Those Bones Are Not My Child (46 page)

John Feegal of the Fulton County Medical Examiner’s Office was asked by a young reporter in a loosened tie if metal fragments indicative of a bomb blast had been noted in the wounds of the deceased. Feegal explained that he couldn’t comment on that yet with certainty, but said he predicted that none would be found.

“I guess we all heard that,” Lafayette said, as the others groaned, then dragged themselves toward the quilt Speaker and Gaston had spread in the middle of McClintock’s office. Lafayette turned from the TV set to open the office door for his cohorts returned with the food.

“Well,” Mac said, “are we all assembled at last?”

Since two o’clock, when Spence had asked for the use of Mac’s office for a strategy session, people had been coming and going—out to Cobb County, down to the Task Force, over to STOP, then to North Druid Hills to pick up Teo and Beemer, then out to the secretary to have their depositions typed, then downstairs to the notary, then out again to the store to pick up batteries and tapes, then off to meet with members of the citywide Tenants’ Association. Now that the food had arrived, there seemed to be little time left to make plans for the evening meeting. But perhaps, Mac thought, they didn’t require a discussion leader and an organized list of goals and objectives. They seemed to think they were ready, so maybe he’d simply missed the beat of their style. He had a few comments to make about the dangerous mind-set of the gathering and of the city, but he kept them to himself; earlier, Mason had up-braided him: “You’ll never change, Mac—always offering psychological solutions to political problems.” So Mac accepted a plate of chicken wings and potatoes and sat down with the others, his desk taken over by children.

“You know those mugs ain’t gonna confirm the phone calls made to the police this morning,” Dave broke the silence. He hooked his arm around the tobacco jars on the counselor’s shelves, not trusting himself to join the circle. If someone put up an argument or squirted ketchup on him, he’d boil over. “In fact, they ain’t gonna do a damn thing but cool us out. A bunch of pussies.”

“Is that your idea of a curse?” Leah snapped, handing the children their plates as they made bubble eyes at each other.

Dave muttered then busied himself reading the labeled cassettes on the lower shelves—Bud Powell, Roy Ayers, the Chicago Art Ensemble, Betty Bebop Carter—there was more to McClintock than met the eye, Dave was thinking, trying to think of anything other than what he was thinking, fingering the tightly laced shoe in his pocket, a little Buster Brown shoe he’d stumbled over in the yard of A. D. Williams Elementary. He was thinking of Jackson’s reduction of the massacre to a five-word fraud: nothing but a tragic accident. The police-media insistence: no connection to the Missing and Murdered case. The cops in the school hallway—shoptalk: full-moon killings, payday brawls, holiday suicides—while he was demanding an evacuation. No need, they told him, calm down, negative report from the bomb squads, it’s over. Over, all but the dying. Signing out at the office, he’d walked in on three coworkers. The shoebox on the table with the bills lying in it. The squares of paper with numbers printed on them. Caught, they copped a plea. Not satisfied with the office football pool, they’d turned the case into a goddamn lottery. More than the Boston Strangler? More than Son of Sam? Or the Zodiac Killer? Would the body count top the Gacy thirty-three, the Texas nineteen? Dave was now on suspension and facing assault charges too. He set the Buster Brown shoe down hard on the shelf and the tobacco jars shook.

Kenti scooted onto the quilt to watch Unca Dave from the sanctuary of her mama’s lap. Spence and Zala exchanged a glance. All morning they’d hoped the same thing; then, no one handcuffed, had feared the same thing; that after the eighty-two children and eight workers were counted, someone would announce that other bodies had been found in the debris. Older than infants, younger than adults … Zala had been wondering where a set of Sonny’s medical papers were when Leah left to help transport the wounded, leaving her with the task of recording. Spence had been keeping one eye on Slick, the other eye roaming the rubble for familiar clothing, when Dave jumped the barrier to tell him other schools had been targeted. Kofi set his plate down between Spence and Beemer. And his parents exchanged another look—would the police move before the culprits left the city or left the country? Dave had expressed his doubts. The Spencers watched him riffling the no longer neat rows of tapes.

