Blackmail and White Lightnin'

By Paul Sinor

Private Investigator Johnny Morocco and Atlanta Police Detective Sergeant Jack Brewer are once again forced to work together to solve each other cases. Brewer has to find out who is making bad whiskey and killing Atlantan’s and Johnny has to find a blackmailer. The friendly adversaries find that together they must turn the city upside down to find what they are seeking.

• Language: English
• Publisher: BWL Publishing Inc.
• Release date: Dec 1, 2022
• ISBN: 9780228623557

Paul Sinor

Paul Sinor is a retired US Army Lieutenant Colonel. He had two combat command tours during the Viet Nam War. His other positions in his diverse career ranged from company commander to being on the staff of the Secretary of Defense. His final military assignment was the Army Liaison to the Television and Film Industry in Los Angeles. He is an award-winning screenwriter with eight feature films made from scripts he wrote. In addition, he has been the Technical Advisor for numerous feature films, including Transformers 1-3, GI Joe, The Messenger, I Am Legend, The Objective, and The Invasion.

Book preview

Chapter 1

The body was in the back seat of the taxi when it pulled up in front of the Grady, as Atlanta’s Grady Memorial Hospital was known by most of the city’s residents. Neither the taxi driver nor the person who had flagged it down in front of a juke joint on Auburn Avenue knew the person they put in the taxi was now a body, and not a live human being.

It was a Saturday night, and the hospital was doing a brisk business in both parts of the massive structure. The Grady had two parts. One was dedicated to the healing arts, care for the sick and infirmed, research, surgery, and post-operative care, but only if you were a white citizen of Atlanta. The other part was where the Negro sick and infirmed went. The white side of the hospital was fully staffed with doctors, nurses, and other personnel necessary to keep a major metropolitan hospital serving the community. It was a completely different story on the Negro side.

It was only in the last few years that Negro doctors were allowed to practice medicine in any hospital in the south, and those that did could not do so on white people. The non-white community got their medical care from home remedies passed down from generation to generation. Everything from colds, to broken bones, severe burns and terminal diseases were treated with elixirs, potions, salves, and remedies made from herbs, leaves, twigs, various animal parts and legends. It would not be unusual to see a practitioner bent over a wood-fired black wash pot bubbling with the latest cure. They would be face down in the steam coming from the pot. Their head would be covered with a cloth, and if you listened carefully, you could hear them chanting or repeating a verse from the Bible.

None of that would help the person in the back seat. No amount of herbs, elixirs or mumbo-jumbo would bring him back to life. Dead was dead. No matter what color you were or which part of the Grady you were sent to.

The afternoon rainstorm had left the city streets wet and smelling of asphalt and tar. Three hours earlier, the rain turned to steam as soon as it hit the hot streets. By the time the first body arrived, the storm had moved on to the east. The occasional flash of lightning was seen in the distance if a person was looking in that direction at the right time. Thunder boomed a low bass note as it and the storm disappeared, only to come back the next day almost as regular as clockwork at this time of year.

An hour before the taxi pulled up in front of the Grady, the man in the back had been a living, breathing son, brother, friend, and laborer with one of the highway crews building a network of new roads throughout the state. He came home, met with some of his friends in the front yard of the house next door to where he lived, pulled up an empty milk crate and took a seat. A man sitting on a worn-out back seat from a car of some sort had a guitar and sitting next to him a younger man blew into a harmonica as they made up the song they played. A quart jar of a clear, fiery liquid was passed from person to person. Known as white lightning or moonshine, the home-made illegal liquor was easy to get and hard to turn down when it was offered.

As soon as the taxi stopped and the driver got out to open the door for the two passengers in the back, he knew something was wrong. The person on the seat behind the driver fell over and almost out of the taxi when the door opened. As soon as the woman seated beside him saw that, she began to scream.

Inside the hospital, an emergency room of sorts was quickly filling up with very sick people of all ages and sex. The one thing they had in common was their skin color and the fact that many of them were about to die.

Doctor Ezekiel Harrison was born on a five-acre plot of land in Riverdale, GA that had been in his family since the middle of the last century. Family legend said it was obtained as a famous forty acre and a mule grant that freed slaves were given at the end of the Civil War. A creek marked the northern boundary of the farm and a series of breastworks had been constructed on the farm side of the creek. When Ezekiel and his younger brothers played on the breastworks or when his father and two older brothers plowed their field with the mule they called Babe, it was not unusual to find relics from some of the battles of the war that took place on their land. Ezekiel had a jar in the barn where he put bullets and pieces of cannon balls they found and hanging on a nail until he needed to use it in a make-believe battle was the rusty sword he pulled from the breastwork.

