Three Days Before the Shooting ... (188 page)

MCINTYRE AT JESSIE ROCKMORE’S

[MANSION]

T
HE ADDRESS CITED IN
the murder report was that of a four-storied mansion, and seeing detectives and policemen making their way up the walk I gripped my recorder and hurried to join them. But upon reaching the entrance we came to a halt, for although the door was wide open there was no one to receive us. Then came a murmur of voices, and with the Sergeant of detectives leading the way, we entered the thick-carpeted entrance hall and set out to find them.

Straight ahead a grandfather’s clock gleamed in a corner, and on our approach it began chiming an hour which was very much later than that on my wristwatch. And then we turned left and encountered a scene which we least expected. For suddenly we were facing a spacious, high-ceilinged vestibule which was crowded with black folk who were dressed in an eye-dazzling assortment of bathrobes, housecoats, and kimonos.

Women and men, they crowded the floor and an elegant staircase which curved to the floor up above, and as I wondered why anyone had need for so many servants they greeted our arrival with expressions which ranged from anxiety and relief to outright hostility. Which in itself was not surprising, for having known at least three of the detectives from on various assignments I was all too aware that some of their tribe were indeed quite prejudiced.

And yet my immediate reaction was one of resentment. For while I took pride in my impartiality on questions of race, the black folk before me appeared to make no distinction between me, a reporter, and the white lawmen for whom as a group they had quite valid reasons, current and historical, for feeling distrustful.

Okay
, I thought,
so you don’t like the presence of white policemen, but they’re here because of a murder. So since you resent others judging you on the basis of color, why not regard me as an individual and make your decision as to my character and competence after
you’ve read my report? Who knows, it might prove helpful in bringing the murderer—whoever it might be—to justice, and even dispel any suspicion of your possible involvement…
.

But now to the Sergeant’s “Where can we find him?” a man on the staircase pointed to a tall door behind us, and with the Sergeant and his men leading the way I followed. Then the door was flung upen and I was blinded by a fierce glare of light, blasted by strong fumes of bourbon, and in a blink of an eye faced a scene of startling disorder.

[ROCKMORE]

W
HAT HAD ONCE BEEN
a ballroom was so crammed with furniture, appliances, and odd works of art that the slightest misstep or unwary gesture could end in disaster. Worst, I had a feeling that the wild disarray was not accidental but the product of a conscious, if elusive, design. And struck by the contrast between the ballroom’s disorder and the vestibule’s elegance I recalled a designer of interiors who had scoffed that the American home was fast becoming a cross between a ragtag museum and a warehouse for gadgets.

Then I moved in with the detectives, and everywhere I looked there were tables and chairs, divans and chaises longues; cabinets, chests, and various utensils; toys, oil paintings, and miniature sculptures; baskets, crates, and old cardboard boxes. Through the glass doors of cabinets I saw collections of crystal and porcelain; antique tables were piled with books, lamps, and musical instruments. And as I tried to make sense of the mind-teasing chaos I heard a detective exclaim, “Hey, Murphy, what the hell kind of a joint
is
this!”

To which Murphy replied, “Oh, come
on!
Being that it’s here in the U.S. of A., it could be
any
damn thing! And especially with those boogies out in the hall. What’s more, I’ll lay you ten to one that our being here has to do with this booze we’re breathing—isn’t that right, McIntyre?”

“It may very well be,” I said as I squinted, “but what’s bothering me is this eye-blinding glare.”

“So use your shades, McIntyre, use your shades!”

“I could very well use them,” I said, “but since it’s long after midnight I left them at home.”

“Which is typical of see-all, tell-all reporters,” he said with a grin, “so be careful, old buddy, or next thing you know you’ll stumble, and for once in your life you’ll end up writing the truth, the whole truth, and nothing
but
the truth.”

“Yes, and then may God help me,” I said, “because you’ll still insist that your harebrained preconception of what brought us here is more accurate than my painstaking efforts to get at the truth. And by the way, since you’re so smart and foresightful, why the hell are you squinting?”

And now, turning away, I realized that one source of the glare was a collection of unshaded lamps. And with the detectives beginning their search for the murdered man’s body I stood puzzling as to why the room was so personally disturbing.

