Bob Carson seemed to fall in slow motion. He collapsed in sections, head dropping first, torso bending at the point of impact, arms coming up to protect what was already wounded, legs buckling, then giving way, the whole of him, falling. It seemed to take all day. Seemed something other than real. When, finally, Bob hit the floor, Malcolm stared at Amy, needing confirmation, he supposed, that this was actual, that it had just happened right in front of him. And of course, it had. He could tell with just a glance at her that she had seen what he had seen. Her eyes were pools of white in a face that hung slack on her skull like a bag on a hook.
“You shot him.”
Pym’s astonished whisper was unnaturally loud in the sudden, claustrophobic silence that filled the old warehouse.
McLarty shrugged. “Of course I did. Said I was going to, didn’t I?”
Then, as if she had been too stunned to process it until this very second, Janeka suddenly cried out Bob’s name and began crawling on her stomach—her ankles were still bound by duct tape—to where he had fallen, right near Malcolm’s feet. McLarty stepped over and stood straddling her. “Look at this,” he said idly. “Look at this, look at this. She had her fucking hands free and you didn’t even notice. Piss-poor job of checking on the captives, Sergeant.” He raised the gun.
“That’s enough,” said Pym.
“The fuck it is,” said McLarty, the barrel of the pistol two inches off the back of Janeka’s skull. “She goes next. Then that bitch over there who slugged me. We can keep this one if you want. He’s not going anywhere with those cuffs on him. We can chain him to the front of the van just like we planned.”
Janeka, still inching her way forward, seemed not to notice any of this, seemed oblivious to everything except the need to reach Bob, who lay there still as death, the blood on his shirt front glistening in the pallid light. “Bob,” she whispered, “please, honey, please. Please don’t…please don’t…”
“‘Please, honey, please…’” mimicked McLarty in a high, singsong voice. Then he laughed.
“I said, ‘That’s enough,’” Pym told McLarty. His voice had taken on a knife’s edge of command.
McLarty noticed. His eyes came up. “How many times do I have to keep reminding you: I’m your commanding officer, not the other way around. What the fuck did you join this man’s militia for, Sergeant, if you’re going to turn pussy over every little thing?”
“I joined it to carry out a mission,” said Pym. “I didn’t join it to be a fucking animal. Now give me the gun, Captain. I’ll watch the prisoners.”
Janeka had reached Bob and was cradling his head, still oblivious to this argument about her very life. She rocked back and forth with Bob in her lap, moaning through her tears.
McLarty said, “What? The hell I will. Who the fuck is going to help me paint the armor and finish wiring the bomb if you’re in here babysitting?”
“You can handle it. May take a little longer, but you can do it.”
“Well, why should I trust you to watch the prisoners? You’re so soft, how do I know you won’t just turn ’em all loose soon as my back is turned?”
“You know I won’t,” said Pym.
“Oh yeah oh yeah oh yeah?” said McLarty. “Funny thing, now that I think about it, how you never noticed this bitch had got her hands loose. For all I know, you’re the one helped her do it.”
Pym raised one of those big hands. “You know better. Now come on, Dwayne, give me the gun. I’ll keep an eye on them, you finish getting the van ready, and we can accomplish our mission like soldiers.”
McLarty said, “You do know we got to kill them, don’t you?”
Pym said, “Maybe. We don’t have to do it now, though, do we?”
They stared at one another for a long time. Finally McLarty heaved a sigh. “Aw fuck,” he said. “Aw fuck, aw fuck.” There was something in his voice of the petulant child surrendering to his mother. He put the gun into Pym’s hand. “Just keep an eye on them, okay? Can you do that at least?”
“Yeah,” said Pym. “Let me know when you’re ready.”
He watched as McLarty took one of the lanterns and went out to the van. McLarty opened the front door and removed cans of spray paint. In the dim glow of the cabin light, Malcolm was able to make out an evil sight: two assault rifles were propped against the passenger seat side by side, twin promises of carnage.
“Jesus,” he breathed.
Pym watched McLarty go with no apparent interest and then nudged Janeka with his foot. “How’s he doing?” he asked.
“How do you think he’s doing?” she spat. Her eyes were glistening. “He needs a doctor. He needs a hospital.”
“That’s not going to happen,” said Pym.
