Darktown (23 page)

19

BOGGS AND SMITH'S
unofficial, off-the-books, and mostly amateur investigation into the murder of Lily Ellsworth was producing little in the way of information and much in the way of risk. They needed to limit the number of people they spoke to, to decrease the chances that McInnis or one of the other white cops might figure out what they were doing. Which hindered their efforts greatly. And they hadn't yet made the trek out to Peacedale to pick up Lily's letters back home. Though Boggs suspected the missives held a trove of information, he kept putting off the trip. Going out into the country, a land where the white men ruled even yet more ruthlessly than they did in Atlanta, was no minor errand. As he plotted it out in his head—he'd need to borrow a car, and go with Smith, and stash some guns in the car just in case—he realized how accustomed he was to moving about a city where he had a powerful family, important connections. But the country? It would be like that South Carolina army camp once again, and the horrible little hellhole of a town outside it, where the buses never stopped for Negroes and where failure to move off a sidewalk at the right time could be your last mistake.

So they'd done what they could in Atlanta, tracking down landladies and former roommates of the deceased and hoping they weren't causing enough of a stir to alert whichever white cops (all of them?) so desperately wanted this case unsolved.

The first place Lily had stayed in the city had been a rooming house, seven blocks south of Auburn, a place Boggs occasionally had reason to visit when trying to locate a suspect or witness. It was run by an older black couple, the Paulsons, who had moved to the city as teenagers themselves and now made a point of providing a clean, wholesome
place for migrants to live as they got established. Or so they always claimed. From time to time, people rooming there had been arrested for this or that petty crime, but no one at the precinct had reason to think the Paulsons were involved in anything.

When Boggs and Smith visited, Mr. Paulson dimly remembered Lily. She had stayed with them for six weeks, he recalled. She had been polite and well mannered for a country girl, the old bald man had said, and had kept her room immaculate. That's all he knew. No visitors, and certainly no male guests (that was not allowed), and no reason to have suspected anything harmful might occur to her. He expressed surprise to hear of her death, but it didn't faze him. Many people came into and out of his three-story rooming house, and he seldom heard from them again. This was life in the city, he said, and he played his role as gatekeeper and hoped the people who moved on found better places, but that's not always what the Lord has designed. Sometimes those gates opened to dark things.

Paulson checked his books and said that Lily had moved there in the first week of March and left in late April. He knew no more.

Mrs. Paulson, who had been asleep that night but had called Boggs just two hours ago, knew a bit more. She had chatted a few times with Lily, especially when she'd first arrived. The girl had seemed friendly and more than a bit wide-eyed at this city she found herself in. Mrs. Paulson was used to seeing people who had fled one bad situation or another and had witnessed all manner of deception and evasiveness, but when she'd asked Lily why she'd left her family and come here, the girl's reply had simply been that she was tired of the country and wanted more. Mrs. Paulson had found her believable.

She also had the name and last known address of the girl who had shared bedrooms with Lily, which Boggs took down for later.

The next place Lily wound up in, for a mere two weeks, was another rooming house, in a better neighborhood, only a block off Auburn. The rooms there were larger, and each guest had her own space, so Lily had been moving up in the world. But the owner of the place barely remembered her, and couldn't think of anyone else who might. Boggs decided he'd drop by again; maybe he'd meet someone who knew something, but he didn't put much hope in it.

That left one more address: Mama Dove's. A brothel two blocks north of Decatur Street. A place Boggs and the other colored cops very much wanted to put out of business, but they had been told repeatedly not to invest their energy in that. The reason was clear: the white cops didn't mind the place, Mama Dove gave out good information, and it was in a Negro neighborhood, so no one on the force cared, apart from Boggs and his colleagues, but that was a battle they couldn't yet fight.

Which meant Lily had made her way from starter boardinghouse to better boardinghouse to working for a congressman to whorehouse, in barely four months.

How?

After a few repeat trips to the rooming houses where Lily had lived, Boggs and Smith finally found a couple of girls who'd boarded there at the same time as Lily, a few weeks ago. The first girl said Lily had been shy but warm, slow to open up to strangers. She'd thought they were on the verge of a friendship when Lily had taken on her job at the Prescotts and became so busy that they only met one other time, for a late ice cream. A second former roommate said something similar, and neither could think of anyone who would've wanted to hurt her, no rivals or beaus, not even any other friends.

The more Boggs heard what a sweet, nice girl she'd been, the more bothered he became.

So at six one morning he got out of bed, far earlier than he wanted to after another long evening of walking the beat. He got dressed and hurriedly drank a coffee and walked out. It was light already, his parents' small yard wet with dew. The birds sounded surprised to see him at that hour.

It hadn't taken him long to figure out the address of Miss Julie Cannon, Lily's replacement at the Prescotts. Between her last name and knowing what church her family worshipped at, he had more information on her than if he'd known her social security number. Finding her at home proved more challenging, as she worked long hours for the Prescotts. Catching her on the way to work seemed his only option.

She lived with her parents in a divided bungalow, two mailboxes out front and letters on the doors. It was a run-down block, just north of the tracks and in the area that Boggs's parents preferred to avoid.

He'd been there barely five minutes before the door opened and Julie stepped out, in a loose-fitting gray housedress and hair pulled into a bun.

“Morning, Miss Cannon.”

“We know each other?”

“We met a couple of days ago but I wasn't straight with you. My name is Officer Lucius Boggs of the Atlanta Police Department.”

She'd been giving him that
boy, I don't have time for your flirting ways
look of pretty girls the world over but now the edges softened, just a tad.

“You came to the Prescotts the other day.”

