“Yes, I did,” Tibbs answered him.
Sam waited for a fuller explanation, then found he had to ask for one. “Such as what, Virgil?”
“Mostly background on Mantoli and the music festival. The Endicotts are strong local sponsors. What they had set up here was what they hoped would develop into another Tangle wood or the Bethlehem Bach Festival. Some projects of that kind have been highly successful.”
“Most of us around here regarded the whole thing as being nuts,” Sam said.
“The response from the advance announcements was surprisingly good,” Tibbs added. “I don’t know too much about music, but apparently Mantoli had arranged some special programs that had a lot of appeal to the kind of people who come to things like this. At least they were willing to pay good money to sit on logs or camp chairs for a whole evening until the thing was proved a success and something better put in.”
“How about something that will help us with the problem we’ve got right now? Anything that might point to who did it?”
“Possibly,” Tibbs answered vaguely. He added, “Mr. Endicott has asked to have Mantoli’s body moved to the undertaker’s as soon as possible.”
Sam waited a moment and then gave up. “What next?” he asked.
“Let’s go back to the station. I want to see that fellow Oberst they’re holding there.”
“I forgot about him,” Sam confessed. “What are you going to do to him?”
“I want to talk to him,” Tibbs answered. “After that a lot depends on how much leeway Gillespie is going to give me.”
They drove the rest of the way in silence. As he guided the car down the turns of the winding road, Sam tried to decide whether or not he wanted the man sitting beside him to succeed in what he had undertaken. In his mind he saw a clear picture of Duena Mantoli; then, as a projector shifts slides, he saw Gillespie and, without looking at him, the Negro by his side. That was what hurt. An outsider might be all right if he were a good fellow and all that, but the idea of a black man stuck up like a jagged rock in the middle of a channel. By the time they had reached the police station, Sam had still not made up his mind. He wanted the crime solved, but he wanted it solved by someone whom he could look up to and respect. The only trouble was he couldn’t think who it might be.
CHAPTER 6
Virgil Tibbs stopped at the desk and made a request. Then he disappeared in the direction of the colored washroom to allow time for it to be considered and for Gillespie to be consulted. The chief was out of the building so the desk man had to make his own decision. After recalling his instructions carefully, he made up his mind, called Arnold, and asked him to admit Tibbs to Harvey Oberst’s cell.
When the steel door swung partly open, Oberst half rose to his feet. “You don’t have to put him in here,” he protested. “Put him someplace else. I don’t want no nig-”
The steel door clanked shut. “He wants to talk to you,” Arnold said acidly, and left. Oberst sank down on one extreme end of the hard board bunk, Tibbs seated himself calmly on the other. He had taken off his coat and tie and had rolled up his sleeves. He folded his lean, dark fingers in his lap and sat silently, paying no attention to Oberst. The minutes passed unnoticed as neither man made any attempt to do anything. Then Oberst began to fidget. First he moved his hands, then he began to shuffle his feet. After a period of increasing nervousness he found his voice and spoke. “What you doing with white man’s clothes on?” he asked.
For the first time Tibbs appeared to notice that Oberst was present. “I bought them from a white man,” he answered.
Harvey Oberst turned his attention now to his cellmate and looked him up and down with unconcealed appraisal. “You been to school?” he asked.
Tibbs nodded slowly. “College.”
Oberst bristled. “You think you’re smart or something?”
Virgil Tibbs continued to look at his locked fingers. “I graduated.”
The silence returned for a moment.
“Where’d they let you go to college?”
“In California.”
Oberst shifted his position and lifted his feet up onto the hard surface of the bunk. “Out there they don’t care what they do.”
Tibbs ignored the comment. “Who’s Delores Purdy?” he asked.
Oberst leaned forward. “None of your business,” he snapped. “She’s a white girl.”
Tibbs unfolded his hands, swung around, and put his own feet on the bunk exactly as Oberst had done. “Either you answer my question,” he said, “or take your chances on being hanged for murder.”
“Don’t you give me any of your lip, black boy,” Harvey snarled. “You ain’t nobody and you ain’t never going to be nobody. High school or college don’t make you white and you know it.”
“I don’t especially want to be white,” Tibbs said, “but white or black, it doesn’t make much difference when you’re at the end of a rope. And after you’ve rotted for a few months in the ground-say, a little more than a year from now-no one will know or care what color your skin was. You won’t have a skin anymore. Is that the way you want it?”
Oberst pulled his knees up close to his chest and clasped his arms around them as though to protect himself. “Who the hell do you think you are?” he demanded. But there was fear in his voice and the arrogance with which he tried to replace it didn’t come off.
“I’m a cop. I’m after the man who killed the one you robbed. Whether you believe it or not, that’s so. I also happen to be the only one around here who thinks you might not be guilty of murder. So you’d better back me up because I’m the best chance you’ve got.”
“You ain’t no cop,” Oberst said after a pause.
Tibbs reached in his shirt pocket and pulled out a small white card sealed in plastic. “I work in Pasadena; I’m an investigator. Call it detective if you like. I’ve been loaned to the police department here to find out who killed Mantoli-that’s the dead man you found. Never mind how or why. Either you gamble on me or stand trial for murder.”
Oberst remained silent.
Tibbs waited a long minute. “Who is Delores Purdy?” he asked again.
Oberst made his decision. “She’s a girl who lives near where I do. One of a whole flock of kids.”
“How old is she?”
“Sixteen, almost seventeen.”
“You know what we call that kind in California? San Quentin quail,” Tibbs said.
Oberst reacted quickly. “I got in trouble with her, but not that way.”
“What happened?”
Oberst didn’t answer.
“I can go out and look up the record,” Tibbs reminded him. “I’d rather get it from you.”
Oberst accepted defeat. “This Delores, she’s young but real stacked, if you know what I mean. A real hot sweatergirl type.”
“There’re lots of those,” Tibbs commented.
“Yeah, but this Delores is real proud of what nature done for her. She likes to show off. I took her on a date to Clarke’s Pond. We weren’t plannin’ nothing wrong; I don’t want to join no chain gang.”
Tibbs nodded.
“Anyhow, she asks me if I don’t think she’s got a nice figure, and when I say yes, she decides to show me.”
“It was her idea?” Tibbs asked.
“Like you said, her idea. I didn’t mess her up or anything like that; I just didn’t try to stop her.”
“Not too many people would blame you for that, but it was pretty dangerous.”
“Maybe so. Anyhow, she gets half undressed and right then a cop comes out of the bushes. I get hauled in.”
“How about the girl?”
“She got sent home.”
“What happened after that?”
“After a while they let me go, told me never to mess around with that girl anymore.”
“Have you seen her since?”
“Sure, she lives on Third Street at the corner of Polk. I live half a block from there. I see her all the time. She wants another date.”
“That’s all that happened?”
“Nothin’ else, so help me.”
Tibbs got to his feet, took hold of the bars of the cell and swung his weight backward so as to pull at the cramped muscles of his arms. Then he walked back and sat down again.