She stood absolutely still, a white line about her compressed lips, her eyes displaying a grief he hadn’t seen there even for Charlie. “I am a spinster, I save for my old age,” she said levelly, “but more than that. In five more years I’m going home – home to a place with no violence, no gun-toting cops, and no Connecticut Monster. That’s why.”
“I’m sorry, I had no right to ask. Forgive me.”
“Not today, and perhaps not ever,” she said, opening the door. The outdoor clothes followed their owner, tossed in a heap on the floor. “Goodbye, Lieutenant Delmonico.”
Chapter 15
Tuesday, January 4th, 1966
The first working day of the New Year was blowy and snowy, but the weather hadn’t prevented someone from daubing the Hug with graffiti – KILLERS, BLACK HATERS, PIGS, FASCISTS, swastikas, and, right along the front façade, HOLLOMAN KU KLUX KLAN.
When the Prof arrived and saw what had been done to the apple of his eye, he collapsed. Not with a heart attack; Robert Mordent Smith’s crisis was of the spirit. An ambulance bore him away, the team manning it well aware that when they arrived one building down at Emergency, they would be shouting not for cardiologists but for psychiatrists. He wept, he moaned, he raved, he babbled, the words he uttered complete gibberish.
Carmine came over to see the Hug for himself, as thankful as John Silvestri that the winter was proving a hard one after all; the real racial turmoil wouldn’t explode until spring. Only two black men had braved the elements to brandish placards already torn to tatters by the wind. One’s face was familiar; he halted outside the entrance and studied it. Its owner was small, thin, insignificant, very dark skinned, neither handsome nor sexy. So where, where, where? Buried memories tended to surface suddenly, as this one did; once things were in Carmine’s mind, they stayed there, resurrected when given a nudge by events. Otis Green’s wife’s nephew. Wesley le Clerc.
He tramped across to le Clerc and his companion, another would-be-if-he-could-be who looked less determined than Wesley.
“Go home, guys,” he said pleasantly, “otherwise we’ll have to dig you out or plough you under. Except, Mr. le Clerc, a word first. Come in out of the cold. I’m not arresting you, I just want to talk, scout’s honor.”
A little to his surprise, Wesley followed him docilely while the other man scuttled away as if let out of school.
“You’re Wesley le Clerc, right?” he asked after they moved inside, stamping the caked snow off their boots.
“What if I am, huh?”
“Mrs. Green’s nephew from Louisiana.”
“Yeah, and I got a record, save you the time looking me up. I’m a known agitator. In other words, a nigger nuisance.”
“How much time have you served, Wes?”
“All up, five years. No stealing hub caps or armed robberies. Just beatin’ on redneck nigger haters.”
“And what do you do in Holloman apart from demonstrating in a peaceful manner and wearing a Black Brigade jacket?”
“Make instruments at Parson Surgical Supplies.”
“That’s a good job, takes some manual and intellectual skill.”
Wesley shaped up to the much bigger Carmine like a bantam rooster to a fighting cock. “What do you care what I do, huh? Think I painted that stuff out there, huh?”
“Oh, grow up, Wes!” said Carmine wearily. “The graffiti’s not Black Brigade, it’s kids from Travis High, you think I don’t know that? What I want to know is why you’re out there freezing your ass off while the weather’s too bad to attract an audience.”
“I’m there to tell Whitey that it’s time to worry, Mr. Smart Cop. You won’t catch this killer ’cos you don’t want to. For all I know, Mr. Smart Cop, you’re the one killing black girls.”
“No, Wes, he’s not me.” Carmine leaned against the wall and eyed Wesley with unmistakable sympathy. “Give up on Mohammed’s way! It’s the wrong way. A better life for black people isn’t going to come through violence, no matter what Lenin said about terror. After all, a good many white people have terrorized black Americans for two hundred years, but has that destroyed the black spirit? Go back to school, Wes, get a law degree. That will help the black cause more than Mohammed el Nesr can.”
“Oh, sure! Where am I going to get the money for that?”
“Making instruments at Parson Surgical Spplies. Holloman has good night schools, and there are bunches and bunches of people in Holloman eager to help.”
“Whitey can shove his lordly patronage up his ass!”
“Who says I’m talking about Whitey? Many of them are black. Businessmen, professional men. I don’t know if they exist in Louisiana yet, but they sure do in Connecticut, and none of them are Uncle Toms. They are working for their people.”
Wesley le Clerc turned on his heel and left, flinging his right fist into the air.
“At least, Wes,” said Carmine, smiling at Wesley’s retreating back, “you didn’t flip me the bird.”
But Wesley le Clerc wasn’t thinking of rude gestures as he scrunched through the worsening snow. He was thinking of Lieutenant Carmine Delmonico in a different way. Bright, very bright. Too cool and sure of himself to give anyone an excuse to cry persecution or even discrimination; his was the soft answer turned away wrath. Only not this time. Not my wrath. Through Otis I have the means to feed Mohammed information he will need come spring. Mohammed looks at me with a little more respect these days, and what’s he going to say when I tell him that the Holloman pigs are still nosing around the Hug? The answer is inside the Hug. Delmonico knows that as well as I do. Rich, privileged Whitey. When every black American is a disciple of Mohammed el Nesr, things are gonna change.
“The way is hard,” said Mohammed el Nesr to Ali el Kadi. “Too many of our black brothers are brainwashed, and too many more have been seduced by Whitey’s greatest weapons – drugs and booze. Even now the Monster has taken a real black girl, our recruitment isn’t picking up enough.”
“Our people need more provocation,” Ali el Kadi answered; that was the name Wesley le Clerc had chosen when he espoused Islam.
“No,” said Mohammed strongly. “Our people don’t need, the Black Brigade does. And not provocation. We need a martyr, Ali. A shining example who will bring us men in tens of thousands.” He patted Wesley/Ali on the arm. “In the meantime, go to your job, do good work there. Enroll in night school. Cultivate that infidel pig, Delmonico. And find out everything you can.”
The Forbeses were still in Boston, would be until the roads were safer, and the Finches were snowbound. Walt Polonowski had spent the weekend in his cabin, but with a living girl, Marian. The men Danny Marciano had sent up there to investigate hadn’t announced their presence; it was no part of Carmine’s intentions to render any Hugger more miserable than he needed to be, and that meant helping Polonowski keep his secret – for the moment.
Patrick had found nothing in the house on Dublin Road either to confirm or deny that Margaretta’s abductor was their man, though he had established that the method of choice had been ether.
“He wears some kind of protective suit,” Patrick said to his cousin. “It’s made of a fabric that doesn’t shed any fibers, and whatever he wears on his feet have smooth soles that don’t make footprints unless he steps in mud, which he doesn’t. The suit has a close-fitting bonnet or hood that covers his hair completely, and he’s gloved. With this night abduction, obviously everything he wears is black. He may blacken his face. I’m picking that the suit is rubber and form fitting, like a diving suit.”