Unanimous Verdict

By James A. Kidney

This book is dedicated in loving memory of

Arthur Zilversmit and Daniel M. Kidney II

ISBN: 1-4392-1454-9 ISBN-13:9781439214541 ISBN: 061531094X 978-0-615-31094-7

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Part One: The Crime

Prologue: March 27, 1954

Chapter One: Mrs. Virginia Van Dyke, April 23, 1954

Chapter Two: Lorenzo King, April 23, 1954

Chapter Three: Problems with Parents, April 23, 1954

Chapter Four: The Other Side of Town, April 23-24, 1954

Chapter Five: The Chief I, April 24, 1954

Chapter Six: Lessons In Black and White, April 24, 1954

Chapter Seven: An Evening at Pennsy’s, April 24 -25, 1954

Chapter Eight: Chicago, April 26-27, 1954

Chapter Nine: The Chief II, April 28, 1954

Chapter Ten: Ezra and Neil, April 28-30, 1954

Chapter Eleven: Road Trip, April 30 - May 7, 1954

Chapter Twelve: Ezra Lowell, 1931-34

Part Two: The Defendants

Chapter Thirteen: The Farwell Family, 1904-1922

Chapter Fourteen: The Roach Family, 1870-1920

Chapter Fifteen: Brian Carter, 1921

Chapter Sixteen: Atlanta, May 7-8, 1954

Chapter Seventeen: The Chief III, May 8 - 11, 1954

Part Three: The Verdict

Chapter Eighteen: River’s Edge, May 9-11, 1954

Chapter Nineteen: Birth, 1921 – 1922

Chapter Twenty: The Reckoning, May 14, 1954

Chapter Twenty-One: The Chief IV, May 15, 1954

Chapter Twenty-Two: Judgment Day, May 17, 1954

Epilogue

Part One: The Crime

Prologue: March 27, 1954

Corporal Walter Earle’s principal goal was to travel his journey of life suffering neither physical nor emotional discomfort. Achieving this meant following only one rule: Avoid risk. Corporal Earle did not expect or desire riches or advancement. Any such passion implied ambition, and Corporal Earle had none beyond receipt of his monthly paycheck from the District of Columbia, which employed him as an officer for the Metropolitan Police Department. Joining the force upon graduation from Coolidge High School in 1949 was not in conflict with his life goal. Earle’s father had been a policeman for 25 years. His firearm was holstered, except for practice drills, for a quarter century – until a comfortable retirement. It required only a few years of service before the older Earle acquired sufficient seniority to select a weekday shift. Thereafter, Corporal Earle’s father never missed either dinner or a weekend at home. This was young Walter’s model for success – to be just like his Dad.

When the younger Earle joined the force five years ago, his father offered advice which Walter eagerly absorbed. “If you should be so unfortunate as to encounter a crime in the making,” his father said, in one of the longest conversations Walter could recall having with him, “do not intervene to stop it. Instead, make yourself scarce and wait until the crime is over and all the bad guys have left the scene. The force has detectives. They should be made to work. They need crimes to solve. Your job is not to lose your life or the District will have to waste good money training a replacement. One day you’ll get a desk job, and then you won’t have to worry about such things.”

Corporal Earle was practicing his father’s lesson on a cold, damp Saturday morning near the end of March, 1954. He was crouched behind a line of parked cars while viewing the double-door entrance to a warehouse across Second Street in Southeast Washington, near the Anacostia River. Earle knew the neighborhood well because it had been his beat for over seven months. The warehouse was one of several on his rounds, along with a Capital Transit bus barn, a cement plant, a couple of liquor stores and a single block of three-story row houses, most of them containing enthusiastic patrons of the liquor stores. Earle liked his beat because it was unimportant. Serious crime was rare among the resident middle-aged drunks, most of them colored, and the warehousemen and bus drivers, all white, who quickly departed for Anacostia, Arlington, Northeast D.C., Maryland and other white neighborhoods immediately after their shifts. Earle calculated that within a year his seniority would allow him to work the same day beat Monday through Friday, thus achieving an important career goal. An inside desk job would come in time.

Avoiding risk requires an alert mind, though not an especially bright one. Corporal Earle’s nightmare was to bumble into a dangerous, but avoidable, situation and suffer a painful injury – or worse – because he had missed warning signals. The young corporal made it a point to be very familiar with the physical details of his beat and the routine of neighborhood inhabitants. He had been instructed at the police academy to look for the unusual because it might be a sign of crime. Since coming upon a crime was exactly what Earle was afraid of doing, he learned his academy lesson well. Consequently, he knew a Mr. Grossman operated the warehouse. He knew Grossman lived somewhere in or near Hyattsville, Maryland, a few miles away. Earle also knew that Grossman closed his warehouse with a large padlock on the double doors every Friday afternoon at 4 p.m. and did not reopen until 7 a.m. Monday. On this Saturday, the padlock was missing from the door. Earle never knew Grossman to leave his building unlocked. The missing padlock probably meant thieves had invaded the building to pilfer whatever they could find of value, which Earle knew would not be much. Grossman’s warehouse contained tires, a couple of old automobiles and a great many boxes of dull documents stored at the request of downtown law firms and some government agencies. The thieves would be disappointed. This was even more reason for caution. The bandits could be armed and they might be angry at the lack of loot – perhaps angry enough to hurt or, God forbid, kill a police officer. Mindful of his father’s advice about the benefits of delay, Earle waited behind the automobiles a half hour, long enough, he calculated, for any burglars to take what they wanted and leave. Fortunately, the area had little weekend pedestrian traffic and there were no passersby inquiring why a young uniformed police officer was crouched alone behind a car in mid-morning for 30 minutes with his pistol at the ready pointing at a brick warehouse barren of activity.

Corporal Earle debated whether to use the police call box two blocks away to summon assistance. But doing so before adequately assessing the situation entailed another kind of risk – ridicule from other cops, including accusations of incompetence and cowardice. “There’s Corporal Earle, scared to death by a broken padlock.” He could hear the scorn even as he worried for his safety. The officer weighed the risks of physical injury versus harassment while watching the warehouse and decided it likely was safe to enter the building before calling for assistance.

After exactly 30 minutes, Earle moved across Second Street, SE quickly, in a crouch. He stood only when he reached the brick warehouse wall to the right of the double doors, holding his body tight against the wall. Hearing nothing from inside, Earle pushed the door closest to him inward slightly until he could see the first few feet of the north side of the interior. Transom windows just under the roofline shed light despite the overcast day. He heard nothing. He saw stacks of bankers’ boxes, presumably containing documents, and a collection of large construction equipment, such as earth graders and a steamroller, parked neatly in a line. Nothing appeared to have been disturbed.

Earle was now convinced that the warehouse was unoccupied. He pushed the door farther inward until it met an obstacle of some sort when it was halfway opened. The obstacle caused a squishy resistance to Earle’s pressure on the door, but did not block the door from opening. Earle entered the warehouse and circled behind the door. His nose hit on a brown leather shoe. It was attached to a foot that was attached to a body hanging from a rope tied to a beam supporting a loft area above the door. Earle stepped back to get a full look at the body. The person was well dressed, in a dark suit, dress shirt and tie, as if going to a job interview. Blank bug eyes stared vacantly toward Earle. A tongue was visible, hanging an inch from the mouth, made slack by a hanging jaw. Although the face was slightly distorted and the neck pulled to the right by the rope, the object hanging from the rafter was clearly a young male. He was also a Negro.

Jesus Christ! Earle thought as he raced to the callbox. A lynching!

Chapter One: Mrs. Virginia Van Dyke, April 23, 1954

Neil Endicott was awakened from a sound sleep at 8 a.m. by a phone call from his answering service. The service told him a Mrs. Van Dyke called at 4 o’clock the previous afternoon and that she wanted to speak to him as soon as possible. The number she left was a LI, for LIncoln, exchange, which meant the caller worked or lived somewhere on the edges of downtown D.C. “Van Dyke”, Neil thought. – very Dutch, perhaps very rich. Just another angry wife who needed pictures of her husband in “the act” with his girlfriend. She would only be Neil’s third client since quitting the police department and setting up his one-man detective agency, but the work already bored him. Chasing errant husbands and wives was like repairing a flat tire on Connecticut Avenue at rush hour – dangerous only if you were stupid and careless, but never glamorous or challenging.

Neil’s tiny Capitol Hill studio apartment was furnished with a bed, nightstand and bureau from his boyhood bedroom in Chevy Chase. He had added a floor lamp and a second-hand green stuffed chair, which was ugly but comfortable. The walls were bare except for a mirror over the bureau. A 25-cent Pocketbook Mike Hammer novel was on the bedside stand along with a photograph of his sort-of-but-not-really girlfriend Jennifer in a dime store frame. The entire apartment could be crossed in fewer than five steps to a small refrigerator and an electric stove. Neil did not have to open the refrigerator. He knew it contained only three bottles of Ballantine Ale, a half-eaten bag of potato chips, stored in the fridge to protect it from roaches, and about a half-pound of sliced bologna from the DGS market. The two-door cupboard mounted above the stove contained only Melmac place-settings for 2 1/2 people. (A dinner plate had melted when Neil tried to reheat some coffee cake to give Jennifer “breakfast in bed” on her birthday. He learned that although Melmac is nearly unbreakable, it is not ovenproof.) Neil was not unhappy with his Spartan accommodations. He was a bachelor and his quarters satisfied his needs, even if they appalled his mother and amused his girlfriend.

Neil showered, brushed his teeth, combed his hair and put on his skivvies and a T-shirt before returning Mrs. Van Dyke’s call. If he was going to meet her today, he would wear his one sport jacket, one of three ties and one of two dress shirts. He had no choice in dress shirts, since he wore one the day before and it required more time to air out, in Neil’s judgment, before it could be worn again.

He dialed the number. The phone rang three times. “Hello,” a woman’s voice answered.

“Is Mrs. Van Dyke there?” Neil asked.

“Speaking,” the woman said. The voice was firm, a little bit guttural, but not loud. It was conversational, accustomed to doing business on the telephone. It was the voice of an older woman. Neil introduced himself.

“Yes, thank you for returning my call,” Mrs. Van Dyke said. “I would like to speak to you about retaining your services. You are a private investigator, correct?” She enunciated each word with precision.

“Yes Ma’am.”

“Can you come over to my house to discuss the assignment?”

“Yes, I believe I have some time today, though I have several appointments.” Neil told himself this was not a lie since he was due at his parents’ house for dinner that night.

“Are you free at 10 o’clock this morning?” Mrs. Van Dyke asked. Neil said that he was and Mrs. Van Dyke gave her address. Neil was surprised. It was in the 300 block of T Street, NW, about four blocks east of Griffith Stadium in the Howard University area. Given that geography, it was certain that Mrs. Van Dyke was a Negro.

“Excuse me Mrs. Van Dyke. I think there has been some mistake. I am a white man and I take it from your address that you are a Negro woman.” Neil immediately regretted what could be interpreted as a hostile tone. He did not know how to handle the situation because he never had encountered the prospect of working for a colored person. Mrs. Van Dyke did not sound as if she noticed.

“Well, yes, Mr. Endicott, but are you saying that you have a policy of not accepting colored clients?”

He had no “policies” of any kind, other than to try to make a living from detective work. He was not complying with that policy very well at the moment, a thought which led him to a maneuver to back away from Mrs. Van Dyke which would be economic, not racial.

“No, my firm has no discrimination policy, but my fees are very substantial and I’ve found that few people can afford them. There are several reputable colored private detective agencies in town which are probably cheaper. I could recommend one or two if you give me some time to check around.” Neil had seen a couple of small ads at bus stops for colored agencies but knew nothing about them. He hoped they were in the Yellow Pages.

“This job really requires the services of a white man, Mr. Endicott. I heard you were somewhat new to the business, and thought you might be reasonable.”

Neil was surprised that she knew something about him. She had done some research. Her point that he was new to the business was a sharp one that hurt. He did not like his experience questioned, especially by a colored woman. Her requirement of a white detective also made Mrs. Van Dyke suspect. Neil wondered if she might be looking for a beard or front-man for some sort of swindle. A young white man could add legitimacy to a colored grifter’s confidence game.

“Yes, but I’ve enjoyed considerable success and I charge accordingly, just like the other detectives in town.” Neil wanted to end the conversation right now.

“How much do you charge, Mr. Endicott. I have some means.”

Neil aimed at a figure he was sure she could not afford. “I charge $500 a week plus expenses.”

“I can afford that,” she responded without hesitation. She did not retreat; she advanced. “I expect that the work will take at least two weeks. Of course, we can’t know until you are finished. Mr. Endicott, it is very important work. I understand that you had a brief career in the police department and are well-regarded there. That is another important reason I need to hire you specifically.” Neil was a little flattered as well as concerned that she knew so much about him.

Having claimed to require a high salary, Neil now was tempted to take the job. He decided to test Mrs. Van Dyke’s bona fides.

“Thank you for the compliment, but where did you learn about me? How do you know I was with the police? How do you know what my reputation was at the department?”

“I will tell you that when you come to my house this morning. You have the address. Can I count on you at 10? No obligations of course – for either of us.”

Mrs. Van Dyke knew she had won. Neil acknowledged her victory by consenting to the visit. He put on his navy sports coat, his white dress shirt, a pair of charcoal grey slacks and a blue and yellow regimental striped tie. Everything but the pants was a Christmas or birthday gift from his parents since Neil was discharged from the Marine Corps a year earlier.

The Eighth Street streetcar passed in front of Neil’s apartment in a three-story row house that had been divided – with difficulty – into six tiny apartments. The streetcar traveled north to Gallaudet College for the deaf, then west on Florida Avenue. Two evidently deaf students exchanging hand signs got off at the Gallaudet stop. After that, Neil was the only white person on the streetcar. He disembarked at Rhode Island Avenue, Northwest. It was a short walk to the 300 block of T Street. The warm weather of the previous day had moved on, replaced by an unusual late April chill. The temperature would not reach 50. Neil shivered and regretted not wearing a coat.

The row houses Neil passed on his way to Mrs. Van Dyke’s home were the same Victorian architecture as those on Capitol Hill. Most appeared to be at least as well maintained. The dominant color was red, either red paint or unpainted red brick, but the blocks were also dotted with tasteful tans, browns and other earthy tones, trimmed in complementary black, white or cream. Some houses had small lawns with azaleas in bud, prepared to bloom in only a couple of weeks. A few had handsome turrets topping bay windows in the front parlor. Others boasted front porches, some with roofs and others with bare awning rails, awaiting warmer weather that would bring colorful canvas coverings.

This was LeDroit Park, home to D.C.’s “Talented Tenth” as W.E.B. DuBois, the colored writer, labeled the educated, well-to-do black middle class. DuBois hoped the fortunate would lead the other 90 percent of their race to equality in the United States. Neil had driven through LeDroit Park in the past, probably with his parents looking for street parking to attend a Senators game. As a native Washingtonian and regular reader of his father’s newspaper, The Evening Star, he knew LeDroit Park was home to prominent blacks, including Mary Church Terrell, who was the first colored person on the D.C. school board and was now, at age 90, helping to lead a sometimes raucous, but mostly peaceful, drive to desegregate the city’s restaurants and theaters. Neil had encountered picket lines outside the National Theatre and downtown restaurants. He greeted the picketers pleasantly. He supposed he hoped they would win their campaign, but he was mostly indifferent. He couldn’t afford anything but the movies, which permitted Negroes in the balconies. His only fancy restaurant meals were as a guest of his parents.

Neil read somewhere that LeDroit Park was no longer the neighborhood of choice for well-to-do colored folks. Like their white counterparts, residents were abandoning the areas close to downtown. Upper Sixteenth Street and Georgia Avenue, near Walter Reed Army Hospital and on the way to Silver Spring, Maryland, was supposed to be their new enclave. The area even developed its own nickname: The Gold Coast. But everything Neil saw on his trip to through LeDroit Park to Mrs. Van Dyke’s was neat and well-cared for. Obituaries for the neighborhood were at best premature, he thought.

Mrs. Van Dyke’s house was painted a light yellow with cream trim. It was one with bay windows and a turreted top. There were two other houses like it on the block, one of them adjoining the Van Dyke place. It was painted red with black trim. A teen-aged colored boy was in the neighbor’s tiny front lawn planting two boxwoods in front of the window to the English basement. He looked up as Neil dropped the brass knocker on Mrs. Van Dyke’s paneled front door. Within seconds, the door was opened by a woman who introduced herself as Mrs. Van Dyke. She welcomed Neil. Before she could close the door, the teenage boy raised his voice to be heard.

“I’m sorry about your boy, Mrs. Van Dyke,” the child said. “I liked Clayton a lot. He was always friendly to me. It’s a damn shame. My Momma and I are prayin’ for you and him, Mrs. Van Dyke.”

“Bless you Leon,” Mrs. Van Dyke answered. “Please tell your mother that I thank her for her prayers. And thank you, too.”

“Yes’m,” the boy said, returning to his yard work as Mrs. Van Dyke closed the door.

Before Neil could fully take in either his hostess or her home, he felt obliged to say something about the yard boy’s remark. “Did something happen to your son, Mrs. Van Dyke?”

“Yes, he was murdered. That’s what you are here to talk about.”

“I’m so sorry, Ma’am. Have they caught the killer?”

“Before we get started on all of that, Mr. Endicott, will you have some tea? Some coffee? A sweet? Please have a seat.”

“Yes, coffee, please. Black.” He dropped into a loveseat in the bay. Behind it were green potted plants and grasshopper-green draperies. Thin white curtains, which permitted sunlight to flood the room, covered the windows. An oval coffee table stained a deep mahogany was in front of the loveseat. It was intricately carved around a raised edge. The loveseat had claw feet, also darkly stained, and was upholstered in a red and yellow floral pattern on a neutral background. A fireplace was to Neil’s right. Above the mantel was a large painting of a man the color of charcoal holding a pipe in his lap with his left hand. His right thumb was hooked into the jacket of a three-piece suit.

The viewer’s attention was drawn immediately to the subject’s eyes. They were a lighter color than the skin, surrounded, of course, with white, but also appearing to reflect light from the pupils in a way that animated him with emotion. One could imagine the subject either angry or intensely studying the artist. The artist deserved praise for a painting that did more than freeze a man expressionless at a moment in time. Or perhaps the subject himself was so compelling that the artist only accurately captured a picture of an extraordinary man.

The remainder of the living room was filled by a baby grand piano bearing a number of framed pictures upon it and two stuffed chairs identically upholstered in a kind of oriental pattern whose principal color theme was red. A thick oriental rug covered the floor, and more photographs were hung on the wall on either side of the entrance to the foyer on Neil’s left. The wall photos were all black and white, some now yellowing, of colored people, some of them obviously dating to the last century. Additional lighting was provided by floor lamps at either chair. A ceiling light was not turned on. An ottoman in matching upholstery was placed in front of one of the chairs. The room was tasteful but comfortable, intended for both entertaining and daily living. The room would not be out of place in Chevy Chase or even the wealthier Foxhall neighborhood, Neil thought. If he had suddenly been dropped into Mrs. Van Dyke’s living room, he would not have guessed it was the home of a colored woman, but for the pictures and the portrait.

That he even briefly carried such a thought puzzled him.

Mrs. Van Dyke returned with the coffee from the kitchen at the rear of the house, passing through the dining room. She was of average height, but carried herself in a very erect manner, almost ceremonially, which made her seem taller. There was no hint of either slouch or jauntiness. Her walk was not slow; it was measured. Her dress was very formal for the morning, perhaps in anticipation of a professional visit, but more likely because it was her habit to always be well dressed. She wore a black wool suit, white blouse, hose and black dress shoes with two-inch heels. Her skirt reached a fashionably stylish but modest level about two inches below her knees. The suit was obviously tailored to present Mrs. Van Dyke’s figure proudly, but with dignity. Mrs. Van Dyke deserved more credit for the effect than the tailor, however.

Mrs. Van Dyke had a long, graceful neck, unmarked by wrinkles or sagging, adorned with a simple string of pearls, which led to a head with slightly graying hair pulled tightly into a bun at the back. The hairstyle seemed to stretch her face taught. In fact, her skin was very smooth and her features sharply defined. Her skin was deep black silk, tempting to touch, stretched over high cheekbones. She had full lips painted a bright red and a slightly flat, wide nose. Neil usually perceived the prominent features of many Negroes as rough and unattractive, especially on a woman, but Mrs. Van Dyke’s mouth was erotic, her face inviting. Her eyes were dark and, at the moment, welcoming. But Neil guessed they revealed nothing involuntarily.

