“Yeah,” Creed put in.
Agent Steel stared back at her. “What if that had been real life, Janis? What if, instead of a flag, the objective was to prevent a nuclear launch? Would the enemy be forbidden certain weapons? Certain stratagems? Would they be expected to restrain themselves from using any and all tricks that would prevent you from achieving your goal and improve their chances of achieving theirs?”
Janis shrunk from Agent Steel’s cold reasoning. But she wasn’t ready to concede, not with fury still lancing her insides. “Well, what was your objective in all of this?” she asked. “Could it have something to do with your team getting your asses handed to you back in April?”
“Janis,” Margaret whispered.
“Must feel pretty good,” Janis went on, “taking revenge on a bunch of kids.”
Agent Steel’s face remained a blank, pallid slate. “I told you, Janis. I am a professional. My one and only objective is to prepare you for what you will encounter in the real world one day. The better I do my job, the better you will do yours. Are there any more questions?”
Without waiting for a response, Agent Steel clicked a remote control. The lights dimmed, and an image appeared on the wall they were all facing. It took Janis a moment to understand what she was seeing. The image was of the inside of the Barn, but taken from the metal rafters above. She and her yellow-clad teammates were huddled beneath their flag while their white opponents stood in formation across the gray-tiled floor. It was a recording of their exercise.
“Let’s go over what happened,” Agent Steel said.
As the video played, Agent Steel talked. Periodically she would freeze the video and explain a mistake that they had made or, conversely, a mistake made by their opponents that the six of them could have capitalized on. She spoke efficiently, without emotion or apparent judgment. She replayed the exercise several times, reviewing old points, making new ones.
Margaret and Scott began to ask questions. Even Jesse had a couple.
By the time the lights came back on an hour later, everyone around the table had nodded at least once.
Everyone but Janis.
17
Washington, D.C.
Friday, January 13, 1961 — Four days until Eisenhower’s address
4:02 a.m.
Reginald’s dreaming legs carried him across a field where nothing grew. He was a child again, no more than four or five, the heat and hardness of the land rude against his tender soles. Red dust stirred around the rolled-up cuffs of his pant legs. The wind moaned and stirred up more dust. Squinting through the grit, Reginald made out a tarpaper shack.
He couldn’t say why, but he needed to get there.
Beside the shack, among withered wooden fencing and cast-off tools, stood a horse. A brown chain had been looped around its neck and fastened to a spike in the ground. All bones and hide, the horse was beyond hungry. Reginald knew the feeling. The horse slapped its shuddering flanks with a threadbare tail.
Ginger.
The horse raised its forlorn head.
Gingie. Gingie.
The horse neighed weakly, its lashes thick with flies. Reginald wasn’t sure how he knew the horse’s name, but he did. When Reginald held out his small hand, the horse snuffed it, snot-caked nostrils trembling with hope. Too bad he didn’t have a carrot or an apple. Ginger loved apples. Reginald was considering hunting some weeds when the shack door slapped closed.
The black girl was no bigger than himself, her flour-sack dress coarse and dirt-red around the hems. She walked up to Reginald on chalky feet, hands behind her back, her head of stiff braids bowed. Her name remained just out of his reach.
“What’s the matter?” he asked.
“Daddy started screamin’ again,” she whispered to the ground, “’bout gettin’ the devils out Mama’s head. Now she won’t wake up.”
Daddy? Mama?
“Where Daddy?” he asked.
An explosive sound shook the shack. When the horse bolted, the chain snapped taut and jerked the horse off its feet. The little girl looked from the shack to the dust-coated creature wallowing on the ground, then to Reginald. Her eyes were round with terror.
“Stay here,” Reginald said, trying to sound older than his four or five years.
As he stood on shaking tiptoes to grasp the door handle, he turned to make sure he’d seen right. He had. The little girl’s eyes were bright blue.
Like his.
