Trip Wire_ A Cook County Mystery - Charlotte Carter [56]
Murder. The blade or the grenade, I thought. Whatever will kill. Turnabout. So this Alvin Flowers was Wilton’s hero, the authentic black man who was so outtasight.
But Norris wasn’t finished.
He took my breath away with the next part: This same Alvin Flowers, he said, was behind last week’s shocking hippie murders in a North Side apartment. Authorities had determined that Wilton Mobley, a member of the August 4 Committee, had defected from its ranks, so his colleagues had assassinated him to keep him from informing on them. Mobley’s female companion, Mia Boone, had been an innocent bystander.
“That’s ridiculous. Wilt was in some outfit that was fucking killing people?” Taylor said. “What a load of crap.”
He was vibrating with righteous indignation. I wasn’t. I was hollow, speechless.
“I underestimated you, Sandy. You’re good.”
I looked back at the television, saw a preening Norris. “So are they,” I said.
“Who? The cops?”
“Yeah. I wonder if they murdered Wilt, too.”
3
The newspapers had the story by now. All the details.
No justice. No beauty. No truth.
In my dirty room, I was affirming those words, droning them like a mantra. I was also trying to obliterate the reality of them with marijuana and music turned up so loud the jars on my bureau were dancing with the vibrations. But it wasn’t working.
I was still fully aware that the police were pulling off an outrageous cover-up, and they were probably going to get away with it. They had tied things up so nice and neat: Wilton was part of August 4 and he wanted to pull out. So Alvin Flowers killed him . . . but oops . . . an innocent white girl got in the way, so she had to die, too.
And who killed Alvin? One of his comrades. Why? They’d argued over money, that’s why. The white comrade, Paul Yancy, had over $100,000 in his duffel when he was apprehended at the Greyhound bus terminal.
Yes, all of that would hold together when they railroaded this fall guy Yancy.
Cliff had been knocking at the door to my room every five minutes for the last half hour, but I refused to answer. Finally he barged in and snatched the plug to my radio out of the wall.
“Get your ass off the floor,” he screamed at me. And when I didn’t move, he took me by the shoulders and shook me.
I had provoked another mild-mannered guy to near violence. Great. I might not be slinky, but I did have a certain power over men.
“I’m getting out of here, Sandy. I’ve had it. I’m withdrawing from school and I’m splitting.”
“So go.”
“I want you to go with me.”
“The only place I’m going is Hyde Park.”
“You don’t have to, and you know it. Are you coming with or not?”
“Fuck off.”
His face crumpled.
“I’m sorry, Cliff. But just leave me alone.”
“I can’t.”
“Why not?”
“Because I love you. Why do you think?”
Tears welled up inside me.
He nearly crushed me. “Let go, Sandy. You have to let go. They’re gonna beat you if you try to take them on. You already proved how tough you are. Let Wilt’s people fight them.”
“They’re not going to fight for him. They believe the cops. So do Woody and Ivy. ‘Cass, you’re being ridiculous. We haven’t come to the point where police come into our homes to murder us.’ That’s what my aunt said. I didn’t know whether to laugh or cry. Everybody believes the fucking cops. You probably believe them, too.”
“No. But what are we going to do about it?”
I hung on to him. “I don’t know,” I said, and let the tears come.
I didn’t know whether I loved Cliff, either. But when I had dried my eyes, I said, “You want me to go home with you? What’s your mother going to say?”
“What do you mean, because you’re black?”
“Well, yeah.”
“She’s not like that. We’re not like that.”
Nobody—not even Nat—had ever held me that way and told me they loved me. What did you do when that happened? You said yes to them, didn’t you? Even if you weren’t sure you loved them back.
“But why do we have to go to Connecticut?