Those Bones Are Not My Child (72 page)

On the sidewalk, a redheaded man setting up a tripod glanced over at the car, then kicked the legs open and screwed his eye to the viewfinder. Further down the street, his partner was pulling a measuring tape along the curb. “That guy is wired,” Preston said.

Nothing about the street that Dowell could see warranted surveying, assaying, protecting, or casing. If the one in the gutter was that obviously wired there’d be trouble, a sign of a backup team somewhere.

“You ought to run them in on GP. If they’re undercover, they ought to be sent back to the academy for a brushup.” Preston turned in his seat to watch the surveyor team from the rear window. “What kind of scam do you think that is? Speaking of scams, how do you think this Abscam case’ll turn out? A good lawyer should be able to get them off with entrapment.”

“Which reminds me,” Dowell interrupted, “I need to find a phone.”

“Well, you got lots to pick from,” Preston said, taking his hand from his face long enough to make a sweep of the area.
SISTER MARTHA READS … JESUS SAVES … CORRECT CHANGE ONLY AFTER 10 P.M … THE NIGHT ATTENDANT DOES NOT KNOW THE COMBINATION TO THE SAFE. ELECTRIC PACHINKO … BEER BY THE KEG … TOPLESS A-GO-GO … MOTEL ROOMS—SPECIAL RATES … ADULT BOOKSTORE
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Dingy pennants strung around the used-car lot hung limp in the April night, and Dowell on the phone wished he’d kept to his original schedule and was home with Rose. A van cruised by and the driver slowed down as Dowell dropped another dime. The van not one of Inquiry’s, he turned his back.

He left a message at the station house for the officers to call him at home. He felt duty bound to back them up. He’d not been listening to their troubles, had mistakenly assumed that the “preacher” who’d been the target of the zealous senior officers was Reverend Carroll of STOP and not Reverend Vivian of the anti-Klan group. The junior officers would have to watch their backs. Payback could be more deadly than anything Internal Affairs meted out. On occasion Dowell had been advised to take time off, to go to Quantico, Virginia, where the FBI offered courses, until things blew over. And then he’d be extra wary of any new partner they assigned him on his return.

“That Abscam business,” Preston was saying as they sped off. “Hard to say no when everyone else is saying yeah. How can you know they’re in cahoots setting you up? Brainwashing is what it is more than entrapment. That would be my defense. Brainwashing.”

Dowell ran his hand over his belt buckle, shaking his head. “I once took a course at Quantico on brainwashing. The instructor had been with Army Intelligence in Korea.”

“Sweet deal, that place,” Preston sighed. “I lay up there sometimes. I’ve never connected with any course that was useful. Know what I mean? But take the situation with Logan’s kid. That’s brainwashing. The kid drops out of school ’cause his buddies are running around in sheets with begging bowls and they talk him into it. They’re already brainwashed. Pretty soon he can’t think straight. They’re all saying the same thing, so he goes along with it. Were you there when Logan was telling about the time he almost had him?”

“I didn’t hear that part.”

“His wife spotted the kid with a bunch of other kooks near a bus terminal. I forget what city they were in at the time. The kid’s eighteen, so what can they do? The desk sergeant advises them to swear out a warrant and charge theft. You know, the family car, the tuition checks. A detective tells them to wait at the hotel while he makes the collar. They wait and they wait. Finally they catch the detective at the station and he gives them some song and dance. But you and I know, same as he pocketed Logan’s check, he had them kooks empty their bowls in his hand and bye-bye.”

“I don’t know if I know that,” Dowell said, pulling into the gate of the Atlanta Junior College campus. “He paid the officer to arrest his son?”

“Aw, come on, Dowell, you act like you’ve never heard of that before.”

They bumped over the speed breaker and Preston slid into the dashboard. Dowell reached for the booklets.

“Who’s he?”

A man had stepped from the campus security booth. He bent down to look through the windshield, then sauntered over, looking from Preston to Dowell to the make of the car.

“Friend of mine,” Dowell said. “Used to own the newsstand in my neighborhood until they ran him out of business. You want the magazines you need, you’ve got to buy the ones they want you to sell. He said no.”

“Muscle?”

“Porn ain’t a polite business, Preston.”

“Same in my neck of the woods—same all over, I guess.”

