War at Home: A Smokey Dalton Novel (13 page)

“What do you see it as?”

“Trouble,” he said.
“Most the time, folks around here just don’t notice us. Then the militant kids come along, and suddenly, it’s a black-white thing.”

“You don’t have racial problems in New Haven?”

He looked at me like I’d grown a third head.
“Where’re you from?”

“Chicago,” I said.

“You live rich, there, right, you and your kid?
Buying Yale and all, trying to be white?”

I tried to think of a way to answer without letting him know that I bristled at his tone.

“We ain’t rich,” Jimmy said.
“He got here on
—
whatsit? — school money.”

“Scholarship.” The bailiff gave him a tolerant look.
“We been seeing all kinds of stuff. They say New Haven’s protected from the — y’know — violence and stuff because the kids here are rich and from good families.
Me, I think it’s that university president, Brewster, you know? He stops stuff just as it starts. And there’s still trouble.
But you don’t hear about it none.”

“How could I find out?”

“Your kid in trouble?” he asked.

“I didn’t think so at first, but I’m not so sure now,” I said.
“He’s been involved in the antiwar movement, and his ‘special master’ said he was also in the Black Students Alliance.”

“Them BSAY kids.” The bailiff shook his head.

“They’ve come through the courthouse?”

“Not except to put up bail money for protestors.
And mostly, they been outside, talking about how unfair the system is.
Like they know.”

I let that pass. Just because a black student got a privileged education didn’t mean he was privileged.

“You said I wouldn’t hear about the problems,” I said.

“Town’s buttoned
up.
You noticed that, right?
Read the
Crow
?”

“The
Crow
?”

He nodded. He was looking at both of us now, not paying attention to his job.

“I’ve only been in town since last night,” I said.

“It’s supposed to be our paper,” he said, meaning the black paper.
“But you read it and you won’t understand it.
It’s all black businesses and how good stuff is.
That’s New Haven.
Don’t say bad stuff about nothing.”

“Even if it is bad,” I said.

“Especially if it’s bad.” His voice was close to a whisper.

“So how do I find out what’s going on?”

“You got to know folks, and you don’t.”

I sighed.
“All I want to do is find Daniel.”

“Best thing, you go through the reports, ask some questions.
The paper’ll help you so long as they ain’t on record.
Nobody’ll go on record.”

“Not even you,” I said.

“A job is a job.” He seemed to remember his.
He resumed his military posture in front of the door.
“But use your eyes.
Look who
’
s got what jobs around here.
And how come no one says nothing to them masters of yours.”

I shuddered at the phrase. They weren’t my masters.

“They have the paper at the library?” I asked.

“Just go down to the offices.
They’re on Goffe, the
hundred
block,” he said.
“And there’s one other place you might want to check out. There’s a place on Washington where kids live, mostly townies, but I heard stuff.
You can’t miss it when you work here, you know.”

“Do you know exactly where?”

“No,” he said.
“Just ask, though.
They been calling it a ‘Teen-Inn’ locally.
Won’t be in the papers, but the neighbors’ll know.”

“And they’ll talk to me?”

His gaze met mine.
“It’s not so much how you look. It’s that you don’t live here.
You gotta tell them this kid is missing, maybe in trouble. They’re not gonna feel no compassion, but the fewer troublemakers we got in this town, the better.”

His tone had shifted. There was an underlying tone of anger, and it felt like he directed it at me, as if I were in the wrong for even talking to him.

“Thank you for your help,” I said.

“Give me his name,” he said, “and I’ll keep an eye out.
You can check back if you don’t find him.”

“Daniel Kirkland.” Jimmy spoke up.
He, apparently, hadn’t heard the undertone.
Or maybe he was ignoring it.

“Don’t sound familiar,” the bailiff said, “but I’ll keep my ears open.”

“Thank you,” I said.

“You checked the Panther roster, right? He ain’t with them.”

I hadn’t checked it, but I couldn’t imagine it.
Of course
,
I couldn’t imagine jeopardizing a full scholarship anywhere either.
“No, I haven’t.”

“He ain’t one of these guys, but that don’t mean he don’t know them.
These kids’re playing at stuff they don’t understand.”

I thought of the Panthers I’d seen in Chicago.
I never had the sense they were playing at anything.

“Thanks again,” I said, and put my hand on Jimmy’s shoulder, to lead him out of the corridor.

“You be careful,” the bailiff said.
“Just because stuff don’t get talked about here, don’t mean it don’t happen.”

I appreciated the warning anyway.
Just because the town was smaller than I was used to didn’t make it any safer.

I was glad Jimmy heard the warning as well.

He needed to remember to keep his eyes open, just like the rest of us.

ELEVEN

Jimmy and I waited for Malcolm on a bench across from Yale.
After twenty minutes, I sent Jimmy off to get us ice cream cones, since I was sweltering in the June heat.
My wool suit itched, and even though I wasn’t wearing the jacket, I was extremely uncomfortable.
I couldn’t wait for Malcolm’s return so that I could go back to the motel and change clothes.

