Reach the Shining River (17 page)

“He doesn’t know anything.”

Piney hovered at the bead curtain. Arlene turned in her seat. “You go on and sell your drinks, Piney. I’ll come out when I’m ready.”

He left. Arlene stubbed her cigarette in the ashtray. Her face was the color of cold oatmeal. “Like I said all along, the boy’s got nothing to do with any of this.”

“To who?”

“What?”

“Like you said all along to who?”

She coughed into her hand and slid towards the edge of her seat. “I have to get back to work.”

He put his hand on her arm. “Mrs. Gray. I need Wardell to show me where he found the body.”

“No. Absolutely not.”

“Listen to me. At the ballgame, at the riot, your son was attracting attention. From the wrong people. Who find out that you’re his mother and that you played with Eddie Sloan.”

Her head was thrown back and her face wide open, like a frightened horse. She was gnawing her lower lip.

“I don’t know what was said to you,” Emmett said. “But the man who brought your son back to you that day is a dangerous man.”

“How is he dangerous?”

He just looked at her.

She slumped in the seat, a hand to her breastbone.

Phineas had started warming the crowd, playing a little boogie-woogie to open the second set. Arlene rubbed her forehead with the tips of her fingers.

“If Wardell can help me, it could make all the difference.”

“He cannot,” she snapped.

Something told him to take a risk. “Richie Timmons,” he said.

She flinched.

“He found your boy.”

“Maybe so.”

“I don’t need you to confirm it,” he said. “It’s a fact. And it’s a fact that he’s the investigating officer on Eddie’s case.”

“Oh, Lord.” She closed her eyes and shook her head.

“And if I’m going to investigate him,” Emmett said, “I’m going to need to find the crime scene.”

She stared blankly at the curtain, her fingers worrying the edge of the table.

Piney parted the beads again. “Don’t make no never mind to me, Arlene, but we got customers out there.”

“I’m coming, Piney.”

She stuffed her cigarettes back in her bag, slid out from her seat. Straightened her dress. So beautiful and yet so forlorn. As he had with Wardell, Emmett felt a strong desire to comfort her.

“Arlene,” Emmett said, looking up at her, “there’s no place to hide on this one.”

“Ain’t no way,” she said as if to herself, and left him.

He stayed in the booth for a long minute and then followed her out. She was not on stage and not in the wings. Piney had also disappeared.

Phineas’s boogie-woogie had reached a fever pitch and the joint was jumping. Emmett pushed his way to the bar and gave his card to the bartender, making him promise to pass it on to Arlene. As he left the club, he saw Hattie and Hence bent double as they jitterbugged wildly on the gapped floorboards.

29.

The schools reopened, but Arlene did not send Wardell. Mornings, she sat on the back porch and watched him while he played in the yard. After lunch she kept him in the house, reading to him and teaching him arithmetic. Alice spelled her on the nights she sang, and on Wednesdays, when she cleaned at the Plaza. Otherwise the boy was not out of her sight.

He had changed. For no reason, he would take her by the hand, scanning the sky and humming tunelessly. He bit the inside of his cheek until his spit was bloody. He shouted in his sleep. For the first time since he was four years old, he wet the bed.

He hadn’t told her what had happened. She hadn’t asked. When he did speak, it was always about baseball. He studied the box scores of old games and copied them into a notebook. After his lessons with her, he listened to games on the radio, sitting by the kitchen window and smoothing Satchel Paige’s autograph on the tabletop.

Since his return she had cleaned compulsively, but she couldn’t rid the house of the smells and stains of the last month. She still had a pain in her ribs from where the man had hit her with the shotgun stock. It hurt when she sang and hurt when she knelt to scrub the kitchen floor.

“You all right, Mama?”

“I’m all right.”

“Can I go to Jesse’s?”

“Read your magazine, child.”

The days had grown cooler, but something hot and menacing hovered in the house. She put away the bucket and brush, went to her room, and sat on the bed. She had bathed in the tin tub that morning but felt dirty again.

“Wardell?”

“Yes, Mama?”

