“No, sir,” the clerk said, nervously.
“Next time you do, you give them this,” Layne said, handing over one of his business cards, with “OK/1” handwritten on the back.
1959 October 06 Tuesday 11:22
“He driving a Buick now, boss,” Rufus said into the pay phone. “Brand-new one. Shiny brown color. Let me give you the plate.”
“Who was that, Sal?” a scrawny man in a white shirt and dark suit pants asked, when the phone was put down.
“That was the future, Rocco,” Dioguardi told him. “For anyone smart enough to see it.”
1959 October 06 Tuesday 12:07
“No flowers today?” Tussy said, as she stood aside for Dett to enter.
“I didn’t think-”
“Oh, don’t be such a stick!” she said, grinning. “I was only teasing you.”
“I guess I’m no good at telling.”
“Well, when I make this face,” Tussy said, turning the corners of her mouth down, “that’s the tip-off.”
“But you weren’t-”
“Walker, what am I going to do with you? That was teasing, too!”
“I…”
“I wish you could see the look on your face. Honestly! Well, come on, let’s get you some food. Just put your jacket over the back of the couch there, if you like.”
“Where’s Fireball?” Dett asked, sitting down at the kitchen table.
“Who knows?” Tussy said, airily. “He comes and goes just as he pleases.”
“You mean he can get out by himself?”
“Sure,” she said. “The back door’s got a hole cut in it for him, down at the bottom. My dad did that, a long time ago. He used to go out a lot more than he does now, but he still likes the idea that he can, you know?”
“Yeah,” Dett said. “I do know. Sometimes, all you have is the things you think about.”
“What do you mean?” she asked, her eyes alive and attentive.
“Well, things can happen. The bank can take your house-not your house, not with you never missing a payment,” Dett added immediately, seeing a dart of fear flash across Tussy’s face. “But… well, you can lose things. Like a car being repossessed, or a business going bad. But the idea of things, those you get to keep, no matter where you are.”
“Like dreams, you mean? Wishes?”
“No. More like… When I was in the army, some of the men I served with, what really kept them going was letters from home. But not everybody got those letters. The guys who didn’t, some of them built their own. In their head, like. The idea of a girlfriend, or a hometown, or people that cared about them-I don’t know-things that could have been. Or things that could come true, someday. Some guys, that was all they could talk about.”
“But if those things never happened-”
“They could happen,” Dett said, insistently. “I don’t mean fools who dreamed about being millionaires-or… there was this one guy, Big Wayne, he was always talking about how he was going to write a book. Not like that. I mean, things that really could happen, if you got lucky enough.”
“Fireball, when he goes out, I don’t think he… chases girl cats, anymore,” Tussy said. “He used to come back just mangled from some of the fights he got into with the other toms. But with that door still there, maybe he thinks he could go out and… be like he was before. Is that what you mean, Walker?”
“It’s exactly what I mean,” Dett said.
1959 October 06 Tuesday 12:36
“You have to listen to me, Uriah.”
“That’s not my name. Not no more,” the tall, rangy youth said to his sister. He was wearing a long black undertaker’s coat and matching narrow-brimmed black hat, with three orange feathers in the headband.
“I don’t care what you call yourself,” she said, firmly. “I didn’t cut out of school and come all the way over here to listen to any more of your foolishness.”
“My foolishness? It ain’t me saying those mangy-ass little white boys got themselves some real guns. Where’d you hear that, anyway?”
“I can’t tell you,” Kitty said. “But it’s from someone who knows.”
“I know you ain’t keeping company with none of those-”
“I’m not one of your little gang boys, Uriah Nickens,” she said, facing him squarely, “so don’t you dare use that tone of voice with me.”
“You heard it at school?”
“What if I did?”
“Yeah. What I thought. Those white boys think they slick, spread the word they got cannons, maybe we don’t show up tomorrow night. Punk out. Wouldn’t they fucking love that!”
“Do you have to talk that way?”
“I’ll talk… I’m sorry, Kitty-girl. You my baby sister. Always will be, no matter what the old man say. Look, I think I got it scoped out, what happened. It’s just a bluff, like I said.”
“Uriah, you know I don’t lie. Just because I can’t tell you where I heard it, that doesn’t mean it’s not true. If you go and fight, you could end up…”
“You don’t know nothing about our life, the life we live, Kitty. Some people got farms, some people got houses, some people got cars. What we got is that we’re the South Side Kings. And every King knows, when we roll on another club, he might not be coming back. But if one of us punked out, ever punked out, then we’re all dead, or might as well be.”
“You could always come back home, Uriah. Daddy didn’t mean those things he said. I know he didn’t. You come back, and I’ll stand right there with you, I promise.”
“I know you would, Kitty-girl. And I hope you find the life you want for yourself. College and all. But me, this is my life. Back there, I’m Uriah Nickens, the nigger-boy dropout nothing. If I’m lucky, maybe I get me a job cleaning some white man’s toilets. Here, I’m Preacher, President of the South Side Kings. And you know what, baby sis? I’d rather die where I stand than live back where I came from.”
1959 October 06 Tuesday 12:52
The sky had broken its morning promise. A dull, leaden rain slanted down with the self-assurance of an experienced conqueror. A pink-and-black ’58 Edsel Corsair swayed down the two-lane blacktop, yawing badly at each curve. The turnoff was unmarked, but the driver had been thoroughly briefed, and recognized the lightning-scarred trunk of what had once been a magnificent white-oak tree.
The Edsel slowed considerably as the blacktop turned to hard-packed dirt, passing ramshackle houses so deteriorated a stranger to the area would have thought them abandoned. The houses were scattered carelessly, like garbage tossed from the window of a passing car. Just like home, the driver thought. Only I don’t live here anymore.
The house at the top of a rise was little more than a cabin, but it looked well maintained, with a fresh coat of barn-red paint and a cedar-shake roof, faded to a soft gray. The surrounding yard was more forest than lawn, with a wide swath of macadam laid through it, branching off to a detached two-car garage.
The Edsel pulled up to the garage, and Ruth Keene, proprietress of Locke City’s finest whorehouse, stepped out.
The door to the cabin opened; Detective Sherman Layne stood there a long moment. Then he walked over to her.
1959 October 06 Tuesday 13:31
“Can I talk to you?”
“You talking to me now,” Moses said to Rufus.
“Not like this. I want to sit down with you.”
“After work,” the elderly man said.
“You want to meet me at-”
“You know where I got my little office?”
“There?”
“After work,” Moses said, again.
“I don’t like talking business with so many white people around.”
“When’s the last time you saw any white people down there?”
“Fair enough, what you say. But… this is private, man.”