Chiefs (45 page)

“Well, now,” said the young cop, “electric windows, too. Boy, this sure is some car you got yourself.”

Tucker said nothing.

“This is your car, of course. You didn’t just swipe it out of somebody’s driveway, did you?” It wasn’t quite a question. “Okay, sport, outta the car.”

Tucker slowly turned his head and looked at the policeman. “What for?” he asked evenly.

An astonished look came over the cop’s face. “What for? Why, because I told you to, that’s what for.”

Tucker shook his head. “That’s not a good enough reason. I wasn’t speeding. You’ve got no cause to believe I’ve committed any crime.”

The cop stared at him incredulously. He reached to his side, pulled out a large pistol and pointed it at Tucker’s head. “How about this? Is this a good enough reason? Now you get your black ass out of that car, you son of a bitch, and do like I tell you.”

Tucker uncoiled himself from the car and stood up, towering over the policeman. He was wearing a blue suit and a necktie. The cop patted him under the arms for a gun, then stepped back and holstered his pistol.

“Why, don’t you ask me for my license and registration?” Tucker asked.

“I’ll ask the questions here, boy. Now, lemme see your license and registration.”

Tucker gave them to the cop, who glanced at them.

“Awright, Marvin”, said the cop, “I’m going to get back in my car and drive down to the station, and you’re going to follow me real easylike.” Tucker’s name was written on the license as Marvin T. Watts, in the military fashion. “Then we’ll see whether you own this car. And by the way, I clocked you doing fifty-five in a thirty-five-mile-an-hour zone.”

“Horseshit”.

“You mouth off to me one more time, and I’ll blow a hole in you, you hear me? Now you get in that pretty new car and follow me, and don’t you even think about going anywhere else.” The fat young man hitched up his pants and walked to his car. Tucker got into his car and followed him to the police station.

There were two other police cars parked in front of the station, and when the policeman and Tucker entered the building, there were three other officers in the main room. One was talking on the telephone, his feet up on a desk, picking his teeth; the other two were running around the room shooting at each other with water pistols.

“Whacha got, Tub?” the one on the telephone called out.

“Speeding, resisting arrest, Bobby. Maybe a stolen car.”

Bobby turned back to the phone. “Listen, honey, I gotta go book a colored gentleman on a number of charges. I’ll be by there around noontime. You keep your motor running, hear?” He hung up, got to his feet, stretched and yawned, ambled over to the counter that separated the waiting area from the squad room, and dug a form out of a drawer. He tugged a ballpoint from his uniform shirt and looked at Tucker, bored. “Awright, high roller, what’s you name?”

Tub slid the license and registration across the counter. “His name’s Marvin, Bobby. That’s nice, ain’t it? Marvin.”

“My name is Tucker Watts,” said Tucker, tossing his open wallet with his badge and ID card onto the counter. “But you can call me chief.”

Hugh Holmes left the bank and headed for the police station with some trepidation. He had been putting off meeting with the members of the police force to tell them about their new chief, but time was growing short now. It was time to spread the word, and the police station was the place to start.

As he approached the building, he acquired a queasy feeling in his stomach. Tucker Watts’s shiny new Oldsmobile was parked in front of the station, along with all three police cars. Holmes hurried through the entrance, but stopped in the entrance hallway when he heard Tucker’s voice coming from the squad room. The new chief was not actually shouting—indeed, he was speaking at a quite normal volume—but there was an edge in his voice which made Holmes not want to interrupt him. Instead, he leaned against the wall and listened.

“I noticed in your records that you have all served in the armed forces at one time or another. Good, because you will all know what I mean when I say that this police force is a military organization and from this minute forward it is going to be run like one. Do you understand me?”

There was an affirmative mumble from several voices.

“Do you understand me?”

“Yes, sir!”

“That means military courtesy, military bearing, and, for the time being, military procedure. It is very clear to me that none of you knows the first goddamned thing about police procedure. We’re going to change that, but for now military procedure will do. Just pretend that you’re back in the army and that I am your commanding officer. If that doesn’t work for you, pretend I’m God. Do you understand me?”

“Yes, sir!”

“Starting right now, nobody on this force has any rank at all. You’re all patrolmen. There is no seniority. I’ll decide, based on your performance, who will get promotion and responsibility. Which one of you is Strickland?”

“I am, sir.”

“You were an orderly room clerk in the army, a buck sergeant, is that right?”

“Yessir.”

“Then maybe you have, at one time or another, made out a duty roster?”

“Yessir.”

“All right, I want you to make out a duty roster for the six men on this force. I want one man in the station to handle the phone and the radio, and I want two cars in motion at all times, is that clear?”

“Yessir.”

“Until I come on full time duty, every man will work seven eight-hour shifts a week, with thirty minutes for lunch—no coffee breaks. Shifts will rotate—every man will pull both day and night duty. All leaves are canceled. Anybody who calls in sick had better be in the hospital. You got all that, Strickland?”

“Yessir.”

“And make sure that information is communicated to the two officers not present, who I assume are home sleeping because they were on duty last night. If there’s any deviation from those instructions, I’ll have your ass, boy, and the ass of the deviator. I’m going to be floating in and out of here for the next couple of weeks, and around town, too. Don’t any of you let me catch you in an unguarded moment. Is that understood?”

“Yes, sir!”

“Now, I’m going down to the hardware store and buy a bucket of paint, and I’m coming back down here at noon sharp. Strickland, you take the first station shift and schedule the others from there. When I get back I want to see that roster posted and this place looking like an army orderly room, and everybody else better be on the street.”

Holmes heard footsteps crossing the squad room and Tucker’s voice again, quieter.

“Now, you. Which one are you?”

“Murray, sir.”

“Newton Murray?”

“Everybody calls me Tub, sir.”

