The Chief looked at me while holding the wad of bills in his hand. “You still ain’t told me where you got this money.”
“I got it from the bank. It’s my money.”
He looked at it in his hand, then pushed it across the desk to me along with my wallet.
“So, I can go?” I said.
“I don’t think just yet. I need you to take a look at our dead man and tell us if you know him.”
“Why?” I asked.
“Because I don’t know who he is,” the Chief barked.
“Well, I don’t know anybody around here.”
“That’s good, that’s good. Because the dead man ain’t from around here. If he was, I would know who he is. He’s got that in common with you. That and the fact that he’s a black boy.”
“I don’t know him,” I said.
“You might know him. It’s possible. You never know. Just do me this favor, Mister Poitier.”
I didn’t want to look at a dead man, and yet in some way I knew I had to. I looked out the window behind Horace at the late afternoon light. I remembered the money hidden under that tree. I felt cold with fear.
“Do you know another guy named Scrunchy? His name is Thornton, and he’s from around here? A strange-looking man.” I thought of the banker. “I mean, how many Scrunchys are there?”
Horace blurted out a laugh. “Hell, boy, you can’t turn around in these parts without bumping heads with a Scrunchy.”
His answer, not surprisingly, did not make me feel better. I was certain that there was no answer to that question that would.
“What about Thornton Scrunchy?” the Chief asked.
“Is he an architect?”
“I doubt it.” The Chief stood and walked around his desk. “Come on, let’s go look at the stiff.”
I stood on still-unsteady legs and realized for the first time that my feet were hurting from the dress shoes that no longer perfectly fit.
The Chief led the way outside, then along the road two doors down to a one-story wooden house with a sign on the lawn that simply read, Undertaking. We walked in through the front door without knocking.
“Donald!” the Chief called out. “Don-ald!”
“Who is that yelling in here?” a tall, gray-headed man said as he came out of the back. “Chief?”
“Yeah, it’s me.”
Donald adjusted the straps of his overalls and regarded me suspiciously. “What’s this all about?”
“Where’s the body?” the Chief asked.
“Which body?”
“How many bodies do you have, Donald?”
“Just one.”
“Well, that one.”
“What about it?” Donald asked.
“I want to see him,” the Chief said.
“Him, too?” Donald pointed to me with his nose.
“Him, too. Now, where is he?”
“I got him out in the garage.” Donald turned and started away toward the back of the house.
“Garage?” I said.
“It’s also my lab,” the man said without looking back.
The Chief looked at me, seemed embarrassed. “Donald is our coroner. Sort of by default.”
“I heard that,” Donald said.
“I know you heard me, Donald. That’s why I said it.”
We entered the kitchen, passed through another back room with stacked magazines, Boys’ Life and Outdoor Gazette and National Geographic, and through a door into what really was the garage. There was an old Plymouth on blocks on the far side and a stainless-steel table in the middle of the near side. Against the wall opposite the garage doors were three white chests that looked like deep freezers. Donald led us to the middle one.
“Here he is,” Donald said, then pulled up the lid. He stood there, his arm extended, holding it open. He scratched his neck with his free hand.
I was standing well behind the Chief, and he turned to look at me. “Well, step on up here. I’ve already seen him. Just tell me if you know him.”
I moved forward and leaned over. The man was young, black, with short-cropped hair. His eyes were closed. His lips were slightly parted. He was circumcised. He looked just like me. He looked exactly like me, a fact that was apparently lost on Donald and the Chief. I wanted to say, “That’s me.” The thought of saying it was strange feeling and scary. My chest was tight, and my ears were ringing. I was lying in the chest, and yet I wasn’t. I said, “I don’t know him.” I was lying, I thought.
“Okay,” the Chief said. “Close it up, Donald.”
Donald let down the lid. “I heard somebody say that he came here to help them crazy nuns or whatever they are.”
“What killed him?” I asked.
Donald cleared his throat. “Somebody smashed him on the back of the head with something harder than his skull.”
“How do you know when he was killed?” I asked.
The Chief cocked his head and looked at me. “Because one minute he wasn’t there, and the next minute he was, along with a lot of blood that wasn’t nowhere except under him.”
“Chief,” I said, “I’d like to help you find the killer.”
“That’s a weird thing for you to say. What makes you think I’m looking for a killer?” he said.
“I just thought … ”
“For all I know this boy beat himself in the back of the head with a bat. You want to find yourself a killer, go ahead.” He looked at the ceiling and over at the disassembled Plymouth. “There ain’t nothing here that makes a difference to nobody. Do what you want.”
The face of the dead man haunted me. I stared at the closed lid of the deep freezer.
The Chief yawned. “Can we get out this way?” He pointed to the wide garage doors.
Donald hit a switch on the wall and one of the doors rolled up. The sight of the late afternoon turning to dusk terrified me. There were people out there looking for me, wanting my fifty thousand dollars. I knew they would kill me for it and I wondered if in fact they already had. As we stepped out of the makeshift morgue I thought that if that body in the chest was Not Sidney Poitier, then I was not Not Sidney Poitier and that by all I knew of logic and double negatives, I was therefore Sidney Poitier. I was Sidney Poitier.
“When we get back to your office, may I use your phone? Collect call. After all, I never got my one. Don’t prisoners usually get one call?”
“Yes, you may. One,” he said. “One call. Collect.”
Back in the dimly lit police station I placed a collect call to Podgy, who again reaffirmed his absolute refusal to come to any place called Smuteye. “What even does that mean?” he asked.
“I don’t know. You don’t have to come. Just call Ted and Professor Everett and tell them that I need them here.”
Podgy said he would, and I hung up. I looked around at the station walls, at Horace in the corner watching me, at the dispatcher who might have been sleeping, at the calendar with a woman leaning over an Oldsmobile beside the passage to the cells, at the open door to the Chief’s office. I wanted to ask if I could spend the night there, but I knew what that answer would be. Hell, they were probably tied in with the people who were after my money. I stepped over to the Chief’s door.
“This might be a stupid question, but is there a motel in Smuteye?” I asked. I leaned against the jamb.
“No,” he said, “there’s no motel, but I do know where you can rent a room.” He looked at his desk and nervously rearranged some papers. “I just now got off the phone. That was the state police over in Montgomery, and they told me that them boys up in Washington want this murder solved or they’re gonna come down here and go through all of our drawers, the ones in my desk and the ones I’m wearing. They say this is a matter of civil rights. I say it’s a matter of a boy being dead. I don’t want no suits down here crawling up my ass. You think you can figure this out?”