War at Home: A Smokey Dalton Novel (19 page)

“Are you going to tell me why you’re here?” I asked.
“Or do I call Drew?”

“There was a bank robbery in Wallingford this morning,” Prauss said.
“Crooks got away with
twenty-seven
grand that don’t belong to them.”

“And the guys who robbed the place were black?”

“Probably,” Sanford said.

“Probably.” I had to struggle to keep my voice even.

“They were wearing ski masks.”

I made myself breathe evenly.
“And you’re what — canvassing every motel room, seeing who has ski masks and a lot of cash?”

Prauss just stared at me.
I felt a flush rise in my cheeks.
It wasn’t embarrassment that made the color rise.
It was fury.

“Oh,” I said after a moment. “You made a few calls, didn’t you?
Asked about suspicious characters, strangers who didn’t seem to belong?
Asked about skin color?”

“It’s well known that Negroes are responsible for
ninety percent
of the crime in this country,” Sanford said.

“Well known,” I said.
“Among law enforcement?”

“We’re checking all our leads,” Prauss said.

“Find anything here?” I asked.

“As a matter of fact.” Prauss moved even closer.
I could feel his breath on my skin. He started slapping that envelope again.
“Who’s Malcolm Reyner?”

“My son,” I said.

“But his last name is Reyner and yours is Grimshaw.”

“He’s my stepson,” I said.
“My wife’s from her first marriage.
I raised him from a baby.”

I hoped I wouldn’t have to keep these lies straight for too long. I also hoped that Malcolm had kept the windows down in the van so that he could overhear what I was saying.

“How come you let him leave Chicago at a time like this?” Prauss asked.

“A time like what?” I was confused about this.
Had something happened in Chicago that I didn’t know about?

He handed me the envelope.
It was address
ed
to Malcolm in care of the Grimshaws.
The return address belonged to the Cook County
d
raft
b
oard.

My hands shook as I pulled out the letter.
I scanned it.
It was dated last week, and it told Malcolm that he was to report for service as soon as he received the letter.

“I’ve never seen this before,” I said truthfully.

“You ain’t helping your kid run?” Prauss said.

“If I was, I wouldn’t have brought him to Yale,” I snapped.
“Canada’s a lot closer if you drive straight north from Chicago than if you go all the way to the Atlantic seaboard first and then go north.”

“Your attitude isn’t helping, Mr. Grimshaw,” Prauss said.
“Seems to me that it would be a good idea to get some funds to help your kid along if he was going to spend some time out of the country.
Maybe rob a bank.”

“And if we did that,” I said, “what did we do with my other son? Put a ski mask on him too and give him a loaded water pistol?”

This was ridiculous.
We hadn’t done anything, not that that mattered. The cops would believe what they wanted to.

“He could’ve waited in the car,” Sanford said.

“Car?” I asked.
“We only have the van.
You can call the Illinois DMV.
That’s the only vehicle I own.”

They both peered at the van again, then looked at its Illinois plates.

“Mind if we inspect the vehicle?” Sanford asked.

I did, but I figured it might be the only way to get them out of here.

“And I’d like to look at your wallet as well,” Prauss said.

“You think I have twenty thousand dollars in my wallet?” I asked.

“Twenty-seven,” Sanford said.

Because the request was so outrageous, I handed him the wallet, mentally thankful that I had the travelers checks and only a little cash. The rest of the cash was spread out between the two boys.

Sanford thumbed through the wallet, frowned, and handed it to Prauss.
He looked through
it,
too, pulled out one of the checks and studied it.

Then he slipped it back inside. “The van,” he said again.

“Fine,” I said. “Do what you need to.”

They went to the van.
Jimmy cringed against Malcolm.

I opened the driver’s door.
“Come out this way, boys.”

Jimmy slid toward me, then slammed against me, clinging to me.
He was covered with sweat and shaking.
I held him close.
Malcolm stood next to me, his gaze fixed on the envelope still in my hand.

The cops examined the entire van.
They found no ski masks or sacks of money, but they did manage to trash our camping equipment and supplies as thoroughly as they trashed the motel room.

After a while, Prauss came over to me.
“You’re clean so far.”

“I’m clean period,” I said.

He shrugged.
“Hope so.”

Then he nodded toward Malcolm.
“You’re the one going to Yale?”

“Just checking it out.” Malcolm kept his voice calm.

“Like it?” Prauss asked.

“I met a few people I like,” Malcolm said. “Dean Sidbury’s been really nice.”

Great touch.
I wouldn’t have thought of that.
I only hoped that the cops didn’t check with Sidbury to see if he’d met Malcolm.

“Next week,” Malcolm was saying, “I have an appointment to talk to Professor Whickam.”

Prauss’s tough guy grimace faded.
He obviously recognized at least one of those names and was beginning to realize he had made a big mistake.

Then he looked at me.
“You see anything suspicious, you let me know.”

I almost retorted
What’s suspicious? More black people in motel rooms?
but I bit back the response.
Jimmy’s tight grip on me reminded me exactly what was at stake.

Then the two men got into their squad car, and without an apology, drove away.

