In the Blood (11 page)

“Voila!” Ben said. Harry and I leaned forward to see a shot of the two of us standing outside the front door of a local hotel. I was on the radio, Harry looking to his side at a crowd of sign-holding protestors. I remembered the day: a liberal Massachusetts senator had been visiting Mobile and Harry and I were put on guard duty along with half the force.

“I know there’s an explanation I’m going to accept.” Harry’s tone said it would be a challenge. Harry wasn’t big on unauthorized surveillance of himself.

“We weren’t specifically taking surreptitious photos of you, Detective,” Ben explained. “This guy here, ten feet away, is who we were tracking. Arnold Meltzer. He’s the head honcho of the Aryan Revolutionary Army, a pivotal white power splinter group attractive to a lot of biker gangs. You just happened to be there.”

Harry took a second to let it sink in, nodded acceptance. He studied the photo of a wisp of a man in his fifties, dressed in a light seersucker suit, his face almost totally hidden behind sunglasses. His mouth was a tight pucker, like he was about to lift a clarinet to his lips. He looked as threatening as a canary.

“This guy’s a Klan type, you mean? A real baddie?”

“These days, the danger is a lot bigger than the Klan. Thanks to the internet, white supremacist types are more organized than ever.”

“Obama’s presidency doesn’t change things?”

“People this broken just feel more threatened. It’s made them even crazier, full-blown paranoiac. The movement used to weed out the worst psychotics, but now it gives them leadership positions.”

Harry re-studied the photo of Arnold Meltzer. “And this little fella’s a leader?” He sounded dubious.

“Don’t be fooled by Meltzer’s stature. His ideas make him dangerous. As well as his influence and money.”

“Where’s the money come from?”

“Outlaw bikers are big in the drug-running biz. Mules. It’s whispered Meltzer’s into that big-time, like a contractor. He’s also the figurehead for the White Power movement in the South, revered by supremacists.”

Harry scowled at the photo. “I was nearly rubbing shoulders with the scumbucket and didn’t know.”

Ben said, “He’s not in any police files. I was scanning through the photos when I saw Carson. From his descriptions, I figured that was you next to him. I blew the photos up and saved them.” Ben grinned at me, a loopy Cheshire cat. “Something
to remember Carson by since he never writes, never calls, never…”

I put my hand on Ben’s shoulder. “I’m here now, Ben. With another photo for you to consider.” I pulled three death photos of our baby abductor, handed them over. He stared, shook his head.

“Never seen him before. What’d he do?”

“Tried to steal a kid from a hospital.”

“I saw that bit of weirdness on the news,” Ben said. “I should have figured you’d be in the middle of it.”

He picked up a magnifying glass from his desk and studied closer. “I know that tat on his shoulder: WR. It shows sympathy with a specific biker gang.” Ben turned to the open door to the back offices, yelled, “Wanda!”

A second later a heavy thirtyish woman with braided hair pushed her head through the door. She wore one of those formless dresses people wear when they don’t give a damn for fashion.

“Yo?”

He held up the shot and she stepped into the office. “This is Wanda Tenahoe,” Ben introduced. “She coordinates the info on biker gangs; a big job, but Wanda has a photographic memory.”

“It’s good,” Ms Tenahoe corrected in a bright, musical voice at odds with her first impression. “Not photographic. Let me take a peek.”

She studied the photo. Yanked her thumb for Ben to move from his desk so she could sit. She pecked keys, faces flying past on the monitor.
I wondered if the SLDP had face-recognition software. They seemed to have everything else to gauge the whereabouts of people, not just in locale, but spanning decades.

The computer beeped and four photos unfolded on the screen.

“Here we go,” she said. “Your baby-snatcher’s name is Terry Lee Bailes. There’s not much on him because he wasn’t singled out for individual surveillance, meaning he’s not considered particularly dangerous.”

I looked at Harry, mouthed
not dangerous
?

“I’ve got a few photos of him peripheral to other investigations. Here they come.”

We leaned close to the monitor. In the first two pix, the man we now knew as Terry Lee Bailes was on a scruffy, dented Harley parked with a dozen other bikers outside a roadhouse. The third was the same bar, a different day, a few different participants.

“That’s the Southern Gladiators’ clubhouse over by Jackson,” Tenahoe said. “It’s a bar where a lot of the WR biker-types hang out.”