The security guard stopped where the light from the booth ended and planted his hands on his hips, barring entrance to the grounds.

“Family man,” Dowell said. “So what do you say to your daughters when they drop by the stand with their friends and see those magazines?”

“Some women like that kind of thing,” Preston said.

Dowell got out and slammed the door.

“Am I glad to see you, Jess!” The security guard shook Dowell’s hand and walked him away from the car. “Things seem to be taking a nasty turn and I’m here all alone—my partner’s on the highway side of the campus. Won’t do me much good if they come back. Got a make on those yet?” He steered Dowell toward Area Tech, the vocational college that shared the grounds with the junior college. A plane from a nearby base was parked there. It gave the quad a movie-set look.

“I was hoping you had something, Jake.”

“What I have is the shakes. Pretty weird, this delivery business, wouldn’t you say?”

“I was hoping you’d say, like, where these pamphlets came from?”

The guard unbuttoned his shirt and pulled out a copy. Same sloppy typing, hastily placed staples, a few pages upside down and slanted margins lost in the cropping.

“When I came on duty Friday night this place was a mess. They missed this one. I found it stuck under the propeller. I guess they were so busy keeping tabs on the Iranian students they didn’t do a good job in collection. But I say it’s the skinheads. And they could come back.”

“Jake, I wonder if we could get together on some of this,” Dowell said, following the guard around to the back of the plane. “They were delivered on Friday?” He watched Jake’s Adam’s apple ride up and down. “And was it the APD or the college administrations that scooped them up and fingered a group of students?”

The guard pulled out his cigarettes and thought back for a minute. “I came on duty and found a bunch of new officers I’ve never seen before. That happens sometimes. We don’t like the meddling, but it happens. You never know which bureau is coming on board to keep an eye on the Iranian students. Sometimes Immigration, sometimes the APD Intelligence boys.”

“Iranian students … But you don’t think they put these booklets out. You say the skinheads. Who are they?” Dowell shook his head no when the pack was offered. Two skinny joints were in the pack. “You know I don’t partake.”

They leaned against the cool gray metal and examined the how-to manuals again, how to take over the city before it was too late. In the four pages that preceded the how was the what and the why. The facts of the case were mixed with some of the better-known rumors, together with high-flying charges that were new to Dowell, one being that a high-ranking APD official had had insurance policies on some of the victims, kids that he often entertained on his boat up at Lake Lanier; further, that he was the lover of one of the slain men.

“Thrown together,” the guard said. “That’s what I make of it. Thrown together and tossed from a speeding car is what I hear. No deliveries were made in the northeast, just our side of town. And the patrol cars rushed in so soon after to gather them up there’s no way they could have missed catching them, except of course they did. Then the second bunch of cars, sneaker cars, drove in and thoroughly ruined my day. Talking about ‘Pick this up,’ ‘Pick that up,’ like I’m the janitor on their payroll. I had to set them straight. I don’t care what rank you hold at your bureau, it cuts no ice with me. You know what I mean? That goes for this security job too. Fuck this job.”

“Can we reason this out together, Jake?” Dowell slowly turned pages.

“Sounds like our people, don’t it? Until you read it aloud and then it don’t. It’s the skinheads, I’m telling you. Stockpiling weapons and ready for war.”

“Skinheads?”

“Those motorcycle gangs that shave their heads and paint swastikas. You know, busted up the rock concert last month. Gotta watch those guys. But who’s to watch them white boys? Administration too busy watching Black folks on faculty. Bureau guys like I said jumping out of the trees every time one of these Iranians yells ‘Down with the Shah.’ I thought that cat was dead and buried, but once a week somebody’s got a sheet strung across the quad demanding his head. I come to work, no telling who’s in my chair with his feet up, taking pictures, taking names, cops stepping all on each other and trying to lord it over me. I ain’t confused. And I ain’t impressed with their badges.”

“What’s the college’s stand on all of this?”

“Mum’s the word is their policy. They think the Black faculty is into it. But I say no. There’s no mind here.” He slapped the booklet,
then took a toke, holding in the smoke and gulping. “I’ve been studying this thing. And it’s not us. The language is too dippy. Who calls Maynard “Jackson”? When have we ever run around talking about stringing somebody up? And then they say near the end that Black folks need to be rounded up for their own protection. Dead giveaway. It’s the skinheads. I’ve seen some of the flyers they put out trying to recruit punk rock groups. It’s them all right.” He buttoned the booklet back up in his shirt.

