The Last Goodbye (23 page)

The little crowd stopped, the boys circling me. They were lean, scarily alive and virile, carrying within their heads a set of nearly random possibilities that ranged from the magnanimous to the unthinkably violent. There was simple curiosity, too—I could see it in their eyes—at what would make somebody so insane as to tempt the particular fate I was tempting. For a while, I thought that would help, because I was definitely going to play the psycho card. Once you start, you have to keep going. It's all or nothing. “You like oatmeal?” I said to Darius.

He looked surprised. “What?”

“Oatmeal,” I repeated. “I was wondering if you liked it.” The group laughed, a little nervously. “Personally, I love it. I think it's the food of the gods.”

“What you talkin' 'bout?” Darius asked.

“My hat,” I said, a little psychotically, I hoped. “Because I eat oatmeal out of it every morning. It's very useful for that.”

“That's fucked up,” the boy who wanted my hat said.

“Yeah,” another boy agreed, “motherfucker's all fucked up.”

The kid who wanted my hat was determined. “I don't care if he is crazy, I still like his hat.”

“I need it,” I said. “I need it because I eat oatmeal out of it every morning.” The kid who wanted my hat gave me a quizzical look, then fell back a few feet. For one beautiful, shining moment, I was free. They were going to buy it. They were going to leave the poor crazy white guy alone, and I was going to find Michele, and we were going to walk in the moonlight back to my Buick. It was probably the fact that I was thinking such happy thoughts that I didn't notice the roundhouse left coming at me until it was too late. Then, everything disappeared.

“THE STAR-SPANGLED BANNER”
was playing, badly and out of tune. Fireworks were going off, impossibly close. Sparks were raining down on top of me, burning my skin. I could feel them individually, searing into me. I opened my eyes. Light flooded into my pupils like razor blades. I shut them again, moaning.

“Wake up. You all right, now.”

Tentatively, I partially opened one eye again. That's when I realized I was on my back. “Whfff.”

“Just lie still. You was just out awhile.”

I moaned again, gurgling something unintelligible. I felt a warm wetness in my mouth. Then I felt a shooting pain up my back, crackling through my neck, drilling a hole through the roof of my skull. The last few minutes came back to me, in spite of how much I didn't want them to be true. I had just had the living hell beat out of me. I tried to sit up, managed it halfway, and let it go at that. “All right, now,” the voice said. “Take it easy.”

I managed to pry both eyes open, letting myself acclimate to the light. I looked around; I was inside, sitting on a sofa in a clean, small room. I didn't see where the voice was coming from. “I would've taken you to the hospital,” the voice said, “but they would have made you sit in the emergency room for five hours before they saw you. You not bad enough to rush.”

“Could have fooled me,” I said, managing my first coherent sentence. I looked left, following the voice. There, smiling affably at me, was Jamal Pope.

Time to go
, every synapse in my brain sang in chorus. My body, however, was singing a different tune. My limbs felt like crushed ice, only colder. “How did I get here?”

Pope laughed. “Nothin' happen on my stoop without me knowin',” he said. “Rabbit brought you in.”

“Remind me to send him a card,” I said. “But I really have to get going.” I kept sending messages to my legs, but they weren't picking up.

“Take it easy,” Pope said. “Don't rush. You need a second.” He stood and walked to the kitchen, which was in sight of where I lay. I looked around; apparently, he didn't spend his money on furnishings. Things were decent, but not that different from any other apartment. It made me wonder what the point of making all that money was. Then another shooting pain made me forget about everything else for a while.

Pope walked over with a glass of water and handed it to me. “Drink this,” he said. “You need it after a beating.”

I took the glass, drinking a few swallows. “Thanks. What time is it?”

“'Bout twelve.” He looked at me. “You shouldn't oughta fuck with Folks Nation. They don't like white people.”

“They've made that clear, thanks.”

Pope laughed. “Word is you was with a woman,” he said. “Word is she fine.”

“Yeah,” I said cautiously. “I was doing research on a case.”

“Word is she not from around here.”