* * *
Reginald spent most of the next morning on the phone in the back of Horton’s Drug Store. By quarter to ten, he’d learned that the local CBS affiliate would be filming the president’s address and broadcasting to the major stations. Twenty minutes later, pretending to be a White House official, he had the names of the six-man crew who would be working the assignment. By eleven that morning, he had arranged to tour the station of the CBS affiliate, a college student interested in the technical side of the business.
“Now we’re getting somewhere,” he whispered as he replaced the phone in its cradle.
Reginald closed his small notebook with the jotted-down information and slipped it into the front pocket of his shirt.
Ginger.
He paused, his hand on the glass door of the drug store. Last night’s dream had clung to the back of his thoughts like a film of grit. Though he’d had the dream before — the dirt farm, the tarpaper shack, the horse — the little girl with the blue eyes had never been a part of it. The dream had always ended with the horse snuffing his hand, Reginald wishing he had something for it to eat.
Gingie. Gingie.
He knew the horse. Knew it in the visceral way you know any creature who belonged to your childhood. And now Reginald wondered: had he been dreaming or remembering?
Daddy started screamin’ again, ’bout gettin’ the devils out Mama’s head. Now she won’t wake up.
He shook off the image of the girl’s horrified blue eyes and pushed his way out into the brisk day and the drifting smell of fry baskets. He’d had plenty of dreams about who his parents might have been. No reason to treat this dream differently. Anyway, when you had no future, what did the past matter? In four days, he’d be standing within pointblank range of the president.
And he had plenty of work to do between now and then.
* * *
Saturday, January 14, 1961 — Three days until Eisenhower’s address
12:22 p.m.
“So I tell this big shot,” Wally said, pointing emphatically, “I tells him, ‘You’re talking to the nephew of the station manager. Bet you didn’t know that, huh? The doggone nephew.’”
The young man sitting across from Reginald was slender, his freckled face milk-white and topped by a cinnamon-colored crew cut. Reginald studied his animated blue eyes. Lighter than his own by a solid shade, but they would make his job immensely easier than if they had been brown. Reginald just had to get his speech pattern and body language right, too. Thankfully, the young man, Wally Goldstein, wasn’t the reticent type.
“And this big shot says, ‘I don’t care who you are, kid’ — kid, he called me kid — ‘Those lights are cookin’ me alive. You don’t turn them down in the next five seconds, and I’ll turn them down for you.’”
Wally twisted his large, comedic lips and mimed like he was kicking out a pair of studio lights. If he was trying for a Jerry Lewis impression, it wasn’t half bad.
“So what happened?” Reginald asked.
For his tour of the CBS television station, Reginald had been Davy Sheffield, a clean-cut, forgettable student. He’d expressed an interest in lighting and, as fate would have it, got paired with Wally — a member of the six-person team assigned to Eisenhower’s farewell address.
After Reginald had spent the morning watching him work (and learning the rudiments of lighting in the process), Wally insisted they go up the street to his favorite cafeteria for lunch.
“You wanna know what happened?” Wally put up his dukes and pistoned his gangly arms over the
table, coming within inches of Reginald’s chin. “Bam, bang, boom is what happened. That’s right. I woke up two days later with a knot on my jaw the size of Manhattan. Ha-ha-ha-haaaa!”
Reginald smiled. The young man even laughed like Jerry Lewis.
Wally slurped up a curtain of spaghetti and aimed his fork at Reginald. “What about you, Davy boy?” he asked around his wet smacks. “Ever been involved in fisticuffs?”
More times than I can count, kid. “No serious ones.”
“Just as well,” Wally said. “Specially if you ever plan to work on the other side of the camera. No one wants to watch an anchor with a lazy eye and a schnauzer sittin’ sideways. ‘Welcub to the seben o’clock schnooze.’”
Reginald chuckled at Wally’s impression. The kid was hard not to like, but business was business.
“Say.” With pale fingers, Reginald stirred his spoon through his cooling clam chowder. “I understand you’re going to be doing the lighting for the president’s address in two nights. That’s pretty neat.”
Wally straightened as he shot his gaze from side to side. Without warning, he seized Reginald’s tie and jerked him until their noses were almost touching. “Who in the freaking hell told you?”