He motioned to Amy with the pink pistol. “You get over here with these others, so I can see you,” he said. “Behave yourself and I won’t have to tie you up.” Amy did as she was told, taking a seat on the floor to Malcolm’s left, right at Bob’s feet. She did not speak. Terror had made her mute.
“What kind of man are you?” demanded Janeka, tears in her voice.
Pym grunted as he sat down at the table. “Right now, I’m a man who could use a beer,” he said.
“You know this is wrong,” said Malcolm. “Your friend out there might be crazy, but you’re not.”
Pym ignored him. He turned his back and started tapping on the computer keyboard until he had brought up the live stream from the conservative cable news channel. The handcuff key, noted Malcolm, was still on the table at his elbow. “America’s news,” Pym intoned with rich satisfaction, “unbiased and unafraid.” This was the news channel’s much-parodied slogan. “Unhinged and untrustworthy” would have been more accurate, in Malcolm’s view.
“Please,” said Janeka, her voice rough. “He’s going to die if he doesn’t get help soon. Please, sir. I don’t want him to die.”
Pym picked up the roll of duct tape and tossed it back to Janeka without looking. “Tape that tight over the wound,” he said. “Keep the pressure on. Might stop the bleeding.” He rummaged on the table and found the gauze he had meant to use to dress the wound on his face earlier that day, and the antiseptic he had sprayed onto it. “Use these,” he said, tossing it all over his shoulder as well. “Best I can do.”
Janeka picked these things up from the floor. “This is not good enough,” she said. “He didn’t cut his finger. He was shot.”
“It’s all you got,” said Pym. “Besides, Dwayne’s probably right. Probably have to kill all of you anyway before it’s done. I’m just too soft-hearted.”
“Your mother must be so proud,” said Malcolm.
Pym looked around. “You leave her out of this,” he said.
“Actually, she’s a nice lady.” Amy’s voice was soft. They looked toward her.
“She’s right.” Bob said this.
His voice was raspy and weak, but hearing it, Janeka laughed in happy surprise. “Bob?” she said. “Oh, thank God. Don’t try to talk.”
Bob shook his head. “She’s right,” he repeated. “You look at her, you look at this guy, and you wonder what happened. How did she give birth to this?”
“Bob, save your strength, honey.” Janeka was peeling tape off the roll with fresh energy. Unable to tear it with her hands, she used her teeth.
“Janeka,” he said, “there’s so much I need to tell you.”
She wouldn’t hear it. “Shush,” she said. “Tell me later. Tell me later.” Bob fell silent as Janeka opened his jacket and tore at his shirt to reach the wound in his side.
Amy spoke on, spoke over them, still marveling at the mystery of Pym’s mother. “You want her to be a monster,” she said in a soft, wondering voice. “After you see her son on the video? You expect that. But she’s not a monster. She’s this nice lady in this nice house who’s had a real hard time of it in her life, including marrying a couple of really shitty men and raising a son with special needs. But she persevered, you know? You have to admire that. She did everything she could for her boy. I felt sorry for her.”
Pym had been looking down at the live stream on the computer. Now he looked at Amy. She said, “When this comes out, it’s going to kill her. You realize that, don’t you? It’s just going to kill her.”
“You shut up talking about her,” said Pym. “I swear, you shut up about her or I’ll make you sorry.”
Amy fell quiet. There was silence then except for the tinny music from the laptop’s speakers. It was a fanfare of drums and horns and then, on the screen, the august, snowy-haired anchor, who had covered every presidential election since 1960, gave the latest results. As he intoned the name of each state, a white image of that state turned the appropriate color, pinwheeled three times, and then flew, trailing red, white, and blue stardust, to deposit itself in either of two columns: one on the left headed by a stern image of Barack Obama, the other on the right headed by a smiling John McCain. A counter directly beneath each man’s chin kept tally of his electoral total. Headlines of other news crept across the bottom of the screen just above a ticker that was at this moment announcing the Dow Jones industrial average had closed that day at 9,625.28. A station logo was in the bottom right corner.
It was a busy screen.
But when the states had finished their pinwheeling and flying to opposite corners trailing stardust the color of patriotism, it turned out that Connecticut, Delaware, Maine, Massachusetts, Maryland, New Jersey, and New Hampshire had all turned blue and placed themselves in the column headed by Obama. Oklahoma, Tennessee, West Virginia, and South Carolina had gone for McCain.
