by Lewis Shiner
Vaughan didn’t answer. The man stood up, pulling Vaughan with him, and they all walked together in a tight group past the back of the band’s amplifiers and the staring crowd and into the rented office.
Harriman turned a key in the lock and lowered mini-blinds over the window and door. The two men Michael didn’t know pushed Vaughan toward the rear of the room. “Take this,” the man in the Hurricanes jersey said, and handed the pistol to Charles.
Michael hung back, close to Anika’s desk, and Harriman hovered nearby. Anika put the receiver in its cradle and turned to watch. “Is that him?” she asked Michael.
“Yeah,” Michael said. “That’s him.”
“Anika?” Harriman said. “You should probably go now.”
“What the hell’s going on outside?” Anika said. “I lost everybody, and all I could hear was yelling.”
“Had us a race riot out there,” Charles said. “Cops let off some teargas. It’s over now.”
“What happens to him?” She hooked a thumb toward Vaughan.
Charles said, “You don’t want to know.”
Anika stared hard at Harriman. “I thought we were together on this. No violence.”
Charles made a face and stuck the gun in the front of his pants. Harriman said, very quietly, “I don’t think I can stop this.”
“So you’re not even going to try?”
Harriman didn’t answer.
Anika stood up and said, “It’s principles going to win this, if it can be won. Not more killing.”
“Can it be won?” Harriman said.
“Donald,” she said, “you disappoint me.” She didn’t look back as she walked away. She let herself out and locked the door.
Charles took the pistol out again and pointed it at Vaughan’s head. “Hurt him,” he said.
The man in the Hurricanes jersey stepped behind Vaughan and suddenly jerked him backward, off balance. The other man, with calm deliberation, slammed his boot into Vaughan’s kneecap. The noise was as loud as a splintering branch in a snow-covered forest. Michael had never seen a leg bend that way, and the sight of it, on top of the tear gas and the long chase, made him physically ill. He swallowed hard.
Vaughan looked at the broken L-shape of his own leg and began to scream.
“Shut him up,” Charles said, “for God’s sake.”
The man holding Vaughan took out a nasty-looking handkerchief and stuffed it into Vaughan’s mouth. The man in the turtleneck looked around and then stopped at Michael. “Do you mind?” he said, walking across the room to peel a loose strip of duct tape from Michael’s jacket. “I mean, I ain’t fucking with your fashion statement or anything, right?”
Michael shook his head numbly, and the man walked back to put the duct tape over Vaughan’s mouth, the way Vaughan had gagged Michael an hour before. It serves him right, Michael tried to tell himself. In fact it wasn’t looking at Vaughan that bothered him as much as the sight of the men who were torturing him.
The man in the turtleneck buried a fist in Vaughan’s stomach, and Vaughan’s eyes bulged like those of a terrified animal. He tried desperately to suck air in through his nose, and then blew a long stream of snot down his face and the front of his coveralls.
“Stop it!” Michael said. “You’re killing him.”
Charles turned on him. “What the fuck you think we brought him here for? A game of Twister?”
“If anybody should want him dead it’s me,” Michael said. “But I don’t want this.”
“Look,” Charles said, “all due respect and shit, I mean, you’re a hero and saved Duke basketball and everything, but I’ve been thirty-two years taking shit off cracker terrorists like this one here. When we throw his body to those peckerheads in the white sheets, they going to see we mean business.”
“Then what happens? They torture and kill a couple of you to get even.”
“Let them come,” Charles said. “Bring it on.”
“If you throw him to the cops instead,” Michael said, “it’ll make CNN. Especially with the riot. The trial will get national coverage. Everybody who thought the Klan went out of business in the 1930s will have to wake up and see what’s really going on.”
“He’ll end up walking. They always do.”
“Then kill him when he does,” Michael said. “Be waiting for him on the courthouse steps.”
“He’s right,” Harriman said, stepping up next to Michael. “And so was Anika. The media is the way to win this. We may never get an opportunity like this again.”
“Bullshit,” Charles said. “Don’t hand me all that Movement shit. All that televised marches and King tears and Gandhi quotations didn’t end us up with shit. I ain’t asking for no more handouts. You saw what it was like out there. That shit’s been waiting to happen forever. It’s wartime. I’m taking what I want, starting with this piece of shit here.”
Harriman settled into the floor, solid, immovable. It happened slowly, and after a long time he said, “I can’t let you do that.”
“What do you mean?” Charles said. “You taking me on, old man?”
Harriman didn’t respond. Michael remembered the ceremony his father had watched in the woods east of Durham. He thought of grainy black and white footage he’d seen from Haiti where dancers were mounted by the lwa. This was different because Harriman was still clearly himself, and yet it was the same because Michael suddenly felt another presence in the room. It was like some kind of blanket had fallen over them, muffling the violence of their emotions.
Charles felt it too. He took a step backward. “Donald, this is bullshit, man. Do not pull this shit on me.” He looked to the two men holding Vaughan. They had stopped, waiting for instructions. Vaughan hung limp between them, chest heaving, moaning through his nose.
Harriman still didn’t say anything. His eyelids drooped; except for the tension in his body, he looked like he was falling asleep.
