CHAPTER 15
-1-
By sunrise, Mabi’s mole at police headquarters had informed him that the police were applying for search warrants for his crib, the Trojans’, Silvy’s place, Hannah’s and Gideon’s apartment, and Blackbird’s. On the street he counted two, no three, stake-out teams in unmarked cars. He waved at one from his kitchen window, laughing as the driver covered his face with that morning’s Herald-American. Down the street beyond the lines the police had set up, television trucks from the local network affiliates waited. Mabi plugged in the phone and called Spider at the Trojans’ crib. “My place surrounded by cops and the TV.”
“Here, too.”
“You know what to do.”
“It done.”
“Silvy taken care of?”
“She’s played out about it. Catch al-Saffah on the tube? He makes you the second coming.”
Mabi hung up, then telephoned one of the lawyers the gang had on retainer, a Jew named Greenberg, because Mabi was color blind when the stakes were high enough.
“How long can you tie up them warrants?”
“A day, two tops with an appeal,” Greenberg said.
“Go the distance.”
“Stay in and you’re safe. The police are scared shitless about violating your rights and blowing up the case on a constitutional nicety. Otherwise, they’d have busted you and searched your place incident to the arrest.”
The cops didn’t worry Mabi. Cops never did. Boston cops were always on sale and he had access to enough dollars to buy his way out of anything. Still, he had planned for the day his dollars would be worthless, mapping back doors into other buildings, escapes routes over rooftops, through passageways in basements. Let the cops think they had him trapped. When the time came, he would Houdini them but good.
He lay down on his bed to think. He was inside a shrinking triangle, a triangle with al-Saffah on one side, his being Falasha on the second, and his doing what he’d done to Mayor Charlie’s kid on the third. It rested on his shoulders like a slave’s collar, this triangle, shrinking ’til it crushed his windpipe, snapping his neck. He felt dizzy, angry, stupid, for letting al-Saffah con him.
The clay man Jesse had crafted for Mabi in the Sunday school playroom frowned. Mabi rubbed his eyes. The rest of the room–Silvy’s photo on the bureau, the wallpaper, the Bill Russell poster, the chair at the foot of his bed–was in sharp focus. Jesse’s clay figure now sat in the chair at the foot of his bed. Life size. Familiar. At the figure’s feet, a tiger. A hand reached out and grabbed Mabi’s in a soul shake. Flesh, not clay.
“It’s traveling time.” Jim Ed placed his hand on Mabi’s shoulder. Mabi trembled at its warmth. “Close your eyes.” Later, “You can look now.”
They were on a fire escape in the ’hood. Night. Hot. On the street, the Trojans marched as if to the funereal music of a dirge, Silvy, who was seven months pregnant, and Spider in the lead. The gang carried a glass coffin on their shoulders. Inside, wrapped partially in a winding sheet with the head exposed, a corpse. Candles bathed the glass coffin in a halo.
As the procession passed, windows in the tenements opened. Hannah and Gideon joined the march when it reached their corner, as did Cealy Thomas. Children played hide and seek among the adults. Jesse, wearing denim coveralls and pajama tops, was always “it.”
“Who made him a little kid again?” Mabi asked. No reply.
Jesse wrapped his arms around Silvy’s thighs, rubbing the top of his head against the bottom of her belly. “Let’s sing a lullaby,” she said.
Jesse wiped his eyes with balled-up fists. Silvy handed him to Stilts and began singing:
Hush, little baby, don’t you cry
You know your momma was born to die
All my trials, Lord, soon be over.
Her voice, pure, strong, cleansed the street. Others sang with her.
River Jordan is muddy and cold,
Well, it chills the body, but not the soul
All my trials, Lord, soon be over.
Scorpion played a blues harp. Like a trumpet, it poured forth notes so rich they could be tasted, so sweet they dissolved the grief. Silvy’s soprano caressed these notes, made love to them, point and counterpoint, melody and harmony, voice and blues harp, competing, complementing, merging, then separating to begin the cycle again.
Too late my brothers, too late but never mind
All my trials, Lord, soon be over.
If living were a thing that money could buy,
You know, the rich would live and the poor would die.
All my trials, Lord, soon be over.
