“Jenny, who are you? You suddenly seem so much older, so much more . . . I don’t know . . .”
“Directed? Purposeful? Not as giddy and as scattered as you thought? After today you may not see me again. But here is what you must know. Lizzy fell in love with you. Whatever you find out in the future you must never forget that. The other thing is what I’ve already mentioned. A war has been declared against your so-called Left. And it’s being waged in three countries. Don’t be a casualty. You want to know where the funds are coming from? You want to know about the hand pulling the puppet strings? Start with the OED in Washington.”
46
Washington, D.C., 1967
The first week of December, Prez flew to Washington. The flight was a special treat to himself. He felt a huge sense of accomplishment. He could pay for his own transportation. He was paying for his rent. He even had a savings account. More importantly, he had earned his master’s degree and wanted to celebrate with his family.
He tried not to feel guilty that his ulterior motive for going home was to visit the Federal Office of Economic Development. Almost immediately he discovered it was ensconced within the Cabinet-level US Department of Housing and Urban Development. It appeared Jenny’s puppeteer had a master.
“Good morning.” Prez beamed his biggest smile down upon the young woman seated behind the desk.
“How can I assist you?”
“I’m doing graduate studies at the University of Chicago on the federal funding of Chicago inner-city housing development, anti-poverty, and community organizing programs and I was wondering if you could tell me who I should speak to in order to come away with an overview of the general philosophical and strategic driving forces behind these efforts as well as a chart of funding flow from the government to the various final recipients.”
“Well . . .” she said as she thumbed through no less than six different pages in a department directory. “Perhaps . . .” she continued as she flipped through cards in a Rolodex on her desk. “One moment please . . .” She got up, went to a cabinet and pulled out various file folders before abruptly shutting one, placing it back in the drawer, and shoving the drawer shut with her knee. “What did you want again? Wait, don’t tell me. Have a seat.” She pointed to a chair behind him.
His tactic of flustering her worked. But would she return with security to eject him or with someone in a position of higher authority to help him?
She came back alone but not empty-handed.
“Here.” She handed him a typed page with a signature at the bottom. “Fill out the appropriate lines.” He did and gave it back to her. “Mr. Preston Coleman Downs, Junior, of Washington D.C.” she said as she applied her signature and gave him back the form.
“Yes. Born and raised here.”
“But doing your studies in Chicago?”
“I did undergrad work at Howard.”
“Did you? Maybe that’s why you look so familiar.” They looked at each other for a minute before she reached in a drawer and took out a thick cardboard tag, about two inches square. She gave it to him. It had the word PASS stenciled in black over the HUD seal. “My supervisor has authorized you to visit and use our archives. The librarian there will give you instructions and assistance. Go out of this building. Turn left and go around to the back. There’s a guard booth there. Give in your pass there. You will be escorted to the archives office. Good day.”
“Thank you very much. I have another question. Can I come back if I need to?”
“Of course. Hold on to the form and bring it back. You’ll need to come to this office first.”
For the week he did his research his family and friends didn’t even know he was in town. He took a little room on Sixth Street in Chinatown. He felt a sense of ownership over the streets he walked upon daily to and from the HUD building. He never felt like that in Chicago. Yet, he felt so strange being in his hometown without it feeling like he was actually home. He hated the acrid taste of the aspirins he started taking to deal with the dull ache behind his eyes, which he thought was due to his long evenings reading and writing in the too-dim light of the room. He quickly tired of Chinese takeout and turned to White Tower Hamburgers close by on Sixth and F Streets. Each evening he’d walk up the stairs to the room carrying his leather satchel and a big white paper bag filled with little square burgers and a milkshake.
*
That Saturday morning, he called his brother to come pick him up. He was so deeply troubled by what he found in his research that he didn’t even question his decision to not tell his family he had been in D.C. for almost the whole week. Nor would he see or call any of his friends, not even his girlfriend. He wasn’t prepared to reason through answering questions related to his research.
Gus laughed out loud when he saw his big brother standing at the curb in front of Union Station. He jumped out of his car and squeezed Prez in a bear hug. “Prez. Man, you look great! Must be that Chicago pussy. I hear the weather is abominable. It’s so good to see you.” He laughed hard again and slapped his brother on the back. “Ow. Think I broke my hand you little short shit.” They both laughed. As Gus drove off, he made it a point to gesture at any woman they passed. “Well . . .”
“The weather is shitty there. Yeah, man,” said Prez.
“Well . . . ahem.”
“I don’t discuss my love life.”
“What the fuck’s love got to do with it? Don’t be a square.”
47
Chicago, January, 1968
On New Year’s Day, 1968, Prez called Professor Mackey. Another man answered the phone.
