Southern Cross Read online

  “You don’t know that for sure. Someone else will come along.”

  “I should let her bear the burden, is that it?”

  “The timing’s wrong, Alameda. Maybe feelings will have calmed down in a year or so. Maybe the next woman won’t have this kind of problem.”

  “They burned a cross, Mr. Hartman. Those kinds of feelings haven’t changed for a hundred years. They never will.”

  “But they have, Alameda. Things are better now. Not nearly enough, I admit. But some.”

  Her lips were thin as wire. “I can’t let it go, Mr. Hartman. I couldn’t keep reading my letters if I did.”

  Seth closed his eyes against the ghost of her sainted father. “Just think about it. Okay?”

  “What do you think I’ve been doing for the last hour? I’m going ahead. If you won’t help me, I’ll find a lawyer who will.”

  Seth took her hand. “If you’re sure you want to proceed, I’d like to represent you. If you’ll have me.”

  She turned her head to meet his look. “I will.”

  “Fine. But at least let me move you to someplace safer. In case they come back.”

  Alameda shook her head. “They want some more of me, they know where they can get it.”

  “That’s foolhardy, Alameda.”

  “It may be, but I stay right here till they let me in that school. You want to help, take Mama to that safe place.”

  Seth kissed her on the cheek. “We know what she’ll say to that, don’t we?”

  “I’m afraid we do,” Alameda Smallings agreed, and laughed like a child around her pain.

  TWENTY-EIGHT

  Back in the yard, we decided to wait for the sheriff. When he arrived, it was in the improbable person of Deputy Gurton Cawl, who displaced three hundred pounds and emitted a drawl as thick as a gumbo. His flesh was as cumulus as clouds; his uniform fit the way rind fits melon. He rumbled through the yard as though he hoped its occupants would genuflect but suspected they would laugh.

  When they didn’t do either, when they didn’t even acknowledge his presence, he coughed and bellowed and scratched and wheezed. “Listen up, y’all. We had a report of some kind of tussle out here. Now what I need is to see a …” He consulted his notebook. “Mr. Hitchens or a Mrs. Smallings.”

  No one moved an inch. “Well? What the sam hell went on out here tonight? Ain’t no one gonna tell me?”

  Seth walked up and introduced himself. “There was a cross-burning here tonight, Sheriff.”

  “A what?”

  “A cross-burning.”

  “Who done it?”

  “We don’t know.”

  “This here cross, it didn’t have, like, a human bean attached to it, did it?”

  “It wasn’t an execution, Sheriff.”

  “Then what was it?”

  “I think that’s for you to determine.”

  “You saying it was Klan business or some such as that?”

  “Quite possibly.”

  The deputy surveyed his surroundings. “Why they messing with folks way the hell out here?”

  Seth told him about Alameda, and her lawsuit, and the reaction it had produced.

  “You figure this is about that?”

  “I do.”

  “Anyone hurt?”

  “The girl who put it out.”

  “Bad?”

  “No.”

  “Any idea who done it?”

  “No.”

  “But you think the Klan?”

  “Possibly. Or possibly ASP.”

  “Who?”

  “The Alliance for Southern Pride.”

  “What’s that?”

  “A hate group.”

  “Who they hating?”

  “Anyone not white and poor and Christian.”

  The deputy glanced nervously at the assembled crowd, confirming that except for me and him, everyone fell into at least one of the hated categories. “Political, huh?”

  “In a way.”

  “Guess I should take some statements.”

  “Maybe you should call in Sheriff Leadwell.”

  Cawl sucked in his gut. “Sheriff don’t like to be disturbed at this hour. He’s up at a parole hearing in Aiken anyways; won’t be back till Friday.”

  “Then I guess you should take some statements.”

  “Where’s the girl? The one what’s hurt?”

  “Inside.”

