The Lost Brother (12 page)

That afternoon, Passer, looking Latina, picks Kellogg up. They find the bar, park a block away, and walk up. The neighborhood, a commercial street surrounded by old but sometimes still attractive row houses and apartment buildings, bears scars from the riots but doesn’t reek of despair, certainly not of danger. The streets are lively on this pretty, warm day, mostly with immigrant Latinos, but also with Americans. Everyone hanging out on the street is Latino. The two beat police are black, and they are eyed carefully, angrily.

The bar is busy but not overly crowded. Latin jazz plays softly. Passer instinctively moves with it as she leads Kellogg down the narrow aisle to an empty back table. Almost all the bar’s patrons are men; almost all turn to look at her as she moves by them, her long legs in tight designer jeans balanced easily on black heels, her dark eyes in a heavily made up face sparkling out at them from under a brunette wig. Kellogg, too, is noticed, but for other reasons. He is the biggest man in the place. The whitest.

They sit. A waitress comes up and, curious as to whether Passer is Hispanic (enough Americans come in that she doesn’t jump to that conclusion just because someone is dark), asks her in Spanish what they would like. Passer, in northern-Mexico-accented Spanish, answers they would like beer.

When the waitress leaves, Passer asks Kellogg if Chavez might not come. Kellogg says he would bet that he’d be here shortly, because when they came in, a man at the bar eyed them and then went straight to the phone and called someone.

Their beers come, with burning-hot salsa and chips.

“Why are you doing the Latina bit?” Kellogg asks.

“Just for fun. I miss it.”

“Is that the main culture you grew up with?”

“Outside the house it was, when I was a teenager, because I was in a Mexican street gang. That’s just one kind of Hispanic-American culture, of course. Just one part of it. Which is true of all cultures. People talk about what’s a certain cultural characteristic, but really it’s bullshit. There’re so many ways to act like a ‘kind’ of person. But yeah, there are stereotypes, generalities, and I know how to use them. It’s mostly just dress and attitude and accent, more than skin color. Really, I don’t have to change my color at all if I don’t want to. I mean, there are black Latinos, white Latinos, brown ones. Light-skinned black people, dark-skinned whites.”

“You can do them all.”

“Sure. And the world reacts differently to me too, depending on how I’m posing. And not just the white world. I find that blacks are the most color conscious, Latinos the least, whites somewhere in the middle. Latinos are the most class conscious, though, and blacks the least.”

Kellogg laughs. “You should have been a cop. You are the most observant person I know. You dissect people’s appearances and mannerisms and accents, see the patterns of what those things mean about who the person is. And what’s more, you can mimic them.”

“I could never be a cop.”

“Why?”

“I’m too afraid of violence.”

“Then go to college. Be a sociologist.”

“I thought about it. But I can’t fill out the admission forms. Right after name and address, they ask your race. Besides, I’m going to be a writer, remember?”

Chavez suddenly comes through the kitchen door and quickly sits with them. In his slight accent, he says, “You have Mrs. James call me for you. Very nice.”

Kellogg is glad Chavez has a little humor in his voice. He has some in his own when he answers that he thought it was fair to remind him why they’re on this investigation.

Chavez nods. “We will talk out back.”

*

In the alley behind the bar, Kellogg sits on a plastic milk crate, leaning back against the dirty white-brick wall Chavez sits on the black steel steps that lead to the heavy kitchen door, and Passer stands on the littered, puddled asphalt, hands in her pockets, looking for and seeing rats dodging about. Other restaurants’ rear entrances feed this alley, and occasionally a busboy or dishwasher steps out with garbage to throw away. Once, three Latino boys come speeding by on their bikes, excited about something.

“Mr. James, he was a good man,” Chavez says. “An honest man. And he helped me to live, to have reason to live, after the murder of my wife. I told him I
needed
to do something. So he asked me to do something for him. Something dangerous. He asked me because he knew I
had
to do something. I had to feel I was working to help things. I had dreams of taking my rifle against a gang and dying in battle. That gang, that crew, that killed my wife, that threatened the witnesses and scared them away from the truth, those men I could kill, those men could kill me, and I would not care. Mr. James, he gave me a chance to risk my life, to try, to do something dangerous, but to help.

“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.

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 quickly 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.