“No,” Louis protested through gritted teeth. “Doctors mean cops. We still gotta get it done.”
“You’re hurt, Louis,” she blurted. “You could die!”
“If we don’t stop ’em, we all die,” he told her. He looked from Amy to Caroline and Kevin, Seth and Zoe. “They know who you are now. They’ll go to your house and kill you in your sleep. Is that what you want?”
They all looked dumbstruck, horrified. Louis turned his focus back to Amy, a fierce determination writ in his features. “Noninvolvement just became a non-issue,” he told her. “You in it now. For real.”
Amy looked at him and nodded. In the distance came the wail of approaching sirens. They helped Louis to his feet. Then quickly, wordlessly, they made their way out the back.
26
Doris Tabb was elbow deep in bubble wrap, happily packing a purchase as the convoy of vehicles wheeled into her driveway. Shortly after Caroline and her family had left for the service the shit had hit the online shinola, pardon her French, as she scored major in auctionland: some faceless bozo with the screenname rebelyell clicking the View Seller’s Other Items button and proceeding to hit BUY IT NOW! over and over on dozens of her listings. At first she was nonplussed; Doris had seen this before, orgiastic consumers going off like Skinner rats on crack over some obscure object of virtual desire, and she was no stranger herself to the curiously addictive nature of skimming sites, checking prices on things she wanted, thought she wanted, or even had already bought, just in case she had paid too much. But this guy was serious, using online payment services and dogpiling her e-mail box within minutes, requesting expedited shipping.
Doris was not inclined to argue — the tab came to just under two grand, plus handling charges. Not bad for an afternoon’s work. The pantry door was flung wide and her kitchen counters, table, and chairs were festooned with all manner of African Americana destined for a P.O. box in Richmond. A cardboard box sat on the table next to a scissors and a roll of packing tape. She heard the sound of car doors slamming; a moment later the kitchen door burst open.
“What the hell?” Doris gasped as Caroline and Zoe piled in, looking disheveled and distraught, followed quickly by Amy, Seth, and Kevin helping the wounded Louis, next by Joya and Henri and the heavily armed remainder of their party. Doris’s eyes went wide at the sight of so many black men with guns standing in her kitchen.
“Don’t ask, Mom,” Caroline said. “You don’t wanna know…”
Doris stood, mouth gaping like a guppy on a radiator as Seth and Kevin helped Louis into one of the chairs; he sat back wincing, then peered down at the table. A Sambo ashtray stared back at him, little ceramic face beaming, tiny hands holding a sign that read PARK YER BUTT HERE! Louis looked at Caroline.
“You gotta be kidding,” he murmured.
Kevin stood back, quietly freaking, his hands smeared red with Louis’s blood. He made for the kitchen sink, turned the water on and scrubbed furiously, trying to clean them. Just then Josh entered, peering over his shoulder as he closed the door. “It’s okay,” he said, “I don’t think we were followed.” He turned, saw Doris.
“Mrs. Tabb,” he said, smiling uneasily. “Long time no see.”
“Aw, jeez,” Doris muttered, rolling her eyes.
In the space of a heartbeat the house had gone from suburban placid to paramilitary panic: men moving into the other rooms, setting up perimeter watch as Caroline morphed into control mode. She grasped her mother’s shoulders, peering into her eyes and nodding as if trying to hypnotize her. “Mom, it’s too much to explain right now, but we need your help. Okay?”
“W-what do you want me to do?” Doris asked.
“First, we need bandages, first-aid stuff,” Caroline said.
“In the bathroom,” Doris replied. “Why?”
She looked over and saw Amy helping to unzip Louis’s jacket, saw the bloody shirt. Doris looked pale, a little wobbly. “I think I need a drink,” she murmured.
Caroline turned to her daughter. “Zoe, go see what you can find,” she said. Zoe nodded nervously and headed for the hall.
Joya surveyed the cramped, kitschy kitchen as Henri came back from the interior. “S’cool,” he said to her. “You got what you need?”
“No,” she replied, “but we gotta do it anyway. We don’t have much time.”
Josh checked his watch. “She’s right,” he said. “Sun sets in less than an hour.”
