Reach the Shining River (13 page)

“How much?”

“Fifty.”

While Mickey looked away, Emmett took a bankroll from his pocket and peeled off some bills. In just this way he had gone to Lloyd three days ago, squirming while the old man stooped at his safe, glancing over his shoulder as he fingered the combination.

He handed the money to Mickey, who did a quick count. “There’s a hundred here.”

“Yeah.” Emmett stuffed the roll back in his pocket.

“This a big tip or you going to enlighten me?”

The light turned green and Emmett gunned the Packard. The road grew suddenly smoother as they left the Negro district and approached the high buildings of downtown.

“I want you to follow someone,” he said.

22.

By the time Emmett arrived at his office on Wednesday morning, Lloyd and Roddy had left two messages each. His secretary, Mrs. Johnson, gave him their numbers, along with his schedule of appointments for the day. She also reminded him that she was leaving the office at eleven-fifteen to attend the wedding of her niece in Overland Park.

His work lay piled on his desk: litigation briefs, claims adjuster reports, summaries of appeals pending, a grand jury proceeding awaiting analysis. After the stadium riot and declaration of curfew, the Attorney General’s office had requested a special report on the crisis from Harold Fleming, the Jackson County Prosecutor, who had passed the work on to his assistants. Emmett had not been this busy since his first year out of law school.

But he pushed the work aside. And ignored the phone messages. On the green baize of his desktop he spread the paperwork Mickey had retrieved from the Friendship Brotherhood office. For a half hour he sorted through the documents, comparing, sifting, isolating what he thought might have something to tell him.

Mrs. Johnson buzzed. “Mr. Hudson on the telephone.”

“Tell him I’m in a meeting.”

Most of the Friendship Brotherhood material was useless. One list of names, however, had check marks beside three members – Virgil Barnes, Edward Sloan, and Rube Gilmore – and a corresponding column of dates. A rota of some sort. There was also a 1935 calendar with red X marks penciled though a range of days over the previous months, including August 13, the day leading up to Sloan’s death.

Mrs. Johnson came into his office without knocking. “Mr. Hudson is unavailable for the rest of today, but he asked you to meet him tomorrow afternoon at the Kansas City Club.”

“Thank you.”

“And Mrs. Whelan called.”

“You didn’t put it through?”

“I was going to, and then she said she had to go. Said she’d call back later.”

She stood before his desk, hands crossed in front of her skirt.

“Is there something else, Mrs. Johnson?”

“There’s a group in the lobby. They asked to see you and I told them you were busy, but they insist. They will not move. I’ve had the porter speak to them, but they will not move.”

“How long have they been there?”

She checked her watch. “Thirty-five minutes.”

“What do they want?”

“I have no idea.” She looked out the window. “They’re colored.”

“Is that why you didn’t tell me they were here?”

“They don’t have an appointment.”

“Send them in.”

He returned the Friendship Brotherhood documents to his briefcase. Mrs. Johnson showed the men into his office. He greeted the two he recognized: Calvin Watkins, a clothing-store owner and prominent district booster, and Lucious Jones, a dark-skinned Baptist minister with a dramatic voice and a poorly disguised hatred of white people. The third man wore a hound’s-tooth-check jacket and an open-neck shirt with enormous, winged lapels.

“William Carter,” the man said, shaking Emmett’s hand.

“With the
Call
?”

“That’s right.”

Emmett sat them in front of the big window and offered them coffee. They refused.

“Mr. Whelan,” Watkins said, “we don’t lightly impose upon your time. We know you are a busy man.”

“I’m sorry about the delay. I didn’t know you were here until a few minutes ago.”

“This is a bad time for Negro folk,” Reverend Jones said brusquely. “There are those in our community who have suffered in all innocence and whose patience grows thin.”

Watkins raised a hand. “What Lucious means, Mr. Whelan, is that those among us who want stability and good relations have grave concern.”

“The man knows what I mean,” Jones said.

“I do know,” Emmett said. “I’ve been in the…district. Felt the tension. Curfew’s never a good thing, never saw the sense of it myself.”

“We’re not here about the curfew.”

“About what, then?”

“A personal crisis.”

“But why come to me?”

“You tried Philip Sweeney,” Carter said.

Jones pointed at Emmett. “The policeman who killed an innocent Negro boy,” he said.

“I know, Reverend. It was my case.”

“You have a reputation for integrity,” Watkins said softly. “And we need some help.”

Emmett spread his hands.

“We have a situation,” Jones said, “a very unpleasant situation. So bad is it that, although it is of the utmost local concern, Mr. Carter has had to refrain from making any mention of the affair in his newspaper.”

“Keeping in mind,” Carter said, “what’s been happening.”

“So, what is it?”

“A friend of mine,” Watkins said, “a woman in our neighborhood, has had her boy abducted.”

“What? Here in Kansas City?”

“That’s what the man said.”

“Kidnapped?”

“Whatever word you want to use, Mr. Whelan.”

“I haven’t heard anything about a kidnapping. Who is it?”

“The mother’s name is Arlene Gray,” Jones said. “An upstanding woman of the district and one of the finest singers in my church.”

“She also,” Watkins said carefully, “sings at the Sunset Club on Twelfth Street.”

“Where Eddie Sloan played piano?”

The question surprised the visitors.

“And no one has gone to the police?”

The three men frowned in unison.

“OK,” Emmett said. “Stupid question. Tell me what happened.”

The boy had been snatched the day before from his school playground, in the middle of the morning. A teacher who had seen the grab and intervened had been pistol-whipped and was in Douglass Hospital recovering from concussion and a broken cheekbone. He’d told Carter that the boy had been pushed into the back seat of a late-model black Lincoln sedan with whitewalls and a broken taillight. Two white men in dark topcoats and derby hats. Plus a driver.

