The Charlie Parker Collection 1

  I had told them to find Atys Jones and they were already looking for him, although not as a potential victim but as a suspect in two further murders. They were wrong, of course. I knew that they were wrong.

  At a gas station in South Portland, the hunched man stood over the Nissan and filled the car with twenty dollars’ worth of gas. There was only one other vehicle at the pumps: an ’86 Chevy C-10 with a busted right wing that had cost its new owner the grand total of $1,100, half down with the rest to pay by the end of the year. It was the first car Bear had owned in more than half a decade and he was hugely proud of it. Now, instead of bumming rides to the co-op, he was there waiting each morning when they opened up, music blaring from the Chevy’s tinny stereo.

  Bear hardly glanced at the other man close by. He had seen enough strange men in prison to know that the best thing to do in their presence was to mind his own business. He gassed the car with money borrowed from his sister, checked the pressure on every tire, then drove away.

  Cyrus had paid the bored gas station attendant in advance and was aware that the young man was still watching him, mesmerized by Cyrus’s crooked body. Although used to the revulsion of others, Cyrus still considered it bad manners to be too obvious about it. The boy was lucky that he was safe behind the glass and that Cyrus had other things to occupy him. Still, if he had time he might come back and teach him that it was rude to stare. Cyrus replaced the pump, got into the car, and took his notebook from beneath the seat. He had been keeping careful notes of all that he saw and did, because it was important that he did not forget anything useful.

  The boy went into the notebook, along with Cyrus’s other observations that evening: the movements of the redheaded woman in her house and the brief, troubling sighting of the large black man who now shared it with her. It made Cyrus unhappy.

  Cyrus didn’t like getting the blood of men upon him.

  19

  The headquarters of the Charleston PD occupied a redbrick structure on Lockwood Boulevard, opposite the Joe Riley Stadium and facing out over Brittlebank Park and the Ashley river. The interview room didn’t have much of a view, though, unless you counted the faces of the two irate detectives currently sharing it with me.

  To understand the Charleston Police Department, you had to understand Chief Reuben Greenberg. Greenberg had been chief since 1982 and was that contradiction in terms, a popular police chief. In his eighteen years in charge he had introduced a range of innovations that had contributed to containing, and in some cases reducing, the crime rate in Charleston: everything from Weed and Seed programs in poorer areas to issuing running shoes to officers to enable them to chase felons more effectively. Homicide rates had consistently dropped in that time, allowing Charleston to compare favorably with any Southern city of similar size.

  Unfortunately, the deaths of Albert, Ginnie, and Samuel Singleton meant that any hopes of matching the previous year’s figures were pretty much gone, and anybody even remotely connected with holing the good ship Crime Statistics below the waterline was likely to be very unpopular at 180 Lockwood Boulevard.

  I was very unpopular at 180 Lockwood Boulevard.

  After an hour spent waiting in a locked patrol car outside the East Side house, I was brought to a room painted in two shades of ugly and furnished by Functional-R-Us. A cup of coffee had since grown cold in front of me. The two detectives who questioned me weren’t noticeably warmer.

  ‘Elliot Norton,’ the first repeated. ‘You say you’re working for Elliot Norton.’

  His name was Adams, and there were patches of sweat beneath the arms of his blue shirt. His skin was blue-black and his eyes were bloodshot. I’d already told him twice that I was working for Elliot Norton, and we’d gone through Albert’s final words half a dozen times, but Adams saw no reason why I shouldn’t do it all again.

  ‘He hired me to do some background work on the Jones case,’ I said. ‘We picked Atys up from the Richland County lockup and took him to the Singleton place. It was supposed to be a temporary safe house.’

  ‘Mistake number two,’ said Adams’s partner. His last name was Addams, and he was as pale as his partner was dark. Somebody in the Charleston PD had a warped sense of humor. It was only the third time that he had spoken since the interview had begun.

  ‘What was mistake number one?’ I asked.

  ‘Getting involved with the Jones case in the first place,’ he replied. ‘Or maybe stepping off the plane at Charleston International. See, now you got three mistakes.’