Once, when he was looking at some of the bullets, he noticed distinct indentations in some of them. When he asked his father what they were, he was told that some soldiers were given bullets to bite on when a limb was cut off or a bullet removed, since there was no way to put them to sleep or deaden the pain in those days. It was that conversation that started Ezekiel on the road to becoming a doctor.

The county school bus usually made it down the hard packed red clay road they lived on unless a heavy rain turned it to mud. If it did, the mud was so deep it clung so thick and heavy to Ezekiel and his brothers that they could hardly walk to the main paved road where they caught the bus when it couldn’t get to them. He was the only one in the family to finish grammar school and the only one that anyone could remember who even attempted high school. He applied and was accepted to medical school and vowed to return to Georgia to practice medicine.

Doctor Harrison was leaning over a man who was convulsing when he heard the taxi driver burst through the doors of the emergency room.

Somebody gots to help us. I got a dead man in my taxi. The frantic driver looked at the first person he saw. You got to get him out of there. I can’t be having no dead man in my taxi.

The sound behind him was that of a woman who either had her hand caught in the wringer of a washing machine or was a relative of the dead man in the taxi. She was wailing incoherently.

Oh, Lord, that’s my baby. Don’t let him die. She rushed to Harrison and tried to grab him by the white jacket he wore. You got to do something. He’s all I got left. His daddy is dead, and his sister done run off with a man and I ain’t seen her in four years.

Harrison twisted out of her grasp. We’re going to do all we can, but I have someone I have to take care of first. He made the mistake of not immediately moving past her to take care of his previous patient.

The woman stood a little over five and a half feet tall and she was built like an oil drum and about as solid. She had on a blue dress with flowers printed on the material. She carried a large purse which she swung to the side when Harrison tried to pass. Instead of hitting him with it as he expected, she opened it and with a speed that was faster than he could keep up with, pulled ou a small handgun. No sir, mister doctor, you ain’t got nothin’ to do ‘cept help my boy.

Before Harrison could respond, the taxi driver stepped forward. I done tole’ her that boy’s dead. Ain’t nothing you or nobody else on this earth can do for him, but she don’t believe me.

Harrison turned to the nurse standing by him. Take care of my patient and let me look at her son. He looked around. Where is he?

We put him on a gurney when they went out to the taxi to get him. The nurse lowered her voice. He was DOA.

Before Harrison could get to the gurney, another person burst through the doors. I need some help out here. I got three peoples in my truck and they’s been vomiting something terrible since we left the house. Some of ‘em’s losing blood, too.

Harrison looked at the nurse. This is not good. See if somebody can get in touch with Doctor Wooten and get him in here. By the time he finished talking, he heard the doors as they were forced much too far back, and two men carried what was obviously another dead body wrapped in a sheet.

By the time Doctor Wooten arrived two hours later, every spare bed in the Negro section of the Grady was filled, and several men and a few women were lying on make-shift beds in the hallway. If they had not already passed out, most of them were delirious, screaming in pain and throwing up everything they had eaten in the last century. Five had already died and four more had been brought into the hospital who were dead on arrival.

Both Doctor Harrison and Doctor Wooten agreed that the rooms, the hallway and now the morgue were filled with patients who had been poisoned and the most likely culprit was moonshine whiskey.

Chapter 2

Johnny McDonald couldn’t keep up with the changes that had happened in his life since he moved from his home in West Palm Beach, Florida to Atlanta, Georgia. The biggest change was that he was no longer Johnny McDonald. When he was discharged from six years in the Army overseas in both the European and Pacific Theater, he tried to return to the life he left in Florida. He quickly found out it was impossible, so he moved to Atlanta. Along with changing his residence, he changed his name.

Once he became Johnny Morocco, he used his military police background to get a license as a private investigator. Johnny started hanging out at a local pool room called Big Town. He came in early one morning and found a dead man on a table . He almost lost his life defending the Negro rack boy whom everyone thought had killed the man. In the process he became a friendly advisory of a police detective in the Atlanta Police Department. All of this led to him deciding to make Big Town his work location, since he obtained most of his work from the men who frequented the pool room.