Reginald wrapped his hands around Wally’s and fought for slack. “Hey, what is this?” He studied the blue eyes that squinted into his. In the space of a second, the eyes had gone from amusing to murderous. The eyes narrowed further.
“What are you, some kind of spy?” Wally asked.
“Spy?”
In most situations, the kid’s wrist would be broken by now. Reginald calmed his breathing, reminding himself he wasn’t Reginald Perry, wasn’t a Champion. He was plain, white Davy Sheffield.
“I don’t remember who told me,” Reginald-as-Davy said. “The station manager, I think. Your uncle.”
Wally remained staring at him, fist trembling around Reginald’s tie. His lips curled, then broke into a huge smile that consumed half his face. “Ha-ha-ha-haaaa!” He released Reginald and threw himself back in his seat, already knuckling tears from the corners of his eyes. “You shoulda seen your face, pally! Oh man, did I ever yank your chain! I thought you were gonna mess your drawers.” He raised a hand. “Waitress, my friend here needs another chocolate milk, oh, and a change of pants!”
Reginald forced a smile and went back to stirring his chowder. Maybe drugging this kid wouldn’t make him feel so bad after all.
“Yeah, yeah, I’ll be working the farewell address,” Wally said through the final spasms of laughter. “It’s no secret.”
“Must take a lot of preparation.”
“Tomorrow night we’ll set up equipment and do a test run with a stand-in.”
“At the White House?”
“That’s right.” Wally slurped up another rope of spaghetti.
“What about the night of the address? Tuesday?”
“What about it?” Wally appeared to be losing interest in the conversation. “Just a matter of showing up early and running through some tests before shooting the address itself.”
“You’ll leave from the station?”
“Four o’clock. Mickey’ll drive the van.”
And just like that, Reginald had the essential information. He could nab Wally sometime between the test run and the actual farewell address, put him out of commission for twenty-four hours. From there, he’d show up at the station as Wally, climb in the van with Mickey, flash his goofy smile and his credentials at the White House gates, and then — a Derringer pistol taped to his chest — be ushered into the president’s company.
But first he had to figure out how to get Wally alone.
“So do you live around here?” Reginald asked casually.
But Wally was no longer looking at him. He’d snapped upright in his seat, eyes crossed, tongue wagging back and forth. “Don’t look now, Davy, but I think I’m in wuuuv.”
Reginald followed his gaze and turned. A tall, dignified woman with an afro and large sunglasses had just entered through the glass door to the cafeteria. Her tan slit skirt shifted as she strode toward a booth, revealing a healthy length of thigh above her knee-high leather boots.
Wally sighed. “Sometimes I think I was born to the wrong race.”
Digs the sisters, hmm?
“You think she’s something,” Reginald said, his mind already assembling a plan, “you should see the women in this jazz club I go to.”
“Really?” Wally perked up. “Better looking than her?”
Cast the line, jiggle the lure.
Reginald leaned in and lowered his voice. “You’d think you’d died and gone to Nubian Heaven.”
“I’m not sure where that is, but it sounds divine.” Wally clasped his hands together in prayer and crumpled his lips. “Take me with you, Davy. I’m beggin’ you. Pleeease! Don’t make me fall on my knees.”
“All right, all right.” Reginald laughed and signaled for him to cut it out. Heads were starting to turn. “Look, I go every Monday. In fact, I’m heading there tomorrow night. Why don’t you come over after you finish up the practice run at the White House. The name of the place is Club Neptune. It’s up on U Street and Fourteenth.”
Wally blinked. “Did you say U Street?”
“Yeah?”
He leaned back, waving his palms. “Sorry, pally, but you’re on your own.”
“What’s wrong?”
“What’s wrong? I value my life is what’s wrong. If I was any whiter, I’d be see-through.” He pretended to feel for his face.
