The Lost Brother

by Rick Bennet

  “There is a man, Khalid. He has an organization, New Africa. You know of it?”

  Passer and Kellogg nod.

  “Mr. James, he heard, I do not know how, this New Africa had videos. Important videos. Videos of important people. And especially, for me, a video of the incident.”

  The “incident” is what the Latino community called the shooting of the local man by the black police officer that set off the riot.

  “It showed, this video, it showed that our man was handcuffed when they shot him. If we could get this video, it would mean much to our people. Mr. James said he believed New Africa had this video, and others—blackmail videos, he thought, maybe. But Mr. James could not trust the police to get this video, for obvious reasons. He went to the FBI, but they dismissed his claim. I think, in fact, Mr. James became afraid of them then. Of the FBI. He told me he was afraid all he had done, by going to them, was warn them that he knew something he should not.

  “Mr. James, he tells me then he has an idea that I can get in the New Africa building, to get the tapes, by taking work as a janitor in the company that cleans the offices overnight.

  “I know people in that company. I get the job. I am told by Mr. James where he believes the tapes are, and I find them there. I put them in a garbage bag and sneak them out of the building. I give them to Mr. James.”

  Kellogg lets a moment pass to be sure Chavez is finished volunteering information, then asks, “Did you watch the tapes?”

  Chavez nods.

  Kellogg lets another moment pass, then asks what was on them.

  “One was of a white man who Mr. James said was the head of the FBI. He was doing things with a prostitute. That this was one of the tapes explains why Mr. James made a mistake in approaching the FBI about his suspicions about New Africa.

  “Another tape was of the Mayor. He was in prison. He was in prison clothes, but he had a prostitute. A white woman. She did some things for him. And they smoked a crack pipe.

  “And then there was a video of the incident. The man was handcuffed when the policewoman shot him. He was coming at her, and he was drunk, and he spit on her, and she drew her gun and shot him.”

  Passer asks, “What did Henry James say about that tape?”

  “He said we should keep it for now and think about what to do. He said he was afraid that if the tape was made public it would just cause another riot. He said if I wanted, he would release the tape. He said it was my decision. But he asked me to consider whether the justice would be worth the violence.”

  “What did you decide?”

  Chavez shakes his head. “Nothing. And now, of course, the tape is gone. I think the police must have gotten it back.”

  Kellogg: Did you or Henry James make copies of these tapes?

  Chavez: I didn’t. I don’t think Henry did, because he said he had no place to safely keep a set of copies. We talked about maybe getting a safe-deposit box in someone else’s name, but I don’t think he had done that yet.

  Kellogg: The police didn’t get the tapes.

  Chavez: How do you know?

  Chavez assumed they did, because he knew they would have so thoroughly searched the James house after the murders.

  Kellogg: I have a contact in the department. A good one.

  Chavez: Then where are the tapes? Kellogg: Whoever got the boy got the tapes. He took them with him.

  Chavez nods again. His eyes water. He says: That boy, he loved his father. He loved what his father stood for. He would fight his father’s fight.

  A tear falls down Chavez’s face. Passer notes how soft his light-brown skin is. Notes that she has not before really noticed his youth, because his eyes were always so hard-set, so aged. But Chavez is young. Not thirty.

  Chavez: I know this boy.

  He hesitates. Then: I was this boy. My father, he was a rebel. In El Salvador. As a boy, I saw him lead a company in the mountains. I saw him go off to fight, and come back. I saw the looks in the eyes of the other men in our town, heard the respect in their voices when they spoke of him. Of his courage.

  One day, he was captured. And then a month later we woke up to find his naked body dumped in our town square. And you cannot know what had been done to him. You would not believe what had been done to him. But I will never forget what they had done to him.

  All this, once, I told Mr. James. With his son listening, I told him. To help Mr. James understand what he was fighting. How universal is what he is fighting. How universal is corruption. His son, I’ll tell you, that boy, he understood. And him I understand. I know where he is. Not where his body is. Where his heart is.