All of this was running through his head as he sat in a booth in a diner near the pool room. He stopped there most mornings for breakfast, and about half the time Atlanta Police Department Detective Jack Brewer joined him, even though he was never invited to do so. It was an unwritten rule between them that they would argue over the smallest thing, but each reluctantly respected the other. Mildred, the waitress who always waited on Johnny, saw him come in. As soon as he did, she pointed to a vacant booth in the back of the diner and headed his way with a heavy white mug of coffee and a morning newspaper another diner had left behind.

Mornin, Johnny. By yourself today?

With any luck, I will be, but you never know when or where Brewer will show up. Both of them were talking about Detective Brewer, who walked in just as Mildred slid the mug of coffee across the table to Johnny.

If you got another one of them, bring it over here. Brewer eased into the booth cross from Johnny.

Looks like your luck just ran out, Mildred said as she left to get another mug for Brewer.

I read the comics at home this morning. That Snuffy Smith is really good today. Look at it. Brewer tapped the paper to get Johnny’s attention. And the Crackers are in second place. They beat the Pelicans last night, but it took twelve innings to do it. Brewer leaned over as if to share a secret with Johnny. I’ll bet some of those low-lifes that bet on baseball games at that dump you hang out in, lost their ass on that one. The Pelicans have been winning for a week. He was referring to the not-so-secret betting that went on at Big Town. The men who spent most of their time, and even more of their money, were gamblers, hustlers and others who did not subscribe to the normal work week like most of the citizens of Atlanta.

Johnny looked up when Mildred brought Brewer’s coffee. You boys gonna eat anything this morning or are you just going to keep my tipping customers from sitting at one of my booths? She said it in a joking manner but they both knew if they wanted to stay on her good side, a breakfast order needed to be made.

Eggs over, bacon, grits, and a biscuit for me, Johnny ordered.

Same for me and one check, said Brewer.

Let me guess who’s gonna get stiffed for it today, she mumbled as she walked to the counter where she relayed the order to the cook.

Johnny looked at the folded newspaper trying to decide if he wanted to read it and ignore Brewer or take a chance and ask him why he was sitting across from him.

* * *

Doctor Harrison didn’t really have an office. In the part of the Grady that treated the white citizens of Atlanta, the space he used would be a space for janitors to keep their mops, brooms, and other cleaning supplies. It was hardly big enough for the desk and chair Harrison had and when the two Atlanta police officers came to see him, they had to stand just inside the door. Like Harrison, they were Negros, and, like Harrison, they were an anomaly in Atlanta.

The first eight Negro officers were hired by the Atlanta police department in 1948. By the early 1950’s the number had grown to only twelve and they still were not allowed to arrest whites, ride in police cruisers, or operate out of the city police headquarters.

When the word got out that a large number of Negro citizens of the area had suddenly been stricken by what Doctors Harrison and Wooten said was poison moonshine whiskey, the only police officers who really cared stood in front of him.

Willie Garrison was the junior man of the two officers. He had been hired a year earlier and was working with one of the first Negros hired, Officer Gaylord Jenkins.

How come you think this was bad liquor? Jenkins asked Harrison.

I grew up with my daddy drinking what he called see-through liquor all my life. I would occasionally sneak a drink and I know what good whiskey, both legal and illegal tastes like and the effect the bad can have. Harrison stopped and looked at both men. We could smell it on all of the patients and one of them came in with a jar in his pocket. He opened a drawer in his desk and pulled out a pint fruit jar. He handed it to Jenkins. Here, smell this, but don’t take a taste. I don’t have any more beds.

Jenkins took a long sniff and immediately jerked his head back. He handed it to his partner. Check this out.

Garrison had the same reaction. He handed the jar back to Harrison. What do you want us to do with this?

Find out who made this poison and arrest him for murder.

* * *

Johnny ate in relative silence, only grunting occasionally when Brewer made a comment or asked a question that Johnny did not feel required an answer. Finally, Brewer spoke up. I get the feeling you are not happy with my company this morning, Mister Dixie Detective.

Let me see if I can ask this in a way you can understand, so I don’t have to explain it. Were you born an asshole or is it something you have developed over the years?

Brewer almost spewed his mouthful of coffee when he heard Johnny. You know, I could arrest you for saying that about a sworn officer of the law, but I’m going to let it pass, because, in spite of all the trouble you have caused me…in addition to getting me shot, I kinda like you for the low life that you are.

