private there. No chance of someone walking in on them.
Wayne was good and pissed by the time Westermann arrived, their respective ranks the only thing keeping Wayne under control.
“How are you this morning, Detective?” Westermann asked, his pleasant greeting incongruent.
Wayne stared back at him, arms crossed, fingers white from pushing down hard on his biceps; probably some means of anger control. Westermann noticed the scarred knuckles, confirming what he had heard and seen—Wayne plied his policing on the edge.
“I want to talk to you about a couple of calls you took, down by the Uhuru Community. Assaults, a week or so ago. This sound familiar?”
“If you say so.” Wayne focused his eyes over Westermann’s shoulder.
“I say so.”
Wayne shrugged sullenly.
“What’s the disposition of the case at this point?”
“You Internal Affairs now?”
“Why would you think that?”
Wayne shrugged.
“What’s the disposition of the case?” Westermann asked again.
Westermann watched Wayne’s face as the sergeant went through the mental process, figuring out if Westermann had jurisdiction, what kind of trouble he would be bringing on himself if he stonewalled. Westermann wondered what he would do if Wayne did stonewall. But Wayne was forthcoming.
“Nothing to do. Couple of interviews, best they could say was assault by a group of Caucasians, didn’t see faces, no thoughts on suspects. Didn’t see much prospect, no reason to waste manpower.”
“This was a series of assaults, correct?”
“If you say so.”
Westerman saw rats behind Wayne, picking at something hidden behind a stack of unused beams. A siren came from the street. Westermann kept his voice even, a benign blankness to his face. “You’re not doing yourself any favors, making this difficult.”
“Two, three assaults; you want to call that a series, you go ahead.”
“You didn’t stake the place out a couple of nights?”
“For a couple of assaults?” Wayne was genuinely incredulous at the suggestion.
“Look, we both know that the vics were passing out propaganda for the Community. These assaults were political intimidation; a little more important than a couple of random beatings.”
Wayne focused his eyes on Westermann’s. “What’re you, Red on top of everything else?” White spittle beaded in both corners of his mouth. “You want the society of the future to go with your policing of the future?”
Westermann stared back at Wayne, willing himself to be placid; unsettle Wayne by not rising to the bait.
“So the extent of your work was …”
Wayne raised his voice and his words came echoing back. “Interviewing the vics. I determined it was a lost cause, moved on, saved manpower. That’s by the book.”
Like many disingenuous arguments, this was, on its face, defensible. Wayne returned to gazing over Westermann’s shoulder, looking pleased with himself.
“So if there’s a complaint that you didn’t follow up on these two cases, it would be accurate.”
Wayne answered aggressively, punctuating his
points with finger jabs in the air. “Lieutenant, I don’t know how much clearer I can be. I determined they were loser cases. Could I have staked it out? Maybe. Maybe we’d get lucky and the perps would come back to the same place and jump some more Negroes. But, to be honest, there are other fish to fry out there and this ranks pretty fucking low in my book. You have a problem with that, take it up with the Kraatjes or the Chief. But, even if they don’t agree with what I did, they’ll see it’s not unreasonable. You see it, too. I can tell.”
Westermann had nothing to say to that.
Wayne said, “Is there anything else?” Sounding as if the battle were won.
Westermann shook his head.
“Then I’ll get back to work.” Wayne walked past Westermann toward the fire stairs, his steps scraping and echoing on the silent floor. Westermann watched him strut, his body soft in the middle, but hard in the shoulders and neck. Wayne paused at the doorway, giving Westermann the half-lid tough-guy look. “You are Red, aren’t you? A commie symp. Jesus.”
Westermann stared hard. “You’ll lose, you mess with me.”
“That don’t sound like a denial to me,” Wayne said, smirking, and left.
Deyna’s cameraman shooting him with Mel Washington.
Westermann stood alone on the empty floor, trembling with anger and anxiety.
* * *
Later, Kraatjes made his way through the squad room like a prince among the paupers, making quick, concentrated comments in response to some remark or other, but nothing holding his attention or getting a longer response.
Westermann stepped out of his office when it became apparent that Kraatjes was there to talk with him. Kraatjes put his arm around Westermann and steered him back into the office, shutting the door behind them. Westermann braced himself for the fallout from the newspaper article.
Kraatjes seemed to sense this anxiety, probably the stiffness in Westermann’s posture. “Take it easy, Piet.”
Westermann exhaled, pulling away from Kraatjes so that he could face him. “What’s the story?”
“No one’s happy about the Gazette piece, but you could have guessed that, right?”
Westermann nodded, his stomach knotting.
“People aren’t happy, but, fortunately for you—for us—the incident took place before you met with the Chief.”
“Fortunately,” Westermann echoed softly.
“But, Piet, this means we are on very thin ice. Very thin.”
“Right.”
Kraatjes studied Westermann for a moment. “Okay, the other reason I’m here is that the Uhuru Community storefront, down on Penrose?”
“Yeah, I know it.”
“Somebody tossed it last night.”
Westermann shook his head. “Really?” Suddenly paranoid about Kraatjes coming to him with this, thinking about Wayne’s parting shots and the connection between the Gazette’s implication of anti-Christian leanings and his association with communists.
“Thing was, someone picked the lock. Not your usual vandals.”
“Okay.” Westermann searched Kraatjes eyes.
“Thought you might want to know, what with you working those girls they found on the riverbank. The Community connection, you see.”
“Thanks.”
“Rolle and Vidic picked it up. In case you want to stay up on it.”
