Cop Town: A Novel Read online

  “Peachy.” Lilly cupped her fingers across her forehead in a salute to the page. Her hair was pulled back into a loose ponytail. The chestnut brown fell somewhere between Delia’s mousy brown and Maggie’s darker hue.

  “Peachy sounds good.” Maggie put a plate by Lilly’s elbow. She bumped her with her thigh. “What’re you studying?” She bumped her again. Then again. When Lilly didn’t respond, she sang the opening lines from “I Feel the Earth Move,” punctuating each pause with a bump.

  “Stop it.” Lilly tilted her head down even more. Her nose was practically touching the book.

  Maggie leaned over to set the other side of the table. She glanced back at Lilly, who had been staring at the same spot on the page since Maggie walked in.

  Maggie said, “Look at me.”

  “I’m studying.”

  “Look at me.”

  “I have a test.”

  “I know you stole my makeup again.”

  Lilly looked up. Her eyes were lined like Cleopatra’s.

  Maggie kept her voice low. “Baby girl, you’re beautiful. You don’t need that stuff.”

  Lilly rolled her eyes.

  Maggie tried again. “You don’t understand what kind of message wearing makeup at your age sends to boys.”

  “I guess you should know.”

  Maggie rested her hand on the table. She wondered when her sweet kid sister had learned how to throw daggers.

  The kitchen door swung open. Delia’s hands and arms were lined with platters of pancakes, eggs, bacon, and biscuits. “You’ve got two seconds to wash that shit off your face before I get your father’s belt.” Lilly bolted from the room. Delia banged the platters down on the table one by one. “See what you’re teaching her?”

  “Why am I—”

  “Don’t talk back.” Delia dug a pack of cigarettes out of her apron. “You’re twenty-two years old, Margaret. Why do I feel like I have two teenagers under my roof?”

  “Twenty-three,” was all Maggie could say.

  Delia lit the cigarette and hissed out smoke between her teeth. “Twenty-three,” she repeated. “I was married with two kids when I was your age.”

  Maggie resisted the urge to ask her mother how that had worked out.

  Delia picked a speck of tobacco off her tongue. “This women’s lib stuff works for rich girls, but all you’ve got going for you is your face and your figure. You need to take advantage of both before you lose them.”

  Maggie smoothed together her lips. She imagined a lost-and-found box in the back of a storeroom with all the missing faces and figures of thirty-year-old women.

  “Are you listening to me?”

  “Mama.” Maggie kept her tone even. “I like my job.”

  “Must be nice to do whatever you like.” Delia pressed the cigarette to her mouth. She inhaled sharply and held the smoke in her lungs. She looked up at the ceiling. She shook her head.

  Maggie guessed it was coming sooner than she’d thought. Her mother was shuffling the deck before laying down the Bad-News Card: Why are you throwing away your life? Go to nursing school. Be a Kelly Girl. Get some kind of job where you’ll meet a man who doesn’t think you’re a whore.

  Instead, Delia told her, “Don Wesley was killed this morning.”

  Maggie’s hand went to her chest. Her heart was a hummingbird trapped beneath her fingers.

  Delia said, “Shot in the head. Died two seconds after he got to the hospital.”

  “Is Jimmy—”

  “If Jimmy was hurt, do you think I’d be standing here talking about Don Wesley?”

  Maggie took a mouthful of air, then coughed it back out. The room was filled with smoke and cooking odors. She wanted to open a window but her father had painted them all shut.

  “How did it …” Maggie had trouble forming the question. “How did it happen?”

  “I’m just the mother. You think they tell me anything?”

  “They,” Maggie repeated. Her uncle Terry and his friends. They made Delia look downright forthcoming. Fortunately, there was an easy way around that. Maggie reached inside the stereo console to turn on the radio.

  “Don’t,” Delia stopped her. “The news can’t tell us anything except what we already know.”

  “What do we know?”

  “Drop it, Margaret.” Delia tapped ash into her cupped hand. “Jimmy’s safe. That’s all that matters. And you be nice to him when he gets here.”