“This is what happens,” Charles said. “The time comes to act, and everything falls apart in ideological bullshit. You let that happen now, and we’re finished, you understand what I’m saying? All of this will have been for nothing.”
When Harriman still didn’t react, Charles’ anger began to burn off. Resignation was what remained. He looked at the pistol still in his hand, and his thoughts were not hard to guess: He could shoot Vaughan, or he could shoot Harriman, or both, and then where would he be?
Charles clicked the safety on with his thumb. He bent over and slid the gun across the floor toward Harriman. “All right. Fuck it, then. Fuck you.”
Michael went over to Vaughan and pulled the duct tape off his mouth and dug out the handkerchief. Vaughan coughed and spat. The men holding him let go, and he fell to the floor, catching himself on his arms and then curling up into a fetal position.
When Michael looked back Charles was at the door. His dramatic exit was spoiled when he had to stop and unlock it; then, when he tried to slam it shut behind him, it bounced out of the frame and swung open again.
“Michael,” Harriman said, “call the police.”
Two lines were still blinking. Michael punched a third and dialed 911.
As he waited, Harriman nodded to the other two men. “Take the gun and go on home. Don’t get caught up in anything on the way out, just disappear for a while.”
“What about him?” the man in the jersey said, jutting his chin at Vaughan.
“He’s not going anywhere,” Harriman said. Then, reluctantly, “Good work today.”
The man in the turtleneck gave the smallest possible nod. “Maybe. We see what happens next.”
The dispatcher came on and Michael asked for the police and then, his legs giving way, said, “Better send EMS too.”
Harriman said to the men, “Go now, before the cops come. You can leave the door open.”
The woman on the phone asked for details.
“You have the address?” Michael asked. The woman rattled off a number on Blackwell Street that sounded right and Michael sa
id, “Inside American Tobacco, near the water tower. Get them here now. It’s an emergency.”
He hung up the phone. “Is there a bathroom?” he asked Harriman. Harriman pointed to a door on the far wall.
Michael didn’t recognize himself in the mirror. One eye was turning black, and his nose was swollen and leaking blood. His lower lip puffed out, and both lips were scabbed and torn from the duct tape. One cheek was as plump as a fat man’s. Tear-streaked dirt covered the rest of his face. His hands and wrists were cut and smeared with dried blood. Ashes caked his clothes, and strips of duct tape still hung off everywhere.
He washed his glasses and then his face as best he could—the pain wouldn’t let him near his nose—and rinsed his mouth repeatedly. Then he went out and said to Harriman, “You should go now, too.”
“You think you’ll be all right with our friend, here?”
“I don’t think he’s a threat anymore.”
“I’ll be close by, just in case.”
Harriman went out.
Michael sat down at the desk and called Denise. “I’m okay,” he told her. “You don’t have to worry anymore.”
She was close to panic. “Where are you? There was a bulletin on TV saying there was a riot, at least two people dead.”
“It’s over now. I can’t really talk yet. I’m going to be a while longer. The police are coming for Vaughan.”
“You found him?”
“Yeah.”
“Was there a bomb?”
“Yeah. It didn’t go off.”
“Thank God.”
“Don’t worry, okay? I’ll call you when I can.”
He put the phone down. Recorded music still played from a speaker outside the door, blandly cheerful country pop.
He suddenly realized Vaughan was talking. “Is it true?” Vaughan said.
“What?” Michael asked, confused.
“What you said about Mr. Bynum being my father?” Vaughan hadn’t moved, and the voice sounded like it came from somewhere else. Mars, perhaps.
Michael had already given Vaughan more than he deserved, and he resented being able to offer this additional comfort. But Wilmer Bynum and this emotionally crippled man deserved each other if anyone did.
“Yes,” Michael said. “It’s true.”
Vaughan was quiet for a minute or two, long enough for Michael to begin to drift off. Then he said, almost with regret, “You’re a dead man, you know. The brothers will see to that.”
Michael did not know how to answer that.
A minute or so later two uniformed police, guns drawn and pointed upward, arrived at the open door. One was blond and beefy with a squared-off mustache, the other black and very young. “You call 911?” the blond said.
Michael pointed to Vaughan. “That guy just tried to blow up the smokestack. You need to get a bomb squad over there and finish cleaning up.”
Both cops looked at Vaughan, and then at Michael again. “Mister,” the young one said, “it looks like you’ve got some explaining to do.”
“Call Sgt. Bishop from Homicide. He’s been looking for this guy.” He reeled off Bishop’s cell phone number. “Get him over here, because I don’t want to have to tell this story more than once. And I’m serious about the bomb squad. There’s twenty sticks of dynamite taped to the inside wall of the chimney.”
The blond got on his radio while the young one took a look at Vaughan. “This one’s bad hurt,” he said. “Sir, can you talk?”
“Fuck you,” Vaughan said.
EMS was next. One tech started on Vaughan, the other on Michael. “It’s not broken,” the tech said, looking up Michael’s nose with a flashlight. “Bet it hurts like a bastard, though.” He began packing it with gauze to stop the bleeding.
