The Lost Brother (8 page)

“Shut the door,” Kellogg says.

Ottaway, after an arrogant hesitation, shuts it. Looks at Kellogg, who can’t help smiling.

“Mr. Ottaway. Sir. How are you?”

Ottaway glares. Kellogg laughs. Says, “Man, don’t try that powerful-executive shit with me. I don’t care how much money you make. I know who you really are.”

Ottaway looks sheepish.

“Let’s cut to the chase, Ottaway. What do you want?”

“What do I want?
You’re
the one who called this meeting.”

Kellogg can’t help laughing again. He’s too amused. “What do you want?” he asks again.

“You
called the meeting!” Ottaway repeats. “What do
you
want?”

“I know what I want. And in fact, I know what you want. But, Mr. Ottaway, I’d like you to
tell
me what you want.” Ottaway shakes his head. “You can sit if you want,” Kellogg says.

“Fuck you.”

Kellogg laughs again. Says, “You the one who produces that Saturday-night comedy hour?” Ottaway nods reluctantly.

“Man, that’s a funny show,” Kellogg says. “I never knew black people could be so funny. Man, I just laugh and laugh and laugh at them. There was that one guy, all he did was come out onstage, look around, and say, ‘Kill Whitey,’ and everybody laughed so loud. Me, too.”

A moment passes.

With a bit of a pout, Ottaway says, “You can’t give me what I want.”

“Yes I can,” Kellogg says. He now looks, speaks, steadily, confidently, right at Ottaway.

“You can undo this shit?” Ottaway asks.

“Sure.”

“How?”

“You haven’t told me …”

“I want out of trouble on the sexual harassment thing!”

“Who set you up on that?”

“You. And that bitch who works for you.”

“That’s right.”

Another moment passes. When Kellogg sees a look of conciliation come to Ottaway’s face, he says, “Sit down.” Ottaway does.

“Here’s your story. You were working
with
us, Mr. Ottaway. We were doing an instructional video about sexual harassment and went to you for your professional assistance. You agreed to help us because it’s such an important issue to you. You used to be the kind of man who took advantage of women who worked under him, and as an act of contrition, and as a sign of your own raised consciousness, you volunteered your time. The photos I took of you and my operative at the bar that one night, that was just role playing.”

Ottaway is thinking. He nods very slightly.

Kellogg pushes a piece of paper across the desk. “This is a letter from Kellogg Investigations thanking you for working with us on this very important issue.”

Ottaway picks it up. Reads it.

Kellogg next pushes an eight-by-ten photograph over.

Ottaway picks it up. It’s a picture of him and Passer having dinner. On the photo Passer has written, “Michael, thank you so much for your help. You know, you talked so much about your wife and daughters that I feel like I know them! They are certainly lucky to have such an enlightened man in their lives!”

She’d signed it, “Gratefully, Catherine ‘Sheila’Jones.”

Kellogg lets it sink in.

Ottaway says, resigned, voice low, “So what do
you
want?”

“I want to know why.”

“Why they wanted the shit on me?”

“Yeah.”

Ottaway looks down. Says, to the floor, “No you don’t.”

“Try me. Starting with who ‘they’ are.” Looking back up, Ottaway smiles and says, “Why?”

“I don’t like being used. And I get the feeling I was. I get the feeling this isn’t about sexual harassment.”

“No.”

“Which means the woman over there just wanted something on you. Wanted a thumb on you. Used me to get it.”

“Yes.”

“A thumb not just on your job but on your life. On your marriage, which is pretty good in spite of you. On your career, which would be over if there was undeniable proof that you’re a sexist asshole.”

“I’m not an asshole. I don’t treat women that way. It was just Sheila. Or whatever her name is. I never met anyone so … you know.”

“She’s a pretty woman.”

“No, I deal with pretty women all the time. She’s more than that.”

“And all you could think to do was use your power to fuck her?”

“It’s all she responded to!”

Kellogg waves his hands. “Back to the thumb on you. Who wants it?”

Ottaway takes a deep breath. The look of a man with a bursting secret comes over his face. Kellogg knows the look well. He saw it a lot as a cop. The look of a confessor.

“I don’t know if you can handle it,” Ottaway says snidely. “You probably won’t believe it.”

