by Reed Arvin
“And Michael?”
Stephens laughed. “He is Doug’s successor, in every sense of the word. So troubled, so easily controlled.” He turned and looked at me. “Who do you think handled Robinson’s diary?”
I stared, growing cold inside. The truth was, at that moment I had no idea if Nightmare was helping Robinson or making sure the tests were scuttled. And if Stephens had anything to do with it, I would never know.
It was about a twenty-minute drive to the Glen. The streets were relatively clear, and we moved down the freeway anonymously, just another of the scattered cars on the road. When Pryor Street approached, he pushed the gun harder into my stomach. “Don’t get any ideas. Pope has the back of the Glen cleared for the next hour.”
We pulled off Pryor and slowed for the entrance to the Glen. Stephens turned left into the project, rolling down A Street toward the back of the subdivision. There were a few people around, but apparently the word had got out to mind your own business. Nobody even glanced as we rolled past.
We drove slowly through the Glen, turning left again at the far end of the project. These units were the most isolated, their backs butting up against the iron gates that surrounded the city within a city. Stephens brought the car to a stop and unlocked the door. “If you make a wrong move, I’ll kill you on the spot.” He opened his car door and slid out, keeping his gun on me. “Move,” he said. I slid out after him, and he grabbed me by the arm, pushing me in front of him. We moved together down the dark sidewalk a few feet, and I felt the gun barrel pushing left to go around a corner. I obeyed, walked behind a building, and saw the one thing I most did not want to see: Michele and Pope. A second, younger girl was firmly in Pope’s grasp. I had no doubt it was Briah. Stephens, seeing the young girl, cursed and pushed me along faster.
“Something wrong?” I asked.
Stephens jabbed the gun barrel into my ribs. “Shut up and walk.”
Michele, hearing Stephens’s voice, whirled to face us. Her face was contorted with pain. “Jack! God, help me, Jack.”
Briah stood beside Pope, leaning slightly. Her eyes were glassy; there was no doubt she was high. She was watching us, rocking a little from side to side. Physically, she was a startling image of her mother, only younger. This was Michele before she had reinvented herself, the girl she had left behind fourteen years ago. For Michele, it would have been like looking in a childhood mirror.
“What the hell is this?” Stephens said. “The girl’s not supposed to be here for this.”
Pope looked annoyed. “You’re early. Ain’t you got a watch?”
Stephens went off on a tirade. “Hammond showed up early. But have you lost your mind? The Briah thing was only a setup, you fool. You weren’t supposed to actually try to do a trade.”
Pope’s voice turned threatening. “Nobody calls me fool.”
“You’re bringing another person into the equation. It’s messy. You don’t know what you’re doing.”
Instinctively, I started looking for cover. I knew what Stephens, apparently, did not: disrespecting Pope in his world was a life-and-death decision. This was no boardroom, this was the Glen, and in the Glen Pope wasn’t just a CEO, he was his own enforcing militia. Pope, as if on cue, calmly reached behind his back and pulled out a Glock 20, one of the highest-powered handguns on earth. Its bullets explode on impact, carving a hole of flesh in the victim’s interior twelve inches across. By comparison, Stephens’s gun was a toy. Pope waved the pistol in the air, not directly at Stephens, but there wasn’t any doubt it was a threat. “Let me explain somethin’, bitch,” he said. “You don’t own me. If we need some motherfuckin’ clarity on that point, let’s get onto it.”
With the word “bitch,” the air instantly turned malignant. A shudder shook through Stephens’s body. He was white, he was unfathomably rich and privileged, and a black man who looked like he hadn’t showered in two days had just insulted him. “What did you just call me?” he said.
Pope acted bored, which was also bad news. Both men were seriously underestimating the other, and that was a dangerous combination. I tried to make eye contact with Michele, but she was focused entirely on her daughter. “Turn up your hearing aid, bitch,” Pope said, leaning on the word. “That way I don’t have to repeat myself to your sorry ass. If you’d have waited a few minutes, I would have had this shit over with.”
