The Skeleton's knee

23

“I got a hit,” Norm Runnion said as he approached my desk.

We were still in the basement, in separate vacant office cubbyholes, each equipped with a phone book, a phone, and a computer terminal, on which Norm had taught me how to look up current addresses of anyone with a recent record. We’d been chasing down some of the names we’d accumulated for over an hour and a half without success-until now.

He sat on the corner of the desk, his face slightly quizzical. “Brandon Huff-he was on the hard-core list-an ex-Black Panther, currently at Carruthers, McBride.”

“A law firm?”

“Yeah-sounds pretty Waspy, don’t it? Actually, it’s the kind of place William Kunstler would call home-big on defending the poor and the oppressed, as they say; drives the state’s attorney’s office nuts on a regular basis. He’s agreeable to a meet, but on a Wendella-a tour boat-in less than an hour. We’re supposed to stand by the flag at the stern and wait.”

I’d noticed the colorful boats plying the Chicago River earlier that day when I’d visited the Tribune Tower; I’d thought they looked as incongruous against Chicago’s sophisticated backdrop as a pair of sandals on a three-piece-suited executive. “What’d you think? Any reason to be nervous?”

Norm turned both palms heavenward. “Don’t guess so-two of us, one of him… Maybe.”

It wasn’t quite dark when we acquired our spot at the boat’s stern. The sky overhead was tinged blood-red, orange, and yellow by the setting sun, the cirrus clouds looking like rippled, burning lava. The city’s towering, sparkling buildings were hard-edged and brittle by comparison-black steel and glittering glass and pale, unyielding stone, flashing with electrical might. Despite the wealth and power bristling beneath it, the sky remained as placid, soothing, and unconcerned as I’d noticed before.

Norm, unlike me, was watching the gangplank. “Hard to tell; there’ve been a few black guys, but none of them looks right. I wonder if we’ve just been jerked around.”

I was having a hard time sharing his concerns. As corny as these boats had seemed to me earlier, boarding one had proved to be a distinctly odd experience, as if the single step from dock to deck had transported me beyond Chicago’s urban grasp. I was suddenly part of the river and the lake nearby, safe from the concrete human meat grinder that crowded the shore. The sounds around me were of softly lapping water, laughter, and clicking cameras. I couldn’t bring myself to feel in peril.

The smile that sensation evoked died, however, as soon as I spotted the two men leaning over the bridge railing above us. Both were well built, in their thirties or forties, wearing dark glasses and baseball caps. They were also dressed in colorful T-shirts, and sharing popcorn out of a single big bag, like lots of other people who were out enjoying the early evening. The popcorn vendor, whose umbrella I could just see over the top of the stone balustrade lining the quay, was obviously doing quite a business. Over a dozen of his customers had taken advantage of the setting to loiter by the bridge and eat while staring at the water traffic below.

Was one of the men the same guy I’d seen eyeing the mini-skirted girl across from Norm’s office? I couldn’t be sure, and while I watched, one of the men turned, stretched, slapped his buddy on the back, and they both disappeared from view, presumably to continue their stroll.

I had acted impulsively twice in this case-once when I’d gone to interview Bob Shattuck and again when I’d poked at the local mob. Both had been catalytic, stimulating a response; Shattuck had killed Shilly, and Bonatto, curious, had emerged from his cave to talk. It seemed entirely reasonable to me that either or both had extended their interest enough to pin a tail on me by now.

And there was another possibility. If my visit to the Salierno home had been recorded by the police department’s surveillance team, had their bosses been content to swallow Runnion’s stall? Or had they put a tail on, anyway? Norm hadn’t told me the reason for his abrupt departure from that branch, and I’d assumed the decision had been purely bureaucratic. Maybe I’d been wrong.

The deck began to rumble with the engine’s thrust, and dockhands threw off the mooring ropes and pushed at the boat’s side with their feet. Runnion sighed next to me and shoved his hands into his pockets. “Oh well, I guess we can see the sights, if nothing else. Never thought I’d take one of these.”

I looked at him in surprise. “You’ve never done this before?”

“Nope. You ever take a bus tour of Vermont?”

I laughed, acknowledging his point.

“You wished to see me?”

The speaker was so near, we both snapped around fast, finding a black man in a sports shirt and slacks standing before us, his hands on his hips. He was of medium height and build but seemed to carry an enormous amount of power within him. His face was impassive, his eyes hard and penetrating, his voice almost theatrically cultured and precise-an English teacher’s dream.

Norm cleared his throat. “Yeah, hi. You Brandon Huff?”

Huff ignored the obvious, the distrust apparent in his voice. “You said you had some questions concerning the 1960s.”

“Yeah. Didn’t I see you come on board with a woman and two kids?”

Huff frowned slightly. “My family, which is why I’d like to get this over with quickly.”

I tried to clear the air somewhat. “Sorry-I’m really the cause of all this. My name is Joe Gunther; I’m a policeman from Vermont, and I’m trying to pin a name to an old skeleton we uncovered back home.”

Huff merely raised his eyebrows, but I sensed some of the tension had eased from his face.

“We believe this man was active politically in the late sixties, around the same time you were.”

“I still am.”

“Well, you get the idea. Did you know Bob Shattuck?”

A crease appeared between his eyes. “He’s not dead, not that I heard.”

“When did you last hear?” Runnion asked.

Huff looked slightly scornful. “It’s what I didn’t hear I’m referring to. My interactions with Shattuck were minimal, even back then. Still, if he’d died, word would have gotten out. I doubt he’s your man.”

He looked about ready to leave. I said, “We know Shattuck is alive, but he and the skeleton were connected somehow. We don’t have much to go on, but if you could tell us a bit about him, it might get us headed in the right direction.”

He considered that for a moment, apparently thinking back. “Bob Shattuck… What do you have on him?”

