War at Home: A Smokey Dalton Novel (15 page)

“Are there black professors?”

“A few,” he said. “Haven’t paid attention to the statistics on them.
Not relevant in this year of the women.
But no need to go to the professors. They won’t tell you much about the black students.
The key to survival at Yale is pretense — and getting involved with a militant black group won’t help.”

“You think BSAY is militant.”

“By Yale standards, yes,” he said.

I opened the paper to the Black Panther article.
“You know what’s amazing about this article?
It’s the stuff it doesn’t say.
It doesn’t say that New Haven has a Black Panther office, just that some Panthers were arrested here.
It doesn’t say whether any locals were involved in that arrest, or even what the arrests were about.”

He templed his fingers.
“Your point?”

“The Panthers
are
militant.
Are they associated with BSAY?”

“God, no,” he said.
“BSAY wouldn’t get its Ivy League fingers dirty with the Panthers.”

“But BSAY protested the arrests.”

“No, they didn’t.
Where’d you hear that?”

“From Ludlow Robinson.”

Freeman let out a small breath.
“And that got you out of his office, didn’t it?”

I nodded.
“It also got me here.
I talked to bailiff at the courthouse. He told me about you, and he said that BSAY did picket when the Panthers were arrested.”

Freeman looked down.
“I told you, we don’t handle the cop beat.
So there’s probably a lot I don’t know.”

“So why’s this article here?”

“Talk,” he said.
“There’s been lots of fear
talk about the Panthers, afraid they’re going to bring the wrong element to town. Then with the murder—”

“Tell me about it.”

“We don’t know a lot.
Just that a young man was found murdered in a swamp near Middlefield. He’d been tortured, and soon we find out he was a member of the New York City Black Panthers.
Rumor has it that he was going to inform on someone — I’ve never quite figured out who — and these eleven Panthers murdered him for it.”

“So the Black Panther Party is active here,” I said.

He shook his head.
“Never really was.
Just some misguided kids, you know.”

“I’ve met some Panthers,” I said. “I don’t know if I’d use the word
‘
misguided.
’
”

“Here? In New Haven?”

“Chicago.
They have a different perspective on the world.
Not one I believe in, but they seem convinced.”

“You sound like you respect them.”

“You sound like you don’t.”

He shrugged, clearly unwilling to answer.

“Where’s their offices?” I asked.

“Shut down,” he said.
“With the arrests.
I have no idea where they are located now.
You think this boy you’re looking for is with them?”

“I’d heard that he got militant in the last few weeks of his stay at Yale, but I don’t know what that means.
You tell me BSAY is militant, so maybe that’s all it was.”

He sighed.
“You survive in this town by rumor.
And even though I heard that BSAY has been talking about getting some
b
lack
s
tudies courses at Yale, that’s about as militant as they’ve been getting.”

“Which is too militant for you.”

“They’re rocking a pretty big boat. They’re representing us in there — the more folks who get into these power networks, the better for all of us.”

I leaned back. I’d heard that argument before, but I knew it had several sides.
“You’re saying they should turn their backs on who they are so that they get into the power networks?”

“Not at all,” he said. “But change comes from above. You got to get above before you can make the changes.
Only Yale alumni are on the admissions teams sent out to pick the new students. And mostly it’s Yale grads who form the various committees at the
u
niversity.
You’re never really inside here unless you came from here. So it’s important that they don’t rock the boat.”

I studied him for a moment.
“You believe that.”

He nodded.

I stood. “Militants frighten you, don’t they?
They make the rest of us visible.
Any kind of protest, it makes you nervous.”

“I didn’t say that.” The good humor had left his face.

“Yes, you did.
You a Yale grad?”

“You think I’d be sitting here if I was?”

I gave him a half smile.
I wondered if he knew how bitter that sounded.
“No, I don’t suppose you would be.”

“Look,” he said. “If I find out anything, I’ll let you know.
Leave me your number.”

He was doing me a favor, as best he could.
I had to remember that.
Even if we didn’t have the same approach to the world.

“I’ll contact you in a day or so,” I said.
“One more question.
The bailiff at the courthouse, he mentioned a Teen-Inn on Washington.
Do you know about this place?”

“I doubt your boy would be there,” Freeman said. “It’s for hippie kids, you know, the dopers and the ones who think they know everything about the war.”

“Do you have an address for this place?” I asked.

“It’s in a bad part of town.”

I gave him a sideways look. “That doesn’t bother me.”

He shook his head slightly, but wrote the address on a piece of paper.
As he handed it to me, he stood.
“You realize this kid is probably just pushing his mom’s buttons.”

“I thought so at first,” I said.
“But I’m beginning to wonder if I might be wrong.”

TWELVE

The address Freeman had given me was
in
the
four hundred
block of Washington, in a neighborhood that the receptionist at the
Crow
called the Hill.

