Dark End of the Street

THE PHRASE PUBLIC RECORD is misleading. Most people think it means they have access to all the governmental information they want, anytime they want it. The truth is that the “all” part of the statement varies from state to state – mainly watered down to “some” – and the “anytime” means when they get around to it. Last year, I was helping a fellow tracker look for a death certificate on legendary bluesman Blind Blake in Atlanta and ran into a mighty long clusterfuck. He had the theory that Blake had died somewhere in south Georgia after being hit by a streetcar in the ‘twenties and that ole Blake’s death would show up somewhere in state records. My written request was never answered. My phone calls were greeted by polite paper sluggers, but no answers were ever given. A trip to Georgia confirmed that no one had even looked for the damned thing.

That’s the way it works. Most of the time you have to go to the office yourself. You have to be polite to those paper sluggers and, if you are lucky, they’ll crawl down into the cave or depths of hell or wherever those physical records are stored, and bring you back an answer. I’ve had tons of academics spin these great tales about conspiracies behind public records and how bureaucrats want to keep everything secret. Most of the time that’s bullshit. When searching for old files, your biggest enemy is apathy.

As I waited down at Davis Bail Bonds on Poplar, I hoped Ulysses was having luck getting what we needed released. I picked at a paper container of health food he’d bought for me. Some tofu squares in brown rice, broccoli, and cooked carrots. I hunted for a bottle of Crystal. Maybe some pepper. Nothing.

It was about 2:00 P.M. when he finally got back. He slid out of his leather coat, hung it on a mahogany rack, and turned down the jazz playing overhead before plunking down the thick stack of papers he carried under his arm.

I picked it up. About half a phone book.

U made some coffee and returned some phone calls while I took the stack into his lobby and flipped through the pages. He called out from his office: “Be careful with those pictures. I have to return them in the morning. Rest was a copy.”

James, Mary/Porter, Eddie

December 17, 1968

The first pages consisted of a detailed report from the Shelby County Medical Examiner. Eddie Porter had multiple injuries. Blunt trauma to the back of the head. Four of his front teeth broken loose. Two found in his stomach. Single gunshot to the base of the skull.

Mary James had died much more cleanly, if there was such a thing. She suffered four knife wounds to her face and a single gunshot that began underneath her jaw and ended up in her brain.

Both died from a.38 caliber bullet.

The crime scene photos, a set of ten, had that same washed-out, grainy-color look of those old Polaroids from the early ‘sixties. Grandpa in weird black glasses. Mother with a beehive. Of course, these were larger, eight by tens, with some of the most disturbing images I’d ever seen.

I’d seen men killed. But staring into the warped angle in which pregnant Mary James lay, clutching her belly with eyes open, made me turn my head and flip the page quickly. These were too personal. I shuffled through the rest. The back of James’s head. Broken plates on the floor and a plane ticket in a pool of blood.

Two sets of bloody shoe prints. Blood smears in an old kitchen. I swallowed as if my own spit were contaminated.

But I was careful to look thoroughly at each page. Take the time. U brought me some coffee in a mug stamped with logo for his company and I leafed through charts and diagrams of angles that the shooter or shooters used. Everything I saw implied two men.

EVIDENCE LIST:

32 scene photographs

1 brick

1 plane ticket

1 kitchen knife

1 woven rug

2 chairs

1 Formica table

fingerprint samples (doors and windows)

1 wallet

personal papers from James’s home

I flipped through the stack quickly looking for copies of what would appear to be letters or notes but only saw more neatly typed pages. What did interest me was the detective log. As with most, they were written by one of a team of two detectives and carried time and place of interviews, what happened, as well as what they personally observed.

1400 hours

December 18, 1968.

Bluff City Records offices, College Street