PROFILE OF CHARLES SINGLETON
* Former slave, ancestor of G. Settle. Married, one son. Given orchard in New York state by master. Worked as teacher, as well. Instrumental in early civil rights movement.
* Charles allegedly committed theft in 1868, the subject of the article in stolen microfiche.
* Reportedly had a secret that could bear on case. Worried that tragedy would result if his secret was revealed.
* Attended meetings in Gallows Heights neighborhood of New York.
* Involved in some risky activities?
* Worked with Frederick Douglass and others in getting the 14th Amendment to the Constitution ratified.
* The crime, as reported in Coloreds' Weekly Illustrated: * Charles arrested by Det. William Simms for stealing large sum from Freedmen's Trust in NY. Broke into the trust's safe, witnesses saw him leave shortly after. His tools were found nearby. Most money was recovered. He was sentenced to five years in prison. No information about him after sentencing. Believed to have used his connections with early civil rights leaders to gain access to the trust.
* Charles's Correspondence:
* Letter 1, to wife: Re: Draft Riots in 1863, great anti-black sentiment throughout NY State, lynchings, arson. Risk to property owned by blacks.
* Letter 2, to wife: Charles at Battle of Appomattox at end of Civil War.
* Letter 3, to wife: Involved in civil rights movement. Threatened for this work. Troubled by his secret.
* Letter 4, to wife: Went to Potters' Field with his gun for "justice." Results were disastrous. The truth is now hidden in Potters' Field. His secret was what caused all this heartache.
Chapter Thirty-Four
Minus the shopping cart, Jax was playing homeless again.
He wasn't being schizo at the moment, like before. The Graffiti King was fronting he was your typical fired-ass former vet, feeling sorry for himself, begging for change, a shabby Mets cap upturned on the gum-stained sidewalk and filled with, God bless you, thirty-seven cents.
Cheap pricks.
No longer in his olive-drab army jacket or the gray sweatshirt, but wearing a dusty black T-shirt under a torn beige sports coat (picked out of the garbage the way a real homeless person would do), Jax was sitting on the bench across from the town house on Central Park West, nursing a can wrapped up in a stained, brown-paper bag. Ought to be malt liquor, he thought sourly. Wished it was. But it was only Arizona iced tea. He sat back, like he was thinking about what kind of job he'd like to try for, though also enjoying the cool fall day, and sipped more of the sweet peach drink. He lit a cigarette and blew smoke toward the stunningly clear sky.
He was watching the kid from Langston Hughes walk up, the one who'd just left that town house on Central Park West, where he'd delivered the bag to Geneva Settle. Still no sign of anyone checking out the street from inside, but that didn't mean there wasn't anybody there. Besides, two police cars sat out front, one squad car and one unmarked, right by that wheelchair ramp. So Jax had waited here, a block away, for the boy to make the delivery.
The skinny kid came up and plopped down on the bench next to the not-really-homeless Graffiti King of Blood.
"Yo, yo, man."
"Why do you kids say 'yo' all the time?" Jax asked, irritated. "And why the fuck do you say it twice?"
"Ever'body say it. Wus yo' problem, man?"
"You gave her the bag?"
"What up with that dude ain't got legs?"
"Who?"
"Dude in there ain't got no legs. Or maybe he got legs but they ain't work."
Jax didn't know what he was talking about. He would rather've had a smarter kid deliver the package to the town house, but this was the only one he'd found around the Langston Hughes school yard who had any connection at all with Geneva Settle--his sister sort of knew her. He repeated, "You give her the bag?"
"I give it to her, yeah."
"What'd she say?"