Bishop arrived, wearing khakis, a polo shirt and a dark windbreaker. He had his shield in hand as he came through the door.
“You know this man, Sergeant?” the blond asked him.
Bishop looked at Michael. “Yes, I know him. Michael, what have you done?”
*
The riot had forced the EMS truck to park by the south entrance to the complex. They all came out together, Michael under his own power, Vaughan on a stretcher, both headed for Duke Hospital. Michael had been through the story once, omitting Harriman and Charles, claiming two strangers had helped him capture Vaughan and had then disappeared. Which was, in fact, what had happened.
“Do you expect me to believe that?” Bishop had asked.
“Sure,” Michael said. “Why not?”
Bishop’s cell phone rang as they walked to his car, and Bishop passed along the news. The bomb squad had removed the dynamite. They’d left everything else for the crime scene unit, already on the job.
The light was starting to fade. Later that night there were supposed to be speeches, more bands, fireworks. Michael wondered if they’d be canceled. Probably not, not if there was money on the line.
The air still smelled of teargas as they passed Blackwell Street. Handcuffed bodies, black and white, lay by the curbs like trash waiting for collection, next to squad cars with flashing lights. The injured sat or lay waiting for EMS workers to get to them, while police, reporters, and a few determined gawkers milled around.
“Listen up,” Bishop said, once they were in his gray Crown Victoria, “because I’m only going to say this once, and I’m not going to say it in front of anybody else. You saved a lot of lives today. If you’d left it up to us, we would have blown it. Which is not to say that what you did wasn’t stupid, or that you’re not lucky.”
Michael didn’t feel particularly lucky at that moment.
“What all that means,” Bishop said, “is that I’m going to do what I can to keep you from having to answer a lot of questions that I know you don’t want to answer. Like why you and Vaughan were in an office that New Rising Sun has been using. Like how Vaughan’s knee got broken.”
“New Rising Sun?”
“It’s a militant black activist group. A UNC professor named Donald Harriman runs it.”
“This is the first time I’ve ever heard the name,” Michael said.
“Whatever. The other thing I’m going to do is promise you, on my honor as a cop, which I happen to take seriously, that Vaughan is not going to walk away from this.”
“Vaughan can’t walk at all,” Michael said, looking out the window. They pulled onto the westbound Durham Freeway, and Michael watched the Lucky Strike smokestack disappear as they crested the hill.
“I’m serious,” Bishop said. “Whatever it takes, he is going on trial for Howard’s death, for the firebombings in Hayti, and for what happened here today. And I’m going to get convictions for all of them.”
“Okay,” Michael said.
“Next question. I can tell the media that you singlehandedly saved the American Tobacco Historical District, which is the truth, and get you some kind of special citation and maybe a parade. Or I can do what I can to keep your name out of it.”
“Leave me out,” Michael said.
“Okay,” Bishop said.
“Vaughan told me I’m a dead man.”
“Well,” Bishop said, “it might be better if—”
“I’m not leaving,” Michael said.
“I was going to say, it might be better if you let us keep an eye on you for a while. I don’t think you’re in a lot of physical danger. The Night Riders are about terror, not murder. They’d rather have you live the rest of your life in fear than have you dead.”
“Not much of a choice.”
“Only if you give them what they want, which is for you to be afraid.”
“It’s easy to talk about not being afraid.”
“I know that. But try to think of it as a choice.” Michael glanced at Bishop, who was staring straight in front of him at his own demons. “Sometimes,” Bishop said, “that can help.”
*
Michael called denise from the hospital and assured her once again that he was okay. She said she was on her way,
but they took him back for treatment before she arrived. They numbed his nose with Xylocaine, cleaning the cuts on his wrists and hands and then sealing them with an aerosol spray and butterfly bandages. After that they treated his hair and skin with neutralizing agents to get rid of the last of the teargas residue. They checked the responses of his pupils and X-rayed the swellings where Vaughan had hit him with the flashlight and ruled out fracture or concussion. They recommended he stay off his feet for a day or so.
“No kidding,” he said.
When they were done he walked gingerly into the waiting room.
Denise looked up from the magazine in her lap and said, “Oh my God!” She ran to him, started to put her arms around him, and then hesitated. “Can I—”
“Yes,” he said, “please. Just be gentle.”
He started the story in the car and then interrupted himself to say, “Can we get something to eat? I’m starving.”
“I can’t take you anywhere looking like that,” Denise said. “People will think I did that to you.”
“It’s my new policy,” Michael said. “I’ve got to learn to stop being afraid of things.”
She heard something in his voice. “What does that mean?”
He told her about Vaughan’s threat, and Bishop’s response.
“Oh, Jesus.”
“You may want to get some distance from me. I could be dangerous to be around for a while.”
“Don’t be stupid. Rachid will hate leaving his friends, but he’s had things pretty easy compared to other kids I know. He can survive a move to Texas.”
“I’m not leaving,” Michael said. He’d thought about it while they worked on him in the hospital. “People don’t want to make hard choices anymore. That’s how we ended up with a few hundred rich people running all our lives. I’m not going to live like that anymore.”