Out of nowhere, Pym rose from his chair, looming over Amy as redwoods loom over shrubs, his fists clenched, roaring at her. “You don’t know anything about it, do you hear?” It took Malcolm a moment to process this, to realize Pym was returning to the subject he had ordered Amy to abandon several minutes before, as if unable or unwilling to leave it alone. “Just because you talked to her for a few minutes, you think you know something about her or me? You think you know anything? You got a lot of nerve, you know that? Fuck you, lady. Fuck you!”
Amy cowered beneath the onslaught.
“Hey, look,” said Malcolm, feeling not unlike a man trying to lure a bad dog with a juicy steak, “there’s M.J. There’s Jordan.”
The election coverage had gone to a commercial break and on the screen Michael Jordan, tongue wagging behind him, was climbing through the air toward the basket in slow motion, bringing the ball down like a hammer on some backpedaling defender who looked as if he just wanted to get out of the way. Flashbulbs twinkled behind them like stars in the sky. In the voiceover, Jordan was saying something wise about the virtues of hard work and persistence. The logo of an athletic shoemaker came on the screen.
“Best there ever was,” said Malcolm, “best there ever will be.”
Pym’s glare was dull. “You’re just trying to change the subject,” he said. “You just want me to leave her alone.”
“Of course I do,” said Malcolm. “She doesn’t deserve you yelling at her just because she thinks your mother is a nice lady. You ought to take that as a compliment. Most people would.”
“I ain’t most people.”
“No, what you are is embarrassed,” said Malcolm. “You don’t like anyone to mention her because it reminds you that what you’re doing is not something that nice lady would approve. I bet you it would horrify her, wouldn’t it? I bet you you’re not the man she hoped you would be, are you? She raised you to be better than this, didn’t she? What would she think of you right now, Clarence?”
Pym shook his head. “You won’t let it go, will you? Always trying to get inside my head. Always trying to get a rise.”
“I just think you’re not nearly as stupid as you pretend to be,” said Malcolm.
“Not stupid at all.”
“Oh yeah? I got news for you, Clarence. Thinking you and that jumpy little meth head out there are superior human beings because your skin is white? That’s stupid. Thinking you’re going to get anywhere near that park? That’s stupid. Thinking you’re going to kill Obama? That’s really stupid. Thinking that two lone idiots constitute a militia? Stupid. Thinking you’re going to do anything except hurt a bunch of innocent people and then die for no reason? Supremely, incredibly stupid.”
“Shut up.”
“And the worst thing is, you know it. You know all of this without me even saying it. Because you’re right. You’re not really stupid at all. But you pretend to be. You let yourself be led by that loser out there even though you know it’s wrong, even though it’s useless, even though you know you’re smarter than he is. You’re better than he is.”
“I told you to shut up.”
“You smarter and you’re better,” repeated Malcolm.
“I said, ‘Shut up.’” Pym raised the gun.
“Go ahead,” said Malcolm. He lifted his chin. “Shoot me because you don’t have the guts to face the truth. Go ahead and do it. I don’t care. I’m sick of you. You’re a coward and a hypocrite. Go on, Clarence. Pull the trigger. You’d be doing me a favor.”
Pym pursed his lips. He looked confused.
Amy piped up in a trembling voice. “You know, your partner killed his family, probably with that gun. Bob climbed through the window. He saw their dead bodies.”
“You’re lying.” Pym glanced over at Amy, kept the gun trained on Malcolm.
“She’s…telling the…truth. I did climb in. I did…see.” Bob tried to say more. His face contorted in a spasm of pain and he fell silent.
“She is telling the truth,” said Janeka. “I know because I was there when he did it. It was when he was on the way here. He stopped by a house and he took me in there and he shot some guy. Then he went down a hallway and I heard a woman’s voice and two more gunshots. The house was on Winnebago Street. Is that where his mother lives? How would I know that if I wasn’t there?”
“You’re all lying. Just shut up! You hear me? Just shut up.”
He looked from one of them to the other. The gun had gone limp in his fist. “I don’t want to hear anything else out of any of you,” he said. “You’re lying.”
“No we’re not,” said Malcolm. He spoke with a cold resolve. “And you know that, too.”
Pym stared at Malcolm for a long moment. In the sudden silence, Malcolm heard the sound effect for a state pinwheeling and looked up to the screen in time to see Pennsylvania deposit itself in the column beneath the unsmiling Barack Obama. The Illinois senator had 80 electoral votes. His opponent had 39.
