The Twelfth Card (2 page)

Another footstep. Then another pause.

Should she leave? Go hang with Dr. Barry, the librarian, until this creepy dude left?

And then the other visitor laughed.

Not a weird laugh, a fun laugh.

And he said, “Okay. I’ll call you later.”

A snap of a cell phone folding up.
That’s
why he’d been pausing, just listening to the person on the other end of the line.

Told you not to worry, girl. People aren’t dangerous when they laugh. They aren’t dangerous when they say friendly things on cell phones. He’d been walking slowly because that’s what people do when they’re talking—even though what kind of rude claimer’d make a phone call in a library? Geneva turned back to the microfiche screen, wondering, You get away, Charles? Man, I hope so.

Yet he regained his footing and, rather than own up
to his mischief, as a courageous man would do, continued his cowardly flight.

So much for objective reporting, she thought angrily.

For a time he evaded his pursuers. But escape was merely temporary. A Negro tradesman on a porch saw the freedman and implored him to stop, in the name of justice, asserting that he had heard of Mr. Singleton’s crime and reproaching him for bringing dishonor upon all colored people throughout the nation. The citizen, one Walker Loakes, thereupon flung a brick at Mr. Singleton with the intent of knocking him down. However,

Charles dodges the heavy stone and turns to the man, shouting, “I am innocent. I did not do what the police say!”

Geneva’s imagination had taken over and, inspired by the text, was writing the story once again.

But Loakes ignores the freedman’s protests and runs into the street, calling to the police that the fugitive is headed for the docks.

His heart torn, his thoughts clinging to the image of Violet and their son, Joshua, the former slave continues his desperate run for freedom.

Sprinting, sprinting . . .

Behind him comes the gallop of mounted police. Ahead of him, other horsemen appear, led by a helmeted police officer brandishing a pistol. “Halt, halt where you are, Charles Singleton! I am Detective Captain William Simms. I’ve been searching for you for two days.”

The freedman does as ordered. His broad shoulders slump, strong arms at his sides, chest heaving as he sucks in the humid, rancid air beside the Hudson River. Nearby is the tow boat office, and up and down the river he sees the spindles of sailing ship
masts, hundreds of them, taunting him with their promise of freedom. He leans, gasping, against the large Swiftsure Express Company sign. Charles stares at the approaching officer as the clop, clop, clop of his horse’s hooves resonate loudly on the cobblestones.

“Charles Singleton, you are under arrest for burglary. You will surrender to us or we will subdue you. Either way you will end up in shackles. Pick the first and you will suffer no pain. Pick the second, you will end up bloody. The choice is yours.”

“I have been accused of a crime I did not commit!”

“I repeat: Surrender or die. Those are your only choices.”

“No, sir, I have one other,” Charles shouts. He resumes his flight—toward the dock.

“Stop or we will shoot!” Detective Simms calls.

But the freedman bounds over the railing of the pier like a horse taking a picket in a charge. He seems to hang in the air for a moment then cartwheels thirty feet into the murky waters of the Hudson River, muttering some words, perhaps a plea to Jesus, perhaps a declaration of love for his wife and child, though whatever they might be none of his pursuers can hear.

*   *   *

Fifty feet from the microfiche reader forty-one-year-old Thompson Boyd moved closer to the girl.

He pulled the stocking cap over his face, adjusted the eyeholes and opened the cylinder of his pistol to make sure it wasn’t jammed. He’d checked it earlier but, in this job, you could never be too certain. He put the gun into his pocket and pulled the billy club out of a slit cut into his dark raincoat.

He was in the stacks of books in the costume exhibit hall, which separated him from the microfiche-reader tables. His latex-gloved fingers pressed his eyes, which had been stinging particularly sharply this morning. He blinked from the pain.

He looked around again, making sure the room was in fact deserted.

No guards were here, none downstairs either. No security cameras or sign-in sheets. All good. But there
were
some logistical problems. The big room was deathly quiet, and Thompson couldn’t hide his approach to the girl. She’d know someone was in the room with her and might become edgy and alert.

