Our Man in the Dark (25 page)

I just know that I breezed past Claudel and Otis and entered Count's office.

“I just want to let you know we're going ahead with it,” Count said.

“With what?”

Count tossed me a letter across his desk:

What disturbed me the most about it was not its crudeness, in all aspects, but the obvious sense of entitlement that was conveyed in so few lines. It might as well have ended with “Can you blame us?”

So, it looks like I will have to protect Martin from Count as well. FBI agents are hard enough, but a gangster?

“He won't pay you, Count,” I said.

“That's where you come in, little man—to see that he does. Besides, I don't know how careful you read, but this letter ain't for the preacher.”

“It's not?”

“Nah. It's for that boss of yours—the queer one you told me about. I figure we get the letter directly to him and you can persuade
him
to pay up.”

“What if it doesn't work?”

“I expect you to do your best. Haven't I been good to you? Just once, I want to see you do right by me.”

I was sick of his presence, but I decided to see if the bartender had the right medicine, and after my fourth dose, I can say that the tincture he's peddling works just as good as my mama's chicken soup. But nothing changes the fact that I'm Count's errand boy, no matter how many agents I follow or scandalous pictures I take. Nothing.

“How much they get you for?”

I hear him say it but I'm not sure he's talking to me, so I ignore him and take another trip to my whiskey glass.

“How much they hit you for?” This time I look at him—an old man, older than my father even, in a baggy dark brown suit that once fitted him properly when he was a younger, more muscular man. His wide silk tie has a gold tiepin, dead center, which winks at me in the darkness. I look at the old man's wrinkled face under his porkpie hat; his eyes tell me that tonight he's young again.

“Excuse me?” I respond to his previous question.

“How much they charge you?” His voice is a delighted liquor-soaked rasp.

“For the drink?”

“Nah, man. You don't remember me, do you?”

I try my best to place him. A volunteer with Martin? Friend of my father's? Nothing.

“Yeah, man,” he says. “I saw you a few days ago with those white men at that insurance office.”

I can hear my heart thumping its own loud rhythm over the howling
blues.

“Were you lookin' for a job there or somethin'?” he asks in response to my blank stare. “Even that day, I felt I recognized you, but I just couldn't place where I'd seen you before. But then, I see you tonight, and that's when it sank in. Here, man, let me buy you a drink. Tonight's pay day and I'm here to spend money.” He motions for the bartender to repeat our remedy and fills the once empty stool that stood between us. “You work for those white men?”

“Something like that.”

“How much does a job like that pay?”

That's when it dawns on me—he's the janitor who stumbled into the agents' office with his bucket and mop and was introduced to their anxious pistols. This man has access to the building, and no one knows how he comes or goes or even cares. He can slip in and out like a shadow. At this moment, he's the most powerful man I know.

I tell him the drinks are on me and, after a while, he loosens up, telling me stories and lies about women and war, and the weight of being a black man in a white man's world. I indulge him through eight songs before I decide to see how well the old man can dance.

“How much money you make in a year?” I ask him.

“What kind of fuckin' question is that?” he draws his arm back, drink still in hand, and spills some of it on the bar.

“Just making conversation. How much would you say? Give or take . . .”

“I ain't never made more than two grand in one year outta all my years,” he confesses to his tumbler before gulping it down.

“I want to give you three thousand dollars.”

His stare is cold stone. He didn't get this old by being a fool. The money sounds sweet to him, I can tell, but he's wise enough to resist his initial temptation.

“What the fuck for, man?”

“I need to get into that building. Those white men you saw me with have some information I have to get my hands on.”

“You want to pay me to get the information?”

“No. I want to pay you to switch places.”

“The hell you mean?”

“I want to see what it's like to be a janitor for a night. You got the keys to the building, don't you?”

“Of course, man.”

“Good. You can just take the night off and let me borrow them. Maybe a couple of months off.”

“Man, if somethin' happens in there and I'm gone, they gonna look at me 'cause I got the keys.”

“That's why you'll make copies. Tell your boss that you're going on vacation. Leave the master keys with him, and give me the copies.”

He lets the idea soak in his drink before looking at me from the corner of his eye. “Those white men must really got somethin' on you. . . . What's stoppin' me from tellin' them your little plan and seein' if they offer some kinda reward?”

I feel cornered—but it lasts only for a moment. “You can do that if you want to,” I say, smiling into my drink, “but you know better than me what kind of offices are in that building. Just because those glass doors say ‘Dentist' and ‘Insurance' doesn't guarantee that your teeth or your life are in good hands.”

We sit shoulder to shoulder in silence for a while, as the bluesman on stage and the crowd both grow weary. Finally, he takes a gulp of his drink that makes him wince, then signals to the bartender for a refill. He turns to me and extends his hand. “No need for names,” he says as we shake. “I'll just tell you when and where.”

