Darktown (37 page)

There were plenty of people he'd spoken to who knew more than they were saying, but he felt he had a decent chance with one of them. He got back in his father's car.

“Preacher's son.” Mama Dove did not look surprised to see him. “But not in uniform. Finally decided to loosen that tight belt of yours?”

They were standing in the foyer, and though the quarters were small indeed he stepped even closer to her.

“Time to pick sides, ma'am. If you really feel like it, if you really think it's a smart thing to do, you could place a call to the Department and have a white cop show up and arrest me for frequenting a whorehouse. That'd be the end of me and the end of the colored cops. And I know you'd like that. You have that fate in your hands right now.”

“Exciting. So why won't I do that? And why are you offering yourself to me?”

“I know that Lily Ellsworth was Congressman Prescott's daughter. I think they paid her off to keep quiet about it, but days later she's sent here. Why here? She wasn't a whore. I've talked to enough people who knew her and there's no way she up and decided to sell herself just days after working in a congressman's house. I'm thinking you were supposed to watch over her or something. But you didn't do a very good job.”

“What a fascinating story.”

“Whoever it is you think you're trying to protect, they don't deserve
protection. And whoever it is you think might take you down for talking to me, I can protect you from them.”

She laughed. “Boy, you had me with the first line, but you should have quit while you were ahead. That
second
line? I don't believe
that
for a second. And you don't either.”

She was right, so he moved on: “They sent Underhill because they didn't want to send real cops, for the same reason they didn't want her in a real jail and put her here instead.” He wished he had a better idea of who
they
was. Probably the Prescotts, but could it have been a rival, or a patron, of the congressman? Did anyone have
proof?
“They didn't want the publicity, didn't want anyone involved who might talk. And a colored madam who owes her continued existence to paying off the cops is a lady who knows how to keep a secret.”

“I am pretty good at that.”

“So Underhill eventually comes to take her away. That's what they told you, probably. But he kills her instead. And then someone else from the Rust Division—or, more likely, one of the high-ranking cops who bosses the Rust Division around—killed Underhill, too, to cover up the tracks, because he knew we were getting close to Underhill. And you don't feel the slightest bit bad about any of this?”

The mirth was gone from her eyes and her arms were folded.

“I want you to know two things, preacher's son. The first thing is that I'd already decided I was going to tell you when you got here, so don't be thinking you talked me into it or won me over with any of that fast-talking guff, got that?”

“Yes, ma'am.”

Then she told him the second thing.

At a pay phone a block away, Lucius dropped in a coin and dialed Rake's number.

“Be there, be awake, be there,” Lucius muttered.

Rake was. Lucius told him what Mama Dove had said, and they pondered what to do next. To Lucius's great surprise, Rake was ready to take a chance.

“I can meet you there,” Lucius said.

“No, no. Not a good idea. I'm sorry, but . . .”

“White people only.”

“I'm sorry. You did your job. Damn if you didn't. Now I need to do mine.”

Dunlow couldn't believe his eyes.

For more than an hour now he had been circling the neighborhood he knew so well. He had stopped at a few informants' houses to ask if they'd seen the man, had finagled a bit more moonshine when he realized his bottle was running low, but apart from that he'd been on the prowl. The alcohol and endless circling making him tired. He'd just about gotten to the point where he was either going to put this off for another day
or
just break into Boggs's house so he could lie in wait for him, when who should step out into the street a mere fifty yards ahead of him?

Thank you, Jesus, for not leaving me.

He was a block from Mama Dove's. And there was the man he was looking for, jaywalking without an apparent care in the world.

Dunlow pressed his foot to the gas.

Boggs heard the car roaring toward him when he was nearly across the street.

He was used to this by now, but, to his surprise, this wasn't a squad car. And he wasn't in uniform himself, so perhaps this was different from those other times. This was a driver gunning for him, personally.

The car drove beneath a streetlight and he saw a white hand dangling outside the driver's window. Somehow he knew who was at the wheel.

Boggs was still standing in the street. If his rage had been a physical thing, it would have split the car in two. If his anger had been able to make itself solid, it would have been too vast and impenetrable for the Ford to drive through.

