CHAPTER NINE

 

 

  "Pamutunhu ukaite jee, pano sara pachi mire nhunghu mira."

  —Shona saying: "If you do not climb while the way is still open to you, weeds will spring up before you—or you might get through but the weeds will close after you and those behind will not be able to get through."

 

 

  "When the Mandinka tribe has the enemy surrounded on three sides, what should they do?"

  "Close the gap and surround the enemy."

  "No. The goal of war is not to kill. The goal of war is to win."

  "Should you not kill your enemy?"

  "It is impossible to kill an enemy. If you kill a man, his sons are now your enemies. A warrior respects his enemy. He kills only to feed his family, or to prevent becoming a slave."

  —Mandinka manhood ritual, quoted in Roots by Alex Haley

 

 

  "The rich man and the policeman are regarded by the people with equal suspicion. The outlaw, on the other hand, is regarded with sympathy, as he must have had an excellent reason for becoming an outlaw."

  —Liang Shan Po

 

 

  The trees rustled in the wind, or perhaps it was the other way round. Otherwise, Fifth Avenue was quiet. Traffic was infrequent, pedestrians rare.

  "I think we blew it, José."

  "Maybe. Let's give it another couple of minutes."

  "Okay. But he's not going to show."

  "You said you heard him say 'museum,' right?"

  "Yeah, he yelled something with 'museum' in it—but it could have been, 'Stay away from the Museum!' for all I know."

  "I don't know, Jennifer. Why wouldn't he want us to come here?"

  "So we wouldn't lead the cops here."

  "To what? I could see it if this was some kind of secret headquarters or something—but we been here over half an hour and there ain't shit going on. You can't tell me no revolutionaries got offices in the Museum of Art. This is just where somebody was gonna meet us and take us to your folks—and they might show up yet."

  "Not without Jerome with us, they won't. I wouldn't."

  "So where do you figure Jerome is?"

  "Back at the apartment, of course. What other rendezvous do we all know?"

  "Then why didn't he yell, 'Back to the apartment'?"

  "Because he probably thought I'd given that cop my address; I didn't, but Jerome couldn't have known that."

  "So right now he's hanging around outside your spot, figurin' out that we must have heard him wrong, and sooner or later he comes back here lookin' for us, and we pass each other on the way. We could keep that up all night."

  "Think about this: maybe he didn't get away clean, maybe the cops picked him up. In that case our best move is to get home and hole up there. Jerome is smart and he knows I'm smart. Here we're exposed and we have no information. At home we're safe and we can be reached by phone. If he is still loose and we do miss him, at the least he'll be smart enough to have left some kind of message for us there."

  "Yeah, that's all very logical. Now you think about this: your parents didn't want you in that apartment, 'cause some kind of bad news is gonna happen in that part of town tonight. We don't know that anything's gonna happen here. I can't picture a guy like Michael havin' somebody blow up the Museum of Art, for Chrissake."

  "José, that is Central Park over there across the street.

  Maybe that doesn't bother you; I'm from Halifax and it scares the shit out of me. I'm tired of standing here scared with insufficient data waiting for something to happen. I want to go home."

  He turned away, walked a circle of ten steps' circumference and stopped. "Yeah, let's go back home. It's a hot night. I don't know whether Jerome is jugged, mugged, plugged, or bein' hugged, but standin' here waitin' for him is bullshit. Fuckin' A, let's go."

  "Let me leave a note for Jerome. No, really, I'll leave it on the lamppost over there. We're right across from the Museum; maybe he'll see it."

  "How are we gonna stick it up? Chewing gum?"

  She got out pen and paper and began writing. "I've got some cyanoacrylate adhesive in my pouch."

  "Some who?"

  "Wonderglue."

  "Hey, be careful, that stuff bonds skin instantly—"

  She gave him her very best withering glare, and he dropped his eyes. "I've been allowed to cut my own vegetables for weeks now. Next year they're going to let me cross the street by myself."

  "I'm sorry."

  "Dammit, I've been using power tools since I was ten."

  "I said I was sorry. Fuckin' A."

  "So you did. What time is it?"

  He thumbed his watch alight. "Twenty to three."

  She added the time to the note. It read:

  "Jerome: gone back where we met. Will wait there.

  —J. & J. [2:40]

  "J. and J.," she repeated aloud.

  "All the way," he said soberly, and she glanced up at him.

  His expression was unreadable in shadow.

  "Fuckin' A," she said, and got the laugh, but she moved at once to place her own face in shadow because she had the horrid feeling that she was blushing. She posted the note with care, but without rubbing his nose in it, and returned the tube of adhesive to her pouch. "There."

  "Let's crank."

  They had gone a block east on 82nd when a bald black man emerged from behind the north end of the Metropolitan Museum of Art. He was not wearing his red shades and had not yet put on his armband; his automatic rifle was in a place of concealment. He sauntered casually out into Fifth Avenue and glanced up and downtown, checking both sides of the street. He saw no hispanic, no shade teeny, and when he had returned to his post he reported this to his sergeant, who relayed it to HQ.

  =

  The 86th Street subway station had doubtless seen better days, but they did not seem to have left any mark. About twenty people waited for trains, or for a transit cop to roust them; this neighborhood had not yet deteriorated enough for sleepers to be allowed in the subway. Everyone except Jennifer and José was drunk or crazy, none charmingly so.

  She was glad that his menacing glower kept them all at a distance. One scabby old starer in particular made her flesh crawl. "I wish we didn't have to take the subway."

  "Me too, but the fuckin' buses stopped runnin' hours ago and we can't take a cab. That cabbie Jerome busted up must have put our descriptions out on the radio; they'd bring us right to the raise. Them cabbies take care of each other."

  "I wish the damned thing would come, at least. We've been here half an hour."

  "They run slow this time of night. When they run at all.

  You're doing okay."

  "What do you mean, I'm doing okay?"

  "I mean, you're handling all this crazy shit pretty good, for a girl from Halifax. You been through a lot so far, and you still got it together. The way you took that cop was like a work of art. I gotta keep like remindin' myself that you're fourteen, you know?"

