The Killings (5 page)

The Negro community had been up in arms over the murders. Several leaders within the Negro community had appealed to the city, demanding they draft colored men as detectives in an attempt to help catch the killer, since it was obvious the increased police presence in the area had no effect. The White folks in the greater Atlanta area were now beginning to loudly demand a resolution to the killings as well. Ironic, since most White people Robert knew couldn’t care less about coloreds.

“What do you think?”

Robert paused. He was holding the cup of freshly prepared shaving cream in one hand and a soft brush in the other. He frowned. “You’re going to have to be straight with me, Henry. I know we’ve been friends and all for going on thirteen years now, but damn, I ain’t no mind reader. Tell me what the hell Chief Marshall’s got up his sleeve. He ain’t really going to recruit Negroes, is he?”

Henry sighed and looked up at Robert. His smile lit up his face. Robert couldn’t help but smile back. When they were kids, the two of them had been inseparable. They’d spent many a long summer afternoon playing with other neighborhood kids in the creek, making up games of hide-and-seek or kick the can in the tall grassy fields that bordered the Chattahoochee. Having Henry in his life as a child had been good. It had helped offset all the bad stuff that had happened at home with Mama. Henry said, “That’s exactly what he wants to do. He wants to recruit some guys from the neighborhood.”

The two friends locked eyes. Henry was grinning, his face lathered with shaving cream, ready for the blade. “He can’t be serious,” Robert said. “He wants to recruit
us?
”

Henry laughed. “Crazy-ass shit, huh? Imagine! Big important White man like Chief Marshall on a drive to recruit us Negroes to help catch the Ripper.”

“That’s ... that’s outrageous!” Robert said. He finished lathering Henry’s face and set the bowl of shaving cream down on the sink.

“And it’s gonna backfire on him too!” Henry jeered.

“Why’s that?” Robert reached for a clean straight razor to begin his work. He turned Henry in his chair so they were facing the mirror. He pressed a lever with his foot to tilt the chair back. Henry looked up at him, his brown eyes dancing with a kind of devil-may-care. “There’s something you know that you’re not telling me,” Robert said.

“I just think this shit is funny,” Henry said. “Here this guy’s been killin’ our women every Saturday night like clockwork for the past six weeks or so. Rotten sonofabitch has been at it before then, but he really have a hankering for it now. Police already arrested Henry Huff for one of the murders.”

Robert rolled his eyes. “Yeah, and the next weekend, Lena Sharpe was killed.”

“Exactly! They even arrested that other guy, what’s his name? Todd something?”

“I read about it in the paper. I know who you mean.”

“Two arrests and that ain’t stopping him. Chief Marshall thinks if he recruits a bunch of Negroes from this neighborhood, that’ll help pin the crimes on those two men! He’s a fool if he thinks that!”

With a skillful and practiced hand, Robert began the process of shaving Henry. He moved the blade smoothly over Henry’s lathered cheek and down his neck, pausing only to rinse in a bowl of fresh warm water. “No, I can see his reasoning,” Robert said. “He thinks if he recruits a man from this part of town, maybe he’ll have a better chance of obtaining better clues. Ain’t nobody in this neighborhood gonna talk to no White detective, so they figure they might just talk to a Negro one. Those detectives working the case now haven’t gotten nowhere.”

“You can say that again. That last one, Todd whoever-his-name-is ... I heard he was just a common wife beater. Police say they have evidence because his wife reported he came home with bloody clothes one night.”

Robert nodded. It was also rumored the man in question had had an argument with one of the ripper victims a week before she was later found dead in the gutter outside a row house on Main street, her throat cut from ear to ear. To most White folks, this was as good as being guilty. To those men who lived in the area, who knew the man, Todd Something - Robert still couldn’t remember his last name - this couldn’t be further from the truth. Todd’s wife, Mary Ann, dished it out harder than Todd did, and she was always the instigator. If you believed the rumors around the neighborhood, the woman beat the shit out of Todd every night.

“So what does this mean for you?” Robert asked.

“It doesn’t mean much,” Henry said. “I tell my boys to watch their mouths. They keep tabs on who gets recruited. They form alliances. They come back to me and I pull the strings. Business goes on as usual.”

“I see,” Robert said. He was almost finished shaving Henry.