You see, Johnny said over the rim of his coffee cup. You just proved my point.

We need to cut to the chase. Before Brewer could finish, Mildred came back and refilled their coffee.

You boys need anything else before you leave around noon while keeping me from filling this booth at least ten times? She stood in front of Brewer when she spoke. Unlike you, I’m not on the city payroll. I have to work for a living and feeding people, and occasionally getting a tip for it, is what I do.

Don’t worry, Morocco here is paying and I’m leaving the tip.

Oh, great. Now I can take that ‘round the world cruise I’ve always wanted. She laughed as she left the booth.

Looks like I’m not the only one who has an opinion of you, Detective Brewer.

The diner was almost empty now, with the breakfast crowd having eaten and left for work or wherever they spent the day in Atlanta.

Like I was about to say, we need to talk, Brewer said as he leaned across the table closer to Johnny.

Let me guess. You ‘have a friend’ who wants to make a bet on something, and you think I know how to make it happen, or you need me for something that you don’t want to do?

You ain’t gonna live long enough for me to actually need you to do anything for me—but, on occasion, I can throw something your way that may take away some of the distrust my entire department, especially my Lieutenant, has for you.

What are you throwing my way today? Johnny pushed the half-filled coffee mug to the side, so there was nothing between him and Brewer across the table.

Chapter 3

Twenty-five miles south of Atlanta a blue curl of smoke rose from a large copper vat sitting next to a small creek that ran off the Flint River. The vat was bubbling inside because of the pile of wood beneath it and the corn and water mixture inside. As the mixture vaporized it was forced through a series of coils of copper tubing and an old radiator from a wrecked pick-up truck. Once it cooled, it once again became a liquid, and the steady flow of freshly brewed moonshine alcohol was caught in jars by the three men who worked the illegal whiskey still.

This was not the only still in the county, nor was it the largest, but Emmet Stevens, the man who ran it, had been making illegal whiskey since he was a teenager watching his father do the same thing. In addition to being a bootlegger, Emmet also considered himself a businessman, and a good businessman was always looking for ways to decrease cost and increase profits, and Emmet had recently found one.

A vital ingredient of good moonshine is grain alcohol, which Emmet found to be in short supply just when he had a massive order to fill. Since most of his distribution and consumption network was in the Negro neighborhoods of Atlanta, he had no desire to lose his customers over a small thing like a shortage of grain alcohol when wood alcohol could be substituted just as easily.

When the next batch of gallon and quart jugs were filled, Emmet had one of the men who worked for him load them into the back of his pick-up truck. The jugs were placed in cardboard boxes to keep them from banging together and breaking once he pulled out from the still and began his journey to the drop off points he used. The still was well back in the pine forest and could only be reached by using a two-lane, rutted track that had probably once been one used by mule-drawn wagons. After clearing the woods, he still had to drive over five miles on a dirt road to reach a paved road that would take him to Atlanta. The total trip usually took about two hours on a good day. If it had recently rained, the dirt road was almost impassable, with the truck slipping and sliding in the thick red clay mud, it added another hour if he was lucky enough to make it to the pavement.

This time, like the last weekly load, it was a clear day, no rain and hardly another car or truck on the dirt road as he pulled out and headed out to make a delivery to his regular customers.

What he didn’t know was most of his regular customers were either dead or about to die.

* * *

Several weeks earlier, when working on what he thought was a simple job to protect a prize bull at the Southeastern Fair, Johnny not only shot and killed two men, but he was also shot during an exchange of gunfire in a restaurant. In addition to getting a job, Johnny also met what may well be the love of his life, the daughter of the man who hired him. The two of them had been inseparable since the first day.

Brewer took great pleasure in reminding Johnny that he had been in the same restaurant shoot-out, almost getting killed, and it was all his fault. After his close call, Brewer’s wife wanted him to retire, and Brewer had floated the idea of a partnership between him and Johnny.

What I have on my mind is why you keep going back to that shithole pool room and the broom closet you call an office? He waited for a response and when he didn’t get one, he continued. If you was to…let’s say, take in a partner, you might be able to afford to pay rent in a decent place.

If I ever found someone I wanted to look at across a room and it wasn’t a good-looking woman, I might consider it. Until then, not a chance. Johnny stood, dropped two dollars on the table and walked out.