Neither Caroline, Kevin, or Doris had any idea what they were talking about. Caroline looked at Joya. “What do you need?” she asked.
“Someplace private,” Joya replied. “Where no one can disturb us.”
Caroline thought about it for a second. “Basement,” she said. She looked at her mom. “Is that okay?”
“Now you ask?” Doris said, then waved her off. Josh and the two women exited; Henri turned to Louis.
“You all right?” he asked.
“Naw, man, I’m fucked up,” Louis answered, “but we gotta stick to the plan. We need weapons check and prep, now.” Henri hesitated; Louis glared at him. “Move!” he barked.
Henri nodded and looked at Seth. “My man,” he said. “Wanna help?”
Seth nodded, and together they headed out the door to the vehicles parked outside. From downstairs came the sound of boxes thumping and shifting, a muted reshuffling. Just then Zoe came back in from the hall, bearing bottles of rubbing alcohol and hydrogen peroxide, and some rolls of gauze.
“I found these,” she said, handing over the meager supplies. Amy took them, smiling wanly.
“Thanks, sweetie,” she said. She grabbed the pair of scissors from the table and cut Louis’s bloodied shirt away, laying bare a small oozing hole in the fleshy part of his side. She gently leaned him forward and looked at his back. Louis winced and said nothing, but it was clear it hurt like hell. “Sorry,” she murmured, then: “It’s through and through. I don’t think it hit anything major.” She felt around the wound gingerly. “I think you broke a rib. You need a doctor.”
“No,” he hissed. “I told you…”
“Asshole,” she muttered, then eased him back. She wadded some gauze and soaked it in the alcohol and peroxide. “This is gonna hurt like hell,” she said; Louis nodded, bracing himself, and she placed it on the wounds.
It audibly fizzed on contact; Louis sucked wind and bit his lip as Amy unreeled more gauze and began wrapping it around his waist. “Where’d you learn to do this?” he asked.
“Paramedic on Avenue A,” she replied. “Used to trade tricks for meds.” She looked at Doris. “Do you have any painkillers, anything?”
“Tylenol?” Doris ventured.
“Shit,” Amy hissed. She sat Louis back in the chair and reached into her bag, withdrew a small pouch containing her works and laid it on the table. Her hands were shaking. Louis looked at the gear askance.
“Tell me you ain’t gonna fix now,” he said.
“Not me. You,” Amy said, pulling out one of the glassine packets he had supplied her with. “For the pain.”
Louis looked at her for a moment, then nodded. Amy looked at Doris, Kevin, and Zoe.
“Y’all might want to go into the other room.”
Doris nodded, more than willing to cooperate. But Zoe stood her ground. “No,” she said defiantly. “I wanna help…”
Kevin turned. He had been staring at his freshly rinsed hands, head shaking in a quiet mantra of denial. But Zoe’s words snapped something in him.
“No way,” he said to Zoe. “No freakin’ way.”
Kevin looked at them all, feeling like the only sane inmate in the asylum. “Oh come on people, enough is enough!” he cried. “Bad enough we’re caught up in some whacked-out terrorist tug-of-war and we only broke about fifteen billion laws today; I won’t have my family sucked into this, too!”
“Speak for yourself, Kevin!” Zoe snapped. She spat his name with such unvarnished contempt that it took him aback. Just then Caroline entered; Kevin looked to her implorin
gly, as if she might inject some sanity back into the proceedings. “Caroline, please…” he began. “Tell her we’ve got to go, now!”
But to his immense surprise, Caroline did not. “I’m sorry, Kevin,” she said. “I can’t. I have to do this…” She paused, looked at her daughter. “We both do.”
Caroline looked at Zoe; there was a fire alight in her eyes, one that immediately struck him for its apparent absence in their entire time together. She looked scared, and wired, and worried. But also, strangely excited. It was a fire now burning in her daughter’s eyes as well.
Kevin didn’t know what to say. And as if the moment could not possibly become any more awkward, it was at that instant that Josh came back in. He sensed the massive tension radiating in the air and stopped short.
“Joya says she’s ready,” he said.
