Standing at the Scratch Line (53 page)

He walked through the doors and went to the railing, which overlooked the first floor and reception desk. As he stood looking down to see which members were present, his smile vanished. There below him, wearing a suit and tie, was Roy Wilcox. Corlis knew that he was not a member. Corlis watched as Wilcox handed a card to the maître d’, who glanced at it and waved him through to the restaurant, which was located in a corner of the mezzanine. Wilcox was looking for someone and it was not a friend. Neither his demeanor nor his facial expressions indicated that he was in pursuit of pleasure. Corlis stepped back from the railing and stood behind one of the decorative screens used to conceal dirty dishes left there for pickup by kitchen staff. He stuck his pipe into his jacket pocket and waited.

While Corlis was standing there, one of the colored waiters brought over some dirty dishes he had collected. He stopped in surprise at seeing Corlis and set his dishes down very gingerly. Corlis gestured him to silence and peered out from behind the screen. Wilcox was walking past the restaurant entrance and ascending the stairs leading up to the billiard room and members’ lounge. Roy was very uncomfortable in his suit. He kept pulling at his clothes as if they were restricting his movement.

Corlis directed the waiter to go and find out who Wilcox was looking for, although he felt he already knew. His intuition told him that Wilcox was there to kill him. If Wilcox was not there to meet someone for a late lunch, there was no other reason for him to be on the club grounds. Corlis watched as the waiter hurried up the stairs after Wilcox. The waiter caught him near the top of the staircase. A few brief words were exchanged between the men and then Wilcox, without warning, knocked the waiter to his knees and continued on his way.

When the waiter returned with his lip bleeding, Corlis demanded to know what Wilcox had said. “Well, suh, he didn’t like no colored man askin’ him ’bout nothin’,” the waiter said, dabbing the blood off his lip with a grimy handkerchief.

“He didn’t say who he was looking for?” Corlis questioned.

“Naw, suh. Leastways, he didn’t say no names to me.”

Corlis ordered, “I want you to find Captain Hennesy and Captain LeGrande. Do you know who they are?” The waiter nodded. “Good,” continued Corlis. “Find them and tell them to meet me in the director’s library right away. Tell them it’s police business and they should bring their guns! You got that?”

“Yes, suh.”

“Good. What’s your name, boy?”

“It be Willis, suh. Willis Markham.”

“Okay, Willis, go get them!”

Corlis went down a staff hallway, past the linen closets and pantry to the service stairs, and descended to the floor below. He was waiting in the library when his two captains arrived. LeGrande arrived first. He was a short, muscular man with a swarthy complexion and dark, curly hair.

“What it is?” LeGrande asked in his Cajun accent.

“I think I’ve spotted someone who is here to try and kill me,” Corlis answered.

Hennesy entered as LeGrande asked, “Who is this man?”

A brief recap brought Hennesy up to speed. Then Corlis explained, “I want Wilcox brought here with as little disruption as possible. I don’t want anyone to know that he’s been brought here either. I want to resolve this with as little fuss as possible. Willis Markham, one of the nigger waiters, can point him out to you, if you think you’ll have trouble recognizing him.”

A plan had formed in Corlis’s mind causing him to smile at how well all the ends would be tied together. He scraped his pipe, filled it with more tobacco, and touched a match to it. Once he had puffed the briar to life, he sat in a wing chair and waited patiently. He had no concerns about his captains accomplishing the task set for them. They were both good policemen and also were extremely loyal to him, for they had been with him on the posse when he killed Bordeaux Tremain.

Twenty minutes passed before the door opened and Wilcox was shoved roughly into the room. Wilcox turned to snarl, but LeGrande swatted him with the butt of his gun and Wilcox fell to his knees.

“Search him,” Corlis ordered, and put his pipe away. Wilcox was dragged to his feet and his jacket was torn off. All the items in his pockets were placed on the table next to Corlis, including a large revolver.