So after he’d stepped inside this wing of the library and locked the door behind him, he’d laughed, a chuckle. Thompson Boyd had stopped laughing years ago. But he was also a craftsman who understood the power of humor—and how to use it to your advantage in this line of work. A laugh—coupled with a farewell pleasantry and a closing cell phone—would put her at ease, he reckoned.

This ploy seemed to work. He looked quickly around the long row of shelves and saw the girl, staring at the microfiche screen. Her hands, at her sides, seemed to clench and unclench nervously at what she was reading.

He started forward.

Then stopped. The girl was pushing away from the table. He heard her chair slide on the linoleum. She was walking somewhere. Leaving? No. He heard the sound of the drinking fountain and her gulping some water. Then he heard her pulling books off the shelf and stacking them up on the microfiche table. Another pause and she returned to the stacks once again, gathering more books. The thud as she set them down. Finally he heard the
screech of her chair as she sat once more. Then silence.

Thompson looked again. She was back in her chair, reading one of the dozen books piled in front of her.

With the bag containing the condoms, razor knife and duct tape in his left hand, the club in his right, he started toward her again.

Coming up behind her now, twenty feet, fifteen, holding his breath.

Ten feet. Even if she bolted now, he could lunge forward and get her—break a knee or stun her with a blow to the head.

Eight feet, five . . .

He paused and silently set the rape pack on a shelf. He took the club in both hands. He stepped closer, lifting the varnished oak rod.

Still absorbed in the words, she read intently, oblivious to the fact that her attacker was an arm’s length behind her. Thompson swung the club downward with all his strength toward the top of the girl’s stocking cap.

Crack . . .

A painful vibration stung his hands as the baton struck her head with a hollow snap.

But something was wrong. The sound, the feel were off. What was going on?

Thompson Boyd leapt back as the body fell to the floor.

And tumbled into pieces.

The torso of the mannequin fell one way. The head another. Thompson stared for a moment. He glanced to his side and saw a ball gown draped over the bottom half of the same mannequin—part of a display on women’s clothing in Reconstruction America.

No . . .

Somehow, she’d tipped to the fact that he was a threat. She’d then collected some books from the shelves as a cover for standing up and taking apart a mannequin. She’d dressed the upper part of it in her own sweatshirt and stocking cap then propped it on the chair.

But where was she?

The slap of racing feet answered the question. Thompson Boyd heard her sprinting for the fire door. The man slipped the billy club into his coat, pulled out his gun and started after her.

Geneva Settle was running.

Running to escape. Like her ancestor Charles Singleton.

Gasping. Like Charles.

But she was sure she had none of the dignity her ancestor displayed in his flight from the police 140 years ago. Geneva sobbed and screamed for help and stumbled hard into a wall in the frenzy of panic, scraping the back of her hand.

There she go, there she go, the skinny little boy-girl . . . Get her!

The thought of the elevator terrified her, being trapped. So she chose the fire stairs. Slamming into the door at full speed, she stunned herself, a burst of yellow light in her vision, but the girl kept right on going. She leapt from the landing down to the fourth floor, tugging on the knob. But these were security doors and didn’t open from the stairwell. She’d have to use the door on the ground floor.

She continued down the stairs, gasping for breath. Why? What was he after? she wondered.

Skinny little Oreo bitch got no time fo’ girls like us . . .

The gun . . . That’s what’d made her suspicious. Geneva Settle was no gangsta girl, but you couldn’t be a student at Langston Hughes High School in the heart of Harlem without having seen at least a few guns in your life. When she’d heard a distinctive click—very different from the cell phone closing—she wondered if the laughing man was just
fronting, here for trouble. So she’d stood casually, gotten a drink of water, ready to bolt. But she’d peeked through the stacks and spotted the ski mask. She realized there was no way to get past him to the door unless she kept him focused on the microfiche table. She’d stacked up some books noisily then stripped a nearby mannequin, dressed it in her hat and sweatshirt and rested it on the chair in front of the microfiche machine. Then she’d waited until he approached and, when he had, she’d slipped around him.

Bust her up, bust the bitch up . . .

Geneva now stumbled down another flight.

