Grant Park

by Leonard Pitts, Jr.

  He moved around Denis to the door. Hector and his two men were waiting for him in the lobby of the editorial suite. Like it would take the three of them to wrestle Bob out of the building. He supposed he should have been flattered.

  But he wasn’t going to make the scene they feared. No tears, no cursing, no punching of walls or of former colleagues. Bob was determined to salvage as much of his dignity from this humiliation as he could. So they fell in behind him as he headed for the elevators, enduring this executive-suite version of a perp walk with his head held high, looking neither right nor left, just straight ahead. The newsroom, thank God, was still relatively empty. Once or twice, a head bobbed up from a cubicle, a jaw dropped open, but that was all.

  Still, it was enough. This would be the stuff of newsroom gossip all day, of industry legend by the end of the week.

  He saw Doug from the corner of his eye watching from his glass-enclosed office. The expression on his face suggested the mortally wounded man had died. As, thought Bob, in a sense, he had.

  Down the hall and into the elevator. Punch the button. The three men behind him, silent and stolid as statues. The elevator opened on the lobby. He went through the turnstiles. The guard at the security desk affected not to see him.

  They paused there, the three of them. Hector reached an open palm toward Bob. For an absurd moment, he thought they were going to shake. Then he realized. And he unclipped from his belt his building ID, a press badge with a magnetic strip on the back, and handed it over to Hector. “I’m sorry, man,” the security chief said. And then he walked away, his two men trailing him.

  Bob moved to the second bank of elevators, the one that served the parking garage. His brain was fighting itself. He didn’t know what to do.

  And then he did. He whipped out his cellphone, brought up Malcolm’s number, punched it. The call went straight to voice mail.

  “This is Toussaint,” said Malcolm’s voice. “Can’t take your call right now.” And then the beep.

  Bob thumbed the phone off. His career was over because of this jerk. He stabbed the down button on the parking elevator.

  You are not to have any contact with Malcolm Toussaint?

  Heck with that. Bob was going to find Toussaint if it was the last thing he did.

  Where are you, Malcolm? Where are you?

  four

  Floating in a darkness spiked with pain, he heard their voices.

  “Those who have ears, let them hear. We are the White Army of Resistance and we—”

  “Cut. Stop, stop.”

  “What’s wrong, Dwayne?”

  “It’s not White Army of Resistance anymore, remember? That spells WAR and there’s already a group called WAR: White Aryan Resistance.”

  “Oh yeah. I remember now.”

  “Let’s do it again.”

  Still floating, Malcolm took an inventory of his agonies. His ribs throbbed and he thought one or more might be broken. His knee ached. A thunderstorm was grinding through the center of his head. And he was aware of bright lights, hot against his face. The darkness turned blood red. He struggled to open his eyes, swim to the surface.

  “Those who have ears, let them hear. We are the White Resistance Army. I am Sergeant Clarence Pym, under the command of Captain Dwayne McLarty. We have captured this coon so that—”

  “Hold on. Stop. I thought we weren’t going to use ‘coon.’ Sounds kind of old-timey, don’t it? Like something some goobers in the woods might say.”

  “Well, what should I call him then?”

  “Just say nigger.”

  “Nigger?”

  “Yeah, why not? That’s what he is, ain’t it?”

  “Yeah, I guess we can’t go wrong with that.”

  “Fine, then. Nigger it is. You ready?”

  “Yeah. Let’s do it.”

  “OK, three, two, one.”

  “Those who have ears, let them hear. We are the White Resistance Army. I am Sergeant Clarence Pym under the—”

  “Wait. Hold on.”

  “Did I goof up again?”

  “No. Look at him. He’s awake.”

  Malcolm had managed to force his eyes open and found himself staring into the harsh glare of unshaded light from a floor lamp. He tried to bring his right hand up to shield his eyes but the hand stopped short with a rattle of metal and something bit his wrist. Shackles? He turned to inspect, but a meaty hand clamped on his head from behind and shoved it roughly back.

  “Sit still and watch the camera, nigger,” said a voice behind him.

