Sacrificial Ground

8

Caleb Stone was sitting at his desk when Frank returned to the detective bullpen. Propped back in his chair, his large belly drooping over the thick black belt of his trousers, he looked like a god of misspent youth.

“Well, I beat on some doors for you,” he said dryly.

“Turn anything up?” Frank asked as he ambled up to Caleb’s desk.

“By the grace of God, I did,” Caleb said. “You ever work Vice, Frank?”

“No.”

“It’s an eye-opener, let me tell you. You walk around the streets, checking out this guy in a high-priced double-breasted suit. He’s got a sweet little wife in Ansley Park, and a son who’s doing just fine at Emory.” He smiled sadly. “Thing is, this is the same guy who likes to tie a woman to the bedstead once a month and beat the shit out of her.”

Frank turned away slightly. “What’d you turn up, Caleb?”

Caleb leaned back in his chair. “Well, when I was in Vice, I used to keep my eye on this little house on Glenwood. A guy people called Sancho used to run a string of whores out of it. One of them was named Beatrice, and dear God, Frank, she was the cutest little thing in the world.” He smiled, almost wistfully, as if his memory were turning faintly sweet. “Black as the ace of spades, and with a wild look in her eye. But goddamn was she cute.” Suddenly the sweetness fell away, and Caleb’s voice took on a dangerous edge. “Anyway, the guy in the suit, he used to pay the price once in a while and Beatrice would meet him at this cabin he had on Black Mountain. For the whole weekend, you know. A real fly-me-to-the-moon sort of thing.” He shook his head gently, and his voice grew darker and more somber. “Well, he used to give Bea a slap once in a while, just for the fun of it, you might say. She let it go. It was just part of the deal, nothing serious. She didn’t like it, she told me, but whoever asked a whore what she liked? One weekend, though, things turned real sour up on Black Mountain, and this fuck did a real nasty job on Bea.” Caleb’s eyes shifted away, as if he were trying to hide what the story made him feel. “Well, I sort of liked Beatrice. She didn’t exactly have a heart of gold, and she’d probably rolled more than one conventioneer in her time, but there wasn’t a really mean bone in her body.” He looked back toward Frank. “Hell, even old Sancho was a stand-up guy. About as good as a pimp can ever be.” He laughed slightly. “Fat bastard with two buck teeth. Like the saying goes, he could eat a ear of corn through a keyhole.”

Frank smiled.

“When things got hot for him, Frank,” Caleb went on, “he did one thing I never knew a pimp to do. He spent his last goddamn dime bailing out his stable, and when he had to leave Atlanta, he run all the way to Kansas City, took every single whore with him, gave them some money, and then you know what?”

Frank shook his head.

“He cut them loose, Frank,” Caleb said. “Just said, ‘Good luck. Hope you’ll have a nice life.’ And then he just disappeared.”

“What are you getting at, Caleb?” Frank asked finally.

“Well, after the double-breasted suit beat up on Bea, Sancho came to me,” Caleb said. “He told me the story, and he said he was going to make sure this guy stayed clear of his girls.” Caleb shook his head. “And he tried to do that. But the suit was hot for Beatrice. Something about her skin, the way it bruised, maybe. Anyway, he wouldn’t leave her alone, and after Sancho said to stay away from Beatrice, just about everybody he knew got busted by the cops.”

“So he looked like a snitch,” Frank said.

“That’s right,” Caleb said. “That’s a dangerous thing to be.”

Frank nodded.

“So Sancho came to me,” Caleb said. “He figured the suit was in on it, that the suit had plugs into the cops, and that they were helping him set Sancho up.” Caleb smiled. “But he was wrong. The suit had a connection to a newspaper, to a reporter on the cophouse beat. That’s the guy that was feeding him.” He leaned even further back in his chair. “Well, it wasn’t long till somebody worked over Beatrice. It wasn’t the suit. It was somebody who thought Sancho had snitched on him. So the way I looked at it, it might as well have been the suit. Know what I mean?”

