Darktown (28 page)

“I skipped that class. In favor of the one about how not to be a dirty cop.”

“Oh yeah. One of them new classes. Didn't have those when I was a rookie.”

“So I've heard.”

“And what else have you heard?”

Rake wondered what the man was really asking. “I assume you recognize me.”

“Remind me.”

“That's right, you were fairly in the bag that night. When we pulled you over, the night you had Lily Ellsworth with you.”

Underhill's expression was maddeningly difficult to read. Rake wondered, did the man have a particularly good poker face or was Rake just bad at this?

“And who might that be?”

“Come on. You got me sitting on the floor, you could at least have the dignity not to lie to my face. Let's do this like men at least.”

Underhill chuckled. “You are an inscrutable little one, ain't ya?”

“She was in your car, with a bruise on her lip. Then you hit her again and she ran off. Dunlow pulls you over, lets you off with nothing but a slap on your wrist. That same night, she's shot.”

“With a .22,” Underhill said. “This look like a .22 to you?”

No, this was a .45 that was staring Rake in the face. Underhill seemed so insulted by the suggestion he might fire a ladylike weapon that he'd dropped his poker face, at least temporarily.

“How'd you know it was a .22?” Rake asked.

“Got friends in high places. Which oughta make you far more wary than you appear to be.”

Rake sat up taller, partly because he wasn't comfortable and partly to see how much movement Underhill was prepared to let him get away with.

“So who was she?” He tucked his feet beneath his ass so that he was kneeling. It was awkward and would be painful if he stayed that way for long.

“You think you're conducting an interrogation here, son?”

“Who was she?”

Underhill laughed. This seemed to entertain him greatly. “She was a nigger.”

“And.”

“And you are exhausting my patience.”

“You were sweet on her, but she didn't go for the older, portly types, and so—”

Underhill's foot moved quite a bit more quickly than it had before, but this time Rake was expecting it. He leaned to his right and the foot
struck his side, rather than his stomach. Before that blow had even landed, though, Rake had straightened his legs, springing upward and driving a fist into Underhill's groin.

Rake heard the gun land but couldn't see it, as Underhill had nearly fallen over and was leaning on him now, his bulk pressing Rake's head into the wall. Rake swung twice with his left, hitting Underhill in what he thought was the stomach. It was almost like hitting a heavy bag, he was that big and solid. But deflating fast. Underhill stumbled, one knee hitting the ground. Rake pushed him with one hand and with the other he reached for the revolver in Underhill's belt. He had it in his hand now, but then Underhill batted at it and it hit the floor.

The two of them squared off, both of them standing on the landing outside the dark room—Rake still had no idea what was in there. They kept their eyes mostly on each other, but each glanced down at the ground occasionally, looking for the two guns.

Rake saw one first.

It was Underhill's, and it was no more than two feet to his right, just at the edge of the landing. Without fully thinking this through, he stepped forward and kicked it off the landing. He heard it clatter against the wall, then land in something wet.

“You son of a
bitch!
” Underhill yelled.

“You sure you want to do this, old man?” Rake asked, his fists at the ready. “You were smart enough not to shoot a cop. You smart enough to walk away?”

Apparently not. Underhill again showed that he was more spry and agile than his bulk would suggest, feigning with a right and then delivering a near-perfect jab to Rake's face. A fraction of an inch more centered and it would have broken his nose, but it still stung. Rake's right eye blinked a few times, watering despite himself, rendering him half blind.

Underhill stepped in to take advantage, but he was such an immense target that Rake landed two blows of his own, then the ex-cop staggered back. Underhill was leaning against the guardrail and seemed unsteady on his feet. His hat had fallen off somewhere along the way.

“
What
in the
hell
do you think you're
doing,
son? You ain't a detective. You're Dunlow's goddamn partner! You looking to dig an early grave?”

“You're not gonna put me there, old man.”

“It doesn't have to be
me
that does it, son. You're making one hell of a mistake.”

“Why? Tell me what I'm doing wrong. Explain to me how I'm putting myself in danger by asking an old ex-cop questions. Connect some goddamn dots for me.”