“Oh, sorry,” said Prez, “I must have dialed the wrong number.” He put the phone down. He knew he had not dialed the wrong number. He dressed, went out, got in his car, and drove over to the professor’s apartment. He found it fascinating how the “Marimba Red” color of his car seemed to blend right in with the surroundings. The professor’s neighborhood contained a heady mix of artists, intellectuals, and Puerto Rican drug dealers. There were sculptures on people’s lawns, graffiti everywhere, and the drug dealers’ jacked-up cars dominating curbsides. Even his loud mufflers seemed quiet compared to theirs. He saw the big black Mercedes Lizzy had told him about and noticed its license plate consisted solely of a long string of letters. He parked and sat waiting. Not long after, a large black man wearing a gold and white agbada came out of the building, got into the Mercedes, and drove off. Prez went to a phone booth and called the professor. This time the professor picked up. Prez made an appointment to see him that Wednesday.
That Wednesday morning, Prez left his apartment and jogged up to Washington Park for his run. It was colder and darker than usual, even for 5:00 a.m. But that did not prevent him from noticing that in addition to the usual police car that tried to hide on Fifty-ninth Street at South Park Way, there was another police car on the other side of the park at South Cottage Grove where Fifty-ninth Street continued. His running partners were nowhere to be found, and that was off-putting since he had just seen them at the New Year’s Eve gathering and they had sworn they’d join him running. He felt a loose shoe, stopped, and bent down to tie his lace. Pieces of bark from the tree beside exploded away. The dirt around him began to kick up. And just before his first footfall onto pavement his right leg collapsed and he fell.
He crawled behind a bush, sat up and looked at his leg. His sweatpants were ripped. He started to feel a dull throbbing, then a rising chorus of pain in his leg. He lifted away the fabric to see that a piece of his skin had been gouged away. Blood quickly surged to the surface. He took his bandana from around his neck and wrapped it around his leg. He listened and looked around but the park was eerily still. He got up and moved behind a tree. He limped over to another tree, then another, then another, finally dropping into a sitting position behind one and took deep breaths to try and counter the pain in his leg. His bandana was soaked with blood. The o
nly place for him to go was back to his apartment. Would they be waiting for him there? He suddenly felt more vulnerable than he had ever felt before. The only weapons he possessed were his limbs and his mind. He hoped they would get him through this. But he swore to himself right then and there that he was never going to feel vulnerable like that again.
He crept up the back stairs to enter his apartment and went straight to the medicine cabinet in his bathroom. He sat on the edge of the tube with his feet under the faucet. He sloshed water over his wound. It stung like heck. He swabbed on some Mercurochrome and wrapped white gauze around his leg.
He called the professor and asked if they could reschedule their meeting until the next day.
“Sure we can. Same time?”
“Yes. That would be fine.”
“There’s something wrong. I can hear it in your voice.”
“It’s cool. I’m looking forward to our meeting. I’ll tell you about my idea for my thesis.”
Prez went over to the sofa and sat down. He thought about which album to put on to soothe his frayed nerves. He turned to look out the bay windows of his brownstone apartment and got a rush of panic. He closed his curtains and pulled the sofa away from the window. Then he realized all the furniture in the room would need to be rearranged to accommodate the displaced sofa. He limped around, shifting furniture, until his leg started throbbing with pain again and his mind throbbed with the realization that he was sinking into the darkness of fear. He put the furniture back the way it was. He wasn’t going to live in fear, even if it killed him.
He was so troubled he needed to speak to someone from back home. She was perhaps the last person he should be talking to but the very first person who came to mind. Later that evening, he went out the back exit of his building. Soon after, he struggled to climb up the fire escape and crawled into the back window of a recently vacated apartment that he knew still had its phone line connected.
“Hello. Oh, my goodness! Prez! Is that you?”
“Hi, Tala.”
“Oh, my goodness! How long has it been? Two, maybe three years. How are you?”
“No, you tell me, how’s the husband and kids?”
“Nice try. Just come right out and ask. No, I’m not married. I’m too busy teaching and studying. Marriage is the last thing on my mind.”
“Weren’t you engaged? What happened to—”
“Don’t say his name. I only say it when it’s absolutely necessary. Like milk of magnesia. You only say it when you need to take it. So, are you calling to wish me a happy New Year? If so, you are forgiven for forgetting me in 1965, 1966, and 1967. Hmm . . . no, I think you called in ’65.”
“Tala, I got shot.”
“What? Where are you, Prez?”
“I’m in my apartment.”
“When did it happen?”
“This morning.”
“Why aren’t you in the hospital?”
“It just ripped some flesh out. I patched it like your father taught me.”
“Who shot you?”
“I didn’t see anything. But in my heart, I know. The pigs.”
“You never talked like that before.”
“I’m talking like that now. I need to talk to you about some stuff, actually a lot of stuff. I don’t really trust anybody here. Do you have time?”
“All the time you want.”
They talked for almost three hours.
“Tala, I don’t think I can talk anymore. My face is getting numb.”
“Well, you have told me more in these last couple of hours than in all the many years we’ve known each other. You know how I used to call you Mr. Ninety Percent back in the sit-in days?”