Kellogg is silent. Ottaway goes on.

“You know what New Africa is?”

Kellogg nods.

“They’re in the other half of the building with us. BTN’s owner doesn’t have anything personally to do with them, doesn’t even like them. But some of the staff members do. The woman who hired you is a New African. Anyway, she’d approached me about helping New Africa because I’d said before that I liked Khalid’s message. She said they wanted to do a video surveillance, for security, but they didn’t know anything about the equipment. She asked me to help. I said get me when you need me. And then one day these three New Africans tell me they’ll need my help with this thing. I went along. Like all my talk about doing my part for the cause, like that talk had a momentum of its own. Okay, so they pull up their car and we load it with the video equipment and go to this motel out on New York Avenue. We set up a hidden camera in one room and monitor it from the next room. I’m nervous with these three guys, because, I don’t know, they were scary. One of them asked me if I’d ever been in prison, and when I said no, they all laughed. I wasn’t liking any of it, but I had to see it through, you know?

“So maybe two hours later, we’re in action on the next room. A white man comes in with a hooker, a black hooker, only she’s a he, you know. I’m calling her a her, but it’s a him. Okay, they enter the room, and me and the New Africa guys, we’re watching the monitor, and the white man, he looks familiar to me, but I can’t place him at first, and then they tell me it’s the director of the FBI. That freaks me, because I’ve been smelling some deep shit, and now I know what it is. These motherfuckers are getting shit on the man. I want out, but what can I do? Right? Okay, so this sick shit goes down. I mean, this hooker, she’s tying this man up, and whipping him, and fucking his ass. Man, I didn’t watch, really. But I heard the New Africans giggling and one of them talking about how he knew the bitch from prison. Okay, so it ends in the next room. And the hooker, she tells the Director she wants more money. He tells her to fuck herself. A couple of minutes ago
he
was
her
bitch, but now he’s a man again, right? And he throws a twenty on the floor and tells her not to forget that one word from him and she’s right back in prison. He leaves. The New Africans, they take the tape we made, turn off the monitor, and tell me to wait there a minute. They go out, and a second later I hear talk in the next room. I can’t help it, I turn the monitor back on.”

He lets out a deep sigh. Scrunches his eyes tightly closed. His hands go to his face, rub his temples. He says softly, hurt, “They killed her. The hooker. Him. They beat him to death with their fists. Took a table lamp and crushed his skull.”

Ottaway looks up at Kellogg. “You understand?” Kellogg nods.

Ottaway says, “They got the Director on tape, in that room with that whore, the same day her body will be found by the police. Who’s not going to know he’s the one who killed her? They even had her mention that she was going to the Bullets-Lakers game that night. You know how often the Lakers come to town?”

“Once a year.”

“So it dates the videotape. They even had her mention some new player the Lakers had, so not even the year would be in question.”

“Then what?”

“Then the New Africans came back. I’d turned the monitor off, because I sure didn’t want them to know I’d seen what they’d done. They’d washed up in the bathroom, but there was still blood on their clothes. They asked me if I’d heard anything. I said no. Some yelling, maybe. They said they’d had to hit the hooker a few times to keep her in line. They said I could wait in the car while they got the equipment together. Thanks for showing them how to set it all up. I went out to the car. They drove me back to BTN.

“That night, the New African woman at BTN calls me. Asks me how it went that day. I said fine. She asked me what happened. I told her we got the director of the FBI on a blackmail tape. She said cool. Asked me what about the hooker. I said I didn’t know anything about her. She asked me if I wanted to do more work with New Africa. I said not really, no. She asked why. I said I just didn’t feel comfortable with them. Then she was quiet. I started talking, like an idiot, saying I liked them all right and believed in what they were about; I just didn’t feel comfortable doing things like that. She didn’t say anything. Just let a minute pass and then hung up. I never heard anything more about it. Never saw anything in the paper about any hooker’s body being found, either.”

“A hooker murder ain’t exactly pressworthy these days.”

“No.”

“So. The New African woman who got you involved gets nervous. She’d probably vouched for you with Khalid, and then when you got shy, she, or they, got nervous. Not drastically nervous, or they’d have killed you. Just a little nervous. Wanted a little insurance. Called me. Set it up in a manner in keeping with this woman’s position at BTN.”