“Well, Mr. Endicott, as you can see, I am colored. But perhaps you also can see that I can afford your fees.” Mrs. Van Dyke took a seat in the upholstered chair across the fireplace from Neil after handing him his coffee and waving her arm around the room at the costly furnishings to illustrate her point. She set her own cup of tea on a side table. “Are you prepared to consider taking my case or would we be wasting our time talking about it?”

“As I told you, Ma’am, I have no race-based policy for my clients. I’m sorry if my remarks caused you any embarrassment.”

“From the redness of your face, Mr. Endicott, I do not believe it is I who am embarrassed.” Mrs. Van Dyke leaned slightly forward, as if preparing to share a confidence. “Let’s get right to the point. As you learned walking in, a little prematurely perhaps, my son has been murdered. I want to hire you to find out who killed him.”

Neil took a deep breath. Such an assignment was far beyond his skills and experience. He could not in good conscience accept the matter even if offered by a white woman.

“Haven’t the police investigated the killing?” Neil asked. It would be rude to turn down the job without the courtesy of some basic questions and the details of a murder were almost always interesting.

“No, they have not. My son was beaten and then hanged nearly one month ago. The police began an investigation, but within a few hours of the murder they were told to treat the death as a suicide. Clay’s death was definitely not a suicide. I saw the body. The police admit privately he was beaten but say he then hanged himself. This is nonsense, which even the police have a hard time with. I’m hiring you to investigate and to identify the killer.”

Neil considered that despite her evident sophistication and intelligence, Mrs. Van Dyke was a mother and was unwilling to accept that her son killed himself. He could not imagine the pain to a parent of such a death. Perhaps he could help her come to terms with the death by drawing out some other facts before he rejected the assignment.

“Don’t you think Clay might have been beaten by someone and then hanged himself? Maybe he was upset or not thinking right. He may have been in great pain and thought this would end it. Suicide is always a mystery. I mean, we never really know why they do it.”

“I claimed the body from the coroner and had him autopsied at Freedmen’s Hospital. The coroner’s office wouldn’t do it. They said Clay clearly was a suicide and there was no need for an autopsy. The doctors at Freedmen’s said even a visual examination showed that Clay probably was dead before he was hanged. His head was fractured. Something about the morbidity and the location of the blood and stuff. Apparently this kind of thing happens all the time when a black man dies under mysterious circumstances. The Freedmen’s doctors said they get these kinds of cases every three or four months where the coroner has ignored obvious causes of death of a Negro and refused to perform a public autopsy. I’m sure if you talk to your friends at the police department they will confirm it.”

The words spilled out of Mrs. Van Dyke’s mouth as she began to lose her composure. She pulled a handkerchief from a pocket of her jacket.

“I’m sorry, Mr. Endicott. It is very difficult. I try to be clinical about this so you will have the facts, but Clay was a good boy. I miss him terribly. He deserves the same justice as anyone else. I deserve the same justice.

“I took the autopsy results to the police earlier this week, but they refused to change their position. I don’t understand it. I don’t understand why they won’t treat my boy’s death the way they should, the way the evidence directs.”

Neil was not particularly surprised that the death of a black man was treated so dismissively by the police and the D.C. government. The number of colored cops on the force was infinitesimal. A dead colored man wasn’t going to receive the same police resources as a white one. The white-run city government and the newspapers collaborated with the cops in tolerating the differing treatment, the first for budget and political reasons and the other because colored crime victims just weren’t good copy. Editors didn’t want to spare a reporter to cover the crime or the family of the victim like they did for white folks. Neil didn’t worry if the system was right or wrong. That was just how it was. In an ideal world, it would be better, but lots of other things would be, too.

“I assume you gave the police any information you had. Who would have killed him? Did he have any enemies? Was he into any kind of bad crowd? The police need leads to pursue a crime.” Neil was tap dancing. He was looking for an opportunity to back out.

“I gave them the names of some of his friends and people he knew at work. I don’t think the police ever contacted any of them.”

“Well, Mrs. Van Dyke, I would love to help you, but the police have more resources than I do. I assume most of Clay’s friends were colored, and a colored detective would surely be able to gain their confidence more easily than I could. That is important if they have any useful information, especially if it somehow implicates them in some kind of suspicious conduct.” In case that was not enough to change her mind about hiring him, he added this:

“I’m also pretty green at this job, despite what I told you over the phone. I don’t think I’m ready yet for a murder investigation. And while I do have a lot of police friends, I got bored with patrol duty after fighting in Korea. For now, anyway, I’m on my own. So I don’t have much experience, not enough, at least, for something this serious. A missing child, as opposed to a murder investigation, maybe I can handle that. Crawl around for evidence of cheating, yes. Murder, no.”

Mrs. Van Dyke tilted her head slightly, her mouth tightened and her dark eyes, again dry, seemed to darken further. She was looking skeptically at Neil. Then she addressed his objections.

“Mr. Endicott, I am well aware that you are inexperienced. You were not my first choice for this assignment. I have contacted nearly every white detective I could locate. One or two had a reputation for taking money and not doing the work. Most of them turned me down as soon as they heard my address, as you tried to do. I interviewed one other private investigator here last week. He said he would take the job, took a check from me, but I have not heard from him since. Yesterday, the check came back to me in the mail with a note from the investigator saying he did not have the time to do a proper job investigating my son’s death.”

Neil was a little chagrined to be such a desperate choice, but Mrs. Van Dyke’s narrative reminded him that he wanted to know the source of her information about him disclosed on the phone. “How did you hear about me, then? I’m not even in the Yellow Pages.”

“We share a mutual acquaintance. She brought up your name when I mentioned how difficult it was to find someone. You do know an Alice Henshaw, don’t you? She said you were a novice, but a well- intentioned young fellow with police experience. She thought you would take the job. She didn’t think you would turn me down because of my race.”

Alice. Although nearly 20 years his senior, Alice and her husband Max were good friends of both Neil and his parents. He knew Alice had liberal views, but was puzzled how she might know Mrs. Van Dyke. Mrs. Van Dyke’s professional inquiry now turned into something close to a request from a personal friend, one Neil liked very much who was dear to him. Nor could Neil turn down Mrs. Van Dyke’s request without repercussion. Mrs. Van Dyke undoubtedly would tell Alice, who would be disappointed in Neil, if not angry. Worse, if she thought he was acting for racial reasons. Alice would misinterpret his indifference as bigotry if he turned down the job. She knew he was not overwhelmed with clients.

“How do you know Alice?”

“She is a member of the NAACP. You know what that is, don’t you Mr. Endicott? My neighbor, Mrs. Terrell, helped found the NAACP. Poor thing. Ninety years old. She’s feeling very poorly. Anyway, we have an active chapter here in D.C. We have several white members, including Mrs. Henshaw. We meet twice a month, but have been meeting more frequently during this campaign to integrate the restaurants and theaters. I just hope Mrs. Terrill lives to see us prevail. We will prevail, Mr. Endicott.” She stated the outcome as fact, not hope.

Neil recalled Alice mentioning she joined the NAACP and made Negro friends in the organization, but she said nothing about assisting the latest desegregation drive in the city. Neil suddenly had the sensation that his conduct was being monitored; that Alice was tracking his and asking Mrs. Van Dyke to report on him. He did not like it.

“I appreciate Alice’s vote of confidence,” Neil said, finally deciding he could provide objective reasons to turn down the assignment that might satisfy Alice. “But I am still white and inexperienced. You would be better off with a black investigator. Surely there are some in town who could satisfy your needs.”

Mrs. Van Dyke’s tightened mouth relaxed a bit. She had an answer for this objection. “I already have retained a colored detective to work with you. He is very good. His name is Lorenzo King. He has investigated murders. You might learn from him. He is waiting to see you this afternoon. We thought it might be more convenient for you to visit him, since he has an office.” The knowing reference to an office stung Neil since he was very conscious of not having one.

“Mr. King recommended that I retain a white man to deal with the police. He also thought that, given the seriousness of the issues, having a white man in tow when Clay’s friends were questioned might give proper weight to his inquiries.”

She had thought of everything. This guy King’s plan was a reasonable one and Neil was Mrs. Van Dyke’s last chance for a white investigator.

“In addition, Mr. King and I agree that Clay was murdered by a white man.” Her face hardened as the subject moved to speculation about the perpetrator.

“You can’t know that, Mrs. Van Dyke. What is your evidence?”

Mrs. Van Dyke allowed herself a sigh. She was tired of doing battle with the callow young white man before her. “The evidence is that my son is – was – an intelligent American Negro who knew full well the horrible history of lynching in this country. Every adult Negro in this city, and probably in the entire country, knows that history and knows that the white man, whole crowds of white men and women, sometimes, lynched colored men for amusement. They lynched colored men for crimes they did not commit. They lynched colored men to ‘show them a lesson.’ And they didn’t just do it in the South, Mr. Endicott. They did it in the Midwest and even in the West. My late husband and I followed this subject carefully on behalf of the NAACP. There have been over 2,000 lynchings that we know of in this century alone.” Mrs. Van Dyke raised her voice as she spoke. Her nostrils noticeably flared and her eyes burned with intensity. Neil could not know how often talk of race discrimination overwhelmed Mrs. Van Dyke’s genuine gentility and grace, causing her to rage. This white Chevy Chase boy seemed ignorant of or, worse, indifferent to the Negro’s constant awareness of color. Even in LeDroit Park, comfortably insulated from the worst of white bigotry, race issues traveled every day with Mrs. Van Dyke. In a perverse tribute to those who bought, transported and caged their ancestors, many black people hated members of their own race in direct proportion to their skin color. The blacker a man or woman, the purer their African genes, the more likely they would be discriminated against by lighter skinned Negroes, most of whom presumably descended from European masters in the more recent genetic past. Lighter skin was a sign of good fortune as well as of brains, beauty and talent. Dark skin, such as that possessed by Mrs. Van Dyke, suggested stupidity and even savagery, especially if joined by Negroid facial features. It was a form of collective racial self-hatred that was never far from Mrs. Van Dyke’s consciousness. The very reason whites discriminated against blacks was the reason blacks discriminated against each other. Mrs. Van Dyke and her equally dark husband, as well as other dark skinned men and women, battled a dual black-and-white discrimination which, especially in the higher strata of Negro society, was a constant presence. Color was a constant presence with Mrs. Van Dyke, even among her own people.

“My son knew the symbolism and horror of lynching. Even if he took his own life, he would not do so by hanging himself. He would not reduce himself to a racist cartoon of a helpless black man. But a white man, a man who hated my son or wanted to send some sort of message to other blacks, he would hang him from a warehouse rafter. A Negro man would not do so. A Negro man would not multiply his sin against my son with a sin against his own race. A white man would do so, and I can envision him cackling as he did it. That vision of evil haunts me.”

Her message delivered, Mrs. Van Dyke relaxed her body into her chair and considered how she was demeaning herself by begging this spoiled son of privilege to overcome his casual racism and accept a handsome wage for taking on her son’s case. Were it not for the love of her son and the need to avenge his death, this woman of great achievement would not have groveled in person and by telephone before half a dozen more mature and experienced white men soliciting help. She certainly would not have tolerated the insolent interrogation by this Endicott child which forced her into roads she wished not to travel once more, including the ugly history of lynching. She was nearly sixty years old and had tried to live a constructive, perhaps even inspiring, life against difficult odds. But even as a grieving widow, ninety years after the Emancipation Proclamation, she was treated as little better than a field hand by a white man who had achieved very little himself, but who assumed, by virtue of nothing but his birth, that he was the superior one in the room. She choked back her anger and despair. She needed this young man’s help only because of his color.

“Mr. Endicott, I can see you are resisting this. I pray it is not because of my color or assumptions about people of color. My son was a good boy. He had a very successful father, who never pressured Clay to equal his success. But I think Clay felt he failed us somehow. Perhaps parents send signals to their children that they don’t intend. I don’t know. But you must understand a mother sheep is always most tender to the weakest of her lambs. Clay’s sister always has been strong and made her way. Clay was weaker. More confused, perhaps. Please take this on, if only to help an old woman with her grief.”

“You are hardly old, Mrs. Van Dyke.”

“I am older than you think. I have good health; I always felt the Lord blessed me and my family. But a parent, no matter how successful in other ways, measures her success by the happiness of her children. My son did not live his allotted years, and I am afraid we had something to do with it. Something that made him lose his way. I need to know why he was murdered. That is almost as important as who killed him. Did he die doing something good or something evil? Was he protecting or attacking someone?” This was mostly true, except that her first priority was to capture the killer and see him dead, by her own hand if necessary. Christian charity and forgiveness were no match for the murder of a son.

“You may not like the answer, Mrs. Van Dyke. It might show he hanged himself despite what you say about him. Perhaps you should leave it alone. An investigation will not bring him back, and could add to your sorrow.”

“A child always is a gift, Mr. Endicott. Clay was a special gift because we got to pick him out. He was adopted, you see. I could not have more children after Christine was born. We chose him. We could have chosen some other baby, or not adopted at all. We have an obligation to both of our children, but only one of them could have had other parents – could have led a different life. We don’t know what that life would have been, but I am called to know and remember my baby’s life, which includes his death. He is my responsibility, including his memory. I need to know if we could have protected him from this fate.” Mrs. Van Dyke again reached for her handkerchief. She made no sound, but tears slid down her face.

“Where is your husband, Mrs. Van Dyke,” Neil knew he could not continue to resist the woman’s entreaties. Perhaps together with this other fellow, King, they could persuade Mrs. Van Dyke not to waste her money after a few days of investigation.

“He died two years ago; sudden heart attack. Have you heard of Elmer Van Dyke?”

“No Ma’am, I’m sorry.”

“He was a law professor at Howard University. He taught different courses over the years, but mostly he taught criminal procedure and landlord-tenant law. Other professors liked to focus on constitutional law in the classroom and appellate and Supreme Court race cases in their work outside the classroom. Elmer picked a different path. He called the other professors ‘glamour pusses.’ He meant it jokingly – he called them that to their faces. He appreciated the importance of their work. But Elmer felt that these big federal desegregation cases were like water wearing down a stone. They might cause the rock to move or to wear away over a long time, but immediate change was barely perceptible. Do you understand? He thought representing a handful of people to sit at the front of Greyhound buses or attend white law schools, things only a few colored folk ever came into contact with, incidental things, was kind of the ‘Talented Tenth’ serving the ‘Talented Tenth.’ You have heard of the Talented Tenth?”

“Yes ma’am,” Neil lied. He could figure it out from the context of the message. He didn’t need all the information he was getting about a dead dad. He wanted to move to something more constructive without showing disrespect.

“Anyway, Elmer wanted a more immediate impact for the less talented 90 percent of coloreds. So he worked the D.C. Municipal Courts representing poor folk charged with crimes or trying to prevent foreclosure of their homes or eviction from their slum apartments. Not just colored, but anybody who was too poor. He persuaded the courts to let these people be advised by Howard law students. The white schools, Georgetown and George Washington, are letting their students do the same thing now, but Elmer started it. He also lobbied the White House and the bar association to appoint more Negro judges to the local courts.

“I know I go on about him. But I am so proud of him. All those years we were raising our kids and I was so happy. These last two years have been a struggle. First Elmer and now Clayton. Both died out of nowhere.” Speaking proudly of her husband’s work helped to dry her tears. The handkerchief was returned to her pocket.

“He sounds like a fine man. I wish I had met him.” Neil hoped he did not sound patronizing.

“Alright, Ma’am, I’ll take the assignment – for now.” Neil was anxious to end the sparring with his new client and begin his investigation. “But I warn you not to expect too much. Can we agree that either of us can cancel at any time? It wouldn’t be good for either of us to go on a wild goose chase.” Neil figured he would be out of the case in a week.

“Yes, Mr. Endicott. And I will stick by my bargain – $500 plus expenses. Let me give you a week in advance.”

The terms of the engagement were settled. It was time for an interrogation.

“Tell me what you know about your son’s death.”

“All I know is what the police told me and what I know about my son. I already told you why my Clayton would not have hanged himself and why his death must be murder.”

“I understand that, Mrs. Van Dyke. But it will help the investigation if you tell me what the official story is. Who did you talk to at the police?”

“A Detective Jeffords at the Southeast District substation on Capitol Hill. Clay died in a warehouse along the river in Southeast a few blocks from the substation, so he was assigned the investigation.”

“I know Jeffords. He’s a straight-shooter. I’d be very surprised if he lied to you and even more surprised if he dropped the case for any improper reason.” Neil was a rookie patrolman in Northeast before he was sent to Korea. Jeffords was his sergeant. He was a solid cop and a Marine veteran. Jeffords suggested Neil join the Marine Reserves to supplement his police pay so he could move out of his parents’ house. Neil never blamed him for the consequences of that decision.

“He gave me a copy of the police report. He wouldn’t give me any other materials, including photos of Clay’s body. He said it would upset me too much. But I identified his body at the morgue and he was awfully beat up. The doctor at Freedman’s said the body had been cleaned up by the coroner’s office before I saw it, so you can imagine how bloody and bruised he must have been. Added salt to the wounds that the D.C. government gave Clayton a bath but not an autopsy. He didn’t need no bath.”

The police report contained no further specific information about the condition of the body, other than that it was hanging from the rafter supporting a loft about 10 feet above the concrete floor, a standard hemp half-inch rope around Clay’s neck. A step ladder was on its side nearby. The report assumed Clay used the ladder to loop the rope around the rafter and himself before kicking it away as the final act of his life. The cause of death was listed as “suicide.” The report was signed by Officer Walter Earle.

Mrs. Van Dyke told Neil that, according to Jeffords, the warehouse was owned by a Mr. Grossman, who locked the warehouse Friday afternoons before going home. However, Grossman gave copies of the padlock key to several of his customers who occasionally required access to the warehouse on weekends. The clients liked having a key because it gave them control over their property 24 hours a day. The cops had a list of Grossman’s customers who had a key. Most of them were law firms and government agencies. The White House had kept a spare presidential limousine at the warehouse until Grossman started handing out keys over the protests of the Secret Service, which then moved the car to another location for storage. The police told Mrs. Van Dyke that Grossman was not a suspect in her son’s murder because he had a strong alibi and a few years earlier he had cleared a Secret Service security review. Mrs. Van Dyke protested to no avail that just because a man wouldn’t murder a President of the United States didn’t mean he wouldn’t murder a colored man.

Jeffords also told her that Clayton Van Dyke appeared to have been beaten about the head and torso before he was mounted from the warehouse rafter. He said there was blood on the warehouse floor, an indication that Clay was beaten at the warehouse before he was hanged. No sample of the blood was taken at the scene because the death was deemed a suicide. Grossman washed the floor when he returned to work the following Monday.

Neil was mildly surprised no sample was taken to compare Clay’s blood type with the blood at the scene. Evidence Clay was beaten where he died could rule out suicide and point directly to murder. Neil doubted the sole reason for the indifference was that Clay was a black man. The MPD detectives he knew had no special brief for the colored, but most of them would rather investigate a murder than a suicide, regardless of the victim’s race. For some reason, before Monday when Grossman came to work, the decision was made not to investigate. Therefore, there was no need to spend departmental money on a blood analysis. He kept his musings to himself, but addressed the possibility of police misconduct with Mrs. Van Dyke indirectly.

“Surely your husband had connections at the Courthouse and at Howard Law School. You are friends with Mary Terrell. Why don’t you and your friends and the NAACP put some public heat on the police to investigate this? That might produce better results than Mr. King and I can.”

“I thought of that. Everyone is sympathetic, but nobody is enthusiastic. The law faculty is anxious about the school desegregation case at the Supreme Court, which of course includes D.C. schools. They don’t want to get on the wrong side of the police or be responsible for any racial disruptions before that decision comes out. Mrs. Terrell and the local NAACP don’t want any distractions from the theatre demonstrations. They all say they’ll help, but later. I want to get some action now.”

Neil asked for pictures of the entire Van Dyke family and any recent pictures of Clayton with his friends. Mrs. Van Dyke handed him some framed pictures from the top of the baby grand.

Neil examined closely Clay’s 14-year-old black-and-white high school graduation picture and a family picture taken in color shortly before Elmer Van Dyke’s sudden death. The face, especially the younger face, was familiar.

“Elijah Lincoln.” Neil called out the name spontaneously, without any thought.

“I’m sorry, Mr. Endicott. Did you say something?”

