In The Place of Justice: A Story of Punishment and Deliverance Read online

  I ate a sandwich for lunch and, not feeling well, remained in the back of the store. When Mrs. Irby returned from lunch at about two o’clock, I asked for the rest of the day off. She said that was fine as long as I made sure everything was in good order before I left. About an hour later, I walked a half block down the shopping center to a men’s shop to visit with the janitor there. He asked me to help him move some things around and I did, which caused me to miss my bus. It would be an hour before the next one. I decided to wait in my cousin’s car in the parking lot in the rear of the shopping center. Like most people in 1961 Lake Charles, he didn’t lock it. Having been up late the night before, I fell asleep until almost 5:30. I was irritated with myself for having missed the bus again. I dreaded the prospect of having to wait at the bus stop in the dark, despite the gun in my pocket. I’d gotten it to scare people off, true, but it was difficult to scare people in a passing car.

  The unseasonable warmth of the February afternoon was fading with the daylight. The smoke belching from the city’s chemical plants deepened the winter evening gloom, coloring the city charcoal gray. The temperature had fallen to about 50 degrees. I zipped my jacket up halfway and meandered to Weingarten’s Supermarket, where I talked to the bag boys and porters I knew and arranged for a ride home with one of them who was leaving at 7:30. It was a quarter past six, give or take.

  I bought a soft drink at Weingarten’s and sat on a bench outside the store, sipping it as I looked out at the overcast sky. I felt totally alone, miserable, frustrated, and desperate.

  I need a new life, away from Lake Charles, I said to myself. But that takes money. On the heel of that thought rose a vision of the bank I had been in earlier that day. It was stuffed with money—whole drawers full of money, where the tellers made change and stuck the cash deposits people brought in. And then there was the vault, where they kept the real money. With that money I could buy a new life someplace else.

  The idea took root quickly, and my mind raced with the possibilities. Three people worked at the bank, but on Thursday evenings only the manager, Jay Hickman, and one teller worked. Hickman was a short, overweight, mild-mannered man who often came to Halpern’s to talk with Mrs. Irby. He wasn’t the kind of person to put up a fight. I didn’t know which of the two tellers would be on duty. One was a thirty-ish blonde who got upset when I had asked her name once when she made change for me. She had given me the strangest look, like she was scared and startled and offended all at the same time. I avoided her after that, always taking my business to the other teller, a pleasant older woman, maybe fifty. I didn’t know their names, but they knew me as the boy who worked for Mrs. Irby.

  I felt the gun in my pocket and knew that I could make them hand over all the money in the bank. I’d seen it done countless times in the movies. I’d get the money and tie up the two employees in the back, in that little kitchenette where they had their coffee. Better yet, I could lock them in the vault. It shouldn’t take but a few minutes, after which I’d return to Weingarten’s to catch my 7:30 ride home, pack some clothes, leave my family some money, and tell them I was going on vacation and not to worry about me. Then I’d catch a Greyhound bus going west. The people in the bank wouldn’t be discovered until late at night or perhaps the next morning. They would tell the cops what I’d done, but it wouldn’t matter because I’d be starting my life over somewhere else by then, fading into the woodwork of a black community. And I would have plenty of money, which meant I could get plastic surgery so no one would recognize me.

  Driven by desperation, I convinced myself that it would work, and that it had to be done now, or never. The bank’s closing time dovetailed with my ride home. When would an opportunity like this occur again? The prospect of failure, prison, even death, did not factor into the equation. I had to do it.

  I looked at my watch: 6:30. I would wait until just before the bank’s 7:00 closing time, and if there were no customers in the bank, I would go in and rob it.

  I went to a department store and purchased a little bluish gray suitcase to put the money in. It was ten minutes to seven. Night had fallen. I wiped my clammy hands against my khakis as I walked out the store’s back exit and stole quickly along the back of some buildings to the Gulf National Bank’s rear entrance. I looked in. I didn’t see any customers, but I couldn’t be sure.