  He smiled. I smiled back. It was only polite.

  ‘Doesn’t it get confusing, you being called Addams and him being called Adams?’

  Addams scowled. ‘No, see I’m Addams, with two d’s. He’s Adams, with one d. It’s easy.’

  He seemed serious about it. The Charleston PD offered an ascending scale of incentive pay based on educational achievement, from 7 percent for an associates’ degree to 22 percent for a Ph.D. I knew this from reading and rereading the notices on the board behind Addams’s head. I was guessing that the incentive box on Addams’s pay slip was pretty empty, unless they gave him a nickel a month for his high school diploma.

  ‘So,’ his partner resumed, ‘you pick him up, drop him at the safe house, go back to your hotel . . .?’

  ‘Clean my teeth, go to bed, get up, check on Atys, make some calls—’

  ‘Who’d you call?’

  ‘Elliot, some people back in Maine.’

  ‘What did you say to Norton?’

  ‘Nothing much. We just touched base. He asked me if I was making any progress and I told him that I was just getting started.’

  ‘Then what did you do?’

  We had reached the point, once again, where the paths of truth and untruth diverged. I opted for the middle ground, hoping to pick up the path of truth again later.

  ‘I went to a strip joint.’

  Adams’s right eyebrow made an ecclesiastical arch of disapproval.

  ‘Why’d you do that?’

  ‘I was bored.’

  ‘Norton pay you to go to strip joints?’

  ‘It was my lunch break. I was on my own time.’

  ‘And after?’

  ‘Went back to the hotel. Had dinner. Bed. This morning: tried calling Elliot, had no luck, checked witness statements, went back to my hotel room. The call came about an hour later.’

  Adams rose wearily from the table and exchanged a look with his partner.

  ‘Doesn’t sound to me like Norton was getting his money’s worth,’ he said.

  For the first time, I picked up on his use of the past tense.

  ‘What do you mean, “was”?’

  The look passed between them again, but neither replied.

  ‘Do you have any papers relating to the Jones case that might prove helpful to the course of this investigation?’ asked Addams.

  ‘I asked you a question.’

  Addams’s voice rose a notch. ‘And I asked you a question: do you, or do you not, have material in your possession that might assist this investigation?’

  ‘No,’ I lied. ‘Elliot had it all.’

  I caught myself.

  ‘Eliot has it all,’ I corrected. ‘Now tell me what happened.’

  It was Adams who spoke.

  ‘Highway Patrol found his car off 176, down by Sandy Road Creek. It was in the water. Looks like he swerved to avoid something on the road and ended up in the river. The body’s missing, but there’s blood in the car. A lot of blood. Blood type is B rhesus positive, which matches Norton’s. We know he participates in the city’s blood drives, so we’re checking the samples from the car against a sample of his donated blood.’

  I buried my head in my hands and took a deep breath. First Foster, then Truett and Mobley, and now Elliot. That left two names: Earl Larousse Jr. and Phil Poveda.

  ‘Can I go now?’ I wanted to return to my hotel room and get the material there out of harm’s way. I just hoped that Adams and Addams hadn’t gone looking for
a search warrant while I was locked up.

  Before either of the detectives could answer, the door to the interview room opened. The man who entered was two or three inches taller, and at least two decades older, than I was. He had buzz-cut gray hair, gray-blue eyes, and carried himself like he’d just stepped out of Parris Island to hunt down some AWOL marines. The military impression was enforced by his immaculate uniform and name badge. It read ‘S. Stilwell.’ Stilwell was the Lieutenant Colonel in charge of the Charleston PD’s Operations Bureau, answerable only to the chief himself.

  ‘Is this the man, detective?’ he barked.

  ‘Yes sir.’ It was Addams. He shot me a look that told me my troubles had only just begun and that he was going to enjoy what came next.

  ‘Why is he here? Why is he not currently occupying a holding cell with the worst filth, the most disgusting reprobates that this fine city can furnish?’

