The Illegal

by Lawrence Hill

  “What is A + R?”

  “Assimilation and resettlement,” Rocco said. “Basically, it’s money in the president’s pocket.”

  According to the memo, Rocco said, Lula was in on the action too. She was also getting paid for information about Illegals hiding in Freedom State.

  John sat back. “Man. What a scam. What a story.” He turned off the video camera.

  “Now give me that USB,” Rocco said.

  “I can’t.”

  “We had a deal!”

  “But I don’t have it.”

  “Who does?”

  “Keita Ali.”

  “What is he doing with it?”

  “He doesn’t know he has it. I put the USB in his bag.”

  “He has until noon on June 21. And that’s it. If he gets it to me by then, I will give him a special permit. But if he does not bring the video to me by then, he is out of luck. And you are out of a deal.”

  CHAPTER THIRTY-TWO

  KEITA HAD BEEN OUT FOR HOURS. FIRST, AT AN Internet café, he had contacted George Maxwell to ask about his sister. He said he was getting ready for a race and asked for the details about the bank into which he had to make a deposit by June 22. Then he went to Ruddings Park for a thirty-kilometre training run. When he finally returned to Elixir Bridge Road, five police cars with flashing lights were parked outside Ivernia’s house. Keita turned right around and kept running until he got to AfricTown.

  “WHAT’S IN IT FOR ME?” LULA SAID.

  “I can’t offer you anything today,” Keita said, “but if you protect me and I succeed in athletics, you will always be able to call on me for assistance.”

  “How long do you want to stay?”

  “One month. Enough time to train for the Clarkson Ten-Miler.”

  Lula stood up. She told him that she would put him in two shipping containers arranged in a T shape for maximum space. She’d set him up with a cook, DeNorval Unthank would see to his medical needs and he’d be given food so he could stay healthy and train.

  “I need a safe place to run,” Keita said.

  “The only people who run in AfricTown have somebody after them with a knife,” she said.

  “Well, I have to run somewhere.”

  Lula agreed, but said Keita had to render a service in return.

  Lula was planning a demonstration at Ruddings Park. She had organized protests before, but they’d never drawn much attention or media coverage. It would be different this time, she promised. She wanted all of her AfricTown people out there to support her, and since he was a famous runner, she might want him to say a word or two.

  “I can’t come to a political demonstration,” Keita said.

  “Relax. All you gotta do is run up on stage in your shorts and wave. It will give all the ladies a thrill, and it will give me cred.”

  Keita said, with great hesitation, that he would do his best.

  “Oh, and you’d better win that race,” Lula said.

  ON KEITA’S FIRST TRAINING RUN AROUND THE NEIGHBOURHOOD, he saw that he was not alone. In the densely populated core of AfricTown, people carrying buckets to and from water taps, balancing platters of fruit on their heads and walking barefoot to school stopped to cheer him on.

  “Keita Ali, Keita Ali, go for gold, Keita Ali!”

  There was no gold to run for, but it was hard to explain that. He was running for cash to get his sister out of prison, and there was only one race left with a big purse.

  Lula had ordered one of her aides to drive a Volkswagen Beetle fifty metres ahead of Keita when he ran. On top of the Beetle, a tinny loudspeaker broadcast: Attention for Keita Ali. Attention for the champion of AfricTown. Look out, Olympians, here comes Keita Ali. Children stood by the roadside and clapped, and they ran after Keita, sprinting alongside him for a few metres at a time. Offering him water and slices of oranges, which he sometimes took just to please them. Occasionally a teenager would surprise him by keeping up with him for more than a few metres. There were no true runners in AfricTown. It was not at all like Zantoroland, where it seemed that a child in every household ran seriously. Perhaps, if Keita managed to get himself straightened out and able to stay in Freedom State, he would start up an AfricTown running club. Get somebody to donate shoes and running clothes. And see if there was any talent waiting to be discovered.

  He ran every day on the undulating AfricTown Road but dared not venture into Clarkson.

