Those Bones Are Not My Child (68 page)

“As you know, the Freedom of Information Act applies to federal records only. Access to state and municipal records depends on local laws, and they vary from place to place. But since the FOIA passed in 1966, the onus is on the federal government to justify secrecy, not on the applicant to prove that the requested information is a matter of life and death. But there’s a catch.”

“Turn up the sound.”

“Under the Privacy Act of 1974, requests for files can be rejected on the grounds that the information sought might be detrimental to other persons—that is, might invade someone else’s privacy. The same holds for state and local records. Access can be restricted or denied if the information one requests mentions others. A just enough restriction—and handy too, because it justifies massive deletions if rejection on grounds of privacy is challenged. In the Atlanta case, then, the shrewd thing for the STOP organization to do is to file on behalf of everyone who could possibly be mentioned in the records.”

“Got to have information to get information, sounds like to me,” the former SAFE worker said.

“That’s the truth.”

When the lights were switched on, Bingham helped the projectionist shift things from the cart to the footstool the moving crew had left after clearing out the carriage house. On a signal neither he nor Hazel Blanchette caught, another group of people got up to leave.

“Counting the spoons, Miss Lady?”

“Laugh if you want to, Bingham, but damn if the salad tongs ain’t missing.” When she turned around to seek out the culprit, she saw the few left in the carriage house all seated on the floor, watching the TV screen and the movie screen at the same time.

“On the UHF monitor,” the projectionist called out, “is the tape Miss B. J. said to put on, said one of you might recognize the Holmes woman.”

“Holmes?” Zala and Alice Moore exchanged a look. “Nancy Dorr Holmes?”

A panel discussion was being broadcast on the smaller screen against a background of commando gunfire on the movie screen. The wife of an admiral, the sister of a mafioso, and the daughter of a Klansman were discussing domestic violence. Zala had the feeling that the three hadn’t been in the same studio; that they’d been spliced together, perhaps by error or not.

“People’s lives,” someone moaned in the dark.

“She came all the way from Santa Cruz to Atlanta,” Alice Moore said, “but Innis stole the limelight. Maybe we’ll hear her story now. She claims her father and his friends are killing the children.”

Miss Hazel touched Bingham’s arm and whispered, “I changed my mind. Let’s get out of here. Another hour of this and we’ll be as crazy as forty ugly yard dogs barking at the moon.”

They wheeled the cart out between Gaston and Spence, who along with the other men had turned their attention to the muzzle flashes of the mercenary training camp when one of the panelists interrupted the show host to exclaim that her efforts to have a career had been trivialized for the whole twenty-five years of her marriage.

“Did you catch that? She said James Earl Ray was driving the setup car and her father was driving the ’65 white Mustang reported to the MLK commission.”

“Yeah, by the very witness they locked up in a state asylum. Who is this Holmes woman?”

“She tried to see Commissioner Brown,” Alice Moore said. “She writes to everyone. I can collect her letters.” She reached for Zalas hand. I’ll try.”

Alice Moore had wanted to be alone with Zala to compare notes, but there’d been no opportunity for privacy. Now the navy wife was talking again about life on the base, and Zala was resisting being pulled away from the screen.

Alice Moore held fast to Zala’s hand. Home, she would have to go past the room. The door was half open, half closed. That, so far, was the best she’d been able to do. But she’d gotten the bed right. The sheets and the spread tucked tight at the bottom and sides, top folded back twice to a three-inch band underneath the five on top, and tucked tightly too. But he was no longer there to bounce the ball on the bed and say it wasn’t right yet, ripping the whole thing apart and flinging the bedclothes to the floor.

The other wives and her in-laws had been confident that a child was the answer. A baby would straighten her out, settle her down, teach her to fit in. Years and years watching the child, contorted, making herself small to slip under the covers without wrinkling them. Night after night, the girl flattened in bed, a few hours relief when Alice came in to loosen the covers, then returned to tighten them before reveille. Till she’d found the ball in his closet, held it over the burner, tore loose both the beds, took her freedom. And lost her child.

Zala was trying to shake her hand loose. Alice Moore let go long enough to find a clean tissue. On the video screen, one of the women was nervously scratching her leg. The mafiosa woman had taken out a new identity, but as she bent down, part of her face was on camera.

“Listen,” someone on the other side of Zala said, “turn off the movie and rewind to where the Holmes woman names the names. I’ve got ‘vice-president of the United Klans of America,’ ‘FBI agent,’ and her father. But let’s get the names.”