“Come here, son.”

In the top drawer of her deal dresser was Emmett Whelan’s card. Three or four times she had taken it out, intending to throw it away, but the sober typeface and simple telephone number gave her pause. The card was like the man: formal and direct.

Wardell stood in the doorway. She extended her arms, and he came to her.

“I love you, baby.”

“Yes, Mama.”

*

On Sunday she took her son to church. Not to Lucious Jones’s First Baptist, but to Emmanuel, where Eddie used to play. She hadn’t been in a while.

It was like going home. The pastor greeted her at the doorway. The church was packed with folks in their Sunday finery. Women fanned themselves with prayer books, and the usher winked at Wardell as he directed them to seats in a middle pew. The choir wore blue robes and sang “Rock of Ages” and “Just a Closer Walk with Thee”. The new organ player was the music teacher at the Crispus Attucks school, who wore reading glasses that slipped to the end of her nose.

The pastor chose the twenty-third psalm as his text, and when he preached his voice boomed like a tenor saxophone. The choir and congregation shouted out their responses until the whole church trembled with tongues and swayed with the holy spirit.

The world is
full
of the pathways of evil (
yes
,
Jesus
) and only the
Lord
can shepherd us to safety (
amen
)… and we will encounter, listen to me now, we will encounter a
multitude
of perils (
tha’s
right
), but the
righteous
among us, (
oh
yeah
), the righteous will know the
wolf
be always with an eye on the flock (
watch
it
,
now
)…the wolf, he always among us…but we keep, yes we do, we keep our trust in
Jesus
(
Alleluia
!)…we keep our trust in the
Lord
.

The organ swirled around the preacher’s words. Arlene raised an arm and waved it through the air in time with the sermon, just as she had as a little girl. With her other arm she held Wardell close. As the preacher hit his stride, members of the congregation shouted and sang and testified, and several of them went to the front of the church and marched back and forth, overcome with the word of the Lord.

The pastor turned to the choir and lifted his arms and led them in “Shall We Gather at the River”:

Soon
we’ll
reach
the
shining
river

Soon
our
pilgrimage
will
cease

Soon
our
happy
heart
will
quiver

With
the
melody
of
peace
.

Arlene’s eyes clouded with tears, and the blue of the singers’ robes mixed with the colors of the hats and dresses of the women in the congregation. The music cradled her in its rhythms. The song gave her something that her singing in the club did not, and she sang along in a strong voice as she had as a little girl in Raytown, when the world was simple and the path ahead of her was straight and clear.

*

In the morning she dropped Wardell at Alice’s and caught a streetcar to Eighteenth and Vine. The stores were open but the streets were quiet. Several shops had black crepe paper bordering their windows. Eddie’s picture hung in the ticket booth of the Gem Theater, beside line drawings and photographs of the four men who had been killed at the ballgame.

The awnings were down at Fox’s Bar, and she ordered a glass of Royal Crown Cola and sat outside. Early as it was, four men were already playing canasta at a table out front. The click of the cards and the men’s low banter were soothing, but from time to time she caught them eyeing her.

After half an hour Piney came limping up the street. Without noticing her he stopped at the game. “Which of you niggers is cleanin’ up?” he said.

“You wants to know, you gots to play.”

“We too small change for Piney. I had his money, all my troubles be over.”

They spoke without looking at him, the cards flying. As the dealer gathered a trick he nodded Arlene’s way. Piney saw her and straightened. “Hey girl, what you doin’ here?”

“Look like she waitin’ for you,” the dealer said.

They moved inside, and she sat with Piney while he drank a cup of coffee.

“I need to use the phone,” she said.

“Can’t wait until tonight?”

“No.”

There were extra furrows in Piney’s face: between his eyebrows, below the corners of his mouth. “This got to do with that police come round the club on Friday?”

“He wasn’t police.”

“Weren’t there to listen to you sing.”

“I don’t know about that.”

Piney shook his head and signaled for the check.