“Well, Newton, that nickname is soon going to be a thing of the past. What do you weigh?”

“About two-fifty, sir.”

“You’re a liar as well as a bad police officer, Newton. You weigh closer to three hundred. Well, Newton, I want you to see your doctor today and ask him for a diet and a prognosis on how much weight he thinks you can safely lose per week. You bring it to me here tomorrow, with a note from the doctor. I’ll give you an exercise program at that time. We’re going to make a new man of you, Newton.”

“Yessir.”

“And another thing, gid rid of that .357 magnum you’re hauling around. The standard sidearm on this force is now a .38 service revolver with a four-and-a-half-inch barrel, and I don’t want to see any pearl handles, either. You’re lucky I didn’t take that cannon away from you and feed it to you, Newton. That little patdown you gave me was no body search, and you never even knew about the .38 in my glove compartment. And when you bring a citizen in here on a speeding charge you better have something to back it up.”

“Yessir.”

Holmes winced. Had Tub Murray arrested Tucker Watts? Good God!

“Any questions?”

Silence. Holmes strolled into the squad room. “Good morning, Gentlemen. I see you’ve met your new chief. Officer Strickland, would you please telephone the
Messenger
office and ask Bob Blankenship if he could come over here with his camera right away? Thank you. Chief Watts, I’ve had the telephone connected at your new house.” He handed Tucker a piece of paper. “Here’s the number. Worth has accepted your offer on the place.”

“I’m glad to hear it, Mr. Holmes. The wife is just delighted.” He looked at the phone number and handed it to Strickland. “Memorize this, and see that everybody else does.”

Holmes and Tucker chatted briefly; then Bob Blankenship arrived. He took a photograph of Holmes shaking hands’with Tucker, with the patrolmen in the background. “Bob,” said Holmes, “if you’d just run that in Thursday’s paper I think that would communicate some additional information about our new chief. You might just mention, too, that Chief Watts paid his first visit to the police station today to meet his force, and that a good time was had by all.”

Chapter 8.

EARLY on the morning of the fifteenth of November, Billy was awakened by a telephone call from the Associated Press in Atlanta, which was closely followed by calls from
Time, Newsweek
, the three Atlanta television stations, a Columbus station, the
Washington Post
, and the
Los Angeles Times.
After that he persuaded Patricia to take all the calls, except one from Hugh Holmes.

“Billy, all hell has broken loose,” said the banker.

“I know, they’ve been calling me, too. I talked with three or four of them and then stopped taking calls. The story was in the
Constitution
this morning, I’m sure you’ve seen that, but it was the
New York Times
story that attracted all the attention, I suppose.”

“I haven’t talked with any of them, yet. What do you think I should do?”

Billy thought for a moment. “Mr. Holmes, I think the best thing to do would be to call the Associated Press in Atlanta and announce a press conference at, let’s see … say, one o’clock. They’ll get it on the wire right away. That’ll give the TV people time to make the six o’clock news. I’d do it at the police station with you and Watts, and I’d make sure that all the patrolmen are out on duty. It’s hard to say how they’d react having a microphone stuck in their faces and asked how they like their new chief.”

“All right, but I want you there, too, Billy. I hope it goes well. The council members are going to be pretty nervous about this.”

“I’ll be there, and I think you ought to present this to the councilmen as an opportunity to get some favorable publicity for Delano. That’s what it is, you know. I had no idea it would stir up as much interest as this, but now that it has, you should make the most of it. Tell you what, why don’t you get the secretary of the chamber of commerce to put together some press kits—just a brown envelope with one of those brochures that Bob Blankenship printed up, and a map of the city. Hand them out to whoever shows up. Don’t forget to call Blankenship. He can do a story for the
Messenger
about all the attention Delano is getting.”

“Sounds like a good idea. Anything else?”

“Might be a good idea to instruct all of the patrolmen to politely decline to answer questions and to refer the press to you, just in case some reporter hunts one of them down.”

“Right. Why don’t we meet in the chief’s office about 12:45.”

“Fine.” Billy hung up and turned to Patricia. “This thing has mushroomed into something a lot bigger than I ever expected.”

“Is that good or bad?”

“We won’t know until we see what sort of press this generates.”

“Good luck.”

At the police station Billy shook hands with Tucker. They had not met since Tucker had signed his contract.

“I hear you’re getting settled in real well, Chief.”

“Yes, sir, our furniture’s all down, and we’ve done a little redecorating. The wife can’t wait ‘til spring to get a garden started.”

“Have you met many people yet?”

“Mr. Holmes took me up and down Main Street this morning, and we met all the merchants. Lot of people on the street, too.”

“The TV people are already at work,” said Holmes. “One crew followed us the whole way and interviewed whoever they could get their hands on.”

“I understand you had an unexpected introduction to your men.”

Tucker smiled. “I guess you could put it that way.”

“Any problems with them?”

“One or two haven’t decided yet whether they can handle it, but most of them seem to be getting used to the idea.”

“I saw Tub Murray in the drug store the other day. Looks like he’s lost some weight.”

“He’ll be losing some more, I expect, if he stays with us.”

Holmes looked at his watch. “Well, it’s one o’clock. The squad room’s full of folks. We’d better get out there.”

Billy was delayed in town giving personal interviews at his law office, long enough to miss the six o’clock Atlanta news, but he got home in time for the NBC network report. He watched as Chet Huntley gazed into the camera and said, “There has been much turmoil in the South as old laws and customs have given way to the new and court orders have enforced integration of schools and public places. But one small southern town has taken an unexpected step, entirely of its own accord. Delano, Georgia, a town of about six thousand people just a few miles from Warm Springs, where Franklin Roosevelt vacationed and, finally, died, today hired a black chief of police.”