The Lost Brother (9 page)

By this speech, Long understands that Khalid is telling him the women are available.

Long says, “Let’s talk.”

Khalid smiles. “Of course. You want a drink? Soft drink, of course.”

Long shakes his head no. He and Khalid go alone into Khalid’s large private office and shut the door behind them. Khalid sits grandly behind his broad oak desk with its computer and phone. Long looks at the expensive furniture. Without sitting, he says, “You’re doing well.”

“We
are doing well. You know I haven’t forgotten you. You got the money I sent?”

Long nods. Khalid had sent a man to meet him when he was released from prison. That man had given him three thousand dollars.

“That’s one of our promises to the people,” Khalid says. “Three thousand dollars, a car, and first month’s rent and deposit on an apartment to all freed slaves. For you, of course, there’s a lot more than that.” He hesitates only a moment, then asks, “You wanted some private time, you said, before coming to see me, since getting out? Why? I mean, it’s okay, of course.”

“I didn’t want to rush back into the world. I wanted to just be slower about the adjustment than I was last time. I didn’t want to fuck right back up again.”

“But I could have helped you with that.”

“Don’t take it personally, man.”

“I know, I know.”

“And thanks for arranging for me to get out of that halfway house bullshit.”

“That was easy. A call from me to the Mayor, from the Mayor to whoever runs that office. Done.”

“The Mayor,” Long says derisively. “I been calling the motherfucker, but he won’t talk to me. What’s up with him?”

“Don’t worry, we got him.”

“You sure?”

“Absolutely. Long, we got him all boxed up. Thanks to the work you did with him while he was inside.”

Long smiles, and Khalid does too.

“Motherfucker can get busted for crack and get reelected anyway,” Long says. “But one look at him getting a blow job from a white woman, and his ass is cooked.”

While in prison, the Mayor received visits from prostitutes, one of whom was white. Long had made these arrangements and also arranged for one such meeting to be videotaped.

“He’s not a true believer, of course,” Khalid says. “He doesn’t care about anyone or anything except himself. If he was white he’d be George Wallace. But that’s okay. In his own way, he’s very predictable. We probably don’t even need that tape. Still, you know how I believe in insurance.”

“Uh-huh.”

“Anyway, man, brother, we got it so going on, it’s scary. We got multimillion-dollar contracts with the city for housing-project security, for Afrocentric education, for commercial development. We’ve got a theater, two restaurants, a music and book store. We’ve got branches in New York, L.A., Detroit, and of course the big one, Atlanta. We got the Mayor in our pocket because of that prison tape, we got the FBI director because of that frame-up murder we did, and we got the Chief locked up with the riot tape.”

“That’s all right.”

“And with our pull on the Director, we had him set up what we call a Goof Squad. Check this out. The Director, he pulls together the four most incompetent, idiotic, and racist agents in the force. White guys so fucking worthless no one wants to work with them anyway. He assigns this Goof Squad to investigate political corruption in D.C. They are so stupid, these guys, they can’t find shit. But even if they did, we all got an out, because these Goof Squad fucks are all documented racists, so their testimony wouldn’t mean shit even if they did find something. Understand?”

“That’s slick.”

“It is. I’m telling you, brother, it’s all going to happen. We got to take our time and do it right, but it will happen. I’ve got the psychology down, just like we used to talk about all them long old nights in the joint. The psychology of the black man to pull him together. The psychology of the white to rip him apart. And the Simpson verdict. What a blessing that was. God is great.”

“I hear that.”

“Now tell me, what do you want to do now?”

“I don’t know”

Khalid nods. “No need to rush into anything. Whatever you want you got. In the meantime, go see Personnel tomorrow. Get on the payroll. Fifteen hundred a week.”

Long smiles. Nods his head. Khalid, seeing Long smile, is happy.

“That money, that’s yours if you want to do anything or not, you understand. That’s just yours. The people owe you for what you’ve done for me. You can just come in once a week and pick up your check, no problem.”

“I might do that for a while.”

“No problem.”

“I got some personal things to take care of.”

“Don’t get yourself in trouble.”

“I won’t.”

“If you got scores to settle, let me know. We’ve got men on staff, women too, who can do what needs to be done.”

“I’m all right.”

