The heat seemed to suck the stench out of the river and into the stagnant night. Humid air clung to Frings’s face like a hot towel. The moving water reflected a shimmering full moon, and the scene at the riverbank was nearly twilit. Westermann had a flashlight anyway as he, Frings, and Washington followed an older Negro—one of the pair who’d found the body. The Uhuru Community shanties were on a plot of flat land where the river took a sharp bend just downstream from a large abandoned industrial compound. The shantytown ended about fifty yards from the shore, maybe to get some distance from the odor.
The older man worked his way along the rocks on the shore while the others watched from higher ground, until he shouted that he’d found the body. Frings could see the corpse’s outline in the moonlight, stuck on the bank and partially submerged in the current. She was clothed, and even with her thin dress matted up against her by the water, Frings could see she was too thin.
Until now, Frings had felt the urgency of the Uhuru Community’s plight and the risk he and Westermann were about to take. But this situation had had a vagueness as he thought it through. Seeing the body made everything concrete. His body tingled from the stress, even as his confidence in the choice he’d made strengthened. You are your deeds.
“I’m going down to have a look,” Westermann said. Frings and Washington caught the implication and hung back on the bank.
They watched Westermann conduct a closer examination of the body, following his progress as the flashlight beam made a circuit of the corpse, starting with her pale, fragile face, her eyes open, staring at the moon; then her thin arms—Westermann zeroing in on them, putting his face up close; then where the sodden dress lay plastered to her chest; and finally her legs and bare feet. There wasn’t much to the dress; probably a pro, Frings thought.
He leaned toward Washington, eyes still on Westermann and the body. “What does Father Womé have to say about this?”
When no reply came, Frings turned to face Washington. “Doesn’t he know?”
Washington kept his eyes on Westermann below them. “It’s complicated, but, no, he doesn’t know.”
Frings shook his head at this piece of subterfuge. He could pick out a faint orange glow to the east; the first hint of sunrise. He reached into his pocket and pulled a cigarette pack from his jacket and tapped out a reefer. He lit it with a battered metal lighter, took a drag, and held it out to Washington.
“I don’t smoke.”
“I get migraines,” Frings said, feeling the need to explain, and this was technically true. Then: “Why is it complicated with Father Womé?”
“We’re at cross-purposes in many ways. He wants to create a separate Negro community. We want to create a separate Negro community. But the Father, his eyes are to heaven. We are trying to work here on earth.”
“But this is his community, right?”
Washington sighed. “It wouldn’t be here if it weren’t for the Father, no question. The thing is that he’s content to provide for his people and leave them to their own devices as long as they are free. What they do with that freedom …” Washington let the thought trail off. “But you can’t keep a community together that way. Not this kind, at least. There needs to be organization. Right now the Community needs to be protected from the City. That’s not what Womé does. He simply doesn’t understand or think about it. So, it’s complicated.”
Westermann climbed up from the rocks to join them. Frings stubbed the reefer out on the sole of his shoe and slipped the stub into his pocket.
Westermann caught the whiff of marijuana smoke as he climbed up the bank to Frings and Washington. He’d seen dozens of dead bodies and there was nothing particularly different about this one. She did have sores—maybe measles or something like that. He’d taken his time with the examination; thinking through the next move. The choice to move the body had been made. It was a career-ending decision if he was caught, but Frings could end his career—would end his career—if he didn’t. His real choices were how to move the body, and where.
“I can’t tell for sure, but my guess is she drowned. No blood, though that could have been washed away by the water. No wounds that I could see. But in the dark … a coroner really needs to take a look. It’s strange, though, she has these blisters. I didn’t want to touch them, but they’re all over her body. And she’s so thin. There’s something wrong with her. She’s sick. Or she was.”
Frings asked, “How’d she end up on the rocks?”
Westermann shook his head. “The river maybe? Washed up? Could be overland. Just park back there”—he nodded in the direction of the road, one hundred yards or so in the distance. “She can’t weigh ninety pounds.”
“What do you suggest we do?” Washington asked, his fingertips brushing his lips, his body hunched with exhaustion.
Westermann looked downstream. “Easiest thing to do is push her back out into the river, see where she ends up. Just like she never washed up here in the first place, or maybe got pulled loose from the bank.” There wasn’t much of a crime scene down among the rocks. The current was continuously washing away any evidence, even of his own presence. He could just shove her back out into the river, “discover” her body wherever it ended up, and conduct the investigation from there. It wasn’t perfect, but it wasn’t terrible and had the benefit of being simple.
He looked at the two men. Washington seemed fatigued, Frings energized for some reason. “What do you think?”
Washington nodded, lost in thought.
Frings shrugged. “You’re the cop.”
This bothered Westermann, Frings putting all the responsibility on him when they were both complicit. He caught Frings’s eye and wondered if, maybe, this squared their debt.