Thomas Cook - Sacrificial Ground

Frank smiled.

“When things got hot for him, Frank,” Caleb went on, “he did one thing I never knew a pimp to do. He spent his last goddamn dime bailing out his stable, and when he had to leave Atlanta, he run all the way to Kansas City, took every single whore with him, gave them some money, and then you know what?”

Frank shook his head.

“He cut them loose, Frank,” Caleb said. “Just said, ‘Good luck. Hope you’ll have a nice life.’ And then he just disappeared.”

“What are you getting at, Caleb?” Frank asked finally.

“Well, after the double-breasted suit beat up on Bea, Sancho came to me,” Caleb said. “He told me the story, and he said he was going to make sure this guy stayed clear of his girls.” Caleb shook his head. “And he tried to do that. But the suit was hot for Beatrice. Something about her skin, the way it bruised, maybe. Anyway, he wouldn’t leave her alone, and after Sancho said to stay away from Beatrice, just about everybody he knew got busted by the cops.”

“So he looked like a snitch,” Frank said.

“That’s right,” Caleb said. “That’s a dangerous thing to be.”

Frank nodded.

“So Sancho came to me,” Caleb said. “He figured the suit was in on it, that the suit had plugs into the cops, and that they were helping him set Sancho up.” Caleb smiled. “But he was wrong. The suit had a connection to a newspaper, to a reporter on the cophouse beat. That’s the guy that was feeding him.” He leaned even further back in his chair. “Well, it wasn’t long till somebody worked over Beatrice. It wasn’t the suit. It was somebody who thought Sancho had snitched on him. So the way I looked at it, it might as well have been the suit. Know what I mean?”

“Yes.”

Caleb smiled broadly. “Ever heard the expression ‘to take the law into your own hands’?”

“Yes.”

Caleb lifted his arms into the air. “These old hands right here, son,” he said. “One night they grabbed that fucker in the double-breasted suit, and they just didn’t stop working on his face until he was really sorry he’d ever been nasty to a nice little black girl.”

Frank smiled indulgently. “And this all has something to do with Angelica Devereaux?”

“It has to do with me knocking on a few doors around that lot,” Caleb answered. “When one of them opened, it was little Bea behind it.”

“She lives around there?”

“No, she lives in Kansas City,” Caleb said. “Right where Sancho cut her loose. Claims she’s a computer operator. Says she’s long gone from the whorehouse business.”

“You believe her?”

“Yeah,” Caleb said confidently.

“What’s she doing back in Atlanta?”

“Her sister’s just got married for the fourth or fifth time,” Caleb said. “She wanted Bea to come down and mind the kids while she went on her latest honeymoon.”

“And you don’t doubt any of this?”

“Nope,” Caleb said. “Know why? Because she didn’t give me that look whores always give men, even the ones they like. Lord God, Frank, you don’t know what disgust is until you listen to whores talk about men. I know. I listened to a lot of them when I was working Vice.”

Frank took out his notebook. “Beatrice, you said?”

“Beatrice Withers’s what she goes by.”

“And what did she tell you?”

“Well, Beatrice don’t much like kids,” Caleb said. “Fact is, she don’t know a thing about them. So they’ve been running her ragged for the last few days. She’s been walking the floor a lot. She was walking it at around three in the morning the day we found Angelica Devereaux.”

“Tuesday morning,” Frank said.

“That’s right.”

Frank could feel the skin of his fingers tighten slightly, as if they were already stretched out and reaching for the killer’s throat. “What’d she see?”

“I thought you might want to hear it from her own mouth.”

“Where is she?”

“At her sister’s house, like I said,” Caleb told him. He glanced at his watch. “She said she’d be there until around noon, then she was planning on taking the kids to the park so they could have a go at the squirrels. She’s probably there now.” He stood up immediately. “Ready to go?”

On the drive to the park, Caleb sat leisurely in the front seat, his. large thighs spread out across the seats like thick rolls of dough. An enormous cloud of blue smoke ringed his head as he puffed at his pipe and, despite the open window, it seemed to coil around in the car, increasing the already stifling heat. It was as if it had become a part of him, this tumbling blue smoke, a swirling, indefinable cloud that marked and identified him like his own personal badge.

“She said she’d be near the playground,” Caleb said as Frank turned the car onto Grant Street, then made a right and headed into the park. “She’s wearing a bright yellow dress,” he added with an appreciative smile. “That’s something that hasn’t changed much about Beatrice.”

The bright yellow dress was visible from a great distance, and Frank saw it almost immediately. He guided the car slowly over to the curb and glanced toward the playground.

“That her?” he asked.

Caleb’s eyes were already on her, and they seemed to soften as he looked at her. “Oh, yeah, that’s her,” he said, almost in a whisper, “sitting by the swings.” He looked at Frank. “You might say she always did love things to be in motion.”

It was well past noon, and as he got out of the car and headed down the small, bare hill toward the playground, Frank could feel that the steadily building summer heat had already turned everything dull and slow and sluggish. Even the children who dotted the playground moved ponderously through the thick, pulsing air. They hung like overripened fruit from the climbing dome, or swung slowly back and forth, as if moving through layers of gelatin.

“Hey, Bea,” Caleb called as he walked up to her.

The woman looked up immediately, saw Caleb, and smiled sweetly as she looked at him. “Didn’t think you was coming back.”

“I said I would,” Caleb told her.

She shrugged. “Well, you know what I’m used to.” She leaned gently against the tree, as if it were a source of cool air. A wave of dark perspiration swam out from beneath the arms of her dress. Another hung in an almost perfect crescent over her upper chest.

“Kids still getting to you?” Caleb asked.

Beatrice smiled languidly. “They more than I can take, Cal.” She waved her hand over her face. “And this heat. I almost forgot what it was like down here.”

“You’d get used to it, if you didn’t rush back up North,” Caleb said, as if he were trying to persuade her to linger in the city.

Beatrice shook her head. “Naw, I got to get back.” She glanced at Frank, but said nothing.

“This is Frank Clemons,” Caleb told her. “He’s in charge of the case.”

Beatrice grinned at him. “Top man, huh?” She winked at Caleb. “That’s good. I like working with the man on top.” She laughed. “Hey, Cal, you tell this white boy about me?”

“I got nothing to hide, Bea,” Caleb said somberly. “You know me when it comes to things like that.”

“So he told you I was once a working girl?” Beatrice asked Frank.

“Yeah.”

“Way back when, though. Long gone from now.”

“You work with computers these days,” Frank said.

“Right, computers,” Beatrice said. “Them other times is passed me by.” She nodded toward Caleb. “He was skinny as a rail back then. Wasn’t you, Caleb?”

I was, yes.

“Handsome, too,” Beatrice said. She shook her head despairingly. “But so thin. Lord, you could just about see through him.” She leaned forward and patted his belly. “Look like somebody done knocked you up, Cal.” She glanced back at Frank, and he saw the wildness in her eyes. “But he could go all night back in them days.” She turned back toward Caleb and smiled affectionately. “Could ’bout wear a girl out, couldn’t you?”