Perhaps it was simply the shock of encountering such an incongruous clutter so close to the Capitol, and in a house which was staffed by so many black folk. For while they were as typical of Washington as its historical monuments, this particular household’s existence suggested that something was happening in the District of Columbia which had escaped my reporter’s awareness….

Whereupon, hearing a thudding behind me, I turned to see a policeman grabbing frantically at a tall stack of books which were tumbling to the floor from a table. And intrigued by the books’ leather bindings, I knelt to give him a hand as he stooped to replace them. But not only did the incessant glare render their titles unreadable, the fumes near the floor were so powerful that in the course of standing I staggered. Which increased my suspicion of having blundered onto a scene in which anything could happen.

For now the clash between objects of such disparate styles and places of origin suggested some excess of emotion or confusion of logic that had been doomed from the start to lead ultimately to murder. But now, seeing the officers making their way to a door straight ahead, I began inching my way toward them and decided that once I had the victim’s name and his attacker’s motive and identity I’d leave the strange house and structure my report in the quiet of my office.

But now I was impatient to have a look at the victim, for suddenly I felt—somewhat irrationally—that although the man responsible for the chaos around me had escaped public notice he had been nevertheless an insidious threat to our center of government. And that even a brief look at his face would assure me that the chaos in which he had chosen to have lived was uniquely his own. And should the detectives discover evidence of crimes other than murder I’d leave that to the Sergeant and the Negroes to deal with. But despite my mounting desire to get the details and take off, my integrity as a reporter demanded that I remain and make note of any facts that were available before structuring my story….

“You know,” Murphy exclaimed as he stood sniffing the air, “there has to be a
still
hidden somewhere in this joint.”

“Yes, Murphy,” the Sergeant replied, “there may very well be, but if so it’s evidence and you’re not to touch it. Meanwhile, forget it and let’s have a look at our stiff.”

“If you say so,” Murphy said, “but stills are a hell of a lot livelier than stiffs.”

“Don’t worry,” the Sergeant shot back, “because in our line of work
all
stiffs are still.”

And with a self-satisfied grin at his banter he pointed to a door behind us and said, “And now to prove it, let’s have a look-see.”

But when he twisted the knob of the triple-locked door we were startled by the faint sound of moaning.

“Hell, Sergeant,” a policeman in uniform said, “whoever’s in there is alive!”

“Cool it,” the Sergeant said sotto voce. “Do you think I’ve gone deaf?”

Then, with a twist of the doorknob he shouted, “You in there, open this door!”

And receiving no answer he repeated his order.

“Hey, Sarge,” Murphy said with a grin, “it would seem that you’ve turned up a stiff who doubts your authority.”

“Dammit, Murph,” the Sergeant said with a glare, “that’ll be enough out of you!”

And rattling the doorknob he bellowed, “Mr. Rockmore, we’re the police, so unlock the door!”

And with the moaning his only reply he turned to a detective and said, “All right, Levine, get it open!”

“Shall I give it my shoulder?” Levine said as he inspected the door frame.

“And scair him to death? Hell no, use your tools.”

It was then I annoyed the Sergeant by asking him to explain why a man reported to have been murdered was moaning.

“Not now, McIntyre,” he said with a frown, “not now….”

“But do you know the perpetrator’s identity?”

“Later, McIntyre, can’t you see I’m busy?”

“So am I,” I said. “You have your duties and I have mine. So what information do you have? And who reported this case as a murder?”

“Please, McIntyre, step aside and let us get on with our work!” And ignoring my question he turned angrily away.

“And you, Lawson,” he barked to one of his men, “go around to the back of this joint and see if there’s a door or a window that’s open.”

Inside the room the moaning continued, and with his companions looking on Levine went to work on the locks, the third of which soon proved so resistant that I moved away and tried making sense of the chaos around me. It was then I saw that a section of the lamp-blazing wall was covered with old lithographs, the subjects of which were deeply interred in my memory. And suddenly I was taken with a disquieting feeling of having been lured to an unnoticed area of Washington by a malicious trickster of historical bent whose motive was to force me to confront certain vague detail from the historical past and make sense of their ties to the present.