  “No, no,” said the other voice. “That’s all right. Give him a moment. Let him look.”

  The bulb went out. Malcolm tried to blink his eyes clear. He examined his wrists. He was right. Both were shackled. He tried his feet. Same thing. He was chained to a chair in some cavernous room. “What the hell…?”

  A man-shaped shadow moved toward him. Malcolm’s vision was still a blur of ghosts. “That’s right,” said the shadow. “Chains. Get used to ’em.”

  “Where am I? What’s this all about?”

  Again, a hand from behind him seized him, yanking his head back. “You don’t ask the questions. You don’t speak until you’re spoken to.”

  “No,” said the one in front. “It’s all right, Clarence. I don’t mind answering its questions.” And then, to Malcolm: “What’s it about? That’s simple. It’s about the salvation of the white race. It’s about saving America from mongrelization and socialism and putting her back on the path of her true greatness.”

  Malcolm ignored the hammering behind his eyes and beseeched memory to give him something…anything. After a moment, it did. He had been driving away from the paper. He had stopped at a light. There had been a car behind him. No, a van, with big rust patches, coming too fast.

  “You crashed into me on purpose,” he said, the memory and the words emerging at the same time. “You hit me. And then…what? You kidnapped me?”

  It was outlandish. Even saying it, he couldn’t believe it. Why would anyone kidnap him?

  The stars were fading from his eyes, and for the first time he could really see the man before him. Skinny and twitchy-looking, buzz cut on one side of his scalp, a thick shock of bright yellow hair on the other side falling to a level just above his ear, where it looked as if it had been chopped with garden shears. A stupid hairstyle too young for him by a good ten years, judging from the gray crinkles of his skin—thirty-five if he was a day. Wispy goatee beneath pale gray eyes and wearing a T-shirt with a drawing of an upthrust white fist and the word “Rise.”

  Tattoos crawled down his arms and up his neck. Guns, snakes, motorcycles, Viking goddesses.

  Swastikas.

  And he had a gun, an evil-looking black pistol wedged into his pants at the belt line.

  The man smiled. His teeth were brown and crooked, with spaces between them you could drive a small car through. “No, we didn’t kidnap you,” he said in an agreeable voice. “We took you prisoner. Kidnapping is a crime, and we are not criminals. We are at war, boy.”

  “You’re crazy,” breathed Malcolm,

  The man slapped him hard. Malcolm’s head jerked viciously. There was a rattle of chains as his hands lurched automatically, futilely, toward his face. Malcolm squeezed his eyes shut against the pain and a sudden nausea roiling in his gut. He tasted blood on his teeth.

  When he opened his eyes again, the man’s finger was bobbing in his face. “We’re not going to put up with any sass from you, nigger. That’s the first thing you need to get through your thick monkey skull.”

  “Monkey skull. That’s a good one.” The chortling came from the other one, the one behind him. “Hit him again.”

  “What are you doing?” asked Malcolm. “Why did you”—he almost said “kidnap” again, thought better of it—“capture me?”

  “Already told you,” said Dwayne. “This is a war. We’re fighting to take our country back.”

  “I have no idea what you’re talking about.”
r />   “Oh, sure you do. You’re just stalling for time. You’re a smart one, nigger. I’ll give you that.” He glanced at the one Malcolm could not see. “Ready, Clarence?”

  “Ready, Dwayne.”

  The one named Dwayne nodded curtly, then retreated to a camcorder on a tripod, aimed at Malcolm. He switched on the floor lamp and Malcolm squinted against the sudden harsh light.

  “Okay, Clarence. Go.”

  From behind him, Malcolm heard the other man clear his throat. Then he began to speak, his voice the careful cadence of a child reciting some memorized thing. It was as if the speech was a minefield and every word had the potential of exploding in his face.

  “Those who have ears, let them hear. We are the White Resistance Army. I am Sergeant Clarence Pym, under the command of Captain Dwayne McLarty. We have captured this nigger, the so-called journalist that calls himself Malcolm Toussaint, who for many years has spewed his white-hating, anti-Christian poison in jewspapers all over this once-great nation, including this morning’s vicious diatribe against the white men who built this nation. Although the actions we take today were planned long ago, the nigger’s diatribe this morning explains better than we ever could why we have felt it necessary to go to this extreme. To put it plainly: at some point, as white men, we have to call a halt, we have to say that we’ve had enough—or we can no longer regard ourselves as white men.”