  John came to see him and filmed Keita running. He brought greetings from Ivernia and the insulin from her fridge. Keita had to ask Lula if she could keep it cool in a part of AfricTown that had electricity. John explained that Anton Hamm had broken into Ivernia’s house and stolen Keita’s cash. The police had responded to a call about a break and enter and an assault. Once they got there, they started asking questions. It turned out that Jimmy Beech had placed fourteen calls to the Clarkson Police Department over the last few weeks, and when the cops came out for the B and E, they finally decided to investigate. They charged Ivernia with harbouring an Illegal and confiscated all his possessions. She’d been released, but she knew she was being watched.

  And there was more. John explained about the videotaping at the brothel, and passed along the message from Rocco Calder. John said he had put the USB in Keita’s bag, but assumed the police had taken both during the raid on Ivernia’s house.

  “But my bag wasn’t at Ivernia’s.”

  “What?”

  “Most of my stuff’s still at the bus station. As a precaution. I only left a little at Ivernia’s place.”

  “Keep it there till the race,” John said. “That USB is as good as a citizenship card. Better, maybe. But it’s only good until June 21. Why don’t you go see him right away?”

  “It’s too risky,” Keita said. “What if something goes wrong? I’ll be of no help to Charity if I get arrested.”

  Keita and John agreed to the plan: he would run the race, and if things went well, win the money and have it sent to Charity’s captors. And then, immediately after the race, he would go see the minister to obtain his special temporary residency permit. John, for his part, would tell the minister to expect Keita on June 21.

  “He’ll need the USB,” John said.

  “I’ll be sure to have it with me. Can the minister be taken at his word?” Keita asked.

  “It’s your only shot,” said John.

  WHEN MITCH HITCHCOCK CAME TO SEE KEITA IN AFRICTOWN, he was on a training run. Mitch was amused to see the security car riding ahead of Keita, and all the children running and chanting behind.

  “Nice set-up here,” Mitch said. “But we could give you better training facilities in Clarkson.”

  “This is the best I can manage, for now,” Keita said.

  “How is the insulin working?” Mitch asked.

  Keita said he had no more headaches, cramping or dizziness. No hyperventilating. He had tested himself on a hard run: ten kilometres at a 2:50-kilometre pace on the broken AfricTown Road. No problems. His body had not betrayed him. Mitch asked again if Keita would like to train with the Olympic marathon team. No, Keita said. It would not be safe to train in Clarkson. Mitch agreed to let Keita enter the Ten-Miler without having to pay the two-hundred-dollar entry fee. Keita would have to register under his own name, but his registration could be confidential until the day of the race. Nobody would know before then that Keita was to take part.

  “How are you doing with those problems of yours?” Mitch asked.

  “I will be doing a little better if I win that race,” Keita said.

  “I’m afraid this may be your last chance,” Mitch said.

  “What do you mean?” Keita asked.

  Mitch explained that the government of Freedom State was quickly moving to close a loophole regarding Illegals. An amendment to the Act to Prevent Illegals from Abusing the Generosity of Freedom State had been tabled. This would make it illegal for the director of a sports event to provide a financial reward to any competitor who was neither a citi
zen of the country nor a visitor with a valid visa, or who had entered the competition under a false name.

  It would take a few weeks for the amendment to pass through Parliament, Mitch said. But it was coming soon.

  Keita would have to give this race all he had. Everything depended on it.

  CHAPTER THIRTY-THREE

  WHAT PAINS THEY TOOK TO COMPLICATE AN old woman’s life! Ridiculous. She had been arrested. Fingerprinted. Photographed. Charged with harbouring an Illegal. And once she was released, she received a notice from the Office for Independent Living. Her file was once more under active review.

  Somebody had even gotten to the library. It came to her boss’s attention that Ivernia had been handing out library cards to bogus applicants. She was fired—a volunteer!—and banned from the building.

  When Jimmy came to visit, she refused to let him in and spoke to him only through the locked door.

  “Why’d you do it, son?”

  “You were harbouring an illegal alien. Do you realize how dangerous that is?”

