Ash dark as night, p.25
Ash Dark as Night,
p.25
Like the famous gathering in D.C., there was domestic and foreign press covering the event. Calls for police reform were echoed by several speakers throughout the day. A row of balsawood coffins painted black were leaned upright against a wall representing those who died under questionable circumstances at the hands of the LAPD and Sheriff’s Department. A blowup of the conclusion from the independent medical examiner showing the path of the bullet that killed Faraday Zinum was on display as well.
At one point, as Ingram worked his way through a knot of people to get a shot of Paul Newman and Harry Belafonte talking, he happened to glance past them and saw a man he recognized. Among the throng was Shoals Pettigrew. Momentarily, their eyes locked. Later, when he told Anita Claire about this, he couldn’t tell her what kind of emotion he’d felt, as he didn’t know. The grouping Pettigrew was among shifted, blocking him from Ingram’s view. When the crowd shifted again, Pettigrew was gone. Ingram went on too.
Later, he talked with Dorrell Zinum who told him about the suspected agent provocateur identified to Anita at the town hall days after the riots. “The dude in the picture calls himself Rivers. He’d been riling up some of the young bucks.” Dorrell Zinum found Ingram again as the event wound down. “He was set to meet them this morning supposedly with some rifles in his trunk. He’d talked them into using them to shoot at police cars and so forth today,” she’d continued.
“Glad they didn’t,” he said. “But you know there’s more of them been planted.”
“Yeah. If we’re not careful. We gonna be our own worst enemies in the years to come.”
“THIS UNSUBSTANTIATED incendiary Glasshouse Papers purports a police intelligence unit has been spying on numerous negro and left-of-center individuals and organizations for several years,” Stan Chambers said on air. “Further, this radical handiwork alleges in some cases operatives of the unit fomented discord among these groups or at times sought to entice members of these groups to commit criminal behavior to have them arrested. This was termed acts of agent provocateurs.”
Chambers paused to shuffle the pages he held. On the screen came the image of a torched and blackened Starbrite panel van. Over this image, he said, “This company was said to be in the Glasshouse Papers as a cover for the intelligence squad. While this is also considered to be an outlandish assertion, an act of arson was committed on this particular vehicle. The station has been attempting to get in touch with a representative of the company.” Spray painted on the van were the words KEEP OUT.
The LAPD was occupied in the ensuing weeks post the distribution of the Glasshouse Papers. Chief Parker’s office initially sought to brand the Papers as clearly being of Soviet manufacture. But, as various leads were followed up on, there was too much specificity to merely be a propaganda ploy.
IN A room where smoke from expensive cigars lingered and Macallan single malt was consumed, the captain of the Criminal Conspiracy Section sat with Winston Hoyt in their respective wing-back chairs.
“Well,” the man said, gesturing with the long stem of his pipe. “No matter how you cut it, the coloreds have gotten one up on us this time.”
“If only momentarily,” Hoyt allowed. “Time and resources are on our side. We set the pace of their progress.”
“A lot of them go around quoting Medgar Evers and Malcolm X.”
Hoyt regarded his drink. “The Anglo-Saxon made this country what it is, created the culture and is the backbone of the economy. Our negro operatives understand that.”
“Satchmo was no paleface and far as I can tell, it’s not your relatives out in the hot sun of Delano picking strawberries. Hell, not even my relatives.” He grinned at that.
“Sounds like you’ve been in the bush too long.”
“Figure I’m going native?” The captain grinned.
“You would know better than me.” Hoyt drained his glass and held up his tumbler, signaling for more at the waiter passing through.
Elsewhere, in a room with spare furnishings, Ingram, Anita Claire and her parents met to discuss what their next steps should be regarding the Providers’ record of bribes, payoffs and other such machinations discovered in the Morning Bandit’s final heist. Tea had been brewed and there was a plate of cookies.
“Mimeographing the contents and leaving them laying around isn’t gonna do it,” the daughter stated.
Steam rose around Dorothy Nielson as she regarded the contents of her cup held aloft. “It’s one thing to take a chance, honey, and another thing to willingly walk into the lion’s den.”
Ingram poured his drink, watching the tea leaves swirl about.
SITTING IN his photo lab in the garage, Ingram hunt and pecked away on his typewriter. It was slow going even though he’d roughed out an outline. While the idea was this would be a photo book filled with his reflections about the shots, he felt it was necessary to begin with how he came to pick up the camera in the war. As he wrestled to get the wording right, he admitted handling the camera became his way of hiding in plain sight. He could intrude on others’ lives, yet have this instrument create distance between him and his subjects. But it turned out the more he witnessed through the viewfinder, the less distance there was.
One day as he left the garage to use the bathroom in the house, John Outterbridge called to him from the driveway.
“Harry, look what I found.” A big grin on his face, he held up the Speed Graphic. “This has to be yours.”
The camera wasn’t in good shape and required several weeks’ worth of Ingram hunting down the parts he needed to fix it, but he did so. Lovingly, he regarded his handiwork after he got the camera working again. He rubbed one of the bullet grooves for good luck. He damn sure knew he and Anita were going to need it.
ACKNOWLEDGMENTS
The author wishes to thank for inspiration those behind the 1973 publication The Glass House Tapes. As the subtitle stated, it was the story of an agent-provocateur and the new police-intelligence complex by the Citizens Research and Investigation Committee, which included the Bar Sinister Law Collective; editor (and playwright, novelist and screenplay writer) Donald Freed; and the agent provocateur himself, Louis E. Tackwood.
Gary Phillips, Ash Dark as Night
