Murder in the Choir (The Jazz Phillips Mystery Series) (10 page)

Steve DiRado could stand no more. “You dumb shit!” he snarled at Spinks. For a moment I thought he was about to throw himself across the table at Spinks. So did Spinks, who shoved his chair back so fast his chair turned over, dumping him on the wooden floor.

“Hey!” yelled the waitress, coming into the room just in time to see Dee on his feet glaring down at Spinks. “No rough stuff or I’ll call the police!”

“We are the police,” I told her. Dee showed his badge. “Special Agent Spinks just tripped over his own feet getting up.”

“We were just having an intense discussion,” Kruger added, showing his identity folder. “The chair caught on the floor. He’s all right.”

“Oh,” the waitress said. “Goodness. That’s the second time that happened this week. I told Arly to fix it but his back went out.” She tried to help Kruger get Spinks to his feet, but Spinks shook them off. He got up and stood there glaring back at Dee but not coming any closer.

“Well, I’m glad you’re not hurt,” the waitress told Spinks. “Are you gentlemen ready to order now?”

Spinks ignored her and stalked out of the café. Kruger turned to us and shrugged, holding his hands in supplication. “Don’t worry about it,” Dee told him. “I’m pissed at him, not you. Go cover your ass.” I nodded and Kruger left the building.

I picked up the check, leaving more than a generous tip. The waitress was still a bit unsettled as I paid the bill, and I assured her things were fine. She nodded, mollified, but I knew the incident would be all over town before sunset. Life is tranquil in small towns, and the story of the fight between a state cop and an FBI agent would send ripples across conversations for weeks. No doubt it would grow as it passed from one fertile imagination to another.

Dee was waiting for me on the sidewalk. “I’m sorry about that,” he said. “Stuff like that goes on with Spinks all the time and I’ve just about had it.”

“Don’t let him get your goat, Dee. The case isn’t worth getting yourself in a jam.”

“A worse jam,” he reminded me. “This whole thing is turning into a real goat grope.”

“Well, there is an upside,” I replied. “It gives us some leverage with the pastor. We can lean on him and Spinks will get the blame.”

“It can also get him off the case,” Dee growled, still torqued.

“Yeah, but why don’t you let me make the call to Lonnie? He may say ‘no’ and it’s better if he says it to me.” While Dee is a man who believes in plucking his own geese, there was a lot of sense in what I said. The name of the game these days is politics. Maybe it always was.

“All right,” he said. “We may as well talk to Jones first. Hear his side of it.”

We walked across the square and down the street to the dismal brick building that houses the county jail. Arkansas is one of the poorest areas of the nation in many of its rural areas, and Nashville was not a seat of prosperity. Nor is it in a progressive part of the state or one too concerned with the well being of prisoners. Such issues were considered a luxury, and the jail reflected that attitude.

The jail house was essentially a collection of iron cages inside a brick shell covered with a tar roof. Set at the center of a block without trees and surrounded by newly paved parking lots and a high chain link fence, the jail was a dismal place. With no shade or air conditioning, except for window units in the jailer’s office, it acted like a solar collector in the summer and shed heat quickly in the winter.

The object was clearly punishment, whether the prisoners were guilty or not, and the interior was even more dismal than outside. The office suite was freshly painted in generic white with some attempts to soften the setting, but the cell block was decorated in the same dismal pea green as schools were throughout the South in the fifties. Only the floor was different, made of smooth, unpainted concrete, broken only by dark brown stains I thought must be blood. Combined with the blaze orange jump suits the inmates wore, the ambiance was anything but soothing. When in doubt, punish.

We stopped by the office the sheriff gave us to use. It had a desk and two chairs, and the glass partitions made it seem less cramped than it was. I asked the jailer to bring Jones there for an interview. For a moment, I thought the man was going to refuse, making us use the dismal interrogation room I’d seen near the cell block. Yet, a look at Dee’s face convinced him it might be wiser to bend the rules.

When the pastor came in, he was shackled and cuffed, but I was glad to see he had not faced the indignity of being deloused and forced to wear an orange jumper. He was in a white dress shirt and faded black chinos, but his belt and shoe laces had been taken along with his tie. Even so, he carried himself with the same dignity I imagine he carried to the pulpit. Nor did he seem frightened. The only emotion I could see was a deep anger that burned in his eyes.

