“I think I see a way to do it,” Dett said. “If everything you’ve got here”-pointing to stacks of paper and the maps taped to the wall-“is accurate.”
“I’d bet my life on it,” Beaumont vowed.
“That’s up to you,” Dett said.
1959 October 07 Wednesday 22:41
“You see it?” Ace demanded, for the fifth time. “You see me drop that nigger like a sack of cement?”
“We got to get rid of that pistol,” Hog said, urgently.
“Fuck that! This baby is what’s going to make the Hawks-”
“Are you nuts? Once the cops dig that slug out of Preacher in the morgue, all they have to do is match it up with your gun, and you’ll end up getting the chair.”
“Why should they even-?”
“Oh, man,” Hog said, despairingly. “I know you’re all jazzed from what happened, okay? But you’re not thinking, Ace. You asking people if they saw it. Well, they did see it, man. Everybody out there saw it.”
“None of our guys would ever-”
“The niggers, man. You think they’re not going to squeal?”
“Never did before, when we-”
“We never killed one before. This time, the cops are really going to look, man. That pistol has to go. Tonight.”
“Damn, Hog.”
“Hey, man, when the Klan hears what you did tonight, they’ll give you another one. Maybe more than one…”
1959 October 07 Wednesday 22:43
“White boys got to burn for this,” a coal-colored youth with a red bandanna around his neck said. “Gunned down Preacher like he was a dog. He never had a chance.”
“Firesticks!” another youth said. “I got a cousin, works on a construction site all the way up in Gary. We get a couple of sticks of dynamite, go down to their clubhouse, blow those cocksucking Hawks all to hell. Bang!”
“Shut up, all of you,” a squat, coffee-colored young man said. He swayed on wide-planted feet, blood still running from a gash next to his right eye. “This ain’t what Preacher would want us to do. We got to be cold, not crazy. Cops gonna be all over this place. Everybody that needs patching up, get out. All the weapons got to go, too. Have the debs take them away. Now! When the rollers show up, we all want to be-”
“Dancer’s telling it like it should be told.” The voice penetrated the darkened room.
“Buddha!” A joyous yell. “Thought you got it, too.”
“White boys can’t kill no man like me,” Buddha said, grinning.
“Is Preacher gonna make it?” one of the youths called out.
“Make it? Shit, motherfuckers, he gonna do a whole lot better than that. Everybody split now, like Dancer say. We meet back here, tomorrow night.”
“You in charge now?” another youth asked, not a trace of challenge in his voice, only awestruck respect for the man who had stayed behind while all the others had run.
“Preacher in charge, fool!” Buddha said, laughing infectiously. “We all meet, tomorrow night, right here. And you gonna see for yourselves.”
1959 October 07 Wednesday 22:50
“I have to look it over by myself,” Dett said. “How far a drive is it?”
“To the estate?” Beaumont asked. “Probably take you only about-”
“Not there. To the daughter’s house.”
“The daughter? Why her? I thought it would be his son. He’s the one named for him. Not Ernest Junior; Ernest the Fourth. Like he was a goddamned king. And I guess he will be, someday.”
“You said the daughter had a baby.”
“So? That kid’s not going to be named for Ernest Hoffman. What makes you think-?”
“Hoffman himself’s seventy-seven years old, right?” Dett said, pawing through some of the papers in front of him. “Had his own son, this Ernest the Fourth, when he was a young man, so that one’s in his middle fifties already. And he’s been married three times, no kids. What does that tell you?”
“He’s had some bad luck picking women,” Beaumont said, ticking off the possibilities on his fingers. “He can’t make babies himself. Or he’s a fag, and the women are just cover.”
“If you’ve been looking as hard as you say you have, for as long as you have, you must have narrowed it down past that.”
“If he’s a fag, he’s the best faker I ever heard of,” Beaumont said, chuckling. “Ernest the Fourth has been in half the whorehouses in the state. And he’s had a woman on the side every time he’s been married, too. In fact, the one he’s married to now, she used to be the lady-in-waiting.”
“And if he wasn’t shooting blanks, he would have gotten one of them pregnant by now,” Dett said. “ ‘Specially when he knows any kid of his would inherit a fortune.”
“Right,” Beaumont agreed. “Got to be something wrong with his equipment.”
“There’s a lot more wrong with him than that,” Cynthia said, disgustedly. “No man ever had more opportunities in life than Ernest Hoffman’s son. And he’s squandered them all. He’s just a wastrel and a failure. If I was his father… Oh!”
“Sure,” Dett said. “The line is going to die out, without anyone to take over. The daughter, Dianne, she’s out of Hoffman’s second wife, after his first one died. Twenty years younger than the son, and still pretty old to be having a baby.”
“You think she was pressured into it?” Cynthia asked.
“It adds up,” Dett said, moving his hands in a wide-sweeping gesture, as if to include all the material Beaumont had gathered. “Hoffman knows his own son isn’t going to take over for him. But his grandson… I don’t care what the name on the birth certificate says, that’s the real Ernest the Fourth.”
1959 October 07 Wednesday 22:59
Sherman Layne entered the precinct house at the beginning of his shift. He strolled through the squad room, back to the area reserved for the detectives. “I heard there was a rumble earlier, Chet,” he said to a jowly, white-haired cop in a houndstooth sport coat, making the statement into a question.
“There was something,” the plainclothesman answered. “Call comes into the precinct, says they’re having World War III out there. Heavy gunfire. Everybody saddles up and rides, but, time the first cars are on the scene, it’s back to being a vacant lot.”
“That doesn’t make sense,” the big detective said, slowly. “There’s always some of them left, either from wanting to be the last ones to run, or not being able to run at all.”
“They got tricked,” the jowly cop said, making a jeering sound with his rubbery lips. “Looks like someone in the neighborhood had their own police siren. Some of our guys heard it in front of them, as they were heading to the scene.”
“That was pretty damn slick, whoever thought of it,” Sherman said, furrowing his brow in concentration. “Those kids hear a siren, they’re going to bolt. They wouldn’t stop to figure out where it was coming from.”
“Yeah. But you know that area. Nobody knows nothing. One old lady, lives a few blocks from the lot-on Halstead, where it went down-she said the sirens were coming from a couple of different cars.”
“Cars?”
“That’s what she said.”
“But not squad cars?”
“Nope. Just regular cars. Driving around, blasting sirens.”
“That’s a new one on me. Never heard of anything like that before.”
“Me, neither. But it wasn’t her imagination, Sherman. ’Cause the gang boys heard them, too. That’s what made them cut and run.”
“I think I’ll go out there myself,” Sherman Layne said. “Take a look around while it’s still dark.”
1959 October 07 Wednesday 23:04
“Did you see it?”
“Not up close,” Lacy said into the phone. “But we were there. Saw one of them go down. We split soon as we heard the sirens.”
“Tomorrow morning, come over to Benny’s place. We’ll shoot a game of pool.”
“What time?”