Grip wore a straw fedora to keep the sun off his face as he and a hatless Morphy navigated the narrow passageways of the Uhuru Community. Grip was exhausted and sweating whiskey he’d downed just a few hours ago at Crippen’s, winding down from bracing Joey Stanic. Morphy seemed fresh, but his hair was damp with sweat.
Negro kids had been playing outside the shantytown entrance when they’d arrived. Young boys and girls engaged in some kind of tackling game with a ball made from a stuffed sack. The same two girls Grip had seen before stood in canary-yellow dresses with their cow, watching from a distance. The cow, Grip noticed, seemed to be putting on weight, though it was still thin through the back and shoulders. Grip waved to the two girls, but they didn’t wave back.
Grip and Morphy made their way to the shacks closest to the river, feeling their way along by a kind of dead reckoning. Kids ran past them, laughing, and women with bright scarves on their heads made way for them, keeping their eyes down. Morphy smiled and excuse-me’d and Grip, for once, let him do the talking. Grip eyed the symbols painted on the doors and walls: weird crosses, elaborate designs with triangles, ovals, stars, weird arcing lines, and, on some, tiny phalluses.
“You see these drawings?”
Morphy nodded.
“What do you think?”
“Weird island shit, I guess. Who knows?”
“Not much like that thing painted on the door back at Crippen’s.”
“Not much like that, what we’ve seen so far.”
“So far,” Grip echoed.
Grip was feeling sick from the combination of the heat and the alcohol still in his bloodstream. His hand rested on his gun as they moved along. He didn’t consider himself a racist. In fact, he reserved a special disgust for racists. But he had an idea of what America looked like and this wasn’t it.
He and Morphy were in plainclothes, but no one in the shanties mistook two crackers in suits for anything other than cops. They hadn’t run into any other white people and they attracted a lot of attention as they moved through the alleys. Older kids—teens—sometimes hurled taunts at them, playing courage games. Morphy and Grip ignored them, though Grip could see from Morphy’s tensed shoulders that he was becoming irritated.
“Let’s just get to the river side of the shanties,” Grip said, trying to keep Morphy’s mind on the objective.
Morphy grunted. They walked on.
They came to an intersection and saw, to their right, a group of five men, younger than Grip, standing in an alley, drinking from mason jars filled with some kind of cloudy liquid. The men caught sight of Morphy and Grip and their conversation stopped, all attention on the two cops.
“Let’s go, Morph. We aren’t going to accomplish anything here.”
Morphy stared back at the group.
“Come on.” Grip grabbed Morphy’s arm and pulled him down the alley away from the men. As they passed out of sight, Grip could hear the men’s laughter. He looked nervously at Morphy, whose face was impassive.
They walked to the next intersection and Morphy paused, surveying the paths of the alleys. “Wait here.”
“Come on, Morph, let’s not get sidetracked.”
But Morphy was already headed down a perpendicular alley, intending, Grip had no doubt, to come up on the group of men from behind. Grip found a spot in the shade. He leaned back against a tin wall but it began to buckle under his weight and he stood straight.
Grip waited, expecting to hear yelling or a scuffle or some other Morphyinitiated mayhem. Instead, Morphy appeared back in the alley he had walked down. He looked pissed off, but that wasn’t unusual.
“What the hell?” Grip walked over to meet him. “I didn’t hear anything.”
Morphy frowned. “I didn’t do anything.”
“You go soft all of a sudden?”
“I was going to start a little fire in one of their shacks.”
“You set one of those things on fire, the whole place is liable to burn down. So I didn’t.”
“But you know you could have. If you’d decided to.”
“Yep.”
“Maybe you’re not going to rot in hell.”
Morphy shrugged. “Let’s go.”
They happened upon the Square by accident, suddenly walking out into it, surprised at the expanse after the cramped alleys. A half dozen men, mostly old, sat in chairs arranged in a rough circle, passing a pipe. A younger guy sat with them, plucking quietly on a guitar with his fingers and playing a slide over the frets. Grip thought he recognized the guitar player from the street fight the previous night. He filed it away, unsure of its significance.
