Black & White

by Lewis Shiner

  “It’s time to take that cracker out,” Charles said. “I can do it tonight.”

  Harriman shook his head, and Michael kept going, unable to slow the torrent of words. “I already told the cops. They’re on this. They’re watching him now, and if he gets anywhere near ATC they’ll pop him. If you move on him, you’ll have cops all over you.”

  “We’ll put our own surveillance in place as well,” Harriman said.

  “And if the cops screw it up,” Charles said, “we move in.”

  Harriman, with some reluctance, said, “We’ll do what we have to.”

  “Do you even know what he looks like?” Michael asked.

  Harriman and Charles looked at each other. “He’s the only one lives on that farm, right?” Charles said.

  “Get me a piece of paper and a sharp pencil,” Michael said, “and a place I can work.”

  He sat at the dining room table, drawing Vaughan as he would for a character model sheet: one full figure pose, standing with his weight on one leg, starting straight ahead, and another quick sketch of the profile.

  The others talked quietly out of earshot. Michael worked quickly, finishing in ten minutes.

  “Are you going to have anybody at ATC?” Michael asked as he handed the sketch to Harriman. Harriman glanced at it and passed it to Charles.

  “Wow,” Charles said. “This is really good.”

  The man in the suit looked at Harriman. “He doesn’t know?”

  “Know what?” Michael asked.

  Harriman sighed. “The Night Riders have a parade permit for tomorrow. They’re going to be demonstrating in the street outside the ATC.”

  “And the city is allowing this?” Michael asked the man in the suit.

  “We had no choice,” he said. “They’re a legal organization. The paperwork was all in order.”

  “Paperwork,” Charles said.

  “Charles…” Harriman said.

  The two men Michael didn’t know looked alternately annoyed and uncomfortable, as if they’d heard it all before but still couldn’t get used to it. One of them asked Harriman, “Are we done?”

  “Not yet,” Michael said. “What else is happening tomorrow?”

  Harriman said, “We think the ‘parade’ is a distraction, to set up whatever act of violence they’re planning. We’re going to have an offsetting distraction of our own.”

  “Showdown time,” Charles said.

  “They’ve put the word out across the entire Southeast,” Harriman said. “We think they could get as many as two hundred men there. We’re going to put at least that many black men, women, and children in their way. Passive resistance a la Gandhi and MLK.”

  “Some of that resistance may be less passive than others,” Charles said, to no one in particular. Then, to Michael, “King was good at working the media, but the truth is, it was the black people with guns and baseball bats and rocks got us what little we got. Without that fist behind King’s glove, wouldn’t have been anything at all.”

  Michael gave his head a small, dubious shake.

  “What?” Charles said.

  “I don’t get it,” Michael said. “I mean, we’ve got a real threat here, whatever it is that Vaughan is going to do. But a bunch of white guys in hoods, is that really the problem? You said they can muster maybe two hundred people from the only states where they’ve got a following at all. That’s pretty sad. Does anybody even take them seriously anymore?”

  Charles looked insulted. “What are you saying?”

  Harriman waved a conciliating hand. “He’s got a point. The NRC isn’t our real enemy. We all know that.” He looked at Michael. “But in the last four years it’s become okay to hate again in this country. Bush got whatever votes he didn’t steal in 2000 by giving every hatemonger in the US a place to roost. Hate queers? Hate those Mexicans coming in and taking those jobs you don’t want? Hate those smart people that know how to pronounce ‘nuclear’? Come on in. Klan membership is thriving, the NRC is growing again, mostly because of immigration issues. For the city to give them a permit is a disgrace. Somebody has to stand up and say this is wrong.”

  Then, for the first time, Harriman’s façade slipped and Michael saw the pain and frustration underneath. “And…sometimes,” Harriman said, “you have to do something. Instead of sitting there and taking it.”

  “Amen, brother,” Charles said.

