Huff merely raised his eyebrows, but I sensed some of the tension had eased from his face.
“We believe this man was active politically in the late sixties, around the same time you were.”
“I still am.”
“Well, you get the idea. Did you know Bob Shattuck?”
A crease appeared between his eyes. “He’s not dead, not that I heard.”
“When did you last hear?” Runnion asked.
Huff looked slightly scornful. “It’s what I didn’t hear I’m referring to. My interactions with Shattuck were minimal, even back then. Still, if he’d died, word would have gotten out. I doubt he’s your man.”
He looked about ready to leave. I said, “We know Shattuck is alive, but he and the skeleton were connected somehow. We don’t have much to go on, but if you could tell us a bit about him, it might get us headed in the right direction.”
He considered that for a moment, apparently thinking back. “Bob Shattuck… What do you have on him?”
I ran down a quick synopsis of the police department rap sheet, omitting any mention of Shattuck’s latest activities. I could tell Norm was uncomfortable volunteering so much information-it ran counter to a cop’s natural disposition-but I was fairly convinced that if Huff felt we were treating him as anything other than an ally, the conversation would end right there.
Huff glanced at the boat’s wake as I finished, a white-foamed swarm of reflected fireflies-all the city’s lights bobbing in captured frenzy. “That’s it?”
“We suspect more.”
“Like what?”
Norm sighed next to me.
“The rap sheet only reflects the times he got caught. We think that in the late sixties, early seventies, he may have been linked to extremist radicals-Weatherman splinter groups and the like.”
“The Panthers?”
I looked at him straight. “No. They never came up.”
He nodded slightly. “You suspect violence?”
“Definitely.” Huff addressed Norm. “You’re Runnion, right?”
Norm was slightly startled. “Yeah-sorry-should’ve introduced myself.” He made to reach for his credentials, but Huff stopped him with a shake of the head.
“Don’t worry about it. I checked you out after you called. That’s why I’m here.”
He paused, but not for any response from us. He moved slightly, leaning against the railing, his eyes, like ours earlier, on the passing cityscape. “I knew Shattuck back then, but not well. Some of his causes and ours overlapped, or so we believed at first. Not that it mattered much; we were a force unto ourselves and our race, and on that level he was as much “whitey” as the police. Still, there were a few activities where some sort of vague cooperation existed for a while.”
“What happened?”
“Nothing dramatic. But we began to suspect his motives. We were used to some of that-the wanna-be syndrome-guilty whites hoping to become cool by proximity.”
He shook his head, not so much scornful as philosophical. “They tried to be blacker than us-hating more, protesting too much, running around wearing African robes and claw necklaces. Pathetic.”
“Shattuck was like that?” I asked, not bothering to hide the incredulity.
“No. I think the stimulus was similar, but he demonstrated it differently. Under a charming, almost obsequious exterior, he was a very violent, unstable man-vengeful. I sensed he wanted more than to be black-he wanted to be a leader of blacks. We soon made it clear we didn’t want him within sight.”
There was a pause, which Runnion clearly understood. “You’re not going to get more specific, are you?”
Huff glanced at him and merely smiled.
I pulled Abraham Fuller’s dog-eared photograph out of my pocket and handed it over. “This face ring a bell?”
Huff tilted it so the lights off the boat shone on it. He finally shook his head and handed it back, a gesture I was becoming used to. “No, I’m afraid not.”
“One last one; the skeleton I mentioned’s been described as a white male, about one hundred and ninety pounds, left-handed, probably a ballet dancer and a runner. Had a chipped front tooth that was fixed and no cavities-something he may have bragged about.”
He chuckled and shook his head slightly. “No cavities, huh?” He glanced at his watch and then along the length of the boat. “I need to return to my family.”
“Thanks for your help,” I said.
He nodded at me quickly but then looked at Norm again closely. “I understand you’re retiring soon.”
Runnion was impressed. “Not too many people know that.”
Huff paused, obviously considering something, but all he said was, “Too bad,” before he turned on his heel and left us.
“I met my first Black Panther tonight.”
Gail chuckled over the phone. “What was he like?”
“Talked better than me, dressed better than me, and was smarter than hell.”
“No black leather gloves and dark glasses? Didn’t call you ‘pig’?”
“All right, all right, so I’m culturally deprived.”
She laughed and then asked, “What else have you been up to?”
I told her about my meeting with Salierno.
She was no longer amused. “Joe, do you really know what you’re doing?”
I knew from the concern in her voice that she wasn’t being offensive-it was a serious question, and certainly one I’d been asking myself a lot lately.
“On one level, I do.” I hesitated, again remembering the two men in the car, the couple at the bridge. “But it’s a little like poking a sleeping dog with a stick. You need to wake him up, but there’s no telling what the reaction might be.”
She sighed but didn’t pursue the point. “I might have some good news. I’ve been fooling around with that astrology chart, calling a few people I know, checking some books out of the library… I think it might be possible to get a latitude and longitude on the birthplace. “
“You’re kidding me.”
“No. Supposedly, there are dozens of mathematical steps to it, along with a strict procedure, and it only works if the chart is very accurate to begin with. I talked to Billie about it; she wasn’t very hopeful. She’d never done it herself and had never heard of it being done-usually there’s no call for it. She did agree that it would take a ‘real hotshot,’ as she put it, to figure it out. She called the person who taught her-some man in California-but he’d never done it, either.”
“So what makes you think it’s possible?” I asked, fighting to keep the skepticism from my voice.
“It was in one of the books. Anyway, I’m going to keep on it-maybe we’ll find it pinpoints a single tiny hospital in the middle of the boonies.”
“Or six huge ones in downtown L.A.”
We talked for a while, about other, unrelated topics. She told me of a deal she was closing, and about the latest political scrap among the selectmen. By the time we were done, I was longing to be back home. Part of that was the lingering pleasure of hearing Gail’s voice, but another part was being in Chicago. It was just too big for me, too crowded, too complicated, with too many levels to its social structure.
Also, while Brattleboro had its proportion of crazies and hop-heads, whose attention was often best grabbed with the working end of a two-by-four, we didn’t have the Mafia, or slums that covered several square miles, or nine hundred homicides every year. I was a mere blip among millions in this city, and my being extinguished probably wouldn’t even make the front page, assuming someone didn’t arrange to make me vanish without a trace.
My thoughts returned to Shattuck and Bonatto, and to the forces they could conceivably control-and which I had so blithely stirred into motion.
It made me wonder how many bodies were anchored to the bottom of that conveniently located ocean-sized lake.
24
Norm Runnion picked me up the next morning, an irrepressible smile on his face.