“Naw, I go there all the time. It’s jazz, man. One hundred percent cool. Race doesn’t matter. No one’s going to bother you.” Time to sink the hook. “And trust me when I say that the only attention you’re going to get is the good kind, if you know what I mean.” Reginald popped his eyebrows up and down.
“Honest to goodness?”
“Honest to goodness. Especially when the ladies learn you work for the CBS Television Network.”
Wally drummed his fingers against his chin. “I guess that does have a certain allure.”
“Just be sure to bring your credentials.” Reginald lowered his voice again. “You know, to seal the deal.”
Wally nodded enthusiastically.
Reginald smiled and took his first bite of clam chowder.
Got him.
18
Washington, D.C.
Monday, January 16, 1961 — One day until Eisenhower’s address
9:58 p.m.
Reginald sat with his legs crossed, watching the club door through a dim shelf of smoke. His heeled foot tapped the air in time to the soft whisks of the jazz trio playing behind him, but his taps were becoming increasingly tense. An hour after their planned meeting, and Wally still hadn’t shown.
And Wally was, quite literally, his best shot.
“Hey there, foxy.” Two drinks clinked onto the small round table where Reginald was sitting. Ice rattled in a brown liquor. A tall, aging man in a blue and white-striped suit grinned down, his chemically straightened hair combed over. “Mind if I join you?”
“No offense, hon, but I’m expecting someone.”
The man’s grin hardened. “I’m sure he won’t mind if I just warm his seat in the meantime.”
He slid a hand over Reginald’s thigh as he stooped to sit.
Reginald bent the man’s ring finger back until something clicked and spoke softly in his ear. “I said I’m expecting someone.”
Wincing, the man gathered the drinks and hurried away.
Reginald’s foot stopped tapping. And here that someone comes.
Edging through the all-black crowd in a white suit, pie hat, and red bowtie, Wally looked like a lost carnival barker. He also looked terrified. At the bar, he craned his neck, his sharp Adam’s apple jerking up and down. Reginald nearly raised a hand before remembering Wally had never met him before.
Or, rather, her.
Heads turned as Reggie stood in an emerald-sequined dress. An hour earli
er he’d amassed his cells into the fullest curves he could manage, grown an auburn afro, and arranged his face into a semblance of the woman’s Wally had drooled over at the cafeteria the day before. Now he drew a cigarette from a silver case in his purse and parked it between his fingers.
He caught up to Wally as he was wheeling to leave.
“Got a light on you, sugar?” he asked, caressing Wally’s arm.
Wally’s eyes widened, clamped shut, and popped open again.
The corners of Reginald’s lips, which he had made glossy and purple, turned up. “What’s a matter? Cat got your tongue?”
Wally punched his chest with the side of his fist as though attempting to resuscitate himself. Then he shook his head with a lip-sputtering br-r-r-r-r and cleared his throat. “Cat got the whole voice box, I think. But here, lemme see about that light.” He turned and slapped the bar. “Bartender! I need some matches here!”
The bald bartender frowned and nodded toward a glass of matchbooks sitting right in front of Wally.
“Oh, yeah. I saw that.”
Wally fumbled a matchbook open and, after several jittery attempts, got a match to light. He clamped his tongue in the corner of his mouth as he held the cupped match to the tip of Reginald’s cigarette.
Reginald inhaled and blew a stream of smoke toward the blue-lit ceiling. “You’re a gentleman,” he said.
“And you’re a goddess. Wait, did I say that out loud?” Wally clapped both hands to his mouth, then screamed when the match burned the end of his nose. He shook out the flame and scrubbed his nose with his tongue.
Reginald smiled and offered his hand. “You’re cute,” she said. “Divinity Childs.”
Wally took his hand and kissed it. “Wally — I mean, Walter Goldstein.”
Reginald sat with his back to the bar, chest protruding, as though settling in for conversation. “And what’s a handsome young man like Walter Goldstein do for work, I wonder?”
Wally canted back his pie hat. “It just so happens that Walter is an executive for the CBS Television Network.”
XGeneration, Books 1-3: You Don't Know Me, The Watchers, and Silent Generation Page 73
