Death of a City Read online

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  BY LIONEL WHITE

  TO FIND A KILLER CLEAN BREAK FLIGHT INTO TERROR SEVEN HUNGRY MEN DEATH TAKES THE BUS TOO YOUNG TO DIE THE SNATCHERS HOSTAGE FOR A HOOD LAMENT FOR A VIRGIN THE BIG CAPER LOVE TRAP STEAL BIG

  COFFIN FOR A HOOD OPERATION MURDER MARILYN K.

  THE HOUSE NEXT DOOR INVITATION TO VIOLENCE V RAFFERTY S

  THE MERRIWEATHER FILE THE TIME OF TERROR »/

  A DEATH AT SEA »

  A GRAVE UNDERTAKING 1 OBSESSION

  MONEY TRAP

  THE RANSOMED MADONNA THE HOUSE ON К STREET A PARTY TO MURDER THE CRIMSHAW MEMORANDUM THE NIGHT OF THE RAPE _ HIJACK

  death of a city

  BY LIONEL WHITE

  И

  COPY 3

  THE BOBBS-MERRILL COMPANY INDIANAPOLIS/NEW YORK

  The Bobbs-Merrill Company, Inc.

  A Subsidiary of Howard W. Sams & Co., Inc. PUBLISHERS Indianapolis/Kansas City/New York

  Copyright© 1970 by Lionel White

  All rights reserved

  Library of Congress catalog card number 77-108164 Printed in the United States of America First Printing

  Designed by Terry Reid

  This book is for

  Joan and Joe Foley

  who own ten percent of my income and one hundred percent of my love and affection.

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  one

  1 THE bomb—in reality a surplus hand grenade left over from the Korean War and purchased from a sporting-goods merchant of dubious repute—was thrown through the front doors of the church at seven-forty-two on Saturday evening during the last week in August.

  By the time the yellow half-ton pickup truck had reached Green Street and swung south off Camden Avenue, two adults and four children were dead. Twenty-three others, all children, all under twelve years of age, were twisting and screaming in a welter of blood and torn flesh, broken and shattered bones. Many of the score or more human beings, also all children, who had been fortunate enough to escape the initial disaster of the exploding grenade, were trapped beneath the crumbling walls and the fallen sheet-metal roof when the single large room which constituted the Abyssinian First Baptist Church collapsed under the impact of the explosion.

  The bomb was a grenade; the grenade was the spark which set < into action the chain of events which was to lead to the death of a

  city.

  It was not accident, neither the tragedy which immediately followed the tossing of the bomb, nor the subsequent events. It was carefully planned, arranged, contrived. As scientifically accurate and predictable as though some diabolic computing machine had programmed it.

  Later, much later of course, certain highly placed federal and state investigative authorities figured this out. But what they never did figure out was that the entire thing was merely window dressing, a background, a stage set for an infinitely more obscure and devious drama. A drama which was authored by no insane mechanical computing device but a drama conceived in the twisted mentality of a single individual who was inspired by one of the simplest and most common of all normal human motives.

  Greed.

  Money.

  Fast, easy money.

  2 BOYD Morris Millard is no longer the mayor of Oakdale. Nor is he any longer the chairman of the board of the Oakdale First National Bank, the majority stock owner of the Millard Packing Company—a closed family corporation—nor the richest man of what he had always rather patronizingly referred to as “my city.” He has also relinquished his reputation as the shrewdest poker player at the Cosmos Club and the best golfer at the Oakdale Country Club.

  Boyd Millard is dead.

  He died, in a signally agonizing and gruesome manner, within hours of the moment that an eighteen-year-old dimwitted youth named Timmy Young pulled the firing pin from the hand grenade which resulted in such tragic havoc on that Saturday evening in late August.

  At the fatal moment when the pathetic, whiskey-sodden epileptic, less than a month out of a state hospital for the feebleminded,

  tossed with unerring aim the grenade through the open doors of the Abyssinian Baptist Church, Boyd Millard was in excellent health. He was also more than half drunk, a not unexpected condition for a sixty-five-year old man who consistently polished off six to eight ounces of one hundred proof bourbon at around that time each evening. But on this particular occasion he had already consumed the better half of a full quart.

  The unusual consumption was no casual fall from grace. It was a direct result of the argument he was having with a man whom he totally despised, but with whom he was forced to come into daily contact in both a business and a social sense.

  The fact he should have left the Cosmos Club at least forty-five minutes before to drive the five miles north of the city to the family estate at Greylands, where he was already late for his weekly Saturday evening dinner with his ninety-six-year-old mother, did nothing to reduce his bad temper.

  Millard could easily enough have told Carlton Asmore to go to hell and walked off. Asmore was his social and economic equal, but he was only the city attorney. Millard certainly outranked him in the political pecking order.

  Had the discussion merely been one of their usual political arguments, Millard undoubtedly would have walked away from it, but unfortunately the argument concerned the very welfare of the city of Oakdale itself, a subject very close to the Mayor’s heart. Asmore might have been his political inferior, but the bitter fact was that Asmore owned the Oakdale Banner; Asmore was in a position to cause no end of trouble.