“They hang around here?”

“Are you crazy? These students bust their humps all day and don’t want no shit when they come here. Those skinheads would be grease smears before they could even hand out one of these. That’s why they threw them and kept on trucking. Nazis, Jess. Dead giveaway when they start talking that roundup talk. I wish somebody would come up to me talking about rounding up folks for our own protection.”

“Any connection between this and Innis? What’s the word on the wire?”

“They ran his ass out of town is my guess, ran him out before he got too much stardust in his eyes. He should’ve brought his own cameras along. People here ain’t going to let an outsider get but so big in this case.”

“What about his witness, his evidence? Heard anything about the boyfriend?”

“If you mean the girl’s cabdriver boyfriend, he’s back on the street. So I guess the evidence didn’t add up to nothing. You the cop, Jess, you tell me.”

“I’m sorry to say I don’t know anything.”

Jake drew on the joint, eyeing the shorter man for a minute before a slow grin bloomed into a sly smile, then erupted into signifying laughter. “I hear you, Jess. ’Cause the one thing this little book got right—and it’s my guess it’s the reason the blue boys were grabbing these up—is that they’re on to that pal of yours.”

“Pal of mine?” Dowell waited for Jake to stop laughing. “Who’s that?” He held his face still, but that only sent Jake into another giggling fit. “I don’t suppose you want to whisper his name in my ear?”

“You suppose right. Mean a bastard as he is, I wouldn’t even give you his initials for a pound loaf. Aww, Jess, I know I owe you one. You
bailed me out and I ain’t forgotten. But you’re the detective. If I know and these skinheads know, you’ve got to know. So get him. Run these Nazis in and get him. Then we can all get some sleep.”

“You’re telling me that there’s a connection between the skinheads and … my pal? Now think, Jake,” Dowell said. “Consider the source.”

“Like you say, all right. But I find it real interesting that they seem to know more about him than you do.”

Dowell heard the beeper sound in the booth. The guard started in that direction, then waited as if he wanted to be prodded. Smoke streamed out of his mouth and he sucked it up into his nostrils, a trick that never failed to stump Dowell. He was not thinking fast enough. What Jake had said about the pamphlet’s authors trying to stir the Black community to revolt seemed right—it was in line with attempts at manipulation by groups he’d seen interviewed on screen. And more than once he’d heard talk in the squad room that members of the Charles Manson gang were in Atlanta on a helter-skelter mission. But what made Jake give credence to the “pal” ’s involvement, given the source?

“You don’t think you’re being had?” was as far as Dowell got before Jake moved off to catch the beeper. Dowell followed him across the quad. He waited while Jake picked up, looked around at the bushes, the dim-lit buildings, the stranger in the crumpled clothes leaning against the red Camaro, then shook his head no, no deal, no more discussion. Duty was calling. Jake immediately left the booth and headed toward the highway side of the campus. Nothing in his gait suggested an emergency or a situation Dowell should wait to hear about.

So Dowell walked slowly back to the car. Maybe Rose could get more information from Jake’s wife, her bowling partner. And maybe it was time for him to go down to the station house and poke around, see what the word was on these booklets and on the skinheads and on this “pal.” It didn’t take great intelligence to figure out who was meant—the boat up at Lake Lanier the key clue—but Dowell put no store in rumors.

Preston looked eager. “Something?”

“I need to find a phone.”

“You know, Dowell, with half the reward you could buy you some AT&T shares,” Preston joked, tossing the car keys to the stodgy detective. “I still say we ought to pursue the leads I’ve already got from the
Gooch kid. The right-wing angle’s only one of the patterns. The easier angle is the one you guys keep overlooking. It’d be a cinch to collar the perverts. No one’s going to let you uncover the Klan angle, so let’s go for the easy money.”

“The easy money,” Dowell said, his voice flat, and over the sound of the motor he could hear the visitor from Florida making a noise in his throat, something between a grunt, a gargle, and a groan of exasperation. Dowell backed the car out onto Stewart Avenue and spun the wheel hard, jerking the bucket seat off its track.