  "I haven't been that old since I was seven. Father believes adolescence is a stupid invention. He's determined to get me from childhood to adulthood in one step. He's always talking about how in most of the world women are having their first baby by age fourteen. Which, he always adds, is why the world is so overcrowded so he doesn't recommend it; he just means I should be ready to make adult choices by the time Nature forces them on me and not years later."

  "He's right, man. I grew up in the barrio. When I was nine there was this girl a year older than me had a baby, and it lived. She made a good mother, you know? Ask me, she was an adult."

  "José? Am I an adult now? Because I started bleeding tonight?"

  He must have heard the bleakness in her voice, he became flustered. "Hey, I don't know, fuckin' A. How would I know? Uh—" He thought. "I always had it worked out that the day you become an adult is the day you get it through your head that some day you're gonna die. That you can die, and that you will."

  She smiled. "Then I'm not an adult, yet, and I refuse to be one. I'm going to live forever and have a wonderful time.

  That ten-year-old...were you the father?"

  He became even more flustered, and strove to hide it. "I don't think so. I coulda been, but I don't think so. I figure at nine I hadda be shootin' blanks."

  "So? Did the baby look like you?"

  "I wish that fuckin' train would get here."

  A Guardian Angel was making her way along the platform in their direction, speaking to each person she came to, telling them something that displeased them. "Ah, shit," José said. "Wouldn't you fuckin' know?"

  The Angel, a young hispanic woman whose beret was too large for her newly-shaven head, approached them. "Sorry, no more trains tonight. You might as well go home or get a cab."

  "Fuckin' A. Power failure or what?"

  She shrugged. "The word came down there won't be no more trains tonight, uptown or down. That's all I know."

  "All right. Look, thanks, sister."

  "No problem."

  There was a distant rumbling from uptown. The three exchanged glances. Obviously a train was coming. The Angel shrugged again.

  They waited. The sound grew louder and louder, and then a train came into view.

  "What number do we want?" Jennifer asked.

  "Number six, but I don't think it—"

  The train roared by at top speed without ever slowing. It was followed at once by another, then a third. All three trains were packed, from end to end, with bald black men who wore white armbands and carried automatic weapons.

  When the last car had disappeared downtown, there was a pause. The Angel shrugged her shoulders a third time and said, softly and not unkindly, "Why don't you folks do yourself a favour and get the fuck out of here?"

  José pursed his lips. "I can't think of a reason in the world why not." Jennifer had nothing to add.

  As they reached the stairs up to the street, something caught Jennifer's eye. She knew it was the wrong time and place, but she couldn't help herself: she roared with laughter.

  He tried to shush her. "What the hell is wrong with you ?

  She couldn't stop giggling. "The only thing good about the U.S. government is that it almost makes the Canadian government look intelligent."

  "What—"

  She gestured. "Your tax dollars at rest."

  José looked where she pointed, squinted a moment— then barked with involuntary laughter himself.

  On the station wall was a Department of Education poster.

  It read:

  "ILLITERATE?

  WRITE FOR HELP!"

  and gave a box number to which one could send for a free brochure.

  Jennifer could not stop giggling. "It's a joke. It can't be serious."

  The Guardian Angel had come up behind them to find out what was going on. "It is one hundred percent dead serious," she said, "and I do not see a single fucking thing funny about it."

  They sobered instantly and left.

  They heard distant gunfire even before they reached the top of the stairs. "Fuckin' A," José said softly. He transferred his little .22 automatic from his boot to his pants pocket, hitched at one of his knives, and flexed the fingers of his left hand. He made her wait while he stuck his head out at knee height and checked the street, then waved her up.

  The street looked perfectly ordinary. Sparse traffic proceeding normally, a few pedestrians walking, no signs of any unrest. "What do we do?" she asked. "Try to bribe a cabdriver?"

  There came faintly the sound of a huge explosion many blocks distant, followed by the sound of a much bigger one much further away.

  At each sound, the New Yorkers on the street froze momentarily in their tracks, without looking at each other— then resumed walking, only a little faster, as if nothing of importance had happened.

  "Fuckin' B," José breathed. "Come on."

  "Where?"

  "Just come on, god dammit."

  They walked west, back toward Fifth Avenue and the Park.

  The faraway gunfire now included machine guns. José carefully examined each car they passed without being obvious about it. It was Jennifer who first saw the trouble ahead. "The raise, José!"

  "Fuckin' C." About ten cars ahead, on their side of the street, a blue and white was parked facing away toward Fifth Avenue. "Keep walkin'—they can see us in the rearview." At least the guns mounted on the fenders were not aimed their way.

  "They're arguing about something—hear them shouting?"

  "Probably arguing over whether to bust us. If we can't talk our way out of it, don't you try nothin', you hear me? A nice safe holding cell sounds pretty good right now. Here we go."

  They were almost up to the police car, and its occupants were indeed arguing loudly. The driver shouted some final phrase, opened his door and began to get out; his partner shot him three times in rapid succession. He danced past them in three big steps, ran his head into a brick wall and rebounded to land just in front of them, on his side, blood fountaining from his belly and back. He was red-haired, in his thirties, built heavily and gone to fat. He looked up at them appealingly, eyes wide, and gestured with a wet hand that lacked two fingers. "Partners fifteen years," he said. "I love the cocksucker." Then his mouth overflowed with thick rich blood, and he jackknifed and died.

  Jennifer stood frozen, vaguely aware that she was getting blood on her sneakers. She turned to look into the police car. The other policeman was black, his hair trimmed to conform to Department regulations. He was looking at his dead partner and did not see her or José at all. His weapon, a non-regulation .44 Magnum, was shaking in his hand. Suddenly he registered their existence. She was too scared to move, and waited to be shot.

  "Excuse me, officer," José said in perfectly normal conversational tones, "My friend and I was thinking of clouting a car and getting the fuck out of here. Are there any vehicles in the neighborhood you would especially recommend?"