  Cawl nodded, then hoisted his pants higher on his belly, then lumbered toward the house. As he passed the group of men, someone muttered something only the deputy could hear. Cawl stopped in his tracks, grasped the butt of his sidearm, and twirled toward the surly crowd—when Seth started to intervene, I held him back. After a moment of silent stalemate, Cawl shrugged his sloping shoulders and continued with his mission.

  “Maybe you should go with him,” I said to Seth.

  He frowned. “Why?”

  “She’s black and he’s white. This could get nasty at some point. Who knows what he’ll say she said if push comes to shove?”

  Seth nodded. “I’ll head him off.” He turned away, then stopped. “Thanks, Marsh. The thing with Colin has made me goofy.”

  Seth hurried toward the house, and I strolled around the yard until I was standing by the cross that had been aflame only hours before and now lay flat on its back beneath a heap of dirt and ashes, its sole surviving potency a carboniferous bouquet. It was about six feet high, built of two-by-fours that had been wrapped in rags, then dipped in kerosene. Not a terrifying object in normal context, but for black people in South Carolina the context had never been normal. I suppose I was feeling somewhat smug, until I remembered the last cross-burning I’d read about had happened in Iowa. And the one before that in Seattle.

  I continued around the house, past the clothesline and vegetable garden and the chickenless coop near the mattress with box spring that was slung by its corners from the branch of a weeping willow. It looked so comfortable I almost lay down on it, but just then I heard a car drive up, so I went back to the front.

  The car was a big Chrysler, and the man who got out of it was as black as his vehicle; although it wasn’t quite dawn, he was dressed in a suit and tie and showed no sign of fatigue. Despite his cane, there was prance in his step and pomp in his bearing; the eye that wasn’t covered by a patch glowed hot with the glint of a zealot.

  He went past me as though I wasn’t there, on his way toward the knot of black men, each of whom greeted him by name. Which made him Aldee Blackwell, political ward heeler to Charleston’s black population and rival of Monroe Morrison, Seth’s client who stood accused of being bribed.

  I eavesdropped as much as I could, and what I heard were varying versions of what had happened and who had done what about it. After listening to the ornamented strains of melodrama, Blackwell issued a matching burst of outrage, which made his audience even more demonstrative. By the time he marched toward the house, I was afraid his disciples might regard me as a handy source of retribution, but thankfully it didn’t happen.

  When I caught the eye of the neighbor, I motioned for him to join me. “You mentioned the men were military,” I said when he’d walked to where I was.

  “That’s right.”

  “You mean they wore fatigues? Jungle boots? That kind of thing?”

  He shook his head. “I mean those swords like they use at that school.”

  “Are you sure?”

  “When I fire at the car, they stick one out the window and whoop and holler like hooligans. Who else got shiny swords beside the boys at that army place?”

  I thanked Hitchens for the information and made another trip around the house. This time I peeked in the chicken coop, lit a match for light, held my breath against the stench, lit a second match to take a closer inventory, moved some stuff around and peeked inside some other stuff, then backed out into the fresher air. On my way back to the front, I stopped by the cross a second time, took The Biology of the Race Problem out of my pocket, and wedged it u
nder a nearby stone, far enough from the cross to be overlooked unless someone knew it was there and searched for it, close enough to be considered evidence when they found it.

  By the time I got back to the front, Deputy Cawl was in his car, and Seth and Aldee Blackwell were arguing. “She’ll do what she has to do,” Blackwell was saying. “She’s come too far to turn back.”

  “She can turn back anytime she wants to, Aldee.”

  “You hear her say anything about wanting that?”

  “No.”

  “Then do like I said—press on.”

  “I intend to proceed unless she tells me otherwise.”

  “That’s fine then.” Blackwell made sure his triumph had been witnessed by his constituents. “Tell me, Seth,” Blackwell went on with elaborate ease. “How’s your man Morrison holding up?”

  “Just fine, Aldee. And he’s your representative, not mine.”

  “He going to resign his seat?”

  “He’s going to establish his innocence at trial, then serve out the balance of his term in Columbia and stand for Congress in the fall.”

  “District’s changed a bit, you know.”