Malcolm arrived from the Elm
S
treet side, walking toward us from our right. He was upwind from us, and as he got close, I caught the sickly sweet
odor
of marijuana.
Apparently Jimmy did too, because he slid sideways, away from me, obviously anticipating my reaction.

“Sorry I’m late,” Malcolm said as he reached us.

“Smells like you found something,” I said, taking the last bite of my cone, balling up the napkin and holding it in my right fist.

Malcolm sighed.
“It’s not like it seems.”

“Oh, really?” I asked. “How is it?”

“I didn’t smoke anything.”

I raised my eyebrows and looked at him.
Even though the smell was strong, his eyes were clear—not unfocused or bloodshot.

“What happened then?”

Jimmy leaned forward, elbows on his knees, watching both of us as he nurtured his cone.
White ice cream dripped down the sides, onto his fingers and pants.
Eventually, I would have to find a Laundromat.

Malcolm looked all around us.
Then he crouched, getting as close to us as he could so that he wouldn’t have to speak too loudly.

“Hooked up with some students in there.” Malcolm pointed toward the arch that we had gone through.
“Let them think I was dealing, you know?”

My fingers tightened on that napkin. That certainly wouldn’t have been my approach.

“Told them I was establishing my turf, and I was wondering who would need my services.” He grinned. He seemed very pleased with himself.
“I figured if Daniel was into bad stuff, these guys would know about it.”

Logical.
Jimmy bit his lower lip and looked at me.
He remembered my reaction from over a year ago when I found him running drugs for his brother.
Jimmy was probably expecting me to yell at Malcolm.

“And did they?”

Malcolm shook his head.
“These white boys are really laid back, you know? They don’t care who knows their business.
I got five names and ten different places to go.
I went to a couple, found out some of those guys were gone for the summer, but a few were hanging around.
They were in Silliman College, which took me a while to find.
No one wanted to tell me where the college was. They told me the names of the guys, but when they found out that I wanted to go to the college and I wasn’t a Yalie, they got really worried.”

“Yeah,” I said softly.
“So did you find the place?”

“It’s that way.” He nodded toward Elm, the direction we had come from.
“A few blocks down, but it’s hard to tell because everything’s fenced off.
Like they don’t want anyone to see in their precious little houses or buildings or whatever.”

“They don’t,” I said.

He sat down cross-legged, apparently tired of crouching.
“Once I got in the college, I found six guys smoking weed under one of the trees. Like no one cared if anyone saw them. I was freaked.”

His language was looser than usual, so he probably inhaled some of that weed.
I didn’t say anything, though.
Jimmy munched on his ice cream cone, his gaze going back and forth from me to Malcolm.

“I made like I was interested in buying, but I didn’t have any cash on me.
I strung them on for a while, but these guys were so focused on money.
They almost didn’t talk to me when I told them I’d have to come back to my apartment to get some.”

“But they did talk to you,” I said.

“A little.” He ran a hand through his hair.
“They knew Daniel.”

That caught my attention.
“They did?
Did they know where he is?”

“They
haven’t seen him since winter break, whenever the hell that is.”

“Christmas,” I said.
“Sometime in there.”

“They didn’t like him.
He liked weed now and then, but he didn’t buy
,
and he wasn’t into the other junk.”

“What other junk?” I asked.

“These guys sold some acid
,
too, and some ludes.
The stuff looked better than the stuff I’ve seen in Chicago.”

I decided to let that pass.

Jimmy crunched the last of his cone, then licked off his fingers.
He wiped them dry on his pants.
He kept his gaze on us, looking worried.

“Daniel was pretty straight.
Most of the guys hadn’t even seen him drunk, which I guess is unusual here.
And he’s righteous — their word, and they didn’t mean it nice.
They meant it like he was holier-than-thou.
They thought he was a real jerk.”

We agreed on that
,
then, but probably not for the same reasons.
“What did they tell you?”

“That there was some trouble with a girl.
Rhonda or Rhondi or something like that.
Back in the fall.”

“What kind of trouble?” I asked.

Malcolm shrugged. “They wouldn’t say.
Something about Coeducation Week.”

“That master guy talked about that,” Jimmy said.

I nodded. “I heard about the week, just not Daniel’s involvement in it.”

“Sounded pretty
heavy, but no one knew exactly what he was doing.
Said he flirted with the SDS but left it for some other organization.
Said he got real militant
,
too, by the end, screaming about rights and privilege
s
and the way that
the
system had to change before anybody got the rights they deserved
,
which didn’t play well with these guys.”

“You’d think it would,” I said, “given what they were doing.”

Malcolm shook his head.
“I got the sense that they weren’t into any kind of revolution except the one going on in their own head
s
. They were doing more than weed because they forgot about me after a while. Except one guy, who really wanted his money.
He started screaming at me, and I got out of there.”

“So we can’t talk to them again.”

“
I
can’t talk to them again,” Malcolm said, “and I doubt they’d let you get near them.
But I think I got most of what I needed from them.
They haven’t seen Daniel since he left campus. But they gave me a few partial names. The girl’s and a couple of other people’s. They think some of the guys are still around, so I’m going to see if I can find them.”