The tap of footsteps above her. Jesus Lord, he
was
following! He’d slipped into the stairwell after her and was now only one landing away. Half running, half stumbling, cradling her scraped hand, she raced down the stairs as his footsteps grew closer.

Near the ground floor she leapt four steps to the concrete. Her legs went out from underneath her and she slammed into the rough wall. Wincing at the pain, the teenager climbed to her feet, hearing his footsteps, seeing his shadow on the walls.

Geneva looked at the fire door. She gasped at the chain wrapped around the bar.

No, no, no . . . The chain was illegal, sure. But that didn’t mean the people who ran the museum wouldn’t use one to keep thieves out. Or maybe this man had wrapped it around the bar himself, thinking she might escape this way. Here she was, trapped in a dim concrete pit. But did it actually seal the door?

Only one way to find out. Go, girl!

Geneva pushed off and crashed into the bar.

The door swung open.

Oh, thank—

Suddenly a huge noise filled her ears, pain searing her soul. She screamed. Had she been shot in the head? But she realized it was the door alarm, wailing as shrilly as Keesh’s infant cousins. Then she was in the alley, slamming the door behind her, looking for the best way to go, right, left . . .

Get her down, cut her, cut the bitch . . .

She opted for right and staggered into Fifty-fifth Street, slipping into a crowd of people on their way to work, drawing glances of concern from some, wariness from others. Most ignored the girl with the troubled face. Then, from behind her, she heard the howl of the fire alarm grow louder as her attacker shoved the door open. Would he flee, or come after her?

Geneva ran up the street toward Keesh, who stood on the curb, holding a Greek deli coffee carton and trying to light a cigarette in the wind. Her mocha-skinned classmate—with precise purple makeup and a cascade of blonde extensions—was the same age as Geneva, but a head taller and round and taut as a drum, round where she ought to be, with her big boobs and ghetto hips, and then some. The girl had waited on the street, not having any interest in a museum—or any building, for that matter, with a no-smoking policy.

“Gen!” Her friend tossed the coffee cup into the street and ran forward. “S’up, girl? You all buggin’.”

“This man . . . ” Geneva gasped, felt the nausea churn through her. “This guy inside, he attacked me.”

“Shit, no!” Lakeesha looked around. “Where he at?”

“I don’t know. He was behind me.”

“Chill, girl. You gonna be okay. Let’s get outa here. Come on, run!” The big girl—who cut every other P.E. class and had smoked for two years—started
to jog as best she could, gasping, arms bouncing at her sides.

But they got only half a block away before Geneva slowed. Then she stopped. “Hold up, girl.”

“Whatchu doing, Gen?”

The panic was gone. It’d been replaced by another feeling.

“Come on, girl,” Keesh said, breathless. “Move yo’ ass.”

Geneva Settle, though, had made up her mind. Anger was what had taken the place of her fear. She thought: He’s goddamn not getting away with it. She turned around, glanced up and down the street. Finally she saw what she was looking for, near the mouth of the alley she’d just escaped from. She started back in that direction.

*   *   *

A block away from the African-American museum Thompson Boyd stopped trotting through the crowd of rush-hour commuters. Thompson was a medium man. In every sense. Medium-shade brown hair, medium weight, medium height, mediumly handsome, mediumly strong. (In prison he’d been known as “Average Joe.”) People tended to see right through him.

But a man running through Midtown draws attention unless he’s heading for a bus, cab or train station. And so he slowed to a casual pace. Soon, he was lost in the crowd, nobody paying him any mind.

While the light at Sixth Avenue and Fifty-third remained red, he debated. Thompson made his decision. He slipped off his raincoat and slung it over his arm, making sure, though, that his weapons were accessible.
He turned around and started back toward the museum.

Thompson Boyd was a craftsman who did everything by the book, and it might seem that what he was doing now—returning to the scene of an attack that had just gone bad—was not a wise idea, since undoubtedly the police would be there soon.

But he’d learned that it was times like this, with cops everywhere, that people were lulled into carelessness. You could often get much closer to them than you otherwise might. The medium man now strolled casually through the crowds in the direction of the museum, just another commuter, an Average Joe on his way to work.