The Dying Crapshooter's Blues (28 page)

“You hear what I'm saying?” Sweet said after they had gone another block. “I can't live inside no more.” He jerked the chain, and the metal floor of the chassis buckled a little where the eye was connected. “So you better get me out of this, Mr. Joe. You get me out of this here shit, or I swear to God, I'll make you wish you had.”

 

When Chief Troutman heard about the orders that had gone out from Captain Jackson's office, his first urge was to race down the one flight of steps and into the detectives' section and fire him on the spot. He could make it even more of a spectacle by bringing the biggest patrolmen he could find to escort the Captain out the door. Clearly, the man had lost his mind. He had nothing even close to the authority to mount such a stunt, never mind that his actions were blatantly disloyal. Troutman had all the reason he needed to put him out and was ready to do it.

His first day on the job as chief, he had quietly assigned certain trusted officers to keep an eye on the Captain, along with a few others from the prior chief's den of thieves who had somehow managed to hang on. He would have been happy to get rid of Jackson, except that the man was a crack hand at wrapping cases when no one else could. Every organization needed such a soldier. So when the mayor woke him up on Sunday morning with the mortifying news of the theft at the Payne mansion, he was only too glad to have a Grayton Jackson in his arsenal.

Even at that early hour, the hunger in Jackson's voice had seeped through the cool front, as he no doubt imagined the door to a glorious future opening before him. What he didn't know
was that the chief and Mayor Sampson had long ago decided that he would get nowhere near a title within the department. The idea was preposterous; he was a step above a thug and already had too much of a reputation around the city.

And wasn't this day the proof? By the time the man had arrived back at police headquarters from the mayor's office, he had hatched a plan to roust every criminal in the city. As if that would produce the Payne mansion jewels. While that tempest was still brewing, word arrived that he had also ordered the arrest of a sneak thief named Joe Rose, along with a Negro brother and sister named Spencer, all on a vague suspicion that they were involved. It was floundering of the worst kind and proved that the Captain didn't have the first idea how to close the case, no matter what he had claimed. It was just more bluster.

The chief, who had spent most of his police career in administrative services, hated disorder, especially the kind represented by a lunatic like Grayton Jackson. The catchphrase “loose cannon” had come into vogue recently, and the chief couldn't think of a better description of the Captain, or a better image than a piece of loaded artillery careening wildly about the pitching deck of a ship, threatening to go off and blow a hole that would sink the vessel. And this was the fellow who had somehow convinced himself that he was chief of detectives material!

Instead of following his first instinct, the chief fell back on his habitual control. He was nothing if not a calculating man, and he wasn't about to give Jackson the advantage of being turned into a hero who had tried to make a difference, only to be stymied by a timid functionary. Mayor Sampson would have his hide if that's the way it played out.

Better to sit back and wait. The Captain's lunatic behavior would cause an uproar that would resound all the way to City Hall, maybe enough to wreck the man's career. Publicly, the chief would express his dismay over the reckless action; meanwhile, he had already passed word down the line that the officers on the
street were to keep up with their duties but under no circumstances instigate the sort of rout Captain Jackson had decreed. Just the defiance of his orders might drive the Captain to do something crazy enough to finish it. If the burglary in Inman Park went unsolved, they'd all just have to live with that.

Having settled on this waiting game, the chief swiveled in his chair to gaze out the window. To the south, Fulton Tower stood stark against the gray midday clouds. He spent a few idle moments musing further on Captain Grayton Jackson and wondering if the whispers he had once heard about the man's wife could possibly be true. He doubted it, but one never knew about these things. He'd make a point of finding out. If nothing else worked, maybe he could use her to drive the Captain out of the Atlanta Police Department for good.

