Blossom - Andrew H. Vachss [62]
I thought of the Ghost Van.
I crossed into Glen Park, where even the billboards turned Afro. Fast food, ribs and chicken. Sex shops, private booths, a quarter a play. Storefront churches. Check cashing. Pawnshops. Bible Book Center Tattoo parlor. A closed–front store advertising Swingers' Supplies and Marital Aids.
They probably got the last word right.
At Twenty–sixth a sign: Welcome to Gary. Sherwood's home ground.
I hung a left on Twenty–fifth. The Police Community Relations sign hung limply from a bombed–out ruin, rusted metal gates padlocked across its face. A black unmarked Ford parked in front, conspicuous as a pigeon among peacocks in that neighborhood. The front seat nearly filled with one body.
I pulled in behind him, killed the ignition. He maneuvered his bulk out of the car, light on his feet. Came around to the passenger side. I hit the switch and he climbed in.
"Let's take your ride. Leave this thing on the street around here, it won't be around when you get back."
"Where to?"
"Straight ahead. Past the high school. Over by the Delaney Projects. You know where they are, right?"
I didn't say anything. But Hightower's mother must have.
Sherwood pointed to the curb with a cigar–sized finger and I pulled over.
"You wanted to talk?'
I lit a smoke. "Remember that postal stuff we talked about? There's a few possibilities in there, but I can't be sure. They're for real, I don't want to just roll up on them at their houses, right?"
He didn't even nod, watching close.
"You must have crews around here. I've been checking, asking around." Remembering something Virgil had told me. "That little town, Lake Station, wasn't it once called East Gary?"
"Yep. Sure was."
"And the people there, they wanted a different name. Not be associated with Gary in people's minds."
"That don't make them Nazis."
"Didn't say it did. But you got a Klan in Indiana, at least south of here you do. And what they do is recruit, right? I don't mean hold rallies and stuff. They ask around, see who's interested. They may not call themselves by any special name, but there's no shortage of hate groups around here."
"Black and white."
"Sure. I'm not a sociologist. The guy I'm looking for, he's white."
"Random killings. Sniper fire. What's white about that?"
"Nothing by itself. But this isn't about race. That's not the key. The Zebra killings in Frisco, that was race war."
"You know about that?"
I dragged on my smoke, letting him have my eyes. "Death Angels. With little dark wings drawn on their photographs. Take Five. Carry devil's heads to Mecca. Extra points for kids. The cops never got all of them. The BLA, that was color too. But the color they were hunting was blue. That white guy in Buffalo. He shot random, but only blacks. The shrinks are working on a new word for it: Afrophobia."
His smile was bitter ice. "Yeah, they always know what to call a lynching."
"My man won't be a Nazi. He's alone. Inside himself. But he may have tried. Flirted with the edges. Likes the costumes. So what I need, I need to know where I could maybe find some of these freaks."
"You gonna sign up?"
"I don't do undercover work. Takes too long. It's not them I'm after."
"So how d'you talk to them?"
"I'll offer to sell them some guns."
"Those boys are suspicious. Paranoid. They'll think you're the Man."
"Not if they run my prints. These guys always have friends on the force."
"Could be…I heard rumors on my own job."
"Officer Revis maybe?"
His eyes glinted. "You do get around, don't you? Where d'you hear that?"
"Same place you heard I'd been to the Projects before."
Sherwood fired a smoke of his own. Looked as thin as a chiba joystick in his thick fingers. "There's a truckers' motel out on the Interstate, right across from the power plant. You know it?"
"I can find it."