I decided to work the venom. “Good afternoon, Pastor,” I said, offering him the best seat. “I regret the misunderstanding that precipitated this inconvenience.”

“Inconvenience!” he spat back at me, holding up his cuffs. “You call these things inconvenient?”

“Let him loose,” I told the jailer, who was watching from the hall.

The man started to refuse, but Dee looked at him with a raised eyebrow and held out a hand. The jailer gave him the keys and Dee unlocked Jones. Then he tossed the manacles and shackles to the jailer, who stepped down the hall to his desk near the front door.

“Please,” Dee said to the pastor. “Have a chair. Can I get you water or something else to drink?”

“You can get me out of here,” the pastor snapped, but he sat down. “Failing that, you can get me an attorney and one for Luther, too.”

“We can do that,” I answered. “On the other hand, this whole thing is not about you. All we’re after from you is some information. We’re not out to create problems for you or for Luther. If you insist on having an attorney present, it will delay getting you released…and Luther, too.”

At the mention of Luther, the skin around his eyes tightened. “Don’t you understand what this will do to Luther!” he said. “Keep me if you have to, but not him. He doesn’t belong here. He’s weak. Those animals back there will tear him apart.”

“Yeah,” said Dee. “It can get bad in here. I’ll see what I can do about keeping him isolated from the others. But, if I’m going to stick my neck out, you’re going to have to help us out, too. Up front.”

The pastor thought for a moment. “I don’t know,” he said. “I’m not sure what they’re holding me for. They think Luther is the killer.”

“We all know he’s not,” I interjected. “Not if what you told us is true.” The pastor nodded. “We also know Spinks is holding you on a thin bust. So help us out. I’ll work things out with the Bureau.”

The pastor thought for a long while. Then he shook his head. “I’m sorry, Dr. Phillips. I really do need an attorney present before I answer any questions. I would like to help you, but I don’t trust the system. However, I will cooperate as fully as my attorney allows me.”

I nodded. In his shoes, I would have done the same. Not only was he within his legal rights, but he was right in his assessment of the criminal justice system. One of the reasons for my retirement was losing confidence in the system I served. I had witnessed too many miscarriages of justice.

“All right,” I said. “Would you be willing to talk to us about Luther’s accident? Or to one of us, if not to both.”

He thought for another long moment, then nodded. “Yes, I’d be willing to talk to you. You’re no longer a police officer.”

Dee smiled. “I’ll see what the charge is.” He headed up the hall to talk to the jailer, and I decided not to correct the pastor’s misconception. While I’m not attached to any specific police department, I am still a sworn peace officer in the state of Arkansas. Not that it would matter that much in court, particularly in capital cases.

“Do you mind if I take notes?” I asked, and Jones shook his head.

I took a pen and a steno pad out of my rucksack and flipped to an empty page. I jotted down the date and time and the name of whom I was interviewing, and when I looked up, the pastor was smiling. “You’re very organized,” he said.

“Actually I’m not,” I told him. “If I don’t do this, I’m lost. My memory is not what it was.”

“Whose is?” he murmured and, without prompting, began to speak. “There were six of us, all born and raised around here. There was Wilbur, Luther Adams, Luther Jones, Luther Goodman, and myself. We were the choir boys,” he said, smiling at my frown. “Yes, with three Luthers in the choir it was very confusing, and there were times we took advantage of that. Among ourselves, Slide was what we called Luther Jones, because he first played trombone, and Luther Goodman was Goodie. Luther Adams was the only one we called by his given name.”

He paused a moment to let me catch up. I read back what I had and he nodded. “Wilbur was about twenty years older than the rest of us, but it didn’t seem to make much difference back then. He was like a kid himself, and he was who organized the choir. We did just about everything together, but what really made us close was music. We sang in the church choir together, but we also worked up our own music on our own. They call it blues now, and Wilbur used a lot of it to get himself started in New Orleans.”

“You didn’t perform as a group?” I asked.