  “What’s your reward for having tipped off the police?”

  “Mother. Please.”

  “How much is it?”

  “I won’t see a cent unless they catch him, convict him and deport him.”

  “Go away, Jimmy, and don’t come back.”

  “Mother! As fate would have it, I’m short of cash and I was wondering . . .”

  Ivernia turned away and walked down the hall until she couldn’t hear her son at all.

  CHAPTER THIRTY-FOUR

  KEITA HAD HEARD FROM HIS FATHER THAT IT WAS no easy feat to attract a crowd to a demonstration. You had to overcome political apathy, offer demonstrators an incentive and make it easy for people to congregate. And you needed decent weather. It seemed to Keita that Lula and her followers had figured out what it took to bring people out. But this crowd was not assembled to hear speeches. They had come for something else entirely, something of Lula’s own making. She had dangled a promise—proof of government officials breaking the very laws they were promising to enforce.

  “Some of these movers and shakers might have left something,” she had been quoted as saying in an article by Viola Hill. “We want to make sure these items are returned to their rightful owners.”

  Attending Lula’s political demonstration at the gates of Ruddings Park, adjacent to the offices of Prime Minister Graeme Wellington and his cabinet, violated common sense. Keita had no business being near demonstrators or the police who had come out to watch. But Lula expected to see him.

  Keita’s father had taught him how to count heads in a crowd. You climbed to a high spot—a rooftop or a tree—and picked out a manageable segment of the crowd. You counted every person in that segment. And then you multiplied the number by the approximate number of such segments in the crowd. From a third-floor café overlooking the Freedom Gates—the main gates to Ruddings Park, adjacent to the government building—Keita had just estimated four thousand people. But the crowd was swelling by the minute.

  Against his better judgment, Keita left his vantage point and wandered down to the street. He saw hot dog vendors. Ice cream sellers. Teenagers walking about catching the sun. And there, on a homemade platform, Lula stood with a megaphone and three young women. All black. All wearing high heels, hot pants and halter tops.

  “What do we want?” she shouted, and then she handed the megaphone to the woman next to her.

  “Water!” the woman hollered.

  “What don’t we get, that everybody else in the country enjoys?”

  “Sewers!”

  “Instead of handcuffs?”

  “Teachers!”

  “Show us your tits,” a man called.

  “That’s why we came,” another man shouted.

  “We have many supporters,” Lula said from the platform. “And we entertain many visitors. The women of AfricTown receive visitors of every size, shape and colour. Some of our visitors walk the halls of power in this country. Some get so lost in the heat of the moment that they forget their things. Socks. Underwear. Watches with engraved initials. Even ID. If the raids don’t stop, and if we don’t receive clean water, we will show you what some of these big men left behind. Things like pieces of paper. Like ID.”

  A roar went up. Another man shouted up at the stage, “Shaddup and show us your tits!”

  Keita saw a group of black men tackle the heckler and a larger group of white men descend on the black men. A white man drew a knife. A black man revealed a gun. The two groups backed away from each other. Meanwhile, the audience thickened with people arriving from every direction.

  “What do we want?” Lula shouted.

  “Justice!” the young women next to her responded.

  The people stirred, impatient for action.

  Keita wandered to the outer edges of the crowd. Police officers on horses were stationed in pairs every fifteen metres or so. One officer on a horse moved toward him. He froze.

  “Keita. It’s Candace!” She signalled to her partner that everything was okay and then trotted over to Keita.

  Candace leaned over her horse’s neck. She had a holstered revolver, a baton and a helmet with a glass mask that was pushed up to reveal her face. She looked young and attractive, even with all that equipment.

  “Not a safe place for you,” she said.

  “You think it will turn violent?” he asked.

  “If Lula trots out any government members’ ID, officers will move in.”

  “For what?”

  “They’ve been told to just do it and justify their actions later. Possession of stolen property. Demonstrating without a permit. Why don’t you go while you can?”

  A roar went up from the crowd. Keita could see another fight breaking out. Candace’s police radio crackled.