  I checked my watch: 6:55. I had to decide. Fuck it. What do I have to lose? I put my right hand on the gun in my pocket and walked in the rear entrance to the bank, my pounding heart echoing in my head. I walked down a corridor, past the small kitchenette on the right. As I reached the end of the hallway, I set the suitcase down against the wall next to the vault and continued to walk into the lobby. There were no customers, but I was surprised to find both women tellers there instead of one. This can still work, even with three of them. I told the women I wanted to see Mr. Hickman. They pointed toward the front, near the window, where he sat at his desk. I told him there was a woman outside in back who wanted to see him, and when he walked back to see, I directed him into the coffee room. He was suddenly alarmed, nervous.

  “I’ve come for some money. That’s all I want, and no one will get hurt,” I said, pulling the gun from my pocket.

  “Okay, Wilbert. I’ll give you all the money you want. All I ask is that you not do anything rash,” Hickman said, his voice rising.

  “I don’t want to do anything rash. I need for you to cooperate with me,” I said. “Just cooperate with me, that’s all. Now tell the women up front to close the drapes and lock the door and come on back here.”

  Hickman stuck his head out of the coffee room and did what he was told. Looking back, it seems preposterous that I took him into a room where I surrendered my ability to see and control what was happening outside the room. It never occurred to me the women might get suspicious, simply walk out the front door and raise an alarm, in which case I would be caught. But the two women appeared shortly afterward in the doorway of the coffee room, shocked at the sight of my holding a gun on their boss. I repeated to them what I told Hickman, emphasizing that I didn’t want any trouble and didn’t want to hurt anyone. I just wanted money.

  I waved the pistol in the general direction of the corridor and the front lobby. “Let’s go get the money,” I said, and followed the nervous and fearful trio out into the hallway. Before we reached the lobby, the phone rang. All of us were startled. Hickman turned his head and looked at me.

  “Don’t answer that,” I said.

  “I about have to answer it,” he said. “It would be suspicious if I didn’t. Most likely it’s the main branch checking in with us like they always do at the end of the day.”

  I relented, warning him to be careful and to talk normally: “Don’t try any funny stuff,” I said. I stood next to him as he lifted the telephone receiver, placing my ear next to his, listening intently. The man calling asked if there was anything wrong at the branch. Hickman ignored his question, saying, “Okay, I’ll be down in a few minutes.” The caller asked, “Do you need a cop there?” When Hickman gave him a vague response, the caller said he was sending a car that would arrive in a few minutes. Hickman said he would call him right back and hung up.

  Everything had suddenly spun out of control. The police were on the way. I didn’t know what to do. I had counted on everything going right, not this.

  I told Hickman to fill the suitcase, and hurry. The women stood by a table near the tellers’ cages while he took stacks of bills from the cash drawers and put them in the suitcase.

  “Get the big bills in there, the hundreds and whatnot. Nothing small. And hurry,” I urged. “Hurry up.”

  I was in a state of near panic, acting on instinct. I had no time to get the money from the vault. I had to get the hell out of the bank now. I would have to take the three employees with me. There was no other way, not with the police on the way. We’d have to go in one of their cars. I could drop them off in the middle of nowhere and take the car. By the time they walked back to town and
explained what had happened, I’d be long gone.

  It felt as though everything was moving in slow motion. The police would be barging through the doors, guns drawn, anytime now.

  “That’s it. Shut the suitcase, and let’s go,” I said. We had to get out. I looked at the younger woman and demanded the keys to her car.

  “I don’t have them,” she said. “I didn’t drive today. My husband is picking me up.”

  I turned to the older woman. “Do you have yours?”

  “Yes.” Her car keys were in her hand.

  “Where is your car parked?”

  “Behind the bank,” she said.

  “Y’all are going to have to come with me. Let’s go,” I said, gesturing for them to move to the hallway that led to the rear entrance. “Come on, hurry up. Let’s move it.” I saw the manager was in shirtsleeves and instinctively blurted out, “Mr. Hickman, get your coat.”

  “I don’t have one here,” he replied.