It took forty minutes to walk the six blocks to the club. Everyone on Vine knew Piney. The talk was about lost business, the lifting of the curfew, the weather. No talk of the killings. Folks avoided her gaze.

She had never been to the club in the morning and was taken aback by the stale smells and cold neon tubing. Piney unlocked the office door and stood there as she entered.

“I’ll need some privacy,” she said.

“Seem like these days you be needin’ a mess of things.”

But he shuffled to the bar. She closed the door and for a long time sat beside the phone. Finally she took the card from her purse and dialled. It was several minutes before she got Whelan on the line.

“Yes, Mrs. Gray, of course. What can I do for you?”

“Wardell.”

“What’s that?”

“I’d like you to talk to him.”

30.

“Are you sure you remember?”

“Yes sir.”

“Near an underpass?”

“A what?”

“A place where you can drive under the railroad tracks.”

“Can’t drive. Only walk”

Emmett drove along Route 9, on the way to Riverfront Road. A Sunday. Less traffic and less chance of being seen.

Wardell sat in the passenger seat, answering questions in a monotone and biting his thumbnail.

“You can relax, you know. I’m here to help.”

“Yes sir.”

They pulled into the parking lot of a greasy spoon called The Blue Lite. Mickey’s Nash was in the far corner and Emmett parked beside it.

“You wait here,” he said to Wardell. “I won’t be long.”

The boy nodded.

Emmett found Mickey in a dim booth, eating a bowl of chili with saltines and drinking a Pabst.

“Where’s the kid?”

“In the car,” Emmett said. “I’m not so dumb I’d try to bring him in here. Hurry up, let’s go.”

“Sit down. I haven’t eaten all day.”

The diner was dirty and stifling. Emmett sat where he could see the car through the window. He ordered coffee while Mickey spooned chili into his mouth. He was bloodshot and unshaven, his clothes wrinkled.

“This the real deal?”

“I think so,” Emmett said. “Says he knows.”

“It’s a long stretch.”

“Said it’s near an underpass. One of those access cutaways is my guess.”

“That’ll help.”

The waitress poured his coffee, slopping some on the stained Formica.

“How about you,” Emmett said, “any progress?”

“On what front?”

Emmett didn’t like the way he hiked his eyebrows. “Those Friendship Brotherhood papers.”

Mickey took a swig of beer and wiped his mouth with his sleeve. “The list of names looks like some kind of schedule. Put it up to the calendar with the days ticked off and, you know, they match almost exactly. At first I figured it was a list of responsibilities or maybe some benevolent activity.”

“And now?”

“Hold your horses. If you remember, there were three names ticked off on the list – Sloan, Virgil Barnes, and a Rube Gilmore. I tracked Gilmore down out the turnpike.”

“In Kansas?”

“Shawnee. Staying with his mother. He was scared shitless when I found him. Thought I was a cop.”

“What did he tell you?”

“Nothing that made sense. But when I mentioned Sloan or Barnes he shit himself. Anyhow, when I got back I had my contact poke around headquarters to see if he had a rap sheet. Another strike out, but guess what? His name turns up on a list of contractors for the department. Seems he did some driving or deliveries. There were dockets with his name for jobs going back two years. I dug deeper and sure enough, Barnes had dockets in there, too.”

“What about Sloan?”

“No. But my guess is the Friendship Brotherhood had some sort of deal with the cops, making collections or doing number runs in the district.”

“Not so unusual.”

“Wait for it. Several of the dockets match the dates on the Brotherhood schedule. And what cop do you think signed off on them?”

“Richie T.”

“Got it in one.”

Outside, a delivery truck pulled up, blocking Emmett’s view of his car. “I’d like to talk to this guy Gilmore.”

Mickey frowned. “If he sticks around.”

“Where would he go?”

“Wherever Barnes went.”

“You think he knows anything about Barnes?”

“Nothing he’s going to tell us. I gave him a grilling and he didn’t budge.”

Emmett heard a rustling beside him.

“Mister.”

It was Wardell, gaping and fidgety. The cook had come out from behind the counter and was looking at him, hands on his hips.

