Макс Коллинз - Quarry in the Black

Around eight, the worker bees began arriving across the way, the usual mix of black and white, and mostly older staffers who had passed on the road trip. By eight-fifteen, a black Plymouth Fury made a parking place out of a yellow-curbed area near the front of Coalition HQ; it might as well have had UNMARKED POLICE CAR stenciled on the side, and the two lumpy-looking plainclothes cops in rumpled suits canceled any lingering doubt.

Boyd and I passed the binoculars around for half an hour, watching these obvious detectives get greeted first by a staffer and then by Harold Jackson, who took them deeper into the building than could be seen from our perch. Presumably back to his office and — assuming the Reverend had made it in by now — that office, as well.

Lowering the binoculars, Boyd said, “Shit.”

“Nothing we didn’t expect. Put those down. We have things to do.”

“We do?”

“In a little while, you’re going to call the Broker. Tell him our adjusted story about the drug-dealer killing across the way. Explain that I’ll go in the office after lunch and deal with the detectives then, when they’re getting tired of hearing what they’re hearing. He’ll know we can’t skip that step before skipping, if that’s what he wants us to do.”

Boyd nodded. “And you?”

“I’m going downtown to the YMCA and make myself known. I’ll take that swim the Broker recommended. Either before or after that, I’ll find a Dumpster to get rid of that garbage bag of bloody clothes. Probably find a department store to buy a few new clothes, since my wardrobe has been seriously depleted. I’ll return here before I go across the street for a grilling, and see what the Broker advises.”

“Okay,” he said.

“It’s barely possible the detectives will call in more troops to canvass the neighborhood. So don’t answer the door, and turn that radio off. Nobody’s home. Got it?”

“Got it.”

And now I was back, and the Broker had advised that we stay, “if possible.”

We were in the living room, on the couch.

I said, “Stay how long, did he say?”

“Till the job’s done.”

“Jesus, Boyd — they’ve seen me across the street. Everything I said about police sketches and my face getting famous still goes.”

He shrugged, sitting sideways with one leg tucked under the other. “But it always did. Once you went undercover, you risked that, unless you could find a way to take the mark out without raising general suspicion. Accident or suicide or some shit.”

I shook my head. “You should be doing the hit, not me. What I’ve been doing is the recon. You’re still a new face. Fucking Broker. This is so fucked up.”

Boyd swallowed, licked his lips; he really didn’t like taking the active role. “You want me to do it? You see a way we can set this up? I mean, if that’s what it takes—”

I shook my head again. “No. And we only have the rest of the week to bring it off. Dead white Nazis, dead black drug dealers... this is not like anything we’ve dealt with before.”

His eyes were close enough to normal now to widen, though he still looked like Lon Chaney halfway through having his makeup removed. “Fuck the Broker. He’s not on the fucking firing line. You wanna bail, Quarry, I’ll bail.”

“Not yet. We might as well see how this afternoon plays out.”

I went in to Coalition HQ around eleven. The Reverend was in his office, on his phone, looking as cool as ever but for a vertical crease between his eyebrows indicating the pressure he was under. Jackson was out in the bullpen, hovering around, mother-henning his bummed-out staff and keeping an eye on the two lumpy cops, who were split up and moving from desk to desk doing interviews, pads and pencils in hand like carhops taking orders.

When he saw me, Jackson came right over.

“Jack,” he said, “you just got here?”

I nodded.

“Are you aware of last night’s tragedy?”

“What?”

He took me by the arm, walked me all the way back to the office. I glanced over at Ruth’s desk. Empty. Then I was in the chair across from a shell-shocked Jackson, seated in his swivel chair, stroking his thick mustache nervously; even the shaved skull had lost its luster.

I sat forward. “Mr. Jackson, what’s going on?”

He told me about the terrible discovery out back, in the alley, that had been made early this morning by Sanitation Department workers. That André Freeman, one of the Coalition’s oldest, most respected staffers, had been found with his throat cut.

Oldest staffers, maybe. Respected? I didn’t see anybody out at those desks who looked teary-eyed or heartbroken or anything. A little blindsided, maybe, and uneasy talking to cops — so what else was new?

“When I got here,” Jackson was saying, “the back room was swarming with blue uniforms who’d let themselves in somehow. I couldn’t catch the Reverend before he left home, so his drivers delivered him right into the middle of a three-ring circus, cops, lab techs, photographers. Those men out there in our work space are interrogating our people. Can you imagine?”

Didn’t seem strange to me.

“No,” I said, “I can’t.”

“And the worst part of is... I can tell this from the nature, the tenor of their questions... they think this is some kind of... drug deal. Drug deal gone wrong.”

“No,” I said.

“Obviously, that’s not what it is.”

“Obviously.” What the fuck else could it be?

“This violence toward one of the Reverend’s staff members,” he said with a world-weary sigh, “indicates the extent of racial discontent in this community.”

“You mean, that black people are discontented?”

“No! Well, of course, certainly black people are discontented. But what I mean is, the racists, the White Supremacist lunatics who would do to the Reverend what was done to Dr. King.”

“Murder him, you mean.”

He flinched at the word “murder,” and his echo was whispered: “Assassinate him, yes. And this movement doesn’t need another martyr. Did you hear about this neo-Nazi maniac, Starkweather, turning up dead this morning?”

“No.”

And I hadn’t. I mean, obviously, I knew he was dead, just not that he turned up.

Jackson was saying, “He was found burned head to toe, shot in the head.”

“Found where?”

“Dumped behind the church where he preached, in Ferguson.”

“Wait, Starkweather was the preacher at that church?”

“Certainly.”

Had to hand it to the late Commander. He had a lot of things going.

“Obviously,” Jackson said, “he was murdered by one of his own people. These hate groups are highly competitive. His ‘Klavern’ was only one of several in the area, none sanctioned by the official Klan.”

“Well, the official Klan wouldn’t want to take on just anybody,” I said.

That stopped him for a moment, but he picked right up. “And of course it’ll be the black community that gets the blame for Starkweather’s much-deserved death. Which will stir up the race hate even more.” He paused dramatically. “And we have the big rally coming up this Saturday, with the Reverend as the main speaker. I personally think we should cancel, but he won’t hear of it.”

“You’ll need heightened security.”

“We’ll have it. Local, federal... but as a great man once said, ‘If history has taught us anything, it’s that anyone can be killed.’ ”

Truer words.

“What great man?” I asked.

“John F. Kennedy.”

I nodded. He would know.

I started to rise. “Well, you must have plenty to deal with without wasting time on a grunt like me...”

He held up a stop palm, half-rising himself. “No, Jack! Please sit down. I brought you back here to ask your help. To ask that you, in our time of crisis, go above and beyond the call of duty.”