I held it up. 'This Emerson?'
She nodded.
I popped the picture out of the frame. 'Fix it,' I told Clarence. His razor sliced surgically, leaving me just the man's photo. I slipped it into my pocket.
'What gonna happen to me?' the woman asked.
'Nothing. You're okay.'
'I'm pregnant, mistah,' she said as we stepped out the door.
29
We exited the hotel into a blanket of misty rain. Clarence started to cross the street. I patted his arm to halt him.
'The car's over there, mahn.'
'Emerson didn't have a car.'
'So what we do?'
'What he did. Come on.'
30
We walked down the block, heading for the lights of La Guardia Airport to the north. Pitch dark now, but the block was choked with humans. Wheeling, dealing, stealing.
'Too many eyes,' I said to myself. We crossed the service road— stood on the other side. To our left, the bridge to the airport. A deep ravine underneath, cut down the middle by the Grand Central Parkway.
'Let's try down there,' I told Clarence.
We stepped in carefully. The underbrush was so thick you couldn't see the ground. We worked our way downhill. I spotted a refrigerator crate lying on its side against a tree, motioned Clarence to be quiet. A man crawled out of the crate, shuffled off into the darkness. We followed a narrow dirt trail toward the highway. On both sides, humans. A whole colony of homeless, living in the jungle. I could feel the watching. No way Emerson buried a baby here without being seen.
We reached the highway, turned left, in the direction of Manhattan. Cars shot by only a couple of dozen feet away— we were invisible.
'How we gonna find anything out here, mahn?'
'Keep quiet, Clarence. Let me work.'
The monster's work. Being him. He didn't have a car. He had a body. He didn't have time.
Feeling my way.
Moonlight glinted on tree branches. Taking me back to the jungle in Biafra a long time ago. This time, hunting. Then, I was the prey.
Voices. Chanting sound from above us, high on the rise. We started up the hill. I looked back at Clarence— the pistol was in his hand, face set.
We stepped into a clearing. The moonlight slanted, pulling my eyes to a gnarled tree growing on a sharp angle out of the sloping ground. Something…I looked closer. Suspended from a rope, a leather bag, maybe two feet long, banana-shaped. The seam was closed with heavy stitches, crosshatched with long pins, pearly red and white heads in an alternating pattern. The bag swung gently in the night, like a lynched man. I felt the fear imploding in my gut. My hands shook.
Clarence saw it too. 'Juju,' he whispered. 'Very bad, mahn. This is an evil place.'
We skirted the tree, climbing toward the top. The chanting came closer. Then we saw them. A phalanx of black males, standing in a wedge formation. Wearing long white shirts with little round collars, black pants. Looking out over the rise, the leather bag swinging down below them. Clarence raised the pistol, sighting in.
I whispered, 'No!' Tugged at his sleeve, pointing to our right. He shuddered, his whole body shaking.
I took the lead. We worked our way about another quarter mile in the direction I'd pointed, climbed down to the highway.
'He couldn't go that way,' I said, pointing back to where the chanters worshiped the leather bag. 'We've got to cross the road. Ready?'
Clarence nodded. We waited for a break in traffic. Made a dash for it. Waited on the highway divider for another break, charged across to the other side.
We skirted the airport, the giant planes fog-shrouded, only their lights visible, following the chain link fence. No place to hide a body. We came to a residential block running parallel to the airport. Turned right.
'What you looking for now, mahn?'
'Water,' I told him. Thinking back to prison. Watching and learning. Studying the freaks. They're always magneted to water. I remember asking the Prof about it, one cold day on the yard, trying conversation to keep warm.
'How come the skinners always work near water, Prof?'
'It's astrology, schoolboy. The stars in the sky never tell a lie— you know what they say, you can find your way.
'Astrology is bullshit.'
'No, bro', here's what I know. The true clue— the real deal. Inside, a man's not blood, he's water. That's what we are, mostly water. The moon pulls the water, the tide takes the ride. Same moon pulls on us.'