“She's from Bowen Homes,” I said. “She's helping me on something.”

“Bowen? So I guess I wouldn't know her.”

“No, probably not.” Pope looked at me, a shallow smile on his lips. It was obvious he knew I was lying. Unfortunately, it was impossible to tell what else he knew. What I needed to do was get the hell out before he could ask me any more questions.

“What her name?”

Damn. Lemme go, Pope. And let her go. Let all of us go, you merciless bastard. Let us all just live our lives without all this shit.
“T'aniqua,” I said. “T'aniqua Fields.”

Pope's face was implacable. “Well, I guess you right,” he said. “I don't know her.” He walked over and put his hands underneath me. “Tell you what,” he said. “I'll help you find her.”

“Uh . . .” Words were forming, but the pain of straightening out my body turned them into a low moan.

“Easy,” Pope said. “You all right. Stand up, now. Get yourself together.”

I leaned on Pope, reorienting myself to an upright world. When the spinning stopped, I felt better. My head was clearing. I took a step, then another. “I can make it,” I said. “Thanks.”

“Yeah,” Pope said. He picked up some keys. “Let's go find T'aniqua. I hear she fine.”

“Really, Pope, I don't want—”

Pope's grip on my shoulder, which had, until that second, been friendly and supportive, turned subtly painful. The change wasn't dramatic, but it was exquisitely communicative. The message was clear:
You are completely in my world. I have ways for you to lose this argument you can't imagine.
I looked up at Pope, whose smile hadn't wavered. “Yeah,” I said. “Maybe she's still around.”

“I wouldn't want anything to happen to her,” he said. “It gets dangerous around here at night.” Then more pressure, moving me inexorably toward the door. We walked outside, me limping but finding my balance again. A couple of boys appeared from out of nowhere; one of them was Rabbit, Pope's son. “What up?” Pope asked.

Unlike the first time I had seen him, Rabbit was living up to his nickname. He was a lean bundle of nervous energy. “I ain't seen her,” he said. “Word's out.”

Pope turned toward me. “Looks like your friend's playing hide-go-seek. We better go help her out.”

Pope led me toward his car. Here, at last, was an expression of his real income. A beautiful black Mercedes sat waiting on the street. He had resisted any tacky moves toward the pimp world; it was bone stock and exquisitely polished. Even in the streetlights, it glowed. A boy materialized out of the ether around me; first Pope's door was opened, then mine. I sat down on expensive leather, feeling my bones ache with the impact. Pope took his seat and lowered the windows. “We find her,” he said. “We just gotta ask around.”

“I'm sure she would have walked out hours ago,” I said. “She's got no reason to hide.”

Pope started the car and we glided down the main street of the Glen. Within blocks, I learned what respect meant in the projects. It's not an exaggeration to say that Pope was treated like a head of state. We couldn't get thirty yards without someone glad-handing him, kissing his ass. Some were storing up favors against an unknown future offense; others were angling for work or a break on product. He greeted them all by name, receiving them into his royal court for a moment's blessing.

McDaniel Glen at midnight was alive. There were even small children sitting on stoops, playing and laughing. Nobody looked scared. They were having fun, mostly. Sticking close to their stoop, playing by the rules, but having a hell of a time. There it was, in all its glory: society. People just being people, chatting and laughing. It almost made me smile, except that threading its way through all that goodwill was a black Mercedes paid for with human misery. No one, it appeared, had seen Michele. Pope's questions got more pointed as we drove, and I could feel his wheels turning, wondering who this T'aniqua Fields was, and what she and the white lawyer were doing in his world.

It took about twenty minutes to cover all of the Glen. As we pulled back up to his apartment, he got a phone call. Pope grunted into the phone a couple of times, then looked at me. “She ain't here,” he said. “Somebody thinks she left couple hours ago.”

“Figures,” I said nonchalantly. Bullshitting Pope was essentially a waste of time, but I was hoping that if I didn't grind my lying in his face he'd give me a break. It was, like everything else in his world, merely a question of respect. And to my eternal gratitude, Pope pulled out an umbrella for the shit storm.