But that's not how these things work.

He stood his ground for as long as he possibly could have, then he bolted to his right and the relative safety of the sidewalk just before the car would have run him down.

Yet it ran him down anyway. Somehow. All Boggs knew was that the air was driven from his body and his body was driven to the air,
and when he landed—after spinning around at least once—he landed hard and on his side.

He heard the car stop but didn't hear the door open, because it was already open.

Damned wily nigger had nearly leaped out of the way in time, but Dunlow had been expecting that, so he'd grabbed the handle and threw the door open, using his left foot for extra leverage, and the door had slammed Boggs with enough force to lift him into the air.

Dunlow stopped the car and got out. Boggs was lying on the ground. Nothing looked broken or bent the wrong way, yet. The colored officer was trying to get to his feet, but his body wasn't moving as fast he probably wanted it to.

There was a bottle in Dunlow's hand, and he swung it at Boggs's thick skull. The bottle shattered—Boggs's skull did, too, maybe—and then Boggs was flat on the ground and his eyes were shut.

He patted Boggs down, assuming the man at least had a knife on him, but he was clean. What a fool. He grabbed Boggs's feet and dragged him to the Ford. The keys were still in the ignition, so Dunlow had to leave the body there on the road while he walked back to retrieve them. Another car passed in the other direction, but Dunlow eyed it good and slow and the car didn't stop.

He popped open the trunk and lifted Boggs, pieces of glass falling all around. He dumped him into the trunk and shut it.

As he walked back to the front of the car, he saw an old black man standing outside the entrance to a shoe store. The light had been off, but the door was open, as this must be the proprietor on his way home after cleaning up for the night. The Negro was tall and gaunt, his hair mostly white, his eyes wide but shrinking fast, realizing he'd been caught watching.

“Get your black ass home, uncle, and be quick about it.”

The cobbler muttered a quiet “yes, sir” and his head bowed as he walked off quickly. Dunlow smiling, easing back in the car and hitting the gas.

35

RAKE COULD NOT
have planned it better: Silas Prescott was drunk.

“Officer. Hello.” His cheeks were red and already Rake could smell the booze on his breath, seeping through the man's pores. He wore a white dress shirt and slacks, the tie only a memory.

“I'm sorry to bother you again, Mr. Prescott.” Rake was not in uniform, yet he was not surprised Prescott had recognized him so quickly in his civvies. Manners would normally dictate that Rake ask if now was a bad time, but the last thing he was going to do was squander such an opportunity. “Won't take but a minute.”

Again Prescott was either too polite or stupid to resist inviting Rake into his home. As before, a jazz LP was circling a record player. The house was no more furnished than last time. Rake wondered if Prescott drank alone like this every night, and the only difference between the two visits was that Rake had come by earlier that first time, whereas now it was nearing ten.

Prescott seemed too preoccupied to ask why Rake wasn't in uniform. Which was fine. Being in plainclothes made Rake look like a detective, he knew. He could get into all kinds of trouble for what he was doing right now. But a man is inclined to draw his own ethical borders on a day when his partner had actually aimed a weapon at his head. Dunlow hadn't pulled the trigger, but he'd silently mouthed
Bang,
and the expressionless way in which he'd done so left Rake with little doubt that Dunlow was warming to the idea of ridding himself of his troublesome young partner. Rake was tired of playing by rules that had been written in a way to empower bastards like Dunlow and made his own life difficult.

“I just wanted to ask why you lied to me, Mr. Prescott.”

The jazz was still on, a slow kind of meandering thing not at all like the swing and big band tunes Rake was used to. This must be what the college boys played now.

“I'm sorry?” A lonely bottle of whiskey stood on the table of the kitchenette behind him.

“Lily Ellsworth did not steal from your parents. Not money, anyway. Not anything tangible.”

An awkward smile. “I'm afraid I don't know what you mean. She stole jewelry from us.”

“That's what your parents told you? And you believed them?”

“What are you trying to say?”

“Did you know she was your sister?”

Prescott's face could not have been more pale. “That's not true.”

