“Come in.”
It was a small room, barely large enough for the junk-piled desk and folding chairs propped up next to the door. Not a captain’s office at all.
Fogherty had a full mane of silver hair and drooping eyelids that were sad and smiling at the same time. His skin was darkish but not by race, or the sun. He had the look of a duskto dawn drinker; whiskey without a mixer if my imagination was correct. He wore no wedding band and his white shirt was too wrinkled, even for a cop, with one too many stains poking out from underneath his brown jacket. He looked up at us with a smile that could have been a mourner’s valiant attempt to console a bereaved widow.
“Sergeant,” he said to Sanchez even though he was looking at me.
“Rawlins,” Sanchez answered.
“Sit down, sit down.” Fogherty gestured at his poor chairs.
We unfolded our seats.
“Mr. Rawlins works …” Sanchez went right into his story.
Fogherty held up his hands to stall the speech. He picked up the receiver to his phone and pressed a big green button down under the dial. After waiting for a few seconds he said, “You got four-A ready yet? Okay. Uh-huh, sure. Yes, that’s right,” and then hung up.
He raised his head and nodded at Sanchez to continue.
“This is Mr. Rawlins,” the sergeant said. “He works out at the school where the victim’s wife teaches.”
“Terrible, isn’t it, Mr. Rawlins?” Fogherty said to me.
“Sure is,” I said with as much feeling as I could muster.
“We see it every day, you know,” he added, nodding wise. “Household spat that gets out of hand is most of it. Good friends that drink too much, maybe with the other friend’s wife, and then, bang—somebody’s dead.” When he smiled I realized that my trip through the bowels of the jailhouse had been calculated to break me down.
“You wanted something from me, captain?”
“Did you know Holland Gasteau?”
“No, sir. Idabell and I are just work friends.”
“Do you know where she could be?”
“No, sir. I don’t.” I was as sincere as a man can get. But that didn’t mean a thing to them.
An honest cop, when asked by a judge, “Did the sun set in the west that day, officer?” will answer, “I believe so, your honor,” and leave the truth for the court to decide.
Fogherty smiled.
A uniformed police officer stuck his head into the room.
“Four-A is ready, sir,” the officer said.
“You get all five?” Fogherty asked.
“No, sir. All we could manage was the four.”
“Damn,” Fogherty hissed.
It was the same word that was at the back of my mouth.
“You know, you could do me a favor, Rawlins.” If you were to believe the wonder on the captain’s face it was the first time he thought of what he was about to ask me.
“What?”
“We’re having a lineup. It’s nothing. But the guy is colored, see, and we’d like to have a good mix up there—you know, to make it fair.”
“What’s it for?” I asked.
“Murder,” said Fogherty.
Sanchez was looking at my eyes.
THEY HAD PUT UP a plasterboard wall to divide a small basement room. I was ushered into one side by Fogherty and Sanchez. There were three uniformed white cops and six black men, all of them dressed casually, except for the manacles that two of them wore.
Fogherty had the prisoners released from their chains. The real wall had evenly spaced vertical black lines drawn along it forming man-sized rectangles that had numbers across the top: 1—2—3—4—5—6. We were all told to stand up against the wall and under a number.
“What the fuck you got me here for?” one of the prisoners complained. “I told ya I been sick. I ain’t done a damn thing.”
“You want to go back down the hall?” a policeman asked in way of reply.
I noticed then that both of the men who had been manacled were bruised around their faces.
From the central vantage point of number three I looked up and down the row. No two of us bore the slightest resemblance. The shortest was five foot six while the tallest was a full three inches taller than I am, a shade over six feet. There was yellow, gray, brown, and black skin. Our faces spoke of the variety of peoples of Africa and of the white masters who raped those ancestors. The tallest man weighed maybe one eighty—so did the shortest.
It was a setup, but I still had some points on my side. We were still a row of Negroes—and white folks, on the whole, could barely tell us apart.