Atlanta early in the morning has a personality all its own. The streets are filled with men and women going to work in a multitude of businesses, offices, and retail operations in the largest city in the south. Many men who came to Atlanta said the best-looking women in the south and perhaps in the United States were on the streets of Atlanta at eight in the morning and five at night when they went to or left work. Because most of them also brought a lunch, which they ate outside at one of the city parks when the weather was good, men filled the parks at lunchtime as well.

Johnny passed many of those women as he walked from the diner to Big Town. He had to cross several streets around Five Points which was to Atlanta what Times Square was to New York City. It was the center of the city, and all directions downtown were given referencing their relationship to Five Points. One of the street vendors of the Atlanta Constitution yelled across the street to Johnny when he saw him pass.

Hey Johnny. I got the bug number if you need it. He was referring to the local, illegal though usually ignored by the authorities, lottery. The number was based on three of the closing numbers of the NY Stock Exchange. The stock market closing numbers were posted at the bottom of the Atlanta Journal’s front page every afternoon when the paper hit the streets. Numbers runners scattered throughout the city every day collecting the small bets, and then returned in the early evening or the next morning to make pay-outs to the ones who hit the bug the previous evening. Johnny waved him off and kept heading to his destination on Edgewood Avenue.

Big Town was one of the most popular pool rooms in Atlanta. It occupied a second floor that extended over a shoe repair shop and a men’s store that was on a corner. The men who sat along the walls in Big Town could look out over two of the major streets in the city. The pool room officially opened at nine, but the owner, a man everyone called Hockey Doc was usually there by seven and sometime, spent the night on a sofa in the office, so he opened any time he wanted. The combination rack boy and janitor, a young Negro man everyone called Billyhart, was always there by eight and sometimes earlier. His name was Billy Hart, but he had a slight lisp and when he answered the phone in the booth along one wall in the building, it always came out like, Dith ith Bic Town. Billyhart speaking.

After working out of the pool room in an unofficial basis for several months, Johnny made a deal with Hockey Doc to rent a small room as an office. Most of Johnny’s work came from the men who frequented the place or the lawyers and other professional men who came up during lunch to shoot a game, so it was logical to set up shop where they knew they could find him.

He climbed the steps and stopped by the counter where Hockey Doc was getting ready for the upcoming day. The first thing Doc did was fill the large army surplus coffee maker sitting on the end of the bar. Next to the coffee urn was a tray with heavy white ceramic mugs and a cigar box. Fill a mug and drop a nickel in the box. Most of the men who called Big Town home during the day were living on the edge. For the most part they had no steady jobs and spent most of their time and all their money betting on anything that happened in the sports world. Large chrome stools with brown plastic seats and backs lined the walls. On shelves above the stools were a variety of radios, all of which would be tuned to baseball, football, basketball, or any other sport during its season. Bets were made, money changed hands, and some men left with just enough for bus fare home and a nickel for a cup of coffee the next day. Others left with a small bankroll, which was destined to change hands again in the next few days.

After Johnny pulled a mug from the tray and filled it with coffee, he dropped coin in the cigar box and spoke to Hockey Doc. Mornin,’ Doc. You ready for a busy day? Johnny knew he would get a version of the same answer he got every day.

If you guys don’t start buying more food and beer, I’m gonna have to close this place. I can’t keep it open charging a dime a game for shooting pool. Hockey Doc continued to chip up the large chunks of ice delivered every day for the beer and soft drink boxes he filled with ice, water, and bottles. When he finished with the ice and coolers, he went to work placing hot dogs in a large cooker filled with hot water, next to a steamer where he placed several packs of buns. He was still mumbling when Johnny turned to walk back to his office.

When he first moved in, someone placed a hand-lettered sign on the door that read: JOHNNY MOROCCO, DIXIE DETECTIVE. When Detective Brewer first called him that, he was offended, but after hearing it a couple of times and knowing that one of the men in the pool room thought enough of him to make a sign, he let it stay.

The telephone booth was across the room from his office, and he paid Billyhart two dollars a week to answer it and clean his office every Saturday night. Every man in the room gave the phone number in the booth as their work number if they were looking for a loan, so anytime it rang, it could be for anyone in the place. For Johnny, the best time it rang was when Gina DeToro was on the other end.

Johnny met Gina when he worked for her father protecting a prize stud bull at the Southeastern Fair. When a man came in to castrate