“It is true. Your father slept with her mother a long time ago, and she was born nine months later. That's how it works.”

Prescott was shaking his head. Something in the man's eyes conveyed horror but not shock. It was more like he was confronting the awful realization that the world is indeed as twisted as he had been warned. A sense of rueful confirmation.

“You fucked your own sister.”

Prescott backed up a step. Then he turned and ran, bumping into the table the record player was on. The needle jumped to the middle of another song, much faster, a saxophone firing off sixteenth notes while cymbals crashed.

Prescott pushed open a side door and Rake thought
Gun.
He's going for his piece, the paltry .22 he'd used on Lily. Rake's gun was in a holster in the small of his back, and he reached for it now, but then a sound informed him that Prescott was not going for a gun at all. He was throwing up.

Rake walked up to the open doorway and turned on the light that Prescott had been in too much of a rush to get to. The son of a U.S. congressman and grandson of a Georgia state senator was kneeling before his toilet, letting loose all that whiskey, the stench foul even from a few feet away.

“Oh God,” Prescott said as he panted, spittle hanging from his lips. “Oh dear Lord.”

“And when you found out she was your sister, you snapped. You killed her.”

“No. No.” It was hard to tell if that was a denial or if there was something else Prescott wanted to say, but couldn't, because he was throwing up again.

When Boggs woke, his head was screaming all kinds of cruel things and his body was being bumped up and down and left and right. His head ached through a dull fog, and he still felt the dreary awful vestiges of his dream, a car racing toward him, and then Dunlow swinging at him.

He realized he was in a car. The trunk of a car. He tried to move and his heart told him not to. No, not his heart, his ribs. Something was broken or fractured or at the very least pointing in the wrong direction. He was able to move both arms, but not very much, since he was crammed in there. He tried to roll onto his back and he felt something on his chest, lots of somethings. He used his hand to try to figure out what they were—then
bam
, the car hit a pothole and he sucked in his breath from the stabbing in his chest.

The things on his chest were shards of glass. The bottle Dunlow had broken on his skull. He picked at the pieces, some of which had torn through his shirt and were half lodged in his skin from his having been thrown on top of them. One of the pieces was big, smooth on one side—even rounded—and jagged on the other. The neck of the bottle, shorn in half. Sharp as a razor and just as long. Delicately, he clasped it in the palm of his hand.

Then he prayed.

He prayed to Jesus for forgiveness for all he'd done wrong. Which was a lot, lately. He prayed for forgiveness for the envy and scorn he felt toward his cousin who had fled Atlanta for Chicago. He prayed the Lord forgive the way he had not been honoring his father much lately, for the anger he'd shown the reverends, for talking back to the group of wise men who had handed him that letter to give to the police chief.
Lord, there is so much I don't know and don't understand and as I try to grow into this world I want to do the best I can, and sometimes I think I know what I'm doing, but I see now that I know nothing, and I should have done what my father asked and I should be selling insurance or even
preaching your
gospel at the reverend's side, though, as you know very well by now, Lord, I wouldn't make a very good preacher and you probably wouldn't have me anyway. Forgive the pride that allowed me to try to “solve” what had happened to Lily Ellsworth, for making everything so much worse for her family, for leading to the death of her father and now the loss of their home and—please, Lord, make sure that the others are safe, please ensure her two brothers are not hanging from branches or beaten half to death in some
forsaken Peacedale cell. If it's your will to take me now, you may do so, but please spare them, please let those two Ellsworth boys grow old, and Dunlow can have me in their place.

That last part of the offer vanished from his mind the moment the trunk popped open. Dunlow was aiming a .45 at Boggs's head. What Boggs felt toward this man was hatred so intense it didn't seem possible it could coexist with a loving God.

“Wake up, nigger.”

Boggs didn't say anything.

“You killed Chandler Poe. And I'll hear you say it.”

“I didn't kill anyone.” Moving his jaw made the top of his head hurt.

“You're a damned liar. I'll give you one more chance.”

They were in the woods somewhere. Full boughs hung behind Dunlow, though what kind Boggs couldn't tell. Dark. The night crawlers were loud and there was no other sound, no traffic or music or shouting or breaking bottles or anything at all human. He didn't know how long he'd been unconscious or how far they'd traveled.

