A Dangerous Road: A Smokey Dalton Novel Read online

  Time and date of birth were duly noted. Laura Anne Hathaway was the name on the birth certificate, daughter of Dora Jean and Earl Ray Hathaway. The attending physician was named Beaumont Calhoun. The certificate was issued from Birmingham in Jefferson County, Alabama.

  I stared at that for a moment. A retyped copy, which so many birth certificates were, told me nothing.

  “When did you lose your original birth certificate?” I asked her.

  Laura turned her head slightly. “I never did.”

  “Then who requested this copy?”

  “How do you know it’s a copy?”

  “I don’t for sure. But originals usually have infant footprints on them or near them. Parents usually kept that sort of thing.”

  She walked up to the window beside me. “It’s the only certificate I’ve ever seen.”

  “And you’re certain your parents were passing through?”

  “That’s what my mother said.”

  “That’s interesting,” I said.

  She peered over my shoulder. “What are you seeing?”

  “Note the line next to the attending physician’s name.”

  “Yes?”

  “It’s blank.”

  “So?”

  “What hospital were you born in?”

  “St. Mary of Mercy.”

  “There is no St. Mary of Mercy Hospital in Birmingham. There has never been one.”

  I could feel her stiffen beside me. “You’re sure?”

  “Positive.”

  “How do you know that?”

  “I found out yesterday, just like you asked me to do.” I tapped the certificate with my left forefinger. “That blank line, it’s for the hospital’s name. Now, not having the line filled out is pretty common for 1939. Most folks, especially in the South, still preferred home births, often with the family doctor attending. But your mother said she was traveling through, and I doubt any doctor would come to a hotel room. I’m pretty sure he’d insist on having a traveling woman come to his hospital.”

  “You get all of that from a blank line?”

  “And the wrong hospital name. And the fact that your folks were pretty secretive about their family.”

  “You think I was born at home in Birmingham, and then my parents left?”

  “It’s a start,” I said. “It gives me a direction.”

  I handed the certificate to her and sat down in my chair. She remained standing, staring at the document she had seen all her life as if it had suddenly grown legs.

  “Why wouldn’t she have told me?”

  “There could be a thousand reasons, Laura.” I had been looking through the envelope she had given me. I stopped. “You’ll have to be ready for anything, you know.”

  “I am ready,” she said, but her voice shook.

  This was my opportunity. I hadn’t expected it so soon. “All right, let’s test your resolve.”

  She raised her chin. Her lower lip trembled. She bit it to hold it in place.

  “In early 1960, I received an anonymous cash payment of ten thousand dollars.”

  She let out a small breath.

  “I was never able to find out who sent it or why. The attorney who dispersed the money wouldn’t tell me where it came from, of course, but he did receive a phone call from your detective last week.”

  Her skin had gone so pale that she seemed to have no blood in it at all. “You think my mother sent it?”

  I nodded.

  “Why?”

  “Hadn’t your father just died?”

  “Oh.” She sat on the chair across from me so hard that it nearly scooted out from underneath her.

  “In all these photographs,” I said, “your mother looks haunted, somehow, as if she were afraid of something or resigned to it. Do you know what that is?”

  She shook her head. “You think they did something criminal, don’t you?”

  “I think it’s likely, but I’m not sure.” And then I said softly, “We can stop here, if you want.”

  She licked her lower lip. “How is all of this related to my messed-up birth certificate?”

  “I don’t know yet,” I said. “You know that the word in Chicago was that your father worked with the mob.”

  “It’s a lie,” she said.

  “Is it?” I let the words hang between us for a moment, and then I said, “These are the sorts of things you’re going to have to look at, Laura. What you may learn may be innocuous—a family feud that led your parents to build a new life in Chicago—or it might be ugly. What if your father had been in prison?”

  “He never—”

  “What if, Laura?”

  She looked down at her manicured hands. She didn’t answer me for a long time.

  “Laura?”

  She raised her head. The color was back in her cheeks. “You warned me,” she said. “You can stop now.”

  “I want to make sure you understand—”

  “Oh, I understand,” she said. “And I’m ready to know.”

  I hoped she was. Because the person she would blame if she didn’t like what she learned wouldn’t be herself or her dead parents. It would be me.

  “All right,” I said, dismissing her. “Bring me the other boxes when you get them. And I’ll let you know when I have anything.”

  But I had a funny feeling that wouldn’t be any time soon.

  * * *

  After she left, I picked up the phone and dialed the operator in Birmingham, Alabama. These were the times I thanked every god I could think of for my education. I could sound whiter than Bobby Kennedy if I really wanted to.

  When the operator came on the line, I asked for Beaumont Calhoun out of Birmingham, then I clarified: Dr. Beaumont Calhoun.

  “There’s no professional listin’,” the operator said. “But I have a Dr. and Mrs. Beaumont Calhoun.”

  “That’ll do,” I said, and waited while she read me the number. Frankly I wasn’t surprised that there wasn’t a professional listing for Beaumont Calhoun. The man would have had to have been a very young doctor in 1939 to still be practicing—although some doctors continued to work until they died. But I wasn’t surprised at the personal listing. Doctors were stable creatures; they remained in their communities from the day they settled there.