  There was a long pause. For Jennifer it was hours. She had time to think well, it probably won't work but I can't think of anything better he could have tried, and the damned minipads chafe, and this is all my fault, Jerome's probably reading our note right now, and I've been using Wonderglue since I was seven, and goodbye Daddy and Mom, and I'm sorry José, and to briefly review the plans and hopes that would now never be fulfilled. Then the cop lowered his gun.

  "There's a Chrysler mini-limo a block up," he said. "It'll stop small arms fire."

  "Hey, thanks a lot," José said, and slowly turned to walk away.

  "Do you need any tools, brother?" the cop asked softly.

  "Uh...well, maybe a screwdriver?"

  "Flathead or Phillips? No, wait, for a Chrysler you'll need a Robertson Number Two." He rummaged in the glove box.

  "Here." He tossed it to José.

  To Jennifer's amazement, José almost dropped it.

  "Thanks a lot, brother. Goodnight. Come on, Jennifer."

  Still not quite believing, she followed him, half expecting a bullet in the back. After a few steps José stopped and turned and she almost screamed at him to keep going.

  "Brother?" he called back to the blue-and-white. The cop looked up. "Uh—I'm sorry. You know?"

  The cop nodded, and dismissed them from his mind. They walked on, and when Jennifer had counted twenty steps she remembered to start breathing again. José caught her as she fell and held her up while she shook and trembled. The moment her trembling stopped he made her start walking again. Just before they reached Fifth Avenue they came to the mini-limo. She leaned against it, the metal cool against her cheek, while he broke in and shorted the ignition.

  As she fastened her seat belt she became aware that he was speaking to her. "Jennifer, listen, God dammit. Do that breathing thing you do or somethin' but snap out of it! It's fifty blocks home and I need you alert, you understand?"

  "Yes, José." She did as he told her, and felt herself coming fully awake again. "Sorry. Long night."

  He put the Chrysler in gear. "Just getting started. See what you can get on the radio—try 1010 AM, it's all news—"

  She got an ancient Stevie Wonder song she didn't know.

  She punched for another frequency, and nothing happened: the song kept playing. She punched random search and the song kept playing. The readout said she was changing frequency but she could not lose the song. It seemed to be called, "You Haven't Done Nothin'."

  "This thing is screwed up somehow," she said.

  "You sure you don't got it on 'tape' position?"

  "Fuck you," she said, then: "I'm sorry. Yes, I'm sure. Wait a minute." She tried the whole AM band, FM, shortwave and other bands. They were all carrying the same song. While she searched, the song ended in a fadeout doo-wop chorus and was succeeded by another song, a live recording. She and José exchanged a glance as they recognized it: they had been present at the taping, only a million years ago. The Juice. "Night of Power."

  The car lurched sickeningly. "Fuck you, pothole," José yelled and fought the wheel; he reduced speed to something in the fifties. Grand Army Plaza came up on the right, the southern end of Central Park. "That radio is blown; what kind of a stupid rich bastid has a eighty-thousand-dollar car with a radio that don't THANK YOU POTHOLE!"

  His gratitude was well-placed; they would surely have hit it if the pothole had not made him reduce speed. Crossing Fifth Avenue eastbound against the light at eighty kph, directly in their path: a tank...

  Jennifer didn't have time to scream. Brakes stuttering, they careened past the tank, missing its rear end by perhaps a meter. They were clear of the Park now; as they sailed through the intersection sideways Jennifer was looking west down 59th, saw armed men firing into the lobbies of the Plaza and Park Lane Hotels. Then José regained control got the nose pointing south and gave it the gun. He was swearing steadily in English and Spanish. She turned the volume down but left the radio on.

  He approached the next intersection cautiously, and sure enough a pair of army trucks went by going east, one of them towing a howitzer, both loaded with armed blacks.

  One loosed off an experimental round at the mini-limo as they passed, but missed.

  Jennifer stared around her in wonder as they kept going south. They went by Bergdorf Goodman, Van Cleef & Arpels, Tiffany, Bonwit Teller, Gucci, Fortunoff's, and all these bastions of wealth were intact, unlooted—some actually appeared to be guarded by bald black men with white armbands and riot guns. "What the hell kind of riot is this?"

  "It ain't a riot," he said. "Jerome told us it wasn't."

  "What is it, then?"

  "I don't know. It feels like a war."

  They drew small arms fire as they went by Cartier. The limo's armor handled it, but it terrified Jennifer nonetheless. Then a block later they hit real trouble.

  Apparently a mixed group of white cops and G.I.s were making their last stand at St. Patrick's Cathedral, besieged by several dozen blacks with better organization and better weapons. Bullets flew in all directions, a grenade blew a massive stained glass window into glittering ruin, and José spun the wheel to the right and accelerated. They screamed round the corner in a perfectly controlled skid, José roared, "Motherfucker," they just missed a stationary tank, the skid went uncontrolled, they were on the sidewalk, knocking over one of the ubiquitous bald black men, they were back in the street and 51st Street appeared to be full of troops and half-tracks. José took a hard left; they glanced off the face of the Associated Press Building and ricocheted back out into the street, bullets whinging off the windows. There were two more tanks dead ahead, at either end of the Satellite Telecommunications International Center, the former NBC Building. The nearest one was facing them; they had appeared too swiftly for the cannoneer to track them but the machine gun opened up and their bulletproof windshield began to show cracks at the perimeter. "Fatherfucker," José screamed and brought the limo to a careening halt in front of the STI Building, directly between the two tanks. Jennifer glanced to her right; her eye was caught by a huge sculpted facade over the main entrance, left over from the days when the building had been NBC Headquarters: under a marble Jove hurling thunderbolts were the words, "Knowledge and Wisdom shall be the Stability of thy Times." A bullet spanged off the roof from the other direction; she looked that way in time to see a sniper opening up from the roof of the Nikon Building, past the Rockefeller Plaza skating rink.

  On the building's facing wall, in huge letters, was the slogan, "New York—it's yours for the taking!"