Pym turned his back on them. He laid the gun on the table within easy reach, sat down, and focused his attention on the news live-streaming to his computer. Malcolm could no longer see the screen—Pym’s bulk precluded this—but he could hear the states spinning and the white-haired anchor commiserating with conservative pundits who analyzed the developments in tones that could only be described as morose, if not downright funereal.
Bob’s breathing was labored and Malcolm wondered how much longer he could last. From overhead, the buzz of traffic from the highway drifted in. From outside, there came the hiss of an aerosol can as McLarty sprayed paint on the armor plating. He was idly humming a happy song.
Malcolm seethed with frustration. Pym was just sitting there, no gun in hand, his broad back unprotected. It wasn’t a good chance, but it was the best one they were ever likely to get. But Malcolm was chained, Janeka’s feet were bound, Bob was shot. The only one who had the opportunity to make some crazy, desperate play for freedom was Amy. A glance told Malcolm that was not going to happen. She sat on the floor with her knees under her chin, eyes seeing nothing, drawn up inside herself and shivering as if naked in a blizzard. She would not try anything.
“You really met my mother? You’re not just bullshitting?”
Pym spoke without moving. His voice surprised them. It seemed to issue from some desolate cave within him.
Amy glanced up, surprised to be addressed. “Yes,” she said. “She has a very nice house with flowers out front. She lives over on Baxter Street. All your school pictures are lined up on the mantel. Up above on the wall is a big portrait of you and her together. You don’t look too happy, but you can tell, Mrs. Funicelli really loves her son.”
Pym grunted. “Yeah,” he said. “Never did like taking pictures on account of my size.”
A silence intervened. Then he asked, still without moving, “You got any kids?”
“I have two,” said Amy. “Daughters. Cynthia and Ella.”
“You’re a good mother?”
“I try to be. Probably work too many hours.”
“You got a husband?”
“Anthony. He’s a corporate lawyer. Out of town on a business trip. Though I expect he’s probably rushing home right about now.”
Pym nodded. The silence fell again.
Janeka spoke. “What about you?” she asked. “Do you have any children?”
“I don’t want to talk anymore,” said Pym.
Janeka looked up at Malcolm. The whites of her eyes glistened in the shadows cast by the battery-operated lantern.
Time passed.
On the computer screen, the sound of states spinning and changing colors continued every so often, mixed with the drone of talking heads analyzing numbers. Janeka cooed softly to Bob, who drifted in and out of consciousness, occasionally grunting with pain. From the alleyway outside, McLarty continued to hum as he painted his armor and tinkered with his bomb.
Malcolm barely heard.
He closed his eyes. He hung his head.
He walked the streets of Memphis again, 20 years old again, angry again, crying “Black power!” again, a gun sitting heavy in his pocket again, just waiting for some cracker, some whitey, some honky, to give him an excuse to use it. He stared at them again, convinced again that they were fundamentally different from him and that whatever they had of humanity inside them was a flame too small, too flickering, too fleeting, to matter. He watched them watching him, seeing him but not seeing him at all, seeing him but really seeing whatever it was that came up in their minds when they plugged in the tape marked “nigger” and let it play. He watched them and knew that they were beyond redemption. And he was glad he had his gun.
This was the man he had been. But then life had happened, as life will.
And he had grown away from that rage, away from that unfocused fury toward a faceless them, had come to accept as true the old axiom that hatred corrodes the vessel that carries it, and this had made him a better man. He had seen 40 years pass and in those years, he had married and mourned a glorious woman, raised two children, and lived a celebrated life. Yet all of it had only brought him to last night, and to writing an angry column that said, “I am sick and tired of white folks’ bullshit.” He had announced that he had given up on the idea that white people might ever be redeemed. He had told America to go to hell. It was as if he had lived those 40 years thinking he was going forward, only to find he had simply traveled in a great wide gyre to become again that angry 20-year-old walking the streets, loaded and ready.
Malcolm’s disappointment with his own life was matched only by his sense of estrangement from American dreams.
Not only had he traveled 40 years to become again who he once was, but had not America done the very same thing? Look at all the young black men in jail or shot to death just for being black. Look at the poverty rate. Look at the unemployment rate. Look at the achievement gap. And look at these two, this ridiculous, delusional pair who fancied themselves an army of redemption, this raggedy little meth addict and his giant companion whose hatred, whose burning sense of birthright stolen, whose conviction that they had been done wrong by all the forces of history and change, was so palpable and deep they might as well have stepped into this warehouse straight out of 1953, 1921, or 1878. Looking at them, how could you believe time had passed? How could you believe progress—any progress—had been made?
