Chapter 7

Nigger go home read the banner flapping above the head of the Exalted Cyclops, and it seemed indeed to be the entire burden of his speech.

'Because I'm telling yaw that while the whiteman was building the cathedrals of Europe and discovering America and I don't know what-all, them lazy nigras was living in grass huts and eating each other, yessir, that's what the anthro-pol-igists say. And now they're asking for Civil Rights! Civil Rights! Why, I bet they don't even know the difference between civil rights and civil lefts!'

The Exalted Cyclops paused for the laughter that was customary at this point, but there was none forthcoming. He scowled, and in the harsh glow of the automobile headlights his hawkish face resembled more than ever the rude handicraft of some benighted aborigine, hacked from a stump of wood, the abhorred and potent image to which the tribe would address its prayers.

For a moment it was so still that Owen Gann, at the edge of the crowd of Klansmen, could hear the hum of the insects and the wind rustling the young tobacco leaves out there in the blessed darkness. Darkness and quiet, an end to this drear, too-often-declaimed speech—that was all that Owen or any of them wanted now. And yet there was a part of him, he knew, that wanted to stay here with the others and listen—and not just for the sake of duty, but because that part of Owen Gann agreed with the Exalted Cyclops.

'We have just begun, brothers, we have just begun to show them the whip—the way you got to show the whip to a mean cur, and believe you me when he sees that we mean business we shall overcome.' The Exalted Cyclops laughed—a short, predatory shree, which, like the cry of a hawk swooping down upon its prey, was modelled upon the death-scream of his intended victims. This time his audience joined in his laughter.

They were, however, wearing. The declared purpose of the meeting had been to congratulate them on their performance of the afternoon, when they had driven up and down the streets of Norfolk in partial regalia—minus only their hoodwinks, or hoods with eyeholes. But that could have been accomplished in five minutes or less, and the Exalted Cyclops had been going on the better part of an hour. He was, doubtless, electioneering.

'Now you all know who I am, and the office I'm running for, but just now I want you to think of me, not as Farron Stroud, then next sheriff of this great county, but as your Exalted Cyclops—and believe me when I say we've got our work cut out for us. We've got the whole damn Communist conspiracy to fight, because that's who's making the nigras rear up on their hindlegs and talk about Civil Rights. You don't think they'd git these notions on their own, no sir!—it's the Yankee agitators coming down here and stirring 'em to a fine froth. They say, "Hey boy, how'd you like to be just the same as white folks? How'd you like to git you some o' them white women, boy?" And let me tell you this—them black devils don't belong in this Land of the Free any more than do those Yankee Communists. The nigras was chained up and brung here and I say what's the matter with chainin' him up again and taking him back to Africa?'

The audience cheered quietly.

That day is a-comin' but we got to do certain things first. We need iron-clad lawmen, who ain't afraid to stand up for the principles this nation was founded on—One Nation Under God, yes-sir!—with white supremacy and justice for all! Now, as you probably know, I'm running for the office of sheriff. I'm not gonna abuse the privilege of my position as Exalted Cyclops to make a campaign speech, no, but I'll tell you this: there'll be no more arrests of white citizens who do their God-given duty when and if I'm elected. So if you want law and order and your rights as a white citizen protected, you'll vote for Farron Stroud. But if you want a lily-livered, niggerlovin', mammyjammin' sheriff you'll vote for my opponent. And that's about all I've got to say to you fellas tonight.'

The Exalted Cyclops stepped down from the platform, and now the Klansmen—some ninety-four strong—joined hands and repeated the Oath of Allegiance, bringing the Klonclave to an end. Every man gave the password to the inner guard, the Klarogo, and then to the outer guard, the Klaxton. They went to their cars, which had been parked in a ring so that their headlights could be used to illuminate the meeting.

Passing by a ten-year-old, copper-coloured Buick, Owen heard the closely related sounds of a car stalling and a man cursing.

'Need a shove?' Owen inquired.

That you, Owen Gann? That would be right friendly.'

Owen identified the nasal mountain voice as Peter Boggs's, a Kladd, or password boss, a recent recruit to the Den. Boggs was the only member of the Den, in fact, over whom Owen could claim seniority.

'I guess any battery could get wore down, what with ole Farron's speechifying,' Owen observed.

'Well, this one shouldn't. I haven't had it but twelve hours. Thought it was a real bargain at the time—seventy-five dollars, only. No fool like an old fool, is there?'

'Not unless he's a young one like me,' Owen said agreeably. He climbed the beer delivery truck he'd driven to the meeting and started it up. Coming up behind Boggs's Buick, he noticed that the old man had not yet bothered to get licence plates. For driving out in these country roads such things wouldn't so much matter. He pushed Boggs as far as the turnoff to County Road B, where he turned right, away from Norfolk instead of towards it.

