Hunting in Harlem (26 page)

"I am on top of all my appointments, sir. I know I missed half a day last week but I had a really rough time hunting the night
before and I called the Armstrong family and apologized profusely and they said they understood and I'm showing them a new
property tomorrow and I think it's an offer they can't refuse, I really do."

"Mr. Snowden, I'm sure you're doing fine with your daytime duties. I'm not calling to bother you about that. I'm calling to
compliment you on your handling of your nighttime ones."

"Sir, we shouldn't be talking on the phone." Snowden wondered if cordless phones could be traced. Apparently mobile ones could
be very easily, a guy in the joint who'd been busted for selling stolen ones told him that, but as far as cordless ones he
didn't know.

"No one's listening. No one cares enough to. What you did, that was a big deal. The problem you solved was a major one. The
man was a menace. Strategically, this greatly reduces the amount of resistance our efforts will encounter in the year ahead.
It puts us far ahead of schedule. I want to thank you. I'd like to apologize to you as well. To be honest, I didn't think
you had it in you. I was wrong."

"No, no, no, no apologies. I don't want your apologies. Keep them to yourself," Snowden told the congressman.

"Look, I'm trying to be contrite here. I'm being a very big man by admitting I was wrong, and you're going to be gracious
and accept that from me," Marks insisted.

"No, no. I owe
you
the apology. I owe you, sir, because I been thinking a lot about this lately, trying to not let my emotions or preconceived
notions get in the way and now I know what the problem was: I was wrong. You see I been thinking that we are people, right,
and the reason we're not just animals is that we have civilization, decency, morality, consideration, right? We have society,
that's what makes us people and not just bald apes. But then you think about it, some people are human, but they don't have
decency, they aren't civilized, because that's learned behavior and they never got educated. So then I was thinking about
the folks. I think - and don't tell any white people I said this because you know they already think we're all this way -
that during slavery, when they were trying to turn us into animals, that on a tiny bit of us they succeeded, and these beast
folks been running around for a hundred and fifty years breeding like crazy because that's what beasts do. The responsible
people, they have little families, do you see where I'm going? So with every generation the ratio gets more out of whack.
So I get it, the whole Little Leaders thing, now. I really do. You're saving them and their descendants from a life of inhumanity,
right? And really by killing the parents we set the offspring free, which in a way is a blessing to the victim since . . ."

Snowden kept talking. The thing about sitting in the closet all the time, about just going to work and wearing a face that
you took on and off like a blazer, was that you never had someone to really talk to. Snowden felt very lucky he had someone.
Even if he got to the point when he'd been talking so long he couldn't remember who that someone was. Pausing to focus on
the receiver, Snowden listened for a change. As seconds passed Snowden became sure no one was even there, until a voice said
back to him, "exactly."

The new novel started with a character named Robert M. Finley slipping a package under a woman named Piper Goines's Harlem
door. Even the weather conditions were the same: clouds in "white streaks, softly smeared on a lazy sky" and "the boastful
warmth of an immature spring." The day of the week, the date, the time of day all were identical. What he was wearing, what
she was, it was maddening. The only thing that kept Piper from getting completely freaked out and throwing the pages away
was the same thing that stopped her fictional self from doing so: the artistry of the prose and the innate curiosity on the
part of the reader, pages that kept turning fast enough for her to be captivated.

There were several assumptions within
The Orphean Daze
that Piper took critical exception to, if this speculative story was going to be as true to known fact as it purported. First
of all, Robert Finley could not be accurately described, Piper felt, as "an upright assemblage of bones, charred and dusky,
grinding dryly forward." Regardless of how skinny he seemed there was some muscle to him, and the whole burnt theme applied
to him throughout the work just didn't fit, didn't acknowledge the fiery passion Piper felt was the character and man's most
prominent feature. Second, when you compared this description of the Robert Finley character with that of the Piper Goines
one, "lush lines curved from the pressure of her bounty," the narrative played into the whole Beauty and the Beast myth, which
besides being an extremely overused cliche was a pretty pathetic male fantasy to begin with. "Ugly guy wins beautiful girl,"
the fraternal twin to the equally vapid "poor girl wins rich guy" Cinderella idiocy.