“Zala?”

“We move forward. Compare notes with each other on the route. What’s coming up next on the screen?”

“Movie clips,” the projectionist said. “Some footage from documentaries. Then some stuff we haven’t seen—rites, ceremonies. ‘The Great Monk Comes Out of the Cave.’ ‘The Imperial Dragon and the Black Beast.’ Stuff like that.”

“Well, if the Holmes woman is through, could we run something else on the TV monitor? All this navy wife wants to talk about is her career, and the Italian broad ain’t said shit anyway.”

“Zala?”

But Zala had gotten up with Alice Moore, who was leading her to the door talking a mile a minute.

A light drizzle sifted down through the trees and dotted the crumpled napkins on the butcher cart. The two elderly people patted each other affectionately as they hugged goodbye.

“Take care now, Big Boy.”

“You too, Miss Lady.”

Miss Hazel had taken her eyes off Mason in his white gym suit for no more than a minute, she was sure. But now, as she ducked under the trellis, there he was around the side of the carriage house stretching and kicking, dressed completely in black. The little woman whom everyone seemed to defer to but who didn’t strike Miss Hazel as the leadership type had changed her clothes too. The others were carrying out maps, charts, and equipment to the cars around back. They were off to something risky. She could feel an electricity in the air that wasn’t altogether the weather. Parlor games indeed.

In the lower hallway of the Webbers’ home, Miss Hazel Blanchette’s eyes traveled along the telephone wire tacked to the baseboard. There was no one expecting her in New Orleans, no one she could think of to phone. Home, she’d lock the courtyard gate, go in to her apartment, open the shutters, turn on the fan; then there’d be no other task to perform, nothing that would make any difference in the lives of Black people. And that shouldn’t be.

She locked the Dutch doors to the breezeway, then headed toward the kitchen for the final washup. “I didn’t come into this world to be some miscellaneous Negress,” she said. “It’s time for a change.” From upstairs came the sound of her nibs coming down with Miss Hazel’s check.

D
etective Dowell dialed the Hyatt, then turned to check on the progress Spencer’s wife and Preston, the narc from Florida he’d been teamed with, were making. The place was a jumping after-hours joint during the week but half-empty on Sundays. A few drowsy couples leaned on the kitchen-counter bar blinking at the colored lights, staring at the red carpet, watching the clock in a ship’s wheel over the microwave oven. The barmaid Marzala was talking with pulled a bag from the rack of chips, peanuts, and pork skins and came from behind the bar with her drink. She handed the bag to a listless couple on the dance floor.

“Look, baby,” she said, winding the red plastic straw from her collins around her finger, “the Marquette Club is where you should be asking those questions.” She slipped the straw free with a snap and immediately wound it again. “Sure the Silver Dollar and them other bars near Greyhound get hassled. But what’s it mean, and who cares? What are they going to do, walk around the corner to the blood bank to get up the scratch for a lawyer? Now, the Marquette’s another deal altogether. Hassle them and it’s repercussions.” She sipped her drink, then set it down and resumed winding the bent-flat straw.

“See, cops don’t go in the Marquette Club there on Hunter, or MLK Drive, like they say now. Cops go in the Cameo, show the pictures, roust a few drunks, throw some muscle around, and leave. Cops try questioning people in the Marquette about the children? No way. That place is strictly them men with fat wallets and some classy fags, a few of them sissies you see working the corner near Ashby too. But hear me, you don’t want to go in there alone, get your feelings hurt. Lotta slipping and sliding in the Marquette—dark glasses, costumes, not using
your real name, the whole bit.” She waved greetings to a couple coming in past the man at the door.

“I’ll tell you another thing, since you come recommended.” She whipped the straw free with a snap, then leaned down.

Dowell stepped from the alcove and collided with a boy who looked too young to be there. The boy gave him a look and glanced at the barmaid, having caught Dowell eavesdropping. “Be surprised how many buffet parties going on in this city, baby. Black, white, men, women, you name it, the whole bit. That’s why they gots to nail somebody quick. Too much quiet money changing hands, and tempers be rising.”

Kool and the Gang drowned out the rest of the barmaid’s discussion. The boy, whom Preston had followed from the bumper pool table, was at the jukebox, punching buttons. Then someone picked up at the Hyatt.