  He cleared his throat. His voice rose. “Tonight, there is a good chance this nation will elect a socialist Muslim nigger as its president. The nigger has been clear in his intentions. He has said he wishes to redistribute the wealth. He has said he will pay reparations to his fellow blacks. He has said this country will bow down before the false religion of Islam. The fact that a foreign-born interloper with such radical extreme leftist views might be elected president tells you how sick this country is. This tells us in no uncertain terms that the hour is late and that it is upon our heads to stand and be counted.

  “We are not kidnappers. We demand no ransom. We are soldiers and this is an enemy we have captured. We are patriots who are convinced this nation cannot be cleansed except with blood. So let there be blood.

  “We leave this document as an inspiration to others so that in case we fall, they will know why we did what we did and they will pick up where we left off. Those who have ears, let them hear. We are the White Resistance Army and this is our declaration of war.”

  Malcolm’s blood was a river of ice. He thought, horribly, inevitably, of Daniel Pearl, the Wall Street Journal reporter who’d sat through a madman’s rant just like this, delivered to a camcorder just like this and was then beheaded for all the world to see, his lightless eyes and slack mouth held up like some grotesque trophy. All at once, Malcolm knew with a certainty what was coming. He knew. And he began to thrash about and buck against the chains, all the while expecting at any instant to feel the steel bite into his jugular vein.

  Instead, the light blinked out and the red light on the camera went dark. “What’s wrong with him?” asked the voice behind Malcolm.

  The one called Dwayne was lighting a cigarette. He exhaled and squinted at Malcolm through the smoke. “He thought you were going to chop his head off.”

  “What?”

  “Sure. Like that Jew reporter those ragheads did in a few years ago. Remember?” He drew his index finger across his throat and made a slicing sound. Then he laughed and bent over, putting his face close to Malcolm’s. “Uh-uh, nigger,” he said. “We ain’t cuttin’ off your head. You ain’t gettin’ off that easy. Won’t be easy at all, will it, Clarence?”

  And now Clarence came into view. He was…a behemoth, perhaps the biggest man Malcolm had ever seen, a good 6’6” and well over 400 pounds, a mammoth pile of flesh draped by a shapeless T-shirt bearing the legend “Patriots Act” above a red, white, and blue swastika with bolts of yellow lightning shooting out from it. His hands were like catcher’s mitts. His florid face was topped with a thick mop of brown hair, a cowlick shooting off the back like he was some past-his-prime Dennis the Menace. Malcolm guessed Clarence Pym to be a good ten years younger than Dwayne McLarty, somewhere in his middle twenties.

  Clarence caught him looking. “Take a picture, shitbird,” he said. “It’ll last longer.”

  Dwayne tugged his friend’s sleeve. “Ah, don’t worry about him. Come on, we got work to do.”

  Clarence allowed himself to be led away, muttering, “Just don’t like people lookin’ at me, that’s all.”

  “I know, buddy,” said Dwayne and his voice was oddly soothing. “But when this day is over, they’re going to be looking at you in a whole new light.”

  “Tell again how big the explosion is going to be,” said Clarence, sounding not unlike a child asking for his favorite bedtime story.

  But Malcolm noted this absently in some small corner of his mind. The rest of his mind was filled with that pregnant word: explosion. What had he gotten himself into?

  “Later,” said Dwayne. “Right now, we’ve got work to do. Go sit over there while I get the camera.”

  As Clarence lumbered off to a pair of metal folding chairs set up on the other side of the vast space—a warehouse, Malcolm realized—Dwayne lingered to remove the camcorder from the tripod. Before he joined Clarence, he leaned in and whispered to Malcolm. “You had no call to stare at him like that,” he said. “He can’t help how he looks.”

