Underground Airlines (3 page)

I had a lot of names. Or, more precisely, it was my practice at the beginning of a new job to think of myself as having no name at all. As being not really a person at all. A man was missing, that’s all—missing and hiding, and I was not a person but a manifestation of will. I was a mechanism—a device. That’s all I was.

I looked at the dot on 38th Street. The dot blinked, and I blinked back at the dot. That address had come from a cash machine receipt dated three days ago—Sunday, at 4:32 p.m. Two hundred dollars from a Regions bank ATM. I tapped a few more keys, and the laptop whirred to life, accenting my map with the requested demographic information, shading every square block of the city according to its African American population.

When this was done I sat back and laid my hands flat on the desk, on either side of the computer keyboard. The main cluster of dots, representing Father Barton’s usual stomping ground—those dots were in pale areas: blocks with an African American population of 10 percent or less, 5 percent or less. That one dot, though, the one blinking lonesome dot down in Mapleton–Fall Creek: that one was singing a different song. It wasn’t in the darkest part of the map—that was a six-square-block area just northwest of downtown. That would be Freedman Town, I figured. But the area where Father Barton had taken out two hundred bucks on Sunday afternoon—there was some pigmentation down there, no question about it.

I whistled very softly, still sitting motionless, hands still flat on the table.

“All right,” I whispered. “All right, all right, all right.”

4.

At 9:49 p.m.
I stood from the wobbly wooden desk and stretched, raising my hands until they grazed the low ceiling of the hotel room. I felt around in the coat I had taken off and found a pack of Babas, tapped it on the edge of the desk, peeled off the foil, and took out a single cigarette.

At exactly 9:50 my cell phone rang. It always rang at 9:50 exactly.

“Hello.”

“Good evening, Victor,” said the voice on the other end, low and even. “How is your progress?”

That’s what Mr. Bridge always said—every time—when a case was on, when a file was active. He always called at 9:50, and his voice always sounded the same.

“She’s doin’ great, thanks,” I said. “How’s
your
mother?”

Mr. Bridge didn’t laugh. He never laughed. He repeated himself. “How is your progress?”

“So far so good.” I slipped out onto the little balcony. The room was on the second floor, and I could smell the bitter fumes of the parking lot. “To be honest with you, it would be a lot better if I had the full file.”

“You will.”

“So you’ve said.” I lit the Baba and took a drag.

“Janice will post the full file by tomorrow noon at the absolute latest. It will be available for download from the second server.”

“Yes, Massa. Sho’ nuff.”

Cold silence. No chance of getting a laugh out of Mr. Bridge on
that
one. I trusted his assurances about the file. My handler at the US Marshals Service was a serious man, and he rarely made promises on which he did not deliver. And even with the full file being unaccountably late, I already knew the most important details. A Person Bound to Labor had escaped. His service name was Jackdaw. His PIN was 78312-99. The company to whom he owed service was a textile plantation called Garments of the Greater South, of Pine Woods, Alabama, a Tuscaloosa suburb.

A man had run. It was my job to find him.

“Victor? How is your progress?”

I took a quick drag off the Baba. “Well, the good father and I broke bread. My name is Dirkson. My wife is Gentle, and she is bound to subterranean service in Carolina.”

More silence on the other end. Mr. Bridge, not interested in the nitty-gritty. Mr. Bridge, waiting for information. He and I had never met face-to-face, but we’d been talking on the phone now going on six years, and I had a clear picture in my mind of the man behind his desk in Gaithersburg. Upright behind his computer keyboard, with a round pale face and pink jowls. A conservative mustache, maybe, thick but well kept. Eyes flat like silver dollars.

“The only snag is,” I said, “our friend Barton does not deal in runners. Not him and not his church. Not anyone he’s ever met. He was shocked by the very idea.”

“He’s lying.”

“Yeah. No shit.”

“He’s sniffing you out.”

“Let him sniff.”

“You’ll get to him.”

“I’ll try.”

Bridge repeated himself. Not insistent, not chastising, just a statement of fact. “You’ll get to him.”

This was how the man talked: clear pronouncements of uncomplicated truth. Never in our years of working together had I detected a note of sarcasm or subtlety. His tone was always the same, cold and unbending, like iron, the hint of a southern accent coming up off his voice like the whisper of smoke from a gun barrel.
You’ll get to him.

My arrangement with Mr. Bridge was simple. Clear as a searchlight. Strong as the law.

Under the Fugitive Persons Act, those who escape from service are to be captured and returned, anywhere they are found in the United States, slave state or free. All law enforcement agencies are obliged to assist in these operations when called upon (as, indeed, “all good citizens” are so obliged), but it is the US Marshals Service that is specifically charged with the job. This law was passed in the ancient year of 1793 under its old name, but it’s been updated repeatedly: strengthened in 1850, reinforced in 1861, revised and strengthened a half dozen times since. When, in 1875, Congress at last ended slavery in the nation’s capital, the slaveholding powers were appeased by the raising of fees for obstruction. When President Roosevelt, in 1935, proposed the creation of a “comprehensive regulatory framework” for the plantations (and the Bureau of Labor Practices to enforce it), he quieted howling southern senators with a sweeping immunity bill, shielding US marshals from zealous northern prosecutors.

Tit for tat. Give and take. Negotiation and conciliation. Compromise. It’s how the Union survives.

People still find ways to evade the burdens of the FPA, though. Local sheriffs sandbag investigations; state legislatures pass thinly veiled personal liberty laws, no matter how many times the Supreme Court sends them back stamped
Unconstitutional
. Plenty of “good citizens” go to jail every year rather than lift a finger to assist a slave-hunting marshal. Since 1970, African American law enforcement officers are allowed to claim nonparticipation under the Moore amendment.

