The Devil's Own Rag Doll (29 page)

“I apologize,” he said. “I was just—”

“You were just thinking that the captain's nephew can do what he wants, is that it?”

“You should give me more credit, Detective,” he said. “It's not easy duty.”

“All right,” I said. I knew that the pain from all the lumps and cuts was making me meaner than I needed to be, but I decided to keep at it anyway. “Now, Walker,” I said, “maybe we didn't settle this before. You are a Negro.”

“That's right.”

“And that means you can get into some places I can't, some places young Johnson here would blush to go into, right?”

“I'll go along with that.” Walker's face was a mask. He was waiting to see how things would go before committing himself to any set emotion.

“Correct me if I'm wrong, Walker, but I'm guessing that when colored folks get together and there ain't no white folks around, the talk swings around sometimes to the general mood in the neighborhood, and how the white folks maybe don't treat people like they ought to, am I right?”

Walker nodded.

“I want you to go down to the Valley, down to Black Bottom for the next couple days, keep your ear to the ground. Just go around in your street clothes. Probably they'll know you're an officer. If you want to, you can tell them stories about how bad we treat you down here. Get what you can.” I paused and clenched my stomach muscles to clamp down on a sharp pain of hunger. “Take your gun.”

Walker nodded glumly.

“I got nothing more to say to either of you,” I said. All along, I had been thinking about putting Johnson and Walker out of harm's way for the trouble I knew to be coming, and now I wondered if it wasn't stupid of me to send away the extra hands on idle errands.

Johnson stood up, his face still red. He picked up his hat from the table and the scrap of paper I had given him and walked out of the room. Walker sat slumped in his chair, his eyes out of focus on the floor, thinking.

I considered walking out. The days were numbered now. Captain Mitchell was waiting upstairs, I knew, and I was afraid that I might say or do something that couldn't be danced around or ignored. I thought I might drop the whole thing and hop a bus out of town, take the five thousand dollars and cut it all loose. I could make it last a year, easy.
Maybe,
I thought,
the game being played depends entirely on me playing the sap. Without me, it might all collapse.
I picked up my own hat and turned toward the door; but before I could take a step, I felt Walker take hold of my elbow from the blind side. The twist and jerk it took to pull myself loose and face him sent pain raking down my spine.

“You oughtn't to lay a hand on me,” I said, hardening up like a flash.

“I don't intend any disrespect,” he said. “But it seems to me we've got some business to settle.” He didn't betray any anger, but he seemed set on some kind of action.

“The only business we have is for you to do what I tell you. Now, I've given you a job to do. Will you do it or won't you?”

Walker spoke slowly. “There was a boy got killed in the Valley some years ago.”

Though I had long hoped for Walker to speak so plainly, I could not find a way to respond. My anger petered away as I said, “He some kin to you?”

“No kin,” Walker said. “But that boy is still in the grave. He might have been a doctor by now, a scientist, a leader in the community. Who knows what you cut off that night?”

“Some day, Walker,” I said, “you'll come up on a time when you have to draw your gun on somebody—”

“I'm not talking about any of that now.”

I wished that I still carried a nightstick, something to hold on to: a way to settle the jangling nerves that always seem to end up in your fists. “Don't try to talk me down, Walker. I ain't much for talking.”

“You know I have a wife and children who depend on me to be there day in and day out,” he said. “All I'm trying to get out of you is some feeling that you're not ignorant to the human feeling there.”

“You can't tell me what to do, Walker.” I wondered if a blush might be coming to my cheeks as it had to Johnson's.

“You've got to choose for yourself,” he said. “What I'm saying is, for my own self and for my family, I need to know how you're going. I don't care if you don't like me touching you. It doesn't hurt my feelings. But if you're the type of man that wouldn't mind putting a colored man in harm's way, I need to know that right now.”

I wondered if he could see how he'd shamed me. Could he see right into me, even through my one squinty eye? We were standing eye to eye, man to man, and it was like Walker was holding up a mirror to me. There it was in front of me, the picture of a decent man, and I could see—with this and all the rest of it—how I had failed to be decent for so many years.