Owen shook his head sadly. There was something about an old heap like that, the discrepancy between the wish and the fact, that made Owen Gann feel guilty, a traitor to his own people.

For that they were his people he could no longer doubt. He had grown up among them, worked at the same unrewarding jobs, known the same youthful, foolish hopes and the growing desperation of an adolescence leading nowhere, felt the acid of poverty nibbling at his character. Oh, he was one of them, there was no denying it.

That he was now an agent of the F.B.I, seemed, at times, quite beside the point.

And so the question arose whether he must resign. Could he conscientiously inform on these men, whose cause he was not entirely sure was not his own? His sympathy did run deeper than these vague stirrings of class loyalty; he agreed with them. He didn't, by and large, like niggers; they were all of them potential criminals in Gann's eyes, and their 'non-violent' demonstrations seemed to have proved it. No, he didn't like niggers, but even less did he like the Yankee agitators coming down South and stirring up all the trouble. Owen knew for a fact that the Communists were mixed up in the Civil Rights protests, and it upset him that he couldn't be set to investigating them. He just didn't understand why the niggers weren't content to leave well enough alone; he would have been. And yet...

And yet he had worked for the Bureau faithfully for four years, ever since escaping from law school with his G.I. Bill-financed degree. To leave the Bureau now would be like losing a part of his own identity, perhaps the better part. He liked the work and did it well. He had received one commendation from the Chief for his bravery in capturing a convict escaped from Leavenworth. Most of all, there was a future there for Owen Gann—and almost nowhere else. A lawyer with the double liability of being honest and having no connections might as well resign himself to driving a beer delivery truck for the rest of his days; it pays better.

He would have liked to put off the decision (as he had twice before put off decisions about marrying, with the result that he was still single), but events seemed bent on not allowing him this easy way out. A massive Civil Rights demonstration was scheduled in Norfolk for the Fourth of July. Norfolk would seem the least likely city for a large protest: it was a large Navy base, and consequently the schools had been integrated in the early 'fifties, thanks to pressure from the base Command. The coloured population of Norfolk was allowed to vote in all elections, and they could go into any restaurant they wanted to and even expect good service in most of them. So what was all the fuss about?

Whatever it was, there promised to be a lot of fireworks that Fourth of July, because the Ku Klux Klan, not quite accidentally, was scheduling its own Norfolk rally that same day. Every Klansman in the Realm of Virginia was expected to attend what the newspapers had announced as 'a day of nonviolent resistance and reprisals'. The least imaginative reader could read between those lines, but as yet Owen's knowledge of what was in fact intended in the way of 'non-violent reprisals' had not advanced beyond the stage of suspicion. Tomorrow, Tuesday, at half past four in the afternoon, he had been asked to attend a smaller meeting at the Norfolk Klavern, at which the Grand Dragon of the Realm was to be present. Then, possibly, Owen would be in a position to ...

To be a Judas? Wasn't that it?

Next morning Owen Gann spent an unusually long time making the beer delivery to the bar and grill that occupied the ground floor of a three-story brick building with the rather grandiloquent title of Camelot Mansions. There, in a minimal office above the bar and grill, he handed his typed report to Agent Madding. As long as Owen remained on the Klan assignment he did not report to the official field office down town.

Madding was a slight, balding man with a professional attitude, which Owen envied him, of blithe anonymity. He seemed to approach his work as others would approach a crossword-puzzle—without any intention of intruding his own personality or concerns upon it. Owen admired the man's dispassion, but at times he could not help wondering what it had cost Madding—what fraction of his beliefs, his soul, his balls—to reach this present serenity. Was he as smooth within as without, all the thorny idiosyncrasies pared away so that there was nothing to snag against his duties? And if not, then was he no different from Owen? Wouldn't he perhaps strike Madding as the same sort of well-oiled automaton, rootless, ruthless, blank?

As a matter of fact, though Gann himself would never know it, such was not his superior's opinion. As he scanned the typed report, describing the uneventful week just past, Madding was engaged in his own speculation about Gann. The boy (though Gann was past thirty, he was still, by his style, a boy) wore a haggard, insomniac expression, not unsuitable for the role he played outside the walls of Camelot Mansions, but not at all the open, guileless face that had earned him, in law school and afterwards, the nickname 'Li'l Abner'. He was clothed in standard work clothes with the name of his employer stencilled on the back in a florid scrawl (not the F.B.I., but SPENGLER'S BEER). His arms and legs were too long for his overalls, but this did not make him seem gawky; rather it showed the ordinary dimensions of his uniform to be meagre. His nose was short and turned-up; his eyes, large, blue, and too close together; he could not speak without beginning to smile. Unless one had proof to the contrary, one would have supposed him to be very dumb. He was, like Madding, though in his own way, perfectly adapted to the role of an agent, but he was, in Madding's estimation, close to cracking. Madding didn't know why (motives didn't interest him); he just read the signs and thought it a pity—or, at least, a waste.