“Spencer party calling in for messages,” Dowell said, feeling foolish. “… Then have ‘Spencer’ paged in the ballroom—table 23. I’ll hold.”

The boy feeding the juke was definitely too young to be there. He was combing his hair with both hands, watching Preston out of the side of his eye crease a five-dollar bill lengthwise.

“You don’t say much for my money,” Preston said, wrapping the bill around his knuckles.

The boy ignored him for a minute while he folded a blue and white bandanna, then tied it around his head and shoved his hair back. “You wanna give me a lotta shit, man, and the kid don’t need your money or your shit. Five dollars a question was the deal. But you think you funky asking ten things at once.” The boy passed in front of the phone alcove going back to bumper pool. Preston looked over at Dowell and shrugged, then followed the boy.

In his ear Dowell was told that someone was coming to the phone. He waited, watching the barmaid, nearly a foot taller than Marzala, slide off the stool to confide.

It had been years since Dowell had heard “buffet party” in a conversation. He knew the term from the old records his father had owned, rough country blues from the twenties. Anything goes at a buffet: the erotic, the exotic, the low-down and kinky. Deputy Eldrin Bell could fill him in on places in the present. Dowell’s father could tell him about the Marquette Club’s past. He hadn’t thought about it in years, but
knew its story; oldest gay club in America, established around World War I.

His parents had come to Atlanta from Tulsa around that time, their business bombed in ’21 in the so-called Tulsa Race Riot. It had been a series of military maneuvers, the way his parents told it. The Negro vets of Tulsa would not surrender their weapons what with riots all over the country being the welcome-home the GIs got for fighting for democracy, but under the French flag because the presence of Negroes with guns in the American army was deemed not in the country’s best interests. Pops and the others had stationed themselves at the jail to protect a colored man from a lynch mob. Routed and mad, whites had invaded Greenwood, the enviable business district known as the Negro Wall Street—burning, looting, shooting, killing.

His father would open the old trunk sometimes and remove the top tray where he kept the old picture postcards that read, “Running the Niggers Out of Tulsa, OK.” They’d begun circulating the week after Greenwood was bombed from the air, private planes commandeered by the police, the 101st Airborne flown in with the dynamite.

Dowell felt a spasm in his gut and leaned away from the wall to clear his throat. Someone was on the line. He had to identify himself twice before he got the report that Lafayette had tracked a caravan of cars to the Chattahoochee and that his team should spot-check the McDaniel-Glenn and Lakewood-Stewart areas. A lot of traffic was going over the route in these areas.

“Look,” Preston said, following the boy back to the jukebox. “You got me wrong.” He’d acquired a pamphlet since last he’d passed the phone alcove.

“You make up your mind, man. You in here to promote a deal, talk to somebody else. The kid don’t deal in product, only tips. Dope ain’t no part of this thing anyway. That either,” he added, slapping at the pamphlet in Preston’s hand. “Ass is the deal. Candy-ass Asslanta, man. You wanna know something? You need to go see
The Night of the Generals
. That’ll tell you what you want to know. All kinds of crazy people mixed up in the thing and they got titles. You sew up your asshole good and go looking. You’ll find the killers.”

“That’s worth five dollars, ‘Go see a movie’?”

“Worth ten, but you ain’t listening. I gave you the whole case right there, but you fucking stupid anyway,” the boy said, plucking the bill
from Preston’s fist and running out of the place before the narc could move.

“Son of a gun,” the man at the door said when the boy sped by. He looked to Preston for explanation.

Preston turned to Dowell, shrugged, and riffled the pages of one of the pamphlets he’d found.

Dowell looked at the phone and pursed his lips. He’d called the precinct at 1700 hours to make sure the duplicating machine on loan was operating in case Spencer came into possession of tapes that needed copying. The question now, as he fingered the belt buckle bearing the number of the Georgia Penal Code that governed most of his decisions, was whether to go home and catch a nap; continue patrolling with the others, which he had not originally planned to do; or check in at the station. He had a court case in the morning and needed to pick up a lab report and sign a weapon out of the property room. And too, he needed to leave a message for two fellow officers who’d asked for his help. They’d been called before Internal Affairs after writing up four senior officers they’d charged with misconduct. Dowell had not understood the importance of what they’d told him until that afternoon, when he learned that the man the senior officers had been patrolling in off-duty hours was the Reverend C. T. Vivian, founder-director of the Anti-Klan Network.