They look at each other. Khalid gets up, goes to Long, hugs him again. Says, “I am so glad to see you. I need you, brother.”

He and Long talked a great deal about political philosophy while in prison. Especially Long’s views, which Khalid had eaten up, about the nature of political emotions with respect to issue positioning, preemptive accusation, and aggressive claims of victimization. Long, the English teacher’s son, thought of writing a book about what he’d learned of human nature, of politics, in prison, a world of cut-throat deceptiveness and fatal clique errors. A Machiavelli-type book. But instead of writing it he told it, over and over, to Khalid, refining it in response to Khalid’s probing questions until he tired of it himself but with interest and pride later watched Khalid apply it through New Africa.

Khalid gets a look on his face. Long, knowing him well, asks what’s wrong.

Khalid says, “Brother, there’s one big thing fucked up right now.”

“Go ahead.”

“I hate to hit you with this, you just out, but I got no one else I can really go to.”

“What?”

Khalid, sighing, says, “The tapes are missing.” Long shakes his head, sad.

“I know, man,” Khalid says. “We got some treasonous motherfucker on staff.”

“You got no copies?”

“I didn’t get around to doing it myself, and I didn’t want to let anyone else do it.”

“Shit, man.”

“I know, I know. I fucked up.”

“Where’d they get stolen from?” Khalid points to a closet door. “It had a handle lock and padlock.”

“You know that ain’t going to keep no pro out.”

“I know, man!” Khalid says, defensively. “I guess I just felt like the building itself was secure.”

“Was it the FBI who did it?”

“I don’t think so, because I can still push the Director’s buttons. Same with the Mayor. That was my first thought, that one of them did it.”

“The FBI could pull it off pretty easy And the Mayor’s got police aides who know how to break into places.”

“But this happened more than three months ago, and no one’s given any sign that I don’t still have power over them.”

“Inside job, then.”

“I know, I know.”

“Done any asking around?”

“Haven’t figured out how to do that without letting it be known that the tapes are missing. If no one knows, then it almost doesn’t matter.”

A light knock sounds on the door. Khalid calls out to come in. A middle-aged Hispanic woman enters with a cleaning cart.

“The maid,” Khalid says. “Another one of our businesses. Office cleaning. We hire Latinos to do it, and we make the capitalist profit. Nothing wrong with capitalism. Makes the world go round. But the Latinos, they’ll do this work cheaper and better than our own. We’re too regal, you know.”

“Uh-huh,” Long says.

Khalid tells the woman to come back later.

“Yeah. Listen, hey,” Long says. “What do you think of this Henry James thing?”

Khalid, of course, doesn’t know that Henry James was Long’s brother. Meanly, bitterly, he says, “That cocksucker. I don’t know for sure that Ells wasn’t backed up, and I don’t like no black man getting killed by a white, but still, I tell you something, I’m glad to see him gone.”

“Yeah, he was a dog-fuck,” Long says, maintaining the pretense.

“He was. Always after the Mayor for dealing with us. Every single city contract we worked out, he investigated. He had some shit on us too. I know it was just a matter of time before he took us to the grand jury.”

“How you know?”

“We got word on his staff. We know.”

“I thought maybe we did him.”

“I thought about it.
Real
hard. But no, that wasn’t us.”

“What about that boy?”

Khalid shakes his head. “Shit, man. Come on. That Ells motherfucker, he didn’t let no child live.”

“How you know Ells got him?”

“I don’t, I don’t. I just do. He had to. Had to be him. If it wasn’t, then where’s the boy? Huh? Nah, there’s no chance he’s alive. I don’t think I could honestly say I care about what happened to some spoiled little rich kid punk son of Henry James and that
bitch
whore wife of his anyway.”

Long shrugs.

“Could have been the FBI, though,” Khalid says. “They hated Henry. Could have been them using LTC, which they got a lot of power over. They could have set Ells up to do this. That’s my theory. The Director himself has told me that that Joan Price woman is on his ticket.”

Khalid asks Long to eat with him at New Africa’s newest business, an upscale restaurant. Leaving the office, Long sees the Hispanic cleaning woman. Thinks about Chavez. Thinks about the boy. Thinks about his mother and how he has no hope to give her.