A few days later, I met the janitor in the Buttermilk Bottom, the tenement slum at the edge of the city. Was it so named ironically—buttermilk for cornbread or hotcakes is a luxury they seldom see—or was it the sour smell in the air, the foulness coming from the piles of refuse and puddles of waste? The dirt path, the wooden hovels crowded with desperate souls and their vacant yet calculating eyes transported me to the days of bondage. From the metal of my brace, I heard the rattling chains of the slave block; from the leather straps, I felt the master's whip.

When the janitor saw me, he descended a wooden porch and led me to a place where we could make our exchange. The approval his presence granted was enough for those lost spirits that watched me—the stranger or savior, the mark or prey—and they retreated slowly into their dark dwellings like feral animals.

He gave me the keys as promised, and my money followed. It was more than a year's salary for him. He's probably long gone by now. He didn't even look like he'd make it another six months.

I'm just glad to be away from that slum, and anxious to see if these keys work. It's late enough—no lights or signs of movement are visible in the agents' or the other offices. I make my way behind the building to the door that guards the stairwell. I turn the key and think
Open, sesame
as the bolt abandons the plate. Up the stairs, slowly, dark and silent, I only hear my brace and my breathing. As I approach the agents' office, I see that someone has installed a shiny new lock on their door. None of the janitor's keys work. If I had any real courage, I'd go to him and shake him up a bit, tell him to give me my money back; but I have no desire to ever return to the Bottom. I'm gratefully rid of that place. I've made it this far . . . I just need to come up with a new plan.

Lester did a good job saving our hides from that Bozley Park cop, but I'm not done with him yet. He may not want to see me, but more of my money means more of his time.

“Second floor,” I tell Lester once we are inside.

Lester bounds the steps with silent speed. I lag behind, punctuating each step with a squeak from my brace. I resent my dependence upon Lester. He steals my lady, causes tension between Count and me, and now I have to rely on his talents to gain the advantage over Mathis and Strobe. My only solace is that it's temporary.

The differences between us are obvious. I must appear to be his gimp, and I must be taking too long, because Lester comes back down the stairs to where I am at, puts his arm around my waist, and begins to walk me up the steps. He supports me with only one arm, yet I feel weightless. But that weightlessness quickly gives way to a feeling of helplessness. I think back for a moment to the young me, that child recently crippled by polio, and the first time I climbed a set of stairs without the help of an orderly. When I made it to the top, breathless, my lungs hurt more than my leg. I looked down a floor below at my father. He wasn't smiling. “Well, you finally made it,” he said. “It took a while, but you did it yourself. Remember that. Always remember that.”

I doubt Lester has ever experienced the pain of physical limitations. I admit that I'm jealous of him, but my envy has already begun to evaporate as I wield the flashlight while Lester works the lock like a virtuoso with his pocketknife and an unfurled paperclip and opens the door of the agents' office. “Got it,” he whispers.

I enter first and he follows. As we pass the threshold, Lester pushes me up against the wall. It's dark, but the whites of his eyes are disturbingly visible.

“When this is over,” says Lester, “You and me are even.” He only has his finger poking my chest, but I feel as if I'm glued to the wall. “Okay?”

I don't say anything. I'm afraid, but I feel a certain amount of relief. The big, dumb, and innocent act was getting old.

“Okay?” he repeats.

“Sure, Lester . . . even.”

“Good,” he says smiling, but I still don't move. “What you want me to do, Mr. Estem?”

I watch his face. The rage he tapped into starts to dissipate slowly. Eventually, that fog, dense and benign, makes its return.

“Watch the hall, Lester,” I say as I take the flashlight and walk over to the file cabinet in the corner. Surprisingly, it isn't locked. I open the drawer. There are photographs of an old guitar taken from different angles, a cluttered room with Civil War–era daguerreotypes, and the schematics of a house with four red stickers, each with the phrase “Mic Here” written on them. I also see a file on Count—Reginald “Count” Glover, that is. It details his whole operation, the gambling, the sex, everything. I almost feel guilty for bringing this kind of scrutiny upon him. He ran a successful illegal enterprise for years without incident. Then I came along with my friends from the government.

There's a great deal of information in this cabinet, but I begin to doubt if I have enough time to find something useful—and then I see it. Yes, inside the drawer, there are many files. However, one intrigues me in particular: the file labeled JEST-0468. I pull out the folder to reveal its contents, which include memoranda and photos. At first, I do not pay much attention to them. I assume they are of random individuals whose importance is only known to Mathis and Strobe. It's still dark in here—only my flashlight offers some brightness. But then I look closer at the photos and realize that they are pictures of me. Pictures of me walking into Count's, talking in a phone booth, driving my new Cadillac off the lot. But it's the last photo that is the most telling. It is a picture of me in front of the bank where I foolishly cashed that SCLC check. But this picture was taken
before
I cashed the check. They were watching me from the beginning:

This will hurt later, I know it. But I can't stop reading, like it's some torrid piece of Hollywood gossip—only this time, I'm the subject.