  She wanted to laugh but could not remember how. José waited until the tank ahead cracked its hatch, murmured, "Pigfucker," and stepped on the gas. Both machine gunners opened up for just long enough to scare the shit out of each other, then shut down. José aimed straight for the tank ahead, was doing 80 kph by the time he reached it, jogged the wheel and was around it, still accelerating. The shortest distance out of line-of-sight was straight ahead; he put it to the wood and was screaming right onto 48th Street before the tank's turret could swivel around to track him.

  He did not turn south again until he had reached the theater district. All the lights were out on The Great White Way.

  Things were relatively quiet for half a dozen blocks, then, until they reached Times Square, where a full-scale riot was in progress. Broadway was blocked with jammed-together burning cars, so José turned left and rocketed up 42nd Street, dodging dead cars and dead people at high speed. Within a few blocks he had hit more than half a dozen people and lost his left headlight. On either side of the street Jennifer saw a parade of clubbings, knifings, shootings. She saw something that had once been a white policeman; she saw a bag lady murder a child her age, only to have her own throat cut by a weeping priest; she saw a white woman in full dominatrix gear running from a pack of black boys, trying to clear her path with her whip. Jennifer put her face in her hands and closed her eyes.

  José warned her before turning right. They were back on Fifth Avenue, and all at once the trouble was, incredibly, behind them. They saw absolutely nothing out of the ordinary all the way down to 33rd Street. There were calmly strolling pedestrians and singing drunks, necking couples and break-dancing kids.

  At 33rd they saw a truckload of National Guardsmen of the 71st Infantry, attempting to flee their captured post, overtaken and machine-gunned by U.S. Army jeeps; the truck crashed and burned half a block east of them. José slammed down 32nd Street, right on Second Avenue, brought the car to a shuddering halt in the supermarket shoppers' drive-through immediately around the corner from Jennifer's apartment. They made it to the building at a dead run, each openly brandishing a gun, and did not relax until the inner door had closed behind them and they were safe in the hallway.

  She put Jerome's gun back in her pouch, and José put his in his belt. They leaned back against the wall, and looked at each other, and suddenly they were laughing helplessly together, holding each other and shaking with laughter.

  Somewhere in there his cheek brushed hers. He badly needed a shave, but the contact produced a stronger reaction than that could account for. She flinched, felt an echo of what she had felt twice at the Juice concert, but different somehow. Much milder. Was it something to do with menstruating? It scared her. Still laughing, she backed away from him, and he let go of her at once.

  "What is going on?" she said through her diminishing laughter, adding almost immediately, "—out there?"

  He shook his head, his own laughter drying up. "I told you: a war. Only thing it can be. A racewar. The black people finally had enough of this town, they're gonna plow the motherfucker under."

  "I can't believe Michael is involved in this."

  "Maybe he's tryin' to stop it; maybe your folks too."

  "They're not doing so good, if that's true."

  "So let's go in and wait for them to call us."

  She got out her keys, opened all three locks and opened the door wide and opened her eyes wide. "Mr. Shaw! What are you doing here?"

  The rental agent smiled pleasantly. "Waiting for you, my dear—hello, José—and for your parents. Are they with you?"

  "No." Confused, she was vaguely aware that Shaw was not alone, that a large redfaced man was also present, but it was not until José, behind her, sucked air through his teeth that she registered the fact that both men were holding guns.

  The redfaced man addressed José. "You. In." He pointed his pistol at José's face and cocked it. "Hands in the air.

  You too, sugarlips," he said to Jennifer.

  She looked helplessly to José. He tried to smile reassuringly, very nearly made it. "Do what he says, Jenniflower. Everything's cool." He raised his hands high.

  She looked at him for a long moment, then raised her own hands and entered the apartment.

  "Before I forget, dear," Shaw told her, "there was a note on the door from someone named Jerome. He couldn't wait any more, and you're to wait for a phonecall. Of course, the phones don't work any more than the TV or radio. I think your black friends have betrayed you."

  "Cover 'em, Uncle George," the big redfaced man said.

  He approached Jennifer, keeping out of Shaw's line of fire and keeping his own gun on José. He took the pouch from her shoulder, stepped back a few paces, put it down on the circular kitchen table and peered into it. "Oh ho." He rummaged, and lifted Jerome's revolver out by a pen thrust down its barrel. "Nice toys you play with, girlie." He found no other weapons. He brought the pouch back replaced it on her shoulder and touched her cheek caressingly. "We're gonna get along just fine."

  She was numb. José would get her out of this. The cavalry would come. At the other end of the room the TV was on; it said "Please stand by," and she felt that to be good advice.

  "Back against the door, sweetheart. You: assume the position." They did as they were told. The beefy man removed José's gun from his belt, patted him down for other weapons. He found a knife in José's boot. "Well done, Thomas," Shaw said. "Let's—"

  "Wait a minute. Spic priests carry one knife. A skell like this'll have another one someplace." He kept searching found a second knife strapped under José's shirt with its hilt just hidden by his collar. "Thought so."

  Ah, Jennifer thought. Now this script is back on the rails.

  He missed the third knife, José will save us.

  "Wait a minute! Look at this—another one on the other shoulder blade! Cocksucker must be ambidextrous."

  Thomas dumped all the hardware on the kitchen table and herded them both to the other end of the room. "Cover 'em good, now, Uncle George." He took out a pair of handcuffs, opened the door out into the garden, and tested the strength of the security gate. "Over here, skell." He cuffed José's wrists to the grille behind him.

  "Stay clear of him, Thomas," Shaw advised. "He's quite adept at that kicking business."

  "No problem." He produced a second set of cuffs, went down on one knee and cuffed José's ankles to the grille.

  "Shouldn't you save a pair of bracelets for the young lady?"

  Thomas grinned at her. "I don't think I'll need 'em."

  José was disarmed and immobilized. He was not going to save her. Wake up, Jennifer, it's up to you!

  "All right, cutie, where are your parents?"