I ran down a quick synopsis of the police department rap sheet, omitting any mention of Shattuck’s latest activities. I could tell Norm was uncomfortable volunteering so much information-it ran counter to a cop’s natural disposition-but I was fairly convinced that if Huff felt we were treating him as anything other than an ally, the conversation would end right there.

Huff glanced at the boat’s wake as I finished, a white-foamed swarm of reflected fireflies-all the city’s lights bobbing in captured frenzy. “That’s it?”

“We suspect more.”

“Like what?”

Norm sighed next to me.

“The rap sheet only reflects the times he got caught. We think that in the late sixties, early seventies, he may have been linked to extremist radicals-Weatherman splinter groups and the like.”

“The Panthers?”

I looked at him straight. “No. They never came up.”

He nodded slightly. “You suspect violence?”

“Definitely.” Huff addressed Norm. “You’re Runnion, right?”

Norm was slightly startled. “Yeah-sorry-should’ve introduced myself.” He made to reach for his credentials, but Huff stopped him with a shake of the head.

“Don’t worry about it. I checked you out after you called. That’s why I’m here.”

He paused, but not for any response from us. He moved slightly, leaning against the railing, his eyes, like ours earlier, on the passing cityscape. “I knew Shattuck back then, but not well. Some of his causes and ours overlapped, or so we believed at first. Not that it mattered much; we were a force unto ourselves and our race, and on that level he was as much “whitey” as the police. Still, there were a few activities where some sort of vague cooperation existed for a while.”

“What happened?”

“Nothing dramatic. But we began to suspect his motives. We were used to some of that-the wanna-be syndrome-guilty whites hoping to become cool by proximity.”

He shook his head, not so much scornful as philosophical. “They tried to be blacker than us-hating more, protesting too much, running around wearing African robes and claw necklaces. Pathetic.”

“Shattuck was like that?” I asked, not bothering to hide the incredulity.

“No. I think the stimulus was similar, but he demonstrated it differently. Under a charming, almost obsequious exterior, he was a very violent, unstable man-vengeful. I sensed he wanted more than to be black-he wanted to be a leader of blacks. We soon made it clear we didn’t want him within sight.”

There was a pause, which Runnion clearly understood. “You’re not going to get more specific, are you?”

Huff glanced at him and merely smiled.

I pulled Abraham Fuller’s dog-eared photograph out of my pocket and handed it over. “This face ring a bell?”

Huff tilted it so the lights off the boat shone on it. He finally shook his head and handed it back, a gesture I was becoming used to. “No, I’m afraid not.”

“One last one; the skeleton I mentioned’s been described as a white male, about one hundred and ninety pounds, left-handed, probably a ballet dancer and a runner. Had a chipped front tooth that was fixed and no cavities-something he may have bragged about.”

He chuckled and shook his head slightly. “No cavities, huh?” He glanced at his watch and then along the length of the boat. “I need to return to my family.”

“Thanks for your help,” I said.

He nodded at me quickly but then looked at Norm again closely. “I understand you’re retiring soon.”

Runnion was impressed. “Not too many people know that.”

Huff paused, obviously considering something, but all he said was, “Too bad,” before he turned on his heel and left us.

“I met my first Black Panther tonight.”

Gail chuckled over the phone. “What was he like?”

“Talked better than me, dressed better than me, and was smarter than hell.”

“No black leather gloves and dark glasses? Didn’t call you ‘pig’?”

“All right, all right, so I’m culturally deprived.”

She laughed and then asked, “What else have you been up to?”

I told her about my meeting with Salierno.

She was no longer amused. “Joe, do you really know what you’re doing?”

I knew from the concern in her voice that she wasn’t being offensive-it was a serious question, and certainly one I’d been asking myself a lot lately.

“On one level, I do.” I hesitated, again remembering the two men in the car, the couple at the bridge. “But it’s a little like poking a sleeping dog with a stick. You need to wake him up, but there’s no telling what the reaction might be.”

She sighed but didn’t pursue the point. “I might have some good news. I’ve been fooling around with that astrology chart, calling a few people I know, checking some books out of the library… I think it might be possible to get a latitude and longitude on the birthplace. “

“You’re kidding me.”

“No. Supposedly, there are dozens of mathematical steps to it, along with a strict procedure, and it only works if the chart is very accurate to begin with. I talked to Billie about it; she wasn’t very hopeful. She’d never done it herself and had never heard of it being done-usually there’s no call for it. She did agree that it would take a ‘real hotshot,’ as she put it, to figure it out. She called the person who taught her-some man in California-but he’d never done it, either.”

“So what makes you think it’s possible?” I asked, fighting to keep the skepticism from my voice.

“It was in one of the books. Anyway, I’m going to keep on it-maybe we’ll find it pinpoints a single tiny hospital in the middle of the boonies.”

“Or six huge ones in downtown L.A.”

We talked for a while, about other, unrelated topics. She told me of a deal she was closing, and about the latest political scrap among the selectmen. By the time we were done, I was longing to be back home. Part of that was the lingering pleasure of hearing Gail’s voice, but another part was being in Chicago. It was just too big for me, too crowded, too complicated, with too many levels to its social structure.

Also, while Brattleboro had its proportion of crazies and hop-heads, whose attention was often best grabbed with the working end of a two-by-four, we didn’t have the Mafia, or slums that covered several square miles, or nine hundred homicides every year. I was a mere blip among millions in this city, and my being extinguished probably wouldn’t even make the front page, assuming someone didn’t arrange to make me vanish without a trace.

My thoughts returned to Shattuck and Bonatto, and to the forces they could conceivably control-and which I had so blithely stirred into motion.

It made me wonder how many bodies were anchored to the bottom of that conveniently located ocean-sized lake.