  I dialed the Calhoun number, not really expecting an answer in the middle of the day. I figured I would have to call back later in the evening, after the errands were run, but before the important social events—if there were any in Birmingham—began.

  The answer, on the third ring, startled me. A woman’s voice with an accent I recognized—the one that identified her as black, the one I was trying to avoid—answered the phone with “Calhoun Residence.”

  “Doctor Calhoun, please,” I said, knowing on the one hand that no self-respecting white man would have a conversation with the maid, and feeling embarrassed at my own brusqueness on the other.

  “Ah—jes a minute.” Without giving me a chance to say anything else, the woman set the phone down. I heard her footsteps as she walked away, so crisp that I knew she had to be walking on a wooden floor—probably one she polished daily—and then the murmur of voices—female voices—in the background.

  Footsteps came back to the phone, slower footsteps, with a bit of uncertainty in the sound.

  “This is Mrs. Calhoun,” a deep, rich voice with patrician southern accents said to me.

  “I’m sorry, Mrs. Calhoun,” I said, “I was calling for the doctor.”

  “The doctor’s been dead nigh these past fifteen years.” She spoke with a dryness that suggested she fielded these requests often.

  I hadn’t prepared for this contingency. I simply decided to move ahead. “My name is—Billy—Dalton. I am—investigating a case for a client from Chicago, and I was hoping to get some information from your husband.”

  “Well now, Mr. Dalton,” she said. “You don’t sound like you’re from Chicago.”

  “I’m from Memphis, ma’am.”

&n
bsp; “Memphis, Lordy. That’s some distance too.”

  “Yes, ma’am.”

  “And you’re working for a Chicago man?”

  I decided not to correct her. “Yes, ma’am.”

  “Whatever could my husband have done with someone from Chicago?”

  “I have a birth certificate, which your husband signed. It seems a bit odd to me as there is no hospital listed.”

  “My husband believed in helping women in their home, Mr. Dalton,” Mrs. Calhoun said archly. “Although most doctors don’t do that anymore.”

  “Perhaps you can help me then,” I said. “I’m dealing with some contradictory information in this case. I was wondering if I might have access to your husband’s records in this birth to help me sort things out.”

  “Such records are confidential, Mr. Dalton, even now.”

  “I understand, Mrs. Calhoun, but it is the now-grown child on the birth certificate who is requesting the information.”

  “That sounds a mite strange, Mr. Dalton. If he wants the information, why doesn’t he contact me himself?”

  I suppressed a sigh. “Because this is just one detail in an on-going case, ma’am.”

  “Well, I couldn’t answer any questions over the phone, no matter who was callin’ and why. It’s not right. I wouldn’t know if you are who you say you are.”

  I gripped the receiver tightly. The last thing I wanted to do was go to Birmingham, Alabama, and try to get some information out of a white doctor’s wife. I’d do it, and I’d find a way to make it work, but I certainly didn’t want to.

  “I understand,” I said. “But my client really doesn’t want to come to Birmingham. I’d have to be the one—”

  “Mercy, there’s no need for that,” Mrs. Calhoun said. “Just have him send me a letter making a request for his files. That’ll keep everything confidential, just as the doctor would have wanted it. It’ll still take me some time to get to the information, of course. We don’t keep it here. It’s in storage, and I’ll need to send a man to get it…”

  Finally I understood what she was about. Old Doctor Calhoun apparently hadn’t provided well enough for retirement. “I forgot to ask,” I said, working to make sure I sounded polite. “Is there a fee for this type of thing?”

  “It’s a token,” she said. “Fifty dollars covers my man and the expense of sending the file.”

  It was an outrageous sum and we both knew it. “Forgive me, ma’am,” I said, “but I thought the standard fee for something like this was twenty-five dollars.”

  “Oh it is,” she said, her voice fluting slightly, as if discussing money made her happy. “But that’s for a working office. Since my husband is gone these past fifteen years, there’s extra effort in gaining the information.”

  In other words, she wouldn’t budge. I supposed it could have been worse; she could have said the files were destroyed. In fact, she probably still could, after cashing our fifty-dollar check.

  “The records are intact?” I asked.

  “Oh, yes,” she said. “The doctor never threw anything out.”

  I had that much at least. “Well, then. I’ll have my client write to you and we’ll send a check for the information. May I have your address?”

  She gave it to me. As I knew almost nothing about Birmingham—having learned long ago to avoid that place—I had no idea if she lived in a good neighborhood or not. I promised to send the letter and the money, and thanked her for her prompt response.

  I hung up and put my head in my hands. I had expected a quick and easy phone call on this, not an elaborate game that an elderly woman seemed to like playing with her husband’s former clients. But, as I had noted before, our communities were different. No black doctor in Memphis would charge for that sort of information—at least not one his former patients.

  I made notes about the conversation, typed up a letter for Laura to sign, and then set it on my desk along with a check, ready to go.