Stephens was trembling with anger and frustration. For a second, I thought there was going to be a shoot-out right then. But Stephens hadn’t risen to his position of power by being undisciplined. He had too much to lose, and with considerable effort he mastered himself. “You don’t complicate billion-dollar deals with this kind of crap,” he said. “It’s bush league.”
“That’s your money,” Pope shot back. He shook Briah, who hung limply in his hand. She looked like she would fall to the pavement if he let go. “This right here is my money.”
Stephens shook his head. “You don’t need to show the girl to get the money.”
“She’s from here, bitch. She ain’t a fool, like you. She had to see the girl first.”
While Pope and Stephens were arguing, Michele had been inching toward Briah. She was oblivious to anything but her daughter. “Baby,” she murmured, her voice catching. She began to weep again, her pain escaping in little sobs. Briah stared at her mother, peering through a chemical haze.
“This is getting out of hand,” Stephens said. He pointed at Briah. “Now she’s seen me. You follow? She’s seen me. This was not the deal.” He put the gun in my back and pushed me toward Michele. I put my arm around her, steadying her. Michele stayed focused on her daughter. “Baby,” she whispered again. “Baby, I’m so sorry.”
Pope looked at Michele and put his arm around Briah. “Don’t you worry none about her,” he told Michele. “She all right. She livin’ good.”
Strictly speaking, it wasn’t smart to open my mouth. But seeing Pope—a man who had made his living off the misery of his own people—act like Briah’s sacred protector got a response before I could calculate the results. “With you?” I demanded. “Kept stoned all day? Is that what you call good?”
Before Pope could respond, Michele collapsed back against me. The complex, massive regret was crashing down on her. Even though it was through no fault of her own—or maybe it was, it was such a mess, it was impossible to be sure—she had lost her child. And now she was face-to-face with a living memory of everything she had tried to escape. She fell against me, falling apart in frustration, guilt, and tears. Stephens pulled her away from me, forcing her to stand up. “She’s losing it,” Stephens said, angrily. “You may run this place, but sooner or later, people are going to get curious.”
Michele began to make a high, painful wail of despair. Pope, finally seeing Stephens’s point, grabbed Briah by the arm and said, “All right, let’s do this bullshit. But not here. Back behind the building.”
Seeing Pope manhandle Briah was enough to turn me to killing. I don’t mean that in any abstract sense. I mean that I ached for his literal and final demise. But first I wanted to tie him to a chair and force him to watch the loathsome parade of human tragedy he had promulgated. My mind flashed with acts of revenge, knowing that they were futile. If I could have killed Pope where he stood, he would have experienced no deathbed conversion, no sudden regret. His evil was ingrained now, a part of his actual fabric. He would have lost consciousness angry that his plans were screwed up. Still, to kill him would have been something. It would have been a statement of outrage and a valuable public service. The legitimate forces of society had so utterly failed to control him that I was, in that moment, willing to trade several years of my own freedom in exchange for the justice killing him would represent. Pope was already walking away, Briah at his side. Stephens had his hands full with the collapsing Michele, and for a brief moment, I was free. I took a step, and the hard barrel of a gun was once again pressed against the back of my head. “Move,” a young, nervous voice said in my ear, shockingly close.
It was Rabbit, Pope’s son.
At the moment of impending death, things go into slow motion. I remember walking toward the dark back of the alley, my vision narrowed, my senses distorted. My mind was filled with unrelated things: the crunch of my feet on crumbling gravel, unnaturally loud in my ears; a sudden, unexpected puff of wind banging a paper cup against a wall; a single, naked bulb shining in a distant window. I tried to gather my thoughts for some defense, but all I could think about was the gun against my skull, and how the slightest move would make Rabbit impulsively pull the trigger. Judging by his history, he would have even less compunction about killing me than his father would. We marched as a little group down the alley behind the last building of the Glen, until we reached the bricked-off dead end. It stank of urine and sweat and everything horrible about hopelessness and generations of poverty. Michele and I were pushed into a corner of the dead end. She was stiff and unresponsive now, wooden with the truth of failing her daughter a second time. She was murmuring, barely audible, “My baby, my baby.” We stood side to side, facing Pope, Stephens, Rabbit, and Briah. The world got smaller and smaller. There was nothing outside these few feet of brick. I pulled Michele into my arms, futilely attempting to shield her. “I’m sorry, darling,” I said, and pulled her close against me. She looked up into my face, and we held each other, ready to die.