“And I continue to supply Chief Marshall with his hooch.”

“Of course. That goes without saying.”

“I also keep him supplied with pussy. Did you know Chief Marshall like his meat
dark?
”

“I didn’t know that.”

“I pull some strings with Ming’s Laundromat on Temple Avenue,” Henry said. “When I know Chief Marshall wants to have a good time, I call Ming, tell him to have a room ready with a nice clean cot. I get him his favorite girl, Rebecca. She knows to show up just after midnight.”

Robert nodded. Ming’s Laundromat was a front for an opium den that operated on the third floor of the building the Laundromat was housed in.

“Long as I supply Chief Marshall with all the opium, pussy, and hooch he asks for, I’ll be fine!” Henry said. His eyes locked with Robert’s again, holding them. The casual observer would see mirth in that look, but Robert knew his old friend too well. That look said,
This is our secret.

Robert was finished with the shave. He grabbed a damp, heated towel and began wiping away the excess shaving cream. “Well, I’m glad he won’t be causing you any trouble. We wouldn’t want that.”

“No, we wouldn’t,” Henry said, and laughed. Robert laughed too. The last time anybody gave Henry any trouble was a tax collector for the state who had come poking around where he shouldn’t have been. Somehow the tax collector wound up at the bottom of a bridge that crossed the Chattahoochee river with his head turned all the way around and his arms snapped like sticks. The time before that a woman had come storming into Henry’s home demanding he release her daughter from his menagerie of street hustlers - Henry had sent her home bleeding out of places blood usually doesn’t pour out of. Most people in the area knew that you didn’t cross Henry. Those who didn’t learned the hard way.

Face shaved and clean, Robert pulled the sheet down and stepped away from the chair as Henry stood up. He hooked his thumbs in his suspenders as he sauntered over to the front of the shop. Old man Stan was sitting in a chair, thumbing through the July issue of
The Argosy
. “How you doing, old timer?”

Stan looked up, startled. “Huh? Oh, fine, doing just fine, young man.”

Robert went to his cash register. “Five cents for the shave.”

Henry dipped a hand into his wallet and extracted a money clip. He peeled off several bills and handed them to Robert. “Keep the change.” He grinned at Stan, who was watching with wide eyes.

“Thanks, Henry,” Robert said. He pocketed all but one dollar, which he put in his cash register drawer.

“Don’t mention it. Us old hometown boys, we stick together, don’t we?”

“We do,” Robert said.

“Maybe you’ll like to go visit Chief Marshall at his recruiting station,” Henry said in a tone that was part suggestion, part serious, and sounded like a thinly veiled order. “It might be a good thing for the neighborhood to have somebody from our section representin’ us. You know what I mean?”

“I do,” Robert said, standing at the cash register while Henry approached the front door. “Don’t see how I can though, with me running the shop.”

Henry paused at the front door. He looked at Stan. “Is Robert’s shop busy, old man Stan?”

“Huh?”

“Busy. Is this barber shop busy?”

“Oh. Well, sometimes.”

“Well, there you go.” Henry smiled at Stan and then turned to Robert, that shit-eating grin on his face. “So what if the shop’s busy, Robert? This shop will become a neighborhood icon in time. Your customers won’t desert you. Will they, Stan?”

“Ah ... no, sir, they won’t.”

“Okay then.” Henry winked at Stan and then turned to Robert. “Just a suggestion, old buddy. Might do us some good for the neighborhood, if you know what I mean. Plus, I’ll help you out here at the shop. You can count on me.”

Robert knew what he meant: Inquire about one of the detective positions.
If you get picked, I’ll make sure the shop is taken care of while you’re on the case.

And on the heels of that:
But why?

But there was no time to question Henry on this. His old childhood friend, who as a boy made him laugh, made him happy with all the games they played, who provided shelter and protection from the storm at home, had turned into one of the most powerful and feared criminals in this section of Atlanta.

Henry opened the door and walked calmly out of the barbershop into the bright, sunny summer day.

Robert watched Henry stroll up the street. Stan set the pulp magazine down and rooted around for another one, this time picking up a copy of
The Cavalier
. Robert had no idea why Stan flipped through those magazines when the sonofabitch couldn’t read a goddamn word. “You got anywhere to be, Stan?” Robert asked.