Emmett ushered him through the quiet diner while Mickey settled the bill. Wardell’s head floated fragilely on his thin neck, and the outline of his shoulder blades was visible through his shirt. Emmett had to refrain from placing a hand on his back. The cook watched them all the way.

Back at the car, Emmett hunkered down to Wardell’s level and said, “Don’t you know you’re not allowed in there?”

“I never been here before, sir.”

“You don’t have to call me ‘sir’. I’m Mr. Whelan.”

“Yes sir.”

Wardell’s eyes were alert. He had the signs of an attentive mother: a sweet smell, clean clothes, good manners. When Emmett picked him up at six o’clock, as agreed, at the entrance to the Municipal Auditorium, Arlene was standing behind him, with her arms around his neck.

“I’m not sure about this,” she had said after Wardell was in the car.

“All I’m doing is driving him out there, getting a look at the place, and driving back. Won’t see anybody except my associate.”

“Nine o’clock.”

“At the latest.”

She had stooped and waved at Wardell, who raised his hand shyly behind the glass. As Emmett moved around to the driver’s side, her eyes gave him a little flicker of appeal, so like a look of longing that his heart had jumped.

Mickey emerged from the diner and they took his car. He was about to turn onto Riverfront Road when Wardell said, “No sir.”

“No what?”

Wardell pointed. “Cross the bridge.”

“You sure about that?”

“Yes sir.”

Mickey looked at Emmett. “North side of the river.”

“County case after all.”

They crossed the bridge and drove west. Ahead the sun was sinking like a ship, reflected in the muddy expanse of the Missouri. They passed an abandoned gas station. The air was cool and earthy, riverbank air. Along the road was a badly strung wire fence, an old windmill or two, and regular underpasses that gave access to the shore paths. Wardell pointed at the second one. “Tha’s it.”

A dirt road led to the base of the underpass. A tower of railway ties and a pile of gravel blocked further vehicle access. Mickey pulled up short and got out. The dead end was a hardpan of dried mud, and there were tire tracks and footprints on both sides of the road.

Mickey crouched and examined one side, then the other. He pointed at the ruts on the left. “Wide tire tracks and shallow threads. This was a big car, a few years old. While on that side – ” he pointed across the road “ – we have brand new tires. Goodyear G-3s, I happen to know. Standard issue on new Speedwagons.”

“Police vehicle.”

“Two of them, over there. Standard unit, I’d say, and a wagon to take the body. And the footprints look like police brogans.”

“The tracks could be from anybody. At any time over the last month.”

Mickey smiled. “You noticed the weather lately?”

“Hot.”

“Hot and dry. I checked Met records. We had one storm on Labor Day. Which petered out, if you remember. Before that, the last rainfall was on the thirteenth.”

“Day of the murder.”

“Half inch. This place was a mudbath that night and the ground’s been hardening ever since. These prints are from the night of the murder, no question. The big wheels are probably the killers. Large sedan would be my guess. These here from the next day, when the cops and the body boys arrived.”

Emmett was itching to get to the scene, but he waited while Mickey took casts of the tire and boot prints.

When he was finished, they fetched Wardell from the car and squeezed past the pile of ties and through the underpass. The boy led them eastwards along the shore path. Cattails swayed in the light breeze and the river surface hummed with insects. The dry spell had dropped the water level a foot or two, and lengths of driftwood reached from cracked clay like the arms of drowning men.

After a hundred yards or so, Wardell pointed at a patch of disturbed earth and matted prairie grass halfway up the railway bank. The sun had set fully, and they beheld the scene in pale twilight.

“Looks like a body dump to me,” Emmett said.

“Oh, it’s the place, all right.”

A goods train passed and hooted a greeting. They hid their faces behind their hats.

“Wardell,” Emmett said, “you sit on that log over there. We’ll be a few minutes.”

“It’s gettin’ dark.”

“You’ll be all right, son. We’re right over here.”

They combed the site and found some cotton fibers and a frayed shoelace. Two black buttons. More footprints, both shoes and brogans. No blood or hair, however. Nothing except the shoeprints that couldn’t have been left by the cops. Emmett had hoped for more.