  “Of course I—”

  A car door slammed in the driveway. The windowpanes shook from the sound. Maggie held her breath because it was easier than breathing. Part of her hoped it was their neighbor coming home from work. But then shoes scuffed across the carport, up the back stairs. The kitchen door opened, but didn’t close.

  She knew it was her uncle Terry before she saw him. He never shut the back door. The kitchen was a non-room to him, one of those things women needed that men didn’t want to know about, like sanitary napkins and romance novels.

  Though the day had barely started, Terry Lawson reeked of alcohol. Maggie could smell it from across the room. He swayed as he stood in the dining room doorway. He was wearing his police sergeant’s uniform, but the shirt was unbuttoned, showing his white undershirt. Tufts of hair stuck up from the collar. He looked like he’d slept in his car with a bottle of Jack Daniel’s trapped between his knees. Which was probably where he was when he heard about Don Wesley on his radio.

  Delia said, “Sit down. You look dead on your feet.”

  Terry rubbed his jaw as he looked at his niece and sister-in-law. “Jimmy’s on his way. Mack and Bud are looking after him.”

  “Is he all right?” Maggie asked.

  “Of course he’s all right. Don’t get hysterical.”

  Suddenly, Maggie felt the urge to get hysterical. “You should’ve called me.”

  “For what?”

  Maggie was astounded. Never mind that Jimmy was her brother and Don Wesley was his friend. She was a cop, too. You went to the hospital when another cop was there. You gave blood. You waited for news. You comforted the family. All of this was part of the job. “I should’ve been there.”

  “For what?” he repeated. “The nurses fetched us coffee. All you’d do is get in the way.” He nodded at Delia. “I could use a cup, by the way.”

  She walked back into the kitchen.

  Maggie sat down. She was still reeling from the news. She hated that Terry was the only way she was going to get answers. “How did it happen?”

  “Same way it always happens.” Terry dropped into the chair at the head of the table. “Some nigger shot him.”

  “Was it the Shooter?”

  “Shooter.” He grunted. “Stop talking out of your ass.”

  “Uncle Terry!” Lilly ran into the room. She threw her arms around him and kissed his cheek. She always acted a few years younger with Terry.

  Maggie told her, “Jimmy’s fine, but Don Wesley was killed this morning.”

  Terry patted Lilly’s arm. He gave Maggie a sharp look. “Me and the boys’ll string up the bastard. Don’t you worry.”

  “Nobody’s worried.” Delia came back with Terry’s coffee. She put the mug on the table and handed him the newspaper. “Cal and the others are all right?”

  “Sure they are. Everybody’s fine.” Terry snapped open the newspaper. The Atlanta Constitution had obviously been put to bed before Don Wesley’s murder. The main story was about structural changes the new black mayor was making at city hall.

  Maggie said, “Don makes five victims so far.”

  “Maggie.” Delia headed toward the kitchen again. “Don’t bother your uncle.”

  She pretended not to hear the warning. “It’s the Shooter.”

  Terry shook his head.

  “They were obviously ambushed. It has to be—”

  “Eat your breakfast,” he said. “You want a ride to work, you need to be ready to go when I am.”

  Lilly still had one arm draped around Terry’s shoulders. Her
voice sounded impossibly small when she asked, “Is everybody gonna be all right, Uncle Terry?”

  “This is still a cop town, sweetheart. The monkeys ain’t runnin’ the zoo.” He patted her bottom. “Come on. Eat.”

  Lilly never argued with Terry. She sat down and picked at her breakfast.

  Terry snapped the paper as he turned the page. Maggie could only see the top of his head, the square crewcut that showcased his receding hairline. He needed glasses. His forehead wrinkled as he squinted at the football scores.

  A loud crackle of static came from the kitchen. Jimmy’s old transistor radio. A newsman’s voice crackled from the tinny speaker. “… reports another officer killed in the line of …” The voice drained away as Delia turned the volume down low.