“If you think I'm gonna spill everything to some college-boy rookie, you're damned mistaken.” Underhill paused for a moment, as if hoping that's all he needed to say. “We can go ten rounds if you like, and we'll see how many teeth either of us have left, but you won't know a lick more than you do now. You'll only have a hell of a lot of injuries that you'll have to explain to your sergeant tomorrow.”

Rake sorely wanted to hit the bastard again. The adrenaline was blasting through his veins with such ferocity he would have hit a
wall
if he had to. But what Underhill was saying had the unfortunate ring of truth.

Rake lowered his fists and stood taller, though he watched his adversary carefully. Underhill didn't look like he was in any condition to go even half a round, but he'd gotten the drop on Rake twice already, and Rake wasn't going to be thrice fooled.

Rake shifted to his side and felt something under his foot—his gun, most likely. He kept his foot there and tried not to give away his discovery.

“Glory be,” Underhill exhaled, leaning over now, hands on his knees. It had been impressive how he'd managed to battle through that blow to the jewels, Rake thought. The big ox was able to endure a hell of a lot of pain. “I don't envy Dunlow one bit having to put up with the likes of you.”

Rake wondered if he'd made a mistake, if he should have beaten Underhill until more secrets spilled. Or he could pick up his gun and threaten him. But even if Rake wasn't a detective, he was a cop, and even if Underhill was a former officer, he was a civilian, and the thought of beating up a man just to prove a point would have meant he was no better than his damned partner.

So if a beating wouldn't work, he would go for the tried and true method of insulting a Southerner and forcing him to verbally defend himself: “You got kicked off the force for running numbers, yet you like
to kid yourself that you still have friends in high places. You're an old fat man with no pension, living in the past.”

“You and damned Dunlow can issue all the traffic citations you want. Go lock up some drunk niggers, too.” He tapped himself in the heart. “It's
us
that gets called in for the tough jobs.”

“Yeah, you're a big man.” Rake still had no idea what he was talking about. “I'll be seeing you around.” He motioned for Underhill to head down the stairs first.

Underhill walked slowly. Rake bent down and put his gun in his pocket, then followed a few paces behind.

At the ground level, Underhill walked over the ledge, which apparently was where his gun had disappeared. “That was a damn fine gun you just got rid of,” he said.

“Frightfully sorry about that.”

The triumphant feeling seemed to fade with every step as Rake walked back through the lot, over the hill, and to his car. His head was throbbing worse than before, and he felt a bit dizzy, either from that first blow or the punch to his face. What felt worse was the realization of what Underhill had revealed. That he still thought of himself as a cop, or close to it. What had he meant by “tough jobs”? And he'd distinctly said “us”—“it's
us
that gets called in for the tough jobs”—so who was us? Underhill and Dunlow, or some larger group? It could have all been bluster, but the fact that Underhill knew the murder weapon was doubly troubling; either he had pulled the trigger, or had been involved, or was somehow privy to inside information.

He leaned against his car, waiting for the wooziness to pass. He wondered how bad he looked, and how much worse he might look in the morning.

Then he heard the shots.

Two of them, close together, but definitely not an echo, because he picked up a distinct, slight echo from each. Coming from the very place he'd just left.

He sprinted as fast as he could, his heart pounding and his stomach very much not in favor of this much activity after that blow to his head. He ran with the flashlight off, not wanting to expose himself to the shooter. He couldn't see very well but at least they couldn't see him.

He stopped at a corner, slowly peered around it, aimed his gun at darkness. He didn't see anyone else moving, didn't hear anything. Then he saw Underhill not far from where he'd been when Rake had left. Before he'd been on his hands and knees, looking for his fallen weapon. He was still on the ground, but this time he was on his back, one knee raised but the rest of him flat.

Rake spun around, calling out “Police!” and demanding that someone come out. But someone did not reply. He was acutely aware of the fact that he was out in the open, and if someone had taken Underhill down with a rifle, he would be next. From the distance he'd been unable to determine if it had been a pistol or a rifle shot. His flashlight revealed nothing but old metal and dirt and decay and rust.

Then he heard something, small and far away, and he only realized it was a car door shutting when he heard the engine. Coming from the other side of the building, the sound fading already.