“No ma’am. It’s just that your son reminds me of someone I knew in Korea.” Neil quickly recovered his composure and looked more carefully at the more recent family photograph. The Van Dykes were a handsome family, but Neil was immediately struck by how much lighter Clay was than either of his parents or his sister. He also was noticeably taller than the rest of his family, about four inches taller than his father, who was not short. Mrs. Van Dyke said Clay was six feet four inches tall, but that there were boys at Dunbar High School much taller. Clay stood out because of height, she said, but he was not especially unusual.

In answer to the inevitable question, she said Clay had not played varsity basketball, preferring to spend his time playing the trumpet with the school orchestra and his own jazz quartet. Clay’s eye coloring could not be clearly discerned from either photograph, but Neil’s suspicion that the young man did not have the deep brown or black eyes typical of a purely African Negro was confirmed by his mother. Clay’s eyes were hazel, with a distinctive smattering of yellow flecks. Nearly everyone remarked on his eyes when he was a child, his mother recalled.

“He was hardened by his wartime service. He wanted to fight, but the Army made him a cook down in Louisiana. It was hard on him.” Mrs. Van Dyke stood and retrieved another picture, this one of a young man in uniform. “When he got back home, he didn’t want to continue with his education or use his music talent. He got a job driving a truck at the public library. But mostly he got excited about militant race ideas he picked up in the service. He wasn’t active helping people like his dad was. He wanted to stir things up. He laughed at my NAACP work. He said desegregation not only is useless, but works against the black man.”

“That was the only thing we really fought about.” The elegant demeanor crumbled slightly as Mrs. Van Dyke reached into the recent past with thoughts of her son. Again, tears began to gather and fall down her cheek. The handkerchief came out.

Neil compared the first two pictures and noted to himself how much change nearly a dozen years caused. The high school graduate’s features were soft, his smile bright and cheerful. Clay’s hair was carefully clipped short for his graduation picture. The graduation picture was of a clean slate, anticipating the future with eyes that twinkled and an optimistic grin. Fourteen years later, the same face was experienced in hardship, disappointment and anger. Features pliable in youth had hardened, the mouth tight, the eyes glaring. The other three people in the picture were smiling naturally, but Clay’s grin was forced, more grimace than smile. Aging accounted for part of the change, but Clay also had become both tougher and sadder. He was different, and not in a good way.

Still, the resemblance to Elijah Lincoln in both pictures was haunting.

Chapter Two: Lorenzo King, April 23, 1954

Neil closed his notebook about 12:30 p.m. and thanked Mrs. Van Dyke for the information about her son and the check she handed him to pay for his first week of work. Although Mrs. Van Dyke had cried more than once during their meeting and had described intimate details of her dead son and of her family, the parting was distant and formal. A businesslike handshake was extended. As Neil walked through the door held open for him by his hostess, he sensed that she was relieved to be done with him.

Lorenzo King, the Negro private investigator, expected Neil at his office on H Street, NE at 3 p.m. Neil decided to take the streetcar to the Southeast Division police substation in the meantime. He called Detective Jeffords on Mrs. Van Dyke’s telephone and arranged to meet him there at 1 p.m. He told Jeffords he wanted to talk about the Clay Van Dyke case.

The Southeast District division headquarters offices were across the Anacostia River. Under pressure from the local community and the small Capitol police force, the Department erected a sub-station on Capitol Hill to which Jeffords was assigned. Jeffords was a second father when Neil was a private walking a beat in Northeast D.C. and Jeffords, in uniform then, was his sergeant. Jeffords was a Marine in the war, but unlike Neil’s real father, a World War I veteran, or his brother, Jeffords wore his Corps experience quietly – pride without braggadocio. He also was a friendly counselor who saved Neil’s job and maybe a life or two before Neil’s Korean tour of duty.

Neil nearly caused a riot in his rookie year on the force. A six-year-old white boy was reported missing in the Brentwood section of town the night before. His picture was printed in both The Post and The Times-Herald along with a short story suggesting he had been kidnapped off the streets. Brentwood was mostly white; Neil was patrolling in Ivy City, which was black, but only a couple of miles from the missing boy’s house.

Ivy City was poor, but working class. It wasn’t known as dangerous. The residents mostly kept their distance from the young white patrolman and he from them. He knew the names of very few people on his beat. He was a stranger. Neil assumed that was the way it was supposed to be.

It was winter. The day was bright but cold, with temperatures well below freezing. It was just the kind of day on which Neil enjoyed walking a beat in his heavy police-issue overcoat, which added girth to his still-adolescent frame. He wore his plastic-brimmed police hat low, tipped down to hide the top half of his face in shadow The sidewalks and curbs were broken, low on the city’s list for repair. Neil kept his eyes to the ground, both to avoid tripping and to further disguise his youth from those he passed. He was only a year out of high school. He was young. On the beat he felt even younger. The uniform was a disguise. He was acutely aware of his own color and of his own pampered background. He was embarrassed to be a figure of authority. He did not know how to approach people on his beat. He told himself that regardless of all that, if anything happened on his beat, he would prevail. Neil was the cop. He was supposed to be in charge.

The young patrolman was watchful as an explorer in a strange land, but was specifically thinking of little more than the cold air he saw coming from his mouth, when he heard a child’s frantic scream. He quickly traced the sound to the rear corner of a frame house with peeling white paint and a sagging front porch which had two window screens resting against the rails. A colored man was trying to hold on to a screaming youngster who, at least from a distance, looked like he could be white under his leggings, jacket, mittens and cap.

“I guess I wouldn’t have done anything with just a man struggling with a screaming boy,” Neil later recounted to Jeffords. “But it looked like a white boy. He looked well-dressed for the cold. And that kid was missing in Brentwood. I had to check it out.”

For the first time in his young career, Neil pulled his police-issue revolver from its holster and advanced toward the back of the house. He moved slowly, partly from uncertainty and partly to give the man plenty of warning. He did not want to startle him, which might further endanger the child.

“Hands up. Hands up, you over there. Leave the kid alone.” His voice cracked through the dry air, carrying the entire block. Black occupants of the neighboring houses quickly appeared on porches, sidewalks and at side doors to see what was causing the police to take up arms. Neil quickly calculated he was two blocks from the nearest call box. He couldn’t get any help.

“Pulling your firearm was your first mistake. Shouting was your second,” Jeffords later told Neil as they relived the situation. “You had no cause for either.”

The man struggling with the child appeared not to hear the officer’s cry, so Neil shouted again, repeatedly, each time with greater urgency. “Stop. Hands up. Leave that child alone. Stop. Hands Up.” More residents came outside. Some grouped behind Neil to better see what was causing a ruckus. The colorful housecoats, hats and jackets were bright in the sun, contrasting sharply with the dead grass of winter on the lawns and the dull gray and black of the salt-stained sidewalk and street. Neil ignored the shouts of “What’s goin’ on?” and “Leave him alone” and “Go home, cop” that angrily trailed him up the side yard. Neil was friendless; he had no allies, only restless enemies.

“You should have listened to those people,” Jeffords said. “Maybe asked some questions.” Neil didn’t.

Suddenly the Negro pulled the boy to his body. The man was on bended knees and the boy was up against his chest. The man pulled the boy’s face into his armpit and held his hand over the back of the boy’s head. The noise from the boy’s screaming ceased. Neil did not know whether he had stopped screaming or his screams were muffled by the man’s body. Nor could he tell if the man was comforting the boy or muzzling him. Only after the boy was tightly against him did the man look up at Neil. His eyes were opened wide. They were bullets launched into Neil’s own eyes – threatening, angry and resentful. Neil was confronted by an angry black man and behind him was an angry black crowd. He was frightened. He was in danger. He needed help. He leveled his pistol. The crowd behind him screamed. Neil couldn’t make out what they were saying. All of his attention was on the man and boy in front of him.

“Let the boy go. Let him go.”

The man pulled the boy tighter. The boy tried to put his arms around the man, a child’s hug. Neither said anything.

“Let him go,” Neil repeated. He had no idea what to do next. The crowd was yelling. “Let him go. Let him go.” A rock flew by Neil’s temple. Another hit him square in the back, harmlessly thanks to the padding of his overcoat. Neil turned and pointed the gun at the crowd, which halted its advance and further increased its emotional pitch, acting as one. “Get out of here whitey.” “Don’t need no white cop.” “Put down the gun.” “That’s his kid. Leave him alone.”

“Awright, awright. Break it up. Break it up.” The comfortable baritone was familiar, its timbre distinct from the higher pitched screams in the crowd. The two dozen or so Negroes gathered near Neil calmed quickly, the angry threats replaced with friendly “Hello officer” and “Howya doin’ sarge?” and “Jeffords, this guy is a jerk.” Sgt. Jeffords moved easily through the crowd, shaking hands and greeting many by their first name. He said nothing to Neil until he was at his side, then, quietly, unheard by others: “Put that damn thing away before you hurt someone. That’s a father and son. Nothin’ wrong here. Apologize and leave. The prowl car is on the street.”

Then Jeffords turned to the Negro man and his child. When the father broke his grip on him, the child turned toward the two police officers. He was wiping tears from his black eyes that had fallen down a face the color of coffee-and-cream with a spoonful of pure terror. He definitely was not the missing Brentwood boy.

“Howdy, Jacob. I’m sorry about this. Private Endicott didn’t know of your affliction.” Jeffords shook the colored man’s hand, and then turned to Neil. “Mr. Robinson here has a bad case of the stutters, Endicott. I’m sure when he saw you he just clammed up. I think you scared his little boy. What’s his name Jacob? He wasn’t born when I was on the beat. Congratulations.”

“B-b-b-b-o-b-b-b-y, O-O-Officer Jeffords. His m-m-m-m-mama n-n-n-n-named him just to m-m-m-make me c-c-crazy.” Jeffords waited patiently to be sure the man was done speaking.

“Well, she sure done that.” Jefferson patted the older man gently on his shoulder as both of them laughed.

“You got something to say to Mr. Robinson, Private?”

Neil was silent in the prowl car most of the way back to the station house after extending his apologies to Mr. Robinson. Jeffords made him repeat the apology so the crowd could hear it. Neil didn’t know what to expect. Perhaps his career was over. Or he would be a private forever.

In sight of the Northeast Division station, a practical question occurred to him.

“How did you show up?”

“Why, Esther McCormick called. Don’t you know Esther? She’s practically the mayor of that block. Hasn’t she offered you her cinnamon crumble cake?” Jeffords was jovial. He didn’t seem angry. The warm reception on his old pre-war beat brought back happy memories of a simpler time in his life and in his country.

“I don’t know any Esther McCormick.”

“Yeah, I don’t think you know anybody on that beat. I had that beat before the war. Wasn’t any oldern’ you.” Jeffords didn’t say he had made friends on the beat. He didn’t have to.

“You made a lot of assumptions out there that were wrong, Endy. You did it because you don’t know your beat. You don’t know the people.”

“I don’t know how to talk to ‘em. We got nothin’ in common, Sarge.”

“How do you know unless you talk to ‘em? They got families. They go to school. They got jobs. How’re you any different? Plus, while you’re walkin’ that beat you all share the same little spot of earth and got the same goals for that piece of earth and are tied to each other by that earth. Preserve and protect. That’s what cops do. That’s what they’re supposed to do, anyway. You do that – protect that earth and make friends of those strangers you share it with eight hours a day instead of treatin’ ‘em as strangers – you’ll get a good return.”

Jeffords never mentioned the incident again, but every month he asked Neil about Esther McCormick’s cinnamon crumble cake until Neil finally brought him a piece, courtesy of Mrs. McCormick, one of Neil’s new friends on the beat.

That was in 1949. In 1954, fresh from Mrs. Van Dyke’s house, Neil received a friendly greeting from Jeffords and two or three uniformed officers at the substation who knew him from his work on the force. Jeffords invited Neil to join him in a small inner office used for interrogations. It was furnished only by a steel table and four steel chairs and was meant to be uncomfortable.

“Welcome back, Endy. I mean, welcome back from Korea. I don’t think I’ve seen you since you rejoined the force.” Jeffords added: “I’m sorry you decided to quit. You’d be off patrol and a sergeant after a couple more years. You were a good cop.” Jeffords said the last sentence like he meant it. He did.

“Thanks. Just impatient, I guess. Tired of taking orders. Good to see you again, Sergeant. I guess it’s detective now. Congratulations.”

“Thanks. I miss the uniform sometimes. Life’s a little easier as a beat cop. I don’t miss being a supervisor, though. Keeping track of guys like you was like herding cats.”

“You still eatin’ Mrs. McCormick’s crumble cake?”

“Naw. New Division. But I also heard she passed.”

“Too bad. She was a sweet lady – once I got to know her.”

The men exchanged a knowing look.

Small talk done, Neil asked Jeffords to tell him all he knew about the warehouse death. He carefully did not call it a murder.

“Not much to tell. Officer Earle found him hanging in the warehouse. It was clear he was beaten up some place. Our surmise is that he hanged himself.” Jeffords, who was looking directly at Neil throughout the conversation, turned his head away at the last sentence.

He was like Neil – a poor liar.

“You don’t believe that, Bob. That’s ridiculous.” Jeffords looked across the table a few moments in silence, his icy blue eyes probing Neil’s hazel ones, not quite sure what he was looking for.

“I consider you a friend, Endy, as well as a good cop.”

“Bob, you taught me to be a good cop. Even a poor cop would know this smells bad. If there’s something else about this case, I need to know it.” Jeffords paused a few more seconds.

“Listen, Endy. The official position is that it was a suicide. You want anything else, you have to promise you never heard it from me. This has to be Marine-to-Marine, OK?” Jeffords frowned and didn’t wait for an answer. Endy was young, but he could be trusted. He already owed Jeffords a lot.

“Guy was colored, but he didn’t deserve to be murdered. Nobody does. And even a bigoted cop – which I’m not, as you surely know – doesn’t like to be told by some civilian to kill an investigation.”

“Why aren’t they playing this one straight?”

“We heard it direct from the Commissioners’ offices. It’s all politics. I’m told there’s never been an officially recorded lynching in D.C. and nobody wants to wreck the record, especially now.” “What’s so special about now?” “Maybe nothin’. Maybe that’s a catch-all excuse. Hell, for all I know there’ve been lots of lynchings in D.C., but not officially.

“Look, Endy, you grew up here, right?” Jeffords leaned across the bare steel table as if to share a confidence.

Neil nodded.

“Then I shouldn’t have to tell you this city is run like a plantation, from sanitation to high society. The House District Committee is made up of Dixiecrats. They want to keep the place under congressional control and no one else on the Hill has the balls or interest to fight them. The city’s half black or better and nobody in the Great 48, especially in the South, wants the Negro to have political power in the capital of the country. The Commissioners have to march to the beat of the southerners, but since they are appointed by the Dixiecrats, they probably agree with them anyway. The point is, the colored man has no friends in high places here. The opposite.”

Neil knew that no resident of the District of Columbia had cast a ballot in the last sixty years. The Constitution did not provide for representation of the District in Congress or even a chance to vote for the President. Congress eliminated the elected office of mayor after a scandal late in the last century, and the city had since been run by committees of the Congress and three commissioners appointed by the President with congressional approval. The southern Democrats controlled the city through the committees, vowing no racial liberties would be permitted. D.C. was mostly segregated by culture and custom, but less rigorously and with greater local disapproval than in the states south of the Potomac. But the House District Committee was a firm bulwark against any risk of either black political power or serious racial desegregation.

“Ok, Ok, I know all that. What’s it got to do with Clayton Van Dyke’s death?” Neil was impatient with Jeffords’ political history lecture. Like Jeffords said, Neil knew.

“Simple. The Supreme Court’s about ready to rule on school segregation, including in D.C., and there’s that protest about theatre segregation. The powers-that-be are afraid Van Dyke’s death will be called a lynching – which it probably is – and that might create enough sympathy and outrage to turn both issues to the advantage of the colored. Moreover, in case you hadn’t heard, we’re in a propaganda war with the Communists. The Reds like nothing better than to rub our noses in racial problems. A lynching in D.C. may not make headlines in Alabama, but it sure will in Moscow and the rest of Europe. One little dead guy, black or white, amounts to nothing compared to international politics.”

Neil was immediately struck by a familiar theme. He scowled at the thought that D.C.’s colored leadership and the racists on the Hill were both so worried about the schools case and integrating theatres that neither group would investigate – or force an investigation – of poor Clay Van Dyke’s murder. They didn’t know it, but the blacks and the racists who hated them were united on this issue for the present, albeit hoping for different outcomes. His mind flashed again to Elijah Lincoln, Clayton’s look alike.

Same theme. Abandonment.

“And you go along with this bullshit?” Neil asked, knowing the answer he would get. “We let a murderer go free in D.C. ‘cause we’re worried about some crappy newspapers in Europe? It’s crazy.”

“I hate it. But I’ve got a family and a career. Van Dyke will be forgotten soon. What if I went public with this? I probably would be ignored or be viewed as a crank. The Post might make something of it, but at the end they’ll get stonewalled. And I would be out of a job for nothin’.”

Neil winced that Jeffords didn’t see his father’s newspaper, The Star, as an ally, but he was probably right. Even the more reliably liberal Post probably wouldn’t spend any political capital or financial resources on the story. Nobody in the city establishment cared what the third paper, a tabloid called The Daily News, wrote. It was thought to be aimed mostly at a colored audience anyway and operated on a shoestring. Despite these realities, Neil felt obliged to challenge his old boss.

“You might get some traction and be a hero. The kid comes from a pretty prominent family. His dad I guess was well known at the Courthouse. His mom’s a big deal at the NAACP. It won’t go down quietly.”

“Yeah. I’m surprised we haven’t heard a lot of noise yet. But Negro protesting is a long distance away from an official finding of a lynching. The best I can do is give you some information and hope you can find the killer. Maybe we can go public if we have iron-tight evidence against a suspect. Who’re you working for, anyway?”

“His mother. I know you talked to her, and she has one page of the file. She asked me to get the rest of the record and any pictures.” “Can’t do that. But I will let you look at them here. Same ground rules: You didn’t get anything from the Metropolitan Police Department.” Neil agreed. Jeffords moved a thin folder that was at the end of the table which Neil had not even noticed and put it in front of his visitor.

Neil opened the folder. The first page, the closing sheet, was identical to Mrs. Van Dyke’s copy, except that hers was a Photostat. There was only one other page in the report. It contained a one-paragraph description of the crime scene and the condition of the victim. A stepladder was found nearly under the body which Clayton would have stood on to toss the rope over the rafter and then kicked aside after looping the rope around his head – if he really committed suicide. There was a reference to some blood on the warehouse floor, which the report asserted came from the victim without any evidence the blood was typed or otherwise matched to Clayton. The report concluded that the victim suffered injuries around the head and neck consistent with repeated beating with feet or fists. No examination was made of the torso, a job left for the coroner.

The police report was followed by a one-page form from the coroner. It offered a more technical description of the injuries to the body, including extensive neck bruising caused by the rope. Although the report found torso bruising in addition to injuries to the head and neck, presumably from a beating, the coroner concluded no autopsy was necessary because death was by suicide/hanging.

Two glossy color photos – one taken of a naked Clayton Van Dyke’s front and one of his back – were all that remained in the folder. Neil was repulsed, but tried to maintain a professional cop’s emotional distance and a studied demeanor. The face in the picture was bloated and heavily bruised, especially noticeable because of Clay’s light skin color, which emphasized the red swellings, some of them tinted with darker dried blood. He was barely identifiable as the same young man in the family picture Neil saw at Virginia Van Dyke’s house. His torso bore bruises that were wide and crossed the front and back of his body. Neil surmised these could have been a result of beatings with a two-by-four or something of similar size. Only Clay’s legs escaped injury.

Neil closed the folder, disappointed. He understood why the police were unwilling to share the photographs with Mrs. Van Dyke. To do otherwise would have been almost sadistic. But the second page of the police report and the coroner’s report offered no clues or leads.

“Bob, is that really all there is?” Jeffords didn’t immediately respond. Instead, he heaved a regretful sigh and looked at the ceiling, almost as if he was surprised to find himself in the interrogation room. His mouth turned down at the left corner and he again sighed, this time more like a scowl.

“I knew you would ask that, Endy. I don’t want to lie to you, and I don’t want to mislead you.” Jeffords paused, like a diver about to take the plunge.

“We have direct proof that this was a murder.”

Neil considered the disclosure carefully, weighing it with everything else he had learned that day.

“Other than the evidence of beatings, it’s not in the files.”