Piper read, looking for more faults to distance herself from the work, but didn't find many. On the page were two people struggling
to make a life together. Not a perfect one, just a life, compiled as it was from the building blocks of minutia. Piper recognized
the sorrow at the core of all living, the unexpected blessings that resonated because of it. Bargaining with eyes that managed
to feel dry and watery at the same time, Piper's mind kept making the promise that after the next chapter she would close
her lids and go to bed, but she never did. It was as if Fate had dropped its notebook and Piper had to finish as much as possible
before he noticed it was missing and came looking for it. Piper kept reading because she couldn't bring herself not to, out
of control and hell yes resenting that, but her only defensive action was to read faster.

In the last chapter, decades in the fictional future, after one widowed lover has buried the other and had months of mourning,
The Orphean Daze
follows them moment by moment as they visit their safety-deposit box. The way it proceeds, it gives the impression it's for
some official papers, possibly insurance documents. Inside the box, however, its papers oxidized yellow by time, is the fictional
version of the book Piper couldn't stop herself from reading. The character takes it home, and the last paragraph is about
them reading it. How none of the facts are true but everything else is. It wasn't until she finished the last sentence, at
four fifty-four in the morning, that Piper realized she didn't even know which of the couple was dead and which was the survivor.
That the point was they'd come so far that even to the reader it didn't matter anymore.

Bobby Finley, ladies and gentlemen! Bobby Finley, Creator of Worlds!

Piper had fallen in love with writers just by reading their work before. Ugly ones. Dead ones. There'd been times when she'd
read the beauty of their work and felt like their souls must be the same, looked to the back jacket picture, and pined for
someone she felt was no longer a stranger. Piper was a lover of books, writers wrote to entice readers, it was an understandable
weakness. So how the hell was she supposed to defend her heart against a book intentionally written to seduce her?

Demanding to know just that, Piper found Bobby's number and started calling. I will not be manipulated, she was going to say
as soon as he groggily said hello, but he didn't. After two rings, the voice mail service did instead, and Piper had not prepared
a statement for recording so slammed the phone down again, only to keep hitting Redial for the next half hour in an effort
to get him to answer, which he didn't.

Not a damn thing you can do if you stay up until four fifty-four in the morning. If you have to be somewhere three hours later,
as Piper had to be at the
Herald,
it was best to stay awake, not torture yourself by nodding off and then having to rise from the deepest valley of your sleep
cycle, Piper told herself. There was only one rational thing to do. So Piper put on her coat and shoes and set out into the
cold morning darkness to go wake Bobby's black ass up.

Coat lapels gripped around her neck to hide it from the nocturnal breeze, baseball hat pulled down over her head to obscure
her gentler to any sexual predator, Piper stomped down Lenox and saw the Horizon office across the street, light on inside
and its security grate still up. The company truck Bobby said he'd be using was parked right there in front of it and Piper
was surprised at her wave of disappointment at having found him away from home and awake. The element of surprised will be
diminished, was how she explained her reaction to herself, but that rational voice was drowned out by another, shriller one
that sounded eerily similar as the one belonging to Mrs. Abigail Goines.
You were going over there to screw that young man, weren't you?
it said.
All that righteousness, and this was just a booty call. You're just disappointed that
his body won't be hot from sleep, that you won't be able to throw your own on top of it.

Piper rang the bell, but the Horizon door was open. She called out his name, several times, walked inside reluctantly when
no voice answered it. See, this is how people get shot, Piper told herself. They show up unannounced in the middle of the
night, just start walking around private property, and then bang, that's it. Piper kept walking, anyway. The only light on
besides the lobby's was in Lester's office. Piper, unable to locate another wall switch among the tiles of framed photos of
Congressman Marks standing next to major and minor celebrities, moved toward it.

Lester's office was big enough to fit a full couch, several rows of file drawers, and a desk that seem bigger than most kitchen
tables. Regardless of how much space the desk offered, every inch of it was still completely covered in paperwork, specifically
file folders. It was the photos attached to them that attracted Piper. Some were actual police mug shots, originals it looked
like. Others were random streets shots, always taken from a distance, always with the subject staring off in another direction
as if they didn't even know they were being photographed. How can I be expected not to open these up and read them? Piper
asked no one. How could someone like me manage not to do that?