“This teacher remembers a lot for a guy who was beaned,” Emmett said.

“Nathan Lewis had his eyes open,” Jones said. “Everyone among us needs be vigilant, especially since the events of Saturday.”

“We’ve tried to keep the whole thing private,” Watkins said, “for the safety of all concerned. For the safety of the district. But the boys and girls on that playground told their parents. Naturally. So word has gotten out. We have our hotheads like everywhere else. There are a few veterans from the war who have taken up positions outside the hospital.”

“Bodyguards, they call themselves,” Carter said.

“Others talking about violent action. Openly talking. We don’t want another Tulsa. We want something done, Mr. Whelan, before these vigilantes react.”

“Not that anyone could blame them,” Jones said.

Watkins shook his head. “Our investigator tells us that the boy cannot be traced.”

“Investigator?”

“Investigations. The mother is beside herself, of course. You have to help us.”

Emmett stood up and walked to the window. “What can I do? I’m a prosecutor, not a detective.”

“You are a neutral party in a racist town.”

Emmett waved away the description and watched the silent traffic ten floors below. From here, the city was all light and peace. “Have you heard anything from the kidnappers.”

“No.”

“Any idea of motive?”

The men didn’t answer.

“Well?”

“This is the boy,” Watkins said slowly, “who found Eddie Sloan’s body.”

Emmett turned from the window. “You know who found the body? And you haven’t told the police?”

“Oh, we told the police, all right,” Watkins said. “Damn fool thing to do, but we told them. And Wardell brought them there.”

“The singer’s son,
he
was the one?”

“Yes.”

“Ah. Are you sure you men don’t want some coffee?”

Emmett opened his office door, but Mrs. Johnson had left for the wedding. His outer office was empty. He picked up pen and paper from his desk and sat down again. He took down the details: the boy’s name and address, the time of the abduction, the names of his teacher and the school. He asked if he could speak to the mother.

“I don’t think that’s a good idea,” Watkins said, “and I don’t think it would help, anyway.”

“How about some of the other kids who were there?”

“We can arrange that.”

They were all silent for a while.

Carter finally spoke, looking at his hands. “Mr. Whelan, if anything happens to this boy….”

Reverend Jones raised his hand as if on the pulpit. “Crimes that go unpunished shatter the very fabric of society. They lead to other crimes and ultimately to an all-consuming chaos. And it will be the Negro folk that suffer, not the prosperous Anglo-Saxon in his comfortable house.”

“Lucious,” Watkins said.

“I’ll look into it,” Emmett said, “I promise you that. I’ll see what I can do.”

The men got up to leave. Emmett said, “By the way, what can any of you tell me about the Friendship Brotherhood?”

They looked at each other. “Why do you ask?” Carter said.

“Another case I’m involved in.”

“Not a serious organization,” Watkins said. “Not in this town anyway. And I don’t think the KC branch’s been functional for quite some time now. Isn’t that right, Bill?”

“I have no idea.”

More silence.

“OK,” Emmett said. “Thank you. I’ll be in touch.”

23.

She sat at the window all day and all night, rocking in her hard chair and staring through the warped glass. Two men guarded the front porch and one the rear. They were always sober and formally dressed. Every four hours a new team of guards arrived. Members of Reverend Jones’s First Baptist congregation. None of them spoke to her. They touched their hats, nodded, took up their posts. In the daytime they sometimes read to one another from the bible. Mostly they also sat and stared.

Food held no interest for her. She left the chair only to use the privy or get a glass of water. Sometimes fell asleep in the chair, but always woke abruptly after a few minutes. She hated these naps because waking was like a nightmare. Her back was always sore, but she took a peculiar comfort from the pain. Suffering might help bring back her boy.

She stared south, down Olive Street. There was a spot in the road past which her vision was blocked by the edge of the house. Her eyes stay fixed on this blank triangle of dust and debris for hours at a time. During the afternoon, the shadow of a telephone pole crossed this patch like the blade of a sun dial, marking time and parceling out her pain. Once or twice a day some kid would emerge from the blocked view, kicking a can or pushing a hoop, and her breath would seize and her muscles clench as if she’d been thrown from a cliff.

Still, she stared.

At night she prayed. At first she tried direct communication with the Lord, but the rawness of her message was too much, so she took refuge in passages from the bible and old hymns.

Yea
,
though
I
walk
through
the
valley
of
the
shadow
of
death
,

I
will
fear
no
evil
;

For
thou
art
with
me
;

Thy
rod
and
thy
staff
,
they
comfort
me
.

But comfort was thin, and often she lost track of the words and found herself sobbing while she clutched the arms of her chair and stared at the dry road through a smear of tears.

On the afternoon of the second day, Cal and Leonora came to the house with a plate of fried chicken, biscuits, and a bottle of cold buttermilk.

Cal sat close to her and whispered, “Parks spent all night searching the North End for the car. He has contacts in Chicago with expertise in… these situations. He’s waiting to hear from them.” When she didn’t answer he continued, “And we also went to the county. Some men there who might be able to help.”

“White men,” she said.

He put a hand on her arm. “There’s a curfew, Arlene. You know that. Lucious’s men, even that’s a risk.”

After they had left, Arlene offered the food to the guards. They refused to take it until she’d insisted several times. The sound of them eating drifted from the porch. The food loosened their tongues; they spoke of the curfew, of the church, of the funerals for the men killed in the riot. She was probably the only person in the district who had not attended those funerals.

Returning from the kitchen, she passed Wardell’s room and caught a glimpse of his magazine pictures and baseball memorabilia. Back in her chair, she saw a dog zig-zagging up the street with a dead chicken in its jaws.