And immediately I was drawn to a lithograph in which soldiers in parade uniforms and civilians in black were accompanying a flag-draped coffin which rested on the bed of a horse-drawn camion. The civilians appeared to be men of authority, and with the flag displayed on the coffin I decided that the deceased had been a figure of national importance. Then from the dated dress of the crowd looking on and the long jackets and high domed helmets of the policemen
in control of the gathering I realized that the time of the scene was the mid-nineteenth century. Then as I groped for the name of the deceased and the role he had played in the drama of history his funeral cortege seemed to surge and begin moving. Then from somewhere close by gunfire erupted, and with people screaming and scattering the horses took off down the street with a banging of wheels and jangling of harness, the flag was flapping, and the coffin banging the bed of the camion with such thundering force that I had a vision of it landing in the street and sending the deceased sailing through the air like a shot from a cannon. And reeling with vertigo, I was relieved that it was only a vision.

But now the image of Abraham Lincoln loomed in my mind, and with my memory aflap like a book in a whirlwind I thought with relief,
Oh, no—thank God—such a thing didn’t happen!

But at the thought the next lithograph came instantly alive, and I was watching a battlefield scene in which soldiers in blue and in gray were firing rifles and cannons while General Robert E. Lee with saber in hand was galloping northward on his handsome steed Traveller. Whereupon wondering if the scene was of Antietam, Bull Run, or Chancellorsville, I recalled the Battle of Gettysburg and moved to the next lithograph expecting a scene in which General Ulysses S. Grant was finally triumphant.

But instead, surrounded by soldiers with a crowd looking on, John “Osawatomie” Brown was being marched down an old Charlestown street on his way to the gallows. And while most of the crowd are acclaiming his capture, a short distance behind them a slave mother wearing a blue bandana headcloth stands weeping and cuddling her tiny black baby. And seeing the soldiers and prisoner approaching the spot where she’s standing she thrust her tiny black child above the crowd’s straining heads and beseeches John Brown to give it his blessing.

To which Brown reacts by thrusting out his chin and looking up at the child with an expression in which pride, surprise, and regret are enigmatically mingled. And while the crowd gawks and remains serenely unaware of what’s happening above and behind them it’s as though Brown were baring his neck for the noose which was ready and waiting at the end of his march.

Then, struck by a blow from the past, I reacted to the slave mother’s gesture of hope and respect in the context of the chaos created by the clash between our democratic ideals and our regional self-interests. And with the devastation wrought by the war which erupted soon after sweeping through my mind, I recalled having read that during Brown’s raid on the armory at old Harper’s Ferry two of his sons had been slain.

And suddenly as I stared at Brown, the crowd, and the weeping slave mother, her symbolic gesture took on a power that wrenched me. For in it tragedy, hope, and sheer hopelessness were so intricately entwined that I moved away in a state of confusion. Then time took a leap, and with a sense of relief my attention was drawn to a thundering contention of fine thoroughbreds.

Mounted by jockeys in eye-dazzling silks, they were rounding the curve past a spectator-filled grandstand, and as I thrilled with excitement any questions raised by Brown and the slave mother’s gesture were quickly forgotten. For now time swept me backwards into a mixture of relief and further confusion.

For, while the cheering spectators were white men and women, most of the jockeys—whether black, brown, or high-yellow—were
racially
black men. And in struggling to make sense of that incongruity I noted the unusual postures in which they were riding. For instead of straddling their mounts in the high-perched, short-stirruped, monkey-on-a-stick style of today, they were brandishing their whips in upright positions with their legs extended and feet thrust earthward. And as I watched a black rider maneuvering his mount to the lead of the track-pounding pack a quick glance at the lithograph’s legend revealed that his name was Pike Barnes, his horse Proctor Knott, the year 1888, and that the race they were winning the first Futurity. And with the fashionably dressed spectators cheering them on they went galloping past in dream-like bounds as they headed for the finish of a race from which in the very near future jockeys of Barnes’ racial identity would be barred from competing. And as though my invisible tormentor was using mute juxtaposition as a means for making me aware of the historical irony, the next lithograph presented a Kentucky scene of Churchill Downs which bore the image of black Isaac Murphy, the celebrated winner of three of its Derbys.