The US Marshals Service, therefore, has needed to find other means of pursuing its mission.

That was me. I was “other means.” A man with no name, a quasi-employee of a clandestine branch, moving from city to city, job to job, under the supervision of a voice on a Maryland telephone. Bridge assigned me my cases, but my tactics were up to me. I pursued my cases efficiently and effectively, and as long as I did that, my own past remained buried. I remained in the North and free. Give and take. Negotiation and conciliation. Compromise.

When we were done on the phone I was feeling low and mean, which is how I always felt after talking to Mr. Bridge. Certain emotions were bubbling up in my stomach, close to my throat. Certain kinds of memories were rattling their chains. As always. I flicked away the butt of the shitty Pakistani cigarette and stared out from the darkness of the balcony into the greater darkness of the parking lot, feeling as if I barely existed at all.

I did, though. I was real, and the case was real. Somewhere in this city there was a lonesome runner, terrified and tired and overwhelmed by the sights and the lights of the free world, and I was going to find him. Have him dragged home. Home.

The full file would come tomorrow, like Bridge said. Tomorrow my search would begin in earnest.

5.

It is
remarkable, when you consider it, all the complicated works we construct to avoid anything that might disturb us or cause us pain. The bulwarks and baffles we build up, the moats and the mazes.

When I got down to the lobby the next morning, Thursday morning, my head was clear, and I felt focused and calm. I had slept well. It was just before 7:30 a.m., and I was the only one in the complimentary breakfast area off the main lobby of the Crossroads Hotel. That’s how I like it. I like to get down to these free breakfasts after they’ve set everything out but before the crowds of folks come in, smiling and chattering and buttering their toast. I’m not a man for small talk in the mornings. I found a seat by the window and set down my newspaper on the table to claim it. I always try to stay at hotels that have these kinds of free breakfasts: warming trays brimming with bacon and herbed diced potatoes, bottomless cups of coffee, sweet muffins in paper wrappers. It is my practice to savor whatever is there to be savored, whatever is available, whatever they just put out for you to take.

I scanned the front page of the
Indianapolis Star,
which was all about Donatella Batlisch, she of the firestorm, the one who had struck the match. She was the president’s nominee to chair the Securities and Exchange Commission, and someone had dug up her master’s thesis, which highlighted the “range of instruments available under existing law” to punish investment companies that trade in plantation profit. Then Batlisch gave an interview,
Time
or
U.S. News,
one of those, refusing to disavow her views, saying only that she’d discharge the duties of the office without prejudice. And then the president, an avowed “centrist” on the Old Question—as you had to be to get to be president—had surprised everybody by declining to withdraw her nomination.

Is this a watershed moment?
said the page 1 editorial I was staring at now, chewing on my bagel.
Is this a moment when things begin to change?

“No,” I said to the paper. “It’s not.” I took another bite. I turned the page.

A girl came in, a white girl in blue jeans and a blue-jean jacket and massively scuffed black Doc Martens–type shoes. She had an oversize leather pocketbook, this young lady, and as I watched she began casually dropping items into the bag’s big maw. This little white lady needed to refine her thievery skills, that was for sure. With each act of petty pilferage she looked first right and then left, like a cartoon mouse about to grab a hunk of cheese, before dropping whatever it was—a banana, a single-serving box of muesli—into the big purse.

A hotel man came in, khaki pants and polo shirt, treading silently enough on the thick carpeting to escape the girl’s attention—although I, a great noticer of small sounds, heard him fine. He waited, watching, arms folded across his chest, as the girl helped herself to one of the paper cups stacked beside the coffee machine and began to fill it with the two-percent milk meant for cereal.

“Miss?” he said suddenly, loudly. “May I help you?”

“What?” The woman turned quickly, jerked the paper cup from the milk dispenser, sloshed some over the sides. “No. No, you’re fine. I’m good. Thanks.”

The hotel man walked over to her, brisk and self-important in his slacks and magenta shirt with
CROSSROADS
HOTEL
sewn on the breast pocket. I turned my eyes back to my newspaper, studied the headlines. The Batlisch hearings. The Pacers win a close one. Wilmington joins Syracuse and Detroit in bankruptcy, and what cities will be next?

“The food set out for breakfast is intended for use during the breakfast hour only.”

“Oh—wait.” The girl tried on a smile, looked around. She couldn’t even figure out a lie for it. “I mean, yes. Oh. Of course.”

The man studied her. “I’m sorry—would you remind me what room you are staying in?” He had that voice that hotel managers must learn in hotel-manager school, smooth and fussy and disapproving. The girl’s smile was flickering, fading.

“Ah. Okay,” she said. She fiddled with a barrette she had in her hair, a bright yellow butterfly. “I’m not—I’m not remembering right this second.”

“Well, perhaps if you showed me your key card?”

The manager’s clipped-on name tag said
MR
.
PAULSEN
, but I already knew his name. I recognized him, a gleaming bald scalp and small features—too small for his big head—that made him look blandly sinister. He was the guy who’d checked me in yesterday, given me my key card, and had me sign the register for “guests of color.” “Just go ahead and jot down your full name and date of birth and Social Security number, if you don’t mind.” Giving me the old standby, “It’s the corporate policy, but if it were up to me…” I didn’t take offense. I was very used to it. I stayed at a lot of hotels.

“Okay, so…I don’t have a key card,” the white girl was saying, shifting from foot to foot on her big shoes. “See, so, we are staying here, or I mean, we are
going
to be.” Before the first of the
we’
s she stumbled, just a little bit.

“I’m sorry?” said Paulsen. “You’re
going
to be staying here?”