  "Aren't you supposed to read them their rights first?" Shaw interjected. She could tell he was high on alcohol. He sat down by the TV and began idly flipping channels; each showed the same standby card, just as all the radio stations had been playing the same song.

  "Shut up, Uncle George. I'm a cop, sweetie. Where are your parents?"

  The best way to lie is to tell the truth, but not the whole truth. "I don't know."

  He smacked her hard across the face, then, as José strained at his bonds, spun and punched him with closed fist. José's head banged off the metal gate. Thomas whirled back to her. "I said, 'Where are they?'"

  "I don't—don't hit me, I don't know!"

  "Listen to me, listen good: there's a race riot going on out there, and your fucking parents are Commie agitators sent here to help start it, and if you don't start coming up with some information I'm gonna break every bone in your little body, you get me?"

  "You're crazy. My parents aren't—what you said. My mother is a dancer. My father is a retired designer, a famous—"

  "Yeah, yeah, Uncle George told me the whole cover. Your 'mother' is a nigger and your father is a renegade American and you all just happened to come down here from a socialist country two weeks before the riot starts. We looked around. Black Muslim literature, some really disgusting pornography. Most of them artsy-fartsy bastards are commies anyway—and your fucking father probably told 'em how to screw up the radio and TV, niggers never could have figured that out for themselves. You listen to me: I seen three of my friends get whacked tonight, one of 'em a thirty-year man, I hadda hide at Uncle George's or they'd have whacked me too, there's niggers in fucking tanks out there in the street, if you don't tell me where your fucking parents are I'm gonna break your fucking skull!"

  "Thomas, it's possible she knows nothing of their activities. Why would they—"

  "Sure. And her and the spic just came in from a late movie, right? She got that fucking piece on the table for a door prize." He glanced at José. "What do you know about this, asshole?"

  José looked straight ahead, blood trickling from the center of his upper lip. "I know a scumbag when I see one."

  The big cop blinked at him, then slowly smiled. The smile became a giggle. "Used to collect used ones for your mother?" he asked, and laid José's cheek open with his gun barrel.

  "No," Jennifer cried, and sprang at him. It was a mistake; he grabbed her with a big hand that hurt. "Oh ho! He means something to you, huh? Jesus Christ, your parents let you fuck a spic?" He shook his head. "Yeah, they probably do."

  His expression changed. "Uncle George, I'm gonna take Little Miss Muffet here into the next room and interrogate her a little. You wait here; maybe the spic'll have something he wants to talk about while I'm gone. If it's interesting enough, you could try to interrupt me."

  Shaw giggled, a ghastly sound. "Perhaps that's wise, nephew." He glanced at José. "Besides, I'm certain José and I have many things to talk about. There's an attaché case I'd like to discuss...you go on." He looked Jennifer up and down and licked his lips. "Perhaps we could trade places in a while."

  Thomas frogmarched her into her parents' bedroom, her left arm twisted up behind her. The pain was shocking. She had not known there was that much pain. He flung her onto the bed, uncocked his gun, set the safety, and tossed it out onto the living room floor behind him. "Take care of my piece, will you, Uncle George? That way I don't have to keep track of it." Shaw giggled again, collected the gun, and Thomas shut the door. Now the room was pitch dark.

  At the sound of the door latch clicking shut, something clicked in Jennifer's mind. No one was going to help her.

  She was on her own. All at once she remembered for the first time in hours that she still had a knife between her legs. She strove to measure her breaths, to regain control.

  "Don't hurt me," she said submissively. "I know what's going to happen but you don't have to hurt me. I'll make it good for you."

  His chuckle came out of the darkness. "You don't understand. When I hurt you: that's when it's good for me.

  Open the shade."

  She did as she was told. Faint light came in through the bars. She made out his bulk by the door. Did bars make him feel more at home?

  "That's better. Stand up."

  She stood beside the bed. She could smell alcohol on his breath, and tobacco.

  "Drop that purse on the floor and take off your dress. Don't hurry."

  She obeyed, heart hammering.

  He whistled through his teeth. "Nice. Jesus, if you were my brat I'd make you wear a bra."

  "You have a daughter my age?"

  "I used to. Little bitch. I threw her out last year." (Jennifer interpreted: his daughter had divorced him just as soon as she legally could.) "Get them pants off, I'm gonna give you what I shoulda given her."

  She removed them quite carefully. He came closer as she did so, and she tried to let the hand holding the panties drop unnoticed to her side.

  "Jesus. Just like a peach." He reached out and pinched her, hard enough to make her yelp. "All right, let go of them drawers and start taking my clothes off."

  She could not get the damned pads separated with one hand; she could touch the knife with two fingertips but could not get a grip. "Just let me throw away this minipad," she said, turning toward the wastebasket.

  He was quick, snatched the panties from her hands before she could chuck them away. "I don't believe it, you ain't old enough to bleed." He squinted into the panties. "Jesus!" He flung them from him as if they were something disgusting, wiped his hand on his pants. The panties and minipad went all the way across the room and landed in the open closet.

  "I guess you are old enough. Well, that's great. We're gonna have a good time. Now get my clothes off." When she hesitated he hurt her dreadfully.

  All the time she was undressing him she tried to think of a way out. None presented itself. The knife—and the hatpin in her dress—were hopelessly out of reach. She knelt to take off his shoes and help him step out of the pants. She tugged the dirty boxer shorts down, flinched away as his penis sprang free. He guffawed. She could see veins pulsing along its length; god, it was enormous. It smelled bad too.

  He thrust his pelvis forward, laughed as she jerked away.

  She met his eyes.

  "Let's see, now," he said jovially, "how are we gonna stick it up?"

  She knelt at his feet and stared up at him, and distantly heard José crying out in pain in the next room. She guessed how much it would take to make José cry out; even the earlier pistol-whipping he had suffered silently. José, she thought, guess what? I'm an adult now. Just in time.

  And somehow her mind made an association between José and Thomas's last words. Sometime earlier in the evening, geological epochs ago, José had used the exact same words, in a different context.

  "Please," she said, total surrender in her voice, "let me grease it up first. I've got some of that love gel stuff in my bag."