“I don't know what it is you think of me, Dunlow. But I'm not a killer.”

Dunlow waited for what felt like a very, very long time.

“Well, that makes one of us.”

With the hand that wasn't holding his gun, Dunlow reached forward and then the trunk lid slammed the scant amount of light away.

A minute or so later, Boggs heard the digging.

“Enough,” Rake told Prescott, backing up a step to get some air. “Get yourself together.”

Prescott leaned back, wiped the spit from his mouth, and slowly went about getting to his feet. He washed his mouth out at the sink.
Rake walked into the parlor and turned off the jazz. When he turned back around, Prescott was leaning his elbows on the sink and staring into his own eyes.

“It's not like you said.”

“It is. Your mother won't let you around the new maid because you took too many liberties with the last one. That's something of a family tradition, apparently.” He didn't know this, but it was a guess—Boggs had told him the new maid, Lily's replacement, had realized she was always sent home before Silas was expected at his mother's place. “You forced yourself on Lily—at the time she was just the maid to you, because your father was still in Washington and she hadn't confronted him yet. After what you did to her, she probably wanted to run, but she felt she'd come too far, she had to meet your father. Or maybe you hadn't raped her yet at that point, I don't know.” Prescott was still staring at himself, not denying anything or shaking his head or even seeming to breathe. Rake continued, “When he did come back for just a weekend, she and he had a conversation. I imagine he panicked, and he paid her off to keep quiet. But then something else happened. Maybe he'd told her never to come back, but she came back anyway. Maybe you were home that night, but he wasn't, because he'd already gone back north. Maybe she caused a scene in front of your mother, shouted or something, and that set you off. So your mama called your old man in Washington and then he called some people in Atlanta who knew how to clean up messes for important folks like you all.”

“She was sweet,” Prescott said, nearly a whisper. “She was a very sweet girl. We spoke a lot. I was around a fair amount then. One of my restaurants had gone under. . . . I didn't have much to occupy myself. Mother never liked it when I spoke to the help. I did it anyway, to spite her. Lily, she seemed like a smart girl.” He spat into the sink again. “The kind of Negro that makes you think the things my father says about them maybe aren't true. People like my father say what they need to say to get what they want. It's a curious thing, to look up to someone like that.”

“I'm sure you've suffered a great deal.”

“I liked her. She even told me about this . . . group she'd joined. The sort of thing my father never would have tolerated, so of course
I encouraged her. And one night, maybe I'd had a bit too much to drink . . .”

He didn't fill in the blanks, which Rake appreciated.

“Only the one time. Just a few days later, my parents told me she'd stolen and they'd fired her.”

“You really didn't know?”

“I was angry. Angry at my parents, at first, for what they were telling me and the way they'd driven away this girl I rather liked. I tried to find her, I drove all through Darktown, but she'd vanished. Then I realized she'd duped me. She'd made me
think
she was a sweet girl, she'd let me have a little fun, but it was just so she could get her hands on our money.” The more he spoke, the less Rake liked him. Did Prescott really believe she'd enjoyed herself? Was he still telling himself it wasn't rape? When she knew all along they were siblings? “She'd waited for me to get my guard down, then she'd stolen from us. My father was right about them, you see. It's not very pleasant to be deceived by a Negro, Officer. And it's even less pleasant to realize a father like mine is right about anything.”

So the congressman wasn't as friendly to Negroes as Boggs had wanted to think. Rake wasn't surprised. “Your father is wrong about quite a bit, actually.”

“Then one night some men I didn't know were at Mother's, talking to her privately, but I put a few things together. They were police, and they'd taken her somewhere. I was so angry,
I
wanted to confront Lily, ask her who she thought she was to steal from us. At one point Mother stepped out and I heard the men talking amongst themselves, and they mentioned a brothel I've . . . heard of. A few days later I went there and the madam told me she wasn't there, but I knew she was lying. I waited in my car, and not more than an hour later one of those same men parks in front, walks in, and takes her away.”