The funeral became a parade, the mourning a spiritual celebration. Everyone rejoiced in life as the traditional black lament escorted Mabi in death.
There grows a tree in paradise,
And the pilgrims call it the tree of life
All my trials, Lord, soon be over.
Jesse joined in, his falsetto rising above Silvy’s soprano.
Too late my brothers, too late but never mind
All my trials, Lord, soon be over.
All my trials, Lord, soon be over.
Silvy raised her head. On the fire escape, Mabi felt her eyes burn into him. He saw what she saw, a scroll unrolled along the aisle of a synagogue in Chelsea, a red swastika stenciled on each page. She repeated a verse.
There grows a tree in paradise,
And the pilgrims call it the tree of life
All my trials, Lord, soon be over.
She held the last note until everyone stopped singing, until Scorpion stopped blowing, until her voice reached beyond the fire escape into the heavens, fading only when the sun edged above the horizon, washing the mourners in the red glow of first light, coloring the glass coffin with a scarlet burnish so it looked like it was filled with hot coals. As the funeral procession marched east toward the new day, Mabi slumped on the steps of the fire escape.
“Take me home,” he begged Jim Ed. He blinked and it was as if they had never left his bedroom.
“I’m here to challenge you,” Jim Ed said. “Same terms you gave Luke Shaw.” Jim Ed scratched the head of the tiger between its ears. The tiger yawned, eyeing Mabi with calm solemnity, unconcerned about where its next meal was coming from.
Mabi led with a quick jab, but Jim Ed parried it, catching Mabi’s fist and flipping him onto the bed like a wet do-rag. Jim Ed pinned him with a forearm to the neck. Mabi thrashed around like a woman being raped, kicking, flailing, unable to get the leverage he needed to throw Jim Ed off. He grabbed Jim Ed’s jawbone and tried to break it with brute force, but Jim Ed bit his fingers to the bone. They rolled around the room. The tiger moved from one corner to another, content to watch.
“Mabi!” A voice, high-pitched, screaming. Jim Ed evaporated. The tiger dissolved. Another shriek, then silence. Mabi’s head cleared. In his arms, he cradled Silvy. Bruises disfigured her face. He fetched a wash-cloth, wrung it out with cold water, and gently bathed her face. Her eyelids flickered and he looked deep into her pupils to make sure she could focus. His fingers massaged her scalp, searching for fractures, her nose to see if it was broken. Balls of paper, crushed and crumbled, and bits and pieces of clay littered the floor. Only one corner of the Bill Russell poster remained tacked to the wall.
Silvy shifted in his arms.
“The cops?” Mabi asked.
“Walked right in the front door.”
“Why?”
“Because I haven’t turned white on you.”
He kissed the top of her head.
“When I walked in you were shaking like a kid having a nightmare so I tried waking you but when I grabbed your shoulders you screamed and hollered, Jim Ed! Jim Ed! and throwed me ’cross the room like I was a Raggedy Ann doll.”
He unbuttoned her blouse to search for more bruises. Her skin was unbroken, soft, supple, still the color of fresh maple syrup. He examined her breasts for contusions, arousing his sex to the flash point. He caressed her and kissed her nipples and when she whispered Please, made love to her with a gentleness that magnified their passion until, exhausted, they both fell asleep. When he awoke, she was spreading pieces of the poster on the floor to try and patch them together, but the edges would not line up. She returned to bed and hugged him tightly, drawing strength from him as they made love on a bed bathed with sunbeams. In the afterglow, she felt a twinge and she knew the way a woman knows things a man will never understand that his seed had impregnated her.
“It’s time,” he said.
“Don’t go.”
“No choice.”
“There’s always a choice,” she said.
He hugged her and buried his face in her hair to imprint her scent in his memory.
“I’m scared,” she said.
“The next time you see me, you be seeing Leroy Wallaca.”
“I love you.”
“I love you.”
-2-
An hour later Mabi sat across the chessboard from al-Saffah waiting for al-Saffah’s next move. He did not mention the morning papers because he didn’t want his confrontation with al-Saffah to be over the wrong thing.