So what good was any of it? What good were Malcolm’s years of writing columns, seeking by the force of his reason and the excellence of his words to cajole and convince white America? For that matter, what good were King’s speeches, what good was Malcolm X’s fire, what good were the NAACP’s court filings, what good were Jesse’s singsong rhymes or Stevie’s brotherhood songs, if at the end of it all, 40 years later, you wound up chained to a chair pleading for your life with a giant misanthrope who called you nigger in one breath and in the next cited to you events from the legend of Michael Jordan?
What good? What good? What damn good?
The question covered him like ground fog on tarmac. The realization did, too: Malcolm had wasted his life. It had all been for nothing.
“Looks like this is it.”
Pym’s voice tried to tug Malcolm up out of himself. He did not want to come. What was the use of opening his eyes only to bear witness to some new obscenity or insanity? What was the point of being in the world if the world was only going to shit on you and disappoint you and make you feel like a goddamn fool for ever having dreamed or believed? Malcolm did not want to open his eyes.
He opened them anyway.
Pym was standing, his hand cupping his mouth, calling to McLarty. “Dwayne, you might want to see this.”
A moment later, McLarty came in, wiping his greasy hands on a greasy rag. “What’s going on?” he said.
“They’re about to call the West Coast,” said Pym. “I think this is it.”
Malcolm looked at the screen. He blinked. He blinked again. Obama had 207 electoral votes, McCain, 135.
The white-haired anchor faced the camera. He looked drawn and sad, like a surgeon after a long night in the operating room about to tell a mother that her son has died on the table. “With results coming in from some key western states,” he said, “we are now ready to make a projection. Polls are closed now in California, Washington and Oregon and it appears—”
The screen went black.
The screen went black!
Malcolm caught himself straining toward the dead computer. “Fix it!” he told Pym.
“Battery died,” said Pym with a shrug.
The two of them stared at one another helplessly, silently.
Then Malcolm heard it. It was a sound so faint that at first he wasn’t even sure it was a sound, wasn’t sure it wasn’t just his mind playing tricks on his ears. Then he saw Amy’s eyes and Janeka’s eyes, saw Pym looking meaningfully at McLarty, and he knew they all heard it, too. Distant and dim but real, carrying across the night and through the door of the old warehouse.
A roar of delirious joy lifted from Grant Park.
In that moment, something rose inside Malcolm that he had not expected and could not name. Something proud. Something with gnarled roots and feathered wings. He felt unexpected tears massing behind his eyes. He felt the painful warmth of dawn breaking behind his sternum. He saw Janeka, tears wetting her face, put her forehead to Bob’s and whisper something Malcolm could not hear. From somewhere deep within the cavern of his own suffering, Bob smiled.
It had happened.
Holy hell, it had happened.
Barack Obama had won the election. Barack Obama was going to be president. Of the United States. A black man, president.
Holy hell.
“I guess that settles that,” said McLarty. “No turning back now. Time to do this time to do this time to do this. Go get the suits, Sergeant. Let’s get dressed. Let’s do this with style.”
Pym did as he was told, using his lantern to light his way to the other side of the cavernous room.
McLarty lifted his own lantern, casting harsh light upon his four captives. He grinned a malignant grin. “I guess you niggers and nigger-lovers are happy now. You got what you wanted. Your socialist nigger was elected. Old Hussein Obama goes up on the wall next to Ronald Reagan and all those other great men. Well, I wouldn’t celebrate too much if I was you. Because tonight is the night white Christian America finally wakes up and starts to take its country back.”
“Here’s your suit.” Pym had come up behind him. In one hand, he carried the two white suits in their clear plastic garment bags, in the other, the two top hats.
“Good job, Sergeant.” McLarty accepted the smaller bag and hat. “Let’s get dressed.”
“Where are we going to change?” asked Pym.
McLarty gave him a surprised look. “Right here, of course. Right here right here right here.”
“You mean, here…in front of…right where they can…?”
“Yeah. What do you expect? We’re going to go over there in the corner and give one of these bitches the chance to go running for help? ’Course, we wouldn’t even have that problem if I’d gone ahead and killed them like I wanted.”
