Our Man in the Dark (11 page)

“If that's how you feel, then give me what I want and I'll never bother you again.”

“What do you want?”

“You know what I want.”

She gives me a wicked smile and tosses her cigarette out of the window. “If that's what you want, then be man enough to take it. What? You want me to put it on a silver platter for you? If you're waiting for me to choose you, then you're wasting your time, because I don't want you. But here it is.” She hikes her dress to midthigh and parts her legs. “Show me what kind of a man you are.”

I stare into the dark space between her legs and mutter a desperate incantation to myself, but no magic appears.

“That's what I thought.” She pulls down her dress and leaves.

I arrive at Count's, but I don't enter through the front bar. Even at this late hour, it's surging with music. Instead I head for the entrance in the back that faces the alley.

I walk past the crumbling brick, through the shadows that reek of piss and garbage that seems to move as I pass. Then I see it: that door made red by the colored light above it.

I knock on the door in a secret rhythm. Two eyes appear through a narrow slot. The door opens and I enter. The hallway buzzes with moans and screams only vaguely muffled by the thin white walls. At the end of this hallway is a room with the number 21 painted on its door. My girl is waiting inside.

“Fuck or suck?” she asks.

“Fuck,” I say so softly I can barely hear it.

She has a young round face, but there is a manufactured innocence in her eyes. She's a big girl; my father would say she's farm-fed. I say she's zaftig. She looks like
her
a little . . . not quite. You have to squint your eyes, let your head fall back, and your mouth hang open, and then they are identical. She is twice
her
size, but that is what I need: two of
her.
I need to be overwhelmed and hide myself in the shadow between her thighs.

“Come on, baby. Come for Mama.”

I'm trying, but I'm too self-conscious and aware of my surroundings. My brace seems to squeak with every thrust. I can hear the wet smack of skin against skin, the soft scrape of tongue against tongue. The noise keeps me there and traps me with my anger for Her. It won't let my resentment give way to desire.

I feel a sudden jolt, as if someone had unexpectedly tapped my shoulder. I remove myself from the girl and struggle to get my pants on.

“What's wrong?”

I don't respond.

“You're a real creep! What is your problem?”

I hear a loud thud, wood splintering, and many pounding footsteps.

“Raid!”
Somebody screams. I hear the policemen shout,
“Freeze!”
and kick in doors.

“I can't be arrested,” I tell the girl.

“Me neither. They gonna send me back to my grandmama's house.”

“Don't let them find me.”

“What the hell you want me to do?”

“Don't fuckin' move!”
comes from the room next to ours.

“Run out there and distract them.”

“Hell, no.”

I reach into my pants and pull out some money. “Here.”

“Like this?” she asks pointing at her naked body.

I give her more money. “Please.”

She jiggles out of the room. “Don't shoot! Don't shoot!”

I gather my clothes and crouch in the corner.

I wait for what seems like a long while, but it's probably just minutes. The chaos seems to subside and I begin to feel safe. Then I hear footsteps. They are faint at first, but grow louder. They echo down the hallway, then pivot and move into the rooms. I cry a little and pray a lot. The footsteps are closer—so close I think I hear the tips of the laces hit the shoes.

The door creaks open slowly. I do not move.

I'm the only Negro in the back of the paddy wagon. Some of the other men seem vaguely familiar, but I'm not concerned with putting names to faces. At the station, I'm photographed and fingerprinted. They corral the white men together in a cell. I have one all to myself.

Dark corners. Only a single lamp outside the cell. My face is crosshatched by the shadows of the bars, adding a gloomy quality to this already hopeless setting.

I'm entitled to a phone call, but I don't use it.

Hours pass. Upon release, I consider fleeing the country.

I hear the jangle of keys. A lanky policeman with a boil on his right upper cheek unlocks the cell door. “Well, boy, it looks like you managed to make friends with the right people. C'mon, now.”

The officer escorts me to the station lobby, where he hands me a file. Inside are my mug shot and fingerprints.

Strobe and Mathis are waiting at the front desk.

“He's all yours,” the officer says.

Mathis and Strobe are silent. I assume that they will drive me home, but as we pass the city limits, my shame and gratitude prevent me from protesting.

“I can't thank you enough,” I say to them. “What you've done tonight won't be forgotten.”

They do not respond.

The city vanishes in the darkness behind us, yet Mathis and Strobe continue to drive. They drive into the forgotten rural area, past the old barns and fields, past the shacks of tenant farmers still lit by kerosene lamps. The sound of gravel crunching under the tires gives way to the softer thump of a dirt road.

Trees suddenly appear. The twisted branches give mind to the mangled limbs of torture and farm accidents. Vegetation suffocates the trunks. Roots push up through the soil, reaching for air.

We are deep in the Christ-haunted woods of baptisms and lynchings.

“Relax, John,” says Mathis.

Finally, we come to a clearing.

“Here,” says Strobe.

Darkness is all around us, though briefly interrupted by a light flickering in the distance.

I blink and take in the brilliance of a burning cross.

The sight of a cross on fire should be unsettling to any true Christian. To a Negro it is worse. A unique kind of fear enters your mind, one perfected by the South: that you could die for the most harmless of offenses. You could die just for the crime of living.

This is how it happens, isn't it? Someone becomes too much of a liability and they mysteriously disappear. But that is not how Mathis and Strobe would get rid of me. I can see the headline now: “King's Accountant
Murdered by Klan.” If I were to disappear, it would be an embarrassment to Hoover and an outrage to Martin. I matter too much. It seems that they brought me here for some type of show—to teach me a lesson. They want to watch me squirm for their amusement.