  ‘We were questioning him, sir.’

  ‘And did he answer your questions in a satisfactory manner, detective?

  ‘No sir, he did not.’

  ‘Did he not indeed?’

  Stilwell turned to Adams. ‘You, detective, you are a good man, are you not?’

  ‘I try to be, sir.’

  ‘I do not doubt that, detective. And do you not, to the best of your abilities, look favorably on your fellow man?’

  ‘I do, sir.’

  ‘I would expect no less of you. Do you read your Bible?’

  ‘Not as much as I should, sir.’

  ‘Damn right, detective. Nobody reads his Bible as much as he should. A man should be out living the word of God, not studying on it. Am I right?’

  ‘You are, sir.’

  ‘And does the Bible not tell us to think well of our fellow man, to give him every chance that he deserves?’

  ‘I couldn’t say for sure, sir.’

  ‘Neither could I, but I feel certain that there is such an injunction. And if there is not such an injunction in the Bible, then it was an oversight, and the man responsible, if he could go back and correct his mistake, would most certainly return and include said injunction, would he not?’

  ‘He most certainly would, sir.’

  ‘Amen. So we are agreed, detective, that you have given Mr. Parker every chance to answer the questions put to him; that you, as a God-fearing man, have heeded the Bible’s probable injunction to take all that Mr. Parker has said as the word of an honest man; and yet you still doubt his basic sincerity?’

  ‘I guess so, sir.’

  ‘Well that certainly is a most unfortunate turn of events.’

  He gave me his full attention for the first time.

  ‘Statistics, Mr. Parker. Let’s talk about statistics. Do you know how many people were murdered in the fine city of Charleston in the year of our Lord, nineteen hundred and ninety-nine?’

  I shook my head.

  ‘I will tell you: three. It was the lowest murder rate in more than forty years. Now, what does that tell you about the police force in the fine city of Charleston?’

  I didn’t reply. He cupped his left hand around his left ear and leaned toward me.

  ‘I can’t hear you, son.’

  I opened my mouth, which gave him his cue to continue before I could say anything.

  ‘I will tell you what it says about this police force. It says that this fine body of men and women does not tolerate murder; that it actively discourages said form of antisocial activity; and that it will come down upon those who commit murder like two tons of shit from a trainload of elephants. But your arrival in our city appears to have coincided with a shocking increase in acts of homicide. That will affect our statistics. It will cause a blip on the screen, and Chief Greenberg, a fine, fine man, will have to go to the mayor and explain this unfortunate turn of events. And the mayor will ask him why this should be, and Chief Greenberg will then ask me, and I will say that it is because of you, Mr. Parker. And the chief will ask me where you are, and I will lead him to the deepest, darkest hole that the city of Charleston can provide for those of whom it most seriously disapproves. And under that hole will be another hole, and in that hole will be you, Mr. Parker, because I will have put you there. You will be so far below the ground that you will no longer officially be in the jurisdiction of the city of Charleston. You will not even officially be within the jurisdiction of the United States of America. You will be in the jurisdiction of the People’s Republic of China, and you would be advised to hire yourself a Chinese lawyer in order to cut down on traveling expenses incurred by your legal representative. Do you think I am shitting you, Mr. Parker? Because I am not shitting you. I do not shit people like you, Mr. Parker, I shit on people like you, and I have been saving some of my nastiest shit for just such an occasion as this. Now, do you have anything further that you wish to share with us?’

  I shook my head. ‘I can’t tell you any more.’

  He stood. ‘Then our business here is concluded. Detective, do we have a holding pen available for Mr. Parker?’

  ‘I’m sure we do, sir.’

  ‘And will he be sharing this holding pen with the dregs of this fine city, with drunks and whoremongers and men of low moral character?’

  ‘That can be arranged, sir.’

  ‘Then arrange it, detective.’

  I made a vain attempt to assert my rights.

  ‘Don’t I get to call a lawyer?

