“No.” She looked out at the street. Cars were backing up at the light. Businessmen were going to work. Women were taking their children to school. “We had a new sergeant last week. One of Reggie’s boys.”
Duke made a sharp comment about this, as if his feelings weren’t already known.
“He got transferred after just one day. Hoyt Woody was moved into his position.”
“Hoyt’s a good man.”
“Well.” Amanda didn’t finish her thought. She found the man unctuous and off-putting, but that was not the point of this conversation. “Anyway, after a few days, Hoyt got transferred back out, and now the old sergeant, Reggie’s boy, got moved back in.”
“And?”
“Well,” she repeated. “Doesn’t that strike you as odd?”
“Not particularly.” She heard him light a cigarette. “It’s how the system works. You get one guy in to do one thing, then move in another to do something else.”
“I’m not sure I follow.”
“You gotta star pitcher, right?” Duke always favored baseball metaphors. “Only he can’t swing a bat. You got it?”
“Yes.”
“So you send in a pinch hitter.”
“Oh.” She nodded, understanding.
Duke still didn’t think she got it. “There’s something going on in your squad. Reggie’s boy wouldn’t follow orders, so they sent in Hoyt to take care of business.” He laughed. “Typical. Send in a white man when you need the job done right.”
Amanda held the phone away from her mouth so he wouldn’t hear her sigh. “Thanks, Daddy. I should get back to work.”
Duke wouldn’t let her off that easy. “You’re not getting mixed up in something you shouldn’t?”
“No, Daddy.” She tried to think of something else to say. “Be sure to put the chicken back in the refrigerator around ten. It’ll spoil if you leave it out all day.”
“I heard you when you told me the first six times,” he snapped. Instead of hanging up, he said, “Be careful, Mandy.”
She rarely heard such compassion in his voice. Unaccountably, tears came into her eyes. Butch Bonnie was right about one thing. It was close to that time of month for Amanda. She was turning into a hormonal mess. “I’ll see you tonight.”
She heard a click as Duke hung up the phone.
Amanda returned the receiver to the cradle. Back in her car, she took a handkerchief out of her purse and wiped her hand. Then she patted dry her face. The sun was unrelenting. She felt as if she was melting.
A honking sound ripped through the quiet of her car. Evelyn Mitchell’s Ford Falcon had stopped for a yellow light. A delivery truck sped around her. The man stuck his hand out in an obscene gesture.
“For goodness sakes,” Amanda mumbled, turning the key in the ignition. She pulled out onto the road and followed Evelyn three blocks down Ponce de Leon to the Union Mission. Evelyn took a slow, wide turn into the parking lot so she could back into an empty space. Amanda swung her Plymouth around and was getting out of the car by the time Evelyn turned off the engine.
Amanda said, “You’re going to get yourself killed driving that slowly.”
“You mean driving the speed limit? That truck driver—”
“Almost killed you,” Amanda quipped. “I’m going to take you out to the stadium this weekend and give you a proper lesson.”
“Oh.” Evelyn seemed pleased. “Let’s make a day of it. We can go to lunch and do some shopping.”
Amanda was startled by her eagerness. She changed the subject. “Hodge is back at my station.”
“I thought it was strange that he wasn’t at Model City this morning.” Evelyn closed her car door. “Why did they send him back?”
Amanda debated whether or not to reveal that she’d called her father. She decided against it. “It’s possible the brass transferred in Hoyt Woody to do their dirty work.”
“Why would they send in a white man? Wouldn’t one of Reggie’s boys be better for this sort of thing? Keep it in the family, as it were?”
She had raised a good point, but then, Evelyn didn’t suffer from Duke’s color blindness. Hoyt Woody would do as he was told in hopes of ingratiating himself with the brass. Luther Hodge might not be as malleable.
Amanda said, “I imagine Woody was sent in for the same reason Hodge sent two women out to talk to Jane. We’re expendable. No one really listens to us.”
“That’s true enough.” Evelyn shrugged because there was nothing they could do about it. “So, Hodge was replaced for a few days by someone who would do their dirty work, then he was slotted back in.”
“Exactly.” Amanda said, “Your friend at the Five said she called security on Jane Delray when she tried to cash Lucy’s vouchers. Security is run out of the Five Points precinct. Whoever hauled Jane out of the building would’ve written her up on an incident card.” The cards were part of a larger system used to track petty criminals who weren’t yet worth arresting. “The cards are fed into a daily report that goes up the chain of command. Someone high up would know that Jane was trying to use Lucy’s name.”
Evelyn came to the same conclusion as Amanda had. “We were sent to Techwood to scare Jane into silence.”
“We did a great job, didn’t we?”
Evelyn put her hand to her temple. “I need a drink. This is giving me a migraine.”
“Well, this should make your head hurt even more.” Amanda told her about the phone call with Pam Canale, the dead end she’d hit. Then she relayed the cryptic conversation she’d had with Sergeant Hodge.
“How strange,” was all Evelyn could manage. “Why won’t Hodge answer our questions?”
“I think he wants us to keep working this case, but he can’t appear to be encouraging us.”
“I think you’re right.” Evelyn said, “Maybe Kitty didn’t get that top-floor apartment with sexual favors. Maybe her uncle or daddy pulled some strings.”
“If Kitty is the black sheep of the Treadwell family, I can certainly see Andrew Treadwell trying to keep her from making trouble. He sets her up in an apartment with her own kind. He gets her on the welfare rolls. He makes sure she’s got just enough money to stay out of his hair.”
“There’s no way we can talk to Andrew Treadwell. We wouldn’t make it as far as the lobby.”
Amanda didn’t bother to agree with the obvious.
Evelyn said, “I talked to my gal in undercover. It’s just what I thought: it’d be easier to find a man who doesn’t like choking whores.”
“That’s depressing.”
“It is if you’re a whore.” Evelyn added, “I told her to ask around if anybody likes painting fingernails.”
“Smart thinking.”
“We’ll see if it pans out. I told her to call me at home. I’d hate for any of this to go out on the radio.”
“Did you find out whether or not Juice was in jail when Jane was murdered?”
“He was at Grady getting fitted with a resisting-arrest turban.”
Amanda had heard the terminology before. There were a lot of prisoners who woke up in the Grady ER with no recollection of how they’d gotten there. “That’s hardly an alibi. He could walk in and out of the hospital without anyone noticing.”