“Of course not. I was told to destroy it.”

“What is it?”

“I’ll show it to you.”

“I thought you destroyed it?”

“I’m not that dumb. Failing to follow-up an investigation is professional misconduct, which can get you fired. Destruction of evidence is a crime, which can land you in prison. I’m not the only one who knows about this evidence. Officer Earle knows, as well as a couple of other cops, the Chief, at least one city commissioner, and I’ll bet he told a congressman about it. What goes around comes around. Like you said, the Van Dykes are a prominent family in town. Even if they are Negroes, they might get some action on this some day. I personally hope they do. Nobody will be able to nail me for destruction of evidence if that happens. Like I said, I got a wife and kids.

“Wait here.” Jeffords left the room and returned only seconds later. Neil calculated he was gone just long enough to reach his desk and come back. He had a single half-sheet of typing paper in his hand. “You can look at it. Same ground rules.”

The note was in block handwriting, in pencil, the kind of writing that anyone could duplicate and that can’t be tested successfully against a writing sample. It said:

NIGGERS – KEEP TO YOUR PLACE – OR DIE!

Both men were quiet a moment so that Neil could digest the message and its implication. It left no doubt Clayton Van Dyke’s death was a lynching, whether by one man or a mob. He was killed by a white man or white men. Not to a scientific certainty, or even to a level of proof necessary at a criminal trial, but it was unthinkable that another black man would write such a note.

Jeffords finally broke the silence. “It was pinned to his shirt.”

“Did you do any follow-up, any checking with his friends, associates, to see if he had any enemies, any run-ins with whites?” Neil asked.

“That would be the next step, I guess. But we got cut off at the knees before that could get started. We haven’t done a damn thing except collect evidence at the scene and send the body to the coroner. Oh, and cover up the whole damn thing. That too.” The presence of the note in the room – the physical proof that could be held in the hand that a man was murdered, that he probably was killed because of his race, and that the government of the District of Columbia, run by the Congress of the United States, was doing nothing to catch the killer – rekindled Jeffords’ anger. Anger was in his voice as he grabbed the paper back from Neil, his hands shaking in barely controlled rage.

“I hope to hell you find out who did this. This man deserves justice. His killer needs to be caught. Any goddamned southern Senate asshole or know-nothing D.C. commissioner who doesn’t believe that needs to be strung up himself. And I promise you this: If we find some dead white guy was the victim of a violent crime, just give me the word that he killed this kid and I’ll make sure he gets the same investigative treatment Van Dyke is getting – none!” Neil chewed his lip. The veteran officer was licensing him to commit homicide. Neil had always thought Jeffords’ friendships with the Negroes on his beat were just for the job. He was wrong. Jeffords didn’t like the colored getting the short end. It was another surprise in a day full of them, and the day wasn’t half over.

“Might not even be a white guy,” he mused. “This note could be intended to throw you off. The note proves Van Dyke was murdered, although the beating pretty much told us that.”

“Hard to believe somebody would be like that to their own race,” Jeffords replied, shaking his head.

Jeffords wouldn’t give Neil a Photostat of the note, but let him copy the contents on another sheet of paper.

The younger man thanked Jeffords and shook his hand. The crime and the cover-up were monstrous, but Neil took some comfort in Jeffords. He was proof there were decent men in the police department. Neil would die before betraying his trust.

The substation was not far from Pennsylvania Avenue, SE, where the Capital Bank of Washington was located. It was known as a Negro bank, and it was where Mrs. Van Dyke maintained her account. Neil arrived there just before the bank’s closing and cashed Mrs. Van Dyke’s $500 check. The teller asked for two forms of identification and conferred with his manager, who placed a phone call, presumably to Mrs. Van Dyke, before cashing the check. He clearly was anxious about giving so much cash to a walk-up white man from the account of a middle-aged black woman. Neil couldn’t blame him. It was a first in his life, too. Taking advantage of his newfound wealth, and noting that it was almost 3 p.m., Neil took a taxi across the Hill to the office of Lorenzo King. Along the way, he pondered the purpose of the nasty note. Maybe the note was a ruse to throw off the police. But more likely the killer wanted to communicate something. But what? To whom? He couldn’t have known the investigation would be suppressed. Was the note specific to something Clay did? Or was it just a racist taunt intended for the newspapers, something to create panic and cause riots? Neil concluded that the note was not much of a clue to the identity of the killer, but it sharply increased his own interest in solving the crime. Whoever wrote the note was a monster.

Although he had lived in Washington all of his life, Neil had never set foot on H Street, NE, which was the principal “downtown” Negro shopping area. It was the colored woman’s equivalent to the white woman’s F Street, NW, which was home to all the major department stores – Woodward & Lothrop, Garfinkle’s, Hecht’s, Lansberg’s and, a couple of blocks south, Kanns. None of them overtly discriminated, but, except for Kanns, the prices were high and little effort was made to attract a colored clientele.

The H street shops were smaller, just storefronts 18-feet wide, connected in block-long brick rows, interspersed occasionally by a larger store. Each store had display windows on either side of the entry door. Because of their small size, the stores tended to specialize in a particular line of products. There were shoe stores, handbag stores, women’s clothing stores, men’s haberdasheries, hardware stores and appliance stores. Professional offices for doctors, lawyers, realtors and the like occupied the two or three stories above the retail shops. Neil spent a few moments eyeing the windows in the shops around King’s office. The merchandise seemed different – more colorful than that offered on F Street, even whimsical sometimes. The haberdasher’s window displayed a blue pin-striped three-piece suit that any lawyer or congressman could wear proudly. But in the other window was a bright red suit on a mannequin which also wore white patent leather shoes. Neil thought of his father in such a suit and laughed to himself. He had never even wondered where black folk purchased their clothes. Now he knew. Shopping might be more fun on H Street, he thought – if he were a colored man.

A second story window above a shoe store garishly advertised “Lorenzo KING of Private Investigators” in bright Chinese red letters bordered in gold. Neil opened the street level door and climbed stairs to King’s office. He opened the office door without knocking, expecting to find an outer office with a receptionist. Instead, he stepped directly into King’s office. It was elegant.

The walls were paneled in a tightly grained wood that was stained a deep brown with hints of red and was maintained in a bright polished shine. Matching built-in bookcases lined half the room on both right and left walls. The book bindings were worn, suggesting that the volumes were referred to frequently. Neil had no opportunity to review the titles as he tread on the thick grey pile carpet in the direction of a battle-ship sized desk of darker stain than the walls which fully occupied the space in front of two of three sash windows overlooking H Street. Atop the desk was a large brass pen and pencil holder engraved “J. Edgar Hoover FBI Crime Fighter”. It also bore the red, white, blue and gold FBI seal. Otherwise, the leather-covered desk surface was marred only by a short stack of typewritten papers. The owner of the desk was turned on his chair with his back to the office entrance, looking out the window. As Neil continued his stride forward he said, “Mr. King? My name is Neil Endicott.”

The man turned in his chair. “You don’t knock, Mr. Endicott?”

“I’m sorry sir. I expected a receptionist.”

“No, we are a low overhead operation here. No receptionist. These fingers do a fine job of typing. Don’t need to pay anyone to do it for me.” He rose from his chair.

“Are you busy? We have an appointment I think.”

“I’m as busy as Christ at a cripples convention, son. But you are correct. We have an appointment. Please sit down.”

As Neil sat on a somewhat scratched Chippendale dining room chair, which served as King’s guest chair, he tried to assess his host. His first thought was that Lorenzo King was a black Moses in a three-piece suit, if children’s Bible illustrations were accurate, only a lot fatter. His face was the color of strong black coffee. It was encircled by a pure white beard and a thick frizzy mane of white hair behind a four inch bald spot running from his forehead to the middle of his scalp. Other than his color, his features were not pronounced. His nose was almost Roman, with just the slightest additional flare at the nostrils. His lips, to the extent they could be assessed between a thick white mustache that met the beard below his mouth, were not distinguished by size, but the flesh was quite reddish.

Neil’s initial impression was that King was a jolly man, not only due to a Santa Claus sized body but because he laughed and his dark eyes twinkled when he squeezed by the desk to welcome his guest with his mildly sacrilegious simile about Jesus. King reached out his right hand to welcome Neil and grabbed Neil’s arm with his left hand, forcing it up and down until Neil wondered if King was selling him something.

Neil took advantage of the few seconds King required to maneuver back to his desk chair to examine the walls in the front half of the office. Rather than bookcases, the walls were covered with framed certificates and award plaques. There was one for “Valor In Law Enforcement” from the Alabama State Police. Another was for “Heroism Including Risk of Life” from the Neshoba County, Mississippi sheriff’s office. Clarendon County, South Carolina, had awarded King the “Distinguished Civilian Service Award” and Henrico County, Virginia something called the “Distinguished Crime-Fighter Award.” Another plaque was engraved “Official Kentucky Colonel”.

“An impressive collection of awards.”

“Yes, I helped a lot of colored folk in those states and the authorities were very appreciative,” King said, adopting a serious mien. “In Alabama I stopped some crackers from whipping on the skull of a colored man. In Mississippi I single-handedly stopped a lynch mob and in Kentucky, why I personally desegregated every restroom in the state.” With the last “achievement”, the serious mien fell away, replaced by another loud laugh and the clapping of hands.

“God, I love to give that speech! Especially to white folk. Takes a minute or two for them to get the joke. Colored folk don’t need the speech. They get it as soon as they read the words on this gimcrackery.

“Of course, J. Edgar Hoover just loves the colored folk. You can hardly stop him from giving out these pen and pencil sets to any Negro caught walking in front of the Department of Justice.” He laughed again at his own sarcasm while Neil squirmed with the red face that King anticipated and loved to cause. “I’m surprised a good detective like you didn’t notice something about all these awards, young man.”

Neil decided to take the bait. “None of them have a name of a recipient on them.”

“You win an award, too. Take one off the wall!”

“No thanks. I think you deserve to have all of them,” Neil said, trying to get into the same spirit of fun as his host. “Where did you get them?”

“Some are real that I found in flea markets and the like. A couple of them I just made up and passed copies out to friends and good clients. Not surprisingly, the most popular are from Mississippi and Alabama. The belly of the beast. I have to make fun of those places once in a while. They are the two best examples of the many places in this country where the inmates run the asylums!”

The jokes now exhausted, King turned serious again.

“Mrs. Van Dyke told me you were going to the police before coming here. Did you find anything out?”

“Hold on, Mr. King…”

“You can call me Lou. It’s not really short for Lorenzo, but I like it. Common man sound.”

“OK, Lou. Don’t we first have to talk to each other a little bit? Kinda' feel each other out and see if we can work together on this before we start exchanging confidential information?”

King stared scornfully for a moment before responding. “What is it that you need to know? We were both hired by Mrs. Van Dyke to find out who killed her son. That’s all that’s necessary.”

“Well, I disagree. I’d like to know a little about you – how long you’ve been in the business, what kinds of cases you’ve handled. Get to know each other.”

“That would be a one-sided conversation, wouldn’t it?” King’s eyes narrowed under his furrowed snow-white brows. “I mean, I’ve been at this business over 30 years. I understand you’ve been at it about 30 days.”

“Six months, but I was a cop before I went to Korea and for a year after I got back.” Neil wondered if everyone he met already knew his background. At least it seemed every colored person he met that day did.

“How long before Korea?” King asked.

“Two years. Walked a beat in Northeast.”

“I don’t think that’s long enough to have to polish your badge.”

“There’s no call for that.” Neil was now flushed. He was embarrassed and angry at the same time. King was being disrespectful to him and to the badge. Neil thought he had been diplomatic and didn’t deserve the abuse. “We’re going to be partners on this thing, so we have to get along.”

“Partners? Are you serious? You are only on this case for one reason, which ain’t none of your doing – you are white. Mrs. Van Dyke had to almost beg you to take the case and she isn’t sure yet that you really are dedicated to finding out who killed her son. I’ve been a private investigator in this town since 1922 and a friend of the Van Dykes since they came to town. I may not have a fancy receptionist or an office on Connecticut Avenue, but I am successful by any standard you want, especially compared to those walrus faced racist PIs downtown who can’t find their ass with either hand.

“I’m happy to say we are partners working together, for the sake of appearances. Hell, if we have to do so to please some redneck for the benefit of the case, you can even say I’m working for you. But the truth is, I know what I’m doing and you don’t. Some politician said being vice president ain’t worth a bucket of piss. Well, I’m the president of this operation, and you are the vice president. Now, do we understand each other?”

Neil had not been chewed out so aggressively since he was a Marine recruit. He was not going to stand for being remonstrated by some colored combination of Santa Claus, Moses and The Kingfish.

“The only shit around here is what you are swinging, Father Christmas. I’ve been on the D.C. force a total of three years. I walked a beat in Northeast and learned plenty. I was a Marine and lost a helluva lot of buddies and nearly my own life in two years in Korea. You say you’ve been here since ‘22. That means you missed the wars, both of them. Sitting around on your fat ass collecting phony awards and looking for missing dogs and cats, I’ll bet. As for Mrs. Van Dyke, she’s right that at first I didn’t want the job. But now I do. There aren’t many times you can work for good money and for the right thing, but this is one of them. I probably want to solve this as much as you do. So I’ll forget what you just said. But we will be partners. That means equals. I’ll listen to you and you listen to me. Do we understand each other now?” Neil expected to be ejected from the office. Part of him hoped to be ejected so he could work the case alone.

King rubbed his face and turned to the window. The back of his head was all white hair. He said nothing for at least a minute, instead humming to himself a tune which Neil did not recognize. Neil was calming himself after his emotional speech. He regretted bringing up his Korean War experience and comparing it to King’s non-existent war record. It was a cheap shot. But he didn’t regret it enough to apologize. King’s shots were cheap, too.

Finally, King turned to face Neil. “Mrs. Van Dyke is expecting us to find out why her son died,” he said gravely. “She is counting on us to show her that her son did not die for no purpose in this life. I think waiting for us to give her an answer is what will sustain her through the sudden loss of her husband and her son. Without that, I’m not sure she will be with us long. That’s a long way of saying she needs us – both of us. We can’t bring her any message if the investigation vehicle is driven on two flat tires – you and me – or if we are sparring like two rabbits in a bag. Maybe I spoke too harshly. I’m sure you did. My career is not to be ridiculed. But we have no choice but to work together, so I emphasize together. Let’s just agree that the best idea, the best strategy, wins, regardless of who it comes from. Can we agree to that?”

Neil would not take the bait to apologize for himself, but nodded his agreement to terms of a cease-fire meant to save face.

“Just remember this: My loyalty is to Mrs. Van Dyke. That’s not just because she is my client. She is my friend. I won’t compromise that.”

“Agreed,” Neil said. “I wouldn’t expect anything else.”

“And one other thing. If I sense that you are patronizing me because of my color, or treating me as anything but an equal or better in this case, I’ll let you know and give you a second chance. If you fuck up again, you are out. Virginia – Mrs. Van Dyke to you – told me you are just what we’d expect from a Chevy Chase boy. That means a walking around collection of bigoted prejudices based on the three M’s. Not mean, exactly, just casually accepting that you’re better than any black person ‘cause you’re white.”

“That’s not fair. I was very courteous to Mrs. Van Dyke.”

“Exactly. Courtesy prompted by overturned low expectations. I heard you couldn’t hide your surprise at how well Virginia lives. How fine she dresses. And how she speaks as well as you do or better. Sometimes she felt you were gawking at her. Don’t you think she’s developed a sixth sense about such things? She knows a patronizing attitude, especially from a young fella’ who’s ignorant about black folk.”

Neil was too surprised and stunned to fight back. He had been ambushed by King and Mrs. Van Dyke. They were minimizing him; making him small and ashamed so that they could control him, Neil thought. He was not going to let anyone do that to him, especially a couple of Negroes. The war would go on. For now, however, there was no point in continuing this battle. He would back off.

“I’m sorry that Mrs. Van Dyke felt that way. Please apologize to her for any hurt feelings. It was totally unintentional.” He wasn’t going to otherwise answer King’s personal attacks or agree to any conditions he laid down. “Let’s drop this for now and focus on our jobs.”

“Just don’t forget what I told you. I’m not happy to be working with a white man, especially a new-born. Now tell me what you found out at the police station.”

Neil shared everything he learned with King except the existence of the handwritten note. He definitely did not trust King and revealing the note might cause King to inform Mrs. Van Dyke.

The note was explosive. It would be enough to prompt the NAACP and the colored community to go to the newspapers and push for an investigation regardless of other considerations. Sharing it with King also risked breaching the commitment to confidentiality he gave Jeffords. The rest of the information from the police files did nothing except to confirm what Mrs. Van Dyke and King already knew.

“Not much to go on. Of course, you didn’t know Clayton Van Dyke. I assume Mrs. Van Dyke told you her son was a little bit of a black nationalist?”

“She mentioned it briefly. Based on what you said, maybe she thought I’d gawk at her if she talked more about it – like looking at a zoo animal.”

King ignored the jibe. “He picked it up during the war. Guess it was the first time he really was exposed to some bad racists. Kinda’ cloistered from that stuff up in LeDroit Park. Howard University, Dunbar High – Clayton was with the crème de la crème until the Army. I’m sure he knew about racism – he surely went to the movie theatre and had to sit in the balcony – but he never before experienced the brutal stuff that colored men face in the South and in poor communities all over all the time.

“A man like Clayton, a man who assumed he was as good as any white man and better than most – and rightly so – wasn’t gonna’ turn tail. He fought back for a while. Did some time in the brig for fighting white GIs. Hardened him. Made him tougher. Made him hate white folks.

“You ever heard of the Nation of Islam or Wallace Mohammed?”

“No. Never.”

“Well, they are a race group. Mostly in Detroit. I guess their closest ancestor is Marcus Garvey. You probably heard of him. Garvey wanted to take the colored back to Africa or set up a section of the U.S. for black folk. Nation of Islam is similar, but they talk tougher. They want nothing to do with the white man, ‘cept maybe to kill ‘em, if you took ‘em seriously. I don’t take ‘em seriously, but Clayton did.”

“Do you think that had anything to do with his killing, his attitude about race, I mean?” Neil hoped King believed this was a possibility since it was the only lead they had right now.

“Maybe. Maybe not. White folks are always ready to believe that any time a colored man talks up it’s a reason for some racist cracker or another to kill him. But you know we got some evil black folk around D.C., too. They might have done the deed. Clay didn’t hang out with white folk much, except maybe at work.”

Neil was tempted to share the note from the crime scene because it seemed to establish a racist motive for the slaying. Instead, he asked: “Did Clayton have any drug problems? Alcohol? Hang around with a bad crowd?”

“He liked to hang around in the bottle clubs after hours listening to jazz. He’d likely run into white folks there. Maybe he smoked a little of the Mary Jane. Common in a musician crowd, you know. He drank a little. I don’t know his friends. I’m way past the age of stayin’ up until the wee hours carryin’ on, so I never saw Clayton socially except at his parents’ house.”

“No girlfriends?”

“Not that I know of. Didn’t you ask Mrs. Van Dyke about that?”

“Same answer from her. She doesn’t know much about his social life.”

“Could be a problem at work. Can’t really see the public library crowd killin’ anybody, but stranger things have happened. Plenty of preachers killin’ folks or gettin’ killed,” King said.

“I once had a case where a deacon of a local AME church close to downtown was murdered. Cops didn’t pay much attention to it and the widow hired me, just like Mrs. Van Dyke did. Turned out the deacon and his preacher got in a fight over whether it was OK to substitute grape juice for wine at Communion. Preacher shot the deacon dead and took the body down the street and left it in front of a bar hoping people would figure that’s where he was shot. Lots of witnesses, but they were scared to turn in a preacher. I had to do a lot of persuading. Preacher’s in prison now. I heard he’s got quite a following behind bars. Anyway, I would be surprised – but not shocked – if some angry librarian wiped out Clay. Most anybody can kill if they’re mad enough.”

Neil was impressed with the story, but wondered if it was true. “How many murders have you solved, anyway?”

“Solved? You mean so the police make an arrest and the guy is tried and convicted? Not many. Three I can think of offhand, including the preacher I just told you about. My job isn’t to find the bad guy, just to get my client off. Sometimes he is the bad guy, but the evidence the cops have still might be wrong. Justice is the government’s job, not mine. Mostly I develop good evidence and give it to my client. Sometimes it identifies a killer. The client takes it from there.”

“You mean they extract their revenge based on what you tell them?”