 

Fulton Tower served as the jail for both the city of Atlanta and Fulton County. Located at the corner of Hunter and Whitehall streets, it was a three-story brick complex of two wings with a sixty-foot spire up the middle, hence the name. The top floor was taken up by administrative offices, interrogation rooms, the infirmary, and the chapel. The wings of the ground floor were set aside for white prisoners and the basement for colored, each with a section reserved for women. There was an exercise yard that had also been the location of the gallows up until local politicians decided that hangings did not suit a modern city like Atlanta, and tore the structure down. Nonetheless, a visitor gazing at the skyline of the city would note that the highest profiles were the dirty smokestacks of the downtown factories and mills and the ominous profile of the Tower.

 

Joe and Sweet were delivered to the front desk, then taken into processing rooms, where they were stripped, sprayed down with cold water, then powdered for lice. Their street clothes were replaced by striped one-piece prison overalls that smelled like they
hadn't been washed in years. Together, they were escorted to the worst cell in the foulest corner of the colored section, a concrete box with a hole in the floor and nothing else, not even a bare pallet. The walls, plaster over brick, were damp and the smell was nauseating even in the chill. Joe couldn't imagine how unbearable it would be in summertime.

A general racket of shouts, cries, and crazy whimpers echoed along the corridor, and Joe and Sweet weren't locked in for ten minutes when they heard the sounds of some poor prisoner taking a fearsome beating. Everybody got quiet, listening as the noise went from bellows of agony to pained shrieks and then into girlish whimpers as the bulls worked the fellow over. Finally, the cell door clanged shut and heavy steps clumped away. From the silence, the victim might have been dead in there.

Sweet turned to give Joe a cold look that said,
look what you got me into.
It was true; Sweet hadn't done a thing, except to have a little sister who had a yen for bad companions. Tangling with one such character had cost him a three-year stretch in Milledgeville. Now another one had him locked in a filthy and putrid cell that he might never leave.

There was nothing Joe could say, even if Sweet would listen, which wasn't likely. The black man turned his back and stared through the bars at nothing. Joe got the message and crouched on the floor to wait for the next chapter in this nightmare, and to fret over what might have happened to Pearl.

 

Pearl had just stepped onto the porch of the house on Lyon Street when a detective and a cop in uniform appeared on either side of the porch. The patrolman whistled and a police sedan came around the corner from Fort Street.

They acted bored as they got her settled in back and carried her across town. She was taken into the section of the Tower reserved for colored women and placed in a cell with a hard case of questionable gender.

“What'd y'all bring Miss Dolly today?” her cellmate grunted.

Miss Dolly, almost six feet tall and two hundred pounds if she weighed an ounce, was done up flapper-style and sported a mouthful of badly made false teeth. She looked Pearl up and down, grinning like she had been presented with a meal on a platter, and Pearl got ready to fight.

One of the two matrons who had brought her in told Pearl not to worry about Miss Dolly, because she might be getting transferred to another section soon. When Pearl asked what section that would be, the matrons exchanged a glance. The talker of the two said that since they weren't about to allow her in the white section, there was only one other place for her to go.

“But don't you worry, honey,” the matron said as they walked off. “They pro'bly go ahead and put you in with the
white
boys.”

 

The Captain fumed around his office in a rage of indecision for another hour before coming to his senses and realizing that sending flying squads to Decatur Street and Central Avenue could be a stupendous blunder. He was sure Chief Troutman was looking for an excuse to fire him and that would do it.

The Captain still held the trump card: He was the only one who had any hope of closing the burglary case. So he caught himself in time to rescind the orders. Except for one sporting house on Central Avenue, neither thoroughfare was open for business anyway. He sent word for the cops to stand down, then mulled at his desk until he came up with another ploy.

He used his telephone to make a quiet call to the mayor's office and was passed through a series of functionaries, only to be told that the mayor wasn't available, which didn't surprise him at all. Still, he managed to get the mayor's assistant on the line, and Mr. Gilbert agreed to come to police headquarters to meet with him and the chief.