“Don’t remind me.”
“Well, I’d have to call you Mr. Ninety-Nine Point Nine Percent today. All kidding aside, it sounds like you are in the midst of something very sinister indeed. Your analyses are impressive. I need to talk to my father, if that’s okay with you. He’s very well connected, as you know. I think he even knows Fitzgerald. Professor Mackey is a homosexual. It’s an open secret in his family and I am close to his family by way of my ex. They’re cousins. But whether your Professor Jambon is actually working for the feds or the police is quite a serious question and probably a secret so deep only he truly knows. He sounds like he’s very complicated and conflicted. I think that if he was going to betray you, you would be dead already.”
“What if it’s a long-term operation like the ones you read about in spy novels?”
“I’ve never read a spy novel. You read those? I didn’t know that. Just be smart in your dealings with him. Keep a distance and come back home for your Ph.D. Okay? Promise?”
“What about that other thing?”
“I’m still thinking about that.”
“Tala, I’ve thought about it. I think it all comes down to being smart and not stupid. Look: fists, feet, elbows, bullets . . . what they all have in common is that for self-defense purposes they are all merely projectiles. I want you to know that my morality is still as high as ever. You know me. I will never believe that life is anything other than sacrosanct—ever. But I need to learn that craft. I need to be as good with it as I am with my fists. I want to be able to save lives if necessary, probably my own. I am committed to never ever using more force than necessary for self-defense. I would never kill. You know me, Tala.”
“I have a cousin in the Marines. He’s actually with the intelligence unit at Quantico, Virginia. I’ll speak to him. He’s on our side.”
“Let me give you my address and phone number. Don’t call unless you have to in case my phone is tapped. Tell your cousin to refer to himself as Virginia when he calls.”
“That’s a girl’s name.”
“Okay, what about Virgin.”
“Prez, that’s even worse.”
“Okay, I got it, I got it . . . Virgil.”
“Prez . . . my dear sweet Preston, you crack me up sometimes. That’s his real name.”
“Okay, I have a better idea. I never have to meet him here. I’m driving home for Easter. I’ll see you then.”
“You have a car?’
“Oh yeah. It’s fast.”
“I know that without even knowing what kind of car it is. Just don’t crash and burn.”
“You mean like the last time we were together?”
She expelled an extended, anguished sigh. “That was a long time ago. See you at Easter.”
“Okay. Bye.”
The next day, a Thursday, he limped into Professor Mackey’s office.
“What happened to you?” the professor asked in a genuinely alarmed manner.
“Somebody shot me in the park yesterday morning.”
Bam! The professor slammed his fist down on his desktop. “I told you to be careful. Didn’t I tell you that?” He got up and paced back and forth. He sat back down. Bam! He slammed his fist down again. “How bad is it?”
“Still a little sore, but it’s healing.”
“Who did it?”
“The cops.”
“Did you see them do it?”
“No.”
“Well, why did you say it was the cops?”
“Because they were parked all around the park when I was running.”
“How many cops are you talking about?”
“Two marked cars and one unmarked.”
“Cops park around parks all the time. That means nothing. What else can you tell me?”
“They were all conversing on their radio microphones when I passed their cars.”
“And you are sure they were looking at you?”
“I’m sure.”
“The unmarked car, describe it.”
“Dark gray, four-door sedan . . . with a removable antenna on the trunk.”
Mackey paused. He look
ed up from the journal he was writing in. “Removable? What do you mean?”
“There was a regular built-in radio antenna on the front fender. The one on the trunk lip could be screwed in and out. Those antennae are thicker at the base. Any street-fighter knows that.”
Mackey went over and looked down. There was Wicker’s dark-gray service sedan parked down the street. “Can you describe the men in the dark-gray car?”
“Only one. He’s big, heavy-set, with brown messy hair, and has a scar that runs in a straight line from his right nostril to his left upper lip.”
He had just described Wicker.
“What can you tell me about Gabriel Turner?” asked the professor. “I understand he’s back in action.”
“I’m not sure what you mean by ‘back in action’ but he has made a remarkable recovery.”
“Is he directing the BPP programs again? Does he really want his Rainbow Coalition to become a political party? Are there really plans afoot to field coalition candidates in the upcoming municipal elections? And you, what’s your exact role in all of this? It seems you have become more a political activist than an academic.”
“Take me to lunch and we can talk over some tacos.”
“That’s a sly one, Mr. Downs. Come on. Let’s go.” As they walked towards his car Mackey began to feel a chill come over him. Downs had never displayed a hint of humor, much less canniness. It was as if that bullet fragment he took had propelled him into another dimension of maturity. He certainly was not the “floater” Wicker thought he was. And, of course, Wicker knew. He had to. But how did they miss?
48
Chicago, South Side, February 1968
Prez was on his fourth set of knuckle pushups when someone rang his doorbell. It was Gabe.
Exile Blues Page 26