The Lost Brother (2 page)

“Can you take care of the in-house shit later?” Passer asks.

“Sure,” Sue says sympathetically. “You got seventeen hundred coming, right?” Passer nods.

“What?” Kellogg says, incredulous. “That can’t be right.”

“I haven’t been paid in three weeks, Kevin,” Passer says. “And I’m in no mood for bullshit.”

“She has to be paid on the books,” Kellogg says.

Passer is ready to explode. “If the client is off the books, then so is my pay!”

“Pass,” Sue says, “you billed five-forty on that case. That much I’ll give you cash for. The rest I’ll also give you cash for, but you’ll have to sign a check back to us later and pay us the deductions then.”

“Fine, fine,” Passer says.

Sue counts out her money. Hands it over. Passer takes it. Leaves. Bangs the door behind her as she does.

Kellogg shrugs. “She acts like she’s the one who bet the don’t against eight straight passes.”

“Really,” Sue says. “Imagine expecting to get paid on time. The nerve of some people.”

“Heh, heh, heh,” Kellogg says, mocking laughter.

“Heh, heh, heh, heh, heh.”

“Shut up, Kevin.” He laughs for real.

Kellogg goes into his windowless, chipping-green-painted, industrial-carpeted office. Sits in his comfortable chair at his broad desk, cluttered, as is the whole room, with equipment. He does most of his work here, at his desk. Using his computer, his phone, his fax.

He’s not going to sleep this morning, so he drinks from his coffeepot. Straight from it. He’s put masking tape on its lip so as not to burn himself. He drinks two, three, four pots a day. Smokes that many packs of cigarettes. Eats bacon, ham, eggs, and pancakes for breakfast, hamburgers and fries for lunch, steak or fried chicken for dinner. Doughnuts with the breakfast, ice cream with the lunch, cake with the dinner. Pie late at night. Candy bars anytime.

He drinks from the pot, sets it down. Lights a cigarette. Rolls, in his chair, to the cabinet with the Ottaway file. Pulls it. Looks at it. Thinks about it.

The woman he dealt with at Black Television Network asked him if it wouldn’t make sense for him to get rid of any evidence that he’d taken the job, in case the IRS looked into it.

There’s a set of still photos of the target, Michael Ottaway, with Passer at a bar. Passer was using the name “Sheila.” She was made up, and dressed and acted, like a light-skinned black girl for the part. They got photos of her looking scared and intimidated at the bar as Ottaway leered at her. More damaging than the photos, though, are the cassette tapes of the phone calls.

Kellogg plays the best tape.

He hears Passer’s voice say, sleepily, “Hello?”

Ottaway, husky-voiced: Hey, baby.

Passer: Oh, you’re finally calling me? I thought you said we were going to a party last night.

Ottaway: We are, baby. It’s starting right now.

Passer: What kind of a party starts at … two in the morning?

Ottaway: The best kind. My kind. Private kind.

Passer: You’re supposed to be Michael Ottaway, executive producer, not Michael Ottaway, party thrower. (She was careful to work his full name into the conversation.)

Ottaway: I keep telling you, this is the entertainment business. Now it’s time you started entertaining me.

Passer: Let’s be professional about this. You keep saying I’ll get that job, but it doesn’t happen.

Ottaway: You got to understand, if you want me to do for you, you have to do for me.

Passer, after hesitating: Mr. Ottaway, if I come over there … do I get the job?

Ottaway: Yeah, baby. You just got to handle this little audition.

Kellogg hears the urgency in Ottaway’s voice. He shakes his head, embarrassed for the man, disgusted by him. Passer said later she couldn’t believe how blind Ottaway was. She was worried, at the time, about being too obvious.

Kellogg lies down on the couch. Nods off. Gets woken by Sue Cline a few hours later.

He looks at his watch and sees it’s not time for his meeting. Looks at her face and sees there’s something else.

She points to the television. News report.

Henry and Jessica James were found murdered this morning.

A BLACK POLICE OFFICER COMES DOWN the front steps of the James house. His longtime partner, a white man, is leaning back against their patrol car, looking up at the overcast early-morning sky.

“They’re not letting anyone in,” the black officer says.

“They’re paranoid. Look how many press dogs are already here.”