KELLOGG: GO SEE THE MOTHER. The grandmother. Passer: Mrs. James? Kellogg: Yeah. Passer: What about?

Kellogg: Everything. Find out what she knows about what her son was working on before he got killed. Find out what she thinks about how the police and FBI have been handling things. Charm her. Sympathize with her. About the press, too, and what assholes they’ve been. You know. Get her to trust you.

Passer: Uh-huh.

Kellogg: And ask her what she thinks about the missing boy. I got a hunch that if the kid’s not dead, which he probably is, but if he isn’t, then she’s got him. Not with her, but somewhere. With a relative or old friend. Maybe she’s scared of the police. Maybe she’s scared of LTC.

Passer: Maybe she’s scared of the world.

Kellogg: Who could blame her? Passer: Right.

Kellogg: But where else would the boy go, except to her house, if Ells didn’t get him? Passer: That’s true. Kellogg: Black up a little. Passer: Why?

Kellogg: ‘Cause you don’t look half black as you are. Passer: I’m not half black.

Kellogg: That’s what I mean. Her grandkids are half black. You go in like that, it’s an edge. The subtle bonding thing.

Passer: Is this my end?

Kellogg: I’m just saying.

Passer: Is this my end? My department?

Kellogg: All right.

They’re in the coffee shop. He’s eating a double hamburger with a full-plate side of fries. Passer is stealing his fries as they talk.

Passer: From what I heard, she doesn’t talk to the press, the police, no one. Why should she talk to me?

Kellogg: I’m going to call her.

Passer: Oh, you’re friends with her now?

Kellogg: We did that one job for Henry James, on that Chavez case. And for whatever reason, she was there every day. I talked to her once, in the hall, during a recess.

Passer: I did that case.

Kellogg: By yourself, almost. Because of your Spanish. Passer: And I testified in that trial too. Which means she might remember me.

Kellogg: She’ll definitely remember you by the time I’m done talking to her. Passer: Uh-huh.

Kellogg: Stop eating my fries. I’ll get you a plate if you want, but leave mine alone.

Passer, taking another fry, stuffs her mouth with it and asks: What’s our official interest in her?

Kellogg: How about “A private individual has hired us to help find the boy”?

Passer: Fine.

Kellogg: Look around the house for signs the boy might be there. No, he won’t be there, because he would have been seen. But see how worried she is. If she’s cool about the assistance offer, it might just be because she knows he isn’t missing.

Passer does “black up” a very little bit, with a lightly curled wig pulled over her own short, straight, fine hair; with some very slightly darkening foundation. Some accent and talk. Just a little. She’s careful to underplay roles, but she knows Kellogg is right when he says people are more open with members of their own race. She knows the different prejudices about darkness within the black community. She could have, and has previously, blacked all the way up. But she thinks it’s better psychology to go for the mixed-race look here.

She dresses sharply, professionally, in a navy-blue skirt with a white blouse, matching jacket, handbag, and pumps. As she stands at the corner during lunch hour on this bright spring day, flagging a cab, every man looks at her; most women do too. She’s the picture of city confidence, youthful assurance, daytime elegance. She gets a cab in forty-five seconds. Minutes later she’s at Mrs. James’s dull-red brick row house, going up the steps of the wood porch, knocking on the door.

Mrs. James opens the door. Looks at Passer. Nods and smiles.

Passer, in sunglasses, seems arrogant, aloof, with her slenderness and height and style. She takes the sunglasses off, and the intelligent innocence of her eyes dispels the intimidation her beauty sometimes causes.

“I’m Catherine Jones,” she says softly.

“I know,” Mrs. James says, beckoning Passer inside, leading her down the wood-floored hall to the bright, daylit, white-tiled kitchen. “I remember you from your testimony at the Chavez trial.”

“My boss, Kellogg, called you?”

“Yes.”

They enter the kitchen, and Passer sees a light-skinned young girl whose stiff long hair is pulled back into a ponytail. Sitting at the table, she is drawing with colored markers. The girl looks up at Passer. Studies her. Doesn’t speak.

Passer says hello and smiles. The girl, eyes running over Passer’s clothes, says hello back but doesn’t smile.

“This is my granddaughter,” Mrs. James says.

“I gathered,” Passer says. “She’s so pretty.”