Horus wasn't following her. He lied, he wasn't following her. He just happened to be there when she came in. "Boss, I said
to myself, something suspicious. From the get-go I was like, there's something ain't right about that one. Better keep an
eye on her." This was bullshit. The only thing Horus had been following at the time was the swollen nose on his face. Horus
had been in the office trying to pick his next special project, something to top Snowden's coup de grace, something to regain
his lead. It was because Horus had been so excited he'd come down there in the middle of the night and laid those files out
that Piper saw what she did in the first place. "Boss, I said to myself, better watch that bitch." Horus wasn't watching Piper
as she went through the files in the office, not for most of that time. Horus was too busy sitting on the crapper, reading
auto magazines, the fan too loud to even notice her arrival. He came out the bathroom without flushing or washing his hands,
heard the sounds coming from Lester's office and thought it was a ghost in there. He sure did. "I'm on top of things, boss.
I'm your man, I think that's pretty clear after these eleven months, ain't it?"

GOING DOWN

CONSIDERING HE'D MISSED the chance to get the truck's keys from Lester and was instead reduced to delivering them on his bicycle,
Bobby Finley was fairly impressed with the amount of
Great Works
he'd been able to disperse in one night's shift. One milk crate load each run, fifty copies a milk crate, three newspaper
boxes a run on a total of eight trips. By nine A.M. every
Harlem Outcry
box was filled to the brim. Bobby's legs were sore about the abuse, but in a couple of days they would forgive him. The exhaustion
became evident as the adrenaline ebbed, but Bobby knew that even if he'd stayed in bed he wouldn't have slept in it. With
her out there reading it. It was best to keep focusing on releasing
The Great Work
back to the world again and be thankful for a monumental task at a time like this.

What was obvious already was that in order to find a home for every copy, more direct measures would be in order. It would
have been nice to stick with newspaper boxes, guaranteeing that
The Great
Work
went to homes that at least made a habit of reading, but the feasibility of this plan was questionable, as well as the exclusivity
of it. Pedaling around in the morning hours of Harlem, sticking to the center of the street to avoid the muggers and rats
that populated the sidewalk, Bobby had decided that to truly make restitution for his artistic arrogance,
The Great Work
should be dispensed indiscriminately for all, with no care to whether they appreciated, despised, or were utterly indifferent
to this most sacred of texts.
I am repenting,
Bobby kept reminding himself. Just hand them out at the 125th Street A train. Do it right: Reserve the truck in advance, get
Snowden and some of the Little Leaders to pack it up the night before, then go down by the turnstiles during rush hour and
hand them out like loaves of bread. At least that way, if someone didn't like it, he or she could leave it on the seat for
a commuter with better taste.

This was the plan Bobby was prepared to pitch when he found Lester in his office after ten. "I need to ask a favor" was the
sentence Bobby never got to utter after Lester motioned him urgently through his office door, closing it behind them.

"A very serious problem has arisen," Lester said, but he didn't have to. The nervousness he exhibited, the uncharacteristic
bulging of the eyes, the thumbnail getting chewed off like there was a bomb attached to it.

"It's about the fire, isn't it?" That was Bobby's fear talking. It was his mouth, but it was his fear that was using it because
the real Bobby didn't even want to say the F-word aloud anymore, and least of all with this man with whom he intended on seeing
out these last weeks before the end of the program in joint denial, as if their shared crime was nothing more than an episode
of regrettable sex.

"Well, in part, yes. It does deal with the fire, actually. You see, someone broke into my office. Somebody read my files and
knows all about it. Worse, it's a reporter. That's how deep we're in the shit, if you'll pardon me."

Bobby thought,
If only I'd given away all my books sooner, if only I'd sat the bottom row of the funerals and offered more direct solace,
maybe I just might
have karmicly avoided this.

"It gets messier, unfortunately. The good news is we know who the person is and it's doubtful she's had a chance to move on
the situation, so this can still be handled neatly. The bad news is, this person touches a little too close to Horizon than
is comfortable, even worse is that she's also connected personally to one of our own. Have you had the chance to meet Snowden's
lover, Piper Goines, since she's been working with the kids?" Lester asked him.

"Yes," Bobby whispered, the rest of him screaming firmly in the negative. Lester could clearly read his intern's pained reluctance
and wagged his head in solemn sympathy as he opened his desk drawer, pulled out a gun, and handed it handle first to him.

"I know this is a very difficult thing to ask of you. I'd prefer it to look like an accident, but I understand we're under
a time limitation. I know this is not your style, Robert M. Finley, so let me add that at review time this act will not be
taken for granted."

Bobby had never held a gun before. Even pointing away from him, it scared him.
I was wrong.
Bobby realized now that he had one in his hand.
I'm not a killer,
it dawned on him.
If I was a killer I would just
point this forward and shoot Lester in the head.