  He was surprised and pleased. "Boy, can I pick 'em or what? Yeah, sure, no sense scrapin' my skin off. Make it snappy."

  She kneewalked over to her pouch, rummaged carefully inside. As her hand came out he was on her, grabbing her wrist. But he relaxed when he saw the tube in her hand.

  "For a second I thought you were up to something. All right, come on, slick it up and then get up on the bed."

  She unscrewed the tube with one hand, awkwardly stroked his erection with the other. Her fingers just met around it. It felt odd, somehow: for all its hardness, it seemed bouncy, loosely attached. Curious.

  She looked him in the eyes. Big jolly detective, having the time of his life. "I'll squeeze a big glob on," she said, her voice trembling, "and you rub it all up and down with both hands while I put some on me."

  "You bet, sweetie."

  She squeezed the tube with both hands. He mock-shivered as the cool liquid contacted his skin, and giggled. He took the shaft in his right hand, cupped the glans with his left, began to rub, and grunted in surprise. "What the—Jesus!"

  Shriller: "Jesus!"

  By then she was standing, stuffing the tube against his mouth and squeezing carefully. At this point he was startled, confused, afraid, and angry, but he had not yet worked out what was happening to him and so he was not yet terrified. Instinctively he tried to spit out the cool runny stuff spilling over his teeth, and this was a grave mistake, for when he pursed his lips they stuck together, and his tongue stuck to their insides. He still did not understand, but he was terrified now nonetheless. He began to grunt loudly and rhythmically through his nose; mucus sprayed down his upper lip. He wanted to pry his lips apart, but his hands were elsewhere engaged. His eyes rolled wildly. He was beginning to get it.

  Jennifer remembered a takedown that José had taught her.

  She tried it and it worked perfectly. He landed on the bed, thrashing violently, kicking his legs up and down as he tried to let go of his by now fully flexible penis, still grunting his muffled grunt. She managed to trap his legs with one arm, used the Wonderglue to seal them together—for a frightened instant she thought his struggles had gotten some on her. She rubbed excess glue from the tube off on his shin, held the tube high and backed away.

  He tried to sit up and throw his legs over the side of the bed. She chuckled and moved the tube toward his eyes. He lay back at once, his cheeks puffing with the shouts he could not get out, arms straining. She held his head down against the pillow by his hair. She put her face close to his.

  "I'm sorry I don't have more time," she whispered savagely. "Take a deep breath."

  His eyes widened even more. Now he got it. He thrashed so violently that the hair in her hand tore loose. She got a better grip and repeated, "Take a deep breath. It'll last longer."

  He must have realized she was right, for he emptied his lungs and held his breath. She smiled faintly, and waited.

  As he was about to give up and inhale one last desparing breath, she squirted glue up both nostrils. "Goodbye, you bastard," she said, and pinched them shut. Her smile was gone now. She watched with solemn interest. His feet banged up and down together on the bed as he tried to drum his heels and arch his back. The whole bed shook and bounced loudly and rhythmically. She heard Shaw giggle in the other room, and that made her smile again briefly. For realism's sake she made a few appropriate moans of her own. Urine fountained from between his fists, spattered his chest; an instant later his bowels let go. She wrinkled her nose and kept watching. His struggles grew weaker, and she timed her groans so that the sound of her mock-climax was the last thing he ever heard. When she was certain he was dead she took a moment to look him over. His eyes bulged out, his skin looked as dark as Mom's, and damned if he didn't have an erection again. That gooey stuff on his belly—that must be semen. Dying body's last attempt to reproduce. It did look like creme rinse, just like Sophie said. Interesting. She tried to close his eyelids, and they would not stay closed, so she used the last of the Wonderglue with great care. Then she went to the closet, retrieved her underpants, got the little knife. She held it flat against her thigh, hidden by her palm, and went into the living room.

  José's shirt had been cut off; there were four long cuts on his chest, bleeding freely. Shaw stood in front of him, a carving knife in his hand; he had set his guns down on the TV. He gaped in happy shock at the sight of her. "Oh, my," he breathed.

  She jerked a thumb over her shoulder. "You're next. He says he wants to watch."

  "Splendid," he said, blinking furiously. "That will be quite satisfactory. Don't go away, José—I still think you know where the Grants are." He came toward Jennifer, smiling.

  "He says to kiss you first. Out here where José can see."

  "Splendid," Shaw repeated, smiling even more broadly and blinking a mile a minute. He reached out and bent toward her and she cut his throat from ear to ear. He straightened, blinked some more, felt his throat. He tried to speak and achieved only a fluttering, kazoo-like sound. He examined the blood on his hand, rolled up his eyes and died. His corpse fell to the floor, carving knife clattering.

  Jennifer looked at José, said, "Do I have to do everything around here?" and burst into tears.

  "Just the one more thing," José said gently after a time.

  "Get the keys to these cuffs out of the bastid's pants. Then I'll finish up the rest.'

  She did so at once, not stopping to look at the thing on the bed. When José was free she flung herself into his arms, still weeping furiously. Everything went away. An indeterminate time later she identified a warm feeling on her skin. She yelped and pushed him away. "Oh, José, I'm sorry! You're bleeding, your cheek, your poor chest—"

  "De nada," he said. "That little bastid didn't have the cojones to cut deep. He was workin' up to it, though."

  "Let me get antiseptic and bandages—"

  "Later. We gotta get rid of the meat."

  "Right now?" She snuffled and wiped her nose.

  "Did you ever wake up in the same house with a stiff?

  Bandage me later; I'd just start bleedin' again. Jeez, this rug is shot. How about the other bastid? He bleed like this when you cut him?"

  "Uh...I didn't cut him. He threw the knife where I couldn't get it."

  He gave her a puzzled frown. "How'd you take him, then?"

  "Well...you remember how I put that message for Jerome up on the lamppost, by the Museum?"

  "Yah."

  "I told him it was love gel."

  His eyes widened. His mouth hung open. Silently he walked to the bedroom door, leaned in, and put on the light. She waited, suddenly afraid. He would be horrified, would hate her...