  “I know.”

  “Some folks feel another brother might best advance our interests.”

  “Be a shame to pit two good men against each other, Aldee. Especially two good black men.”

  “Be a shame for one black man with a corruption charge over his head not to step aside and give another black man his turn.”

  “Be a shame to toss six years of experience and effectiveness out the window for no reason.”

  When Aldee smiled, he exposed a golden tooth. “I imagine we’ll discuss this again.”

  “I imagine we will.”

  Aldee drove away, and Seth gestured and I followed him to the car. We traveled several miles before he spoke. “Hard to believe anyone would do something like that in this day and age.”

  “This is the day and age of Howard Beach and Bensonhurst. It’s lucky there wasn’t a lynching.”

  “Who do you think was behind it? ASP?”

  “Possibly. Except it seems odd that ASP didn’t leave a calling card. Don’t the hate boys usually want credit for their outrages? To help with the recruiting?”

  “I don’t know. I’ll ask Rick Last about it.”

  “Plus, I doubt that Bedford was planning any more missions this evening. My guess is he was inclined to cool it till he saw whether the scene with me and Colin was going to make trouble for him.”

  Seth looked at me. “If not ASP, who else could be behind it?”

  I hesitated. “Maybe Alameda.”

  “What do you mean?”

  “Maybe she did it herself.”

  Seth looked at me so quickly he almost drove us off the road. “Why would she do something like that?”

  “Watching her with you, hearing her talk about her father, imagining what’s gone on between her and people like Blackwell, all suggest that Alameda’s been under a lot of pressure to pursue her Palisade admission. Maybe that’s the reason she’s doing it—other people’s expectations, including her dead daddy’s dreams. Maybe the pressure got to her, and this was the only way she could think of to get out from under—fake a Klan attack. No one would fault her for not going up against them.”

  Seth was shaking his head. “That dog won’t hunt, Marsh. Alameda’s been behind this all the way.”

  “White people have been sure they’ve known what blacks are thinking since the slave ships landed, and they’ve been wrong for three hundred years. There’s kerosene in the chicken coop in back of the house, and scrap lumber. If the lab got called in, it could prove it one way or another.”

  “How about the car Hitchens saw?”

  “Maybe she just used it to her advantage—torched the cross after they’d gone.”

  Seth shook his head. “I don’t buy it, Marsh. Not for a minute. But assuming you’re right, which you’re not, what are you suggesting we do?”

  “Nothing.”

  “But—”

  “The law isn’t going to pursue the cross thing too strenuously, so you can leave it where it is—Alameda can go ahead with her lawsuit or stop, whatever she decides.”

  “You’re letting this Southern stuff get to you, Marsh,” Seth said with an uneasy laugh.

  “Maybe, but there’s one more person we need to talk about.”

  “Who?”

  “You. Everything that has anything to do with ASP seems to have at least as much to do with hurting you as it does with Christian patriotism or racial purity. Who’s out to get you, Seth?”

  “Lawyers have enemies; I’ve already told you some of mine. Plus, I haven’t exactly been a saint in my private life.”

  I took a breath and let fly. “Lots of arrows point to Jane Jean in this.”

  The heat of his anger warmed me from across the car. “What do you mean? What arrows? She loves me, for Christ’s sake. Hell’s fire, man.”

  I believed he believed it, but I still had my doubts. Or maybe I just wanted to be dubious—Scar Raveneau would have said that Jane Jean had flummoxed me.

  “Tell me about her ex-husband,” I said.

  “Bilbow? What about him?”

  “He’s a Palisade man, I hear.”

  “Everyone who’s been within ten yards of him has heard that—it’s all he talks about.”

  We stopped at a light, and I pointed. “Isn’t his dealership down that way?”

  Seth nodded. “What about it?”

  “I’ve got a hankering for a used car.”

  “You’re kidding.”

  “Nope. Take a left.”

  Seth started to object, then shrugged and made the turn.