  Maggie knew her mother was right about one thing: they didn’t need the news to tell them what they already knew. In the last three months, four patrol officers had been murdered in the early morning hours near the downtown area of Five Points. They had been in pairs. Nobody patrolled downtown alone. The first two were found in an alley—they’d been forced down on their knees and executed with one bullet each to the head. The other two were found behind the service entrance to the Portman Motel. Same modus operandi. Same lack of leads. No witnesses. No bullet casings. No fingerprints. No suspects.

  Around the station, they’d started calling the killer the Atlanta Shooter.

  “I put on a fresh pot.” Delia sat down at the table, something she rarely did for long. She was turned in her chair, facing Terry—another thing she rarely did. “Tell me what really happened, Terrance.”

  Terrance. The word hung in the air alongside the smoke and bacon grease.

  Terry made a show of his reluctance. He sighed. He methodically folded the newspaper. He put it down on the table. He lined it up to the edge. Instead of answering Delia’s question, he made a gun with his hand and put it to the side of his face. Nobody said anything until he pulled the trigger.

  Lilly whispered, “Jesus.”

  For once, no one corrected her language.

  Terry said, “Nothing Jimmy could do. He ran twenty blocks with Don slung over his shoulder. Got to the hospital, but it was too late.”

  Maggie thought about her brother running all that way on his bad knee. “Jimmy wasn’t—”

  “Jimmy’s fine.” Terry’s voice sounded like he was humoring them. “What he doesn’t need is a bunch of hens squawking around.”

  With that, he opened his newspaper again and buried his nose back in the pages.

  He hadn’t really answered Delia’s question. He’d just given the highlights, likely the same details you could hear on the radio. Terry knew exactly what he was doing to them. He’d been a Marine during the war. His unit specialized in psychological warfare. He would draw this out just because he could.

  Instead of returning to the kitchen, Delia took a packet of Kools from her apron pocket and shook one out. Her hand trembled as she fumbled with her lighter. She looked calmer once she had the cigarette lit. Smoke furled from her nose. Every wrinkle on Delia Lawson’s face came from sucking on cigarettes—the crepe-like lines around her mouth, the sagging jawline, the deep indentation between her eyebrows. Even her hair was streaked with the same smoke gray that came out of her Kools. She was forty-five years old, but on a good day, she looked around sixty. Right now, she looked twice that, like she was already in her grave.

  Like Don Wesley would soon be.

  Maggie knew her brother’s partner was a grunt just back from Vietnam, unable to do any job that didn’t require him to carry a gun. His people were from lower Alabama. He rented an apartment off Piedmont Avenue. He drove a burgundy-colored Chevelle. He had a girlfriend—a flower-child American Indian who talked about “the man” and didn’t complain when Don hit her because he’d seen so much bad shit in the jungle.

  And none of that mattered anymore because he was dead.

  Terry banged his mug down on the table. Coffee splashed onto the white tablecloth. “Any of this for me?”

  Delia stood up. She took his plate and started loading it with food, though Terry was usually too hungover to eat anything in the morning.

  She set the plate in front of him. Her tone had a begging quality when she said, “Terry, please. Just tell me what happened, all right? He’s my boy. I need to know.”

  Terry looked at Maggie, then looked down at his half-empty mug.

  She allowed herself the luxury of an audible sigh before she went to get the percolator from the stove. As soon as she left the room, Terry started talking.

  “Toward the end of their shift, nothing going on. Then they get word there’s a signal forty-four off the Whitehall spike at Five Points. That’s a possible robbery.” He caught Maggie’s eye as she came back into the room, like she hadn’t been behind the wheel of a squad car for five years. “They get there, check the place out. Doors are locked front and back. They give an all clear on the radio. And then …” He shrugged. “Guy comes around the corner, shoots Don in the head, then hightails it. You know the rest. Jimmy did everything he could. It wasn’t enough.”

  “Poor Jimmy,” Lilly mumbled.

  “Poor nobody,” Terry countered. “Jimmy Lawson can take care of himself. Got it?”

  Lilly nodded quickly.

  “Mark my words.” Terry stabbed his finger into the newspaper. “This is a race war, plain and simple. You won’t read about it in the paper or hear it on the news. We see it on the streets. It’s just like I said ten years ago. You give ’em a little power, they turn on you like rabid dogs. What we gotta do today is take back that power.”