SIXTEEN

I shoved Malcolm’s letter into my back pocket, determined to discuss the contents
with him
after this current crisis passed.
First, I had to deal with Jimmy.

He was so terrified he didn’t want to move.
He clung to me like a young child, his face buried in my waist.
Malcolm was staring at him as if he’d never seen Jimmy before.

I kept a hand on Jimmy’s back, rubbing it, trying to soothe him.
He had dealt with police all right in Chicago — even challenging a white detective, Sinkovich, who had stayed with us a few nights.
But that apparently wasn’t the same as coming in on two officers searching our hotel room — our private place.

“It’s all right,” I whispered.

He shook his head.

“They’re gone,” Malcolm said.

Jim just held on tighter.
I pulled him close, let him take his own time to disengage.
I didn’t dare hurry him.

“He gonna be okay?” Malcolm asked quietly.

I don’t know
, I mouthed, not wanting Jimmy to hear my pessimism.
I hadn’t anticipated this at all.
Usually I prepared him for the things that could go wrong, but this
hadn’t
even occurred to me.

I thought we had stayed under the radar.
I thought we hadn’t done anything to be noticed.

Then I wondered if someone from Yale had sicced the cops on us, and immediately dismissed the thought. There I was known as Darrel Kirkland, not Bill Grimshaw.

There were only two ways the cops could have known we were here.
They could have followed our van, which didn’t seem likely
,
since it looked like they’d been tearing up the room for some time, or someone in the motel told them.

“I guess I should start cleaning this up, huh?” Malcolm said.

“Leave it for a minute.
We have a few things to take care of first.”

Jimmy leaned back, wiped his eyes with a fist, and looked up at me.
His face was blotchy, his eyelashes stuck together by tears that my shirt had probably absorbed.

“Let’s just go.” His voice was hoarse, as if he’d been shouting.

“Go where?” I asked.

“Home,” he said.

Leaving sounded like a good idea, but I wasn’t completely ready to head back to Chicago.
“What about Daniel?
We promised Grace we’d try to find him.”

Jimmy shrugged.
“We gots to be careful ourselves, Smoke.”

He was talking about the reason we had left Memphis in the first place, the reason we had changed our names.
He was referring to the fact that we were both still wanted by the FBI for “questioning” in connection with Martin Luther King’s death.

“Yes, we do,” I said, “and I’m not sure running is the right thing right now.”

“I sure as hell don’t want to stay here,” Malcolm said.

“If we run, we look guilty,” I said.

“Even though they didn’t find any money or ski masks?” Malcolm asked.

I gave him a sideways look.
“You know how fair white cops can be.”

He sighed.
“What do you want to do?”

“Get a few answers,” I said.

“To what?”

“How they found us,” I said.

“What if they come back?” Jimmy asked, his voice trembling.
“What if they arrest us? What if they put us in jail?”

“We’ll be fine,” I said. “We have the resources to protect ourselves.
It won’t come to that.”

“I don’t know how you can be so sure.” For all Malcolm’s posturing, he was scared
,
too, just not as deep-down terrified as Jimmy.
Malcolm had no reason for that kind of fear.

“If they were going to arrest us, they would have done so tonight,” I said. “This was just a normal shakedown.”

“Shakedown?” Malcolm asked.

“Normal?” Jimmy asked at the same time.

“Get my wallet, Jim,” I said, nodding toward the dresser where Prauss had thrown it.
“I’ll show you what I mean.”

Jim wiped at his face, and walked into the motel room, his back straight, his entire body on alert, as if he expected more cops to jump out of the shadows at him.

He climbed over a pile of clothes, grabbed the wallet, and ran back outside, tossing it to me as if it burned his hands.

I caught it with my right hand.
The fake leather was slippery.
Prauss’s skin had been sweat
y
, and had left a film on my wallet. The thought disgusted me.

I opened the wallet, pulled out the traveler’s checks, and then pulled the wallet wider. I bent slightly, holding the wallet open so that Jimmy could see inside the long flap.

“What do you see?” I asked.

“Nothing,” he said.

“Exactly,” I said.
“I had fifty dollars in cash in this wallet when we drove up.
Where’d the money go?”

“They stole it?” Malcolm breathed.

“What are we going to do after that little encounter? Run to the police station and accuse two of their officers of theft?”

Jimmy took the wallet from me and felt inside of it. Then he held his hand out for the traveler’s checks.
I handed them to him, and let him look through them as well.

“I have a hunch they were disappointed that we didn’t have more cash,” I said.

“How would they know you had any money at all?” Malcolm asked.

I sighed. “How many black people go to hotels expecting to write an out-of-town check?”

“You think the cops do this a lot?” Malcolm asked.

“I think these two do it every opportunity they get.
If there’s a robbery nearby, they ‘investigate.’ A murder, a kidnapping — any excuse they have to tear up a black motel room and find whatever cash is lying around.”

“But they found us,” Jimmy said.

“Yeah,” I said, “and I think I know how.
But I want a chance to confirm it.”

Jimmy glanced at the room.
“I don’t know if I can sleep here.”

“Other hotels aren’t going to be any better,” I said.
“In fact, they might be worse.
We don’t know if Officers Sanford and Prauss have hit those motels.
We know about this one.”