Then, as the light was failing, Mickey said, “Bingo!”

Using a twig he pried a cartridge case from the ground and handed it to Emmett: a .38HV caked in river clay. Too grimed for prints but highly matchable should the opportunity arise. He felt the cold metal on his fingertips, imagined a muzzle flash, the smell of gunpowder.

Mickey circled the flattened grass, examining angles. “What do you think?” He assumed a gunman’s pose with his back to the river. “Shooter’s standing like so, right?”

“So why’d he empty the cylinder?”

“To reload. Had one bullet in the chamber for the hit and popped him a second time to make sure.”

Emmett looked at the city lights twinkling in the distance. At Wardell’s silhouette in the dusk.

“It’s a cover-up,” Mickey said. “Either that or unbelievable incompetence.”

“Looks like it, doesn’t it?”

“There’s too much here. And we’re supposed to believe that nobody downtown knew anything about the scene.”

“Joe Healy said the body was delivered to the county morgue by mistake.”

“No mistake. It
was
county.”

“But think about it – Timmons would know that the county morgue wouldn’t be surprised by unfamiliar faces. Coulda been anyone dropped off the body. Then he claims it’s city later. After the dust settles.”

“And he’s pocketed the slugs.”

“Whole thing set up to make sure nobody followed up,” Emmett said. “Timmons.”

Mickey held out his arms in the dying light, summarizing. “Couple of goons do the business with the full knowledge of the police. Next day the kid here finds the body. His people call it in, someone in HQ gives Timmons the tip, and he heads out to the river with a few trusted lieutenants. They clean up the mess, drop the body off at the wrong morgue, file a fuzzy report.”

“And Timmons scares the shit out of the kid and his mother so they won’t talk.”

Mickey gathered the evidence. The fibers, the shoelace and buttons, the tire mud and footprints. Emmett had a lab guy who could give them the once over. And the cartridge case. If it led to a weapon, he could get a line on the hitmen and start the trace back to Timmons.

When it was all packed up, Emmett looked out over the water, listening to the gurgle of the current. Swallows or bats swooped from a raised bank upriver and disappeared into the thickening darkness. Broken light on the surface.

“We gonna hang around here all night?” Mickey said.

“Wardell,” Emmett shouted. “Let’s go.”

As they approached the underpass, they heard voices. Sabers of light flashed behind the gravel pile. So as not to surprise, Mickey shouted, “Hey there, coming through!”

Three men in straw hats and work clothes stood beside Mickey’s Nash. Behind them was a flatbed truck with its engine running. Empty bushel baskets were stacked against the cab. Two of the men held flashlights, and the third cradled a shotgun in the crook of his arm.

“This your car?” said the man with the gun.

“’Fraid so,” Mickey said. “Couldn’t interest you in it, could I? Give you a sweet deal.”

Wardell had dropped back and Emmett motioned him to stand beside him. One of the men shone a light in his face, and Wardell lifted a hand before his eyes.

“Thought you might be Union Pacific boys,” one of the unarmed men said. He pointed at the stack of ties. “Come down here in July, dump these here logs. Ain’t seen ’em since.”

“They do this up and down the line,” Mickey said. His voice was louder and brighter than it should have been. “Got some system going where they have different crews for drop-off and construction.”

The men were hawk-nosed and hollow-cheeked and unshaven. The flashlight beams hopped from Wardell to Emmett to Mickey. Settled again on Wardell. “What you doin’ here, boy?”

“He’s with us,” Emmett said.

“That a fact?”

“Yes, it is.”

The man with the shotgun hiked it up to waist level.

“What’s a nigger boy doin’ hanging around with a couple of dudes?”

Mickey laughed. “I look like a dude to you?”

“You don’t look like no nigger kid’s old man.”

The man with the gun stepped forward and, using the barrel, edged Wardell away from Emmett. Wardell whimpered.

“You shut up, boy.” Then to Mickey and Emmett: “You faggots gonna tell us what’s goin’ on?”