The Black Hearts Murder (13 page)

“The issues of the campaign will remain the same despite the change in candidacy, the party chairman announced. The main issue will continue to be the party's position that Mayor Heywood Potter's administration has been too permissive with militant minority groups and has hampered the city's police and prosecutors in upholding and enforcing the law.”

So Ben Cordes has had the mantle of party leadership thrust on his chicken shoulders, McCall thought as he resumed shaving. He could imagine how much pressure the executive committee had had to bring to bear on the little man to “persuade” him to accept the nomination. By his own admission Cordes was a behind-the-scenes type who preferred working in the dark rather than in the glare of open political warfare. But McCall had an idea that, once committed, Cordes would surprise a great many people. The little guy had potential.

The phone rang as McCall finished dressing.

“How come you didn't wait for us to get to the hall last night?” Lieutenant Cox asked in his melancholy voice.

“I had urgent business elsewhere,” McCall said. “Besides you had five hundred other witnesses. Do you have a case?”

“Bloomfield and Speziale of Homicide took the original squeal. Fenner and I have the followup. The other five hundred didn't phone in, Mr. McCall, and you did. I've got to ask you to drop by here this morning.”

“All right. Say fifteen minutes?”

He had planned to visit BOKO and Ben Cordes first, because the radio station was nearer the hotel than any of his other ports of call. But the summons from the lieutenant sounded a note of caution. Better not to cross the locals.

He drove over to police headquarters.

He found Lieutenant Cox and Sergeant Fenner in the detective bureau squadroom. The lieutenant wanted a signed statement.

“It's because you were the one who called in,” Cox said apologetically. “You know the rules, Mr. McCall.”

“I can't add anything to what I told Communications over the phone, but I'll be glad to repeat it for your file. Bring on your stenographer.”

“Who rates stenographers?” Cox grunted. “Just tell it to Hank here. But take it easy, Mr. McCall. He not only doesn't know shorthand, he can hardly write.”

“If I had to take off my shoes to count past ten, like you do, I wouldn't mention the next guy's educational shortcomings,” Sergeant Fenner growled back.

It took McCall only a few minutes to tell his story, which the sergeant took down in a cryptic shorthand apparently of his own invention. “I can hardly write, huh?” he said. “Okay, Lieutenant, you can read. Try reading this!”

“They didn't teach us hieroglyphics in the school I went to,” the lieutenant said with dignity.

Fenner typed his notes and McCall signed the sheet.

“Anything else, Lieutenant?”

“Could you identify the killer if you saw him again in the same kind of half mask, Mr. McCall?”

“I don't know. I kind of doubt it. The nostrils, hair, lips, and skin color were typically African—characteristic of a great many black men. I might be able to cross off a few suspects for you, but I'd hesitate to make a positive I.D. on the basis of the mere glimpse I got of only half his face, even if it was the lower half.” At the detectives' puzzled look McCall said, “I mean, the lower half of a face is better for identification purposes than the upper half. The really smart boys hide the lower part if they're going to use only a partial. This one either wasn't smart or he was lucky. Anyway, I don't believe I could identify him beyond a doubt. By the way, according to a radio report I heard, you fellows pulled in some people for questioning. Anyone I know?”

“One of them,” Lieutenant Cox said. “LeRoy Rawlings. As usual he had an alibi for the time of the assassination. He was presiding over a meeting of the Black Hearts executive board, according to the sworn statements of five board members.” The detective shrugged. “The Black Hearts always come up with alibis like that.”

“Whom else did you question?”

“A few hatchet men who wouldn't be above making this kind of a hit for enough scratch. They had alibis, too. We were only seening, anyway, if we happened to catch them in the net. We had no particular reason to suspect them. Personally, I think the killer was Harlan James.”

“Why?” McCall asked quickly.

The description fits, he hated Gerald Horton's guts, and in my book he's off his rocker. Plus that gun.”

“What about the gun?”

“Hank caught that,” the lieutenant said. “Tell him.”