He walked over to Underhill and crouched down. A bruise was forming on his cheekbone from one of the punches Rake had landed. What was far more noticeable was the red chest and two gunshot wounds, the blood everywhere. Rake stood back up and looked at the blood on the ground, tried to make sense of it, and quickly. If someone had shot Underhill with a rifle, if an ambush had been set up along one of the catwalks or some other spot on this vast building, then there likely would have been a longer blood trail. And Underhill would have fallen differently, staggered. No, someone had shot the man from up close.

Shit, shit, shit.
Could Rake call this in? Could he explain his presence here?

He looked at his knuckles. They weren't bad. They wouldn't look so bad tomorrow. He thought. He hoped.

His footprints? He beamed the ground again, checking the gravel where he'd walked. The ground was dry and he didn't think he'd left behind any tracks, nothing a plaster could be taken of, nothing to provide an investigator with even a guess as to what his size was. Of course, he also couldn't tell what size shoes the killer had worn, or even how many men there had been.

His heart was pounding but his hands were steady. He knew that
he needed to make a decision, needed to do so now, and that whatever he decided would likely determine the next few weeks, or months, or years of his life.

“Us,”
Underhill had said. With such confidence. The calmness of knowing you're part of a group, that they had your back. Rake had felt that, too, during the war, but here on the force he felt the opposite, that his fellow officers were ready to drive the dagger into his spine.

Rake hurried back to his car, beaming behind himself again to make sure he hadn't dropped anything. He got in the car and closed the door. He drove home taking a circuitous route, checking behind himself, careful not to drive by any busy locations where any businesses might remember him.

Cassie was sound asleep in her bed, as were the kids. Rake washed his hands, the cuts on his knuckles stinging, before sitting down on his couch in a dark living room to think.

23

“ARE YOU STILL
interested in that fellow you were asking about the other day? Underhill?”

Boggs had been filling out paperwork at his desk when the phone rang. It was the unseen woman in Records, the second one, who had called him back and actually helped him.

“Yes.”

“Well, he's dead.” Her voice, as before, was hushed. She was talking quietly while her colleagues were away from their desks.

“What happened?”

“Got the report right here. Officers Delroy and Reardon came upon the body at 12:31 a.m. Just filed their report a little bit ago. Shot twice, close range, small caliber. His body appeared to have been there for at least twenty-four hours, it says. Morgue's still working on it.”

He asked her for the location, scribbling it down with the nearest pencil, then reaching for a street atlas. He didn't know the area well—it was a white part of town, blue collar.

“Body was found at a factory that's been closed a while,” she said. “We make a few busts there most weeks, some reefer peddlers and prostitutes, and the occasional moonshine drop-off.”

“Wonder what a guy like him would be doing out there.”

“They're working on it, I can assure you. That last murder you were calling about, the colored girl? They could care less about that. An ex-cop is different.”

He was amazed she was calling him with this, or with anything. And the fact that she referred to Lily as “colored” rather than the more derogatory “black” did not escape his notice.

“What else can you tell me about him?” he asked. “You mentioned he was forced out last time.”

She told him how Underhill was one of the cops fired for being involved in running numbers.

“Do you know if he's still friendly with any officers today?”

“Hell, in this city you're a cop for life, even if you lose the job. I'm sure he has plenty of friends over here. Which is why you should be mighty careful if you're thinking what I think you're thinking.” She let that sink in for a moment. “You should be able to ask your commanding officer for updates on his case if you want them. But if he stonewalls you, give me a ring.”

“Thank you very much for calling me, ma'am. I appreciate it.”

“We aren't all against you, you know.”

“Thank you.”

“Well, most of us are, I guess. But there's more of us for you than you'd probably think. We just can't advertise it.”

“I understand.” He didn't, not really.

“Anything else you want to know?”

“Yes, one thing.” He took a breath. “Is there really a pool among the white cops, to have one of us killed?”

A pause. “Wish I could tell you otherwise, but yes.”

“I appreciate your honesty.”

“I mean, it isn't a literal pool as in an actual collection of dollars that they've passed around to give to the guy who finally decides to put a bullet in one of you. But it's real in the sense that people do talk about it a lot.”

“And if people talk about something, then it must be real.”

