In the Heat of the Night

Virgil visits Jess, the Black mechanic who loaned him a car. Virgil hopes the case will wrap up soon, and Jess invites him in for dinner. Virgil resists, but Jess wants Virgil to meet his 13-year-old son, Andy, who has never met a detective, let alone a Black one. At dinner, Andy watches Virgil intensely, fascinated. He asks about Virgil’s first case. Virgil helped catch heroin dealers in Pasadena by disguising himself as a shoeshine man. Andy is delighted that being Black helped Virgil catch the criminals: ‘“No one expected a Negro in a job like that to be a police officer.’ ‘So if’n you’d been white, you couldn’t of done it!’ the boy burst out” (113). Andy remains fixated on Virgil for the rest of dinner in awe.

Virgil walks to his car after dinner, mulling over the case. Suddenly, two men emerge from behind him and attack. One man tries to strike Virgil with a piece of wood, but Virgil blocks the attack and twists the man’s wrist; then he subdues the other man. Andy and Jess arrive to help, and they call the police and a doctor. Virgil wants to press charges, but the officers that arrive to the scene are confused that a Black man is trying to charge two white men with assault.