Dark End Of The Street

Chapter 53

U found him. He’d found that old bastard, Detective Raymond L. Jenkins, with a computer service called AutoTrack in less than fifteen minutes. I was familiar with the service, my occasional girlfriend had used it in Chicago while we were looking for witnesses to help a blues singer named Ruby Walker get out of prison. Too bad only reporters, cops, and those who worked on the fringes of law enforcement could access it. It would make my life a hell of a lot easier when I was tracking down long-lost singers. But I only asked for favors when I really needed them.

We decided not to call ahead even though there was a possibility that this wasn’t even the same man. His age would be about right and U said he found weapons permits that he expected for a retired cop. Besides, he was only a few miles away in the Cooper-Young district in Midtown.

“Strange neighborhood for an old cop,” I said, looking at all the meticulously renovated houses, many proudly flying their rainbow flags from porches.

“Not really,” U said, taking a turn through a small business district of antique shops, coffee houses, and art galleries. “Probably just holding out for the right buyer.” He took a zigzagged pattern through several narrow streets lined with cottages and bungalows painted bright blues and yellows, and wound his way down around a curve to a dead end.

The house didn’t really seem to belong with the others. Two-story narrow brick. Seafoam green paint and a cast-iron balcony littered with drying socks and Sansabelt slacks. An upstairs window had been sealed with plywood. The bottom windows had been covered in security bars despite the neighborhood looking like a postcard for the chamber of commerce.

The front door was open and we heard hammering as soon as we got out of U’s truck and walked over a reddish dirt lawn.

More hammering. The tinny sounds of a small AM radio. The smell of freshly cut wood.

“Mr. Jenkins?” I called out.

More hammering.

U walked ahead. The walls were mildewed and covered in a splotched gray-green mold. In a narrow hallway, some of the mold had overgrown family photos taken decades ago of a bristle-haired patriarch, his angular, red-haired wife, and three boys. Some unframed shots had been tacked to the wall with toothpicks and seemed like they’d been added by someone other than the person who’d made the family collage. My breath caught in my throat as I saw images of an old woman in a coffin, the same green mold obscuring part of the faded photograph.

I heard U talking to a man down the hall and I followed, the words becoming more distinct and clear as I entered a room that had been stripped of wallpaper and carpet. A half-completed bookshelf stood by a back wall.

Tree branches obscured the view from one dirty window behind Raymond L. Jenkins.

“This is Detective Jenkins,” U said, nodding to the older man who was looking at U like he’d just been approached by a wandering Bible salesman with a glass eye.

Jenkins was in his seventies, a palish white and just as grizzled as you’d expect. His teeth were stained with nicotine and his later years had made his nose and ears so extremely pronounced they almost gave him a rodentlike appearance. Small pale-blue eyes. He wore boxer shorts with red hearts and a white dress shirt with the sleeves cut out. Navy-blue dress socks and sandals.

The old man took a deep breath, wiped his forehead with an oily rag, and sat down on an overturned bucket. We stood. I could tell U didn’t want to soil his four-hundred-dollar jacket. He stepped back a little giving me the go ahead to lead. I knew why. He’d known the subject in about five seconds.

“Detective Jenkins,” I said. “I’m looking into an old case of yours. It was a double murder in nineteen sixty-eight. Woman’s name was Mary James, she was pregnant at the time, and the man was a musician, name was Eddie Porter. Both were shot in the back of the head.”

I felt myself rambling, probably because Jenkins wasn’t showing any normal signs of listening. No nodding. No quizzical look. Didn’t even seem to be paying attention. He seemed more focused on a hole in the sock of his left foot.

“Do you remember?”

He pulled his foot to his body, examined the sock, and placed his foot back on the floor.

He shook his head, looked over at U, and grinned. He stayed silent. Somewhere down the street someone was mowing the yard. Jenkins’s face was covered in white whiskers and he’d spilled grape jelly across the front of his shirt.

“Would you look at the case file if we brought it by?”

“Y’all don’t have the right.”

“Excuse me?”

He grinned to himself again, full of self-important knowledge that someone still needed him after all these years.

“Y’all don’t work for the department. Why do you care?”

“One of the suspects is a friend.”

He nodded, then his face crossed with great aggravation with the growing sound of a lawn mower cutting too close to his yard. He stood, cranked open the window, and craned his old head outside. “Damn fudge packers. Taken over this whole street. Suppose to raise property values but all they do is leave little typed notes for me about my yard in my mailbox. I don’t know why those deviants don’t go back and hide like they should.”

I watched his face heat with anger as he sat back down on the bucket, his eyes flashed once again with a realization of what we were discussing.

He looked at the decaying walls covered in glue and loose bits of wallpaper and the sagging ceiling and sighed. “I’m sorry, don’t remember the case.”

“Can we bring by that case file? Maybe it’ll jar your memory, sir.”

“I don’t think it needs to be of your concern,” he said, and suddenly jumped up and hobbled from the room. “Good day.”

U crossed his arms over his chest and said, “Nice man. Think I’ll call him Grandpa.”

I followed Jenkins into a family room. White sofa. White coffee table. White walls. Even white carpet. But the crispness of the room had long since faded. All the white had become a little more yellowed. The carpet mostly a muddy brown.

Jenkins turned on a ‘sixties console television and began watching a Spanish soap opera.

“I need some help, sir,” I said. “I can be back in five minutes with that file. Maybe you can just remember a little piece.”

About ten seconds later, he turned and looked at me. Full attention now. His rat nose flaring. “Son, I kept every one of my case files. I know every one of ’em like I know my own name. Don’t talk to me like I’m some sad old man.”

“I need five minutes.”

“I need to be left alone.”

I didn’t move. I watched him slump into a well-worn seat surrounded by opened cans of cheap beer and packs of saltine crackers and Vienna sausages.

He didn’t look back. Only spoke: “You playin’ with some mighty powerful people, son. And I don’t think you’ve brought enough chips to the game.”

I opened my mouth to speak. But he was done. His eyes had glazed back over reflecting with the colorful lights playing on the screen before him and living with the decayed memories of a life he’d known a long time ago.

I planned on coming back with the file. Fuck him, I thought. I could break him down. Shit, probably only needed some decent food and a six-pack. But as U and I walked out the open door, I saw a basket hanging from the wall. A familiar logo stuffed among the bills caught my attention.

A Confederate flag. Three strong stamped letters: SOS.