War at Home: A Smokey Dalton Novel (40 page)

I had lost my chance to get Daniel and his group arrested.
But I might be able to get information out of the wounded girl, provided she survived the night.

Jimmy was happy I had returned.
He wanted to do something special for the Fourth, and Malcolm had been resisting.
I saw no reason to resist.
Jim was getting very little enjoyment out of this trip; the least I could do was help him celebrate, even though any sort of celebration felt odd after the last twenty-four hours.

After I took a short nap, I discovered there would be no parade, and no local fireworks.
New Yorkers went out of town for that kind of celebration, although one neighbor said she believed we could see some from New Jersey if we went up on the roof.

I couldn’t handle another roof.
Instead, we walked through Harlem, which seemed unusually deserted.
No flags flew, except for one or two from apartment windows.

So in lieu of a parade, I used the day for an impromptu civics lesson, one I felt both boys needed.
I showed them houses where famous black Americans had lived.
I explained how a black man, Scott Joplin, started an entire musical subgenre — ragtime — which led to blues and jazz and ultimately rock
and
roll.
I showed them where the jazz musicians lived, and the writers of
the
Harlem Renaissance.
I taught them about important black political leaders who helped change America, and who also lived in Harlem—Marcus Garvey and
Thurgood Marshall
and Malcolm X.

I showed them Madame C.J. Walker’s house, and told them that
,
even in America, a black woman could become the rich head of her own company.
I spent the day helping these boys respect their heritage and hoping that some of it, at least, would sink in.

We ended our tour at Mount Morris Park,
expecting
that we would be able to climb the only remaining fire watch tower in the city.
From there we might be able to see some fireworks.
But people already sat on its three levels and the stairs leading up to the top, and I didn’t want to fight for our place.

So as twilight fell, we slowly walked back to our apartment.
At Jimmy’s insistence, we bought some firecrackers and sparklers.
By the time we reached our street, we had hot dogs, root beers, and two armfuls of sparklers for a midstreet celebration.

Kids were already out there, running with sparking light trailing behind them, making images in the darkening air.
Jimmy crammed the rest of his hot dog into his mouth, and grabbed a box of sparklers from me, then
ran into the middle of the street toward kids he didn’t know to get a light.

Soon he was laughing with pure joy and writing his name in the sky.
Malcolm grinned at me, took a box of his own, and walked out there,
too,
deciding that for once he didn’t have to be cool.

I sat on the steps and watched, staring at the phone booth across the street.
Would Grace be home
,
or would she be at Jackson Park with Elijah, watching the fireworks there?
I knew I should call her, but I couldn’t summon enough courage.

Instead, I leaned my elbows on the cool concrete step behind me and thought about my strange day.
It had certainly turned my investigation upside down.

Now I had to figure out three things: not just what Daniel planned next or how to stop him, but also who had shot at his group, and why.

FORTY-TWO

The next morning’s newspaper said that a student named June D’
Am
ato had been shot while taking a walk near Battery Park with four of her friends.
According to the paper, the friends panicked, and drove her to St. Vincent’s Hospital.
No one seemed to know why she had been shot.

I had no more arguments from Malcolm and Jimmy.
They knew I had to investigate on my own.
They went back to the Harlem branch of the library while I headed down to the Village to see if June D’
Am
ato was angry at Daniel for allowing her to get hurt, and
whether she
would tell me exactly what she and Daniel had been up to when she got shot.

I arrived at St. Vincent’s sprawling complex at the start of visiting hours, but my promptness did me no good. June D’
Am
ato was in a drug-induced sleep after her second emergency surgery.
The nurse on her floor told me that June wouldn’t be up to visitors for at least twenty-four hours.

I thanked the nurse and headed back toward the main floor.
I had thought June D’
Am
ato my best chance of getting information quickly.
Now I realized I would have a lot more work to do.

At least it was still early in the day.

As I headed toward the hospital’s main exit, a white man in a suit approached me.
He reached into his pocket, pulled out a wallet and opened it, revealing a badge.

My mouth went dry,
but I managed to smile, nod, and look slightly confused, like any innocent black man would when approached by a plainclothes police officer.

“You the man who just asked to see June D’
Am
ato?” he asked.

I took the badge from him, looked at it, and saw that it was legitimate.
I would have thought the police had finished with June D’
Am
ato yesterday.
The case had to be important for someone to hang around the hospital.

I thought about lying about why I was here.
But I decided it would be easier to cooperate.
It might also get me some more information on Daniel.
“Yes, I asked about her.”

“Why?” the man said. “You’re clearly not family.”

He was balding, with care lines around his mouth, but the suit fit him well even though it was cheap.
He looked five to ten years younger than I was, obviously on a career track, and maybe more open-minded than some of his longer term colleagues.

That was a gamble I was going to have to take.

“I heard she’s a friend of Daniel Kirkland,” I said.

The cop raised his eyebrows, asking a question without bothering with the words.