  “Gotta go,” she said.

  “Show us your tits!” a man shouted.

  “Pigs out there,” Candace said. She gave Keita a wave and turned her horse to go.

  “Mr. Prime Minister,” Lula shouted through her megaphone. “Mr. Wellington. We know you can hear us out here. And you know that we have come to demand change. We know you are at your fourth-floor window, looking out at us. Come speak to us. We have some items in our lost and found. We shall release them to the public, if you do not speak to us.”

  A large contingent of black women in the crowd began chanting: “Welling-TON, Welling-TON, we want you, Welling-TON.”

  There was no response and no movement from the doors of the Freedom Building.

  Lula addressed the crowd again. “We shall give them a few minutes. Prime Minister Wellington’s knees must be pretty busted up from rugby. And the building has a lot of stairs. In the meantime, props to sister Viola Hill for writing about this story for her newspaper. Sister Hill, do you have something to say to the crowd?”

  IN THE THICK OF THE CROWD, NEAR THE STAGE, VIOLA HILL was taking notes. She looked up and waved—no, she did not wish to come up on stage. For one thing, ten steps led up to the platform. More importantly, Viola was not a community activist. She was here to report the story, not to become it.

  “Come up here, Sister Hill,” Lula said.

  “No,” Viola called back up, “staying down here, thanks.”

  “Just one minute, folks, while we fetch Viola Hill,” Lula said.

  Fuck them. There was no way Viola was getting up on that stage. She would lose all credibility with Bolton. They might not let her keep covering the story. But then four black men reached down to place their hands under her chair.

  “Ma’am,” the lead male said.

  “Just leave me right here, please,” Viola said.

  “Sorry, ma’am, Mrs. DiStefano’s order.”

  “I don’t give a flying fuck what your orders are. It’s my ass you are putting your hands under, so let go.”

  “Sorry, ma’am.” The men bent over, hoisted her and carried her up the steps. They put her down beside Lula.

  “Viola Hill, you have d
one us such an honour by writing about this tragic situation. Could you tell us what you know?” Lula handed her the mike.

  Viola was met with loud cheers from a vocal section of black women in the crowd. “You go, girl! Stick it to the man!”

  Viola wanted to tell the crowd that anything she knew could be found in the pages of the Telegram. She cleared her throat.

  Then a bottle of Coca-Cola sailed through the air, crashed and shattered into a million pieces less than a metre away. Suds bubbled up next to her. Someone shouted, “Dyke faggot gimp freak!”

  Another cried, “Get that lesbian nigger gimp off the stage, and show us some tits!”

  More bottles sailed through the air. One struck Viola on the shoulder. Stuck in a wheelchair on a rickety homemade stage! Goddamn that Lula DiStefano. Viola didn’t care how important she was. If she could have stood on her own two feet, she would have punched that woman’s lights out. The men who had carried Viola jumped down off the stage.

  “Take me too,” she called to them, but they ignored her and gave chase to the first bottle-thrower.

  Viola saw them ripple through the crowd, like wind through weeds, as the offender fled and the men followed. Eventually, Viola lost sight of the perpetrator. Instead, she saw Keita Ali. He was waving to her and pointing. Look out, he seemed to be telling her. Others were making similar gestures. “Look out!” a thousand people were calling now. Suddenly, a volley of bottles, cans and rocks bore down on her. Viola dove out of her wheelchair and crawled head-first down the steps.

  VIOLA’S WHEELCHAIR REMAINED ON THE PLATFORM. JOHN kept his video camera rolling. The images wouldn’t be worth much, because he was getting shoved and pushed in the crowd, but he was certainly catching some good sound effects. He’d captured Lula challenging Prime Minister Wellington to come out and speak to the crowd. He’d got some angry male voice screaming obscenities at Viola after she was introduced to the crowd. He got voices warning, “Look out, look out!” He caught an angry man yelling through his own megaphone.

  And now there was the sound of a young man beside him, saying, “No, John, don’t film me, please, just come this way. This is no place for a boy to be.”