  He whooped with laughter. He laughed louder and harder than she had ever heard anyone laugh before, much louder than he had when they'd first come home. He whirled and looked at her with bright merry eyes, with amazement and approval and respect and congratulations in those bright merry eyes, and shook with his laughter.

  And she thought of what Officer Thomas must look like in bright light, and she lost it too. They reeled like drunks, howling and helplessly waving each other away as though, if they were to touch, their combined mirth might exceed some kind of critical value and destroy them both. They knocked things over and fell down.

  It was so powerful a physical experience that it reminded her again of the Juice concert, reminded her that she had been awake an ungodly long time and had expended emergency reserve energy, reminded her that she must be exhausted. But as the laughter ended, she realized that she was wide awake and alert. She felt as though she could run to Halifax and back.

  "Come on," José said, still grinning. "Get dressed and help me with these chumps."

  She scrambled quickly into jeans and a sweatshirt, greatly relieved to be dressed again. "Where the hell do we put them? In the garden?"

  "Liable to get us talked about. The basement door is right across the hall. I got my keys. We can just kick 'em down the stairs and figure something else later."

  They wrapped Thomas in the blanket he had died on, Shaw in the damp stained sheet under that. José needed her help with the carrying; his strength was equal to the weight but both bodies traveled awkwardly. Somewhere during the process Jennifer discovered that the sight of José's naked chest and shoulders and arms was fascinating. It was hard to take her eyes from him to watch where she was stepping.

  At last he clicked the last of the apartment locks shut and slumped against the door. "Okay. Time to get you to bed.

  We'll clean up in the morning."

  "José. Go to my bedroom. Lie down. I'll be in in a second with bandages." He began to protest. "My parents aren't coming home tonight, we both know that. So I'm your boss.

  You're still bleeding. Go lie down."

  He gave up.

  She sponged herself quickly in the bathroom. As she was leaving she saw the box of sanitary pads, remembered that José was not the only one bleeding. But when she checked, nothing was dripping. The first heavy flow was over, she must be in the stage called "spotting." She went to her bedroom. On her way through her parents' bedroom she located her father's Irish whiskey. José thanked her for it and took several pulls from the bottle while she dressed his wounds, kneeling on her heels beside him. As he'd said, the wounds were grisly-looking but not deep

  "José?"

  "Yah." His voice sounded sleepy. The only light was the bedside lamp.

  "Something you said before. You become an adult the day you understand you can die. I'm an adult now."

  His face became somber. "I know, chiquita. I'm sorry. It wasn't supposed to happen for years yet."

  "Don't be sorry. If it had come two minutes later..." She finished the last bandage, left her hands on his chest.

  "José?"

  "Yah."

  "Shaw was going to kill you, wasn't he?"

  "I don't think so. The one time I pretended it really hurt and yelled he almost shit his pants. But he was calmin' down.

  Maybe. I figured he was gonna hurt me, but the other bastid was gonna kill me, the fucking nephew."

  "So I did save your life?"

  He met her eyes. "That's fuckin' A."

  She slid one hand down to his belt buckle. "God damn it, do I have to do everything around here?" The robe slipped off one shoulder.

  He grabbed her wrist. Quickly:

  "Jennifer, I can't—"

  "—the hell you can't, you've been hard since we dumped Shaw together, I saw—"

  "—your parents—"

  "—if I'm an adult it's none of their god-damned business, is it—"

  "—dammit, you said you wasn't gonna do this no more—"

  She raised up onto her knees. "I said no more teasing."

  He closed his eyes. "Fuckin' A."

  She released his hand, unbelted the robe, and shucked it off. "Look."

  He looked.

  She waited.

  "Jennifer," he said finally. His voice was low and hoarse, but quite firm. "I never did nothin' harder than this in my life, okay? Get the fuck out of here and go to bed, or I'm gonna pimp-slap you."

  "Damn it, why not?" she cried.

  "Because bein' a adult got nothin' to do with bein' old enough to have sex," he said. "And because your mother and father trusted me. Now book!"

  She left in tears, intending to cry for hours more, but the first wave dropped her off the edge into oblivion.

  When she woke the room was in daylight. The garden outside was in direct sunshine, it must be near noon. She was stiff and sore in many places—her legs, feet, her shoulder where Shaw's nephew had grabbed her.

  Fortunately she did not have time to dwell on her hurts; she had to pee too badly. Reluctantly she got out of bed and raced for the bathroom.

  She yearned inexpressibly for a very long very hot bath.

  She settled for a quick shower and decided not to wash her hair. As the water sluiced off the grime of the night past—surely the strangest assortment of things ever washed from her body—reality restarted. Time-out was over, normal life began again, slowly but with increasing acceleration until all at once she was back in the world again and considering the events of the last twelve hours.

  She thought hard until the hot water gave out.

  José was in the kitchen, sprawled in a chair, staring at the ceiling. "You make breakfast," she said, toweling off her hair. "I've got things to do."

  "Like what?" He was feeling argumentative.

  "Oh, nothing special. Watch TV, listen to the radio, play with the computer, make a few phone calls—"

  "You make breakfast."

  She moved close, invaded his personal space. Since he was seated, she did not have to tilt her head at all to look him in the eye. "José, listen to me. We're in a war together, and we're a team. You are a terrific warrior, strong and skilled. I am neither. I am a lousy soldier; therefore it falls to me to be the general."

  "Bullshit you're not a warrior, you iced two guys last night!

  One of 'em a fuckin' gold shield! While I stood around wondering how the mortician was gonna fuck me up.""That wasn't being a warrior, that was being a sneaky bitch. If you'd been loose, you wouldn't have needed to be sneaky. Who got us home past all those tanks and soldiers?

  With only one hand tied behind your back, you'd have taken that fat slob without working up a sweat—that's why vou're the soldier. I'm sneaky: that's why I'm the general." She remembered Mom telling her: treat them like insecure children, stroke their egos—but be firm.