“I don’t ask. Look, the justice system in this city – hell, in this country – is run by whites for whites, which means it comes down hard on colored folk committing crimes against white folk, or even if they’re just suspected of committing crimes. But black-on-black crime? Forget it. That’s mostly do-it-yourself work to get any justice at all. If I ain’t convinced the evidence shows another guy is guilty, I don’t give it to the client. I just try to get the client off.”

“So you’re the jury?”

“You can look at it that way. So what. Clayton’s murder proves my point quite well. No investigation. Just another nigger dead. If another colored man killed him, then they say ‘who cares?’ If a white man killed him, then it’s ‘he probably deserved it.’ Either way, no investigation, no justice. You can’t defend it, but you have to live with it best you can. If we figure out who killed him and the cops don’t do nothin’, then there’s other solutions.”

“So what’s your suggestion?” Neil had no good ideas and decided to let King take the lead. He admitted to himself that King had a lot more experience, if any of his stories were even half true.

“It’s Friday. Big night at the jazz joints and bottle clubs. I think Clay was partial to the Blue Mirror. Let’s see what we can dig up there.”

“I have an engagement for dinner,” Neil replied. “How about we meet at the Blue Mirror around 11?” He had been to the Blue Mirror once or twice. It was a mixed race crowd. Good jazz, lousy food.

“Fine. No point in getting there any earlier. I suspect Clay’s buddies won’t even start their evening until 11. It’ll give me time to take a nap, else I won’t make it to the wee hours.”

Neil rose to leave, but felt obliged to do more to heal the breech erected earlier in their conversation. “It’s too bad we got into a fight right away. I hope we can work well together.”

King was in no mood for further apologies. “If we don’t, I’ll bounce you from this case like a harlot workin’ a revival meeting.” He grinned and shook the hand Neil offered while showing him to the door.

“By the way, when you were insulting me you mentioned something about a Chevy Chase boy learning about coloreds from the ‘three Ms.’ What are they?”

King’s grin disappeared as he looked Neil squarely in the eye. “Mammies, maids and movies,” he replied, closing the door.

Chapter Three: Problems with Parents, April 23, 1954

It was 5:30 when Neil left King’s office. He was due at his parents’ house in upper Northwest at six, but paying for a taxi to take him that far was extravagant, even with $500 in his pocket. It took one bus and two streetcars, including the long ride on the L-4 line practically to Chevy Chase Circle. Neil reached his destination about 6:30. His parents lived in a trim stucco house on McKinley Street, east of Connecticut Avenue. It had a broad front porch that Neil loved when he was a child because he could pretend to study while looking at passing cars and pedestrians.

Both his brother’s and his sister’s cars were parked on the street. Neil entered the house without knocking. He still considered it “his” house, as part of the Endicott family. The Endicotts were the original owners. They had two children when they bought the place, and did not anticipate a third, who was Neil. Neil had to room with his brother, Norcross, until the older boy went to war after graduating from Georgetown University in 1943. Sister Nancy left the house when she married a man named Brad Gifford in 1947. Neil returned to the house after his stint in Korea was over in 1952 and did not move to his own apartment for a year. Finally, after more than 32 years, the senior Endicotts had the house to themselves. It suddenly felt too large.

Neil’s father, Samuel, and his brother were seated in two Queen Anne chairs located at either end of a well-worn sofa on which Brad Gifford was sitting. They were having a drink when Neil entered. No one rose, but all three waved a hand in greeting.

“You’re a little late, Neil. Anyway, glad you could make it. Would you like a drink? I had planned gin and tonics, but it’s a little chilly tonight. Not spring yet. How about a scotch and soda?”

“Sure, Dad. Thanks. Where are the ladies and the kids?”

“Grace, your mother and sister are in the kitchen. I think the children are in the den watching television,” his father said. “Did I tell you we got a television? Very fancy one, too. An RCA. It’s also got a radio and record player. I got the office to pay for it.”

“How did you do that?” Neil was impressed that his parents finally had bought a television set.

“To watch the Army-McCarthy hearings. I argued I needed one to keep up when I wasn’t at the office. I’m surprised I sold them on the idea, since I’m in the office all the time. Let me mix you that drink.” He headed for the kitchen. Neil took a seat on the worn sofa next to his brother-in-law.

“So, old man, how’s the detective business treating you?” his brother asked in a manner that suggested he didn’t care about either the question or the answer.

“Not bad. I just got a big assignment.” Neil hoped to whet his brother’s curiosity. His family was critical of his latest career choice and Neil could not resist the chance to promote it.

“Big? What’s big?”

“Five hundred a week plus expenses.”

“Jesus! That’s what Dad makes. Maybe more. Pretty good wages for a guy like you.” Neil knew that in his brother’s view a “guy like you” meant a guy without any college. “What evil things do you have to do to make so much filthy lucre?”

“A man died earlier this month. The police have ruled it suicide. The victim’s mother thinks it was murder and wants me to investigate.”

“Murder? That’s the big leagues. Aren’t the police investigating? Why did she pick you? Do you have any experience at that stuff? What do you think?” His brother’s curiosity was easier to spark than Neil had imagined.

“Slow down, brother. Do you want me to answer all those questions or just the last one?”

“All of them. But wait ‘til Dad gets here.” As if on cue, Samuel Endicott appeared bearing a tray with four drinks which he offered to his sons and son-in-law before taking his own and sitting.

“Dad, Neil’s got a job for some old widow paying him $500 a week. He’s supposed to track down a murderer.”

“Hold on,” Neil said. “I didn’t say she was a widow, although she is. She is a mother. And I don’t know about tracking down any murderer. We have to at least figure out if it was a murder first. The police say it was a suicide.”

“We?” his father asked. As an editor, he was always alert to a change in pronoun.

“I’m working with another guy. He’s a PI, too.”

“What’s his name?” Samuel Endicott prided himself on his knowledge of people in Washington. Many names passed through his hands as managing editor for news at The Star. Because of both his job and his distinguished New England family name, the Endicotts frequently attended White House state dinners and embassy functions at which Sam met many of the city’s movers and shakers. He probably knew the guy working with his son, he thought. Probably a PI at Metro Detectives or Five Diamonds, the biggest private agencies in town. Their clients could afford to pay that kind of money.

“Lorenzo King.”

Samuel Endicott was puzzled. “I never heard of him. Is he a D.C. private dick?”

“Yes, he is. Office on H Street in Northeast.”

“H Street Northeast! Is he a colored guy?”

“Yes, Dad,” Neil said, a touch wearily.

“That explains the big fee, anyway.” A grin broke across Norcross’ thin, sallow face. “Narcotics, numbers, maybe prostitution. Big money in all that.” Neil tried to laugh with the other men at his brother’s observation, but could manage only a wan grin. He quickly turned serious and surprised himself with a little anger when he thought of Virginia Van Dyke.

“My client has nothing to do with any of that.”

“Who’s your client, for goodness sakes?” his father asked.

“That is confidential information.” Neil wasn’t about to alert his father to the possibility the police were covering up the death of the son of a prominent black family.

“Was the victim colored?” Samuel Endicott asked.

“I don’t think I’m at liberty to talk more about it,” Neil said.

“Fine, don’t tell us. But at $500 a week, I’ll bet it’s a white victim who was found dead in a black neighborhood. Probably some guy who went to a bottle joint on the wrong side of town, got drunk and had some kind of fatal accident. Or maybe he was killed by a colored guy. That’s why you need a Negro PI. Am I right? Because he can get information from the coloreds you can’t?”

“You got it Dad,” Neil said, knowing the subject would be dropped now that his father could claim to have figured out the mystery.

“You see, Norcross. Your brother isn’t wrapped up with drugs and prostitution, after all.” Neil’s father clearly was relieved. “But I really wish you’d reconsider this detective business. Now you’re associating with coloreds. Nothing wrong with that, I guess, but it’s more than a little below you and it just proves how crude this whole private detective business is.”

“You don’t like colored folk much, do you, Dad?” Neil couldn’t recall his father ever talking about Negroes, not counting the Endicott’s housekeeper.

“Look, we brought them over here and now we have to live with them. I’ve got nothing against them. But they kind of rut in their own kind of culture. It’s nothing a self-respecting white man wants to get into. We shouldn’t mistreat the Negro, but we really have little in common.” Samuel Endicott spoke as a man expressing a commonly accepted truth, such as that the sun would rise tomorrow or that spring rain was good for flowers. Norcross and his son-in-law nodded their agreement. Neil was silent. His mother entered the room, guaranteeing a change of subject.

“Why hello Neil. I’m so glad you could come. It’s just like old times having all our children in this house again. And now their children, too.” His mother thought her life pretty much ended when the kids left the house. She was genuinely rejuvenated when they visited, especially with grandchildren.

“Hi Mom. Glad to be here. I guess it’s getting pretty crowded in the old place.”

“Plenty of room for more, dear. We’re keeping space for your kids when you visit with your wife.”

“Please, Mom. Nothing in sight on that score right now.”

“What about that nice young woman you brought around last time. What’s her name?”

“Jennifer, Mom. She’s just a friend.”

“For now, maybe,” Mrs. Endicott said. “You never know.”

“No, Mom, you don’t.”

“Anyway, it’s time for dinner.” The men in the family trooped into the living room to take their seats. Nancy and Norcross’s wife, Grace, were already seated. The four children, two for each of Neil’s siblings, sat around a card table under the arch which separated the dining room and living room. They already were pushing and shoving and playing with their food. The eldest was six.

Neil knew what the menu would be: Dry, overcooked roast beef, lumpy mashed potatoes, green beans or broccoli, also overcooked, soft, mushy rolls that were nothing more than a flavorless excuse for eating butter, and a cake. The rolls and cake were always purchased from Schupp’s Bakery on Connecticut Avenue. Only the cake would be delicious. Everyone knew, but no one said, that Mrs. Endicott was a terrible cook. Her daughter and daughter-in-law were no better. All the men claimed ignorance about all kitchen activities, including washing dishes. Making accommodations to bad food was the cost of admission to the Endicott family. Once they all were seated, conversation would be lively if the usual pattern was followed. The quality of the food was secondary, since there was not a gourmand in the group.

“So, Brad, you’ve been quiet. What’s going on with your business?” Norcross asked as his sister delivered serving bowls of vegetables to the table and his father circulated a pitcher of iced tea. Brad had completed a B.S. in biology at an obscure Midwest college. He never clearly explained how he escaped military service and the Endicott men, each of whom was a Marine in different wars, did not press him for details out of respect for Nancy and fear an honest answer would cause bad blood. As a result, however, Brad was forever condemned to be an outsider among the veterans. The Endicott women welcomed Brad. He was more relaxed and accommodating than Samuel and Norcross, who never entirely lost the erect bearing, stern manner and expectation of orderliness characteristic of Marine officers. They prided themselves on their manliness. Brad told Nancy privately that taking pride in just being a man, which was an accident of birth, was silly and that the Endicott men had plenty else to be proud of, except maybe Neil. The Endicotts all maintained a trim physique, with only Samuel starting to show a small pot belly, nearly forty years after his discharge. Brad’s belly already hung well over his belt and he didn’t care. Neil, who “only” was an enlisted man, was more like his mother. The Marines had toughened his body, but he somehow escaped the service much less influenced by his enlistment than his father and brother. Even so, he, too, thought Brad a lightweight who left little impression.

“Oh, not much,” Brad responded to Norcross’s question as he cut a one-inch slice of butter from the stick and applied it to his potatoes. “We acquired some property in Bethesda. One hundred acres. We expect to put some high quality shops there and about 150 homes. You know where Old Georgetown Road is? On the way to Rockville?” Brad was on the staff of a local real estate developer. He was salaried, but his purchase of a large, expensive, rambling house on Primrose Street in Chevy Chase Village, just a few blocks across the Maryland line, proved to the Endicotts that he was doing well. The house cost over $40,000.

“Christ that’s far out. Have they even paved those streets?” Norcross said laughingly. Nancy jumped in to defend her husband.

“I’ve seen the drawings of those houses. They are going to be very nice – little brick colonials. They are going to attract nice families with children. Maybe you should think about moving your practice to Bethesda, Norcross? You always talk about getting into the ground floor of some prosperous new neighborhood.”

“I’ve been thinking about something like that,” her brother said, suddenly serious. “There’s too much competition around here. Might be wise to pioneer someplace like that.”

“We would love to have you sign-on as a tenant,” Brad said enthusiastically. “You can even help us design an office building you would like.” This prompted several minutes of further discussion, ending with an agreement that Brad would take his brother-in-law on an inspection trip to Bethesda next week. Neil’s mother and father then started reminiscing about auto trips through Bethesda when Wisconsin Avenue was unpaved and about the rural county seat town of Rockville, Maryland.

“I think Walter Johnson’s farm was just off Old Georgetown Road,” Samuel told the table. “Don’t know if Hazel and the kids sold it off. I have a vague recollection they moved to Gaithersburg. They probably made killing on that Georgetown Road farm. Remind me on Monday, honey. Frank Stann should write an update about Johnson. Maybe pay his widow a visit.” Stann was a popular sports columnist at The Star. Johnson, a Hall of Fame pitcher, was the best player the lowly Washington Senators ever had. He died in 1946.

“Maybe you could have an office on Walter Johnson’s farm!” the eldest Endicott said to his elder son with palpable enthusiasm.

Norcross carried the unusual name of his uncle, his grandfather and numerous grandfathers before him. His own young son was named Norcross to continue the line. The senior Endicott fought all attempts by friends and acquaintances to shorten his son’s name to “Nort” or “Nordy” and the like. The son was now waging the same battle against the six-year-old friends of his son. To hear Norcross or Samuel tell it, the Norcross name crossed the Atlantic while Plymouth Rock was molten. Samuel Endicott shared this pride of ancestry, even though his older brother got the distinctive family name in his generation. His son was born before his nephew, so Samuel was able to steal the name back.

Norcross was a war hero. He joined the Marines in time for most of the major battles of the South Pacific and was prepared to lead a company into Japan if an invasion was necessary. He won two Silver Stars in quick succession on Guadalcanal and Tarawa. His father made sure stories of his heroism were printed on the front page of The Star. Even The Post printed a short item when Norcross got his second Star. After the war, Norcross returned to Georgetown and earned a degree in dentistry. He opened a practice near Chevy Chase Circle in 1950, just when the children of returning veterans were losing their baby teeth. He told his family that the practice was good, but that the suburban practices did better.

He and Nancy recently moved from a rented row house in Georgetown, near the university, to a large fixer-upper on McComb Street in Cleveland Park, closer to downtown than Chevy Chase.

Only Neil, who was awarded a Purple Heart, but no medals for heroism in Korea, was not on the post-war track to affluence that was the God-given right of any kid who grew up in Chevy Chase and survived the war. He was not envious of his brother’s success or his in-law, but he was a little jealous of the evident pride his father expressed over their achievements. He wanted to change the subject before the family again got around to pressing him about college.

“So, you guys got a TV, huh? What’s the screen size?” Neil asked. “I think that’s supposed to be important.” He was glad his parents owned a television. His father rarely parted with a dollar for what he called “extras.” His mother was not so cheap, but respected her husband’s rules as the breadwinner. The family’s radio, for example, was purchased long before the war.

“Twenty-four inches. Good reception even without rabbit ears.”

“What did it set The Star back?” Neil asked.

“What does The Star have to do with it?” his mother interjected. The men at the table knew instantly that Samuel Endicott had not told his wife that the television console was bought by the newspaper. Neil shut up to let his Dad handle the situation.

“Damn, Neil. You’ve got a big mouth,” his farther said angrily. Turning to his wife at the other end of the dinner table, he said, “I persuaded the paper to pay for it. TV covers more and more stuff, especially the hearings on the Hill. I persuaded them it was necessary for my job.”

Mrs. Endicott turned red and excused herself from the table. She had spent the week excited about the $400 purchase, telling her friends and showing off the set to visitors. Not only was the console handsome with its cherry cabinet and three-speed record player, but it was a visible sign of her husband’s success and, she thought, his love and respect for his wife, who had been requesting a set for months. At least, that is what Mrs. Endicott believed until Neil disclosed his father’s secret.

There was a moment of silence after Mrs. Endicott left the room. Nancy initiated the bombardment.

“Terrific, Neil. Why didn’t you just shut up?”

“Now Mom’s in tears and the dinner is ruined, thanks to you,” chimed in Norcross. Brad and Grace only looked knowingly at each other across the dining table, uncomfortable to be in the middle of another Endicott family fight.

“I didn’t know you were keeping it secret, Dad,” Neil said in his defense.

“Why should he have told Mom? He got to save some money and make her feel good. What’s wrong with that?” Nancy kept up her attack.

“Now, now Nancy. Neil is right. I should have told him to keep it a secret. Your mother will get over it,” he said. Norcross pursued another line of sibling torment.

“Neil, you shouldn’t be after Dad for the TV. What have you given our parents lately? Christmas cards? That was it last Christmas, wasn’t it? Crummy cards. This detective business is a joke. Isn’t it time you grew up? Isn’t it a son’s duty to make his folks proud?”

“Lay off, Nordy. I’ll lead my own life, thanks.” Neil used the hated nickname like a weapon.

“You’re in a fine fix now,” his sister said angrily. “No college, a crappy job and no prospects. I mean, nobody believes you can be some kind of Boston Blackie,” referencing a radio and television program about a private eye. “Why don’t you get your degree? You’ve got the Korean GI bill. You can still get a diploma before you’re 30. Make something of your life.” Neil’s only thought – unspoken – was that the criticism came from a girl who spent two years at Mount Vernon College, a finishing school at best, and whose sole aim at the time was finding a husband.

Neil hunkered down in his chair and focused on Grace, who knew better than to step into feuds among blood relatives. She turned her eyes away from him. Neil always considered her lovely, but not especially bright. A good dentist’s wife, he thought, while his siblings continued their attack. A good fit for his hero brother, who rarely expressed a thought more complex than how to fill a molar.

The raised adult voices quieted the children at the card table, but Nancy’s last remarks were delivered with such force that one of her children started to cry. His mother was scaring him. Nancy cut off her rant to comfort her son in the living room. But Norcross wouldn’t let go.

“Dad, can’t you get him a job at The Star? The place is riddled with nepotism. Can’t you get a share of it? Last I knew, your ink stained wretches didn’t need a college degree. You don’t have one.”

“I’m not interested in the newspaper business.”

Neil’s father ignored him.

“That’s true, I don’t. But newspapers were different in 1919 and so was the country. Most jobs didn’t require college. We pretty much expect at least some college for reporters now. Still, I probably could get you on as a copyboy or something if you were at least attending college. You aren’t a Noyes or a Kauffman, of course, but I could hide you someplace.” The Noyes and Kauffman families owned The Star and were notorious for favoring relatives for jobs. “If you’d rather sell ads, I could make inquiries in that department. A successful display adman makes good money.”

“I’ll repeat it, Dad. I’m not interested.”

Mrs. Endicott returned to the dining room, recovered from her surprise, if not relieved of her disappointment.

“Are you all picking on poor Neil again? He’s just testing his wings. He’s still young. His father and I are very proud of him already. He’s already been a policeman and a war hero. What more would you want of him? Just leave him alone.” Mother’s remarks were heartfelt and reasonable, Neil thought, but because she never criticized any of her children, her opinion about Neil carried little weight with his brother and sister. And although everyone was too polite to mention it, the only medal he received was a Purple Heart for a shrapnel wound to his leg that took him off the front lines for less than a week.

“Thanks, Mom. I appreciate that.”

“He’s 22 and acts 16,” Norcross said to his mother.

“I’m 24,” Neil said.

“So it’s even worse.”

“All right. Enough,” Samuel Endicott said firmly as Nancy reentered the room, her son quieted in her arms. “Neil, I’m not so concerned that you don’t have a stable home life, a family or a good career at this point. You are young enough to get all those things still, and maybe a college degree is overrated. I’ve done ok without one.” Neil suspected this merciful dispensation would come at a price. His father’s voice turned grave.

“What troubles me more than all of that is you don’t have much drive to achieve anything, or even a cause or an interest that might drive you to make something of yourself. I don’t want you to be uncomfortable, but we are all family and this is as good a time as any to talk about it.

“Are you interested in politics? I probably could get you a job on the Hill. A trade? I’ll bet Brad could get you a job managing construction projects. Doesn’t anything attract your interest?”

“Good God. In case you’ve forgotten, I’ve picked a career already. I’d call it a kind of law enforcement.” Neil was fighting not to lose his temper or deliver a sanctimonious speech about the majesty of the criminal law. The less said about his work the better since three-quarters of his clients just wanted pictures of spouses having sex with other people.