“I’m from Chicago,” I said.
“I know Daniel’s mother.
He went missing several months ago, and I’ve been looking for him.
I just came down from New Haven.
He’d been attending Yale, but he dropped out.”

“And you think June D’
Am
ato knows about him.”

“I had heard they were close,” I said.

The cop stuffed his badge back in his breast pocket.
“Where’d you hear that?”

“In New Haven.
I think I went to every hippie house and drug den in the city, trying to find Daniel.”

“You a private detective?” the cop asked.

“Kinda,” I said.
“I’m a freelance investigator for a number of Chicago businesses.”

If he wanted to check on me, he could.
I’d give him the numbers if he doubted me.
“This is a far cry from Chicago.”

“Yes, it is,” I said.
“Grace didn’t have anyone else to turn to
,
and I had some time coming to me, so I took it as a vacation, to see if I could find her son.”

“This Grace,” he said, “she single?”

“Why the third degree, officer?” I asked.

“Detective,” he said, correcting me like I knew he would.
Then he sighed, relaxed his shoulders, and extended a hand. I was relieved to see it.
Many white Chicago cops would never have shaken the hand of a black man. “Detective Mackey O’Conner.”

“Bill Grimshaw,” I said, shaking his hand.

“You know that June D’
Am
ato was shot.”

I wasn’t quite sure how to play this.
“I knew she was injured.”

“Shot,” he said.
“Right outside the Army Induction Center yesterday.
Some friends of hers brought her to the emergency room, then took off.
This Kirkland, I take it he’s colored?”

“He’s black, yes,” I said, adding a correction of my own.

“He might’ve been the one who brought her in.
One of our guys talked to a black kid for a minute before he ran.”

“But why are you here today?” I asked again, hoping I wasn’t pushing too hard.
I was trying to play the insurance investigator who did claim fraud and was out of his depth in the big city.
I hope the act convinced.
“Is she in trouble?”

“I suspect so.
She’s the fourth person in her circle of friends to get shot.”

I started.
I knew nothing about this.
“Was Daniel shot?” I asked, even though I knew he hadn’t been.

O’Connor shook his head.
“The victims are Ned Jones, Victor McCleary, and Joel Grossman.
Names ring any bells?”

“No,” I said, making a note of the names.
“Were they all shot this week?”

“Over the summer,” O’Connor said.

“They die?”

“No.”

“You have any idea why they were shot?”

He shrugged.
“They’ve been associating with some unsavor
ie
s.
Protesting — which ain’t against the law — but this group
—
D’
Am
ato’s group — it’s starting to get violent.
There’ve been some assaults, and some threats, and one unexploded bomb.”

“June has a group?” I asked, sounding as naïve as I could.
“And it’s violent?”

“We think so,” O’Connor said.
“We’re watching a number of these militant antiestablishment groups.
Your girl here, she just might’ve gotten some of her own medicine.”

“You think someone she knew shot her?”

“I don’t know what to think,” he said. “First
,
there’s the location.
There’s a lot of military folk down there, even on the Fourth, and not all take kindly to these kids, you know? But that’s a long way between shouting at some kids and shooting at them.
You got any military background, Mr. Grimshaw?”

“I served in Korea,” I said.

“So no sniper training,” he said.

That was an interesting statement.
He sounded almost disappointed.
In that statement was an assumption I had heard before.
The younger vets seemed to believe that snipers were only used in Vietnam.
I wasn’t going to dissuade him.

I
thought again of the echoing rifle shot, and that figure, standing on the steel girders outlined by streetlights.
A sniper had crossed my mind yesterday.
O’Connor simply confirmed one of my own suspicions.

“You think I’m a sniper and I came here to finish the job?” I asked, pretending an affront I didn’t feel.
“I came here to talk to her, just like I told you.”

“I figured as much, but it doesn’t hurt to check,” he said.
“Where were you yesterday?”

“With my son and a friend, walking through Harlem,” I said.
“My son’s eleven, so if you want to verify my alibi, I suggest you talk to him before I do.”

“No need,” O’Connor said.
“Have to ask everyone, you know.”

“What makes you think a sniper shot her?” I asked. “Did you find a nest?”

His eyes met mine for
half a second, measuring, evaluating.
After a moment, he said, “What we found is police business.”

I shook my head, as if I were out of my depth.
“If June is involved with a group,” I asked as if I were trying to get things straight, “does it have a name?”

“We think so, but we’re not sure,” he said. “These kids change their allegiances as fast as they change their clothes. Initially, we thought we had an offshoot of the Students for a Democratic Society.
Then we hear about Black Panthers, but most of these kids are white. Then we hear about the War at Home Brigade, dedicated to bringing Vietnam to America.”

I thought of that graffiti we had found in the Barn in Fair Haven.

“You know something about that?” he asked.

“I’d heard it,” I said.
“Up in New Haven, something about bringing the war home.
It never made sense until now.”

“I thought these college kids were local,” he said.
“D’
Am
ato’s going to City College. But we get lots of wackos down here in the Village.
This’s become some kind of gathering place.
It’s hard to keep track of all of them.”