  Carlton Asmore, running on a Republican ticket and a liberal Republican ticket to boot, had beaten Millard’s own Democratic machine. It was the first time since the Civil War that any Republican had been elected to office in either the city or the county. Like him or not, the city attorney was a man who must be taken seriously.

  Millard reached for his old-fashioned glass and was not only embarrassed but annoyed to see that his hand was shaking. He replaced the glass on the table and picked up the bourbon bottle. His voice however was controlled and courteous, although icy.

  “I’ll have another one,” he said. “And let me pour you a little I more sherry, although God only knows what that hogwash is doing

  to your insides, my boy.”

  He refilled both glasses, nodded his impressive head ever so slightly and downed his own drink before going on.

  “If you think, Carlton,” he said, “that I am going to ask the Governor to send the State Militia into this city, on the strength of some insane rumor, the source of which you even refuse to name, you must be stark, raving mad. I tell you I know this town. I know everything about it, its people, its mood, its . .

  “You know half of this town,” Carlton Asmore said. “The white half.”

  “Don’t be an utter ass. Good Lord, my father, my grandfather, my great grandfather—our family has known and employed just about every colored family in Oakdale since slave days and even before."

  “You hardly employed them during slave days,” Carlton Asmore said and smiled.

  Boyd Millard shook his head angrily.

  “Don’t be a fool. I told you, I know the town. Like the palm of my hand.”

  “The palm of your hand,” Asmore said, "is resting in the ashtray.”

  Millard looked down and quickly lifted his left hand. He took a clean linen handkerchief from his pocket and wiped his hand, but he didn’t return the smile.

  “Carlton,” he said. “Listen to me. You must either be drunk or you are losing your hold. Do you really and truly expect me to take you
seriously? What, after all, have you actually told me? Some neurotic colored girl has come to you—not even you, but that Northern so-called social worker you seem to have lost your head over—and told her some utterly fantastic and unbelievable tale. Just think about it for a moment. You’re an attorney and you’re supposed to have a logical, practical mind. Think about it.”

  “I have thought a great deal about it, Boyd,” Asmore said. “I have thought about it and it makes sense. There is a very definite and positive plan to create a race riot in this city, in Oakdale, within the next few days.”

  “The proof?" Millard asked. “Where is the proof? You say yourself that the girl refuses to let her name be known. You say that she also refuses to give names or places or dates. That she has no real facts. Merely that there has been some sort of hidden agitation going on, some sinister plan by some unknown sinister people, to create an incident and stir up possible trouble. Now, tell me honestly, would you as a lawyer accept that sort of evidence in a courtroom? Would you? Another thing, what possible outside circumstantial evidence do you have to substantiate any such fantastic theory? You know these people as well as I do. Has anything happened? Have there been any incidents? Go on, explain it to me. Do you mean to tell me you think I don’t know what is happening in my own city? By God, I probably know half of the colored people here by their first names. A finer, more orderly, solid and conservative ..

  “Oh, for Christ sake,” Carlton interrupted. “You know a lot of old Uncle Toms and Aunt Jemimas who polished your mother's Detroit Electric or baked hominy in the old family wood range. What the hell do you know about the current generation? The boys and girls in the youth groups, the punks hanging around the pool-rooms and beer parlors. I see these kids, sometimes I have to prosecute them in court and send them away. A lot of times I try to help them. I see them and know them and know their problems, how they think and what they think. God almighty, do you think our Negroes are any different than Negroes anywhere else? Do you think we have raised a special breed? Don’t you read the papers, know what’s been going on these last few years? Boyd, you’ve got to stop living in some dead, nostalgic past. This is Oakdale, America, the last half of the twentieth century. And you, as the Mayor of this city, have certain duties and certain responsibilities.”

  Boyd Millard slammed his old-fashioned glass down on the table and pushed his chair back. His dark, finely chiseled face was flushed as he stood up, towering over the table.

  “You are damned right I have responsibilities, Carlton,” he said. “And if I were to pay attention to a completely insane, completely crazy rumor and start some sort of panic in this town, I would certainly not be living up to those responsibilities. National Guard

  Holy Christ! You really must be some sort of maniac. Why if I

  were to call the Governor, on the strength of what I can only > assume is some LSD- or pot-inspired fantasy of an unnamed crazy colored woman, he would probably have me committed, and he should. I honestly think, Carlton, you yourself should consult a

  psychiatrist.”

  He stepped away from the table and then hesitated and turned back, looking at Asmore with honest concern.

  “I’ll sign for the drinks,” he said. “Boy, go home. Get a good night’s sleep. You’ve been working too hard lately. And stop worrying. Believe me, nothing is going to happen in Oakdale. Nothing. Even if you were right and someone is out to make a little trouble, we’ve got a mighty fine police force in this town. The only trouble we are going to have is the usual Saturday night drunks, a few auto accidents, and maybe a knifing or so over in colored town.”

  Carlton Asmore cocked his head and forced a weak smile. He started to say something, but the words were drowned out by the crashing reverberations which seemed to come from almost directly behind the Cosmos Club. It sounded so close by that, for a moment, Asmore thought it was in the club itself.