Pym was still hesitant. “What about if I go over in that corner behind those pallets and change first while you watch the prisoners, and then you can—”
“We don’t have time for your bashfulness, Sergeant. We’ve got a timetable here. Ol’ Barry Hussein Soetoro is probably already on his way to the park. Let’s go let’s go let’s go.”
Pym gazed around him with the glassy eyes of a man trapped inside his own nightmare. Malcolm had the sense he wanted to run. There was a moment when he thought the big man might do it. Instead, Pym dutifully unzipped his garment bag and pulled out the white suit. McLarty did the same.
The smaller man was quick and matter of fact about it, stripping out of his windbreaker and jeans down to his tighty whities, which were in fact not tight, but sagged on his bony, drug-withered frame. His movements brisk and businesslike, he stepped into the pants, pulled on the shirt—his filthy hands left black smudges on each—fastened the cummerbund, and fixed the clip-on bowtie.
Pym, by contrast, stood there for a long moment with his great head falling almost to his chest, his eyes downcast. He didn’t begin tugging at his T-shirt until McLarty was mostly dressed. The little man stood there tapping his foot to show his impatience, but Pym would not be rushed. He peeled off the T-shirt as if he were peeling back his own skin. Malcolm wondered if Clarence Pym had ever undressed in front of another human being before.
Then the shirt came over his head and Malcolm saw. Pym’s flesh dripped off him like wax from a burning candle. It tumbled down, hanging in great rolls, creasing itself in deep crevices. There was simply too much of him, a fact of which Pym, with his dazed face and slow movement, seemed freshly and painfully aware as he stripped in front of these strangers. Slowly, he pulled down his pants to reveal the red boxer shorts hanging like a flag from his massive behind.
“Come on come on come on!” snapped McLarty.
Still Pym ignored him. With the same dazed and deliberate movements, he pulled on his tuxedo shirt. His hands were so big he fumbled with the buttons, but eventually, he managed. He pulled on the pants next, got them zipped, sat down and stuffed his feet into patent leather shoes the color of snow. With slow, awkward hands, he clipped on the bowtie. Finally, he shrugged on the coat. Then he stood next to McLarty, his head still down. “About time,” McLarty said. “About time about time.”
McLarty donned his top hat. Pym followed suit. McLarty tipped his hat to the side. “Well, how do we look?” he asked Malcolm brightly.
They looked ridiculous. Pym, in particular. He looked like a sad polar bear in a top hat. But for some reason, Malcolm could not make himself say that. He settled for saying, “You look like you’re going to the prom.”
“Didn’t go to no prom,” said Pym in a baleful voice. “But you probably already guessed that.”
“I wasn’t trying to insult you,” said Malcolm.
“What the fuck do I care what you were trying to do?” said Pym. “You think I give a shit what you think?” But his eyes carried wounds.
“Come on,” said McLarty, speaking to Pym but looking at Malcolm, “let’s get him hitched up to the front of the van. I’ll get the ordnance. You bring the prisoner. When we get him hitched up, then I’ll come back and take care of these others.”
“I don’t want to kill them,” said Pym. “This guy, he’s enough.”
McLarty’s eyes were windows of his disgust. “Goddamn it,” he said. “I knew you were going to do that. I knew it I knew it I knew it.”
Pym’s head was still a weight, sitting heavily upon his chest. “Let’s just leave them here, Dwayne,” he said. “The white woman there, she’s got kids. And the other guy, he’s already been shot. He probably won’t live anyway.”
“You know, Clarence, I was afraid you were going to pull some shit like this. Here we have a chance to really make a mark, really do this with some style, and you’re too fucking pansy to go through with it. What we do right here, this could ignite a movement.”
“I don’t want to hurt them is all,” mumbled Pym. “I don’t see the reason.”
“The reason is because I say so, dummy!”
Pym’s head came up. “Don’t call me that, Dwayne.” He was no longer mumbling.
“What else can I call you? What else what else what else? You’re worried about killing three people? If this mission goes like we plan, we’ll kill 300. Maybe even 3,000!”
“Yeah, but we won’t see any of those people. It’s different. These guys, it’s more…personal.”
“Personal? Personal? Personal? That’s the stupidest thing I’ve ever heard. It’s always personal when you kill somebody, Sergeant. You can damn well bet it’s personal to them if nobody else!”