  The man in the suit cleared his throat. “The police will be out in force. Nothing’s going to get out of hand. It’s going to be like street theater or something. Making a point, but nobody gets seriously hurt.” He looked to Charles and Harriman for confirmation and came up empty.

  Michael saw that it was time to go. “I wish you luck,” he said. “I mean that.”

  He let himself out.

  *

  He called Denise again as soon as he started the car. “I’m heading for the hotel.”

  “I’ll be in the lobby when you get there.”

  His thoughts were mostly on Denise as he drove, even as he felt a slow unwinding inside. He still couldn’t visualize the person he would be in another year or two. At least the pieces were all out where he could start to fit them together. He would have some time to do that now, with Greg Vaughan and the American Tobacco crisis out of his hands. If Bishop somehow blew it, he knew Charles would step up.

  When he walked into the Holiday Inn Express and saw Denise, rising from the couch where she’d been sitting, beautiful in a plain black T-shirt and jeans, he understood that wherever he was going, she was going to be part of it.

  “Don’t say anything,” she whispered, as he wrapped her up in his arms. “Don’t talk, okay? Just hold me.”

  As soon as the elevator doors closed he was kissing her, and when he turned back from bolting the door of his suite she was pulling off her shirt.

  “There’s something about a hotel room, isn’t there?” she said, with a bright nervousness that Michael found sexy and endearing. He didn’t answer, just went to her and helped her with the last of her clothes.

  *

  They were both exhausted afterwards. With Denise curled inside his right arm, Michael tried to tell her what he’d learned from Ruth, and found himself getting incoherent. Finally Denise put her fingers to his mouth. “Shhhh. You can tell me in the morning. Sleep now.”

  And he did.

  Saturday, November 6

  His cell rang at 10:13 a.m. He’d had it off so long he barely recognized the sound, especially swimming up from deep sleep in the thickly draped, artificial night of the hotel.

  He stumbled out of bed and found the phone where he’d plugged it in to recharge during one of his last coherent moments the night before.

  “Hello?” he said. The room was cold and he huddled naked in an overstuffed chair, facing away from Denise so as not to wake her.

  “It’s Sgt. Bishop.” Michael did not care for the sudden formality. “We’ve got a problem here.”

  Michael found himself violently and painfully awake. “What kind of a problem?” He went back to the nightstand and put his glasses on.

  “Well, we followed what we thought was Vaughan over half of Johnston County this morning—”

  “What you thought was Vaughan?”

  “My men had a good description. The guy was wearing a baseball cap and a down jacket. He came out of Vaughan’s trailer at seven this morning and got in Vaughan’s truck and proceeded to lead them on one hell of a trip.”

  “It wasn’t Vaughan.”

  “No.”

  “So you’re telling me you don’t know where he is.”

  Bishop sighed. “Not at this exact moment. We do have twenty heavily armed men over at American Tobacco, and they’re all watching out for him.”

  “Jesus Christ.”

  “I admit this situation is not ideal. There’s no reason to think he knows where you are now, correct?”

  “I don’t know what he knows.”

  “Maybe this would be a good day to drive dow
n to the coast. The skies are clear, it’s supposed to be in the sixties. Make sure no one’s following you, maybe get a motel room on the beach.”

  “I’m not real crazy about taking your advice at the moment.” The sense of calm he’d been inching toward was gone. A gale of contradictory impulses pounded at him, urging him to pile furniture against the door, to run downstairs and look for Vaughan, to scream obscenities at Bishop, to demand that Harriman send an armed guard to protect him.

  “Now listen, Michael, don’t do anything stupid—”

  “I don’t think you’re one to talk,” Michael said, and switched off the phone.

  Denise was watching from the shadows of the bed. “We have sex, and the next morning you get bad news on the cell phone. This is getting to be an ugly habit.”

  “The cops lost Vaughan.”

  “Uh oh.”

  “I don’t think he’s looking for us. I think he’s got other business first.”

  “American Tobacco.”

  “Yeah. But once he’s done there, I would expect we’re next.”

  “Michael, it’s freezing out there. Come to bed.”