  “Well, you’re going to be cold walking back to town.”

  We filed out the back door of the bank and made our way to the car, a Vauxhall, a small English four-seater roughly the size of a Volkswagen Beetle. I told the older woman to drive and the younger one to sit in the front passenger seat. I directed Hickman, with the suitcase, to the back seat behind the driver, and I sat behind the blonde. It was cramped, close quarters.

  The woman drove out of the back parking lot and onto the city streets. It was about five minutes past seven. She was driving a little fast, so I cautioned her to slow down and to obey all traffic signs. I didn’t want us to be stopped by the police for speeding or running a red light.

  “Where are we going?” the older lady asked. “Where do you want me to drive?”

  I was totally unfamiliar with the streets in this all-white section of the city. I told her to take one of the streets behind the shopping center and generally head north toward downtown, which I was a little familiar with.

  The three bank employees, understandably fearful, talked constantly to me, asking that I not hurt them, that I not use the gun, that I just stop and let them out. I didn’t pay much attention to what they were saying because I was trying to figure out what to do with the three of them, at which out-of-the-way place I should drop them. I was almost as afraid and desperate as they were. I knew that if other whites caught me with these three, I wouldn’t survive.

  We twisted and turned aimlessly through streets for fifteen minutes, passing right by the sheriff’s headquarters and the heart of the downtown business district. I suddenly remembered that Opelousas Street, in north Lake Charles, petered out at the city’s outskirts into the Old Spanish Trail, a country back road that went to Iowa, a small town eleven miles away. “We’ll get on Opelousas Street and go east, toward Iowa,” I said. “I’ll let y’all out in the country. But only if y’all cooperate. Everything depends on your cooperation, remember that.”

  We were outside the city on Highway 171. Hickman asked if we were going to English Bayou. I said no, that I was confused. I told the driver to turn the car around. We doubled back to Opelousas Street and followed it east until it dead-ended at Ward Line Road, a narrow gravel lane. Where was the Old Spanish Trail? We could only go right or left. “What do you want me to do?” the driver asked. I had no idea which way to turn. No houses were visible. No house lights, no streetlights. There were no stars, no moon. It was pitch-black, the way it gets out in the country, in the woods. I thought maybe I could leave my prisoners somewhere on this road since it seemed to be in the middle of nowhere. I quickly dismissed that notion when several cars passed us after we turned left, going down the lane a mile or so through the wooded landscape. I didn’t know this road or where it went, but it was obvious I couldn’t leave them there, given the amount of traffic.

  We came to a little bridge that crossed a bayou. There was a small clearing in the woods, next to the road, on the left-hand side. I told the driver to slow down. I was disoriented. Another car passed, and in the distance its brake lights came on. I watched the car intently through the rear window, scared it might be returning to try to help us.

  Suddenly, the younger woman was bolting from the car. “Stop the car!” I yelled, grabbing at the door handle and springing out. I slipped, losing my footing. The woman ran across the road. Scrambling to break my fall, I leaned against the trunk of the car. “Stop or I’ll shoot!” I yelled. Hickman, now out of the car, lunged toward me and the pistol. It went off, and he ran. I continued firing—five more shots in rapid succession—until the gun emptied. Both women fell. “Mr. Hickman!” I called, running a couple of steps after him, stopping as I realized I could not see him, then spinning around in time to see the older woman start to rise. I grabbed the knife, stabbed her, and ran to the car where I stood, shaking violently and gasping for breath. I couldn’t see anything in the pitch-black night. It was deathly quiet. Oh, God, what have I done? I got into the car and took a deep, ragged breath. “Oh, God,” I murmured, “help me—please.” I took off down the gravel lane. I needed to distance myself from this horrible place, this nightmare.