“And your Mother is correct. We were proud of you when you went on the force. Even prouder of your war record and that you returned to police work. But this private investigative work is disreputable at best and might get you in some illegal activities at worst. The PI’s I’ve met are mostly slovenly, with the ethics of a coyote. Private detectives are about as much like real police as professional wresters are to the Olympics. You must know that. Surely your ambition is not to be like those guys, is it? And now you’re even involved with some colored business. You really can’t get much lower, can you?” His speech completed, Mr. Endicott sat back from the table waiting for his son to respond.

“Would you feel better if I was involved with white crooks, like the Mafia, Dad?”

“Of course not. I don’t hold anything against the colored. You were practically raised by a colored lady.”

“That’s not true.” Mrs. Endicott put down her fork and appeared ready to bolt from the room again.

“Of course I don’t mean that literally, dear. You were a wonderful mother. But Louella isn’t like most coloreds. As a rule, they just aren’t as smart or as honest as most white folk and many of them can be violent. You know that, Neil. I’d prefer you stay away from them.”

Neil said only, “I think I’d like to play with my nieces and nephews before I leave, if you don’t mind. Are we through?” Without awaiting a response, Neil rose and approached the child-laden card table. Fifteen minutes later, he was gone.

The weather was unusually cold. Perhaps it was the full moon, which was so bright that the street lights were almost unnecessary. The brisk air was a relief from the smothering confines of the house he grew up in and the hot breath of family criticism. Neil decided to head for Connecticut Avenue and walk toward downtown, taking a streetcar somewhere along the way when he got cold or bored. He needed to clear his head. There was plenty of time to meet King at the Blue Mirror.

Neil worked the family’s dinner table conversation around in his mind. The theme was a familiar one: “What’s wrong with Neil?” Only this time, race was interjected. Only a day earlier, Neil wouldn’t disagree with his father’s observations about race. Samuel Endicott would admit that they were generalizations, with lots of exceptions. He was a fair man. Yesterday, Neil would not have given his father’s remarks a second thought. But tonight they were an itch in his head needing some scratching. Was his father prejudiced? Maybe, but no worse than most folks he knew except maybe Jennifer and her friends, who called themselves “liberals”. But maybe Lorenzo King is a crook. That seemed unlikely, but Neil surely could not depend on him.

King didn’t seem too serious with his goofy plaques and he was disrespectful of white people. His father’s remarks were an insult to someone like Virginia Van Dyke and her husband, but what did he really know about them, either? Defending poor tenants sounded like do-gooder work, but landlords had rights, too. Poor people have poor habits and are unreliable.

It didn’t matter. He had the $500. This would surely be his last case for a colored client.

I’ll work this one for Elijah Lincoln, Neil told himself. He dismissed the thought instantly as foolishly sentimental. Elijah was dead on the other side of the world. He didn’t give a fuck.

As he reached the avenue, Neil turned his thoughts to himself. His father was wrong. Neil didn’t lack drive or ambition. He wanted to succeed as a private detective, if that was what he was going to be. He wanted to solve Clayton Van Dyke’s murder. Wasn’t that drive and ambition? No, he decided, not really. It was just a desire to complete the task assigned him. Finishing an assignment successfully wasn’t the same as dedicating yourself to dental school, creating a practice and committing for the long-haul to provide for a family. Norcross’s life wasn’t exciting. It didn’t appeal to Neil. But his brother had visible ambitions even now and was planning and plotting to reach his goals. Tracking unfaithful husbands and wives to get pictures of them fucking was not fulfilling an ambition, at least not an ambition Neil wanted to claim.

Neil paused in his contemplations to ascertain his geography. He had walked far, farther than he had intended. He was at the Calvert Street Bridge, an informal border between the principally residential area of Northwest and downtown. He looked at his watch. It was only 9:30. He decided to walk through the Adams Morgan neighborhood in the direction of 14th Street and the Blue Mirror. He had plenty of time and he was bundled warmly in an old overcoat he had left in his parents’ closet long ago.

Elijah Lincoln. This guy Van Dyke was the same light brown color as Elijah and had the same slick black hair. But Elijah wasn’t especially tall and had black pupils on big white bug-eyes, like Eddie Cantor in the movies. Some guys even called him “Eddie.” The two Jews in the squad sometimes called him “Cantor” and asked him to sing. Elijah didn’t object, but he didn’t sing, either. Neil would never forget the eyes. Neil probably was the last person those eyes had seen, except maybe those of some Red happily jamming a bayonet into Elijah’s gut. Elijah said very little. He was a quiet Negro from Louisiana who never asked for anything. Who laughed at everyone’s jokes. Who volunteered nothing, but was friendly when spoken to. Even the many bigoted men in the company enjoyed his presence sometimes after they found he wouldn’t react to their evil name calling and nasty stories. Elijah would just walk away.

He finally spoke up through those eyes in the middle of Hell.

Elijah’s buggy eyes begged, doing the job his mouth could not as his chest heaved, seeking the losing air through a chest wound caused by a Red rifle round. Don’t leave me, the eyes beseeched. I’m a Marine. I’m alive. Take me with you, Neil. By all that is holy you gotta’ help me.” “No! No!” Neil screamed to his squad. “Marines don’t leave Marines on the battlefield alive! He’s alive! We can save him! We must save him.” Surely the men heard him even as the shells exploded around them and bullets screamed past their ears and thumped into the rocky, snow-covered earth of North Korea. These men knew the informal but strictly adhered to code of the Marine Corps – Marines don’t leave Marines behind to die. It was drummed into them from the first day of basic training. Doing otherwise was a sacrilege to the Corps. But the Jarheads removed Neil’s bloodied hands from Elijah’s chest, where they were trying to cover the ragged hole, trying to force blood, flesh, muscle and air back into place. The men lifted Neil to his feet, jammed his rifle into his hand and pulled him away. Cpl. Rudin dragged him by his pack strap 100 yards to the rear, over boulders and across a pencil-thin stream, until finally even Neil realized he could not go back.

In two more days, the Marine retreat from Chosin Reservoir was completed. Neil fought the war for another year. Chosin was the worst, but it was all bad. He saw many men die and even more wounded, some horribly. But he never saw the Marines leave another wounded man on the field of battle. Only Elijah. Nobody said Elijah was left behind because he was colored. Other Negro Marines were rescued.

“As far as I’m concerned, he was a Marine first and a nigra second,” Gunnery Sgt. Henderson, the highest ranking enlisted man in the company at the time, told Neil when he asked if Elijah was left behind because he was black. “Things was hot and gettin’ hotter, Endicott. If we hadn’a gotten outta’ there when we did, we’d all a died. Sometimes doin’ what’s right ain’t the same as doin’ what’s best.” Henderson was a career Marine from Texas who was openly scornful of putting Negroes into combat units with white men. The question of why Elijah was left behind was never a closed subject in Neil’s mind. Elijah’s pleading big dark eyes never closed for him, either.

Chapter Four: The Other Side of Town, April 23-24, 1954

The Blue Mirror was one of the better jazz joints in town. Some of the best known names in jazz played the Mirror, including Dizzy Gillespie, Washington native Duke Ellington, Count Basie and Billy Eckstine, but most of the time the bill was made up of lesser lights, known to, maybe even loved by, aficionados, but strangers to the casual fan. This was such a night.

The Maxwell Williams Quartet, a Baltimore-based group, was in the middle of its second set when Neil arrived. Neil classed himself a casual fan, but he recognized the song, “Jump, Jive ‘n Wail”, a lively swing number recorded by Louis Prima. Several couples were jitterbugging on the small dance floor, but most patrons were seated at one of about 35 small round tables. The tables were covered in white linen and topped by a bud vase containing a rose, an ashtray and a candle like those purchased in Catholic churches for devotionals. Everybody had a drink; nearly everyone was smoking a cigarette; very few were eating. D.C. law required any establishment serving liquor to also offer meals. The Blue Mirror’s food tasted like a grudgingly offered legal obligation, which it was. It was made worse by the heavy, sometimes choking, cigarette smoke.

Lou King was at a table near the dance floor. He was engaged in animated conversation with a young Negro man at his table. King waved to Neil, who was led to the table by the maitre de.

“Mr. Endicott, I’d like you to meet Albertus LeClerc. Mr. LeClerc, this is the man I was telling you about who is helping in my investigation,” King said. King smiled broadly at the reference to Neil as his helper. Neil decided to let it go. “Mr. LeClerc is – or was – a friend of Clay’s, isn’t that right Mr. LeClerc?” King spoke loudly over the music.

“Yeah, I was his friend, at least when it came to partyin’ at the clubs,” LeClerc said. LeClerc stood to shake Neil’s proffered hand. Neil struggled to conceal his shock. LeClerc was extraordinarily thin, as if he were starving himself. Although he was nearly six feet tall, he could not have weighed more than 110 pounds. His skin was deep black, but pallid, as if he had been dipped in dust. His face was narrow and boney, his cheeks hollow and his deep brown eyes protruded listlessly from shrunken sockets. He reminded Neil of the terminally wounded soldiers he saw in Japan. He immediately assumed LeClerc was a narcotics addict and simultaneously comforted himself that his father was home and could not see him now in the company of a colored drug abuser. Neil said nothing and took his proffered seat.

“It’s very sad to hear that he passed,” LeClerc said. He spoke softly, interrupting himself to take deep, long breaths. He was difficult to hear. “Clay was a decent man.” Deep breath. “I can’t believe he hung hisself.” Deep breath. “I hope you and Mr. King here,” deep breath, “find his killer.” His bona fides established, LeClerc sat back, anticipating questions. A waiter took Neil’s order for a Ballantine Ale.

“Did Clay have any enemies,” King asked. “You know, people who didn’t like him for one reason or another. Did he get in any fights? Maybe stole somebody’s girlfriend? Things like that?”

“Naw, he didn’t go in for things like that.” Deep breath. “Clay was a peaceful guy. White people made him a little nuts,” deep breath, “but, hey, ain’t that true for all of us?” LeClerc looked directly at King, clearly excluding Neil from his frame of reference. He slumped further in his chair, exhausted by his speech.

“Well, what do you mean by ‘nuts’?” King raised a snowy white eyebrow, asking the question in a way that emphasized to LeClerc that he wanted a thoughtful answer. He was able to speak more softly because the quartet had finished its set. King made the conversation conspiratorial to inspire LeClerc to provide information, as if doing so was his part of a cunning plot. LeClerc still was difficult to hear and gulped the air even while not speaking. Neil was grateful the tables were small so he could hear LeClerc but was annoyed by the deep breathing.

“He was kinda’ focused on race. He said he drove out to the lily white parts of town in his job,” deep breath, “and it disgusted him to see how they had more books in the libraries there,” deep breath, “and the buildings was much nicer.” Deep breath. “He used to say the only colored folk in Chevy Chase was dem dat cleaned the mastuh’s privies.” Deep breath. Neil reddened slightly.

“Well, sure. That’s a given,” Lou replied. “That don’t hardly make a man especially known for being nuts about race.”

“He carried it further than that.” Deep breath. “Clay wouldn’t tolerate no racist remarks. These clubs, especially the after-hour bottle clubs,” deep breath, “they get a mixed crowd and lotsa people get pretty drunk by four in the morning. Not Clay.” Deep breath. “He hardly drank. But, man, he sure got pissed if some drunk white guy made some remark,” deep breath, “or even looked at him like he was just thinkin’ about some racist crack.” Deep breath. “One time he overheard a white guy with a buncha other white guys at a table next to us talkin’ bout coon huntin’.” Deep breath. “Clay stood up and told the guy he was in his neighborhood now and,” deep breath, “if he talked like that again he might never leave the neighborhood.” Deep breath. “Looked like he meant it, too, though I ain’t never seen Clay actually do anything like hurt somebody.” Deep breath.

“Joke was on Clay, though. The white guy was talkin’ bout real coon huntin’.” Deep breath. “Had a brochure or somethin’ for some huntin’ lodge. He showed Clay. Clay said somethin’ like,” deep breath, “‘Well, be careful how you talk aroun’ here,’ but that was just a face savin’. He looked kinda’ foolish.” Deep breath.

“Sounds harmless enough,” King said. “Doesn’t strike me as a reason to say he was especially nuts ‘bout race issues.”

“Thas’ jus’ an example.” Deep breath. “He was real sensitive. You know, he was pretty light skinned,” deep breath, “and I know he was damned sensitive about that. Deep darkie like me, I’d love to been born lighter.” Deep breath, laugh and cough. “’Scuse me. But Clay, he was mad about it. He wanted to be black like his mom and dad.” Deep breath. “He said bein’ a black man is somethin’ to be proud of and he felt kina’ tainted by white blood. Sounded a little crazy to me – nuts.” Deep breath, laugh, cough. “Scuse me.”

“Well, that didn’t cause him to actually do anything that might get somebody mad, did it?” King asked. Neil thought the line of questioning with LeClerc was pointless and he was getting restless. LeClerc was probably dying from his addictions. Looking at LeClerc, Neil figured Clay was involved with drugs, not the pointless dermatology of Negro skin colors.

“He tole me he was gonna find out who his real momma and papa were – what they call it, his ‘biology parents’?” Deep breath. “I know for a fact he went to Chicago where he was adopted,” deep breath, “and he sho ‘nuf found out something. He jes tole me he had a clue.” Deep breath. “He said he was goin’ to Atlanta to find out more. I think he went, but I never saw him again.” Deep breath. “He died jes after comin’ back from Atlanta, I guess.”

“What other friends has he got who he might have talked to about this?”

“He got a sometime girlfriend. Name’s Audrey, Audrey Winkler. She works at the downtown library. But you might find her later tonight at the Slide Trombone.” Deep breath. Cough. “Scuse me again. My breathin’ ain’t so good, as you kin tell.”

“You mean the after-hours place up Sixth and Mass?” King knew of the place.

“Yeah, thas it. But watch out. Audrey gets kina’ loaded on Friday nights.” Deep breath. “Can’t tell if she’ll be a mean drunk or just a sleepy one. Try to catch her early.” Deep breath.

Neil finally spoke up. “One other thing, Mr. LeClerc, was Neil involved in illegal drugs at all?”

LeClerc turned and stared into Neil’s eyes a long moment. He turned up the right side of his lips into a sneer. He took a deeper breath than usual. “Y’all white folk always got the drug thang against the Negro, right? What about prostitution and numbers? Maybe Clay was the drug kingpin of Washington, D.C.?” LeClerc took several deep panting breaths. He was angry, excited and exhausted by his efforts. “LeDroit Park, Dunbar High, military service, good respected parents – don’t matter to you people, does it?”

“Well, it looks like you have a drug problem. That’s why I asked.”

LeClerc’s breathing moved from pants to a loud heaving noise which attracted nearby guests. “You cracker bastard!” LeClerc rose from his seat. Clearly, he was ending the conversation. “I used to weigh over 200 pounds and lifted weights. But I got the cancer a year ago.” Despite his breathing difficulties, LeClerc was nearly shouting. “First in my lungs, and now it done spread all over. I only got months, maybe weeks to live. I got only one lung. Am I on drugs? Damned right. Prescription drugs, mostly for the pain now.” Neil stood up. He was afraid LeClerc’s loud heaving would cause the skeletal man to vomit.

“Well, I’m very sorry. I didn’t know.” Neil was now very red with embarrassment. But LeClerc wasn’t through with him.

“You probably don’t believe an ole nigger like me. I’ll prove it to you.” LeClerc lifted his white dress shirt practically to his neck, revealing a long scar of creamy brown, white and pink along his upper torso that stood out against his normal ebony skin and was pulsating in time to his heavy breathing. “So fuck you, whitey asshole. No, Clayton wasn’t into drugs. He was a good man. Fuck you again.” LeClerc wrestled his shirt back into his waist and resumed a frantic battle between breathing and coughing. He pulled himself upright despite his obvious pain, turned in an almost military fashion and marched with considerable difficulty – which translated from a distance to an exaggerated dignity – to the door, accompanied by the trumpet sound of his own forced breathing and a tympani of coughing. At least half the room heard and saw LeClerc’s demonstration and was silent a few moments until the sick, angry black man left the building. When conversation resumed, it was almost whispered, with most patrons casting side looks at Neil and Lou.

“Well done. Very well done.” King was more amused than sarcastic. “Didn’t they teach you how to ask questions when you were a cop? You had no call to accuse the man of anything. He was trying to be helpful. Plus, I would have gotten there eventually about the drugs and all. Got to get his confidence first. Keep the conversation about Clay, not about LeClerc, at least, not so’s he knows it’s about him.”

The quartet returned from its break. Lou and Neil listened to the music a few minutes to permit the crowd’s attention to wander away from them. Soon, the incident was forgotten by all but Neil and King. King said he had no money, so Neil paid the check, including for Lou’s Remy Martin and soda and LeClerc’s Coca-Cola. Although it was still early – not yet midnight – they left the Blue Mirror, hailed a taxi and went to the Slide Trombone at Sixth Street, N.W. and Massachusetts Avenue.

You had to know where the Slide Trombone was before going there because it was a bottle joint, an illegal after-hours bar. D.C. law provided that all bars closed at 2 a.m. on Friday and Saturday, midnight on the other days of the week, far too early to accommodate the pressing need for fun of a generation raised on the Depression and two wars and now enjoying record prosperity, albeit under the threat of nuclear holocaust. War, bombs, and an uncertain world – these were good excuses for a drink at 3 a.m. for those so inclined to need one – either the drink or the excuse. Thus, the bottle joints met a pressing social need. They were called “bottle joints” because they originally were places for a patron to bring his own bottle. The joint provided the set-ups, music and sometimes food. Over the years, the more prosperous joints started supplying the liquor, too. The D.C. police were pragmatic about the bottle clubs, knowing some laws are unenforceable if they aren’t supported by the public. They struck a silent bargain: If the bottle club patrons didn’t cause trouble, the police would ignore them. Of course, some cops required a little extra cash from the bottle joints to enforce the deal and sometimes a joint needed to be raided to satisfy the blue nose contingent in Washington, which was substantial. Otherwise, the rule was to live and let live.

Sixth and Mass was seedy. Not the worst place in town, but bad enough to scare off most white folk. Adding a little more excitement, the only entrance was from an alley, down some dimly lit steps to a basement door. The club was in the basement of a store that sold cheap furniture to poor colored families, on credit and at high prices. As they went down the basement steps from the alley, Lou told Neil to stand far to his right. He then knocked and stood in front of the peephole, a device leftover from the club’s speakeasy days. The bouncer could see only Lou. Satisfied the patron was a black man, somewhat elderly, not likely to cause trouble, the door opened. The bouncer was surprised when Lou entered accompanied by a white man.

“He’s with me. He’s OK,” Lou told the bouncer. “You know an Audrey Winkler?”

“Who wants to know?” The bouncer was appropriately large, tough, and ugly and spoke in a deep bass. He wore a suit that looked like it would tear when he inhaled and a bow tie that nearly strangled him.

“Lou King. You heard of me?” He didn’t bother to introduce Neil.

“Why sure Mr. King. You the big time investigator, private eye type.”

King accepted the compliment as a fact. “That’s right. We are here to see Miss Winkler. It’s business.” He would show this white boy the difference between a career in private investigation and a hobby. King’s name opened doors. He wondered what Endicott’s would do. He answered his own question: nothing.

“She ain’t here yet. It’s only midnight. She usually comes in after the bars close. We ain’t really open for business yet anyway.”

“You don’t mind if we stay, do you? Play the juke box, have a couple drinks. We won’t be a bother.”

“No, Mr. King. I’m sure that’ll be OK. Impress the cops to have you here if there’s any trouble.” King smiled at the man’s error. He was not a friend of cops. King made his money by working for defense lawyers.

The two men sat at the bar, which ran the length of the building. They were the only customers. It was nearly one o’clock. Lou ordered a Remy and soda; Neil a Ballantine. The juke box was playing something by Etta James. Apparently it was rigged to play without money for the benefit of the bartender, the bouncer and a couple of other employees until the place opened for business. Other than the music and staring at the bottles on the other side of the bar or into their own drinks, there was nothing to do. The two men were forced to talk to each other.

“What’re we doin’ here,” Neil finally said, a little uncomfortable in a third rate bar in a bad side of town with a private detective he had never heard of until about 10 hours earlier. So far, he thought, all they had done was suck up about ten dollars of their expense account on booze. “You can’t think Clay was killed because he was angry about being light-skinned? That’s crazy.”

