- Courtney?
- Yes, sir?
Change the charge to theft.
D'you mean Harve?
Who the hell else do we have back there?!
Yes, sir.
Hey.
Didn't I ask you to fix that gate?
No, not me, sir. Must have been
my brother Harold. He's on days.
Harold.
Police department.
Yes, he's here. Hold on, sir.
Mayor's on the line, Chief.
What's all this Miz Colbert's been
tellin' me about a... a cover-up arrest?
No, ma'am. We ain't had no cover-up.
In fact, we just dropped the charges
for insufficient evidence.
Miz Colbert, I told you
he was nobody's man.
I came by to make it
as clear as I possibly can
that I do not want that Negro officer
taken off this case.
Negro officer?
Yeah, well, he, uh...
He comes from up North, you see.
And he was, uh, kinda...
- passin' through...
- If it wasn't for him,
your impartial chief of police would still
have the wrong man behind bars.
I want that officer given a free hand.
Otherwise, I will pack up
my husband's engineers...
and leave you...
to yourselves.
Miz Colbert, now don't you
worry about a thing.
Believe me, we're gonna
take care of everything.
Bill?
I wanna see you come through
this now, you hear?
Even if we have to
step on Endicott's toes?
Even that.
But do it fast.
All right.
Now, Bill, how about
this here Negro officer?
Miz Colbert seems
to have confidence in him.
Oh, he ain't nothin'. Some kind of a...
some kind of a homicide expert.
But I don't need him.
You mean you don't want him.
But you do need him.
Now look, Bill.
Suppose he turns up the killer.
He has no police power here. He's gonna
have to hand him over on a platter, right?
That's right.
And if he fails, you're off the hook, cos it
was Miz Colbert's idea in the first place.
See what I mean?
Oh, yeah.
Works out all the way around, Bill.
For all of us.
Excuse me.
Any reason why you have to leave today?
There's lots of reasons.
What would you say if
I asked you to stay for a while?
No.
This town needs a factory, Virgil.
Colbert come down
from Chicago to build it.
I hear they're gonna hire a thousand men.
Half of them'd be coloured.
- Know what that means?
- Probably got him killed.
That's what Mrs Colbert thinks.
She wants us to catch her a killer.
No killer, no factory.
Well, it's a lotta jobs for a lotta
coloured people. You follow me?
- I'm going home, man.
- They're your people.
Not mine - yours. You made this scene.
- What do you want me to do? Beg you?
- Look, I've had your town up to here!
Boy, it would give me a world
of satisfaction to horsewhip you, Virgil!
My father used to say that.
- Even did, once or twice.
- Yeah, well, not enough to suit me.
Now you listen to me.
Just once in my life
I'm gonna hold my temper.
I'm tellin' you that you're gonna stay.
You'll stay here if I have to have your
chief remind you what he told you to do.
But I don't think
I have to do that, you see?
No. Because you're so damned smart.
You're smarter than any white man.
You're just gonna stay here
and show us all.
You could never live with yourself
unless you could put us all to shame.
You wanna know something, Virgil?
I don't think that you could let
an opportunity like that pass by.
Jess?
Jess, this is, uh...
This is Virgil. He's workin' for me.
Give him somethin' that runs. Fix him up.
What I fix, runs. Who pays?
Police.
Well, you know where to find me.
What you doin' here, man?
Policeman.
You're a policeman here in Sparta?
They've got a murder
they don't know what to do with.
They need a whipping boy.
You got a roof?
No. I'll find a motel.
Viola... We got company.
Know what's gonna happen?
He gonna get hisself killed.
You watch and see he don't.
I'm aware of the risk, Tom.
But, like it or not, we're stuck with him.
Not if the chief here is right on the ball.
What do you say, Chief? You got that old
killer all lined up in your front sights, hm?
I'm workin' on it.
Tom, climb off of Gillespie's back now.
You know damn well