“I got the scoop, though. Decapitated, both of them.”

“No fuck! You see the bodies?”

“Wouldn’t let me in for that. But I talked to Johnson— she’s first officer—and she told me.”

“What she say?”

The black officer laughs. “Okay, check this out. She gets the call, with her partner. They go in and they see a blood trail, like the garbage man that called this in saw through the back door, which was open. So, you know, they got their guns up, and they go in through the kitchen, and in the living room they see the bodies. The partner, he goes on upstairs, you know, looking to see if the perp’s still here, while Johnson, she goes to check the bodies for life. Now, you know, she sees the blood, all this ton of blood, but still she’s got to check for life, you never know. But she’s also got her gun out and she’s looking around because the premises isn’t secured yet, so she’s really only looking at the bodies out of the corner of her eye. She puts her hand on the woman’s neck, wanting to feel body temperature or a pulse or something, and the fucking
head
falls off!”

Both officers crack up, laughing.

Hank Thomas is called the Black Detective. He was first promoted into an office that already had a detective named Thomas, a white man, and so callers forgetting his first name, when asked which Thomas they wanted, sometimes referred to him as the black one, the black detective (there weren’t many black detectives at all then). The white detectives had been happy to call him “the black one.” Now everyone does.

He looks around the Jameses’ living room. Not at the dead bodies. At the live ones. The lieutenant, the captain, the two assholes from the Chief’s office, who are really from the Mayor’s office. The lab techs. The MEs.

He sighs. As the primary investigator on this homicide, he theoretically could get them out of here, but that’s on the same page as the one that says a detective will be judged only by the quality of his work.

His lieutenant comes up. A reasonable man. White man.

“At least it’s indoors,” the lieutenant says, commiserating. “At least the press isn’t videotaping all this shit like they did with the Simpson scene, so they can nitpick us in court. We got uniforms outside keeping them back, and the rest of the homicide squad out canvassing. Hopefully we can get neighbors before they leave for work.”

The Black Detective nods. Looks around. Sees what he presumes is the Jameses’ video camera. It’s on. He makes a note to check the tape.

He looks at the walls. Covered with blood. The letters
LTC
have been painted on in wide swaths.

“What’s LTC?” someone asks.

“League of True Colors,” someone answers. “White supremacist group.”

They hear a pop. Another. A third. Gunshots, from outside the house. Distant.

Homicide detective John Mallory, fifty, dark-haired, well tanned, handsome in a slick way, fit, not too tall, steps out of an alley, hands up, badge in one hand, gun in the other, signaling to the uniforms rushing over that it’s okay, don’t shoot, put your guns away, God damn it.

Report: A block and a half off, checking an alley, a Dumpster. Sees a suit jacket covered with blood. Hears a noise. Turns. Sees a white man in pants that match the bloody jacket. The man’s shirt is bloody. The man is nervous. Mallory pulls his gun. The man pulls one too. Mallory shoots, three times because the man didn’t seem fazed by the first hit.

Woman Host: Well, good afternoon, brothers and sisters, good afternoon. Welcome to Black Talk Radio. Let’s get right into it. Hello?

Caller: Hello?

Host: What’s the word, brother?

Caller: I want to talk about that James murder.

Host: For the people who haven’t heard yet, Henry James and his white—excuse me, slip of the tongue there, like
fag
for Frank—Henry James and his
wife
were found murdered this morning.

Caller: You know what the word on the street is?

Host: You’re the street. This is the wire. Put it out.

Caller: That’s his punishment.

Host: How do you mean?

Caller: That’s his punishment because Whitey lost the Simpson case, and they mad. They mad at all these house-nigger prosecutors they got.

Host: But he’s not the one who lost that case.

Caller: No, no, he didn’t lose the case personally, but I’m saying The Man is pissed off, so he whacked Henry James as a lesson to all the other black prosecutors. The Man set it all up on O.J., all that fake evidence and all, but the good people on the jury saw through it, and so The Man is all mad.

Host: That’s a point, that’s a point.

Caller: You understand what I’m saying? And I don’t even care. I got no sympathy for Henry James, marrying a white woman and working against his own kind.

Host: Well, I don’t know I go that far. He was still a black man, our brother, and even if he was a lost brother, we all end up in the same black heaven with our African Father of All and our Lord Black Jesus.