Sergeant Fenner said, “I had a recollection that Harlan James applied for a permit to carry a hand gun a couple of years back. Though I had a feeling his application had been turned down; I checked with the files and, sure enough, he had applied and had been turned down.”

“So?”

“On an application for a gun permit, you have to enter a description of the weapon you want to carry. What James applied for was a .22 caliber Woodsman target pistol.”

FIFTEEN

He drove directly to BOKO.

The studio maintenance engineer, Andy Whalen, was coming down the hall when McCall stopped before Cordes's office door.

“Oh, Mr. McCall,” Whalen said. He shook his big red head. “You hear what happened last night?”

“I was there,” McCall said.

“Wasn't that something? They ought to line all those Black Hearts up against a wall and shoot 'em like dogs!”

“I happen to be a dog man myself,” McCall said. “What makes you think the Black Hearts had anything to do with Horton's killing?”

“Who else could it be? You know what I think? It was that kook Harlan James himself. Don't you?”

“I could have been any one of thousands of people.”

The ex-boxer looked uncertain. Then his battered features lit up. “Hey, what do you think about our boy Ben Cordes being tagged to run in Mr. Horton's place?”

“I don't know enough about Banbury party politics to say.”

“Yeah, but can you imagine that little guy as mayor?” He laughed. “Not that he ain't smart enough, if you know what I mean—”

“I know what you mean. Well, Whalen, I'm in something of a hurry—”

“Yeah, I got to get going, too, Mr. McCall. Emergency generator's on the fritz. If the city power went out, we'd be off the air. See you.”

McCall nodded.

The man went down the stairs. McCall rapped on the door of Cordes's office, opened it, glanced in.

“You busy, Mr. Cordes?”

“Mr. McCall. Come in. Have a chair.”

McCall sat down. “Congratulations on your selection as candidate for mayor.”

“Thank you,” the little man said with a grimace. “I was the most surprised man there. I accepted only because I knew Gerry would have wanted me to. I was closer to him, I guess, than anybody else.”

“You don't sound like a very enthusiastic candidate,” McCall remarked. “Duncan doesn't strike me as a pushover.”

“Oh, he isn't. But don't misjudge me, Mr. McCall.” Cordes's tone hardened. “I was reluctant to accept the nomination because I hate public exposure and what hard-fought campaigns call on a candidate to go through. But now that I'm in it, I'm out to win. And make no mistake about that. I don't expect this pronouncement to bowl you over, Mr. McCall,” Cordes went on with a faint smile, “inasmuch as the governor's backing Duncan, and maybe you think the little man is whistling in the dark to keep his courage up. If so, you can tell Sam Holland he and his party are making a big, a very big, mistake. As you'll all find out.”

McCall smiled back. “My report to the governor is not going to underestimate you, Mr. Cordes. Anyway, don't include me in your collective ‘you.' My personal politics aren't involved.”

The little man squinted at him across his desk. “Why are you here this morning, Mr. McCall?”

“I wanted to talk about last night, and any developments subsequently.”

“Yes, I understand you were present in the hall when the shooting took place. In fact, that you were the man who chased the killer and gave the police his description.”

“That's correct.”

“That was very courageous of you, Mr. McCall. Did you have a weapon?”

“Never carry one,” McCall said. “And it wasn't courage, it was reflex. I used to be a Marine. However, thank you. I admire the way you stopped the trouble that was brewing there last night, by the way.”

“We can all apparently call on reserves we didn't know we had,” Ben Cordes said simply. “By the way, no one's mentioned it publicly yet as far as I know, but that description you gave the police fits Harlan James.”

“And LeRoy Rawlings, and Jerome Duncan.”

“Duncan!” The little man leaned forward. “You can't be serious, Mr. McCall!”

“I'm merely pointing out a possibility. I'm not accusing Duncan. He'd have to be a maniac to have done what that masked man did last night, and Jerome Duncan strikes me as anything but crackers. The point is, James is not the only black man in Banbury who fits the description.”