Walker said, “I don't want you to think that I'm afraid to go on. I can handle myself as long as I know that what's coming is out front of me, not behind me. My family can get by if I happen to lose this job but not if I'm gone. Not if I'm dead. Now, Detective, I ask you: How would you feel about tearing apart a family?”

“You know my family is already torn apart,” I said weakly. “I don't feel too good about it.” My stomach and my whole belly clenched and seized, and I thought I might start to well up with angry tears.

Walker stood for a few moments, watching. His look softened, and I felt smaller when he seemed to have something like pity for me. He said, “I guess that's as close as I'll get to a good word from you.”

“Just stay out of it, Walker, if you're worried,” I said. “I'm willing to handle it on my own.”

“I can handle myself all right,” he said. “It's you that's got me guessing.” He turned slowly and walked out of the little room like he was tired in his bones.

After he left, I sat back down at the table. The scratched-up wood of the tabletop held my interest for a time, and it amused me to think of the heat pipes and the water pipes and the electrical lines in the little room, wondering where they went and how they worked. I fancied I could hear the gurgling and the ticking of water and steam and the hum of electricity waiting to flow; I guess I knew there was a cloud of doom coming my way. After what I had learned from the Hardiman woman, I knew I'd have to go out to the hideaway by the lake, and I knew I'd have to do it alone. It seemed funny. A man gone punchy like that can step as he likes, any way but the right way, but I had gone outside worrying.

I got up and left the little room and trudged up the stairs. I went up the final flight to the fancy offices, thinking,
I'll be damned if I'll go on like this without at least the support of Mitchell.
Passing the bank of secretaries, I set my jaw and rolled my shoulders. I opened the door to Mitchell's office without knocking and stepped slowly inside.

Mitchell looked up. He was haggard and red-eyed.

“Yeah?” I said.

Mitchell leaned back into his leather chair. He brought his thumb and forefinger to the bridge of his nose and pressed hard, eyes shut tight. Then he opened his eyes and peered brightly at me. “Detective,” he said, “I want you to give me your badge.”

I felt blood spike up into my neck, throb at my temples, and push up into my scalp. “What the hell?” I said. I stepped forward till my thighs pushed against the desk.

“You heard me. I want you to give me your badge.” Captain Mitchell sat back in his chair, left hand pressed flat onto the desk.

I sputtered, “You—you—” I jerked forward in a spasm and placed both palms onto the desk.

Mitchell held up his hand. “Watch what you say, Caudill. Stop and think. All I've asked you to do is give me your badge.”

I stood up and stepped back, dizzy from the receding blood. “My badge,” I said.

“You're a detective, you have a badge, haven't you? You were issued one.”

“Sure.” I patted myself down but came up dry. “I don't—”

Mitchell flipped the badge in its charred leather case onto the desk. We both stared silently at it for a moment, and then I picked it up, slid it into my pocket, and sat down.

“I've been making do with less sleep lately than I'm used to,” said Mitchell. “It doesn't agree with me.”

“I been sleeping pretty good.”

“Reverend Jenkins tells me there was a fire during the night.” Mitchell placed his fingertips together gently and looked over them at me. “It seems Mr. Jenkins knows more about what you've been doing than I do.”

“I've been doing a few things.” I tried to parse the situation. I still could not tell what Mitchell had in mind. Jenkins knew I had burned down Noggle's shack; and yet the badge was still in my pocket.

“One thing—was it necessary to burn down the man's home?”

“I think so.” I looked dully at the gray hairs crossing the bridge of Mitchell's nose.

“I'll give you three more days to reel this whole thing in, Caudill. After that, I'm going to ask you to spill everything you know and we'll let the rest of the department in on things.”

“Three days ought to do it,” I said, thinking of all the vague hints I'd heard about the beginning of summer—just two days away. “That should be plenty.”

Mitchell said, “That's not the sort of attitude I was looking for. Have you given up? Do you honestly have such a lack of feeling for what's at stake here?”

I squinted at him. “Pease is dead,” I said. “I killed him. Had to cut off his nuts and I still didn't get much out of him.”

Mitchell's fingers laced together tightly but his eyes did not flicker. He weighed what I had said for a moment. “We'll tally all of it up at the end.”