King stirred his drink lazily, trying to avoid looking at his aging self in the mirror behind the bottles behind the bar. It wasn’t clear if he was considering an answer to Neil’s question or ignoring him.

“You got any friends, Endicott? Any friends from high school or the army or the cops?”

Neil decided to play along. “Sure, I’ve got lots of friends. I grew up around here, remember?” As long as “around here” wasn’t defined too narrowly, his assertion was a fact.

“Any of those friends real fat, or have a lot of zits on their face, or real ugly?”

“I suppose. One guy, Willie Max, was so fat he couldn’t do a single chin-up in high school. Military wouldn’t even take him. Musta weighed 300 pounds. Maybe five-six. Almost square. Shook like Jell-O when he walked. I’m not even sure if he’s still alive.”

“Do you think your friend, what was his name? Willie Max? Do think this Willie Max ever thought much about being fat?”

“I assume he thought about it all the time. How could he not? Where is this going, Lou?” Neil was getting tired of being interrogated for no evident purpose.

“You think Willie Max wanted to be fat, or be more like you and the other guys, meaning sorta normal,” Lou said, sipping his drink and ignoring Neil’s protest.

“Sure he wanted to be normal. Now that you mention it, I remember Willie crying a few times in gym class ‘cause he couldn’t do even the simplest thing. Sit-ups were impossible for him. I don’t know, he was just good for nothing in sports. Last guy picked, that kind of thing. Got kidded a lot, too.”

“So you’d agree that this fella’s weight was on his mind always and caused him a lot of problems?”

“That’s what I said ten minutes ago. Let’s move on to something else. Clay Van Dyke for example.”

Lou returned to his drink, stirring the mostly melted ice. “We are talking about Clay Van Dyke, Mr. Endicott. You told me a few minutes ago that it was crazy to think Clay was murdered because of his light skin. I’m telling you it’s not so crazy.

“You white people walk around without a thought about your skin color. You are in the majority most places and in charge. You get to set the rules for ‘normal.’ But a black man, I don’t care how dark or light he is, a black man never forgets about his color. Even if he’s just among other colored folk, he’s comparin’ his color to the other folks. Now, you don’t think that happened back in Africa, do you?”

“I don’t know,” Neil replied truthfully.

“Well of course it didn’t. The black man was in charge then, ‘til the white man came ‘roun to buy some slaves. The black man decided what was ‘normal.’ This place here will fill up soon and there’s a good chance you’ll be the only white man here. You probably already wish you could jump outta your skin, and it’ll get worse before the night’s over.

“Your friend Willie Max was the white nigger in your school. He was the guy who didn’t meet the standard. He never forgot it and you and your friends never let him forget it. Same thing with skin color. White folk never let coloreds forget they’re colored. Jes bein’ round white folks is enough. ‘Course, white folk, they’re aware of coloreds. But I bet that except when they are in the minority, white folk don’t think of their own color, just the black man’s color.”

“I guess that’s so,” Neil responded, more in hopes of trimming the lecture rather than making it a discussion. “But I never heard some white person complain he wasn’t white enough or was too white. You just are what you are.”

“But some black folk are always wantin’ what the white man’s got. ‘Causes other black folk, to react the other way. Maybe Clayton was one of those. The big tragedy is that just like Willie Max, who wanted to be normal size, lotsa black folk look at themselves and wish they was lighter. White, for sure, but at least lighter. Like you say, most learn to live with the color they are – no choice. Some don’t.

“I don’t know why Clayton Van Dyke was murdered. Maybe it had nothin’ to do with him being a Negro or his skin being light. But I do know this: Thinkin’ his color had somethin’ to do with why he died ain’t ‘crazy.’ It’s common sense.”

Neil was silent. It had been a helluva day for a guy who never paid much attention to colored folk. LeDroit Park in the morning, a run down bottle club the next morning. Quite a range for one day. What would be a white parallel? Chevy Chase to Suitland, Maryland?

One thing was sure: At this point, Neil Endicott needed Lorenzo King more than King needed him. That might change, but as long as they were in the colored neighborhoods – and Neil couldn’t see much chance they would not stay there for a while – King was the lead. Neil was the vice president – not worth a bucket of piss right now. He had to place his trust in this elderly snow white haired black guy and hope he could earn King’s trust, too, eventually.

“I think Clayton was killed because of his color; not because he was light skinned, but because he was colored. We have direct evidence of that.” Neil pulled his copy of the note found at the scene from his pocket and handed it to King. “You can’t tell anybody we have it, but this was found on his body.”

King studied the note. “Why didn’t you show me this before?”

“I wasn’t sure if I could trust you. A good friend of mine could lose his job, maybe even be prosecuted for giving me this.”

“So what changed? You trust me now?”

“I’m not sure. But you have a lot more experience in these race matters than I do. I’ve got none. Except for freezing under the Korean stars with a few and walkin’ a Northeast beat for a few months, I’ve had no real experience with colored people since I was a kid and…”

“Yeah, I know, you had a sweet colored gal takin’ care of you while Mommy went to art galleries and ladies club meetings. Spare me the story.”

Neil turned red for at least the third time that day. He didn’t really deserve King’s patronizing tone, he thought to himself. He was trying to be cooperative.

King returned his attention to the note. After committing it to memory, he gave it back to Neil. He said nothing. Neither did Neil.

In a few minutes, customers started coming through the door. It was nearly two a.m. Some of the men were dressed in colorful suits, one in a tuxedo. Most of the women wore gowns, lots of costume jewelry and high heeled shoes they could barely walk in. Others were not so fancy, just jackets, no tie for the men and neat skirts and blouses for the women. Everybody was black and was having a good time. The average age couldn’t be much above 30.

Half an hour later, the bouncer came over to Neil and Lou. He pointed to a short woman, with a figure that once was a knockout but was succumbing to rolls of fat visible under her thin black silk blouse. Her face was soft and very round. Her lips were full, covered with bright red lipstick. “There’s Audrey Winkler,” the bouncer explained. She was alone. Lou and Neil took their drinks and walked to her table.

“Miss Winkler? My name is Lorenzo King. This is my associate, Mr. Neil Endicott. We are investigating the death of Clayton Van Dyke. Mr. Albertus LeClerc told us you might have some useful information. May we join you?” King was formal with the woman. LeClerc warned she might be either a mean drunk or a cooperative lush. He needed to find out which Audrey Winkler he was dealing with.

“Oh God, Clayton! Yes of course. Please have a seat.” Her words were slightly slurred. She already had too much to drink, but was still coherent. “Did you say you are police?”

“No ma’am, we are working for Mrs. Van Dyke. Private detectives.” King pulled up a chair inches from the woman and offered her his business card. Neil sat across the table from the two of them. Chastised for the LeClerc debacle, he took a vow of silence. Audrey Winkler looked at him suspiciously, Neil thought, or maybe he was just jumping out of his white skin, as Lou predicted he would. He was the only white person in the place.

“Are you alone here tonight?” King asked.

“Yeah. Clayton used to come here with me. But I can’t get anyone else to join me. LeClerc is too sick for late nights. Lots of my other friends gotta work on Saturday. Can you buy me a drink? Scotch rocks?”

“Certainly.” King hailed the waiter and ordered the scotch and refills for himself and Neil. He wanted to get right to the point while Miss Winkler was sober enough to answer questions and because it was way past his own bedtime. “Mr. LeClerc told us that Clayton went to Chicago, where he was adopted, to find out something about his past. Is that right? Do you know anything about that?”

“Clayton was obsessed. He always wanted to find out if he had some white ancestor. He said he needed to know himself, know who he was, and couldn’t do it without knowing why he was so light-skinned. It was silly to me. I mean, he wasn’t so light-skinned he could pass. He clearly was a colored man.”

“Maybe he just wanted to find out who his real parents were. I think a lot of adopted kids want that.” Neil broke his vow of silence and popped in with an obvious point.

“Sure, that’s so. Maybe that was part of it. But Clayton was interested in Black Nationalism. Marcus Garvey, Muslim Nation, Liberia. Black separatism they call it. He was always raisin’ money for one black cause or another, mostly to separate us from the whites. Pie-in-the-sky you ask me. Who wants to go back to Africa? I think he wanted to find a white relative and ask for money.”

This was a new element. The possibility Clayton Van Dyke was extorting money from some previously unknown relative. Lou and Neil looked at each other with surprise.

“Did Clayton say that – that he wanted to get money from any white relatives?”

“Not exactly, but pretty close. He said he wanted to extract some vengeance against whatever white man raped his mother or grandmother, he wasn’t sure which. He assumed some white guy took advantage of his power and authority and raped a black woman and got her pregnant. He wanted to find out who did it ‘cause of the violence he assumed happened and because his own black blood got tainted, as he put it. I don’t know. He went on and on about it. We broke up ‘cause he got so boring with it. We were still friends, though.” Audrey Winkler adopted a distant stare into the rest of the room, which was nearly filled with customers. She was thinking about the past. Then a tear fell, followed by another.

“Clay was a wonderful man. He was gentle and kind and smart. But he’d go crazy over this stuff. Can you buy me another drink?”

“So he went to Chicago?” Lou was coaxing her to move on. He didn’t want to be comforting a 30-year-old falling down drunk the rest of the night.

“Yeah, he went. I think it was in January. Took the train out there and went to the place where he was adopted. He had a friend out there. A guy he met in the Army. Earnest or Ezra or something like that.”

“Last name or first name?” King was getting tired, but didn’t want to have to go through the same drill again. He needed the information to be accurate the first time.

“First name. I don’t know his last name. Can I get that drink?”

Neil made himself useful by signaling the waiter again, who came quickly. Neil didn’t know if it was standard good service or to please the white guy. If the waiter expected a big tip, he’d be disappointed. A small stage was set up at the front of the club and some musicians were getting ready to play. There were a lot of them. Maybe it was a jam session.

“What else do you know about the Chicago trip,” King asked, pressing again to get the story completed before sunrise and before the music started. He was too old for jam sessions at three a.m. and the cognac was giving him a headache.

“Well, he couldn’t get anything out of the place where he was adopted, but this guy Earnest or whatever did. I don’t know how. Clay told me he found out that he was actually born in Atlanta, but was sent to Chicago to be adopted. Sounds strange. He didn’t know why. He wanted to go to Atlanta, and he did.”

“When was that?”

“Soon after Chicago. I know he had to wait to get enough leave at work. He died early this month, I think. He went to Atlanta a couple of weeks before that. Train again. I remember he was mad about the treatment on the train. White passengers kept telling him to go to the back car, the ‘colored car.’ He wouldn’t do it until a colored conductor told him his own life would be a lot easier if Clay went back.“

King sighed. Standard practice on the railroads south of Washington. “Did you see him after he got back from Atlanta?”

“Yeah, I did. Couple times.”

“What did he tell you?” King was getting tired of pulling this gal’s teeth for answers. He thought she was stretching things out to get another drink.

“He didn’t really say. He said he might have big news and he might not. He wanted to check with somebody. He wasn’t as excited as after Chicago. He was more reserved. I think he maybe found out his dream wasn’t going to happen. Wasn’t no rich white man. That’s the last time I saw him. Right here, right at this table.” Audrey Winkler started to cry again. King pulled a handkerchief from his pocket and offered it to her. “Keep it,” he said. Then, as a matter of form, he asked:

“Do you know of anyone who had a grudge against Clayton? Might want to kill him?”

“No, of course not. He was a good man, like I said. He went after me about my drinking and lately I’ve kinda gotten a little fat. You know, that’s kinda’ like married folk talk. I was expectin’ to get back together and marry him one day.” The tears came in a flood of loud sobs. For the second time that night the King-Endicott table was getting a lot of unwanted attention. King patted her on the back. Neil wondered if Miss Winkler was the kind of woman who fell in love with anybody who paid attention to her.

“Can I get another drink?” Miss Winkler asked.

“Of course,” King said. “Thank you very much for your information.” He left a twenty on the table to cover the tab plus a few more drinks for Miss Winkler. “I think that will take care of everything.”

“That’s very kind. Thanks,” she said, her eyes already casting about for other company.

“I thought you said you didn’t have any money,” Neil said as they left the building.

“I didn’t have any money to pay for your blow-hard performance with LeClerc, if that’s what you mean.” King looked at Neil angrily. “I’ll pay for results.”

“What are you mad about now?”

“Don’t get me started.”

“No, what?”

“White people – and black people. Everybody. I know this kid’s parents,” King said, referring to Clayton Van Dyke. “They struggled hard to get up the ladder and then they been pulling people to come up behind them. NAACP, Howard University Law School, Mr. Van Dyke’s work in the court system. And most white people see their skin and treat them like any common nigger. And their son buys into that shit. He’s all ripped about his skin color and who his granddaddy was and meanwhile his life is crap. That woman we just talked to, what was her name? Winkles?”

“Winkler.”

“Yeah, Winkler. Clay could do much better than that drunk. He coulda’ gone to college and made something of himself – more than a damn library truck driver. But the white man has got him all worried about his color ‘cause the white man has made him think that’s the most important thing of all.”

“Well, maybe it is. I can’t imagine many white men wantin’ to be black.” It was the wrong thing to say.

“Fuck you,” King exploded as the pair reached the alley. “I’m going home. We can talk over the weekend. You got my card. I’ll be in my office tomorrow.”

King could walk surprisingly fast for a man his age and girth. He walked quickly away from Neil, clearly ending their conversation. He reached Massachusetts Avenue and stood at the curb on the north side of the street, which headed west, looking for a taxi. Neil soon joined him, even though he was not wanted, since he needed a taxi in the same general direction as King – east.

“Don’t you live in northeast? That’s the other direction,” Neil said, trying to be helpful.

“You come and talk so polite to a man who just told you to fuck off? I’m tryin’ to get rid of you for the night. I ain’t no stupid peckerwood. It’s three in the morning. Hard enough to get taxis for anybody, but it’s impossible for a black man to get a taxi headed for northeast. Probably in any direction.”

At that moment, a taxi heading west stopped at the curb. Neil politely made way for King to get in. When the driver saw which man was his fare, he sped away. “See,” King said. “Fucker,” he yelled powerlessly at the fleeing taxi. The two men continued to wait.

“Look, Lou, you can’t blame me for the whole race situation in this country. I have always tried to be polite, not use hurtful words or be mean to black people. It’s unfair.” Neil was trying to calm the waters. “Let’s do like you said this afternoon: try to cooperate for Mrs. Van Dyke’s sake.” King did not respond. Another taxi pulled up in front of Neil. This time, Neil opened the door, took a seat and motioned King to join him. As King did so, Neil got out of the car on the driver’s side and instructed the driver to “take this man where he wants to go. No crap, please.”

“I don’t carry no coloreds this time of night,” the driver said.

“Well, he ain’t goin’ anywhere ‘til he gets home. He’ll stay in your taxi all night if he has to. So this is an exception to your rule. I got your cab number and I’ll find you if I hear you haven’t taken him directly home. No more crap,” Neil said, surprised at his vehemence and conscious that he was putting on an act for King. He was Helping The Negro.

As Neil started to close the taxi door, King said only, “I’ll take care of it. Talk to you tomorrow.” The driver took a closer look at King in his rear view mirror. King’s three-piece suit and the fact his English was better than the cab driver’s was enough for the driver to decide it was a safe fare. He drove off after the door closed. Neil saw the driver make a U-turn at the next intersection while he waited for his own taxi to take him home, which required another U-turn. King didn’t know it, but at three a.m. cabdrivers didn’t want to go anywhere but northwest D.C., whether the fare was black or white. Color isn’t the only thing that counts, Neil thought to himself as he was driven home. Geography can be destiny, too.

Chapter Five: The Chief I, April 24, 1954

Weary of reading the same document several times without finding a shred of reason, the Chief Justice of the United States removed his horn-rimmed reading glasses, rubbed his eyes and sighed. The few pages of typescript in the middle of his otherwise cleared desktop caused him deep anxiety. He feared that his rookie term was going to conclude a failure.

The Supreme Court’s 1953-54 term ended in a little more than six weeks. Its most important case, potentially one of the most important cases in the Court’s history, had yet to be resolved. That case, Brown v. Board of Education of Topeka, Kansas and companion appeals from three states and the District of Columbia to be decided at the same time, was going to strike down as unconstitutional legal racial segregation of schools in 17 states and the District. That much was decided. Six justices out of nine were in favor of such a ruling.

The Chief, as the Chief Justice was called inside the Court, knew that Brown by itself would not really end separate schooling of Negroes and whites. But it surely would start the end of something. Whether that was to be school segregation, civil order or the power and majesty of the Supreme Court, no one knew.

The Chief lost no sleep over his own vote. He had allowed the State of California to assist the federal government in impounding American citizens of Japanese extraction in camps during World War II. God had granted his Norwegian soul the opportunity to make amends and – he acknowledged the vanity – surely to stand taller in history.

Others on the Court were not so charitable or farsighted, especially Nathan Bedford Farwell, the author of the pages on his desk.

“This piece of racist crap isn’t going to see the light of day on my watch,” the Chief exclaimed angrily to his empty chambers. Since it was a Saturday, the Court building was nearly empty. Only a few clerks were around scribbling madly to complete what they hoped would be end-of-term opinions minimally rewritten by the justice to whom they were assigned. The justices had agreed not to involve the clerks in the drafting, compromising, rewriting and discussion in the Brown case to insure the decision was not leaked to the public before it was announced. Warren could not vent his frustration to his own clerks, as he frequently did.

“It’s a disgrace. Fuck Farwell.” The Chief was surprised by his intensity and coarse language as soon as he spoke. He never used such words in public or private conversation. They welled from sources the man viewed by most Americans as a moderate preferred not to visit.

The Chief was a politician to the bone. He was not appointed Chief Justice because of judicial brilliance. He was a competent Alameda County prosecutor and later California attorney general, then governor. But his first job as a judge was to head the highest court in the land. The Chief Justice owed his prominence in national affairs to politics, not to the law. His strengths were leadership, persuasion and compromise. He would need these attributes and more, the Chief thought, if he was going to curb the egos of the eight other prima donnas on the bench.

Brown was the first important test of his abilities.

As a political animal, the Chief knew that the Brown decision must be a unanimous one to have the legal and moral authority necessary for it to be obeyed and enforced. Dissents, no matter how well-intentioned, would be used to excuse Jim Crow laws – laws that separated blacks from whites with the goal of keeping the former socially and economically inferior to the latter. Jim Crow laws already struck down by the Court continued to be practiced unabated in some especially truculent areas of the South. Rail cars leaving Washington for the South still were segregated after they left Alexandria, Virginia, just across the Potomac River from the Court, although laws requiring such segregation had been declared unconstitutional several years ago. The Chief also knew that state colleges and universities in the South admitted those Negroes they specifically were ordered to admit by the Court, but used multiple tactics and outright contempt of the Court’s orders to avoid enrolling other colored students. More seriously, Negroes continued to be disenfranchised throughout the South as one state after another cleverly subverted court decisions intended to remove obstacles to exercising the right to vote. Racist southerners, like most people, read and remembered what they agreed with. They used dissents to justify continued Jim Crow practices and ignored or belittled the true rulings of the courts that condemned their practices.

The South’s resistance to earlier judgments had an unexpected result: It reinforced the will of at least six justices, including the Chief, to eliminate all remaining legal segregation and, therefore, any ambiguity

that segregation was unconstitutional. Piecemeal approaches aimed at weaning the South from its racist laws had instead strengthened the political will of the southern whites to more vigorously promote their race discrimination, going so far as to run their own candidate for president in 1948 on a purely segregationist platform. The Chief knew from discussions with other justices that it was clear to the majority that since a battle must eventually be joined, peaceful or not, the stakes must justify the tumult. Only the death of Jim Crow in all his visages was worth the struggle.

But the Supreme Court only issued opinions about the law. It had no power to enforce those judgments. It relied on the other branches of government in the state and federal systems. Only a unanimous verdict, one tolerating no dissent, would have the moral and political weight to be enforced. Even then, it was not certain that the politicians, the police and the public would join the Court’s call, instead exposing the justices as nine powerless old men.

Two justices – Robert Jackson and Tom Clark – reluctantly were leaning toward a dissent. Justice Farwell was neither reluctant nor leaning. His feet were firmly planted in favor of continued segregation, not just in schools but in all areas of life. No reasoning would change his vote. It was his draft dissent from the anticipated six justice majority opinion that occupied the Chief this Saturday morning.