Ottaway nods.

“Take the glossy,” Kellogg says. “And the letter. They’ll clear you with your wife anyway, if the subject ever comes up. And I will back you on the story, that the sexual harassment was just role playing. But do yourself a favor—get a job someplace else.”

Ottaway nods. He knows.

SOLEMN LONG RAY MOVES DOWN AN ALLEY, comfortable there, in the dark. He’s wearing blue jeans, boots, and a hooded sweatshirt, the hood pulled over his brow.

He’s spent this day letting the city know he is back. Tracking down people he knows. Asking questions as coolly as possible. “What’s up with that murder? That Henry James murder? What you think about that boy being gone?” Asking like his is just the same curiosity everyone has, nothing more.

But he’s only got rumors (those LTC people got the boy and tortured him/sold him/killed him; the police did it, ‘cause Henry James was investigating them). He hasn’t heard any stories he couldn’t have invented himself. And his attempt to find Chavez has been pointless. He went to an old address his mother had for the man, but no one there knew him, or would admit it to a six-ten black man.

He called the Mayor’s office. Left a message. Called back. Left another message. Called a third and fourth time.

Now he walks across the city, at night, looking in the windows of nice restaurants where well-dressed white people are eating; past emptying office buildings of the sort he’s never been in for any good reason; through the blacker and blacker, tougher and tougher residential neighborhoods of Northwest Washington, until he’s deep into Northeast Washington, on a commercial block off New York Avenue. Single- and double-story broad warehouse buildings, fast food, cheap motels. Skyscrapers aren’t allowed in Washington, so its buildings flow gently over its slight rises. It’s a beautiful, tree-filled city for the most part. Not this part.

He comes to a new, red-brick, two-story building. The sign there says: N
EW
A
FRICA
. He peers through the dark glass windows, into the well-lit lobby. Sees four men in black suits, white shirts, brightly striped ties. The New Africa uniform.

Long enters the lobby and the four men stand, move to confront him.

“Can I help you, brother?” asks one, looking up at Long, as they all must.

“I’m here to see Khalid.”

“Do you have an appointment?”

“No.”

“You have to have an appointment.”

“No I don’t.”

The other three men stand behind the speaker, ready to back him up but not liking the prospect. The speaker takes a more aggressive posture and vocal tone. “If you don’t have an appointment, you have to leave, brother.”

Long smiles slightly. Death-looks the four men, none of whom can hold his gaze. He comes from a place, has seen things, in himself and others, that set him apart and above other men in any situation of threat or fear. He’s hard at a higher level.

“Pick up the phone,” he commands. “Call Khalid. Tell him I’m here. He’ll see me.”

As an act of appeasement, looking put out, the man speaking for the four says, “What’s your name?” as he picks up the phone on the desk.

“You just tell him what I look like. If he wants you to know my name, he’ll give it to you.”

The man pushes a button on the phone. After a moment, he speaks into it, saying only, “It’s some really tall guy who says he knows Khalid.” After a moment, he says, “Yeah, I guess so.” After another moment, he hangs up. Looks up at Long with respect and relief. He lets his breath out. Says, to the others, “It’s okay.”

The others also look relieved. Long shakes his head, disgusted.

Though it’s only a two-story building, it has an elevator. That elevator opens, and the handsome, light-skinned Khalid steps out, followed by two pretty, long-legged, big-bottomed young women in the female version of the New Africa uniform—black skirt and pumps, white blouse, bright green and brown and red scarf.

Khalid beams as he grabs Long, who smiles genuinely back at him.

“Remember this man,” Khalid says to the others. “Remember his face. He is the man referred to in my book as the Tall One. The man who gave me hope and help during my year in the Slave Pens.”

Khalid leads Long, with the two silent women, into the elevator, then upstairs, into his well-furnished office suite.

Another young woman and two other men, all in uniform, are in the anteroom, at a desk. Khalid introduces Long to them.

“Our fine New African women, they do not suffer the white disease of gender fear, gender hate. Because of our basic precept of respect for women, they are comfortable in their respect for men. Satisfied with their role as leaders, not of nations, but of families. This is the natural way, the African way, which has been corrupted by weakling white males, whose women revolt from sexual and moral dissatisfaction. But our women seek only to bring happiness to the world.”