He paused, disgust blowing out of him in great angry gusts. Finally, he said, “Okay, you don’t want to lay a hand on the other three, fine. Can we at least take care of this guy?” He thrust an index finger toward Malcolm. “That’s what we got him for, isn’t it? Can we at least do that? Or is that also too much for your poor tender conscience?”
Pym shrugged. “I guess we can do that,” he said.
“Well, halle-fucking-lujah,” said McLarty. “Bring the prisoner. I’ll get the ordnance.”
McLarty went to the van to retrieve the guns. Pym snatched the pink pistol from the table where he had laid it while pulling off his T-shirt. He also picked up the handcuff key. He handed that to Amy, waving her over to Malcolm with the pistol. “Let him loose,” he said.
Amy rose to do as she was told. With a crisp click, the cuffs around Malcolm’s ankle sprang open. Then the cuffs around his wrists did the same. Malcolm ached in too many places to count. His joints were solid like something forgotten in the back of the freezer. He could barely make himself move.
“You.” Pym was pointing one thick finger at Amy. “You wait until we’re gone, you hear? Then you can leave and call for help. But you don’t move til we’re gone. You understand that?”
Amy nodded briskly.
“Don’t do this,” Janeka pleaded. “Those people in that park, they’ve done nothing to you.”
Pym wasn’t listening. He looked down at Bob. “Hope he makes it,” he said. “That’s a hell of a thing he did, finding us here when even the cops couldn’t. He must really like you.”
Then Pym’s attention turned to Malcolm. “Get up,” he said.
“Hold on,” said Malcolm. “I can barely move.”
“Oh, and I guess I’m supposed to come over there and help you and you’re going to jump out of that chair and stick a thumb in my eye. Is that how you’ve got it planned?”
“No, I…”
Pym swung the pistol around. “Get up,” he said. “Don’t make me tell you twice.”
Malcolm put both hands on the chair and pushed. It was agony. He came off the chair slowly, joints and tendons screaming curses and protests. With an effort, he stood upright.
Pym motioned with the gun. “Walk,” he said.
Malcolm complied as best he could, his gait shuffling and slow, favoring his right leg. Behind him, he could hear Amy crying. Ahead of him, he saw the little meth freak standing at the door, an assault rifle in each hand, grinning his maniac’s grin.
Malcolm went back to Memphis. He went back to the balcony of the Lorraine Motel. Martin Luther King stood there in the gathering twilight, feeling pretty good for a change, bantering with his men, getting ready to go to dinner, sensing Malcolm coming up on his left, about to turn and smile in greeting. And across the street, the window opens. And Malcolm sees it, sees the snout of that rifle, that Remington Gamemaster 760, poking through.
And in the very instant of his seeing it, there is a bang and a 30.06 bullet, a bullet with enough stopping power to fell a buck dead in its tracks, strikes King on the right side of his face and he drops like a sack of flour and gore flies up and paints the overhang of the balcony and everybody ducks and Malcolm just stands there impotent, useless, and pathetic.
For 40 years, that failure had been with him. He had never told anyone, he had sought no psychiatric help, he had said nothing. He had simply lived with it, this secret shame that haunted his dreams, the knowledge that he had seen, yet done nothing.
Not again. Not this time.
He might die tonight—no, he almost certainly would die tonight—but he would not just allow the thing to happen in front of him while he failed to act. Not again. That much, he swore.
Malcolm knew that whatever it was he did, he had to do it now, while he was still free. Once they chained him to the hood of the van, he wouldn’t have a chance.
But what?
He thought of all the hours of television he had watched as a boy and a young man, all the times he had seen the likes of Joe Mannix and Little Joe Cartwright move like lightning and disarm men who had the drop on them, knock the gun away in one quick motion, deliver a solid haymaker in the next. But that was television and besides, after having his car rear-ended this morning, after sitting in that chair for 16 hours, after blowing out candles on his sixtieth birthday cake, Malcolm knew one thing for sure: there was no lightning caged in his bones.
But he had to do something. He couldn’t not do something. Not again.
Think. Think.
He was struck by the sheer ridiculousness of what he was demanding of himself. He was no action hero. Indeed, as a man who spent his days crafting arguments on a computer screen, he was about as far from an action hero as it was possible to get. All day, he had tried to use the skills he did have to move Pym, had tried to use logic and provocation to persuade this strange and somehow tragic man to see what he refused to see, but that had netted him nothing. Pym refused to see, refused to be moved. So Malcolm’s options had come down, absurdly, to trying to think of what Joe Mannix might do in his place.