  I put Laura’s personal papers in the small cast-iron safe that I used for important things. The safe was hidden by a haphazardly built wooden frame—something I put together to make it look as if there was nothing of value in my office. The safe itself was bolted to the floor and was too heavy for one man to lift alone, but I didn’t believe in taking chances. Over the years, my office had been tossed five times, and no one had ever found the safe. I figured her belongings would be fine there.

  Then I went outside. As I crossed the sidewalk to my car, I saw Joe in Handy Park. He wore his leather jacket and was smoking a cigarette. Two men I didn’t recognize were talking earnestly with him. Jimmy was sitting cross-legged beneath the statue of W.C. Handy, his back to Joe. Jimmy had a pile of schoolbooks on his lap—too many to be his. One was open, but he wasn’t looking at it. He was staring at the street as if he could wanted someone, something, to save him.

  I started to cross the street, but he saw me and shook his head slightly. He didn’t want me to come there. I held up a finger, silently asking him to stay, then I went back to my office and got the pea coat.

  By the time I came back down the stairs, Jimmy and Joe were gone. I stared at the park for a moment, as if I could make them magically appear, but they didn’t.

  After a moment, I put the coat in my car, and wished, not for the first time, that good intentions made life easier.

  EIGHT

  A PHONE CALL WHEN I ARRIVED at my office the next morning took me away from Laura’s case for the day. I freelanced for several attorneys, and one of them needed me to act as a process server for him on a critical case. I spent all of the morning and most of the afternoon tracking down a day laborer so that I could receive the most vituperative dressing down I’d received in weeks. I went back to the office, typed up my bill, and served that to the attorney before I went home for the evening.

  I also called Roscoe Miller and asked him to meet me at Club Handy the following night. I still hadn’t figured out a way around Henry’s request to do security, but I figured Roscoe could help me.

  I didn’t see Jimmy that day, but I did call the school. He was there. I dropped off the coat and asked the office secretary to make certain he got it. She promised that she would.

  The next day, Friday, the first of March, Laura came to my office with the boxes. She wore a short rabbit fur jacket and blue jeans and had her hair long with no styling at all. She carried a crocheted purse. If anything, her style was a bit too hip for a white person on Beale, but someone probably would think her one of the many musicians who came to town and not give her a second glance.

  At least, that was what I hoped.

  After she set the boxes down, she closed the door, took off the rabbit fur, and hung it on the coat rack. Underneath, she wore a tight ribbed turtleneck and no bra. I made my gaze move toward the boxes.

  “I’m helping you,” she said.

  “I see that.” I didn’t get up from my desk. Instead, I shoved the letter forward. “Sign this.”

  She came forward, her kid boots leaving damp prints on the marble floor. She bent over the letter, read it, then frowned and looked at me.

  “What’s this?”

  I explained my phone conversation with the doctor’s wife.

  “What do you hope to find?” she asked.

  “Something in the records that might tell us more about your parents.”

  “But fifty dollars, isn’t that unreasonable?”

  I made myself smile. “Very. I tried to talk her down.”

  “Maybe I should call her.”

  I shrugged. “I get the sense that the harder we try, the more she’ll up her price.”

  “Why would she do that? She’s a doctor’s wife. She doesn’t need the money.”

  “We don’t know that.” I took a ballpoint out of my top desk drawer. The pen was slender and blue. I’d already tossed out a number like it. They tended to leak. I set it on top of the letter. “A lot of doctors, particularly white southern doctors, worked in parts of town that they would n
ever admit to if they were dealing with whites.”

  “But you’re black.”

  “I didn’t tell her that. She lives in Birmingham.”

  “Oh,” Laura said, a slight flush rising in her cheeks.

  Everyone had seen the rioting in Birmingham five years ago. The televised images of police dogs going after teenagers, and black folks getting knocked over by high pressure hoses stayed with everyone who saw them. I knew people who lived in Birmingham, and they said it had its good points. I just didn’t want to find out.

  “Will she send you the right information?” Laura asked.

  “Or any information for that matter,” I said. “That’s the $64,000 question.”

  She frowned. “This doesn’t seem very efficient to me. I mean, if she doesn’t, we’re out fifty dollars.”

  I smiled. “If she doesn’t, we send you down there in your prom girl get-up and have her look it up while you’re there.”

  She wiped her hands nervously over the front of her jeans. “You think that’ll work?”

  I nodded. “And I have other ideas if it doesn’t.”

  Although I didn’t want to pursue them. I figured I would probably have to make a trip to Birmingham, which I wasn’t too thrilled about. But I wanted to postpone that trip as long as I could.

  “Well, then,” she said, and bent over to sign the letter. Her breasts moved independently of each other as she did so, and I felt a sudden surprising desire to touch her.

  I stood and turned toward the grimy window. She’s a client, I reminded myself, and clasped my hands tightly behind my back.

  “You know, Smokey,” she said, “I think it might be better if I send a check directly. Having one from your agency looks a bit suspicious, don’t you agree?”

  I turned. Her hair was swinging slightly against her face, her cheeks were still flushed, and her body was too sharply defined in that outfit. She was beautiful in a way I hadn’t noticed before, a way that actually appealed to me.