Tormé, Mose Allison, Diana Ross, Dionne … but where was Nina, Nina the Nasty, the Black Sorceress? Dave grimaced a smile at the
memory of the 1968 concert at the Atlanta Stadium—Nina, Miles, Cannonball. Thousands come to hear Nina give the word—Tear the sucker down. It would’ve been done. So after that, it was called the Kool so-called Jazz Festival. And tonight it would be more of the same. Cool out. Where was it? he questioned himself. A campus in Florida. He and Norma had driven down to hear Nina. She told the audience slyly that the bookers had begged her not to get “militant,” not to sing inflammatory songs. Then she laughed and held up the check, striding across the stage waving it. The suckers had paid her already. Riiiight, the crowd roared. “Mississippi Goddamn!” “Pirate Jenny.” She looked out from the keyboard toward the administration building, singing, “I don’t expect to see it standing in the morning.” Nina. Nina.

Dave unlaced the little shoe. Tonight there’d be filibustering windbags, go-slow knee-benders, agents, hymn singers. But no Nina. “Alabama, Georgia too, but Mississippi, goddamn!” Atlanta needs ya, Nina. “Asking me, kill them now or later …” Riiight. “I’m counting your heads as I’m making the beds.” A Buster Brown shoe. He should find the parents, but what could he say? What if someone came knocking at his door with his son’s shoe? What if Norma rang up from wherever she’d gone to, taking their son with her, leaving no clue first of why, and told him that all that was left of David Morris Jr. was a goddamn shoe?

“We should get there early,” Spence said to no one in particular.

Leah tossed Speaker a clean tape and got up to get confirmation that reliable Black media would attend the meeting.

“What’s the matter with your phone, brother?” She held it toward Mac; maybe he was familiar with the odd sound.

“We’ve got several electronic wizards in the neighborhood,” Mac smiled, glad for a chance to smile about something. “One kid—course he’s hardly a kid anymore—used to run a radio station around here. He had such powerful equipment, he’d come through the stereo, the radio, and the UHF channels. Sometimes, all I could get on the phone were the police calls he monitored.”

Leah looked at the phone with interest while the others urged Mac to locate the operator in case he’d heard something that morning that wasn’t public yet.

“Well, he doesn’t broadcast anymore,” Mac explained, but he
reached for his Rolodex anyway. “Wayne Williams, you know him?” he asked Speaker, who’d been preparing notes for the WCLK and WRFG community broadcasts. “I think you know his father,” Mac said to Zala. “Homer Williams, the photographer.”

Zala nodded. “He covered some of the children’s funerals.”

“Did he cover the rally a few weeks ago?” Mason asked. “It might be interesting to see who was there.”

“And who wasn’t,” Leah added.

“Mayor wasn’t. Lee Brown either.”

“A green-light invitation to the killers,” Lafayette said.

“I don’t know that we fully appreciate the situation the administration is faced with,” Mac quickly inserted before the group tuned up to rehash opinions. He glanced toward Mason, but he’d gotten up to show Kofi how to wield the nunchaku sticks. Teo gave Mac an encouraging look, and Mason turned around. So though Speaker excused himself to retire to a quiet corner, some people seemed predisposed to hear Mac out.

“What we should be asking is this.” His back to the circle, Speaker spoke quietly into the mike. “Whenever a crisis strikes a foreign nation, be it ally or archenemy of the U.S., the State Department pulls a team of experts together to map out the U.S. response to that crisis. Where is Big Brother now, good people? Has Mayor Jackson asked the State Department to respond to the domestic crisis in Atlanta? Four preschool children and a teacher were killed today in an explosion. Scores of others were injured. In the context of what has been going on in this city since the summer of 1979, that explosion today at the Bowen Homes Day Care Center warrants a full investigation. In the past year and four months, at least fifteen other children have been kidnapped and many of them murdered. City Hall says there’s no connection. We’re being told that the explosion this morning should not be viewed in the context of what is happening nationally to Black people—physically, economically, and politically. That argument is a con text. Wake up, Africans. Check it out. War’s been declared again.

“And we know it will get worse if Reagan’s elected and the full force of the right wing is unleashed. You heard Ronnie down there in Mississippi talking states’ rights. Wake up, people! The explosion today, so hastily labeled an accident, and the children who’ve been dying through no accident but through murder, tell us this—it is time we
moved on Malcolm’s recommendation of nearly twenty years ago, and go to the UN once again, this time ten times the number as last year. We’ve a crisis on our hands, African people!”