The smell of marijuana wafted slowly toward Grip and Morphy in the stagnant air. Grip snorted. Morphy elbowed him and pointed to a dark patch, maybe two feet in diameter, in the middle of the square.
“What’s that?”
They approached the spot and the old men stopped passing the pipe to watch in silence. Morphy flashed them a broad smile and got down on a knee while Grip watched. Morphy stirred the discolored dirt a little with his finger, pulled it up stained with rust-colored residue.
Grip narrowed his eyes. “Blood?”
Morphy frowned. “Could be.” He turned to the group of men. “Excuse me. Any of you gentlemen know what made this stain here?”
The men looked at each other, communicating something with their redrimmed eyes. An old-timer with a patch over one eye spoke. “That’s blood right there.”
“Blood?”
“That’s right. From the meeting last night. Blood.”
Grip and Morphy exchanged a look. Morphy asked, “Whose blood?”
“Got no name, so far’s I know.”
“No name?”
“I don’t know how you do, but the people down here don’t often name our roosters.” The man with the patch kept a straight face but the other men broke up in laughter. Morphy, too, laughed.
“Jesus Christ,” Grip said, shaking his head.
They stood and strode over to the circle of men. One of them was making a cock-a-doodle-doo sound, to everyone’s amusement.
Grip spoke. “You gentleman hear about the girl’s body they found two days ago down at the riverbank?”
The men quieted down, exchanging glances, noncommittal. The pipe made the rounds again.
“You see a white girl around here two days ago?”
There was a collective shaking of heads, the men avoiding eye contact. The guitar player seemed to be ignoring them, focusing on the guitar and, when it came around to him, the pipe.
“How about a week or so ago—another white girl?”
The geezer with the patch seemed to be their spokesman. “No, sir. Just like we told those boys come round the other day. No white woman been through here for months, save Mrs. Bierhoff, and since we seen her yesterday, I’m pretty sure it wasn’t her body they found on them rocks.”
Morphy asked, “Who’s Mrs. Bierhoff?”
“She’s a girl, works with us. Helps out in the Community.”
Grip shook his head. “Carla Bierhoff?”
“That’s right.”
Grip turned to Morphy. “She’s Red.”
Morphy nodded, not thinking this was as important as Grip did. “So you all don’t know anything about this girl who they found on the riverbank?”
The man with the patch shook his head. “I was you, I’d ask those men go fishing down at the riverbank. Anyone know about it, it’d be them.”
“Where’re they?” Grip asked.
The man with the patch recoiled as if it were the dumbest-ass question he’d ever heard. “Riverbank. Where else?”
They didn’t follow the same path out, getting off track almost instantly in the seemingly identical alleyways. Grip noticed different kinds of graffiti on the doors of some places, more representational, like the skull and hat, but not that exact design; elongated brown faces with eerie, liquid eyes; crimson hearts that seemed to vibrate where they were painted against the wood; bearded men with three-horned hair and halos. The torrid air seemed to impede him, the tin reflecting the sunlight into the alleys, washing out the colors. The scents of marijuana smoke, sweat, and spices inundated him as they walked. He was getting shaky, not sure how to get out of the maze, bile rising into his mouth, the acid taste of whiskey coming up from his stomach.
“You know where we’re going?” Grip asked, his voice pitched high as it came out, sounding to him as if someone else were speaking—someone far off.
“Hmm?” Morphy asked.
“You know how we’re going to get out?”
“Yeah.” Morphy sounded distracted.
Grip’s heart pounded. Kids ran past laughing, voices echoing off the close walls; women watched silently with suspicious eyes from inside their shacks. Morphy made turns seemingly at random, Grip following close behind, fearful of getting separated; the two of them silent. Morphy seemed to be walking faster. Grip had to take a skip every third step to keep up. His vision tunneled.
The exit came upon them out of nowhere, a rectangle of green and brown and the distant skyline. Grip followed Morphy into the open, sweat pouring down his face and soaking his shirt.
“Jesus.” He looked at Morphy, who was smiling, but not very convincingly.