“There wasn’t much for us,” the pastor told us. “We made the circuit of black churches here in southern Arkansas, but that was all gospel music. We pushed it as far as we could, messing with rhythm and syntax, but we couldn’t sing our own music in church. The only place we could was in roadhouses and nightclubs, and we knew better than to ask the preacher about that.” His smile was very sad. “You see, my dad was the preacher then: Albert Jones, Senior. He was a rather hard-shelled Baptist. No drinking or dancing was allowed, of course, but nothing that smacked of works of the devil, either. Since it took place where it did, he considered jazz and blues and ragtime the works of the devil.”

“You still did it, though?” I asked.

“Of course,” he said. “Since then I have come to understand that all music is sacred…at least real music. It’s God’s clearest way of speaking to us, but back then I was just being rebellious. I knew my dad was wrong to judge our music the way he did, but that didn’t keep me from feeling guilty. Nor did it do much to bring my dad and me closer.”

He paused for a long moment, then looked at me, assessing what he saw. “I see why you were so good as a policeman,” he said. “I haven’t talked about that in years.”

I shrugged. “To tell you the truth, I just listen. People seem to talk to me.”

“That’s why,” he said. “You listen and few do. The police I’ve known are either fools or trying to make themselves look good by finding a quick solution.”

I smiled. “One thing my father taught me was that a person doesn’t learn much when they’re talking.”

Albert Jones nodded. “Then I’m not learning much here, am I?”

I laughed. “No, I think you are. You listen with your eyes.”

He looked at me intently for a long moment, then nodded but said nothing.

“We seem to be getting off the subject,” I prodded gently.

“Yes,” he said. “On the other hand, I’m always intrigued when I run into someone as intelligent as myself.” The way he said it was not bragging. It was a simple statement of fact. “I expect you find yourself lonely on that accord,” he added. “I do. One of the reasons I grieve Wilbur’s passing so much is because he was one of the few people I knew who understood what I was saying, and what I was not saying, too. I suspect you listen for what is not said, too, don’t you?”

He had me cold, so I smiled and nodded. “Silence can be eloquent,” I said.

He nodded, then sighed. “You do understand that talking about all this is painful to me,” he said. His eyes were soft now, and moist. “There was a time when I covered the pain with anger, but that was not good. Rage is a cancer that eats the soul.”

I nodded. There was nothing to say. The pastor sighed. “Grasp the nettle firmly,” he murmured softly, speaking to himself. “Remember the good.” He was quiet for a moment longer and began speaking so softly I could barely hear. “We called ourselves the Soul Men Six. That way we could do what Wilbur did. Sing in church and at the roadhouses, too. Only we never made it to the roadhouses. Luther accidentally shot Goody, and we sort of fell apart after that.”

He looked at me. “You wanted to know how it happened. It was stupid. We were out squirrel hunting. All we had was a single shot .22 rifle that belonged to Slide. He was the best shot, but we took turns and Luther was up. Goodie was out front being the dog. Whoever was dog would spot a squirrel and point where it went up a tree to whoever was shooter. The rest of us would stand real still and the dog would walk to the opposite side of the tree. Squirrels like to stay out of sight, so this would push the squirrel around to the shooter’s side, so the shooter could pop him.”

He looked at me and I nodded. We used the same strategy when I was a kid and we didn’t have a good squirrel dog. The pastor went on. “We pretty much had filled our sack and that was the last one for the day. We would have let it go, but Luther missed all his shots and he wanted to get at least one, so we humored him. Problem is, Luther was always clumsy. He had the gun up and the safety off, but he didn’t have a clear shot. There was a branch in the way. So he eased forward and he tripped. The rifle went off when he hit the ground, and the bullet hit Goody straight through the eye.”

He stopped talking. When he turned to me, there were tears running down his cheeks unnoticed. “Luther has never been the same since. None of us have. Wilbur poured his grief into his music, and I suppose that was part of where it got its power. Slide was always a drinker, but after that he grew hard and sour and got in with a bad crowd. He got a job as roustabout for a carnival that came through a couple of years later, but I wasn’t sure exactly whatever came of him until he showed up here again a couple of years ago, and we got reacquainted. I think Wilbur mentioned working with him on the carnival circuit for a while at some point.”

Albert Jones lapsed into silence then looked up. “You’re wondering about me, aren’t you? What happened to me?”