If nothing else, he hoped to persuade the justice from South Carolina to tone down his rhetoric. Even Farwell should not want to incite riot or disobedience to a decision by a majority of his own court. Or would he? It was not beyond the Chief’s imagination that a nutty old Confederate sympathizer like Farwell would put himself and his ancient causes above the general welfare. These thoughts caused a slight tremor to run through the Chief’s body. The pages on the Chief’s desk contained the following draft of a dissent from Justice Farwell in Brown v. Topeka Board of Education:

The majority today completes the usurpation of the rights of the States of this Union to preserve and foster their own social and educational traditions which they have relied upon for decades. Today’s subject is once again the public schools. Tomorrow it will be housing or employment or even marriage. The logic of this decision knows no bounds in the mischief it shall create in what heretofore have been natural, largely benign, relations between the Negro and the white man.

The minority of this Court bows to no one in its respect for the Negro. But history has proven time and again that the white man and the Negro both desire to conduct their business, social, family and personal affairs separately, preserving the dignity and separateness of each race. This Court does the Negro no favor by requiring him to compete directly with the white man in public schooling. God has decreed that the black man’s strengths shall differ from those of the white man. The history of the world, not only of the United States, shows that, in general, the Negro’s strengths are not those of the white man or, indeed, of the Oriental or the Arab or even of the Mexican. Physical labor and manual trades have been the Negro’s contribution, as was predicted by the great Negro leader Booker T. Washington. The Negro race has been freely allowed to realize the fruits of its labor in all regions of the nation, commensurate with its level of skill. It is true that a few black men and women, such as Washington, have contributed to the liberal arts or sciences. This illustrates that Negroes are free to realize their God-given exceptional talents even in a segregated society. That so few Negroes achieve such recognition is clear evidence that few are capable of doing so.

It does no good to decree in law an equality which does not exist in nature. When the Negro is forced by law to compete directly with the white man, it shall be the Negro who suffers. The statutes which the Court declares unconstitutional this day are a shield for the black man, not a burden. They shield the black man from the truth, established by the Bible and by scientific genetic examination. The truth is this: that the Negro is assuredly a creature of God, worthy of respect, but he is different from, and not the equal of, the white man. This Court and the black race shall rue the day that the shield is removed and the differences are mercilessly exposed to the detriment of this previously protected minority.

All pretense of abiding legal precedent or of respecting the important cultural differences among the regions of this great nation, are now stripped away in an exercise of judicial supremacy– nay, judicial arrogance and dictatorial self-righteousness – not heretofore seen in our history.…

A call to arms, the Chief said to himself as he put down his glasses and furrowed his forehead to favor a deep frown. “Another civil war. That’s what that war-loving, Negro-hating bastard wants. Resurrecting the stars and bars. What an ass. He won’t get it,” the Chief muttered.

He would have preferred that fate put Brown and the race cases sure to follow on some other Court’s doorstep at some other time. Accepting that it was his burden, the Chief assigned himself to write the majority’s opinion. He had already jotted down a theme on a yellow pad that he hid in a desk drawer, waiting for the right time to expand upon it. “To separate [Negroes] from others of similar age and qualifications solely because of their race generates a feeling of inferiority as to their status in the community that may affect their hearts and minds in a way unlikely ever to be undone,” he wrote. He had shared it only with Felix Frankfurter, who suggested substituting “hearts and minds” for the Chief’s words.

The Chief knew his job was to obtain a unanimous vote among the nine justices . No newspaper or magazine commentator expected a unanimous result with Farwell on the bench. Neither did the Chief. But he had to try. Anything less was failure. Although striking down legal segregation was sure to light fires of both freedom and hatred, there was no choice but to expect – or hope – the nation would survive and be a better place. Perhaps, the Chief thought, his grandchildren would not be burdened by the prejudice even he could not wholly discard in his own heart.

As winter melted into early spring, the Chief devoted nearly all of his time off the bench to maintaining a plurality of six votes to strike down segregated schools and pondering how to persuade the holdouts to make the decision unanimous. He regularly visited his allies – Black, Douglas, Burton, Frankfurter and Minton – to reinforce their commitment with hearty good cheer developed from many years of greeting political supporters. But the uncommitted justices, Jackson and Clark, were indifferent to his camaraderie. Jackson was not even around the Court. On April 1, he was hospitalized with what he reported his doctors describing as a “mild” heart attack. Jackson was still working and writing those opinions assigned to him before he got sick, but the Chief had not raised Brown on his visits to the hospital. Doing so was not a task the Chief was looking forward to, but the matter was sufficiently important even to threaten a fragile recovery.

The Chief comforted himself with the observation that Farwell’s dissent was so crude, rabid and indefensible that the holdouts would side with the civilized majority. He could not envision Robert H. Jackson voting to sustain segregated schools, especially not if he was identified with the raw racism of Farwell’s dissent. Jackson was a believer in judicial restraint, but he also took leave from the Court nearly a decade earlier to prosecute Nazis at Nuremberg. He understood that something evil, such as imprisoning and killing Jews, was not made right merely by making it a law. There was nothing about Jackson that suggested he believed in subjugating Negroes. He was from upstate New York and presumably his sympathies were shaped by the abolitionist history of the region. If he really was very sick, he would not want sustaining racism to be among his last acts. The Chief immediately dismissed the last thought from his mind as both morbid and frightening. However he voted on Brown, Jackson was a good man whose death would be a loss to the nation.

Clark was more difficult to assess. He was a Texan with no record of opposing segregation. He, like the Chief, facilitated the impoundment of the Japanese-Americans early in the war. He was a senior organizer of the project while with the Department of Justice. The Chief had not talked to Clark about their mutual experiences, but he assumed that Clark must have some regrets about his role. Farwell would have mentioned if any other justice were thinking of joining his dissent. The Chief assumed Clark would vote with Jackson, not Farwell. Would they dissent? Or would they set aside legal formalism to vote for justice?

These thoughts were interrupted by two knocks on the door of chambers, a private signal that the Chief’s secretary wished to see him. “Come in, Janet,” the Chief said loudly enough to penetrate the thick, wooden door. His secretary entered with some papers which she put on the desk, at the same time announcing that “these were delivered from Justice Jackson’s chambers this morning.” The Chief thanked her and she left. He turned to the papers she deposited and read them eagerly, expecting to see a memo from the former Nazi prosecutor announcing he would join the majority – a bright and hopeful antidote to the malicious poison of the Farwell dissent. But the message from Jackson could be read in the Chief’s face, which reddened easily when he was angry or excited. As he read, his skin purpled.

Chief: As matters now stand, I plan to deliver the following dissent in Brown. I believe that Justice Clark plans to join me. I cannot let that damn fool Farwell’s racist meanderings be the sole basis for opposing the majority when there are more rational and important reasons for holding one’s nose and continuing to tolerate such laws if truly “equal” facilities can be provided. I can’t let Farwell speak for the traditional legal views. By the way, I appreciate you not bringing up Brown while I was in the hospital – but I could see you chomping at the bit to do so. I’m home now. Drop by to say hello.

It was signed, “Cordially, Bob”. The second page was a separate memo to all of the Justices. It said only Re: Brown (Jackson Dissent), followed by this text:

JUSTICE JACKSON Dissenting. I cannot concur with the majority and must disassociate myself entirely from Justice Farwell’s dissent. The statutes overturned today are indeed odious, but they were approved by the elected representatives of these four states and, for the District of Columbia, by the Congress. Each statute provides, consistent with Plessy v. Ferguson, decided nearly sixty years ago by this Court, that equal school facilities be provided separately for white and Negro races.

The evidence demonstrates that Topeka, Kansas, does provide equal or nearly equal facilities for both races, proving that the rule of Plessy can be satisfied. The evidence also clearly establishes that the District of Columbia, Delaware, Virginia and South Carolina have failed to provide the equal educational opportunities mandated by the laws of those jurisdictions struck down today.

There is evidence, however, that these jurisdictions and others, undoubtedly fearing the Court would rule as it has today, are feverishly devoting treasure and labor to bring Negro schools to a level equal to, or nearly equal to, white schools. They should have a chance to do so. The Constitution properly forbids me and my colleagues from imposing our personal views on the South or any other region of the country, else I would join the majority. Consistent with our limited powers, the states should be afforded an opportunity to comply with their own statutes and Plessy before we take the step required by the majority.

I dissent. JUSTICE CLARK concurs.

The Chief read Jackson’s memo and the dissent three times before laying it on his desk. He stood to walk around chambers in hopes of allaying his anger. “God damn it!” he shouted to the walls of his office, not caring if anyone heard his exclamation through the marble. Didn’t Jackson understand? Farwell’s opinion gave the white trash, racists and know-nothings the seemingly rational, unbigoted arguments they needed to oppose the Court’s majority.

Jackson’s opinion also would provide cover for the more sophisticated and polished racists, north and south, as well as for their peers in the top law schools and corporate law firms that defended the status quo. The latter group pretended that the law imposed an orderliness and predictability it never really had so that power was retained by the wealthy individual and corporate clients of those same lawyers. Jackson’s dissent, including his childish belief that the states would somehow equalize educational opportunities for people they hated once legal threats disappeared, would give all but the most dedicated abolitionists reason to ignore segregation. “Leave it to the states” meant “leave the slaves to the overseer and don’t bother me about it.” The Chief paused to write a note to himself that if Jackson maintained his dissent, the majority opinion might include some reference to slaves, overseers and “states rights”

The Chief surprised himself by his populist reaction. As Chief Justice, he was at the summit of The Law. He was meant to assure the rowdy populace of America that The Law was just, reliable and worthy of respect. But the Chief was frustrated because at this moment he was less successful doing what was both just and respectable than he was when he governed the entire state of California.

He considered that perhaps Jackson was the more responsible justice, trying to keep a respectful if hypocritical lid on an emotional issue. Why not leave it to the legislative branch? But the solons across the street under the Capitol dome were never going to pass a law or offer a constitutional amendment to end Jim Crow. Southern Democrats dominated both Houses. They blocked consideration of any civil rights laws. Their focus now was on Communism, a miniscule threat to domestic peace but a diversion from more important issues.

The Reds used America’s mistreatment of Negroes as a propaganda advantage. Especially in poor African nations, expected to soon become independent of their colonial rulers, the Communists promoted on their newswires, radio transmitters and in diplomatic missions pictures and descriptions of Negro slums only blocks from the Capitol. The Jim Crow laws would be as well known to the black Africans of the Belgian Congo as to Alabamans if the Russians had their way. A Supreme Court decision affirming legal segregation would be handing them a loudspeaker.

“Thus concludes the political sermon,” the Chief said to his imaginary congregation, smiling at the futility of lecturing to himself.

The Chief buzzed Margaret on the telephone intercom and asked her to call Justice Hugo Black’s chambers, then changed his mind and told her he would walk there. He knew Black was in his office because they had encountered each other in the underground garage. Black had kidded the Chief for about the one hundredth time that only he got a chauffeured limousine while the associate justices drove themselves to work. Congress appropriated funds for one only a few months ago, without any urging by the Chief, but Black pretended the luxury was provided at his request.

The Chief met no one on his walk through the marble corridors to Black’s chambers. No natural light entered the corridor. The incandescent lights in the chandeliers were placed long distances apart and only some of them were lit on the weekends. The absence of staff, reduced lighting, the cold marble walls and floors and the finish of the office doors made the corridors of the Supreme Court dark and uninviting. The Chief was reminded of a tomb. He missed the colorful politicians, lobbyists and hangers-on who always were present outside the governor’s office and created a lively atmosphere in Sacramento. The Chief entered Black’s outside reception office, which was furnished nearly identically to the Chief’s. Black’s secretary said, “Good morning Mr. Chief Justice. Go right in. Justice Black is expecting you.” Margaret obviously called ahead to warn Black of his visit. The Chief thanked the secretary and opened the door to Black’s chamber. He noted jealously that Black’s windows had a southern exposure, admitting the late morning light. Black rose from behind his desk to greet the Chief and they shook hands.

“Well, what pressing matter causes you to hike to my humble abode?” Black asked cheerfully, the older justice again referencing, by inference, the higher rank held by the younger man.

“Have you seen the latest from Jackson?” the Chief asked, attempting a casual air, emphasized by taking a moment to examine some of the pictures on Black’s wall from his career as a U.S. senator from Alabama.

“Of course,” Black said, resuming his seat behind his desk. The Chief sat in the guest chair without waiting to be invited. “He’s defending the Order of Legal Formalism,” Black continued, “but I can’t blame him for wanting to disassociate himself from that bastard Farwell.”

In the short time the Chief had been on the Court, Black had become his best friend, though they did not always agree. Black had mentored the Chief through the term, advising him of the unwritten but still highly formalized rituals of the Court and the wide differences in personality among the justices. Black also matched the Chief’s intolerance of fools, procrastinators and obstructionists, which included most lawyers and some of the other justices. The courtly, almost frail, Southern senator and the younger rough-hewn Western prosecutor were only different on the outside. They could speak to each other in ways they could never speak to their other colleagues.

“Bob just has not thought this through,” the Chief responded. “If he votes with Farwell, his reputation will be badly tarnished, if not ruined. Farwell’s opinion smokes. Bob’s dainty regard for limits on judicial power is going to get burned by the fire. He’ll just be remembered as another justice to vote for segregation.”

“Oh, I don’t know. You haven’t been here very long. You get used to significant decisions, both making them and dissenting from them. I grant you this is high up on the significance ladder, but Bob will survive. His legacy is likely to be his Nuremberg work, anyway. In any event, you won’t get anywhere threatening him about his reputation.” Black turned to another strategy. “What if Farwell withdrew his draft opinion and just dissented without any opinion at all?”

“Do you think that would satisfy Bob, and maybe Tom, and they would go with the majority? Neither of them likes these laws. It’s crazy for them to dissent.”

Black, who had lost most of his white hair and had a much paler and thinner face than the slightly jowly, ruddy Chief, put his feet on his desk, considering his answer.

“Well, you either haven’t talked to Bob or maybe you weren’t listening. Nuremberg didn’t just teach him how horrible a government can treat its people, but also that government power has to be limited – vigilantly so. That includes the courts. There were no divided powers after Hitler took over. Maybe Bob figures that segregation will die of its own weight some day and it’s more important to preserve a federal system. It’s helpful to have the states keeping the feds honest.”

“Hugo, that may be his view, but what about the reverse? It’s our job to review these state laws. Making millions suffer for errors of government – at whatever level – sounds more like the Nazis than overturning a few state laws that are reprehensible.”

“Point taken,” Black replied. “Let me talk to him. We’re friends, and you’re still the new boy on the block.” Black changed the subject slightly.

“Bob may decide to switch because of Farwell, but it won’t be to protect his reputation. It will be because Farwell genuinely is the evil face of racism. I know. I grew up with his type.

“Farwell is an insult to the South. His appointment was a travesty. I think the Old Man regretted it from Day One. It was a bone to the Dixiecrats. Elevating a racist South Carolina Supreme Court justice to this Court just to please Jimmy Byrnes is a scar on FDR. He replaced one South Carolina racist with another.” Farwell was appointed to replace fellow South Carolinian Byrnes in 1942. Byrnes was now the governor of South Carolina and a leader of Southern opposition to desegregation.

The Chief waited patiently while Black told his story again. He knew the justice could not contain himself when Farwell’s name was mentioned. Black hated him – a strong word, but not an overstatement. If Farwell had any genuine friend on the Court, the Chief could not identify him.

“What do you know about Farwell that isn’t in the official bio?” the Chief asked. He was fishing but needed a hook.

“Why? You mean is there a skeleton in his closet? Chief, we don’t go about things that way at the Court. You have to keep your old political tricks out of here. I don’t like Farwell, and I want this Brown decision off on a good foot, but you’ve got to respect this Court first and foremost. We got the majority. We don’t need him.”

“It was just an idle question,” the Chief said, putting it aside but not forgetting it. “You know damned well how difficult this desegregation is going to be. Surely you haven’t gotten so liberal in the law that you don’t keep up with your racist friends from Alabama who are going to blow up when this decision comes out. We need a unanimous verdict. We can’t let Farwell be the Karl Marx of a Southern revolution. His dissent will be the racist manifesto.”

Black was amused by the Chief’s association of the wealthy, elitist, racist of South Carolina with the founding father of Communism. Even Joe McCarthy couldn’t find many Reds in the South. But what the Chief said about racists was true. You could not be a politician in Alabama without their support. At least, not an elected politician. As newspaper articles reminded him – often – Black briefly joined the Ku Klux Klan in his younger years. He told people he regretted it – which he did – and that he thought it was just something to join to help himself get elected, itself hardly a badge of honor. He wasn’t sure if that was his only motive at the time, but his brief membership embarrassed him now. Black loved the South and Alabama, but he knew that after 15 years on the Court, voting with the majority on the race cases and in most other “liberal” causes, he was unelectable in his home state. He was glad the Court was a lifetime appointment.

“I guarantee you that you can’t paint Farwell as a Communist if that’s what you’re aiming at with that Marx reference. I’m sure Farwell would prefer a comparison to Tom Paine.” Black chuckled as the Chief waved his hand, dismissing his own analogy as inapt. “As for whether there’s any dirt, Farwell is from a different state and never served in Congress. I never even encountered him until he got to the Court and I took an instant dislike to him. I’m a poor source for that kind of information, even if I was of a mind to give it to you, which I’m not. I know he comes from one of those families that got rich from cotton. Still has a big estate, I think. His father was once governor. That probably put him on the state supreme court. The family owned slaves, I’m sure, and I believe Farwell still has some sharecropping on his farm.

“That part of South Carolina may not be the poorest, but it’s among the meanest,” Black continued, enjoying both the attention of the Chief and the sound of his own voice. “I think if you look at the record you will find that there were lynchings in that part of the state before the war, maybe a lot of ‘em. It’s not surprising how he comes out on these votes. That’s how he was raised. He may be rich, but he still was raised in a latrine. It’s tough to blame him if he’s still got a lot of shit on his shirt.”

“Hell. The man is 70. He ought to have overcome his childhood prejudices by now,” the Chief retorted. “This is 1954, not 1864. Look, can you ask some of your Southern buddies about Farwell? See if you can get something on him. I’m not going to blackmail him, but it may be necessary to discredit him some way if he insists on this dissent.”

Black turned very serious. The Chief wasn’t getting the message through the friendly banter. The warning had to be made clear. “I won’t do it, Chief. I think you’re overreacting. And even if you’re not, we probably all have a skeleton or two in our background. It offends me that you are even speaking this way. We all did things when we were younger that we regret. I’m sure you’ve got lots of stuff in your closet. We don’t play that way here.” Black stopped. He did not want to lose his temper. The Chief was his friend, but his office had to be respected, too. The Chief knew he was being chastised by the most senior justice on the Court. He politely retreated from Black’s office, taking the unusual and certainly unnecessary step of reminding his friend that their conversation was not to be shared with anyone else. “Of course, Chief,” Black replied, “and I am also going to assume that you were just running that blackmail idea up the flag pole to see if anyone saluted. Nobody did, so burn it.” The Chief didn’t respond, but shook Black’s hand and left.

That was the difference between a legislator like Black and a governor or president, the Chief thought as he returned down the dark corridors to his own office. Black was content to let everyone have their say, as they did in the Senate. He didn’t understand, or perhaps chose not to care, that policies had to be executed if they were to be any good. That’s why it was called the executive branch. Ike would eventually have to enforce the law. At least, the Chief hoped he would. Dissents by Farwell, and especially by Jackson and Clark, would make that task much more difficult. Perhaps it was just an old governor talking, but the Chief believed that as the man named by the President to head the Supreme Court, and as the man speaking for the majority on an important issue of law and social policy, he had to do what he could to help the President execute the law. That meant no dissents. A unanimous verdict.

Upon returning to his office, the Chief asked Margaret to call Louis, his messenger, to his chambers.

Table of Contents

Part One: The Crime

Part One: The Crime

Prologue: March 27, 1954

Jesus Christ! Earle thought as he raced to the callbox. A lynching!

Chapter One: Mrs. Virginia Van Dyke, April 23, 1954

The words spilled out of Mrs. Van Dyke’s mouth as she began to lose her composure. She pulled a handkerchief from a pocket of her jacket.

Chapter Two: Lorenzo King, April 23, 1954

Chapter Three: Problems with Parents, April 23, 1954

Chapter Four: The Other Side of Town, April 23-24, 1954

Chapter Five: The Chief I, April 24, 1954