  15

  JOAN PRICE, FIVE THREE, STOCKY BUILD, permed hair, plain face, pale skin, dark eyes, dressed in slacks and blouse and heels bought at Sears, stands on a stage, microphone in hand, pacing. She has an energy that comes from absolute focus and a confidence that comes from absolute belief in her righteousness. She is speaking to a crowd of two hundred in Montgomery County, Maryland, which is a predominantly white suburb of D.C. and is one of the wealthiest, best-educated, and most liberal counties in the country. This is an LTC fund-raiser. Its very presence is controversial. People picket outside; burst in at one point and scream obscenities before being removed.

  Jimmy Close is sitting on the stage. Watching Joan. He’s thinking, of her, who is she? Why is she? He has his doubts about her. Worries about her. He knows what a fine line he’s drawing with this movement. But he can’t deny her talent. No one can. White Malcolm.

  She is pacing. A plain-looking, middle-aged white woman of the sort most people find invisible in a crowd. She has a paper in her hand.

  “This,” she roars, to her white, Jewish, and Asian crowd, in this affluent suburb, “is the law.”

  She crumples the paper up, throws it away. Stands a moment, staring at her audience.

  They stare back. In an age of medium-cool televised politicians with their studiously safe blandness, a live and real old-fashioned orator is fascinating. And she has the main asset of all great orators—she fakes nothing. She says nothing she doesn’t believe. She says everything she does believe.

  “The law says you cannot discriminate according to race.”

  She’s a master of timing.

  “The law says you can not discriminate according to race.”

  A master of inflection and emphasis.

  “But the courts say that law means you have to discriminate. You have to. It’s called affirmative action. Blacks said give us equal rights, and we did. Now they say give us superior rights, and we have. Our own children are second-class citizens in our own country. We don’t just have government-tolerated hate, we now have government-mandated hate.”

  Jimmy Close, listening, watches the crowd. Joan Price is freelancing. Always does. Refuses to write a speech. Says you write letters, you give speeches. Says it has to be natural. Felt. Real. Emotional. If it’s also unordered and inconsistent, so be it.

  “The League of True Colors is an organization for poor and working-class whites. Our people get proportionately less government help, suffer the worst media stereotypes, and have fewer educational opportunities than anyone else in America. Yet we aren’t demanding quotas. We just don’t want to be hurt by them. Blacks complain that their kids shouldn’t have to study as hard as Asians and Jews but should get into college anyway; shouldn’t have to work as hard at jobs but should get promoted anyway. You don’t hear that from us.”

  She has a look and tone, for now, of conciliation. Her arms are spread wide, her hands are palm up. “We are called racist.”

  She lets that statement sink in. She knows that her audience has heard the charge and is hurt by the charge.

  “The media say that because we are against black racism, we are ourselves racist. Because we are against the hate-mongering of affirmative action, we are hatemongers? Wow!”

  She says “Wow” in such a way that people laugh, caught off guard.

  Now she changes pace. Begins stepping q
uickly about the stage, backward and forward, one side to the other, bobbing with her words, expressing with her arms, pointing with her hands, entrancing with a rhythm both verbal and visual.

  “Things change fast in this modern, technological world. We read in the history books that there was a time when it was whites who were racist and blacks who were victims, but that was then, this is now. Now blacks are the bigots, not us. Not one white in a hundred is racist, not one black in a hundred isn’t. Blacks who have never been oppressed get racial advantage. Whites, Asians, and Jews who have never oppressed are supposed to take their punishment with a smile.”

  It is no accident that she mentions Asians and Jews tonight. She understands the need for allies, for expansion. She wouldn’t talk this way in Tennessee.

  “Black politicians like to point out examples of individuals who’ve benefited from affirmative hate, but there were individuals who benefited from slavery too. Does that excuse it? The profiteers of bigotry cannot be their own argument.

  “Black people have to understand that fairness isn’t just something you have to demand; it’s also something you have to give. Discrimination is wrong not only when you receive it but also when you dish it out.