  "But you make better scrambled eggs than I do—"

  "Listen to me. You are bigger than me, stronger than me, older than me, more streetwise than me, more experienced than me: true or false?"

  "True."

  "That makes you the perfect top sergeant, according to the books I've read. Now—I am smarter than you: true or false?" Refusing him permission to look away: "True or false?"

  "True."

  "So I am the general, and the general is suffering from insufficient data and hunger, so you are going to cook while I try and get information, and at the next sign of mutiny I will bite you, and I want mine scrambled with cheese and served on the toast so I can eat one-handed. Oh, and Sergeant?"

  "Yes, General?"

  "The next time there's a break in this damned war, remind me to compliment you on your driving."

  "Yes, General." He kissed her on the forehead.

  She powered up the entertainment console and tried tuner mode first. As she had guessed, a program of old and new songs with racial themes or subtexts was being broadcast on all frequencies, burning everything else off the air just like the night before. She was forced to conclude that there was no more FCC in New York. This tuner had an unusually wide frequency spectrum—her father had built it—but even on military, police, and other out-of-the-way bands she got the same music. So the police and the U.S.

  military could communicate only by phone and data links.

  Or could they? She picked up the phone, heard no dial tone. There went phone and data links—no wait, that wasn't certain. She had no way of knowing whether the entire New York phone system was down—or whether her particular phone had picked this particular time to go out of service for the third time in a week and a half. She could hear no distant explosions or gunfire, and the window was open. Come to think of it—

  She went to the window, suppressed the sound of José overcooking the eggs, and listened hard. She heard nothing. No voices, no blaring music, no traffic echoes, nothing. No, wait, there was music—the song she had just switched off on the tuner was barely audible: something by Mingus. There was an odd quality to the sound. She could not tell if it was being played nearby at low volume, or far away at high volume. It was just in the air. The tune was frenetic, angry; she heard Mingus shouting something about Mama's little baby not wanting any damn shortnin' bread.

  Where are my Mama and my Daddy? she wondered. They are with Michael. Where is Michael? Could there be any truth in the nonsense Thomas was spouting last night?

  Could Mom and Daddy have something to do with this racewar, could that be why we came to New York? Is that why Michael saved us in Harlem?

  Impossible. I'd have figured it out long ago. I could fool them about something this big, but the other way around?

  Bogus program. But maybe they got just a little advance warning about this thing—from Jerome, say—and appealed to Michael for sanctuary. How did they contact Michael?

  Through Jerome? Where is Jerome, that he hasn't gotten back here by now? Is he with Michael? Where is Michael?

  It was already warm in the apartment; the slight breeze through the window was welcome. She checked the time: it was 11:40 A.M. She started to turn away, barely heard an odd sound, and paused. Somewhere outside and upstairs, softly creaking metal. She heard a sudden grunt of effort, and a man appeared outside the window as if by magic, performed a rapid plié. It took her a stunned second to work out that he had dropped from the second-floor balcony. She vaguely recognized him as the man who lived above them. He was overweight and unshaven, wore baggy pants and a shabby t-shirt, and carried a small and cheap-looking pistol.

  She stood frozen. He saw her and smiled with one side of his mouth. He came the few steps to the window, pressed his face against the bars. He looked past her at José, who must have had his back turned because the man looked back to her and took the time to look her up and down quickly. Her throat would not pass air in either direction.

  He did something she had seen actors do on TV, pointed the pistol skyward and then began to bring it down to draw a dead bead on her face. He had time to get it halfway down and to say "Nigger-lovin' bas—" before his throat grew a carving knife. It bisected the hollow of his throat almost perfectly. He made a gulping sound, weirdly similar to the one she made at the same instant. Fragments of cheese still clung to the knife; as blood welled over it she thought wildly of Italian cooking. Then he fell away from the window and began a high shrill gargling sound that was over soon.

  She stood motionless for several seconds after the sound had stopped. At last she turned to José. "We're going to need a bigger cellar soon." Her voice sounded too far away.

  He shook his head. "This time maybe we leave him where he is. I know the people in this building. Maybe a few others feel the way he did, but there ain't another pair of balls like his around. If he don't come back, they might come find out what happened to him—but if they know what happened to him, they'll find something else interesting to do. When it gets dark maybe I'll go push him away from the window."

  "José?"

  "Yah."

  "Thank you."

  "It was my turn, that's all. Hey, these eggs are ready."

  She started to say that she couldn't possibly eat scrambled eggs after what she had just seen—and discovered that she was ravenous.

  The eggs were dry and overspiced, the toast burnt; overall the most satisfying meal she had ever eaten. She drank a full litre of orange juice—it was almost worth living in New York to have access to real orange juice in unlimited quantities. Rather, it had been almost worth it. By the time she was full her brain had come up to speed. She was still woefully short of adequate intelligence. No matter what question she formulated, the answer came up "Insufficient data." Had she neglected any sources of information?

  Well, the TV. But that would just have the "Please stand by" legend that Shaw had gotten the night before on all channels...

  Wait a minute! The black revolutionaries couldn't possibly control all the TV stations in North America, could they?

  Shaw must have been trying only local channels—

  On the way to the console she realized her error. The rebels hadn't bothered to take a few dozen individual TV stations, any more than they had bothered with individual radio stations. They must have simply taken over one of those two big satellite uplinks. God, what an audacious bunch they were! Jennifer did not yet see all the implications her father had grasped at once, but she understood that this was much more than a simple, garden-variety massive riot. Without any hope at all, merely to confirm what she had already figured out, she finished the act of switching on the TV—and yelped.

  "—and show your heart to the world," Michael said.

  "José, come here!"

  The screen had reverted to the standby pattern. "What?

  What was that?"

  "That was Michael."

  "No shit? You sure?"

  "Hell, yes. I told you what happened—I ought to remember that voice. Wait, here he comes again." She switched in the recorder.

  Together they watched the final replay of Michael's tape, and when it was over and they had most of the answers they wanted, it was twelve noon.

  Outside, the streets of New York were filling with black people....