Stan looked up, confused. “Me? No, no I don’t.”

“I’ve gotta close up the shop early,” Robert said.

“Oh. Okay.” Stan set the magazine back down on the coffee table, stood up, and headed out the door.

Robert stood at the cash register for a long time afterward, staring out the window onto Main Street where his old childhood friend, Henry Parker, had disappeared into the crowd. Getting somebody to man the barbershop was going to be tough. Robert had inherited it from his uncle Joseph, who had started it nearly a decade before. Uncle Joseph had passed on three years ago from syphilis. He’d fathered no children, had never married, and had built the clientele for the shop over a number of years so that it was entirely self-sustaining. It was one of two shops that catered to the colored community. The other one was owned by an older man named Markus Nelson, who ran his shop with the assistance of his three sons. Robert didn’t have that luxury.

If Henry Parker wanted him to play detective, he was somehow going to have to help Robert maintain the shop.

Robert closed the cash register, walked over to the door and flipped the OPEN sign over to read CLOSED. Then he locked the door and set about the task of closing out the day’s business.

FIVE

July 20, 1911, Atlanta, Georgia 

Late at night, he remembers things.

He remembers cowering in the corner of the small, two-room shack he shared with his mother on Watkins Road on the outskirts of town. The lady helping his mother was called a midwife. The midwife banished him to the living room/kitchen area while she’d tended to his mother, who was screaming and yelling in pain. Mother’s belly was big. She lay on her back, sweat pouring down her face as she grunted and strained, her back sometimes arching off the mattress. The midwife had a bucket of water and a bunch of towels that were growing bloody. It sounded like his mother was dying. He was too scared to move.

Finally, after what seemed like hours, mother let out one final agonizing howl of pain and stopped. The midwife said something and then suddenly he heard the sound of a baby cry.

Later the midwife swaddled the baby in the last two fresh sheets and handed it to his mother. She cradled the infant in her arms and looked down at it. It looked like his mother was crying.

He remembered approaching his mother. He remembered her showing him the baby, who had light skin and thick, dark hair. “She’s your sister,” his mother said.

Two days later his mother’s employer, Mr. Samuel Johnson, made her give the baby up for adoption. That same day he fired her.

Life was hell after that. Mr. Johnson had been a good man. Kind and generous. He would give his mother extra money here and there when he knew she needed it. Mr. Johnson would give him his children’s old clothes and toys. But the best thing about Mr. Johnson was that he had never yelled at his mother, never beat her or tried to touch her breast or rear end like Mr. Jeremiah did.

Ronald Jeremiah owned an old tobacco plantation that hadn’t produced much tobacco since the emancipation. He’d tried growing everything from sweet potatoes to watermelon since then, but his habit of not paying folks what he owed them made it hard for him to keep labor around, so most of his crops rotted in the field before they could be harvested.

His mother went to work for Mr. Jeremiah after losing her job. She moved into an old slave quarters in the back of his house. Unfortunately, Mr. Jeremiah’s payment habits with his domestic help weren’t much better than with the laborers in the field. He remembered watching his mother beg Mr. Jeremiah for her week’s pay. He remembered Mr. Jeremiah telling her that he’d double her pay if she gave him some of what “Young Master Johnson” had gotten and then slapping her to the floor and kicking her when she refused, tossing her money onto the floor beside her. He remembered what happened to old Mr. Jeremiah when he told his grandma about what he’d been doing.

Grandma Sable was really his great-grandmother. Everyone he knew called her Grandma Sable, even people her own age, of which there were few. Grandma Sable was a hundred years old if she was a day. She had come to America on a slave ship straight from Africa. She would tell him stories about her tribe and life in “the bush.” She would tell him stories about the “old religion,” the religion of her people. She would teach him names like Shango, Olorun, Oludamare, and spirits she called the Orisha, who she said she could call upon for protection.

“I never got beat by massa,” she said. “Not a once. Orisha protected me and he knew that. He would whip everyone but me. He knew what’d happen if he ever put leather to my hide. He knew what’d happen to him and his family.” There was never a need to explain what would have happened to the massa’s family. It was understood. Grandma Sable was powerful. The spirits listened to her.