Next caller, you’re on the air, Black Talk Radio.

Second Caller: I want to say, that James murder, it got to be a fix. That white detective, Mallory, he’s been caught before fixing things, and here he is again, this time killing the man who
supposedly
killed Henry James. How we know that man did it? Dead now!

Host: Ain’t that something, sister?

Caller: I mean, I’m sorry the people got killed, even if Henry James was an Uncle Tomfool. But you
know
it’s the devil’s work and they going to say there’s blood evidence. I say that’s all DNA voodoo.

Host: That’s fresh. DNA voodoo.

Caller: You understand what I’m saying? They call our traditional science voodoo, so I call
their
science voodoo. You know those forensic scientists say whatever the police tell them to say They all lie. Try to say there’s DNA evidence against O.J., or proof that we genetically less intelligent. Don’t none of it mean nothing, because those scientists, they just find what they told to find. They all lie. They all a bunch of Mark Fuhrmans.

Host: I’m okay with that, thank you. Next caller, you’re on the air.

Third Caller: Sister, how you?

Host: Talk to me, fine woman.

Caller: I want to say, first, to all the brothers out there, you know we love you. Host: We do, we do.

Caller: But you all keep messing with white women, you got to
know
what it leads to. Host: Tell it, sister.

Caller: You got the finest women in the world, but you let yourselves wander right into the devil’s trap.

Host: Ain’t no one here going to argue with you.

Caller: But I got to say, I don’t care about Henry James or his wife.

Host: Oh, sister, you have to find it in you.

Caller: No, because they gone. My concern is with the living. I’m talking about the boy.

Host: Yes! Let me tell the listeners who might not know, but the Jameses got two children, and the little boy is missing. The girl spent the night with her black grandmother, so she’s all right, and we appreciate the symbolism of
that
. But her brother was home, and he is gone, and God knows what happened to him.

A BLACK MAN, SITTING ON THE BED in a cheap hotel room, intently watches a news show on television:

Host: We’re here with Mr. Jimmy Close of the League of True Colors. Mr. Close, the alleged killer of Henry and Jessica James has now been identified as a Richard Ells, most recently of Charles Town, West Virginia. Your headquarters are located just a few miles from there, in Harpers Ferry, and as you know, Ells used the victims’ blood to paint the letters
LTC
on the walls. Yet you deny any connection with Mr. Ells.

Close: We have checked our records, which are computerized, and found that his sole connection to us was that he attended one of our meetings, where he signed the guest sheet.

Host: But he had LTC literature in his pockets. Close: He probably picked it up at that meeting. Host: It isn’t this show’s purpose or ability to investigate the depth of your connection with Richard Ells. We’re here to ask you whether there isn’t at least a philosophical connection.

Close: None.

Host: No connection between a philosophy of racial hate and the murder of an interracial couple?

The black man in the hotel room turns off the set. Lies back on the bed, his hair grazing the headboard, his feet hanging over the other end. He’s six feet ten. When he gets up from chairs, he seems more to unfold than rise; when he walks down streets, more to flow than step. He is slender but clearly strong; his forearms ripple at slight movements. His deep-furrowed eyes seem always to be glowering, and it has been true of his life that, without trying, he intimidates. It has also been true of his life that he has often deliberately intimidated. It is true that even as a child he found he could get things from people by pressing their fear of him. And it is true, he thinks now, that he was thus seduced into that part of the world where the fear he inspires is an asset, not a handicap. Drawn into that part of the world because to belong to the broader world meant a constant effort to dispel fears, a constant effort to prove himself “safe,” a constant effort to apologize for what he was born to look like. And it is true that once he set down that other road, there was no turning back. As a teenager stealing cars, dealing drugs, robbing dealers, and finally killing in what was effectively, if not legally, self-defense, he earned himself a sheet and a rep.

His mother, good woman, English teacher, taught him to read and write, to appreciate literature, to speak clearly if he wanted. His stepfather, good man, was too late and too different to teach him manhood. His natural father, Raymond Ray, Ray Ray, was a small-time hustler, numbers runner, and pimp, whose sole act of fatherhood after conception was to look at the baby and pronounce him long. Long. Long Ray.