He'd recalled her being attractive before, but she seemed to look twice as good this time. Perhaps he'd been too nervous the other day at the Prescotts, or he'd been put off by the coldness she'd so fully inhabited as part of her job saying
No
to unwanted visitors. Maybe it was just the low sunlight off her round eyes or the coffee he'd gulped too fast, but he found himself thrown off.

“I did. I was hoping to ask you a few questions.”

“Are you trying to get me fired?”

“No, Miss Cannon. But I do need your help.”

“I have a bus to catch.”

“And I have an amazing ability to walk and talk at the same time.”

That
boy, don't be flirting
look returned, but with it was the tiny hint of a grin. Then she was walking, and fast. She hadn't been kidding about being in a hurry.

She said, “So, you told Mrs. Prescott that you were the last maid's brother?”

“I lied to your boss about that. Her name was Lily Ellsworth. And she was murdered.”

Julie stopped. She stared at him and he felt guilty for inflicting this look in her eyes, and for the way her right hand gripped her left forearm, as if he'd struck her. This certainly was the first she'd heard about her predecessor's death. Had the Prescotts deliberately kept it from her, or did they not even know?

“What?”

“Someone killed her. About a week ago.”

“Wh . . . Why? How?”

“I'm working on the why. As for the how, someone shot her through the heart.”

She lingered on that for a few seconds. “What are you playing here?”

“I'm not playing anything, Miss Cannon. I'm just trying to do my job, and do it discreetly so that, like you said, no one gets fired.”

She shook her head and muttered, “I'm gonna miss my bus.” She resumed her earlier pace. “If you have questions to ask you'd best get around to asking them.”

The women he met through his church were so refined and mannerly, taught from a young age to be delicate and fair. Julie was more like the women he found himself dealing with on the job, curt and in no mood for dancing around subjects. He'd never found that an attractive trait before, but he was reassessing his feelings with every step she took.

“What can you tell me about Lily?” He told himself not to let her catch him glancing at her chest and calves but he ran the risk nonetheless.

“Nothing. I never met her.”

“Have you ever heard the Prescotts talk about her?”

“Not really. I mean, I don't really talk to Mrs. Prescott much, you know? You met her. She's not the ‘mingle with the help' sort. She don't ask me about my life and I don't ask about hers.”

“But has she ever said anything at all about Lily, how they came to part company? She seemed to hint to me that she wasn't too happy with how Lily had worked out.”

“I don't know. I mean, maybe things have been said. I assumed they weren't happy if she ain't there no more, but haven't asked her a lot of questions about the last girl.”

They crossed the street. In another block they'd be at Auburn and the bus stop. He wished she'd lived farther away, both to get more out of her and because he was enjoying watching this girl walk.

“Has she ever said anything that made you think the last maid had stolen from them?”

“They sure don't leave their jewels out when I'm around if that's what you mean. But they're all like that.”

“How about the congressman? Has he ever said anything about—”

“Never met the man. I've only been there a few weeks, and he's been
away the whole time. Up in Washington. I don't think he's home much, or ever.”

There were probably ways he could find out if Prescott had ever met Lily, Congressional calendars or something. The other day Lucius had asked his father for his opinion about Prescott; Boggs didn't mention the murder or the investigation, saying only that a former employee of the congressman was in some trouble. The reverend admitted he didn't know Prescott well, but he noted that the man's politics were as good as you could ask of a white elected official in Georgia. In addition to helping tamp down the state legislature's revolt against the mayor for hiring Lucius and the others, Prescott had recently dropped some hints that he might come around to supporting the latest version of antilynching legislation that kept failing in Washington.

“And their son?” Boggs asked Julie. “He lives in town, doesn't he?”

“Yeah, but I've never met him, either.”

They were at the corner of Auburn now, and he could see the bus stop barely ten feet beyond her. Four other women stood there, three of them obviously maids and the fourth, too, probably.

“Miss Cannon, I need you to get back in touch with me if you ever hear them say anything at all about Lily. Even the most minor thing. You might not have noticed it before, but now that we've had this talk, hopefully—”

“This is my paycheck you're talking about. I ain't no one's spy. And why aren't you wearing a uniform?”

He saw a bus a block away. She'd hear it in a couple of seconds.

“Like I said, I'm trying to be discreet, for your sake as well as my own. And I'm not asking you to spy. I'd just like you to tell me if you ever hear anything, that's all.”

She looked at him as if mentally flipping to the definition of
spy
and trying to determine how exactly his request differed from it. Before she could figure that out, he offered her a card with his name and number and the Department crest. He'd had to pay for the printing himself, as had the other colored officers. He'd also scribbled his home number on the back of this one.

She glanced at it, then recoiled.

“I can't have that on my person when I'm in their house!”

“Then may I leave it in your mailbox for you?”

She turned around and saw the bus coming. “Not
now.
My parents will see it and think I'm up to something.”

“Do your parents often think that?”

She put a hand on her hip. “What would most parents think of their daughter talking to a cop?”

“Well, that's why I'm not in my uniform.”

“And I don't need no card to remember. Your name is Officer Lucius Boggs and I surely can figure out how to phone the police if I need to.” He liked hearing his name on her lips. Even if he could feel his mother flinch every time Julie dropped a syllable. “Look, I gotta go.”

The bus stopped and the other ladies began boarding. She took a step toward it, then turned to face him again and asked what he'd expected her to ask far earlier in this conversation. The fact that she hadn't until now impressed him. “Should I be scared? Should I quit for someplace else? I mean, I
need
this job.”

He wished he had a better answer for her than, “If I have any reason to think you're in any trouble there, I'll let you know. And you do the same.”

He felt responsible for her then, as she boarded the bus and he caught a final glimpse of her smooth calves. Surely what happened to Lily would not be visited upon a second maid of the Prescotts'. Surely he would get to talk to Miss Julie Cannon again.