  Before he could think how to respond, Dwayne had crossed the room to a card table where Clarence sat with a laptop open. Dwayne produced a cable and attached the camera to the computer.

  Malcolm tried to convince himself this was actually happening. Who kidnapped journalists in America? In the Middle East, yes. In Mexico, yes. It was a job hazard, something you accepted going in. But in Chicago, USA? Things like this just did not happen.

  It struck him that he could easily be killed in whatever harebrained scheme these two idiots, this Laurel and Hardy of white supremacy, had cooked up. Malcolm felt himself beginning to panic. He ordered himself not to.

  He had to focus, had to impose some order on his thoughts. He forced himself to breathe in deeply, to hold it over a seven count, and then to exhale slowly. His heart slowed its gallop to a trot, and his situation shivered into clarity.

  He examined the restraints. Handcuffs, one pair on each wrist, with a short length of chain looping through the empty cuff on each side. The chain ran through a metal U-shaped ring bolted to the floor. His feet were held by leg irons around his ankles, similarly restrained. The result was a very limited freedom of movement—not more than a foot or so in any given direction.

  “Fuck!” spat Dwayne suddenly, his finger stabbing down on the laptop’s keyboard.

  “Well, maybe if you try it this way,” said Clarence.

  Obviously, they were frustrated by some failure of their tech. Malcolm ignored them and continued to survey his situation.

  He was in an enormous warehouse space that rose two stories above him. The entire place was largely empty but for a few crates mounted on wooden pallets in one corner, six large metal drums clustered near a man-sized rollup door, and the table in the center of the space where Pym and McLarty were working, a crumpled Santa Claus mask abandoned at their feet. The whole space smelled of dust. Malcolm had the sense it had been abandoned for a long time.

  No one knew where he was. No one was looking for him. No one would even know he was missing. He was at the mercy of these two terrorist wannabes. The realization of it made him gulp down a throat full of sand.

  Then he saw the face.

  Each window was a grid of opaque glass blocks. Except that, in the bottom left corner of this particular window, a block was missing, and through it appeared the face. It was behind McLarty and Pym, unseen by either, a black man with red-ringed eyes that surveyed the scene inside the old warehouse from the other side. There was confusion in those eyes as they fell upon the mammoth man and his small companion, hunched over the laptop, muttering to themselves.

>   Malcolm dared not make a sound. But he willed the man silently, implored him with all the force he could project.

  Look here. Look at me.

  And then, to his great relief, the man did. The red eyes widened in confusion. Malcolm screamed at him silently.

  Get help. For God’s sake, go and get help.

  The other man’s eyes did not register the plea. Malcolm saw no alarm flare in them, no urgency click into place, nothing but the same dull bewilderment.

  Help me!

  Malcolm roared this in the silence of his thoughts.

  Still, nothing sparked in the other man’s eyes. They watched for another few seconds, then slid down out of sight.

  Malcolm spat a mute curse.

  Outside on a loading dock ringed by weeds taller than a small child, Willie Washington sat amid broken bottles and discarded butts and tried to make sense of the baffling, extraordinary thing he had seen. Who were these men and what were they doing in his home?

  Once upon a time, yes, it had been some kind of toy company, headquartered here in a warren of warehouses west of Michigan Avenue beneath the expressway interchange. “Funn Toys!” read the sign hanging from the top of the four-story brick building, just above a placard that read “For Lease.” But for the last few weeks, thanks to a broken lock on the metal rollup door, it had been his home.

  Willie knew everybody who lived on these streets, but he had never seen these men before, the fat one and the skinny one and that brother they had in there, trussed up like a slave or something. Whatever they were up to, that was their business, but that didn’t give them the right to bring it into his place. His shopping cart was in there, hidden behind those boxes, filled with all his worldly possessions. Had they found it? Had they messed with his shit?

  If they have, what are you going to do about it, you stupid motherfucker?

  Willie heard voices. He had heard them for 40 years.

  “You shut up,” he said aloud.

  Nhng mà bit làm sao đây?

  It meant, “What can you do?” One of the voices spoke Vietnamese, a language he had picked up during his three tours in that country.