  3 DURING the summer and early fall months, the Oakdale First National Bank makes a practice of staying open between the hours of four and eight o’clock on Saturday evenings. They did so not only for purely selfish reasons, such as the acceptance of deposits from local businesses which are hesitant to have a lot of money in their tills over the weekend, but also as an accommodation for the cashing of the weekly paychecks of the cannery workers.

  The canning business, the backbone of Oakdale’s economy since the decline of the old cotton plantations, is seasonal and the height of the season comes during the harvest time. As a result, although they keep open the year around, they operate on a double-shift schedule during July, August and September.

  Southern Canning Company employs some sixty-five hundred persons. It is the largest, but there are others. Millard Packing is almost as big.

  Cannery workers are paid at Millard Packing on Saturdays and the other companies meet their payrolls on Fridays. The Oakdale First National is one of three banks in the city; there are also the Columbia Savings and Loan and the City Trust. The latter two stay open late on Friday nights, but the First National, controlled by the Millard family, arranges its hours to accommodate the customers of the Millard Packing Company.

  At five o’clock in the afternoon, on the last Saturday of August, Hughy Crown, newscaster, disk jockey and general all-around clean-up man at station WXZQ of Oakdale, drove his four-year-old XKE Jaguar into the parking lot next to the Oakdale First National Bank, pulled back the safety brake and, not bothering to take the key from the ignition switch after cutting the engine, climbed out and walked into the bank.

  There were three paying tellers on duty and lines in front of each cage. Two of the tellers were elderly women and the third was a young, dark-haired girl he had never seen before. He instinctively made a head count and the longest line was in front of her cage. He chose this line, although he was in a hurry. He had to be at the station at five-twenty to prepare his five-forty-five newscast.

  It took him a little longer than he had thought it would to cash his weekly paycheck of a hundred and eighty-five dollars.

  But it was worth it. She turned the check over, studied his signature and then looked up and said, “I follow your disk show every night and I think it is great, Mr. Crown.”

  Hughy accepted the hundred and eighty-five, after saying, “Oh, just give it to me any way, honey,” and made a mental note that he would stop by the following Monday and see if his instincts about attractive, young, dark-haired girls were still correct. His instincts had told him that she could be had and his instincts were almost infallible. They might well have been in this case, had he been alive on the following Monday.

  4 THE Oakdale First National Bank is on State Street, at the corner of Green Street. The Cosmos Club is also on State Street,

  two blocks north of the bank and a block from the Peabody Hotel, < which is the second-best hotel in Oakdale. The Peabody has a mixed clientele. At one time it catered exclusively to traveling salesmen, but since Holiday Inn put up its million-dollar motel at the north end of town on Route 17 and several lesser motels opened up, it has lost its old-time custom and has to make certain

  compromises.

  Perhaps half of its customers rent their accommodations on a weekly or monthly basis. These are, for the most part, older people, widows or widowers who have retired on small but secure incomes and who hate the thought of living in the sterile loneliness of apartments or small-house isolation. The rest are floaters, the ones who seem to come from nowhere and are going nowhere, and merely check in for a night or perhaps a week or ten days and pay the full nightly rate. For a short time a couple of girls who put a “Mrs.” in front of their names, signed in, but George Evarts, the manager, was no dummy and he knew within a couple of days that they had bribed the bellboy to pimp for them and he gave them short shrift.

  George himself was not above making a phone call or two to accommodate a lonely man who was away from home and needed company. He only had three rules. There was to be no loud and noisy partying, no straight professionals, even tho
ugh they might be willing to pay him off, and, above all, no colored girls, no matter who arranged for them or how much money might be involved.

  He’d been in the business a good many years and he was smart. He could usually tell before a male guest had finished signing the register whether the phone would be ringing within a few minutes and the usual request made. He almost never missed. That’s what had surprised him so much about room forty-six when the slender, rather short middle-aged man with dark green glasses had checked in the previous week. He would have given ten to one that within a few minutes the switchboard would light up. Certainly within a day or so, assuming Forty-six stayed that long. But he had stayed a week and not only had he made no telephone calls, wanted no companionship, he’d hardly left

  hjS room. He’d had visitors, but no girls. No one, in fact, that George had ever seen before.

  Room forty-six had not violated any of George’s three cardinal rules, but he’d done something which George considered just as bad. Among those who had visited him, and there had been at least seven or eight different men, two had been colored.

  The first thought which crossed his mind was, naturally enough, that the guy was some sort of fairy. But George was an old hand and he might be wrong on some counts—like, for instance, figuring this guy would be wanting a girl the very first thing—but on some things he never made a mistake. The guy wasn’t a fag and he’d bet his life on that. But then, what the hell was he up to? And why would he have niggers going up to spend time with him?

  There is a good chance George might have done something about it and maybe he would have, but on Saturday, Forty-six had stopped by the desk around noontime and said that he would be checking out the following day.

  It was just as well. That last one, the young punk with the funny eyes, had tossed some sort of fit when he’d gotten off the elevator early in the morning after being up in the room for at least two hours. Damned lucky Forty-six had been with him and had known what to do.

  It certainly takes all kinds to make a world.