  ‘Mr. Parker, you do not need a lawyer. You need a travel agent to get you the hell out of this city. You need a priest to pray that you do not irritate me any more than you already have. And finally, you need to go back in time to get hold of your mother before your father impregnates her with his sorry seed and ask her not to let you be born because, if you continue to obstruct this investigation, you are going to regret the day she thrust you mewling and screaming into this world. Detective, get this man out of my sight.’

  They put me in the drunk tank until 6 A.M., then when they felt I had stewed for long enough, Addams came down and had me released. As we headed for the main door, his partner stood in the hallway and watched us pass.

  ‘I find out anything on Norton, I’ll let you know,’ he said.

  I thanked him, and he nodded.

  ‘I found out what “plateye” means too. Had to ask Mr. Alphonso Brown himself, man who guides folks round the old Gullah places. He said it was a kind of ghost: a changeling, one that could shift its form. Could be he was trying to say that your client turned on them.’

  ‘Could be, except that Atys didn’t have a gun.’

  He didn’t reply, and his partner hustled me on.

  My possessions were handed back to me, minus my gun. I was given a slip and told that the gun was not being returned to me for the time being. Through the doors I could see prisoners in jail blues arriving to work on the lawns and clear garbage from the flower beds. I wondered how much trouble I’d have getting a cab.

  ‘You planning on leaving Charleston in the near future?’ asked Addams.

  ‘No. Not after this.’

  ‘Well, you make a move and you let us know, y’hear?’

  I made for the door but found Addams’s hand resting against my chest. ‘You remember this, Mr. Parker: I got a bad feeling about you. I made some calls while you was in here and I didn’t like one thing that I heard. I don’t want you starting one of your crusades in Chief Greenberg’s city, you understand me? So just to guard against that, and to make sure that you call on us again when you’re leaving, we’ll be holding on to that Smith 10 of yours until your plane starts heading down the runway. Then maybe we’ll give you your cannon back.’

  The hand dropped, and Addams opened the door for me.

  ‘Be seeing you,’ he said.

  I stopped, frowned, and clicked my fingers.

  ‘Which one were you again?’

  ‘Addams.’

  ‘With one d.’

  ‘Two ds.’

  I nodded. ‘I’ll try to remember.’

  When I g
ot back to my hotel I barely had enough energy to undress before I fell into my bed and slept soundly until after ten. I didn’t dream. It was as if the deaths of the night before had never happened.

  But Charleston had not yielded up the last of its bodies. While the cockroaches skittered across the cracked sidewalks to hide from the daylight and the last of the night owls made for their beds, a man named Cecil Exley was walking to the site of the small bakery and coffee shop that he owned over on East Bay. There was work to be done, fresh bread and croissants to be baked, and although the clock had not yet struck six, Cecil was already running late.

  At the corner of Franklin and Magazine, he began to slow down slightly. The bulk of the old Charleston jail loomed over him, a testament to misery and grief. A low white wall surrounded a yard thick with long grass, at the center of which stood the jail itself. The red bricks that had formed its sidewalks were missing in places, stolen, presumably, by those who felt their need was greater than the demands of history. Twin four-story towers topped with battlements and weeds stood at either side of the locked main gate, its bars and the bars of the windows around and above it stained red with oxidized rust. The concrete had crumbled and fallen from around the frames, exposing the brickwork beneath, as the old building succumbed to slow decay.

  Denmark Vesey and his co-conspirators in the ill-fated slave revolt of 1822 had been chained up in the whipping house for blacks at the back of the jail before their execution, most of them led to the gallows still proclaiming their innocence and one of them, Bacchus Hammett, even laughing as they placed the noose around his neck. Many others had passed through its gates before and since. There was nowhere else in Charleston, Cecil Exley believed, where the past and the present were so closely linked, where it was possible to stand quietly on an early morning and feel the aftershocks of past violence still shuddering through new days. It was Cecil’s habit to pause occasionally at the gates of the old jail and say a short, silent prayer for those who had languished there at a time when men with skin the color of Cecil’s could not even arrive in Charleston as part of a ship’s crew without being consigned to a cell for the duration of their visit.