Speaker was about to punch the pause button to find his place in the notes, but the next idea came in a rush. “What’s the Intelligence Division doing? The Atlanta special investigation unit set up in the sixties to keep an eye on you know who. The unit that provides security for visiting diplomats, the Pope, and international figures whose safety must be guaranteed. The special intelligence unit mandated to infiltrate any clandestine groups that threaten the security and well-being of America. What are they doing about these kidnappings, these murders, this explosion? When last we heard from this special intelligence unit, it was in 1979, when the infamous billboard went up opposite the Omni. Put up in plain view as an attack on the Black administration. The unit was asked to investigate the billboard’s origins. The then head of SPS said it was “distasteful” to be investigating a noncriminal matter. “Distasteful.” “Noncriminal.” If security and well-being were taken seriously, any overt and covert act of racism would be a felony, an antisocial crime. Wake up, Africans!

“What else has the SPS been doing? In 1974 they broke the case of the kidnapping of Reg Murphy, then editor of the
Atlanta Constitution
. Fine. Why haven’t they been called in by the special Emergency Task Force to Investigate Missing and Murdered Children? And called in to investigate the bombing this morning? We know why. Can we get justice in Babylon? Mobilize, people. Organize. It is time to take our case back to the UN, thirty million strong.”

From the backseat, Kofi leaned over Spence’s shoulder.

“What if the mayor and the chief and them know who’s killing but can’t arrest them ’cause they’re cops?”

“You can lock up cops cancha, Daddy? Betchu the mayor can.”

“We need to stop for more tapes,” Zala said.

“And cookies.”

“But what if it’s the police doing the killing? Can cops lock up other cops?”

“Give it a rest, Kofi.”

“Well, I gotta know, Ma. You always saying to ask if you wanna
know something, so I’m asking. Say like a bunch of cops and them Kluxers are killing the kids, would the mayor be scared to say so? He’s the head of the city, ain’t he? He’s the boss of all the police and the fire department and the water company, so what would he do?”

“What would you do?”

“I’d get on TV and tell everybody, that’s what I’d do.”

“Then they’d come and shoot you. And some cookies, Daddy.”

“Kenti, you just ate.”

“Not cookies, Mama. Didn’t have no cookies or nothing.”

“Well, then, I’d write down everything I know and make lots of copies to send to the newspapers. And I’d put a set of them papers in my safety-deposit box in case they get me.”

“What safe-deposit box? You don’t have no safe-deposit box. You hear him?”

“Would you shut up. That’s what I’d do, Dad. Dad? Hey, Daddy, you think maybe the mayor and them know? They got to know, don’t they? So maybe they waiting till everybody gets organized like you said, you know, to back ’em up and everything.”

“Could be, Kofi.”

“Is that what you think? Dad?”

“I want me some cookies and some choc’late milk. Choc’late milk is good for you, right?”

“If I knew who it was, Dad, I’d write everything down while the people are getting organized. Then I’d send the information to the newspaper and the TV and the radio. But then … what if …” Kofi dug his fingers in Zala’s shoulder. “But, Ma, you remember what happened in that picture
Three Days of the Condor?
What if it went down like that? ’Member in the end when the main guy is talking with the other guy, the one with the wig on his head like a rug, and he says he’s going to take the information upstairs to the newspapers and the wig guy says, ‘What makes you think they’ll print it?’? It could go like that, hunh? Whatchu think? Can’t you pay ’em to make ’em print the story? Does it cost a lot of money?”

“There’s a store, Daddy.”

“Kenti, we’re trying to get to the meeting. We’ll go for dessert after, all right?”

“Will somebody answer me! Dad? What if it was you? Would you hide out in one of them embassies and ask for protection? Then maybe
they’d give you a bodyguard to get you on TV without getting shot. But maybe the TV people would be scared to give you a mike ’cause the killers sent them a threat note. But then maybe the mayor and them could call up the TV to let you talk. Wouldn’t they have to do it if the mayor told ’em to?”

“If you had a gun, they would,” Kenti said. “I’d take Baldy Bean with me if I was you, Baldy Bean and the Kung Fu Man, that’s what. Daddy got a gun.”

“Dad—”

“Actually, Kofi, the idea of asking an African nation for asylum is swift. It would attract media attention. So under protection, you could hold a press conference once the forces got themselves together. It’s a good idea,” Spence added, hoping that would cap it. But his son’s breath was still hot on his neck.