Next morning, I called Sam Brown from a phone booth on Claiborne by a school painted pale blue and tangerine, the kind of color scheme I always think of as island pastel, part of the city’s Caribbean heritage.
I said who I was and asked if he had anything for me.
“For you? You better believe it. You’re tall man in the forest right now, Lewis. Word came down. Happen to be free this afternoon about two?”
I told him I thought I could arrange it.
“You sure you don’t need to check your schedule, now?”
“Well, you know how it is: business first.”
“I do, I do. Shame so many people’ve already forgotten that.”
“What’s on?”
“Second.”
It took me a moment. “And who’s on first.”
“Why you are, man. I just told you that.”
“You know, Brown, maybe we’re in the wrong line. We could work up a few more gags, get us some bowlers and checkered suits and have our own TV show.”
“Or at least a guest spot now and then on some white man’s.”
“There is that.”
“And of course we’d have to be careful what we said, or we’d wind up blackballed like Bobbye Belle, having to move overseas because we couldn’t get work in clubs here.”
“Never happened. I read an article about it. All just a misunderstanding.”
“Yeah. Right.”
“So what work do we have?”
“Straight escort job. In and out, an hour, hour and a half tops.”
“Whose pony are we riding?”
“Elroy Weaver.”
A few years back, with a couple of other guys Weaver had formed Black Adder. It was the first truly militant organization for blacks, short on rhetoric, long on action. Adder had lots of enemies both inside the establishment, where the three of them spent a lot of time, accompanied by their Harvard lawyer, in court proceedings, and alongside the establishment, where repeated threats and escalating violence issued from white individuals and groups. Adder probably had as many enemies among its own community: older blacks terrified of rocking the boat any harder, younger ones convinced all we could do was burn the whole field down and start with a new crop.
“Big pony,” I said.
“Ain’t it though? A real dark horse. Weaver’s coming in for a strategy-and-position conference with an undisclosed local organization. The Black Hand, we think. Whole thing’s been kept quiet, Weaver’s even using an assumed name. We pick him up at Moisant, deliver him to a motel out on Airline. That’s it. From that point on, the local group takes over.”
“Who’s picking up the tab?”
“Not a question I ask.”
“Who’s on this, and how many?”
“Six of us. Our best men. I’ll be out there myself-though you won’t see me till we shut it down. Maybe after that we can talk about your future here at SeCure.”
“Where am I in the line-up?”
“Honor guard, Lewis. Man says he wants you there in the car by him.”
Which is where, four hours later, I found myself.
Elroy Weaver was a small man, wiry, with still, dark eyes that stayed on whatever he directed them toward, and below those eyes, a mouth quick to smile or laugh. He’d come off the plane with only a shoulder bag, down the ramp directly to me.
“Glad you made it, Lewis.” He held out his hand.
Not much talk in the car. He asked me a few questions about myself, told me how much he missed his family, being away so much like this.
“You have family, Lewis?”
I told him about my parents and sister Francy up in Arkansas.
“See them often? Keep in touch?”
I shook my head, and he didn’t pursue it.
“No family of your own, then.”
No. Though not long after this, much to my surprise, there would be.
Just past Williams Boulevard a station wagon had tried to beat an oncoming van and got caught halfway through its turn, racking up a couple of other vehicles as it slewed across two lanes and into the cross street. We pulled up and took our place in line. Police and wreckers were clearing the road. Elroy sat watching the operation quietly.
This is what would happen: I’d go into the downtown library to look for another book by Camus and the librarian at the information desk would be named Janie. She’d be getting ready to leave for the day, for some reason I’d ask her, and before I knew it we’d be across the street drinking coffee.
When I told LaVerne that Janie and I were getting married, she just said, very quietly: Good luck, honey. I didn’t see her for a long time then. Janie and I had a son. I got busy drinking and using the marriage to do things to myself that my anger and self-disgust alone couldn’t accomplish. LaVerne wasn’t all I didn’t see back then.
Years went by and David, my son, was gone.
More years, and LaVerne was gone.
We began moving again, past a cop directing traffic, over scatters of gemlike glass.