  Three white deputies pulled into the driveway of 1820 Brick Street. They pounded first on the front door, waking my mother, and then again at the back door. One ordered her to put on some clothes and told her she was needed at the jail. They told her that they wanted her to talk with her son but would tell her no more than that. Terrified, she dressed quickly as the cop standing in the doorway watched. They got her into the car and drove off, leaving her children behind. At the jail, they escorted her through a wild and drunken mob and left her sitting on a bench in the lobby, which was full of angry white men spilling out into the street. “I had never seen nothing that ugly in my life,” she remembered. “There were about two, three hundred white mens—no women or colored folks. I was the only one there. They were drinking, cursing, and talking about how they were going to kill that nigger. They had guns. I was scared to death.”

  “Your momma is here. We got her in the front. You want to see her?” the sheriff asked me.

  “Yes, sir. Sheriff, she’s not out there with all those people, is she?” I asked.

  “She’ll be all right,” he said. “And we gonna let you see your momma—but we need you to finish telling us what happened first. The quicker we get that done, the quicker y’all can visit.”

  A secretary took shorthand notes of our interview. Within an hour the police had enough of a confession, which they typed up for me to sign. Only when it was handed to me for my signature was I told that I did not have to make a statement, that I did not have to say anything at all. But I was worried about my mother being dragged into my troubles. The sheriff left to issue a statement to the media detailing the crime. I was taken upstairs, stripped of my clothing, dressed in gray jail coveralls, and locked in a cell.

  I lay down on the bunk, emotionally spent and traumatized. The cops did not let me see my mother. I hoped she was all right. I wondered about the three bank employees I left out in the country. I hadn’t wanted to harm them. I figured the man was okay because he ran off. I whispered a prayer that the women were somehow all right, too. Totally exhausted, I fell into a deep sleep.

  The jangling of steel keys dragged my sleep-fogged mind awake. Three uniformed deputies stood before me, one in the doorway of the cell, hands on his hips: “Awright, Rideau—let’s go,” he said.

  “Go where?” I asked, moving through the door. No response. As we walked down an empty hallway, I believed they were taking me to be killed. We went down an elevator. My legs were so weak from fear, I could barely walk. They directed me toward an extremely brightly lit area of an otherwise dark room. Sheriff Reid and the two state troopers who had captured me were waiting in the pool of light. They sat me in a chair at a long table. I wondered if it was the electric chair. The sheriff fed my fear when he sat next to me and told someone behind the light, “Tell me when you’re ready.” Then he offered me a cigarette, just like they did in the movies before exe
cuting someone. I snatched the lit cigarette, inhaled, and tried to see the shadowy figures in the dark behind the blinding lights. I returned the cigarette to my lips, only to find that the tension in my fingers had broken it.

  The sheriff introduced the troopers flanking us on either side and then conversationally turned to me. “When you approached English Bayou off of Highway 90, on the side road there, would you mind telling me just how the car slowed up and how Mrs. McCain jumped out of the car? Would you tell me exactly how that happened, and how you shot at her?”

  “One got out, and then the other two got out from the other side,” I mumbled.

  “Did they go in the same direction, run in the same direction?” the sheriff asked.

  I nodded at him and said, “Yeah.”

  “And then what did you do when they ran?”

  “Well, Mr. Hickman ran one way and the other two women ran another way.”

  “And then what did you do as they ran?”

  “I shot.”

  “You shot? Well, uh, did you hit ’em? Did you notice?”

  “I don’t know. They fell, though …”

  “How many of them fell?”

  “The two women fell.”

  “The two women fell,” repeated the sheriff. “And then, I believe that, uh, one of the women got up, and as she got up, she fell back down, and you went over to her, isn’t that right?”

  “Yeah.”

  “Well,” said Reid, “tell what happened when you went back to the old woman as she was laying, as she was lying, on the road.”

  “I stabbed her,” I mumbled.

  “You stabbed her? What was it with, a hunting knife?”

  “A hunting knife.”

  “And then you turned around after you lost them in the dark, you turned around and went back down Opelousas Street. You decided that you better not go back into town, so you reversed yourself, turned around, went back east on Opelousas Street, hit Highway 90, and proceeded on toward Iowa, Louisiana, and later on were stopped by troopers Dupin and Byon.”