“You and Jenkins?”

“Jenkins is a part of this because of our own shortcomings as a police force,” he said. “If you could pull yourself together as a man and as a detective, we'd be on better footing. As it is—”

“You're only talking,” I said. “I don't sit behind a desk.”

Mitchell looked to be fighting a wave of nausea. “Sit yourself down sometime and see if you can live with yourself, Caudill. My nails are clean, but—if I were willing just to cut out and let things fall to pieces, I would have done it by now. I'm here for the long haul, however it turns out. You're just skating along like every other yellow pedestrian. You're a coward, a moral coward.”

I could hardly answer. The badge in my pocket was like a gallstone.

“You just don't like the look of me, I think,” I said. “I'm ugly. That's how the real world goes.”

“If you ever read a newspaper, Caudill, maybe you would understand what's simmering here. Maybe you'd care. When a nationally distributed magazine says, ‘Detroit is dynamite,' what do you suppose that means? Do you suppose the important men in the city are going to let things go? Do you suppose they'll let the hate strikes go on at the war plants, just now when we're knocking on Hitler's door? Don't fool yourself. You and I are nothing here.” Mitchell wiped a fleck of spittle from his lip. “We're just treading water.”

“I got you,” I said. I stood up and turned to go.

“Three days,” said Mitchell. “Then the tide turns.”

“Is that including tomorrow? I always like to have a little pic-a-nic on Sunday.”

Mitchell turned his chair toward the window and said nothing more. I went out softly and made my way out of the building without haste. I was thinking about Detroit, about cars and hard paved streets and regret.

There was time to kill. I knew it would be best to wait till night fell before I tried anything at Hardiman's cottage, and I thought that maybe I'd made a mistake in sending Johnson and Walker away. There was no way of saying how many crackers they might have up there, or if they were planning a party for me, or if the place would be empty. From what I could say, it might have been the whole army of night riders making a ceremony. After I left Mitchell stewing in his juices, I knew I'd have to find some way to keep myself occupied for the rest of the day—or else my nerves would get so bad that I wouldn't be able to shoot straight when I had to.

The time to go after Rix had passed, I thought. Alex, if he was anywhere close by, would not be with Rix or his boy. They were at least smart enough to see to that. According to Estelle Hardiman, her husband was out of town, and I couldn't have done much to roust him without the photographs anyway. I knew I'd find Anna and Lucy gone if I went to Bobby's house. The junk from Bobby's business might as well have been dumped into the trash for all the good it could do for me now; it was all pointless. I wondered about the possibility of shaking down old Lloyd for more of what he knew about it all, but it didn't seem likely that I'd be able to get near to him.
Carter, Frank Carter.
It occurred to me that it would be Carter who could tell me the most about the dirty details, since he had been on the inside of Lloyd's organization for so many years and had put his paw into all sorts of trouble—and it might be possible to get to him. I decided to wait to see what fell out of the business at Hardiman's cottage. If it had enough of a stink to it, I might be able to put the screws to Carter with that in my pocket.

All this went through my mind as I sat in my old car up the street from the headquarters on Beaubien. It must have been hell for anybody who wanted to tail me, watching me just sit in the car without going anywhere for such a time. All the fuss and the empty stomach and the constant throbbing pain in my head and neck had put me into a wicked mood. I wanted trouble. I thought I might go over to the deepest part of Black Bottom or Paradise Valley and get my hair cut in one of the colored shops. They'd have to find a way to trim around the lumps and the scabs on the back of my head. My presence would cut down on the happy conversation, I was sure, but I knew it would start up again after I left. I could just drive up and down the colored streets—or leave the car and go strolling, chatting up the shoppers on Adams or Hastings. Those colored folks had a reason to hate me, and for some reason I wanted to soak up some of that feeling for the work I had to do. A few restaurants down there served southern food, grease and greens and gravy all over everything. I thought I might be willing to ignore stares and the bad feeling I'd bring up if I dawdled my way through an early supper—
maybe my last bit of supper,
I thought to myself,
if my visit to Hardiman's hideaway goes as poorly as it ought to.