  “The problem is that black Americans have become a people of hate. Go see a movie made by blacks, watch a video made by blacks, listen to music made by blacks, read the lyrics. It’s all about hate and violence. Black kids are brainwashed into thinking that we hate them. Brainwashed into interpreting our behavior as racist. Brainwashed into bigotry. Brainwashed into thinking violence against us is justified.

  “Never mind that ninety-nine percent of all interracial crime in this country is from blacks to nonblacks. Never mind that more whites will die at the hands of black criminals this year than blacks were lynched by whites in a decade in the Old South. Never mind that one hundred percent of black economic inferiority comes from the fact that they are the worst parents in the world. Never mind that black people have always lagged behind everyone else in the world and that it can’t have anything to do with racism because blacks were behind everyone else before whites came to Africa, which is how they ended up being bought for slaves in the first place. Never mind that Africans were the ones who invented slavery, and African chieftains sold their own people, and our European ancestors were the victims of the greatest con job in world history. Slavery was the worst thing to ever happen to this country. Africans sold Africans to Europeans, and centuries later their descendants are angry at us!”

  That may have been the riskiest thing she will have said tonight, so by strategy she follows with her most powerful language:

  “Never mind that my husband”—she chokes up, and the audience is completely silent—”was a good, open-minded man who believed we should stay in our neighborhood even though it had turned almost entirely black.

  “Never mind that our daughter”—tears fall down her stern, angry face—”had a black girl for a best friend.

  “Never mind what we do, or how we feel. When the time comes, when the blacks come, it doesn’t matter how good we are. So many of us thought, if we were good whites, somehow we’d be protected.”

  Pause.

  “Yet every day in every city in this country, blacks mug, murder, rob, and rape us.”

  She breathes deeply, passionately, loudly. Holds her hand to her temple and forehead, eyes closed a brief moment in concentration, collection. She opens her eyes, looks imploringly to her audience.

  “How many people here have been victimized by black crime?”

  Some hands go up.

  “How many people have had loved ones victimized by black crime?”

  Everyone’s hand goes up.

  “Then help us. Help the only true civil rights group in this country. Help us fight New Africa, the Nation of Islam, the N-double-hate-C-P, the Black Congressional Klan, and the other hate groups that are destroying this country. Help us save your lives.”

  Passer, looking her whitest, in jeans and boots, a ponytail wig under a ball cap, skin paled with makeup, and Kellogg, who’s white as can be naturally, are in the audience, in the back.

  Passer whispers to Kellogg, “She is awesome.”

  Kellogg nods.

  Passer says, “I mean, I have never seen a woman speak like this. I’m not talking about right or wrong. I just mean, she can speak”

  Kellogg nods again.

  Jimmy Close called him today and suggested tonight as a good opportunity for Kellogg to begin investigating LTC. After all, the only provable connection between Richard Ells and LTC was Ells’s attending a meeting such as this one.

  After her speech, after an hour of talking with supporters, with reporters, with newcomers, Joan is finally alone, pouring herself a cup of coffee. Passer comes up to her. Speaks in a heavy New Orleans accent she learned during her stay there. Puts out her hand.

  Passer: Mrs. Price? I’m Adelia Desormeaux.

  Joan Price takes the proffered hand. Shakes it. Looks Passer in the eye.

  Passer: Mrs. Price, I just have to say, my God, what you said all tonight, it is just something I have never heard so well before.

  Joan: Thank you. Adelia Desormeaux? Passer: Yes.

  Joan: Thank you. We haven’t seen you before, have we?

  Passer: No, this is my first time, but I had to come, because I read about you in Time magazine, and then heard you speak on the radio, and saw you on Ricki Lake and Geraldo, and I just had to come.

  Joan: Thank you. I hope that means you’re going to get active in the movement.

  Passer: Absolutely!

  Joan: Great. Do you have any background in political activism?

  Passer: Yes, I do. I worked on David Duke’s campaign back home. It still hurts me we came up just short on that, but still, you know, we got some things said.

  Joan: You’re from Louisiana?

  Passer: New Orleans.

  Joan: I thought I recognized that accent.

  Passer: Ain’t much mistaking it for nothing around here.