  Michael got in next to her, still holding the phone. “I have to make another call.”

  She wrapped her small body around his, and he felt her naked, silken skin from his chest to the bottoms of his feet. “Make all this go away,” she said. “I just got you back.”

  As his desire for her began to stir, panic pushed it away. He punched up Harriman’s number, saying, “It’s not going to go away. Not by itself.”

  Harriman answered on the first ring. “It’s me,” Michael said.

  “We lost him,” Harriman said.

  “I was afraid you were going to say that.”

  “We followed the cops, and they went for a decoy.”

  “I heard,” Michael said.

  “There may be ten thousand people down there today. Black Star is giving away barbeque and beer, they have bands playing under the water tower, the Duke basketball team is signing autographs—”

  Michael saw then what Vaughan wanted to do. “Duke, did you say?”

  “I’ve got the schedule here in front of me. They’ll be signing between three and four.”

  “If something happened to those players, Black Star would never recover from it.”

  “Vaughan’s a UNC fan?”

  “Funny,” Michael said. “But yes, he would believe he has a score to settle with Duke.”

  “That helps. We still have to put our hands on him, though. The cops will be looking for him, we’ll be looking for him, but he might still get in and do whatever it is he’s going to do. I’ve made some copies of your sketch to hand out to our people, but the fact is, you’re the only one who’s actually seen Greg Vaughan in person.”

  Michael had seen this moment closing in through the entire conversation. Still his mouth went dry. “You’re saying you want me down there.”

  “If you don’t come, and Vaughan burns the ATC down, or does whatever he does, and injures or kills hundreds of people, I don’t think you’re going to feel very sanguine about it.”

  “I’ll call you back,” Michael said. He cut off the phone and put it on the nightstand.

  “Michael?” Denise said.

  Every muscle in his body was rigid. He tried to make his mind go through the motions of logic and reason, in vain. There was no real choice, and he didn’t need Harriman to rub his nose in it.

  “Michael, talk to me.”

  “I have to go,” he said. His lips felt numb.

  “Why?” She put her hand on his mouth before he could answer. “Think about it for a minute. In the last few days you’ve lost your father, your mother, and your job. If you’re looking for a way to kill yourself and have it not be your fault, you need to tell me now. For my sake.”

  “Denise.” He held her face in both his hands. She was so beautiful, he thought. “I love you. I’m not trying to kill myself. All I want is to be with you, and not be running from some cracker nutcase or having nightmares about a disaster I maybe could have stopped.”

  “And what am I going to feel if I let you walk out of here and you get killed or maimed?”

  “I don’t know,” Michael said. “I guess that would really suck.”

  She stared at him, then laughter exploded out of her like water from a breaking dam. She buried her head in his neck and squeezed him around the chest with both arms. When she looked up again, her face was wet with tears. “I love you too, by the way,” she said. “Seeing as how this is the first time we’re saying it to each other and everything.”

  He kissed her, and she broke away a second or two later, laughing and crying and wiping her nose. “Can’t breathe,” she said.

  He gently disentangled himself and got out of bed, gathering his clothes. “You might as well stay here,” he said. “I should be back by five.”

  “No predictions,” she said. “It’s bad luck.”

  Michael looked at her. “My mother—my real mother—used to say that to my father all the time.” He pulled on his pants and turned his T-shirt right side out.

  “I’ve got my cell,” she said. “If you could call me every so often I might not panic so badly.”

  “Okay.”

  He went to the bathroom and brushed his teeth and then called Harriman. “I’m on my way,” he said.

  “Good. I just arrived myself. Traffic is pretty congested already. It’s going to be a mess. Do you know where the Durham Bulls ticket window is?”

  “No,” Michael said. “I imagine I can find it.”

  “It’s on the west side of the ballpark, facing the ATC. We’ll meet you there. If there’s a problem, call.”

  Michael put the phone in his pocket and put a spare key card on the nightstand. “Room key,” he said. “Mi casa es tuya, as we used to say in Texas.”