“Maybe later, Lewis. Further along,” Weaver said.
“Yeah. Maybe.”
Further along we’ll know all the answers, further along we’ll understand why.
We eased down Airline past ramshackle bars, hole-in-the-wall eateries and blocky abandoned factories with grids of punched-out windows, to the Pelican Motor Hotel. Refrigerated air was painted on the office window. An overgrown drive-in movie lot sat across from the motel.
Time for the transfer, the hand-off. Always the weakest point.
As rehearsed back at SeCure, I got out of the car, leaving Weaver, another guard and the driver inside, and stood several paces away. After a moment Louis Creech stepped from the motel office to join me. He nodded curtly to me as he glanced toward the drive-in across the street. From the corner of my eye I caught a brief flash of light at the top of the screen over there. Could have been a reflection from a passing car. Gone as quickly as it came.
I had known the Sentry was on this job.
Now I knew where he was.
The game plan called for me to fall away at this point, passing Weaver on to Louis Creech. Meanwhile I’d circle around back, check the periphery.
I started around, and when everyone’s attention seemed taken, sprinted down an alley behind the motel and a cut-rate furniture store, back up by the store’s delivery docks, and across Airline.
Just as I hit the other side I looked back. Creech’s head turned toward me. He lifted the walkie-talkie.
Beside the drive-in was what had probably been an automobile showroom, with walls intact but the windows that had spanned the whole storefront, and most of the roof, gone. I dove in there and raced through its junkyard floor: stacks of ancient tires, carcasses of small animals, fast-food containers, remains of campfires. At first I saw no way out. But an emergency exit finally gave way on the fourth kick.
I came back out into sunlight and open air and saw the screen only ten, twelve yards away.
Someone was scrambling away from its base toward the stand of trees behind.
Scrambling as once before he’d scrambled over a Dumpster and through a delivery door.
He was almost to the trees when his foot caught in something-weeds, a tangle of roots, a sinkhole-and he fell.
He got up, looked down, looked behind to see me advancing, and shot off into the trees.
Where I lost him.
I plunged on for some time-thrashing about, turning this way and that, stopping to listen-but there was little doubt my bucket had sprung a terminal leak.
At last I found my way back out. Traffic on Airline was picking up fast. More cars and pickups than trucks now, as people started home from work.
Sam Brown said, “Little ways off your post aren’t you, Lewis?” So much for my bright future with SeCure.
I shrugged and walked over to where my pursuee had stumbled. No doubt about it. A professional’s piece, assembled by hand or made to order. Winchester bolt action, with a Zeiss 10x scope. The rifle’s original barrel appeared to have been replaced. Only the receiver was attached to the stock. The new barrel was free-floating. I’d seen snipers carry similar hot rods.
Sam Brown had followed me.
“Who is he?” I said, looking up.
“You’re the one has trouble, Lewis.”
“Sam.” I stood. “Now, I can’t be absolutely sure, of course, but I think we can both assume this weapon is loaded. Since it hasn’t been fired yet.”
I was careful to avoid touching trigger and guard, places on the stock where fingerprints might be, though I knew there wouldn’t be any.
“People know your shooter was on the job, Sam. You go down here, under his rifle, he’s the one did it. No one will say different.”
He started to raise the walkie-talkie and stopped himself. “You’re crazy, Griffin. Crazy as everyone says you are.”
I shrugged. “America. I’ll yield to the majority opinion. What are you going to do?”
Moments shouldered by. Twenty or thirty cars, pickups, service vehicles.
“I authentically don’t know who he is, Griffin.”
“How’d he get on the SeCure roster?”
“Again: I don’t know. You’d have to go higher up on the chain. But my feeling is, he got in touch with us.”
“Everything okay across the street? Weaver handed on safely?”
He nodded.
“Good. I need one of your men to drop me-and this-off downtown, at the central police station. That all right with you?”
He shrugged. “Sure. Why not?” Then as I started away he said: “Lewis.”
I turned back.
“This is what you were after all along, right?”
I told him it was and he said he had wondered.
Never as invisible as we think. Us or our motives.