Not ten minutes after he laid the telephone in its cradle, a call came from upstairs. Chief Troutman wanted to see him at two
thirty. The Captain sat back, imagining how Troutman must be fuming at being outmaneuvered again. He was delighted by the progress of his scheme, and called out to Lieutenant Collins to inquire after Rose and Sylvester and Pearl Spencer.

“They've got Mr. Rose and Sylvester in the hole at the Tower,” Collins replied as he stepped into the doorway. “Miss Spencer is on the women's side.”

“Good enough.”

“How long do you want to hold them?”

“Long as it takes,” the Captain said decisively. “They need to know I mean business. One of them'll crack. You wait and see.” He arranged some papers on his desk, then told the junior officer about the meeting in the chief's office. The lieutenant recognized the shifty ploy and also what a dangerous game Jackson was playing.

“Come back at two fifteen and we'll go up together,” the Captain said.

Collins understood. When it came time to face the chief and the mayor's man, Jackson wanted a cohort, a witness, and maybe a scapegoat.

Captain Jackson did not fail to notice the flicker of cool contempt in Collins's expression as he excused himself, and he didn't like it. He felt his sharp distrust of the lieutenant return even stronger. The man was not a team player and a little too smart for his own good. In other words, he did not treat every word that dripped from the Captain's mouth as gospel and did not go along with the action on the street. Lately, he seemed to be running his own detective agency, maybe in cahoots with Sergeant Nichols. The Captain swore that if somehow he did end up in the chief of detectives' chair, those two and a few others he didn't like would be gone.

 

The police car came roaring up from behind, the siren sending up a wail like a suffering cat. Jake saw the car in the mirror and
pulled over to let it go by. Instead of passing, it slowed and pulled off thirty feet back. Two uniformed officers stepped out, taking their time, and started a slow stroll up to the sedan.

Mr. Purcell looked out the back window and said, “Now, what the hell is this?”

One of the cops stepped to the driver's-side window, the other to the passenger side. Jake was about to ask the officer what was wrong when Mr. Purcell put a hand on his arm to silence him.

The policeman bending down to Jake's side took a long moment to gaze at the both of them. Then he said, “Y'all like to step out for a moment?” He straightened and moved back a few feet.

The two men opened their doors and got out to find the two policemen staring at them flatly, thumbs hooked over their gun belts. The one who had done the talking wore sergeant's stripes. His partner wore no insignias on his sleeves, a rookie. Both of them were too heavy for their frames and their faces were pale and doughy. They looked enough alike to be brothers, and maybe they were.

The sergeant shifted his gaze from Mr. Purcell and Jake and peered into the backseat. “What do we got here?” he asked.

“We're employed by the Columbia Record Company,” Purcell said. “Those are master recordings we made in Atlanta, and we're taking them back to New York.”

“New York,” the sergeant mused. “Is that right?” He rolled his head from Jake to Mr. Purcell and back again. “You're the ones, then.”

“Beg your pardon?”

The officer ignored the question. “Let's have a look in the trunk.”

Purcell nodded slightly, and Jake stepped around with the keys. The second officer stood back a few feet more, eyeing him as if he was prey, fixing on his features. Jake was thinking,
He knows I'm a Jew,
and kept his own face impassive. He opened
the trunk to reveal the recording machine and the cutter. The two cops studied the tangle of boxes, dials, and wires as if it had come from outer space.

“What's all that?”

“It's a recording machine.”

“All right, then.” The senior officer addressed Mr. Purcell. “We got a call about y'all. Seems there was a complaint swore out in Atlanta. Says you had a nigra in your hotel room. That's against state law and city ordinance.”

“Then why weren't we charged at the time?” Mr. Purcell asked politely.

“I don't know nothin' about that,” the cop said.

Mr. Purcell said, “Are you about to arrest us now?” It sounded like a challenge. It was meant that way. He had decided that if they wanted a fight, they could have it.

The sergeant seemed to grasp this in some dim way, and hesitated, unsure of what to do. “What you got here was obtained illegally,” he said.

It was a ridiculous argument, and Purcell would have smiled had he not been so annoyed.