  “I wish we were in Texas.”

  He leaned over to kiss her and said, “Be careful what you wish for.”

  “I love you, Michael.”

  “I love you too.”

  There was nothing more to say. He let himself out.

  *

  Traffic on the Durham freeway had backed up past Fayetteville Road and the Hayti Heritage Center, a mile and a half from American Tobacco. Michael drove on the shoulder to the exit and hit more traffic on the access road. Impatient, he turned north into downtown and eventually found a parking place near the Courthouse.

  The day, as promised, was sunny and clear, the temperature already up into the 50s. Michael’s ribs hurt from the beating Tuesday night, and he hadn’t slept nearly enough. He was terrified of what might happen to him, terrified of what might happen if they failed to find Vaughan. Still there was a primitive pleasure in the warmth of the sunshine on his face and the memory of Denise’s touch.

  He crossed the railroad tracks running east and west, the tracks that had once separated Hayti, off to his left, from the rest of downtown. The baseball stadium lay ahead and to his right, and beyond it the high brick walls of American Tobacco.

  He was in a crowd now, mostly black, mostly middle-aged, though he also saw mothers with handfuls of kids, young men in sports franchise gear, college-age white couples in thrift-store outfits. All of them were heading the same way as Michael. A little girl pointed at the sky, and Michael looked up to see a hundred black balloons float up and away from the complex. They seemed more ominous than festive.

  He crossed over to Blackwell Street, which ran between the stadium and American Tobacco. Police sawhorses had closed it to vehicular traffic. The Blackwell side of the complex was three blocks long, broken every few hundred feet by new steel and glass double doors. The walls came out to the edge of the crowded sidewalk where Michael stood, with windows that opened into retail spaces, some still in the early stages of remodeling, with exposed joists and piles of rotten lumber.

  Michael found himself staring at every white man’s face he saw. Logic told him Vaughan would not be wearing the clothes M
ichael had last seen him in, still his attention snagged on every baseball cap and every flannel shirt over faded jeans in the periphery of his vision. Ahead, a few yards from the access road for the Durham Freeway, he saw the Durham Bulls ticket plaza. Like the rest of the park, which was not yet ten years old, it tried to evoke nostalgia for a dying sport, a sport that could no longer compete with the ritualized violence of football or basketball or hockey.

  Harriman and Charles waited by the entrance gate to the ballpark. Harriman looked like he’d dressed for a faculty mixer: purple V-necked sweater, checked sport shirt, and gray slacks. Charles wore a gray hooded sweatshirt and loose jeans, the very profile of a man with something to hide. Harriman gripped Michael's shoulder. Michael was not immune to the flattery of his approval.

  Charles shifted his weight uncomfortably. “I meant what I said last night. I'm sorry for what happened…for what I did. I can't make it go away, but I can try to make up for it.” He offered his hand, soul-style. “Give me a chance, all right?”

  Michael, reluctantly, took the hand.

  “Thank you for coming,” Harriman said.

  “You guys both know I've been seeing Denise,” Michael said. Charles shrugged and looked the other way. Harriman gave a guarded nod. “If anything happens to me today she is going to blame the two of you personally.”

  “You’ll make out,” Charles said. “I won’t vouch for some other folks, but you stick with me, I’ll see to it you come out okay.”

  “This way,” Harriman said.

  They crossed the street and kept walking west, to where the narrow U shape of the complex opened to the street. The pocket universe inside was designed to make an impact, and Michael could not help but respond. The immediate focus was the bright white, freshly painted Lucky Strike logo water tower, looming over the entire complex from long, spindly legs planted in concrete in the center of the courtyard. Behind it, less conspicuous, also newly refurbished, rose the landmark brick chimney with LUCKY STRIKE spelled vertically. A water sculpture divided the foreground into upper and lower levels, and, above them, an enclosed walkway joined the two arms of the U. Freshly laid grass looked surrealistically green in the November sunshine. There were small white lights everywhere.