“Yes.”

Caleb smiled broadly. “Ever heard the expression ‘to take the law into your own hands’?”

“Yes.”

Caleb lifted his arms into the air. “These old hands right here, son,” he said. “One night they grabbed that fucker in the double-breasted suit, and they just didn’t stop working on his face until he was really sorry he’d ever been nasty to a nice little black girl.”

Frank smiled indulgently. “And this all has something to do with Angelica Devereaux?”

“It has to do with me knocking on a few doors around that lot,” Caleb answered. “When one of them opened, it was little Bea behind it.”

“She lives around there?”

“No, she lives in Kansas City,” Caleb said. “Right where Sancho cut her loose. Claims she’s a computer operator. Says she’s long gone from the whorehouse business.”

“You believe her?”

“Yeah,” Caleb said confidently.

“What’s she doing back in Atlanta?”

“Her sister’s just got married for the fourth or fifth time,” Caleb said. “She wanted Bea to come down and mind the kids while she went on her latest honeymoon.”

“And you don’t doubt any of this?”

“Nope,” Caleb said. “Know why? Because she didn’t give me that look whores always give men, even the ones they like. Lord God, Frank, you don’t know what disgust is until you listen to whores talk about men. I know. I listened to a lot of them when I was working Vice.”

Frank took out his notebook. “Beatrice, you said?”

“Beatrice Withers’s what she goes by.”

“And what did she tell you?”

“Well, Beatrice don’t much like kids,” Caleb said. “Fact is, she don’t know a thing about them. So they’ve been running her ragged for the last few days. She’s been walking the floor a lot. She was walking it at around three in the morning the day we found Angelica Devereaux.”

“Tuesday morning,” Frank said.

“That’s right.”

Frank could feel the skin of his fingers tighten slightly, as if they were already stretched out and reaching for the killer’s throat. “What’d she see?”

“I thought you might want to hear it from her own mouth.”

“Where is she?”

“At her sister’s house, like I said,” Caleb told him. He glanced at his watch. “She said she’d be there until around noon, then she was planning on taking the kids to the park so they could have a go at the squirrels. She’s probably there now.” He stood up immediately. “Ready to go?”

On the drive to the park, Caleb sat leisurely in the front seat, his. large thighs spread out across the seats like thick rolls of dough. An enormous cloud of blue smoke ringed his head as he puffed at his pipe and, despite the open window, it seemed to coil around in the car, increasing the already stifling heat. It was as if it had become a part of him, this tumbling blue smoke, a swirling, indefinable cloud that marked and identified him like his own personal badge.

“She said she’d be near the playground,” Caleb said as Frank turned the car onto Grant Street, then made a right and headed into the park. “She’s wearing a bright yellow dress,” he added with an appreciative smile. “That’s something that hasn’t changed much about Beatrice.”

The bright yellow dress was visible from a great distance, and Frank saw it almost immediately. He guided the car slowly over to the curb and glanced toward the playground.

“That her?” he asked.

Caleb’s eyes were already on her, and they seemed to soften as he looked at her. “Oh, yeah, that’s her,” he said, almost in a whisper, “sitting by the swings.” He looked at Frank. “You might say she always did love things to be in motion.”

It was well past noon, and as he got out of the car and headed down the small, bare hill toward the playground, Frank could feel that the steadily building summer heat had already turned everything dull and slow and sluggish. Even the children who dotted the playground moved ponderously through the thick, pulsing air. They hung like overripened fruit from the climbing dome, or swung slowly back and forth, as if moving through layers of gelatin.

“Hey, Bea,” Caleb called as he walked up to her.

The woman looked up immediately, saw Caleb, and smiled sweetly as she looked at him. “Didn’t think you was coming back.”

“I said I would,” Caleb told her.