Caroline looked from Josh to Kevin, a bright sheen of tears welling. It was as if this entire insane drama had sparked something deep within her, brought the long-banished wildass girl screaming back into the world. She held out her hand to her husband.
“Please,” she said.
“This is nuts,” Kevin sighed. He took her hand in his own, their fingers intertwining. He looked at Zoe and she suddenly looked down, feeling sheepish, exposed. Kevin kissed her on the forehead, then turned to face Josh.
“All right,” he said. “What now?”
The interior of the basement was dark and smelled of mold, old cardboard, and newsprint, now laced with the sweet scent of burning incense and tallow. As they descended the stairs, they saw the boxes and detritus pushed back to form an open space in the center of the room; a circle had been drawn on the floor in a fine red powder, a number of candles lit and placed around its circumference. Joya stood in the center of the circle, clutching something to her breast, murmuring in a soft, hypnotic cadence.
Josh led them to positions surrounding her; as they completed the circle, Joya looked up, her blue eyes bright and fiercely focused.
“This is ritual magick,” she said, her voice soft and preternaturally calm. “Its purpose is to prepare us for what is to come. To invoke Ghana, the spirit of the living earth and enlist her support in our cause. To bestow her blessings on us, and make us spirit warriors equipped to enter the underworld. Do you understand?”
One by one they nodded, their expressions a mixture of determination laced with dread.
“Good,” Joya said. “Is everyone here HIV negative?”
They looked at each other, nodding nervously. “Why?” Caroline asked.
Joya then revealed what she held in her hands: a ceremonial dagger with a short, sharp blade. She stepped up to Josh and held the dagger out. Josh took it in one hand, held the other palm facing upward, and drew the blade across. A bright line of blood welled up. Joya took back the dagger, then moved to Caroline and held it forth.
Caroline hesitated, then took it in hand. And did the same.
One by one they were initiated: cutting themselves, the commingling of warrior blood, bonding them together in their quest. This was the level at which the bruja must step to the edge of the abyss in order to combat the darkness.
By the end of the ritual, it was obvious that something had happened. There was an incredible feeling of power that surrounded them, permeating the air through which they moved and breathed.
“Crossing over will open your inner eyes,” Joya told them, “and will allow you to see, for better or worse, the true inner nature of all you meet.
“But you must beware of the Great Night's tricks,” she continued. “The house is full of fearful memories, and he will use your deepest fears against you.
“Your inner sight will guide you,” she said. "You must trust each other. And trust your heart.”
Joya blessed them and wished them all luck. They may not have been as ready as they would have liked. But they were as ready as they would ever be.
27
The sun was just starting to set as Chief Jackson stood at the edge of the boardwalk and stared at the disembodied heads of the black man and woman. The heads were canted at forty-five-degree angles within a circle and stared inland with lifeless eyes, with the eternally surging tide as a backdrop. Their expressions were frozen in something that was part stoic resolve, part infinite sadness, as if contemplating a vast and merciless unknown. He did not know their names; no one did. That was kind of the point.
The heads were large, over nine feet tall from base to crown, sculpted from thick cast bronze and mounted on marble pedestals. A word was emblazoned at the base of the monument: DIASPORA. And beneath it, in smaller letters: Middle Passage, 1619-1865. It was a local landmark erected in far more liberal times, when notions of social justice were more than just cable news pundit bait, and the memorial was intended to both remind and inspire, perhaps to provoke thoughtful reflection to sun-baked visitor and local alike. But Chief Jackson knew the more unctuous locals simply called it Big Niggerheads.
Jackson popped a cherry-flavored TUMS, quietly crunching. It was his second roll of the day, and its chalky sweetness did nothing to alleviate the sour rumbling in his gut. Labor Day weekend was upon them; as Jackson psyched himself to go on camera for an up-beat law’n'order local news spot, his anxiety level was already a palpable thing — five arrests on drunk-and-disorderlies, three fights, a trash fire of suspicious origins and one assault with a deadly weapon. All before seven o'clock. All with the promise of more to come once the sun went down.