  Joan: No, there isn’t. It’s a great accent. Passer: You never meet no one from home ever makes the least bit effort to talk like the rest of y’all. Joan laughs.

  Passer: Anyway, Mrs. Price, I just think what you say and do is so right, and I want to be a part of it. I came up here just for that. I want to work with you.

  Joan: You came up here to work with me? Really?

  Joan Price is still new to her own power. She still enjoys, like a revelation, hearing that people are moved by her speeches.

  Passer: I got thirty-three hundred dollars to live on for a while, and I can stay rent free in Frederick with my uncle.

  Passer points to Kellogg, who, across the room, his huge belly sprawling out from under a T-shirt, over his jeans, looks as much a redneck as anyone ever does. His T-shirt says PEOPLE WHO BELIEVE IN ABORTION SHOULD HAVE BEEN ONE.

  Passer: Well, I don’t mean to gush. Or keep you. I know you must be so busy, so many people demanding your time.

  Joan Price smiles up at Passer. Asks if she’s hungry. Passer says yes, very much so. Joan says, Come eat with me. Passer asks if her uncle can come too, and Joan says certainly.

  Earlier this day, Passer and Kellogg went out to Frederick and borrowed a truck, with Maryland tags that can be traced to a Frederick address. The man who owns the truck is a retired police officer, an old friend of Kellogg’s named Desormeaux with a daughter named Adelia, so they can get by a casual check, if Joan runs one.

  16

  MIGHT, AT THE TASTEE DIMER IN BETHESDA. The temperature has dropped, and a slight rain falls, misting the windows. Joan Price has brought a tall, sharp-eyed young blond man who takes his job as her bodyguard very seriously. He sits with them all at the diner but doesn’t join in the conversation much. Stares at Passer a lot.

  The conversation at first is indirect. Passer, who’s done some library research on the subject, speaks about the David Duke campaign; Joan Price is very interested. Passer says she answe
red phones in a New Orleans office for a month and did some leaflet distribution, and poll work on election day. She has actually done those things as a kid for one of Tom Bradley’s mayoral campaigns in Los Angeles, so she feels comfortable discussing the work. And she has seen Duke speak on C-SPAN.

  “You know what I remember most about the David Duke campaign?” Joan says. She’s eaten amply and is drinking coffee. She doesn’t smoke. “You know, blacks are always talking about redemption, but they aren’t willing to give anyone else any. They say forgive the Mayor, forgive Tyson, forgive Farrakhan, but don’t forgive David Duke. Tell me, Adelia, do you know anything about Malcolm X?” Passer: I saw the movie.

  Kellogg, who’s been busy eating, says, “I tried to watch it when it was on cable, but I turned it off after about thirty seconds—as soon as that nigger started preaching that white-hating bullshit of his.”

  Joan, pointing her finger at Kellogg, sternly says, “We don’t use that word. Period.”

  Kellogg: They use it. All the time.

  Joan Price: I don’t care. I don’t use it, and I can’t let people around me use it.

  Kellogg shrugs his big shoulders.

  Passer: It just gets us in trouble.

  Price: Exactly. We have to be more careful about such things than anyone else. We are held to a higher standard. If we say we prefer vanilla ice cream to chocolate, we can be accused of racism. Getting back to Malcolm X, he is someone I understand very well, but with regard to David Duke, remember that Malcolm, too, at first said horrible things about whites, but we are supposed to overlook them because at the end of his life he started changing his views. He was still a separatist, as I am, but he realized the futility of hate. As I do.

  Kellogg: And as soon as he stopped hating whites, the blacks killed him.

  Price, nodding: That’s true. And it’s also true that blacks today idolize Malcolm because, as a young man, he was a racist fanatic. But understand, thirty years ago things were very different in this country. If you know history, you know there was a time in this country when it was whites who were the violent racists, whites who organized politically along racial lines, whites who got away with crimes if their victims were black, whites who got job preference so absolute that it makes affirmative action look like nothing. I always try to bear this in mind when I think about succumbing to my own anger.