“Here’s his pass. It’s signed by Frank Loebels,” Hennesy said as he handed the paper to Corlis. He took the pass and examined it. Corlis knew that Loebels was out of town on a fishing trip. The perfect alibi, but Corlis also knew that Loebels would never return from fishing; he would fall off the boat at the appropriate time. No one would ever know that he had been pushed.

Wilcox had recuperated sufficiently from his smack on the head to threaten, “You better watch how you treat me! The Klan ain’t gon’ stand fo’ you to be beatin’ on the Grand Titan!”

Because he was Catholic, LeGrande hated the Klan and he was not intimidated by threats. “You got to remember that the Papists have a heavy hand too, eh?” LeGrande laughed as he hit Wilcox on the back of the head again with the butt of his gun. Wilcox fell heavily to the floor a second time and lay there several minutes before stirring.

“Find that nigger waiter named Willis Markham and bring him here,” Corlis directed Hennesy, who nodded and departed. Corlis picked up the revolver and spun the cylinder. The gun was fully loaded. He set the gun back on the table and smiled.

Willis Markham entered the room after Hennesy. “Yes, suh, you want somethin’, Sheriff Mack?”

Corlis asked LeGrande and Hennesy, “Would you boys mind stepping out of the room for a minute?” They each gave him a questioning look. “I’ll be alright,” he assured them and pulled back his jacket to reveal the butt of his own revolver. His two captains walked out and shut the door behind them.

Corlis turned to the waiter and asked, “Do you remember this man, Willis? He’s a big man in the Klan. Do you remember him?”

The waiter was uncomfortable, but he answered the question. “Yes, suh. He the one you sent me after.”

“Did you like it when he hit you in the face?”

The waiter’s discomfort grew noticeably with each passing second. He did not know the correct answer to the question. In his world, in which he was largely helpless to control his level and station in society, important questions asked by the whites rarely had correct answers based upon facts or truth. In the white man’s world, the colored man’s correct answers had to do with timing and context, not substance.

“Is it that hard a question, boy? I’m getting the distinct impression that maybe you liked being smacked in the face! Do you like it?”

“No, suh. I ain’t got no desire for that!” Willis answered in an even voice. He maintained an iron-fisted control over his fear and struggled to keep the nervousness out of his words and actions. He was a colored man in Louisiana in a room alone with the sheriff and a Ku Kluxer man who had been roughed up. Every sense that he had developed in twenty-eight years screamed danger. “I just didn’t want to be disrespectful, suh,” he attempted to explain. “I didn’t want you to think I fo’got my place, suh.”

“Willis, you’re a good boy. That’s why I called you in here. I wanted to give you an opportunity that no other colored man has ever had. This man hit you in the face while you were simply carrying out my directions. You didn’t do anything to deserve that treatment, did you?”

The first easy question of the interview. Willis almost smiled. “No, suh. That’s the truth, suh. I ain’t done nothin’ what deserve a beatin’. I was duly respectful all the time.”

“That’s the reason I’m going to give you a chance to get even with this bully. I want you to know this man killed colored women and children as easily as he killed their men. You’d be doing your people a service if you killed him. Really, it would be a service to the whole community. As a matter of fact, see that gun on the table?”

Willis looked at Corlis, then at the gun, then once more back to Corlis. Fear was now evident on his face. He began to back away. “This ain’t no place fo’ a colored man. Please, suh, I’ll just go back to cleanin’ them tables.”

“Are you a man? Don’t you have any pride? Don’t you know you have to earn respect? This is one of the night riders who have been burning and killing in Possum Hollow. Are you willing to let him go on, or will you stop him?” Corlis challenged, “Pick up the gun! Hold it in your hands and feel its weight!”

Willis edged backward, “Please, suh, I ain’t done nothin’ to deserve this. Please, suh, can I just get back to my job?”

“Pick up the gun, nigger!”

With the introduction of that word, the disguise had been dropped. Nonetheless, Willis was totally unclear as to who was the most evil between Wilcox and the sheriff, but he did realize that he was trapped. There was no way to back out. He could only continue forward. He walked over to the table and picked up the revolver. He held it with the barrel pointing to the floor and explained, “I don’t know nothin’ ’bout handguns, suh.”