From out of the darkness, I heard Pope’s voice. “Rabbit’s gonna do it. He’s still a juvenile.”
Stephens’s voice answered. “I don’t give a damn which one of you does it. I just know I paid for it, and I want it done as soon as I’m out of here.” There was a dangerous, horrifying silence. Then Stephens said, “You’ll have to kill the girl, too.”
“I ain’t killin’ no girl,” Pope complained.
“It’s your mess, damn it,” Stephens said. His voice was getting shrill. What was about to happen wasn’t going to get him three years’ minimum security and an SEC fine; he was treading into twenty-five years to life. The energy level between the two of them was elevating rapidly. “She shouldn’t have been here,” he said. “She could have gone right on living her pathetic little life and never known her mother. But now she does know, thanks to you and your greedy little side deal. So you have to take care of her.”
“That’s bullshit. It ain’t my fault you ain’t got a watch.”
“Dammit, Pope, clean up your mess.”
“You didn’t pay me no money for her.”
I cautiously raised my head and peered into the darkness at the two men arguing. They had turned to face each other, ignoring us for the moment. Pope still had Briah by the arm, and Rabbit held his gun on us. Pope and Stephens were standing about ten feet apart from each other. “I’m not going to argue with you,” Stephens said, angrily. “Take care of the girl.”
Pope raised his Glock and pointed it at Stephens. The threat, however vague before, had just landed on its target. Pope was seriously angry. “White people all the same,” he said bitterly. “You come in here, act like folks in the project ain’t worth shit. Kill this one, kill that one. Like black folk ain’t nothin’ but slaves.” He shook Briah, who had come to life enough to realize something bad was happening. She was futilely trying to extricate herself from his iron grip. She had both her hands clawing on his fingers, but Pope barely noticed. “You think I kill people ‘cause you snap your fingers?” he said. “Like we breeding stock? That’s disrespect.”
Stephens was vibrating with frustration. “For God’s sake, Pope, what do you want?”
“The price is the same as the other two. Twenty-five thousand dollars.”
Stephens stared at Pope’s gun. He was on Pope’s turf, and he was running out of both time and options. “All right, dammit,” he said, at last. “Just do it. The police are going to come through here at some point.”
“Don’t worry about no police.”
“All right. Give me five minutes to get out of here.” Stephens whirled and started back toward his car. After several seconds I heard the car door, and he pulled out, heading out of the Glen.
Pope turned to me. He still held Briah by the arm in his iron grip, but she had finally become aware that she needed to get away from Pope as soon as possible. She was clawing at him, and Pope was trying to get her calmed down. He didn’t want to have to shoot her in the back if he let her go. “Dammit, girl, settle down a second.” Briah was crying, trying to kick him. Finally, she pulled his hand up to her mouth and bit down hard on his hand. The teeth sank down into his flesh with brutal force. He pulled back in surprise and pain. “Dammit girl, what you do that for?” He reached out and backhanded her across the face, knocking her down with a vicious blow. She staggered, fell to her knees, and collapsed onto her side.
There was a wail beside me, as the voice that had made the most beautiful music on earth turned into a shriek of outrage and horror. Michele hurled herself onto Pope like a hurricane. She was a blur of arms and legs and teeth and screaming anger from hell. The sheer frenzy of her attack was breathtaking. She had finally reached the state of pure chaos, of unrestricted freedom where everything she loved had been stripped away and let go. She didn’t give a damn what happened next, she just knew she was going to stop Pope from hurting her little girl. She started punching him, pulling his hair and kicking him with total, blind fury.
Rabbit stepped in front of me, the gun at my head. If I even moved, I would be dead. I was forced to watch something horrible. All of Michele’s anguished, delayed love for her daughter had surfaced, but Pope was far stronger. Gradually, he began to subdue her. He took some vicious shots, but eventually he got her arm behind her and clamped it down backward with terrific force, forcing her to cry out in pain. She continued to try to hit him with her other arm, but I could see it would be over soon. It took thirty or forty painful seconds for the evil in Pope to overcome the good in Michele. I was trembling with rage, but there wasn’t a thing I could do.