He could hear her smiling when she said, “Don't be smart, Officer Boggs.”

He was smiling, too, when he hung up. So much so that he didn't remember until a few hours later that, the first time they had spoken, he had called simply to ask for the arrest history of Brian Underhill. He hadn't said anything whatsoever about Lily Ellsworth that time. Yet today she had noted that his earlier call had been about “that colored girl” who'd been killed.

So how did she know that when he'd called about Underhill, it was to look into Lily's murder?

The next day, Boggs stood waiting for his partner in the vast shadow of a magnolia tree in the Fourth Ward. Three little kids were climbing on the tree's thick branches, one of which was only a few feet off the ground and extended parallel for a good fifteen feet before suddenly plunging into the earth and emerging a meter away like some sea serpent turned arboreal.

It was that kind of late-afternoon hot that would only get hotter up until the moment the sun disappeared, the dampness in the air thickening nearly to the point of suffocation. Dark was still many hours off when Smith approached and they walked toward the home of Lily Ellsworth's former teacher. Boggs had visited the previous day and had been told by a pretty young woman that her husband wasn't in.

The narrow bungalow was in need of a paint job but Boggs had certainly seen worse. The garden was well maintained, thickets of seven-foot-tall brandy-wine canna flanking the house, their tropical leaves like wings and their red flowers like dragon's faces, jaws agape at the sun. Below them pink-veined caladium leaves, large as elephant ears, hung limp in the still air. The bungalow's windows were open, the sound of an electric fan whirring inside. This was a neighborhood they walked on their beat, but they seldom had reason to enter any of these homes except to take down robbery reports. The families here had decent jobs, and their accumulating possessions attracted thieves.

Boggs knocked on the door. Two hours before roll call, they were both in civilian dress.

The door was answered by the same woman as before: pretty and slight, eyes warm and round as chocolates. Bags under the eyes, though: the first time she'd had a little toddler with her, and this time she was holding a sleeping infant.

“Afternoon, Mrs. Hurst. Is your husband around?”

He'd not told her he was a cop yesterday, opting instead to lie and say he was an old friend from Morehouse. Not because he necessarily thought the man was a suspect, but still, he didn't see any reason to leave advance notice that a policeman was coming by. She had said her husband was at work, teaching summer school, and that late afternoons were best, so here they were. She didn't look suspicious to see him back again, and with
another man this time. Maybe she was just too tired to be suspicious. She said she'd get her husband, the screen door snapping behind her.

Smith raised his eyebrows the way he always did after spying a good-looking woman.

The screen door opened again. Nathaniel Hurst was a tall man, two inches on Boggs and one on Smith. He looked the part of the teacher, thin and with glasses, his shoulders hunched forward a bit, as if he was used to lowering himself to reach his students. His forehead was shiny and his red plaid shirt was opened one more button than would be socially acceptable if it weren't so ungodly hot.

“Afternoon, gentlemen. Can I help you?”

Boggs extended a hand. “My name is Officer Lucius Boggs, Mr. Hurst.” Hurst's hand greeted Boggs's after a two-second pause. “This is my partner, Tommy Smith.”

Another handshake, and Hurst, taking them in now, unhunched his shoulders and grew an inch.

“We were hoping to ask you a few questions.”

He said fine and motioned them to sit in the old wooden chairs on the cramped cement porch. “It's even hotter inside,” he said, as if to excuse what could have been seen as a lack of hospitality.

Smith, rather than joining them on the chairs, chose to stand and lean against the porch railing, looking down at the teacher. Wasps as orange as tangerines zipped past.

“What can I help you with?”

The chairs were low to the ground, so Boggs's elbows were on his knees, his hands folded as he said, “We're looking into the murder of a former student of yours. Lily Ellsworth.”

The teacher nodded, his expression appropriately somber. “Yes.”

Smith asked, “You knew she was dead?”

“It was in the
Daily Times
a couple of days ago. I was . . . shocked. I still am. She . . . She was a very sweet young woman.”

Boggs took out a small notebook and pencil and asked, “What else can you tell us about her?”

“Well, as you apparently know, I taught her in Peacedale. For a number of years. She was probably, I don't know, twelve when I met her? Could hardly read, like the other kids that age over there. I was the
new teacher, just a year or two out of Morehouse, and I taught her for, I guess it was five years.”

