I hang up laughing, then lock the car and hurry into the inner square of the block. It harbors parked cars, dumpsters, and fire escapes, but thankfully no people. At the rear of Mackey’s building, eight concrete steps and a green handrail descend to a steel door. There’s no key in the lock. I go down the steps and feel beneath the crack of the door. Nothing. In the lee of the bottom step lies a broken, rust-colored brick. I bend and lift it.
The key is there.
The basement is lighted by bare hanging bulbs, and it stinks of mildew. I feel like I’m breathing fungus. What I first perceived as walls are stacks of boxes, hundreds of them, old bellied cardboard things that look like they were stolen from a grocery store trash pile. Thankfully, there are dates scrawled on them in black magic marker.
There seems to be no organizing concept. Files from the 1920s have been stacked next to files from the 1970s. I scan the wall of dates as though searching for my size in a display of blue jeans. No luck. But after twenty minutes of digging through rat droppings and dust, I find a short stack of boxes labeled ’73 fiRE.
Dragging the stack into the nearest pool of light, I open the top box and riffle through its contents. The files inside are charred, stained, and mildewed, and all date from 1966. I set that box aside and open the next one. My pulse quickens. The files inside are dated 1968.
Starting at the front of the box, I examine the first page inside each folder. Marston’s name is all over the files, but none deals with Delano Payton. When I get to the end of the box, I go back to the beginning and flip through every sheet in every folder, but again I find nothing. One by one I go through each folder in the boxes dating from the fire with painstaking care, but I find nothing related to Del Payton.
It looks like Mackey was telling the truth.
After restacking the boxes, I lock the door, put the key back under the brick, and climb back into the sunlight. The custodian is standing thirty yards away, smoking a cigarette in the shadow of a nearby building. I walk straight up to him like a tourist asking for directions.
“Mackey was right.”
He spits on the concrete. “Shit.”
“You don’t happen to clean the police station, do you?”
He shakes his head.
“I guess that’s it, then. I appreciate your help.” I start to leave, but he reaches out and touches my elbow.
“You know, we had a couple of black police chiefs. The first one was back in ’eighty-one. I knew him pretty good. He didn’t mind stepping on toes to get the job done, so they fired him after a few months. He might know something.”
“What was his name?”
“Willie Pinder.”
“Does he still live in town?”
“He stay over to Gaylor Street. Blue house. Drives a old Dodge pickup.”
“Would he be home during the day?”
“I believe he ’tired. You could see.”
“I’ll call him. Hey, I never got your name.”
“That’s right. You watch your ass, Penn Cage. And tell your daddy Zoot say hello.”
He grinds his cigarette beneath the heel of a cheap work boot and walks back toward the D.A.’s office.
As soon as I reach the car, I dial directory assistance again. There’s a listing for a Willie Pinder on Gaylor Street. This time I dial the number myself.
“Yeah?” says a coarse voice.
“Is Willie there?”
“This Willie.”
I hang up.
Gaylor Street is in a black neighborhood off the road that leads up to the city cemetery. It takes several trips through blocks of small, brightly colored houses, but I finally find the ex-chief’s Dodge pickup parked on the street. A cracked pad of cement leads to the rear of the house. I drive around and park near Pinder’s back porch. It’s fully screened, with rust eating the black wire in big orange patches.
“Who the hell are you?” shouts a hostile voice. “You just call me on the telephone?”
I wave broadly at the dark screen. For all I know, I’m looking into the barrel of a shotgun. “I’m Penn Cage. I’m looking for the former chief of police, Willie Pinder.”
“Who you work for, chump?”
The screen door opens with a screech of protesting springs, and a big black head appears in the opening. The sleepy-eyed face says late fifties, with some rough years on the back end.
“Car like that, you ain’t no process server. Must be a lawyer. You work for my ex-old lady?”
“No. My name’s Penn Cage. If you’re Willie Pinder, I want to ask you about the Del Payton murder.”
At the words “Del Payton” the sleepy eyes wake up. “I’m Willie,” he says, looking closely at me.
“You got my name, right?”
“Trouble. That’s your name.”
“Will you talk to me?”
“Sure.” Pinder laughs. “I might be hearing your last words. Come on up.”
He holds the door open for me. Three steps lead up to the porch, the kind of weed-grown slat steps that snakes like to lie under in the heat. In one bound I am up and through the door, which slaps shut behind me with a bang like a pistol shot.
“Porch is far enough,” says Pinder. “Hotter inside anyway. AC’s busted. You want a beer?”
“Sure.” I try not to glance at my watch; it can’t be eleven a.m. yet.
Pinder goes inside and returns with two sweating cans of Schaeffer. He hands me one, then sits beside me in a green iron lawn chair, pops the top off his can, and drinks.
“So you’re retired now?” I say, opening my beer.
He laughs again. “That don’t quite seem to say it. I’m fucked now. How about that?”
I’m not sure how to proceed. I don’t want the man’s life story, but neither do I want to offend him. Thankfully, Pinder spares me.
“You the crazy man who popped off about Del Payton in the paper?”
“I mentioned the case.”
“Case? Ain’t no case on Del Payton.”
“What about a file, then? There must have been a police file.”
He takes another long swig of Schaeffer. “I was pretty busy back then. It was all I could do to hold the goddamn place together.”
“I’m sure. Still, I’d think you might have wanted to check some things the white chiefs had let slide for too long.”
Pinder sniffs and looks through the rusted screen. “I worked in that department eleven years, and I never saw no Payton file. Didn’t think there was one. But when the old chief gave me the combination to the station safe, and I opened it up, there it was. Sitting on the bottom of a stack of insurance policies. Just like that. First day on the job.”
“Did the police seriously investigate the case in sixty-eight?”
He smiles. “In 1968 the city slogan was ‘Natchez, Where the Old South Still Lives.’ It looked like they investigated. There was lots of confidential-informant reports, rumors tracked down, stuff like that.”
“Any suspects?”
“A couple.”
“Who?”
He smiles enigmatically. “You know, I might ought to check the file. My memory ain’t what it used to be.”
Something quivers in my chest. “How can you check the file?”
“Easy. I got it inside.”