As I drove into the Hill, I noticed that several buildings had condemned signs on them, and even more appeared abandoned.
Near the empty buildings were development signs, explaining how wonderful the area would be when construction
was
finished.

The house wasn’t too hard to find.
It was a two-story frame house in the middle of a group of intact buildings.
No signs here; it almost looked like this part of the neighborhood had been forgotten by the redevelopment committee.

Two yellow VW microbuses were parked on the street, along with an old Ford truck that someone had painted neon green.
The back of the truck was painted with red flowers, and in the truck’s bed were open boxes filled with tie-dye shirts.

A bunch of white kids sat on the lawn.
Most of them had stringy long hair that fell to the middle of their backs.
If it weren’t for the clothing, I wouldn’t have been able to tell the sexes apart.

The girls wore skimpy
T
-shirts over long skirts, and the boys wore the same shirts with blue jeans.
The group was passing a pipe around, and I knew before I smelled it that they were smoking marijuana.

As I got out of my van, one of the kids looked up at me.
“You here about the sink, man?”

I felt color flush my cheeks. He thought I was a plumber.
I couldn’t tell if the assumption came from my skin color, the panel van
,
or both.

“No, actually,” I said. “I’m looking for someone.”

“Second floor, back bedroom,” he said.
“Don’t be surprised, though, if you catch him having a hairburger.”

I almost asked what he meant, and then my brain caught up with the slang.
“Thanks,” I said, and went into the house.

The smell of pot clung to the walls.
It was mixed with patchouli oil and incense. Candles burned despite the remaining heat of the day.
Kids were scattered everywhere, in various states of undress.
I couldn’t determine ages, partly because all I saw were white limbs tangled together.

The kids weren’t moving.
Most of them were in some sort of drugged state.
A hi-fi played Country Joe and the Fish, a group I’d become familiar with thanks to Malcolm on the drive over.
I still didn’t know the name of the song, but I recognized it.

The stairs looked treacherous.
They were made of wood and hadn’t been shored up in a long time. The wood was thin in some places, scarred in others, and looked like it might collapse under my weight.

I debated whether I should talk to some of the kids on the ground floor, but they didn’t look all that rational.
The kid outside had sent me upstairs for a reason.
He had no idea who I was looking for, but he made an assumption—and I had a good guess why.

I made it to the landing, which was remarkably people-free, but did have a table in the middle with more candles, burning next to an open window.
Curtains blew inward from a breeze I hadn’t even noticed.
My innate caution made me pinch the candles out.

More music came from up here, a variety of types, all clashing so badly that I couldn’t recognize anything.
All the doors on the second floor were shut.

I knocked on the first door, didn’t get an answer, and pushed it open.
No one was inside.
Just more candles, some incense burning beneath a picture of an Indian god, and a blackout curtain on the window.

I pulled the door closed and went to the next room, finding no one, and then the next.

Finally, I reached the last room. Remembering the kid downstairs’s comment, I knocked first.

“Fuck off, man,” came a male voice from inside.

I knocked again.

“Shit-fuck, man.
We’re busy.”

I knocked a third time.

More swearing, but it was mostly inaudible. Then the door pulled open and I found myself facing a young man, naked and in full arousal.
A naked girl lay on the bed, her body open to me.
She was white.
He was as dark as I was.

The room smelled of sex.

“Yeah?” he said, not seeming to care that he didn’t know me.

“The guys downstairs directed me up here,” I said. “I was looking for Daniel Kirkland.”

“That pussy? Fuck.” He shook his head.
“He hasn’t been here in a hundred years, man.”

My heart rose. This was the first real lead I had.

“How long has it been really?” I asked.

The kid extended his hand toward the makeshift bed.
It appeared to be several mattresses on the floor, covered with batik sheets.
The girl sat up, keeping her legs spread.

“Like I care,” he said.
“I’m busy, man.”

“I already interrupted you,” I said.
“You may as well take a minute and answer my question.”

“You can come in if you want,” the girl said.
“But you gotta get naked.”

I hadn’t really been embarrassed until then.
“Thanks,” I said.
“But I’m just here to find Daniel.”

“I don’t know where he is,” the boy said.

“I didn’t ask where he was,” I said, although I really wanted to know.
“I asked when he was last here.”

“Fuck me, man, I don’t keep him.”

“Christmas,” the girl said. “Him and Rhondelle.
They got the tree.”

I looked at her.
Her eyes were wide and blue and bloodshot.
Her black hair was tangled over her face.

“You’re sure?” I asked, mostly because I couldn’t believe someone in her state would know what they were talking about.

“Oh, yeah.
They were gonna make it a special Christmas no matter what, but then Jax brought some smack and they got all pissed. Said they were going to find a place where people used their brains instead of fucking them up.
Fucking losers.” She flopped back down.

“You sure you haven’t seen them since Christmas?” I asked.

The kid sighed.
He didn’t look as out of it as his girlfriend.
“They got their own place near here for a while.
Shared it with some other heavy types, you know?”