“WR?” Harry asked. “White something-or-other?”

“How’d you guess?” Tenahoe grinned. “White Riders. They’re a nasty lot. Not real organized, not real smart, but murderously mean and loving to prove it. They’re also allied with the Aryan Revolutionary Army, its security and enforcement wing.”

Something caught Harry’s eye. He leaned close to the photos, scanning between them. He pointed to something only he had seen.

“Look how their bikes are parked. The gang’s machines are lined up straight and so tight they’re almost touching, but here, five or six feet away, is Bailes’s bike. Both times.”

“He’s not part of the group,” I said, suddenly seeing it. “It’s subliminal. He couldn’t park his bike up close and personal to theirs. The physical distance reflects a psychological distance.”

Harry nodded. “He’s not fully accepted by the group.”

“Incredible observation,” Tenahoe said, staring at Harry with undisguised admiration.

The last shot was Bailes with two other guys, smoking and talking. One guy’s palm rested on Bailes’s shoulder, like they were buds.

“Who’s the guy with his hand on Bailes?” Harry asked.

“The guy the shots were meant to catch,” Tenahoe said. “Donnie Kirkson. He’s a low-life scuzzer who operated as a conduit between movers and shakers like Arnold Meltzer and the rank-and-file types like the White Riders. Kirkson’s nasty business: aggravated assault, breaking and entering, wanton endangerment, drug busts, sexual assaults. He’s not bright enough to be a chief, but he probably killed or kicked the shit out of someone Meltzer considered an enemy, so he moved up to the equivalent of middle management.”

“You said ‘operated’, past-tense,” Harry noted.

“Kirkson got caught having sex with a fifteen-year-old runaway. He befriended her, then loaded her with alcohol and dragged her to a motel for four days. Kirkson took a six-year prison fall. He went in last winter.”

I looked again at the spread of surreptitious photos, always amazed at the minutiae Ben and his people could garner.

“Anything else you need?” Ben asked.

I handed him the list of names Bailes had ranted at the camera.

“Lessee here,” Ben said, tapping the list. “You know Adolf, and you know 88 is Heil Hitler, right? The James is probably James Burmeister, who randomly executed two black people on the street. John is probably John King, who dragged a black man to death behind his truck –”

“I remember that,” Harry said. “The victim’s name was Byrd.”

“Right. Buford would be Buford Furrow, who opened fire on pre-schoolers at a Jewish community center. And Pastor Butler is Richard Butler, the founder of the Aryan Nation, a supposed man of God who proclaimed Hitler a prophet, Jews the descendants of Satan, and blacks as mud people.”

“So Terry Lee was giving a big ol’ shout-out to previous hatemongers?” I said, feeling sickened.

“A lot of these screwballs believe in Norse myths – the Aryan thing, right? – your boy Bailes was probably figuring he’ll get his name scribed on the
walls of Valhalla, right beside Adolf, Buford, James and the rest of the glee club.”

Harry and I thanked Ben and Wanda Tenahoe and started to the door. Ben said, “Anything else you need, Carson, just ask. We’ve got decades of info on low-life scuzzballs, with more coming in every day. Plus a wide range of operatives, informants, and sympathizers who keep up on the whereabouts of the worst of the lot. Some of them, we can tell you what they had for supper last night. And what pizza company they called to deliver it.”

Harry stopped and turned. “You know when they make phone calls, Mr Belker?”

An uneasy smile from Ben. “We might have a sympathizer or two in the phone companies. Folks who slip us call records of certain nasty individuals. Unless that’s illegal, in which case this is all conjecture.”

“Must be conjecture,” Harry said, jamming his hands in his pockets and heading for the door. “Hell, I didn’t even hear it.”

“That’s some network those folks have,” Harry said, putting the cruiser in gear.

“It’s been in place for years. Some of their operatives are dedicated enough to take heavy risks, like being undercover in dens of hate. And as Ben alluded, they’re not above edging around the law to get the job done.”

“Keeping tabs on white supremacists has got to be one of the stranger job descriptions. How’d Belker get into the gig?”

“You remember the twenty-year-old white guy who came down South in 1973 to register voters, unionize the factories – Thomas Belker? Ben is his boy.”

It was one more ugly act in a national history of ugly racial acts. After only a week of trying to unionize a paper mill in a small town on the Sippi-Bama border, Thomas Belker had been abducted and beaten severely. Like many of the attacks of the day, the perps were never found.