“Oh … incidentally, we received another taped speech from James in the mail this morning, along with another letter. See what you make of this.”

He handed over a sheet of cheap white bond paper. It was neatly typed, addressed to the radio station. There was no return address. The letter was dated the previous day:

Sir:

I heard on the news that Gerald Horton was shot to death earlier this evening by a black man. According to the broadcast description, that black man could have been me. It wasn't, but I suppose I'll be blamed for it
.

I won't shed my black tears over the death of a racist honky, because Gerald Horton was an enemy of my people. But I didn't kill him and I don't know who did. Not that Whitey will believe me. You racist pigs are out to get me one way or another, and if you don't frame me for this you'll frame me for something else. If you can find me, that is
.

Enclosed is another taped message to my brothers. Since BOKO is the only station which has broadcast the first two, this is an exclusive
—
only you are getting this tape. In the future, as long as you continue to broadcast my tapes, BOKO will continue to receive them exclusively
.

I won't thank you for playing them, because you wouldn't be doing it unless you thought it was gaining you listeners and profits. Your dead owner was a racist pig, so I imagine your news department is run by racist pigs also
.

From the bottom of my black heart
,

H
ARLAN
J
AMES

The signature was in ink over the typed name.

McCall handed the letter back. “He's a literate man.”

“Articulate, too,” Cordes said. “And no dummy, Mr. McCall. James just happens to be a fanatic. Does it sound to you as though he's intimating that he did kill Gerry, but phrased it in such a way that it doesn't constitute a confession?”

“No. I think he genuinely means this letter as a denial of guilt. I can see that some listeners might interpret it as a brag, especially if the thought is suggested to them. Do you plan to do that, Mr. Cordes?”

“We don't suggest anything to our listeners, Mr. McCall,” the station manager-candidate said stiffly. “Our eleven o'clock newscaster—eleven
A.M.
, that is—will read James's letter and play his tape. We played yesterday's tape at ten, but today our mail was late, so we couldn't squeeze it into the ten
A.M.
newscast unless we ran it without screening it first. And we couldn't do that, because the usual obscenities have had to be blipped out.”

“I'll try to catch it. I missed yesterday's.”

“You didn't miss a thing,” Cordes said in a grim voice. “Same old stuff about slavemasters and black-hating honkies and racist pigs.”

“Why are you playing these tapes? They can only be incendiary.”

“I'm running a radio station, Mr. McCall, and the tapes are news—exclusives, besides.” Cordes shrugged. “I don't deny it worries me. But I'm a politician, Mr. McCall, not a social worker. For a smart man Harlan James in some ways is pretty dumb. It's this honky hangup of his—it blinds him to his own best interests and the interests of Banbury's black people generally. These speeches of his are alienating the white middle and blue-collar classes from Jerome Duncan's candidacy simply because they're delivered by a radical black; Duncan being black, too, he naturally gets tarred with the same brush.”

“There's nothing natural about it,” McCall said abruptly. “It's out-and-out prejudice.”

“Isn't that natural?” Cordes asked with a slight smile. Then he shrugged again. “Anyway, that ‘prejudiced' white vote is going to swing this election.”

“But a quarter of your population is black. That's a healthy chunk of the electorate.”

The little man shook his head. “We have some ten percent of the black vote tied up, and the power of the other ninety percent is overrated. Less than half the eligible black voters turn out on Election Day in this town, as opposed to about seventy percent of the whites. If the killer is caught before the election and turns out to be some Black Heart—especially if it turns out to be James—we'll walk in.”

“And if it turns out that the Black Hearts had nothing to do with Horton's murder? All this propaganda pressure against them might well swing public opinion around and give Jerome Duncan the election by a sympathy vote.”

Cordes smiled again, not slightly this time. “I read somewhere once that Bismarck said politics isn't an exact science. That's what makes it so fascinating. Anyway, the odds are against the case being solved by Election Day. The police don't seem to have a single clue.”

“But they do,” McCall said.