“So until about a year ago?” Boggs asked.

“That sounds about right.”

Boggs wrote that down, and only mentally noted the fact that Hurst seemed to be saying “about” and “I guess” more than an educated man like him probably did in normal conversation.

Boggs asked more questions and heard what he'd already been told elsewhere, that Lily had moved to Atlanta because she tired of the limitations country life put on her. And no, I'm sorry, I don't really know who her friends were, don't know with whom she'd been consorting in her last days.

“When was the last time you saw her?”

“I don't know. It might have been . . . three months ago.”

“At a Racial Cooperative Council meeting?”

He looked surprised. “Yes.”

“What exactly was she helping you with?”

Hurst rearranged himself in his chair. They were pretty damn uncomfortable, Boggs had noticed. “We drafted a lot of letters. Petitions to elected officials, letters to other groups with whom we wanted to develop a relationship. Some outreach to Negro high schools and colleges. The kind of slow drudgery that some people have to undertake in hopes that it leads to something greater.”

Boggs found it odd how everyone described the group in such boring terms.
Nothing to see here.

“What brought you to Atlanta?” Smith asked.

“I was tired of the country myself. I went out there because I wanted to help kids, kids like Lily. And I feel that I did. Again, that girl could not read at an age when she was already starting to turn into a woman, and I opened the world for her, and for many others. At least, that's what I'd tell myself after really bad days when I wondered why I bothered. I did it for a few years. It was rewarding in some ways, but it was also grinding me down.”

“Yet you're doing the same thing here, teaching?” Boggs asked.

“I got a job at Booker T., yes. That, too, has its challenges, but at least I get to live in Atlanta.”

“So you and Lily moved here at about the same time.”

“If we did, that's just a random coincidence. My wife and I left Peacedale a year ago, moved up to Macon, but after only a few months we decided to come back to Atlanta. I hadn't been in touch with Lily that last year, and only after she made it to Atlanta did I meet her again, at one of the Council meetings. I was very surprised to see her there, but also, honestly, flattered.”

“What do you mean?” Boggs asked.

“My teaching had given her a political spirit—I'd seen that in Peacedale. And then to see her come to a political gathering here, it meant something to me. I was proud of her.”

And proud of yourself,
Boggs thought. His attention was diverted by a small lizard darting out of the tall grass past the opposite end of the porch. He looked back at Hurst. “What can you tell me about her family?”

“Not much. I only met them once or twice. Farm family. Sharecroppers. The conditions for our people there are not good. Again, I tried to help, but . . .” He shook his head.

“Her father gave the impression he didn't like you,” Smith pressed. “Said you put all sorts of ideas in her head. Made her leave her family.”

Hurst slowly took in some breath and leaned back, palms flat on his thighs. “I suppose it would look that way to an uneducated man. And yes, I suppose if I'd never taught in that school, Lily would still be illiterate, and milking someone's cows, and be pregnant and poor. And, I suppose, alive.”

Boggs wanted to pause before asking another question, to see if those emotions would build, but his partner felt otherwise. Smith asked, “What did she think of the congressman?”

“Which one?”

“The one she worked for.”

“That—oh, yes, that's right. Prescott. I don't know if she ever met him.”

Alarms were blaring in Boggs's skull. He could tell by the way Smith slightly leaned back that his partner heard it, too, the completely false way in which the teacher had pretended to not remember and then
remember something, the very thing he wished these officers had not mentioned.

“What did she tell you about working there?” Boggs asked.

“Nothing. I mean, I recall her mentioning that she worked as a maid for his wife. But I didn't exactly ask her for details about being a housekeeper. I assume it's rather dull.” And to complete the fake act he grinned a bit, as if this were a joke now, three men rolling their eyes about the tediousness of women's work, as if they'd forget why they were here.

“You're absolutely sure she never mentioned anything else about working there?” Boggs asked. An obvious lifeline tossed to a man who was perhaps now realizing he was at risk of drowning.

Hurst wouldn't take the lifeline. “I'm sorry. And I'm afraid I'll be in trouble with the wife if I don't head back in and help feed the little one.”