  The highway was blessedly dark and eerily unoccupied at that hour, which was a few minutes after 5:00 A.M. By the time Seth pulled into the dealership drive, his ire at my slur on his inamorata had rendered him mute.

  A chain barred the road into the sales lot, so we had to reconnoiter on foot. I bypassed the new cars and headed for the used, with Seth a sullen shadow in my wake, hugging himself for warmth.

  Most of the cars in the lot were spick-and-span, covered only with a spray of dew, but a few were still dirty, recent arrivals presumably, proof that Bilbow had done new business. It was the dirty ones I paid attention to.

  What I hoped to find on one of the half-dozen cars that were soiled enough to have been driven to Johns Island that evening was a broken taillight or some chipped paint or other evidence of the sting of a round of birdshot from the gun of Harold Hitchens. But nothing I found would pass for proof.

  As I started back the way we’d come, Seth grabbed my arm. “What are we doing here?”

  “I thought maybe Bilbow used one of these to drive out to Alameda’s and torch the cross.”

  “He’s not that stupid.”

  “Are you sure?”

  Seth swore. “No.”

  I started to climb back over the chain, then had another idea. I hurried back the way I’d come and made another pass at the dirty vehicles, this time running my fingers along the rear of the cars at the point where the metal body met the plastic bumper. I found what I was looking for on the fourth one I tried, a blue Celebrity that was salted with dirt and sand.

  I held them up for Seth to see.

  “What’s that?”

  “Birdshot.” I sniffed. “And that smell you smell is kerosene.”

  Seth shook his head. “Jesus. I wouldn’t have thought he had the guts.”

  “It’s the guys with no guts who like to play bully. I’ll bet Bilbow was one of the biggest hazers at the Palisade in his day, trying to make the new guys as terrified of the place as he’d been.”

  Seth nodded. “I’ve heard that about him, as a matter of fact. So he takes it on himself to preserve the school’s manhood and beat back the invasion of the female hordes. I can see that. But someone put the idea of the cross in his head.”

  “Any connection between Bilbow and anyone else
in your life? Except Jane Jean?”

  “Not that I know of. And lay off Jane Jean. She’s not involved. She couldn’t be.”

  “Who owns the dealership?”

  “It’s not public knowledge, but a guy named Benedetti has most of it.”

  “Aldo? Of the Newark Benedettis?”

  Seth frowned. “How do you know about that?”

  I told him I was psychic.

  TWENTY-NINE

  We drove to Hampton Park under the siege of a heavy silence. Fatigue made words a chore; the incident at Alameda’s made reality anathema. In the forefront of my mind, I was pleased that by linking Bilbow to the cross, I’d foreclosed Alameda’s complicity in it. In my deeper recesses, I was confused and contradicted over the role of Jane Jean Hendersen in ASP and its enmity toward Seth—it seemed possible that contrary to what Seth saw, she carried some deep-seated seethe for him. But my brain had baked too long that day to piece such peculiar parts together, let alone make sense of an entire puzzle, so I postponed deduction until daylight could lend assistance and leaned my head against the seat and tried to soothe my alkaline eyes.

  When we reached the lot where I’d parked his Thunderbird some dozen hours earlier, Seth pulled next to it and stopped. I yawned and stretched and got out of the Lincoln. “Go home and get some sleep,” Seth advised after buzzing down the window.

  I asked where he’d be the rest of the day, in case I needed to reach him.

  “I’m going to stop by the hospital to see Colin, then go straight to the office. I’ll probably be there all morning—Monroe’s coming in to discuss whether he should change his plea on the bribery charge.”

  “Tell the hospital people I’m cleared to see Colin.”

  “Sure. Why?”

  “He’s still the only link to ASP I’ve got. Maybe his adventure this evening has scared him enough to talk to me. Also, you might want to consider putting some private security in there, until he’s released.”

  “Why?”

  “Bedford and his troops might worry that Colin’s telling tales out of school.”

  Seth met my eye. “Which is precisely what you want him to do.”