Though Belker had the fortune to survive, his wounds were crippling and constantly painful. He was an icon of the populist movement, the naïve but hopeful kid from New York City who went to the Deep South to fight the segregation and work abuses that had lingered into the seventies. Pete Seegar had written a song about Thomas Belker, and his name was invoked at civil rights commemorations.

“I remember the day it happened,” Harry said. “I was just a kid. When I got older, there was something in me that wanted to track down his address, say thanks. But then I’d wonder what I’d say, how I’d say it. And, of course, I never knew where to write.”

“Ben’s dad lives in Brooklyn,” I recalled. “Send a letter.”

“It’s a different time now,” Harry said quietly. “And I still wouldn’t know what to say.”

A little more checking revealed that Bailes had lived in a trailer on the southern side of Mobile. I expect the motor court had started out nice back in the fifties, but time and weather had taken a toll on some of the lots and units. Others were in decent shape with sculpted hedges and neat little lawns. I figured these were owner-occupied, the park a mix of owned and rented units.

Bailes’s trailer was a rental, not a surprise. I suspected it had been in place since the court opened, its lines blocky and tired-looking. It was
green, which probably helped disguise the mildew, but not much. Paint isn’t generally fuzzy.

Harry and I walked rickety steps to the door and he slipped the lock in a five-count. The door bottom squealed across the warped floor, needing to be lifted to swing clear. We stepped inside to a smell that wrinkled our noses.

There were plates on the table with cigarettes stubbed out in unwashed food remains. Maybe Bailes hadn’t done the dishes because there was a motorcycle engine block in the sink. If there was a décor motif in the trailer, it was Empty Beer Bottles, the Miller Lite period. A secondary motif was Aryan: a “flag” made from a sheet and hand-painted with a black swastika, poorly, draped over a slumping couch. I figured it was a thematic venue for reading
Mein Kampf.
Except for the couch, it was all outdoor furniture, probably swiped from patios. The smells of smoke, beer, garbage and mildew fought, with garbage the easy winner until Harry set the overflowing can outside and we opened the windows.

I checked the cabinets, finding canned goods, packets of tuna, popcorn, a five-pound bag of instant mashed potatoes, all from cut-rate outlets. The fridge held beer and ketchup and a package of gray hot dogs. Harry took the bedroom, emerging after a five-minute toss.

“Nothing in there but a porn collection and white-power pamphlets and books.”

We found mountains of porn in our jobs. I used
to regard the bulk of it with an ironic amusement, but the content had darkened and now there were widely available magazines and websites that made me avert my eyes and wonder if we were all the same species.

Harry got down on hands and knees to check under the couch. He rolled his eyes, muttered, “Oh shit.”

“What?”

He pulled out a mousetrap with a shriveled body dangling from the clamp.

“Looks fresher than the hot dogs,” I noted.

We finished up. Aside from the white-supremacist and biker trappings, Terry Lee Bailes remained a cipher. Stepping outside into clean air blowing up from the Gulf, I resisted the impulse to strip to my skivvies and let the sun burn away any vampiric bacteria from Terry Lee Bailes’s stinking trailer.

We heard the near rumble of motorcycle engines and saw a trio of bikers through a copse of cypresses acting as a windbreak between the trailer park and the road. They braked to turn into the park. I saw the advance biker look our way and shout behind him and the trio fired their engines and thundered away.

“Goddamn I hate them big motorscooters,” grumbled a voice at our backs.

We turned to see a tight, wiry guy in his seventies. Though small of frame, he had the shoulders and stature of a man who’d once been
fit and hard, his carriage as erect as a fence pole. He wore pressed khakis and a white strap tee, a blurry blue anchor tattooed on a bicep. His hair was short and steel gray.

“You’re cops, right?” he said, narrowing an eye.

“As true as the day is long,” Harry said.

“Bailes in jail?” the guy said, looking hopeful.

“Bailes is in the morgue.”

For a split-second it seemed the old guy was about to clap his hands in glee. But maybe he was gonna play air accordion.

“Did you know Mr Bailes, sir?” Harry asked.

“Our biggest conversation came after he moved here few months back. Thought he was some big-ass Hell’s Angel or something, a tough guy. I worked as an oiler in the Merchant Marine since I was seventeen years old. I never gave anyone shit, but I never took any either, you know what I mean?”