Still churning over this sobering thought, he parked the car in front of his small house, let himself in, lost no time in taking off his clothes, and showered. For a moment he contemplated getting something to eat. Then he decided he wasn’t hungry and climbed into bed. He pulled a single sheet over his body in lieu of pajamas and, despite the broiling heat and his disturbed state of mind, went immediately to sleep.
CHAPTER 5
As soon as Endicott had left his office and was safely out of the corridor, Bill Gillespie turned toward Virgil Tibbs.
“Who in hell asked you to open your big black mouth,” he demanded. “If I want you to tell me anything, I’ll ask you. I was questioning Endicott exactly the way I wanted to until you butted in.” He clenched his massive right hand into a fist and rubbed it in the palm of his left. “Now get this-I want you out of here right now. I don’t know when the next train is and I don’t care; go down to the station and wait for it. When it comes in, never mind which way it’s going, just get on. Beat it!”
Virgil Tibbs rose quietly to his feet. He walked to the door of the office, turned, and looked directly into the face of the big man who dominated the small room. “Good morning, Chief Gillespie,” he said. As he walked through the outer lobby, the desk man stopped him.
“Virgil, did you leave a brown fiber-glass suitcase in the station this morning? Initials V.R.T. on it?”
Tibbs nodded. “Yes, that’s mine. Where is it?”
“We’ve got it. Wait five minutes till I finish this and I’ll get it for you.”
Tibbs waited uncomfortably; he did not want Gillespie to come out of his office and find him still there. He was not afraid of the big man, but he saw no possible advantage in another scene. He stayed on his feet to suggest politely that he was expecting the wait to be a short one.
After a long five minutes, the desk man returned with his bag. “Can I get a ride to the station?” Tibbs asked.
“Go ask the chief. If he OK’s it, it’s fine with me.”
“Never mind,” Tibbs answered shortly. He picked up his bag and began to walk down the long flight of steps that led to the street.
Nine minutes later, the phone rang in Gillespie’s office. It was his private line, the number of which was known to only a few people. He picked up the instrument. “Gillespie,” he acknowledged tersely.
“This is Frank Schubert, Bill.”
“Yes, Frank.” The chief made an effort to sound confident and cordial. Frank Schubert ran a hardware store and owned two gas stations. He was also the mayor of Wells and the chairman of the small committee which ran the city’s affairs.
“Bill, George Endicott just left my office.”
“Yes,” Gillespie almost shouted, and resolved to keep his voice under better control.
“It was about this colored detective that one of your boys spaded up. He wanted me to call Pasadena and ask if we could borrow him for a few days. George is terribly upset about Mantoli’s death, you know.”
“I know that, too,” Gillespie cut in. He felt he was being treated like a child.
“We got through immediately to Chief Morris in Pasadena,” Schubert went on. “He gave us his OK.”
Gillespie gulped a deep breath. “Frank, I appreciate your effort very much, but I just got rid of that guy and frankly, I don’t want him back. I have good people here and I’m not inexperienced myself. Excuse my saying this to you, but Endicott is a meddler.”
“I know he is,” Schubert agreed, “and he comes from up North, where they think differently than we do. But I think you’re overlooking something.”
“What’s that?” Gillespie asked.
“The fact that this gives you a perfect out. Endicott wants us to use his black friend. OK, go ahead and do it. Suppose he finds the man you want? He has no police power here, so he will have to hand the whole thing over to you. But if he fails, that lets you completely off the hook. And everybody in town will be with you; the whole blame goes to him. Either way you win. If you don’t use him and for any reason fail to nail your murderer in fairly short order, Endicott will be out for your scalp, and he’s got more dough than anybody else in this town.”
Gillespie chewed on his lower lip for a moment. “I just kicked him out of here,” he said.
“You better get him back,” Schubert warned. “He’s your alibi. Be nice to him and let him hang himself. If anybody blames you, say that you did it on my orders.”
Gillespie knew then that he was hooked. “All right,” he said in an unwilling voice, and hung up. He got up quickly, reminding himself that he didn’t know the first thing about the procedure in catching a murderer and that Virgil Tibbs was the unwitting alibi that would lift the whole responsibility from his shoulders. By the time he jackknifed himself into his car, he had decided that it would be good to give Tibbs the rope with which to hang himself.
Two blocks from the station he found his man. Tibbs had paused for a moment to switch his suitcase from one hand to the other as Gillespie slid his car up to the curb. “Virgil, get in, I want to talk to you,” he said.
As the young Negro moved to obey, Gillespie had a sudden revolting thought. Tibbs had been walking and carrying a heavy bag for some blocks in the hot sun. That meant he would be sweating and Gillespie hated the odor he associated with black men. He reached around and quickly rolled down the rear window behind him. As soon as that was done, he motioned Tibbs to come in the front seat. “Put your bag in back,” he instructed. Tibbs did as directed, climbed into the car, and sat down. To Gillespie’s intense relief, he didn’t smell.
Gillespie started the car and moved out into traffic. “Virgil,” he began, “I was a little rough on you this morning.” It occurred to him to stop right there and he did.
Tibbs said nothing.
“Your friend Endicott,” Gillespie went on, “spoke to our mayor about you. Mayor Schubert phoned Pasadena. After consulting with me, we reached a decision to have you investigate Mantoli’s murder under my direction.”
There was silence in the car for the next three blocks. Then Tibbs broke it carefully. “I think, Chief Gillespie, that it might be better if I left town as you suggested. It might make things easier for you.”
Gillespie swung the car around a corner. “What would you do if your boss asked you to stay here?” he inquired.
“If Chief Morris asked me to,” Tibbs replied promptly, “I’d go to England and look for Jack the Ripper.”
“Chief Morris sent word to you to spend a week here with us. You won’t be a member of our department, of course, so you won’t be able to wear a uniform.”
“I haven’t for some time,” Tibbs said.
“OK. What do you think you will need?”
“I have been up all night and haven’t had a chance to clean up,” Tibbs answered. “If there is a hotel here that will take me, I’d like to shave, shower, and put on some clean clothes. Then if you can fix me up with some sort of transportation, that will be about all I’ll need. At least for a while.”
Gillespie thought for a moment. “The hotels here won’t take you, Virgil, but there is a motel for colored about five miles up the road. You can stay there. We’ve got an old police car in reserve I could let you have.”
“Please,” Tibbs requested, “not a police car. If you know a used-car dealer who will lend me something that runs, that would be a lot better. I don’t want to be conspicuous.”
Gillespie realized that it was going to be harder to make Tibbs undo himself than he thought. “I think I know a place,” he said, and U-turned in the middle of the block. He drove to a garage on the other side of the railroad tracks. A huge Negro mechanic came out to meet him.