"It's for the best, coming from you," Lester kept talking. "I'm sure Snowden would appreciate that if it had to be done, it
was done by a friend."

Bobby started running as soon as he was out of sight of the lodge's windows. The first pay phone he found he seized, Piper's
number still imprinted from all those calls so long ago. When she refused to pick up, Bobby settled for a frantic message
and immediately after disconnecting checked his own machine.

That Bobby had seventeen messages was a complete shock to him. The first fifteen were the repetitive the sound of a phone
hanging up again. Number sixteen was her blessed voice accusing him of creating "a damn Trojan horse for my heart" and declaring
defiantly that she was on her way over to break in. Number seventeen was Piper's voice too. The words were almost identical
to the ones Bobby had just left on her machine. Slightly different phrases, but the same basic warning of danger. The same
person to avoid. The same promise of relentless search, the same rushed parting, "I love you, be careful."

Snowden was pretty damn sure it was Piper even before he opened his door. He'd met other people in his life relentless and
stubborn enough to ring someone's bell for twelve straight minutes, but none of them lived in New York.

"Where is Bobby? Did you help him with his books? I need to talk to him. If he's at work, I need you to find him and get him."
Snowden's apartment was so dirty that he decided it would seem insincere to offer an excuse for this. Instead, Snowden offered
Piper a drink, which she declined with such annoyance that he got offended.

"Oh so you laying up with him now? That's fine, I'm cool with that. You're a good person, showing pity on that cat. Don't
go breaking his heart when you get bored, though, all right?" Snowden requested. The light was still hurting his eyes and
he was tempted to invite her back into the closet.

"Snowden, this is some serious shit. I need to talk to him. I need to talk to you too, you're both in it. I'm not joking,
I'm talking real danger."

"Oh fuck," Snowden managed. He had begun to recognize mortal fear, and this wasn't an act. Snowden seated himself in shock,
left her standing. "Jesus Christ, you're about to tell me you're HIV positive, aren't you?"

"No! Could you at least pretend not to be an idiot for one second?" Piper asked. Snowden shrugged a maybe, went looking through
his pockets for cigarettes. "Look, there's something going on at Horizon. I was in Lester's office and I found folders — "

"What the hell were you doing snooping around Lester's office?" Snowden asked her. "Damn, woman! I told you about that shit,
I told you not to enter that world! What's wrong with you?"

"I . . . found," Piper continued louder, rolled her eyes, and punched out the words to knock his own back once more, "I found
folders on the people who died, Snowden. The accident victims. All of them, right there in Lester's drawers, every name I
could remember."

"So? Maybe the man's got a crime fetish. Yo, people are into that death stuff. Perfectly normal, don't worry about it. Or
they were applications. Most of those people lived in Horizon-owned housing," Snowden offered, involving himself in the ritual
of tobacco lighting so he didn't have to look at her as he said it.

"These weren't applications, Snowden. I'm not a moron. I know the difference between prison records and credit reports. You're
not listening to me. Some of these folders even had notes on the subject's lifestyle habits - it was like whoever wrote it
was stalking them. I'm going to check, but I'm almost certain some of the dates on the fax receipts for the documents predate
their deaths."

Snowden kept shrugging, putting more emphasis into his shoulders. He tried, and failed, to laugh. "Piper, Piper, Piper," he
started, half relieved when she interrupted him, as he had no idea what to say next.

"Snowden, look up at me. Do me this favor: listen. Don't tell me I'm being hysterical. Don't just come up with uninformed
explanations, OK? Snowden, some of these people listed, I didn't recognize. Some of these people aren't dead yet. I know it
sounds nuts and, if it is, I would be the happiest one if you can give me a rational explanation for this, but I think your
boss Lester is somehow connected to all this. It makes sense, right? I mean, who else would have the keys to all these apartments
in the first place?"

"I don't know, how about a locksmith?" Snowden attempted.

"All right, so I'll say it, I'll put it out there and if it sounds ridiculous, that's fine, I can deal with that." Piper paused
before continuing, taking a deep breath as if she needed a lot of air to push the statement out. "Based on the evidence I
just read, I'm eighty-five percent positive Lester Baines is some kind of mass-murdering, vigilante maniac."

