The Lost Brother (17 page)

Khalid: Know who this is?

Long: Yeah.

Silence.

Khalid, dejected: Then I guess it’s true. Long: What?

Khalid: I can’t believe it. I had to call to be sure.

Long: What?

Khalid: You’re Henry James’s brother.

Long: Yeah, that’s right. Who gives a fuck?

Khalid laughs. Sadly: Man, I’m sorry.

Long, keeping his echoing, deep, emotionless voice: What’s up? How’d you know I’m here?

Khalid: That’s the same thing as asking how I know you’re Henry James’s brother, isn’t it?

Long: How you know?

Khalid: It don’t matter.

Long: How you know?

Khalid: Listen, man. The boy is dead.

Long is silent.

Khalid: I mean, he will be soon. Real soon. Good as dead.

Long: What’s going on?

Khalid: I can’t tell you. I’m sorry. It’s not my people doing it. It’s not my people who found him.

Long’s anger is rising: Where is he, Khalid? What’s going on?

Khalid: The boy called your house a little while ago. Talked to his sister for a minute, to tell her he’d be home tomorrow. The number he called from led back to a pay phone across the street from where he was.

Long: Led back? By who?

Khalid: The people who are probably still listening. Long: Who?

Khalid: The boy’s your nephew? I’m sorry, brother. It’s just the way it goes.

Long: Where’s the boy, Khalid?

Khalid: Look, man. It’s like this. Those stupid FBI motherfuckers the Director put in charge of city corruption investigation? I told you about that little arrangement. The Goof Squad. Well, they also are handling the tap on your mother’s phone, ‘cause the Director wanted to know all that’s going on with the videotapes shit.

Long: Tell me where the boy is, Khalid. That’s all you got to do.

Khalid: You got to forget him, Long. He’s gone, okay? I mean, he saw too much. He knows too much. Okay? Long: He’s just a boy, Khalid.

Khalid: Shit, man, I ain’t happy about it! But like you said when you gave that order that time in the joint—about how I had to take out that homeboy of mine who weren’t nothing but eighteen—death ain’t no thing.

Long, forcing calm into his voice: Khalid, give me the boy.

Mrs. James has been listening closely.

Khalid: Long, it’s out of my hands. He does know too much. And I don’t just mean all the videotapes he saw. I mean, he saw someone knifed tonight.

Long: Who?

Khalid: The man who found him and took him in, the night of the murders. The man who’s been hiding him all this time.

Long: Who’s that?

Khalid: Come on, man. Just let it go. The boy is gone. Good as gone. They’re just interrogating him a little more now, ‘cause they’re scared he might have called someone else besides his sister. They want to know who else might know what he knows. But I left there ten minutes ago. They probably done the boy by now.

Long: Khalid, listen now. You owe me, right? Tell me that. Tell me you owe me. Khalid: I owe you.

Long: Then tell me where the boy is. Silence.

Long: Come on, man.

Click

“God damn it!” Long yells, banging the phone against the wall.

His mother looks at him. “They found the boy? But what? What else?”

Long can’t answer. He looks into his mother’s terror-filled eyes and can’t answer.

He moves quickly to the stairwell landing, bounds up the steps four at a time. Opens his niece’s door without knocking.

She’s on her bed, watching television. Looks up at him as he bursts in.

“Girl, where’s your brother?” She looks at Long, frightened.

He realizes that and softens his features, his voice. “Girl, I need to know where he is.”

“I don’t know.
I don’t!”

“Did he say anything about where he was? Like, what neighborhood?”

“No.”

“Did he say if he was in a house or an apartment?”

“He said he was in a basement.”

“Good, good. Now, when did he call you?”

She thinks about what was on television when he called, looks at her clock, figures it out. “An hour and ten minutes ago.”

“Yes,” Mrs. James says. “I remember the phone rang, but it’s almost always one of her girlfriends, so I let her get it.”