Strobe opens the car door and pulls me out.

“Well,” I say to them, “I see you have a flair for drama, but are these theatrics really necessary?”

“Shut your trap, for God's sake,” snaps Strobe.

There is nothing but the cross and darkness. Strobe pulls something from his jacket and presses it to his lips. A birdlike chirp is released. A duplicate sound echoes from the night. We wait, staring into the dark. And then I see it, what I hope is a trick of the mind, a ghostly apparition emerging from the pitch. I stand in disbelief as the white hood and cloak make their way toward us.

He removes the hood and reveals his coal black, sweat-soaked hair. “You boys need to start being on time. Been waiting out here who knows how long.” He looks at me, then smiles at Mathis and Strobe. “Would've brought my corn liquor if I knew we was having a party.”

“What's the news, Pete?” asks Mathis.

“Might know who killed that salt-and-pepper couple last month, that's what.”

“You do or you don't.”

“Can't fully recall. Memory's been acting funny since my little girl got sick. Doctor can't tell what's causing it. Bless her heart.” He seems to swell under that sheet. He has a large brawny build; not athletic, just the ropy girth resulting from years of physical labor.

“How much?”

“Two hundred might get her through.”

Mathis nods at Strobe. He retrieves the bills and hands them to Pete.

An unwelcome smirk comes to my face. Out here in these woods, I am surprised to see someone I think I can relate to.

Pete looks at me, money still in his palm. His close-set eyes narrow. “What is that goddamn monkey looking at?” He puts the hood back on. “You want to look at something, nigger? Look at this.”

Strobe snatches the hood and tosses it to the ground. “One more word and you'll watch me piss on it.”

Pete attempts to reach for it.

“Leave it,” says Strobe.

“Names,” says Mathis.

“Frank Billingsley. Sam Cullworth. Brothers—same momma, different daddies. Share a place not too far from here. They been bragging about what they did to the girl while they made the nigger watch.”

“And I suppose a man of your stature favors discretion, is that it?” adds Mathis.

“Ain't saying she didn't have it coming. But what them boys did was done
after
she was dead. You got to draw the line somewhere, for Christ's sake.”

“Your buddies back there will support a hundred different alibis. What else you got?”

“Took some jewelry off the girl. The nigger had a guitar that Sam won't shut up about. Said it's like the one his daddy taught him on. Sure as hell he's still got it.”

A rallying cry echoes in the dark. Pete jerks his head like a dog responding to a whistle. “It's been fun visiting, boys. But I need to get going.” Again, he reaches for the hood. “May I?”

Strobe nods.

“You know where to find me if you need me.” Pete looks at me one last time. “Be sure to keep that dog on a short leash,” he says as he disappears into the woods.

The three of us are silent as we head toward the city. In my mind, Mathis and Strobe have reached their low point. Allowing me to witness their little display of power reveals their true estimation of me. Despite what they have told me, they see me as corrupted and compromised. An unscrupulous man who can be maneuvered and manipulated by his faults, like puppet strings.

I decide to speak up. “Good to see you boys are putting your connections to good use. I wish that I could tell Martin what you boys are up to.”

“I'm sure you do,” Strobe says glaring at me in the rearview mirror.

“I mean that it would put him at ease. Martin's been so troubled about the FBI's lack of protection for us civil rights workers, he'd love to hear that you are going to get those animals.”

“Hear that, Mathis?” asks Strobe, “
Martin
would love to hear that we're going to get those animals.”

“John,” Mathis says, letting out a sigh, “We most certainly do not, and probably never will, give protection to a civil rights worker. The FBI is not the police. We're purely an
investigative
organization. The protection of individual citizens is a matter for local authorities.”

He sounds rehearsed, and he knows it.

“So you've obtained information regarding the murder of two innocent people,” I say, “yet you plan to do nothing with it?”

“I can't believe this son of a bitch is developing a conscience,” Strobe says.

“We'll give the information to the sheriff once we've followed up on everything.”

“You and I both know these redneck sheriffs won't make an effort,” I say. “It's your job to ensure that justice—”

“I've had enough of this degenerate. Put the bastard out here and let him walk home.”

“Strobe, enough. John, our job is to
know
. Period. Now, you need to focus on
your
job and that is helping us do ours. We brought you out here to show you that we can be trusted—to remove any doubt about whose side we are on. We are on your side, John. When you act in the manner you have, it gives us the impression that you take our relationship for granted—that you don't trust us . . . and that we can't trust you. You must stay focused, John. If you fail, we all fail. You will be an embarrassment to the FBI, to King—to everyone. Don't you see it? We have people planted inside an organization that is the sworn enemy of the Negro people. We're working to destroy them from the inside out. Yet you continue to treat our arrangement with a disrespect that puzzles me. The barbarians are at the gates, John. Saboteurs, both foreign and domestic, are threatening America. You have to capture, for good, any part of you that wants to flee, and suppress it. Your responsibilities to your people and to this country are too great.”

Mathis tosses an envelope to me in the backseat.

I see his eyes in the rearview mirror, surveying me to assess the effect of his words. I don't have to look in the envelope. I can tell by its weight that there's cash inside.

“Get the information,” says Mathis. “The next time we meet, you'd better be a goddamn encyclopedia.”

As we approach the lights of the city, we pass a billboard displaying our town's new civil-minded slogan: “Welcome to Atlanta, the City Too Busy to Hate.”