“Feel its weight in your hands, the heaviness,” Corlis urged. “Break it open and check that it is fully loaded. All you have to do is point it and pull the trigger. It’s a double-action revolver. You have an instrument of death in your hands, Willis.”

Wilcox groaned and sat up slowly, holding his head. It took him several seconds before he became aware of the other two men in the room. When he saw that Willis had a gun in his hand, he blurted out, “What’s the nigger doin’ with a gun?”

“He’s going to kill you, like you were going to kill me,” Corlis chuckled.

Wilcox looked at Corlis. “You know, huh?” Corlis nodded in response. Wilcox paused, then asked another question. “Kaiser told you, huh?” Corlis nodded in response again. Wilcox snarled. “I figgered he might tell, so I set something up fo’ him too. So, if you don’t let me go, he dies.”

“I don’t care about your threats,” Corlis answered and then turned to Willis. “Kill him, Markham!” he ordered.

“Please, suh,” begged Willis. “I don’t want to take no white man’s life, please, suh!”

“If you don’t kill him, I’ll have to shoot both of you,” Corlis advised him, patting his holstered gun. “I’ll kill you for trying to help him to escape. Now, kill him!”

Wilcox slowly got to his feet as Willis watched. “Give me that gun, nigger!” Wilcox commanded.

“Better shoot him now,” Corlis said with a grin.

Wilcox staggered unsteadily toward Willis. “Give me the gun, nigger!”

Willis fired two shots into Wilcox, causing his body to jerk and tremble with the impact of the slugs. Wilcox fell backward and hit the floor with a loud thump. At the sound of the shots, Hennesy and LeGrande charged into the room, but Corlis stayed their entrance with a gesture and waved them out. Once they were alone again, Corlis ordered Willis to put another bullet into Wilcox’s twitching body.

After the third shot had been fired, Corlis walked over to Willis, who was standing transfixed, staring at the smoking gun in his hand. Corlis took out a handkerchief and told him to place the gun in it. Upon receipt of the weapon, Corlis said, “You can go now, but for one thing. If anyone asks you, you tell them you saw me lying dead on the floor in here. You follow?”

Willis nodded glumly, then stared around the room and finally ended looking at Wilcox’s body. “What about all this?” he asked.

“Well,” began Corlis with a jovial smile, “you just killed the Grand Titan of the local klavern. Your fingerprints are on the gun that killed him. It seems to me, you better start treating me pretty nice and keeping my little secret, unless you want this information to fall into the wrong hands. If you do as I say, you got a pretty good chance in living a long and useful life.”

As if he couldn’t believe the level of bad luck which had befallen him, Willis asked, “Did I do somethin’ to make you treat me like this, suh?”

“What?” Corlis snapped, not comprehending his question. Then as its reasoning occurred to him, he said with impatience, “Nigger, get out of my face before I decide I don’t need you!”

Willis backed out of the room and left without a word.

Hennesy and LeGrande entered and took a look around. “How do you want to handle it?” Hennesy asked.

“We’ll call it a double murder, but without suspects. If we get too much pressure, we can always turn the nigger over. I want to be dead for at least a week. That should give me time to find out who was involved and whether my friend Harley was in on it. I want a hearse here in fifteen minutes and I want you to treat this as a formal investigative case. Conduct some public interviews. Give the press as little information as possible. Interview that nigger waiter too, but you better prep him first. Don’t allow anyone else in here until you get me out of here. I’ll call the mayor when I get home. You need more particulars?”

Neither of his captains needed further direction. The two men hurried out to begin what was to be a very interesting week. Corlis smiled and thought about the fates that had allowed him to discover that Kaiser had known about Wilcox’s assassination attempt. Obviously, Kaiser’s relationship with his uncle was stronger than Corlis had previously thought. As he took his pipe out and relit it, Corlis hoped that Wilcox’s threat against Kaiser would be carried out. If not, he would make his own arrangements. Kaiser would become part of the history and lore of the department in less than a week, long before news of his uncle’s demise surfaced. Corlis would make sure of that.