'Nothing more than this?' Madding asked, folding up the report.

'Later this afternoon I'm going to ...'

'Yes, I read that. Do you think you can find time meanwhile to do a bit of routine inquiry for us?' Madding delivered his orders so that one might have thought he was really in doubt whether Gann could find time.

'Oh, I guess it's possible,' Owen allowed.

'Good enough. It's a kidnapping case in Baltimore. Little girl, eleven years old, name of Raleigh. Here's her picture. It was taken only two months ago at her school. St. Arnobia's. Over near Charlottesville.'

'Pretty little thing.'

'I suppose she is. She was grabbed Saturday morning, so the statutory three days are over and we're on the case officially now.'

'And they think she's down here?'

'Nothing as definite as that. But the girl's uncle is a lawyer— and incidentally he's in charge of her trust fund—and he showed up Sunday at the Baltimore field office with a lawbook under his arm. Seems as if there was another kidnapping, back in '49, that was done almost the same way: a little girl, a large inheritance, and kidnapping the governess along with the girl to use her as a messenger.'

'So she must have given you a description of the man.'

'Only of the Negro chauffeur that's in on it. The girl was transferred to another car, a Buick, copper-coloured, '57 or thereabouts. The governess didn't see the driver of that car. We showed her Dorman's latest prison photos but she couldn't say one way or another. At least we know she isn't suggestible.'

'Dorman, I take it, was the man who pulled the '49 kidnapping.'

'Mm-hm. He got life sentence, which was commuted, and he was released less than a year ago.'

'It sounds more and more like he's the man.'

'Except that Dorman isn't dumb. There's more than one way to get an eleven-year-old girl into a car. Why should he repeat himself—right down to the detail of the Negro chauffeur? It's almost as though he'd signed a letter and mailed it to us. As a matter of fact, he's done that too.'

'Oh, come on!'

'Well, the parents received a typed threatening letter yesterday with a Norfolk postmark. And Norfolk is where he used to operate from.'

'Well, if it isn't him, then...'

Then someone is systematically laying a false trail. Whoever is doing it, even if it is Dorman, must know that we'll connect the two kidnappings. Even without the assistance of the girl's uncle. Though, admittedly, he got there first.'

'Could it be him, the uncle?'

The man's seventy, and he already has control of the trust fund. What motive could he have?' Madding, as has been noted, was not one to interest himself in questions of motive.

'What about the governess then. Since so much of the information comes from her...'

'The Baltimore police have messed that up. Hauled her off to jail, gave her the third degree when she was damn near hysterical already. Now she won't talk unless she's got her lawyer sitting beside her. Not that she's been un-co-operative. If the story that she's telling is true, then she's been a model witness. She even drew a pretty good picture of the chauffeur from memory.' Madding showed him a photostat of the drawing.

Owen's lips tightened. 'A nigger.'

Madding laughed. 'You'd make a great Klansman.' Owen blushed. He had forgotten Madding was a Yankee.

'As a matter of fact, so is she. Negro, that is. She also had the presence of mind to plant a clue on the kid that may make it easier to trace her. She gave her a first edition of Just-So Stories, which looks like a piece of junk but which is worth a couple of hundred dollars. It was a gift from the uncle. We've put ads in the newspapers up and down the coast and phoned bookstores, offering $400 if they've got the edition we want. With Luck, it'll be tossed into a garbage can and some scavenger will notice it.'

The threatening letter you mentioned—what was that about?'

They'd found out somehow—or guessed—that the girl's father had gone to the police, and they were making noises to frighten him. Nothing to be learned from the letter except the postmark and that whoever wrote it wasn't illiterate.'

'Are the parents going to pay the ransom?'

'Yes and no. It's not the parents' money, you see. Comes from the trust fund that the girl's maternal grandfather set up when he cut the parents out of his will. But the ransom is being paid. In fact, the girl's father is giving it to them today. The Baltimore office is keeping its eye on that operation, of course.' Madding smiled, the way a man will when he's itching to tell a very funny joke.

'How much?' Owen asked.

'A million dollars. Yes, I whistled too. But, to come back down to earth, your job will be to go around to these places...' Madding handed Owen a typed list, '... and find out the last time anyone there saw your good friend Harry Dorman.'

Owen looked at the names on the list—bars, cheap hotels, and ... 'What in God's name did Dorman have to do with the Green Pastures Funeral Home?'

'I thought you'd ask that,' Madding said. 'As it happens, Green Pastures is no longer what it once was. It has become a cathouse, and Dorman used to pimp for it.'

Owen grinned boyishly and rose to leave. 'Well, I suppose that's all of it for now, eh?'

'Not quite, Owen. Sit down. Before you go, I'd like to tell you a dirty story...'