Malcolm went through the door, hands held high. Behind him, McLarty handed one of the assault rifles to Pym, who slung it over his shoulder.
Malcolm took inventory, tried to see everything, to view it the way an action hero would. There had to be something here that could help him. He felt the pistol poking him in the back and realized he had stopped just outside the door.
He walked around toward the back of the van. Except that it wasn’t a van anymore. It was a tank, its every surface and window covered with armor plating. The plating had even reduced the windshield to a mere slit of glass. Neon hate slogans festooned its sides.
WHITE AND PROUD!
NOBAMA!
WHITE AMERICA, RISE!
One of the panels carried a crude rendering of the Confederate battle flag. “She’s a beauty, ain’t she?” McLarty had come up on his side.
Malcolm did not speak.
Think. Think.
Now he stood behind the van, the back door of which still hung open. The back seats were gone. The cargo area was filled with two rows of barrels, linked by a profusion of wires running across the floor. This, Malcolm supposed, was the bomb.
McLarty had pulled the van up into a narrow alley closed off at the front. In that tight space, the doors to the cab could not be opened wide enough to accommodate someone of Pym’s size. And the sliding door could not be opened, covered as it was with armor plating. Pym would have to climb in through the back, between the drums that constituted their bomb. And they would have to pull the van out into the open space on the other side of the warehouse if they intended to chain Malcolm to the grill.
They seemed to realize this at the same time Malcolm did. They looked at each other. McLarty shrugged. “Didn’t think about that,” he said. “Go on and climb in. I’ll watch this guy.”
Pym nodded. He pocketed the little pistol and began to shrug the assault rifle higher on his shoulder as he braced to climb into the van.
Now.
The thought and the action were simultaneous. Malcolm jabbed his elbow into Pym’s side. It didn’t hurt him much, but it surprised him. His hands went automatically to his stomach. Malcolm yanked at the rifle. The gun slid free.
Somewhere, Malcolm had seen—maybe he read it, maybe he saw it on television—that Timothy McVeigh had had a failsafe for his terrible device. There were multiple fuses, but in the event they failed, there was also some sort of contraption—a blasting cap, Malcolm supposed it was called—that could go off with the impact of a bullet and set off the unholy bomb. These two had aped that Opie-faced killer in so many other ways; Malcolm prayed to God they had also aped him in this. He lifted the rifle toward the rear of the van and pulled the trigger.
Nothing happened.
He pulled the trigger harder.
Nothing happened again.
Then Malcolm was on the ground, his skull throbbing from the impact of a rifle butt. McLarty, who had hit him, didn’t even look at Malcolm beyond the instant it took him to snatch the rifle back and thrust it at Pym.
“How fucking stupid are you, Sergeant? What kind of soldier are you, you can’t even keep hands on your own fucking gun?”
He smacked Pym on the back of the head with his open palm.
“You fucking idiot! Do you realize what almost happened here because of your carelessness?”
“What the hell, Dwayne?” Pym stared incredulously at the smaller man.
McLarty reached up and smacked Pym again on the back of the head. “Fuck fuck fuck, Clarence!” he snarled. Dwayne McLarty had become something…feral.
“Ow!” cried Clarence. “Dwayne, I told you not to hit me any—
McLarty cut him off by hitting him. And this time, McLarty smacked Pym hard enough that the big man hunched his head and bent double. When he did, his eyes met Malcolm’s. It was like looking into a cauldron. Rage burned there. Hatred burned there. Shame burned there. And hurt—years and years of hurt—burned there, too.
McLarty screamed. “Goddamnit, Sergeant!”
Pym’s burning eyes met Malcolm’s. Malcolm said, “What will your mother think, Clarence?”
He might have said more, but all at once, Pym was roaring like some wounded beast and bringing the rifle up. Malcolm closed his eyes and cringed, wondering how bad it would hurt, wondering if he would hear the shots.
But all he heard was the voice of Clarence Pym. It said, very clearly, “I’d run if I was you.”
Malcolm opened his eyes. He saw Pym flip the safety selector on the AK-47 to fire mode.
Oh, shit.
Malcolm was coming to his feet as Pym was straightening up. Malcolm was running as Pym faced the bomb inside the van. Behind him, McLarty screamed, “No no no!”
Malcolm ran.
The rifle chattered.
The van exploded.