When al-Saffah showed him Scott Dunleavy’s piece in the Globe and told him about the television interviews, he nonchalanted it. Smoke from al-Saffah’s hookah saturated the room, settling on al-Saffah’s shoulders like rings circling a peg, veiling his harsh features in a cloud. The thickness of the atmosphere diffused the light; the mihrab looked like a torch barely visible in a heavy fog. The Islamic-style chess pieces cast multiple silhouettes. He had broken whatever linkage chained him to eight centuries of unknown chess players. He no longer envied the chess set for its past, but he understood how it had become a part of his, as much a part as a poster of Bill Russell or a comic book or a photo of the children of Wallaca razored out of a library book.
Playing the Majdorf variation of the Sicilian Defense, al-Saffah held a two-point advantage, two pawns. Mabi unfolded the photocopy of The New York Times article about the torture of the Falashas in Ethiopia and fanned at the smoke. The paper rattled. “Chess should be played in the silence of the desert dawn,” al-Saffah said. “It’s a game for that quiet moment before the sun breaks the plane of the horizon, when the desert air still chills the body.”
“If my noise be your bother, you should be resigning.”
“Not with a two pawn advantage.”
Al-Saffah’s bravado belied the position of his pieces. His king cowered at QR1. Mabi’s rooks patrolled the knight’s and bishop’s files on the queen’s side and his queen attacked the isolated pawn guarding al-Saffah’s king. Mabi’s knight was the trigger that would spring the final trap. There was no escape. If al-Saffah moved his queen’s rook to K-B2, then Q-B2 would force mate in two moves. If al-Saffah attacked with his bishop to K-Kt5, Q-R1 would give Mabi refuge in his own corner where al-Saffah could not pin him. Al-Saffah lacked the tempo or time to start the sequence of moves necessary to checkmate him. Mabi recalled Bumper Sullivan’s taunt: The average player would become world champion if he could make two successive moves once each game.
Al-Saffah reclined his king, conceding the game. “Now we’ve completed this child’s game, let us plan the Trojans’ next mission.”
“How come it ain’t no child’s game when you win?”
“Don’t be petulant, my son. It is written that the blood of Jews and Catholics will flow freely until they become extinct, first in Boston, then in America, then throughout the world. Jerusalem will become a charnel house for all but the followers of Allah. Out of this divine inferno the phoenix of Islam shall rise triumphant from the ashes. You shall be the warrior who starts the blood flowing.”
“I remember you readin’ me from that Koran,” Mabi said, “about how them who wage war against God be executed and suffer heavy in the next world.”
“An eye for an eye.”
Mabi’s past welled up and burst forth from his eyes, fixing al-Saffah with a stare fed by the power of memories, memories of Jim Ed, memories of the children of Wallaca, memories of Leroy and Priam. Belief powered Mabi’s stare, not belief in hatred or the corruption of the religion of Abraham by Christians and Jews, not belief in some jihad supposedly ordained by Allah, not belief in al-Saffah as Allah’s messenger, but rather a belief Allah had ordained ajal to the enmity between the children of Abraham to be replaced by brotherhood. Allah, Mabi now understood, had chosen him to fulfill the destiny of his name, to be His prophet, to be His instrument to rid the world of al-Saffah and those who would prostitute Allah and the holy precepts of the Koran for their own unholy and ungodly purposes. The fire next time burned in Mabi’s eyes, spreading holy flames throughout the room.
“I’ve been heaven sent,” Mabi said. The softness of his voice did not mute its thunder.
Al-Saffah leaped, aiming for the soft, fleshy part of Mabi’s throat. Mabi rolled to his side, then to the floor, then pinned al-Saffah with a knee to the back, grinding it against al-Saffah’s spine at the base of his neck. He pulled back on al-Saffah’s arms until the bones of his upper arms popped out of the shoulder sockets. Al-Saffah kicked wildly, pummeling Mabi with his heels. Mabi secured al-Saffah’s hands; then, immobilized his legs, and tied his wrists against the small of his back.
“Kill me and you honor me with martyrdom,” al-Saffah said. “In the next world eternal victory will be mine.”
