“Why didn’t you tell me, Sherman?”
“I didn’t think it would matter. Until you… said what you said, I never thought you… I never thought you cared about me that way, Ruth. I knew you were my friend. I knew you were the one I trusted. But I was being a cop. The kind of cop I taught myself to become.”
“I don’t understand.”
“You know how cops are supposed to be ‘brothers in blue’? All for one, and one for all? Well, that’s a lie. The police depart-ment in Locke City is just like those apartments they build for poor people-the projects. The bids are always rigged, and there’s too much sand in the concrete. You can’t see it to look at them, but those buildings are rotting from the inside. One day, they’re going to just fall down, like a tornado hit them. They tolerate me because I do my job. I do it better than anyone they ever had. And someone’s got to solve the crimes.”
“Don’t they usually solve crimes?”
“Most crimes don’t need to be solved,” Sherman said. “Most murders, for example, you don’t have to look further than the family of the dead person to find out who did it. Most robbers, they keep doing the same thing, the same way, until they stumble into getting caught. And a lot of crime in Locke City isn’t crime, if you know what I mean?”
“Like my house?”
“Like your house. Like the casinos. Like the punch cards and the jukeboxes and… all the rest. And there’s other kinds, too, Ruth. There’s rich man’s crimes, which means just about anything a man does, as long as he’s got the contacts and the connections. And then there’s the crimes nobody gives a damn about.”
“What kind are those?” she asked, snuggling deeper.
“A guy beats his wife half to death, what’s going to happen to him?”
“Nothing.”
“Nothing is exactly right. And his kids, unless he actually kills one, that’s on the house, too. To get away with crimes like that, you don’t even have to be rich.”
“All you have to do is be a man.”
“Yeah. A man can’t go to jail for burning down his own house. The only way he gets in trouble for that is if he tries to claim on the insurance. He can do what he wants with what he owns. The law says a man can’t rape his own wife. I mean, he can, but it’s not a crime. I had one of those, once.”
“A real rape? Not just…?”
“A real rape. This guy, he broke her jaw, snapped her arm like a matchstick from twisting it.”
“And nothing happened to him?”
“He wasn’t even arrested,” Sherman said.
Ruth caught something in his tone, shifted in his lap, whispered, “That doesn’t mean nothing happened to him.”
“You think that’s wrong?” he said, almost in a whisper.
“No, Sherman,” Ruth replied, shifting her weight again. “No, I don’t.”
1959 October 06 Tuesday 20:46
“Darryl, this is Mr. Moses,” Rufus said, almost formally. “He’s been in the struggle for longer than you and me have been alive, brother.”
“Yes?” Darryl said, his tone noncommittal.
“I would like it if you would talk. To each other,” Rufus said, his gesture encompassing both men. “In private.”
1959 October 06 Tuesday 21:01
“I know it’s just a movie, but this is scary,” Tussy said, sliding in close to Dett.
“I guess so,” he said, dubiously.
Tussy turned to her left, reached across Dett, and flicked the ash off her cigarette out his window. Her breast brushed lightly against his chest, firing a synapse that radiated through his groin. Her hair smelled like flowers he couldn’t identify.
1959 October 06 Tuesday 21:02
“What do you say?” Rufus asked Darryl.
“He’s what we been looking for, Brother Omar. A true elder.”
“You think he should sit in when that boy comes around?”
“He’s got the wisdom,” Darryl said, “and he’s ready to share it with us. I be proud to have him.”
“No sign of Silk?”
“No, brother. But if he shows, Kendall’s going to ease him off-he’ll never see nothing.”
1959 October 06 Tuesday 21:03
“Sherman, can I ask you a question?”
“You can ask me anything,” the big detective said.
“When you were with those girls. In my house, I mean. Did you ever think about me?”
“You mean, think about you that way? Or… think about you while I was…?”
“What’s the difference?”
“When you came out here, what did you expect?” Sherman countered.
“I expected to… I expected to prove my promise. About doing anything for you. So I didn’t know what to expect, but it didn’t matter.”
“You thought what I wanted, it was the same thing I did down in your basement, didn’t you?”
“Yes,” she said. “But it wouldn’t matter if you-”
“I do think about you that way, Ruth,” Sherman said. “Having… being with you. But not with you tied up, or blindfolded. I always wished, when I was coming out there, when we were talking, that it would be… in bed. Like… afterwards, you know?”
“Start by kissing me,” Ruth said, locking her hands behind Sherman’s neck.
1959 October 06 Tuesday 22:14
A boxy ’51 De Soto moved slowly through the night-shrouded junkyard, every rotation of its tires recorded by watchers’ eyes.
The car came to a halt. A young man with a tall, rangy build got out. He was wearing a long black coat. The three orange feathers in the headband of his hat looked like candle flames in the night.
Two men approached, bracketing the young man.
“I’m here to see someone,” the young man said.
“Who?” the men asked, with one voice.
“I don’t know no name. Don’t want to know no name. I’m here to buy something. This is where they told me to come.”
“You come alone?” one of the bracketing men asked.
“Just me.”
“I don’t mean in the car,” the man said. “I mean, you got anyone waiting for you, close by?”
“No.”
“Come on,” the man said.
The young man followed the speaker; the silent man walked behind them, maintaining the bracket.
“In there,” the lead man said, pointing to a shack.
The young man entered. The room was shadowy, illuminated only by the distant glow of the junkyard’s arc lights coming through a single, streaked window. But he could make out a table, three seated men, and an empty chair.
“Sit down,” said the man seated directly across from the empty chair.
The young man did as he was instructed, resting his hands on the table.
“Say what you come to say,” he was told.
“My name is Preacher,” the young man said. “I’m the President of the South Side Kings.”
His statement greeted by silence, the young man continued, “We’ve got one on for tomorrow night with the Golden Hawks. At the lot over on Halstead.”
More silence.
“I heard that the white boys got cannons, this time. Pistols. Real ones. That never happened before.”
The young man took a breath, said, “I heard the white boys, they got guns from the Klan. We need guns, too. That’s why I came here. To buy some.”
“How much money you bring?” Darryl asked.
“I got three hundred dollars,” Preacher said, proudly, hoping his voice concealed that he had emptied his gang’s treasury for this purpose.
“You say ‘guns,’ you mean pistols?” Darryl asked.
“That’s right. ’Cause that’s what they got.”
“You ‘heard’ this, about the white boys having pistols?” Rufus said. “You didn’t say where you heard it.”