The girl speaks quickly. “He said not to tell you! He asked me if anything happened when his letter came, and I said no, and he said nobody did anything, no police did anything, or FBI? And I said no, and he said then maybe it
was
safe to come home, and I said I thought so because Uncle Long was here, and he said I was lying, and I said no I am
not
, and Uncle Long is so big
nobody
can hurt us now, and he said Uncle Long is really there? and I said yes! and he said maybe it really
was
safe to come home, and I said, should I get Grandma? and he said no, because she’ll want him to come home now, and she’ll tell the police and the FBI and he wouldn’t be able to convince her not to except by showing her the videotapes he had, that Daddy had, that explained why it might be the police or FBI that
killed
Mommy and Daddy.” She started to cry. “I knew I should have told you, Grandmommy. “

“That’s okay, hon,” Long says. “That’s okay. Now who did he say he was with?”

“A man.”

“Okay Who?”

“I don’t know.”

“You don’t know the man, or he didn’t tell you?”

“He said it was a man I didn’t know.”

“Did
he
know him?”

“No, the man found him. In the alley that night, behind our house.”

“What kind of man?”

“I don’t know.”

“Black or white?”

“I don’t know.”

He spends a few minutes asking the girl more questions, but she can’t tell him anything else. His mother sits with the girl. Long goes downstairs.

He goes out the back door, through the little yard there, to the alley. Thinks, who might have been in a city alley at night? Thinks, the police would have asked everyone who was around that night, that morning. Even the reporters would have. But what about whoever wasn’t around anymore?

He sets out at a run for his brother’s house. Goes to the alley behind the house. Looks around. Sees no one. Goes down a block, sees no one. Back up a block, sees no one. Crosses the street. Down the street, sees a couple of black men passing a bottle in a brown paper bag, drinking from it. He goes to them.

Long has spent too much time on the street and in the joint not to know how to handle such men as these.

“Hey,” he says, coming up to them.

They eye his gaunt figure and stern eyes. Nod.

In a deep, serious voice, he asks, “You going to tell me something?”

One of the men drawls out, “Shit,” and Long grabs the man by the throat, stares ferociously down into his eyes.

That man, and the other, have spent too much time on the street and in jail themselves not to know that a man such as the one confronting them now will do what he needs to get what he needs.

“What’s up?” asks the other man.

“I need some information/’ Long says. “That ain’t hard/’ says the man whose neck Long is letting go.

“I want y’all to tell me who you ain’t seen for a while. I mean, out here. Who hanging out here, round here, you ain’t seen for about a week.”

“Man, that’s some people, you know,” says the second man. “But now, don’t get mad, let me think. You mean, like the white folk living here? You wanting to know who’s on vacation so you can take their house down?”

“I’m talking about the brothers that hang here.”

The two men think. Look at each other. The first man, the one Long grabbed, says, “Ain’t seen Preacher for a while.”

“How long a while?” Long asks. “Like you say, about a week.”

“He hang around here?”

“Here. Downtown some. He ain’t checking in, though, you know.”

“I know. What’s his thing? Wine?”

“Oh, wine, sure. Whatever. He’s a case. Upstairs.”

Long takes that to mean he has some mental illness. “But is he together?”

“Yeah, he stays together well enough.”

“Violent?”

“No, no. Not Preacher.”

“You know him to sleep in that alley back there?”

“He’s got that one doorway staked out. Back door to the Thai place. Stays there when it rains. Rest of the time, I think he’s got some place he goes to. His grandmother’s place. She got some basement in her house I think he stays wintertime. That house might be abandoned now, though, because I think he said she died a few months ago and that old house wasn’t worth nothing, out in nowhere.”

“Where’s that?”

“I don’t know. Never been there. He ain’t going to bring no one there, ‘cause his grandmother didn’t even want him there. She was ninety year old and didn’t hardly trust him. Sure wasn’t going to trust me. She only let him in the basement. Not upstairs. I think that what he told me.”

The other man says, “Maybe he just don’t want to bring you over.”

“Fuck you,” the first man says.

“I need to know where it is,” Long says.

“Don’t know. Northeast, all I know.”

“What’s his whole name?”

“Oh, man, don’t be asking me nobody’s whole name!” He points to his companion. “I don’t even know this motherfucker’s whole name.”

“His name’s Bobby Jay,” the other man says. “I mean, that’s what he says it is, don’t he? Preacher Bobby Jay?”

Long gets a description, approximate age. Can’t get any other hard Information.

Rain has fallen much of the day, and the streets are wet, shining under headlights, glistening under lamps. The warm yellow windows of homes sparkle with tense drops. The air is cool, clean; the sky cloudy, orange-tinted from the underflow of the city’s lights.