Jackson stared out at the sea, where pinkish light glinted off the cresting surf, and took a deep breath of warm salty air. Behind him were an assortment of news crews and stringers from the cable channels. Scruffy techs toyed with cables and mikes as buff and salon-tanned reporters mumbled their lead-in lines with salacious solemnity, gimlet-eyed with anticipation of camera-friendly chaos.
Jackson sighed; he was still distraught over the loss of Elizabeth Bergen. Her death had deprived him of a trusted colleague and friend, and despite the trashing of the lab, her own autopsy had revealed cardiac arrest as the cause. The nagging mystery only served to deepen his unease. That, and the missing hand of Justin Van Slyke.
Vexing him further was this afternoon's assault at the Church of the Open Door, where arriving officers discovered a bullet-ridden interior containing the bodies of two black males and the mutilated — and as yet unidentified and unidentifiable — remains of a white male. The absence of paraphernalia indicated that this was not about drugs.
No, it couldn't be that easy, he thought. A nice simple drug deal gone bad would be a cakewalk in comparison. Because this appeared to be racial and, as such, political. The mystery firefight meant that at best there were some heavily armed insurrectionists running around and duking it out with some equally armed opponents.
And at worst?
Jackson didn’t want to think about it. This was not good news: for him personally or the town in general. His available man- and woman power was already stretched along the whole strip on the oceanfront, with additional mobile units doing DUI spot checks between Atlantic and Pacific avenues and a search chopper doing laps up and down the length of the boardwalk. On the main drag tricked-out cars bunched and crawled along at a snail's pace: late model low-riders, plush Beemers and hulking SUVs, all packed with rowdy collegiate youth hailing from black fraternities and sororities across the country, from Alpha Phi Alpha and Zeta Phi Beta, as well as those whose grades, ambitions or resources precluded higher education but who didn’t want to miss the party. They gridlocked every intersection, blasting vintage Wu Tang and Tupac from thunderous stereo systems and daring somebody, anybody, to give them a hard time.
It was American Graffiti in a gulag, with absolutely everyone wearing a chip on their shoulder. And Jackson was in charge of keeping the lid on. So when the call had come not fifteen minutes ago, Jackson was thrilled to learn that his higher-ups had been reminded by their higher-ups to remind him of the incident at Custis Manor. And though there had been nothing directly correlati
ng the incident at the manor to the one at the church, they wanted to caution that it could happen again, with far worse than spray paint.
And so, with the whole town poised for confrontation, Jackson was put on alert to have his people babysit a landmark bastion of good old-fashioned southern racism. He told them flat out that it was out of the question; he’d give his officers a head’s up, and if anything happened they would respond as quickly as possible, but beyond that he simply couldn’t spare them. But somehow he knew that wouldn’t be the end of it.
Jackson looked at the memorial: the setting sun graced the sculpted features with a burnished glow and also illuminated the inlaid brass lettering of the circle, which commemorated the myriad contributors who had made the monument possible, sorted according to donation level and christened with portentously noble titles: Trail Blazers, Torch Bearers, Heroes. Their ranks included everyone from B’nai B’rith and Kiwanis to the Stillson Beach Black Municipal Employees Association and the African Holocaust Committee. And one name he had never really noticed before, that shone fiery with reflected light.
Custis.
Jackson frowned. He couldn’t believe he had never noticed that before, but indeed it would seem that the Custis Historical Preservation Society had made a hefty contribution to the cause, enough to rank it as a Torch Bearer at any rate, though Jackson wondered exactly what kind of torch a Custis would likely wish to bear. Probably one that came with a rope, he mused.
It was perverse, especially given the recent uproar over Governor Langley’s proposed National Museum of Slavery. It was an idea that had first been advanced as a “Negro Memorial” by a group of aging black Civil War vets in 1915, some fifty years after Lincoln’s skull had been reduced to patriotic pulp by John Wilkes Booth. Congress had authorized an edifice to be built in the nation’s capital in 1929 and had envisioned it as a neoclassical structure to rival the Supreme Court. Several months later came Black Monday, the stock market cratered, and the ensuing Depression washed away any practical hope of the project’s fruition in a tidal wave of bleeding red ink.
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