She shrugged. “Well, you know what I’m used to.” She leaned gently against the tree, as if it were a source of cool air. A wave of dark perspiration swam out from beneath the arms of her dress. Another hung in an almost perfect crescent over her upper chest.

“Kids still getting to you?” Caleb asked.

Beatrice smiled languidly. “They more than I can take, Cal.” She waved her hand over her face. “And this heat. I almost forgot what it was like down here.”

“You’d get used to it, if you didn’t rush back up North,” Caleb said, as if he were trying to persuade her to linger in the city.

Beatrice shook her head. “Naw, I got to get back.” She glanced at Frank, but said nothing.

“This is Frank Clemons,” Caleb told her. “He’s in charge of the case.”

Beatrice grinned at him. “Top man, huh?” She winked at Caleb. “That’s good. I like working with the man on top.” She laughed. “Hey, Cal, you tell this white boy about me?”

“I got nothing to hide, Bea,” Caleb said somberly. “You know me when it comes to things like that.”

“So he told you I was once a working girl?” Beatrice asked Frank.

“Yeah.”

“Way back when, though. Long gone from now.”

“You work with computers these days,” Frank said.

“Right, computers,” Beatrice said. “Them other times is passed me by.” She nodded toward Caleb. “He was skinny as a rail back then. Wasn’t you, Caleb?”

I was, yes.

“Handsome, too,” Beatrice said. She shook her head despairingly. “But so thin. Lord, you could just about see through him.” She leaned forward and patted his belly. “Look like somebody done knocked you up, Cal.” She glanced back at Frank, and he saw the wildness in her eyes. “But he could go all night back in them days.” She turned back toward Caleb and smiled affectionately. “Could ’bout wear a girl out, couldn’t you?”

“With the right help, I could,” Caleb said, and the two of them laughed softly.

“I understand you’ve been staying at a house near Glenwood?” Frank said.

“That’s right,” Beatrice told him. “I been takin’ care of my sister’s kids. She on her honeymoon. I never figured she’d get married again, but she done it, so I come down to see after the kids.”

“Caleb says they keep you up at night?”

“That’s right, too,” Beatrice said. “They don’t got much sense, them two. They run all over me. Like wild animals.” She pointed toward a small dirt hill. Two children were tumbling down it, spewing waves of dry dust into the air. “See ’em. Like monkeys.” She shook her head. “Shit, if I’d acted like them two, my mama would have nailed my bare feet to the kitchen floor.”

Frank took out his notebook. “So you were up early on Tuesday morning?”

Beatrice nodded, her eyes looking closely at his face. “You had a talk with the wrong guy, looks like.”

“More than one,” Caleb said.

Beatrice smiled. “’Member when them two got after you that time? You was all busted up.”

“Tuesday morning you were up, is that right?” Frank repeated.

“Till the break of dawn.”

“What did you see?”

“Well, they ain’t much traffic on them sidestreets that time of the morning. So, I heard a car, and I looked out the window, sort of hoping it was my sister. It was a crazy thought, like maybe she done got tired of that fat bastard and left him on the beach. It was a crazy thought, but you know, when you want something bad, it does things to your mind.”

“What kind of car was it?”

“Fancy car,” Beatrice said, “like you don’t see much around here.”

“Do you know what kind it was?”

“It was a red little thing. What they call a ‘coupe,’ I think. It looked like a foreign car.”

“Did you happen to notice what model it was?”

“I don’t know models much. Used to, I did. Back when they was just a Buick and a Ford. They got too many of them foreign cars now.”

“Was it new?”

“Oh yeah, it was new. Real shiny. Red as a rose. Only brighter. Bright red.”

Frank wrote it down. “Which way was the car coming?”

“Up from Glenwood,” Beatrice said, “going sort of slow.”

“So you were facing the headlights?”

“Yes,” Beatrice said, “shined right in my eyes. But then he flashed them off, and it was black night again.” She looked at Caleb. “Black as my old ass, right, Caleb?”