And then something terrible and wonderful happened, something that I couldn’t have predicted in a million years. A moment of grace flickered tenuously in hell. Briah, for the moment forgotten, cried out, “Mama?” in a desperate, little girl’s voice. It was probably the first time she had ever said the word. But she had put together that Pope was about to kill her mother, and whatever chemicals coursed through her body weren’t enough to block that out. With that realization, she threw herself at Pope. It was ugly and not particularly forceful, but it did the job. Pope buckled forward, barely holding his balance. His gun skittered across the pavement, stopping about six feet beyond my grasp.
That was the moment I had waited for, the moment I saw it all clearly. I didn’t give a damn anymore. Ignoring Rabbit, I lunged low and dove for the gun on the ground. The moment my fingers touched metal there was a loud pop, and a pain like I’d never felt before stabbed through my leg like electric fire. Rabbit had caught me with a bullet in the left thigh. My fingers closed on the gun. I gasped and rolled away, clutching the Glock in my outstretched hand. For once, Pope’s jungle reflexes did me a favor; he had shed Michele and was on me in less than a second, preventing Rabbit from finishing me with a second shot. We clutched each other, fighting for control of the gun into a half-standing position. Michele, her fury unabated, jumped on Pope’s back and began slamming her fist into his head and neck.
The three of us were in a terrible dance, whirling and moving in a tight group. I got the gun pointed straight up, where at least nobody was going to get accidentally shot. Michele kept pummeling him from below. Pope was immensely strong, but the odds were turning against him. In another few seconds, we would overwhelm him, and the situation would be completely different. “Shoot, dammit!” he yelled to Rabbit. “Shoot the motherfuckers!”
Rabbit didn’t need his father’s encouragement. He had been trying to get a clear shot, but it was impossible. The mass of bodies was in constant motion, and at this range, a bullet from a gun like his could easily pass through its intended victim and into Pope as well. “Whic
h one?” he cried.
“Either one, dammit!” Pope yelled. I spun Pope around, forcing his back to Rabbit. But Briah wasn’t finished. She clambered to her feet and stood, swaying and crying. “Mama, mama,” she wept, and began moving unsteadily back toward the three of us. She was a wild card, not quite in control, but a force. If she reached us we would all tumble to the ground, and what would happen next was impossible to predict. Pope saw the movement out of the corner of his eye and said, “Her, damn it! Take her out!”
Rabbit turned to Briah, and the moment of grace flickered again. I don’t know if it was because she was a young girl, no older than himself, but he hesitated. He stood woodenly, the gun pointed vaguely in Briah’s direction. Suddenly, they were two teenagers, caught up in a horrible, adult world, and they had no business being there. They should have been out on a field, playing catch, or falling in love. They should have been a million places but in the dim light of the Southeast’s most desperate housing project. They should have been doing anything else with their lives but playing out a young American tragedy with death in the air. Standing there looking at each other, they were children.
For a moment, I thought Rabbit might throw the gun down and walk off. You could feel it; human decency was raising its quiet voice, telling a teenage boy that something was terribly wrong, and even though he was too young to understand how he found himself in this godforsaken back alley of hell, this was a moment when the evil in the world could and should be silenced. Everything froze and the night turned horribly quiet. Briah stood unsteadily in the dangerous air, a human target caught up in a game she had no more chance of understanding than Rabbit. It was the whole universe contained in one second, governments and futile poverty programs and black and white and the collapse of the family, all compressed into one boy whose anger had turned back into sadness and confusion before our eyes. I swear to God, it was the whole history of the world. Rabbit turned and looked at his father, his face covered in sudden confusion. It was in his eyes, like a kind of pleading: What have you done to me here? How have I turned into this in so few years? Why is the world so unbelievably hard? But Pope’s cold breath blew out the flame. His voice cut across the night air, killing hope; the moment passed, and the world spun once again on its familiar axis. “Shoot her!” he screamed. “Shoot the bitch!”