Long passes his brother’s house. Murder site. Looks at the darkened windows.

He jogs quickly back to his mother’s house, a spectral form in his black jeans, black jacket. The few people on the sidewalks step aside well before they’re in his way, if they see him before he’s on them.

He tells his mother what he found out, then opens a phone book. Looks for a Jay listed in Northeast.

Finds only one. Calls it.

A young woman answers. Babies are crying in the background. Long asks just a few questions before he’s satisfied it’s not the house he’s looking for. The young woman also claims no knowledge of any elderly female relatives in the city, especially none that died lately. She’s never heard of a Preacher Bobby Jay.

Long hangs up. Thinks. Grimacing, calls Kellogg.

Kellogg is in his booth in the diner. He answers on the cellular phone, thinking it’s probably Passer. He’s surprised it’s Long.

Long: Listen, man. I need an address. Kellogg: Whose?

Long: If I give you the last name of a person who’s supposed to own a house, can you find their address?

Kellogg: If it’s that simple. If they own the house, not rent. If you got the name right. Sure. Why?

Long has been hesitant to ask for help his whole life, always.

Long: I think I got the last name of a place where the boy might be.

Kellogg inhales sharply.

Long: He’s alive.

Kellogg: How do you know?

Long explains. Tells him the name, Bobby Jay. Kellogg shakes his head, feels a rush in his blood.

Kellogg: Call me back from a pay phone in five minutes.

Long leaves the house. Goes to a phone. Calls.

Kellogg: You?

Long: Yeah.

Kellogg: I got it.

Long: Give it up.

Kellogg: I’m coming too.

Long: Ain’t your place.

Kellogg: Fuck you.

Long: Shit, motherfucker, what are you good for? Kellogg: The address. Long: Shit.

Kellogg: You got a car? Long is silent.

Kellogg: I’m on the job here. Long: Is the address in Northeast? Kellogg: Yeah.

Long: Around CU or the Soldiers Home? Brookland? Kellogg: No.

Long: Then your white face is going to queer my play. Kellogg: This ain’t a debate, asshole. It’s a fact. I’m coming. Long: All right. Fuck. Silence.

Long, conceding: We need some more people. Where’s your girl Passer?

Kellogg: Working. Long: Can you get her? Kellogg: No.

Long: This might be too ugly for her anyway. Shit, man, all the motherfuckers I could trust in a spot this hard are in lockdown. You got anyone you can
really
trust here?

Kellogg: Yeah.

Long: I mean, man, with a gun if it comes to it? Kellogg: Yeah.

Long: I’m serious, man. This ain’t no time for a folder.

Kellogg: Nah, the man I’m thinking of, he won’t fold. It’s the only man your brother would trust with this. Chavez.

Long, solemnly: Yeah.

Kellogg: He’s working, but I know where.

Long: Get him. Fast. I don’t know how much time we got, but it might be none. What guns you got?

Kellogg: I don’t use guns. Don’t you have some?

Long: I’m on parole. You don’t have a gun? A redneck motherfucker like you don’t have a gun?

Kellogg: I got an old rifle.

Long: Bring it, then. You got fifteen minutes to get here.

Long gives him the street corner he’s calling from. Kellogg: Be there.

Long: I’ll be there. I’m going to get me a piece first, but I’ll be there.

Kellogg hangs up. Gets moving. Doesn’t doubt that Long can find and buy a gun in fifteen minutes.

Kellogg goes to his office. Gets the rifle and bullets from the closet.

He moves as quickly as his body lets him to his fake taxi. Drives as quickly as the streets let him to Georgetown. Blocks the alley when he parks behind the restaurant where Chavez works. Stomps up the steps of the restaurant’s back door, opens it without knocking, sees Chavez in dirty white work clothes, scrubbing pots.

Chavez looks up when the back door opens. Sees Kellogg. Sees the look on his face. Comes instantly when Kellogg silently beckons him out. Without a word, gets in the car with Kellogg. Only when they are moving does he ask, What?

Kellogg tells him.

Long is hidden in an unlit alley across from the corner where Kellogg pulls up for him. He looks things over before stepping out of the dark. Calls out “Yo” as he comes up to Kellogg, so as not to startle the man.