“Okay,” Westermann said, trying to read Kraatjes’s ulterior motives, but seeing only the man doing his job, keeping the right people in the loop. He and Kraatjes were close, too, as much as men with their difference in rank could be. No way he’d be feeling Westermann out. No way.
Kraatjes strolled out, pausing briefly to exchange a few words with a detective new to the force about something, then leaving altogether.
Westermann paced his office, thinking he should get in touch with Washington, find out what the hell was happening. He walked to his window, looking out on the busy block, cruisers parked on the curb, cops in and out of uniform, frail indigents hoping that proximity with police headquarters would deliver safety.
On second thought, though, Westermann decided maybe he better not contact Washington. His attention was caught by a conversation on the street—two men talking intently.
Deyna and Wayne.
49.
Morphy and Grip were back in the prowl car. The old man across the hall from Vesterhue had been a dead end.
Grip aped him in a geezer voice as they drove, “ ‘Many times he’s entertained ladies of the night. These here walls aren’t thick …’ ” Letting the phrase hang there the way the old-timer had.
Morphy grinned at this and responded, mimicking Grip but exaggerating his officious tone, “ ‘Sir, would you be able to identify any of these women if we showed you pictures?’ ”
Grip-as-geezer: “ ‘Son, you think I stand at my door peeping through my spy-hole all day?’ ”
Both laughed as they recalled the old man catching Morphy’s smile and kicking them both out of his apartment. Their laughter died down, and as they drove, Morphy eyed Grip’s brooding again.
“There a problem?”
Grip looked over at him. “No. No problem.”
Morphy spit out a disdainful laugh. They both knew there was some kind of problem.
“All right. Fuck. Look, you remember that weird skull that’s painted on the door at Crippen’s?”
“Skull with a top hat?”
“That’s the one. This morning, I open my door and there’s the same fucking thing. On my door.”
Morphy’s eyebrows went up. “Really?”
“ ‘Really?’ ” Grip said, mimicking the tone. “The fuck you think?”
“Front door of your building, isn’t it usually locked?”
“Yes. Always. And better yet, how the fuck does whoever it is know where I live? And why did they paint that goddamn thing on my door?”
“That’s strange.”
“That’s one word for it,” Grip said sullenly, thinking about his strange dream; about the man who might or might not have been in his room; about the symbols and murals in the Uhuru Community and that feeling he’d had trying to leave.
50.
Frings waited for Westermann on the roof of his building, hoping to catch a breeze eight floors above the street. Someone had left chairs up there, weather-beaten now, and Frings sat with his feet propped on the raised ledge that ran about the roof’s perimeter. He smoked a reefer, letting the tension run from his body, and soothed his throat with beer from a sweating can. The sun was a low red ball over the artificial horizon of silhouetted highrises to the west. From the east came the rhythmic pounding of bridge supports being driven into the ground. Iron on steel. Again and again and again and again …
Renate had returned, not that he’d actually seen her—only evidence: wet towel on the bathroom doorknob; cigarette butts—her cigarette butts—in the ashtray; her smell hanging in every room. She’d be back tonight, he knew. That’s the way it worked with her. Whatever it was she’d gotten into, it was over. He was glad that she’d be around again because he liked it better with her around.
Frings had noticed that the theater across the street was screening something called I Married a Communist, Robert Ryan and some bird locked in an embrace, the bird looking away with an unreadable look, making it unclear what she thought about being married to a Red: scared, resigned, brainwashed. Tagline: Her beauty served a mob of terror whose one mission is to destroy! Next to the movie poster, three for Truffant, stacked one above the other.
The utility door behind him creaked on its hinges and Frings, without turning, raised a hand to Westermann.
“Grab that chair.”
Westermann twisted the cap off the cone-top can Frings had brought up for him. Frings studied Westermann’s face: tight, stressed, the accumulation of deception and pressure getting to him.
“You going to make it?”
Frings had to wait for a beat while Westermann finished a pull on his beer. “Yeah. We’re making progr
ess but I don’t know if we’re getting very close to figuring anything out. One thing I can tell you, though, it’s not a normal dead-pross case. Too much background noise pulling in too many directions.”
“Background noise?”
“Yeah. Other things brought into play.”
“Like a second body.”
Westermann froze with his beer almost to his lips.
“What’d you think, I wouldn’t find out?”
Westermann took a pull off his beer, looking past Frings to the indigo skyline.
“What were you thinking, Piet?”
“I’ve been wondering that myself.”
Frings shook his head softly. “This changes things.”
“I know.”
“Why?”
Westermann shrugged.
“Damn it.” Frings seethed with the realization that Westermann’s holding back had simply been out of petulance. Frings sighed hard. “Okay. So where are we?”
Westermann kept Frings’s eye, feeling defiant, but cornered. He told Frings about the second girl—where she was found, the sores, the different cause of death.
Frings stopped him. “Why?”
“Why what?”
“Why kill a second girl and put her in the same place? What’s the point?”
“That’s the question.”
“You think it’s a matter of convenience, this gink kills them close to home or at his drinking spot or whatever?”
Westermann frowned, as unconvinced as Frings about this line of reasoning.
“Because,” Frings continued, “it seems to me like the person that did this is trying, specifically, to tie these murders to the Community.”
“And since it would be stupid for someone actually in the Community—”
“Right. Either that or maybe a copycat.”
“But who knew about the original location of the first body?”
Frings nodded, conceding the point. “What else?”
Westermann filled him in on Godtown—though not about the pressure from the mayor—the pamphlets found in the apartments; the connection with Vesterhue.
“You did a story on Maddox, right?” Westermann asked.
It smelled like hot tar up on the roof. The fumes made Frings light-headed on top of the reefer. “The paper did, not me per se.”