“Be no thousand virgins waiting to fuck you.” With a knife, Mabi cut open al-Saffah’s sleeves. He inserted plastic tubing into al-Saffah’s nose and snaked it down his throat into his stomach, taping it to his neck and arm. He connected a syringe to the plastic tubing and plunged the needle deep into a vein in al-Saffah’s forearm and taped it in place. He turned al-Saffah on to his side so gravity would pull the blood through the tubing. “The prophecy of your name it’s coming true at last.”
Blood from al-Saffah’s veins distended his stomach. He struggled and as he did his heartbeat accelerated, pumping the blood faster, filling his stomach. He felt weak, chilled. His muscles quivered, but the syringe remained in place, drinking his blood with an unslaked thirst. “Why?” he grunted. His breathing was labored. Blood overflowed his stomach and backed up in his gullet, drooling from his mouth.
Mabi held up The New York Times. “I am Falasha.”
Al-Saffah’s lips shivered. He tried to respond, but only spoke gibberish. His eyes began to glaze, the pupils to dilate. He could not focus. “Jew,” he hissed as death froze his face. Still, the blood flowed and his body twitched with the kinetic energy of death. Blood streamed from his mouth and pooled at Mabi’s feet. Death eternally froze al-Saffah’s lips in the shape of the word “Jew.”
Mabi thought again about the children of Wallaca, about the Falashas, about four girls in Birmingham, about Martin and Medgar, about all who had been lynched, known and unknown, about the six million. Leading the Trojans was such a fucking waste. Doing time for killing Bumper Sullivan and trashing Chelsea was such a fucking waste. His time as Mabi had achieved ajal. The Falashas needed him. He needed them. More. He needed them more. Going to Ethiopia, he would atone for burning his own backyard. He would avenge the men, women, children hung upside down from poles like animals, avenge the open wounds where worms were allowed to breed, the broken bones left unset, the mothers and fathers who paid bounties for the corpses of their children. Atone and revenge.
It was written in the book, his book, the only book worth reading.
-3-
Later that night, at the Gulf station at the Charles Street rotary, Mabi filled several five-gallon cans with gasoline. At al-Saffah’s, he built a pyre in the living room–furniture, books, magazines, paper, whatever he could find that would burn. He centered al-Saffah’s body on the top. He put the box of ancient chess pieces on the floor beside the door and phoned Silvy.
“It’s me, Leroy. I needing one last favor. Lay me next to Jim Ed and put Leroy Wallaca on the stone.” He hung up before she could say anything and dialed the Boston Globe.
“City desk. Crocker.”
“You got true confessions on the line, baby.” He heard clicks, beeps. “You’re talking to Leroy Wallaca, who used to be Mabi way back when. I killed Bumper Sullivan and spread his blood ’round Chelsea. Tonight, I, Leroy, offed al-Saffah. Rabbi Esrael. Me. Father Dominic. Me. The Jew houses, churches, grave yards. Me! Me! Me!” He ripped the telephone out of the wall and tossed it on the pyre and chanted
“I ain’t needing
no rainbow sign
’cause tonight I lighting
the fire this time,”
as he doused the room with gasoline, saving some to make a Molotov cocktail. In the kitchen, he snuffed out the pilots in the gas stove and turned on the jets. A calmness he had never before experienced descended on him. He was going to a better place. It was his destiny, his ajal. Saluting the circle of scimitars, he ignited the Molotov cocktail and hurled it on the pyre. The explosion cooked his face and singed his hair. The heat dried his tears while they were still in his eyes. The flames danced as fire consumed the pyre and peeled al-Saffah’s flesh from the bones. As the fire consumed Mabi’s past, laid bare his future, he shouted his name: Leroy Wallaca, Leroy Wallaca, Leroy Wallaca! He opened the door. The air flow sent a column of flames through the ceiling. As he picked up the box of ancient chess pieces, the gas accumulating in the kitchen exploded and hurled a fireball into the star-filled sky, a fireball so high, so bright, night was day. Later, people would say it was as if the sun had risen at midnight.
*
It took several hours and multiple alarms to bring the fire under control and another twenty-four hours to extinguish it. Nothing remained but soggy debris and ash, which clung to the rubber boots of the arson squad who sifted through the debris for clues of the fire’s origins. As April turned into May, the sun dried the ash and swirls of wind scattered the gray dust, first around the ’hood, then around Boston. The fire this time was no more.