Caleb took out his pipe. “Double or single headlights, Bea?”

“Two of them,” Beatrice said. She looked scoldingly at the pipe. “So you still smoking that thing?”

“Just like always.”

“How’s your poor wife stand it?”

“Just like always,” Caleb said, and again they laughed together.

“Where did the car stop?” Frank asked.

“’Bout halfway up the street,” Beatrice said. “It circled a time or two. Then it pulled up to the curb right by that empty lot. Then the lights went off.”

“Could you see the car clearly?”

“It was pitch black, except for that one streetlight down on Glenwood.”

“But you’re sure about the color?”

“Yeah, I could see it good enough for that.”

“Could you see any people in the car?”

“One guy. He was behind the wheel.”

“Could you describe him?”

“You mean his face?”

“Yes.”

“Naw, he was too far away for something like that,” Beatrice said. “He waited a while before he got out, just set there behind the wheel. Then he got out and sort of looked up and down the street.” She smiled. “White guy, though. I could tell that much.”

“Could you tell what he was wearing?”

“Work suit, something like that,” Beatrice said. “You know, one of those one-piece things that sort of go on like my daddy’s overalls used to.”

“Did he just stand by the car?”

“Uh huh.”

“For how long?”

“Oh, maybe a minute, maybe two. I wasn’t timing him.”

“Then what happened?”

“He went around to the dark side of the car and opened the door.”

“The door on the passenger’s side?” Frank asked. “Not the trunk?”

Beatrice nodded. “Then he pulled something out. It looked like an old carpet. I figured he was dumpin’ it in the lot. Nobody supposed to do that, but that old rusty car, God didn’t put that there, you know? I figured that’s why he’s looking all around, ’cause he ain’t suppose to be dumpin’ no trash in that lot.”

“Did you see anything in the carpet?”

“Nah, I didn’t,” Beatrice said. “But it was rolled up real loose like, and from the way he was walkin’ it seemed a lot heavier to him than it ought to have been.” She looked at Caleb. “It must have been real heavy. ‘Cause one time, he dropped it.”

“Where did he drop it?” Frank asked immediately.

“Oh, maybe a few yards into the lot, just about in front of that old car.”

That was about where Angelica’s shoe had been found, and Frank made a note of it in his book.

“He didn’t put the carpet up on his shoulder no more after that,” Beatrice added. “He just sort of drug it along, pulling it as he walked backwards.” She glanced toward the children. They were now beyond the hill.

“Stay close now, Raymond,” she called loudly. “And you watch out for Leila.”

“Where did he take the carpet?” Frank asked.

“Into that lot, like I said.”

“Where in the lot?”

“’Bout the middle of it.”

Which was about where the body had been found, Frank realized, and which meant that she probably had seen the things she described.

“What did he do in the lot?” Frank asked.

“I seen him lay the carpet down in the weeds,” Beatrice said. “That’s the last I seen. One of them kids started some shit, and I had to go tend to them.”

“So you stopped watching him?”

“That’s right.”

“You didn’t see him leave?”

Beatrice shook her head. “Next time I seen that street, it was maybe an hour later. Car was gone by then.”

Frank wrote this last statement down in his notebook and ended it with a large black period.

“Thank you,” he said.

Beatrice smiled faintly. “Don’t guess it adds up to much, does it?”

“It’s very helpful,” Frank told her truthfully. He pocketed his notebook. “How long do you expect to be in Atlanta?”

“Maybe another week.”

“Let us know before you leave.”

“I’ll tell old Caleb here.” She smiled. “We’re old buddies, ain’t we?”

“Yeah, we are,” Caleb said.

Moments later, when the two of them were back in the car, Caleb glanced wistfully toward the playground, his eyes lingering for a moment on the woman in the bright yellow dress. She seemed like a spot of light in the surrounding green. “You know, Frank,” he said softly, “there’s nothing like the past to make the future look like hell.”