Piper waited for the laughter, for Snowden's patented derision. Piper waited to be exposed as the pathetic snoop with an overactive
imagination she knew herself to be. There would be a rational explanation coming, and it would undoubtedly make her look like
a fool, but Piper was prepared to face that. What Piper was not prepared for was Snowden smiling calmly back at her, shrugging
yet one more time and saying, "Ah, come on, I don't think you're being fair. Think about it, is what Lester's doing really
all that bad?"

"Excuse me?" Piper asked, and she really did want to be excused, because even though he was sitting down, the look on Snowden's
face made her start stepping back. Her imagination, in a backlash against its earlier forced restraint, really took off as
Snowden got up and started following after her.

"Piper, be honest with yourself. You read their folders. These people were scum, they were parasites. I know it sounds harsh,
but just be real for a second. Armed robbers, burglars, drug dealers, pedophiles, they were all people who specifically lived
by creating misery for the rest of us. In lots of countries people are executed for living like that. Come on, if you read
the files, then you really saw them. Imagine what this neighborhood would be like if all those animals were still around?"

Snowden could tell that Piper wasn't even trying to imagine. She was too busy walking away toward the door. He jumped forward
after her, regretted that the action just made her turn and start running. "Piper, it's me, relax, just stay, we have to talk
about this," Snowden said, but Piper just started screaming, "No!" back at him, yanking her arm away violently every time
he tried to hold it.

When Piper got to the door, Snowden couldn't bring himself to slam it. He couldn't bring himself to do anything more, either.
As Piper flew out into the hall, Snowden remembered her naked, on top of him, what her hair looked like as she leaned forward
to kiss his mouth, what it tasted like when she did. It was a shame that it would all end like this, Snowden was thinking
as he watched her literally run away from him.

Snowden wasn't expecting Horus to pop out from the shadows of the hall any more than Piper was. But there Horus appeared in
all his destructive brilliance, ready and eager to change everything.

As Piper got to the stairs, Horus came from behind her, in motion. He must have been hiding in one of the other doorways the
whole time, Snowden figured that out later, when there was time. His shoulder forward, his head down, Horus slammed into Piper
Goines's unprepared spine, her body folding backward like a fortune cookie from the force. Standing in his doorway, Snowden
watched Piper hit the metal railing from the momentum, saw how in that instant she tried to lean her torso away from the void.
Horus took his two thick hands to her two soft ankles and lifted her up and over like he was dumping a wheelbarrow. Piper
cleared the railing as smoothly as if she wanted to. Snowden never even got to see her face again, just a blur of limbs and
clothing as she grabbed at the air. Then she was gone. That quickly. Horus leaned over the ledge to watch her land.

If Piper made a sound falling down to the lobby five stories below, Snowden didn't hear it. He was too busy lunging forward
to the last place she was standing, firmly grabbing the railing that she'd failed to. Piper was already lying still on the
ground so far below by the time Snowden arrived to help her.

It wasn't that bad, is what Snowden said to himself to contradict the horror he was feeling. She didn't suffer the terror
of the whole drop, surely she hit her head in the narrow stairway before she got that far. It's a shame that had to happen.
Dear God it's a shame, that it had to, that it had to happen. An unspeakable tragedy, that this was a necessity. To ensure
that Horus, who appeared beside him with a hand firmly on Snowden's shoulder, didn't attempt a repeat performance, Snowden
repeated those thoughts aloud for him.

"It's a damn shame," Horus agreed, looking down, a direction Snowden looked purposefully away from. "A fine-looking woman
like that one."

"They already know, don't they? You were sent to back me up, in case I didn't do it, weren't you?" Snowden asked him. Horus
kept looking down at the body but started squeezing Snowden's shoulder so hard that it hurt.

"First of all, I'm not no one's 'backup,' OK? I done told you about that shit before. Think of my role in this venture as
more 'quality control' if you want a name for it. Second of all, it ain't always about you, is it? See, that right there is
the man I'm supposed to be overseeing." Horus pointed below.

Snowden forced himself to look down in the direction of the corpse once more and this time saw Bobby standing over it. The
faintest of hopes fluttered through him and he thought Bobby would reach down for a pulse and find one and just as suddenly
as things turned morbid they would spring back to being merely bleak again, but looking down at the body's anatomically impossible
position, Snowden wasn't surprised Bobby didn't bother with the formality. Nor that Bobby should look straight up with the
anger and pain distorting his face as they did. So many exhaustive trials Snowden had undergone since arriving in Harlem this
last year, so many elaborate tests of moral fortitude and determination, but none more demanding than just meeting Bobby's
stare without flinching.