I nodded and he continued. “I finished school and then went to Grambling, which is where my dad went. I did all right there. Played football and tried to leave faith behind. I stopped going to church and got involved in the civil rights movement. That became my God, freedom and self will. I went up North raising money and recruiting Freedom Riders and sleeping with every white woman I could. There were a lot of them, too, and I’ve always wondered how many black kids I left behind.”

He looked at me. “I’m not proud of that part, but back then...”

I nodded. “Everything was crazy back then,” I said. “How did you ever make it back to being a pastor again?”

He laughed. “Ever read The Hound of Heaven?”

I nodded. “As I remember, it’s a long poem, or maybe short prose set to poetic meter.”

“Yes. Well, my own celestial hound just wouldn’t let me be. Can you keep a secret?” He saw the look on my face and added, “It has nothing to do with your investigation, believe me. On the other hand, it would shock some of my good church folk around here.”

I shrugged and he took that for assent. “I ended up in South Dakota at a Benedictine monastery. It was the only way I could get away from the women. I mean, it got so bad I was losing weight.”

I chuckled. “God give me chastity, but not yet!” I said, quoting a famous Catholic bishop.

“Exactly.” He was smiling. “Can you imagine what some of my folk might think about that! Yet, it was the most peaceful time of my life, and I almost stayed there. I loved the daily hours, the times for prayer, and I even came to really get into the Mass.”

“Why didn’t you stay?”

He smiled. “The abbot was a very wise man. He knew right off I didn’t belong there, but he let me find that out on my own. This is where I am called, Doctor. This is where God wants me and where I belong. But, I still write to the brothers, and every once in a while I go there for retreat. I draw a great deal of nourishment from that well.”

“My friends call me Jazz,” I told him.

He thought about that for a moment. “Mine call me Albert,” he answered and offered me his hand. I took it.

We were silent for a moment. “Is there anything else?” he asked.

I looked back over my notes and noticed something. “Did I miss someone?” I asked. “You said there were six of you and I only have five down. You, Wilbur, and the three Luthers.”

“Yes, there were six of us. The other was Edward…Edward Posey. I forgot him, but people always do.”

“I’m not sure I understand.”

“Edward is one of those people who others don’t seem to see,” he told me. “We called him Eddie, and even though he was the youngest of us, he looked like Wilbur or Luther—Slide Luther. That was part of the problem, I guess. People always confused him with Smiley or Slide. Nor was he one to toot his own horn. He seemed to like being anonymous.”

“Whatever happened to him?”

“No one seems to know.” There was something in the way he said this that told me he was hiding something. I decided to come back to it later, if necessary.

“So he wasn’t here for the birthday celebration?”

“No, I’m pretty sure he wasn’t. I think I would have noticed. I did see Slide here, but I didn’t get to visit with him much. Of course, I doubt he would have made much effort to talk to me just then.”

“Why is that?” I asked. “Did you have a falling out?”

“No, nothing like that. He and I are friends and we visit from time to time. There were just a lot of people here, and at these things the pastor is always surrounded by people trying to get a word with him. Slide came here to talk to Wilbur and I had the impression he was keeping a low profile.”

“Did he talk with Wilbur?” I asked.

“I’m not sure. I never noticed them together, but then there were a lot of people needing my attention.” He shrugged.

I nodded. “I think that’s all I need for right now. I really appreciate your cooperation. We will want to talk to you more when you have a lawyer.”

He looked at me and nodded. “That’s really not necessary now,” he said. “I don’t think you’ll try to railroad me. Get your friend and I’ll talk.”

I shook my head. “As a friend, I wouldn’t advise it. I’m not worried about me or Dee, but Spinks. No. You need to insist on a lawyer until we get the mess he made cleared up.”

“A most unpleasant man,” Jones agreed. “What’s he afraid of? Or is it a racial issue with him?”

“I’m not sure, but he’s scared and that makes him dangerous,” I said. “Let me talk to his boss and see what I can do. In the meantime, insist on a lawyer.”

I left to find a phone to call Lonnie. Dee saw me and headed my way. I told him Spinks was way out of line, and I was going to phone Little Rock. He looked at his watch and grinned. “Good luck. I just happen to know Lonnie is on the golf course this afternoon,” he told me. “He hates to be interrupted.”

“Maybe he got rained out,” I said. “I need to talk to him right away.”