  Maggie leaned her shoulder against the doorjamb. Her eyes threatened to roll back in her head. She’d heard this speech so many times she could recite it along with Terry. He hated everybody—the minorities who were newly in charge of the city and the traitors who had helped put them there. Left to his own devices, Terry and his cronies would dig a pit to China and throw them all in.

  “Who called in the forty-four?” Maggie was momentarily surprised by the question until she realized that it came from her own mouth. It was a good question. She repeated it. “Who called in the robbery?”

  Terry opened the paper again. He folded it into a sharp crease.

  Delia stood up. She touched Maggie’s arm before she went back into the kitchen. Lilly stared at the eggs congealing on her plate. Maggie sat down in the chair her mother had vacated. She poured herself some coffee but had no stomach for it.

  The robbery call had sent Jimmy and Don to Five Points. The heart of downtown. The origin for the street addressing system. The site of Atlanta’s first waterworks as well as a red-light district since before the Civil War. Five streets converged there: Peachtree, Whitehall, Decatur, Marietta, and Edgewood. The intersection was near a state university and close to the welfare office where women lined up around the block every day to get their vouchers. Many of them came back at night when all the lights in the skyscrapers were off and the only men around were the ones willing to pay for company.

  Maggie could guess what the police response would be to Don’s murder. There would be a city-wide crackdown. The jail would be full every night. Johns would be afraid to venture out. That was bad for business. Everybody bragged about never talking to the cops, but the minute commerce was halted, the snitches came flooding in.

  At least that’s how it usually happened. The Shooter cases were different. Each time, the entire force had mobilized to shut down the city, and each time, the momentum had drained away, the snitches had stopped showing up and eventually, the streets had gone back to business as usual as they all waited for the next cop to be murdered.

  This wasn’t just fatalistic thinking; the 1970s were proving to be a bad decade for police officers. Atlanta had suffered more losses than most. In the past two years, they’d caught five cop killers, though only one of them had seen the inside of a courtroom. The others had accidents—one guy resisted arrest and ended up in a coma, anothe
r woke up in jail with a shiv in his kidney, the other two were checked into Grady Hospital with routine stomach ailments and ended up leaving in body bags.

  The fifth one had walked out of the courtroom a free man. There wasn’t a cop in the city who didn’t spit before he told you that story. Combine that with another possible notch in the Atlanta Shooter’s belt and today would be a very bad day for anybody who found themselves on the wrong side of the law.

  Terry cleared his throat. He was staring at his empty mug again.

  Maggie poured the coffee. She set down the percolator. She straightened her knife and fork. She turned the handle of her mug left, then right.

  Terry grunted with disgust. “You got something to say, princess?”

  “No,” Maggie said, but then she did. “What about their car?” Jimmy and Don had a cruiser. No one patrolled on foot that time of day. “Why did Jimmy carry him? Why didn’t he just get—”

  “Tires were slashed.”

  Maggie felt her brow furrow. “The four other cops, were their tires slashed, too?”

  “Nope.”

  She tried to get the sequence straight in her head. “Someone called in a burglary, then slashed their tires, then shot Don, and didn’t touch Jimmy?”

  Terry shook his head, not looking up from the paper. “Leave it to the detectives, sweetheart.”

  “But—” Maggie couldn’t let it go. “The Shooter’s changing his M.O.” She had to add, “Or it’s not the Shooter. It’s somebody trying to copy the Shooter.”

  Terry shook his head again, but this time it was more like a warning.

  Lilly said, “I’m doing a report on the Civil War.”

  Maggie asked, “Were they split up when Don was shot?”

  Terry sighed. “You don’t leave your partner. Even you oughta know that.”

  “So, Jimmy was with Don?”

  “ ’Course he was.”

  Lilly said, “Most of the kids are talking to their grandparents, but I—”

  Maggie interrupted, “But Jimmy wasn’t shot. He was standing right beside Don, or near him at least.” That was the big difference. In the previous cases, both men were forced to their knees and executed, one right after the other. She asked, “Did Jimmy pull his gun?”