“You better get goin',” he said, looking at me. “She probably lookin' for you.”

There was a moment's recognition between us, and I was gone.

SO SHE MADE IT OUT,
probably hours ago. She's safe.
Pope believed it, and one thing was certain: nothing happened in the Glen without him knowing about it. That assurance, however—and I knew, at least intellectually, that it was absolute—failed to stop me from driving every block around the edges of the Glen for at least an hour, looking for her. But eventually, there was no way around it: Michele had vanished. I turned my car toward my house, and by the time I got there, it was nearly two. There was no way to check on Michele; the only number I had was her cell phone, which was now resting on my dining table. I considered calling the police—even though to do so would have revealed her identity—but discarded the idea. I had been overreacting, which was pretty understandable, considering my last few hours. It had been less than fifteen blocks from where I left Michele to the edge of the Glen, and she had certainly made that walk often enough as a young girl. There was no reason to believe she couldn't have simply vanished under the gates into Atlanta.

Which was all bullshit, because for the next five hours I slept about ten minutes. Saturday morning came, and the weekend loomed like an eternity. I prowled my apartment for most of the day, frustrated at the impossibility of reaching Michele. I stared at my phone, thinking that at least she would call me. I paced. I slept in fits and starts, feeling the nervous energy that comes from exhaustion. I looked at myself in the mirror, watching the topography of my face pass through an inflated black and blue, until by Sunday afternoon, the swelling was beginning to recede. But two days to imagine everything bad that could have happened to her was at least one day too many; by early Monday morning, I couldn't take it anymore. I had to do something, so I called Nightmare. At least it was better than staring at myself in a mirror.

Once again, I was speaking to the beep on Nightmare's answering machine. “Wake up, Michael. We've got to move.” Nothing. I was not in the mood. “Dammit, it's Jack,” I said. “They've stolen Doug's computer.”

Nightmare picked up the phone. I could hear him breathing, slowly coming to consciousness. “What?” he mumbled.

“Doug's computer. It was stolen out of my office a few nights ago.”

Nightmare's voice cleared. “Who stole it?”

“Whoever doesn't want us to find out what's going on.”

There was silence, as Nightmare thought over the preceding few sentences. Apparently, he didn't like their meaning. “That is not good.” Then, a dial tone.

It took me a moment to realize what had happened: I had been ditched. I called back. Nightmare picked up, but he didn't speak. “Don't lose your nerve, partner,” I said quietly. “I need you.” More silence, but I could feel the tension climbing up Nightmare's skull. “You and me. Jackie Chan.”

“They stole Killah's desktop?”

“Yes, Michael.” I didn't mention the trouble with Michele and my getting thrashed by emissaries of Folks Nation; more tension was the last thing Michael needed.

Nightmare's voice dropped to a whisper, as though someone was in the next room, eavesdropping. “Dude, you are so completely busted.”

“Probably.”

“It means they know we were on the site. They know where the hack came from.”

“The call came from my office. There's no connection to you.”

“I'm pretty sure I want to keep it that way.”

“Explain this to me, Michael. I thought you said all the data was on Georgia Tech's mainframe.”

“It is. But the access was on Doug's. I figured if they sent a ping out, it would stop at Tech. But they got to the other side and located you.”

“How could they do that?”

Another long silence. “I don't know,” he said quietly.

“What do you mean, you don't know? I thought you were king cyber god or something.”

“You are dead shit, dude. Seriously.”

“Don't overreact, Michael. If somebody wanted to kill me, I'm an easy enough target. What they wanted was the computer, and they got it. They probably wanted to make sure we can't get back on.”

“In that case, they're screwed, because I can get back on anytime I want.”

I shook my head in disbelief. “Are you serious? You can get back on?”

“Sure, no problem. If I were nuts, that is.”

“Michael, we have to get back on the site.”

“Yeah, dude, we'll just hack right back on there, and then sit and wait for them to come kill us. Gotta go now.”