One of the orange vests looked over at us as the other two stopped with their brushes.
My friend motioned him over with two jerks of his cupped hand. To me, he said, 'Stay here and talk to him. I wanna spend some time with my guys.'
'Right. Thanks.'
Yary drew even with the foreman about forty feet from me and tried to ask him a question. The foreman just stayed in stride and walked on by.
Yary continued to me, the hardhat jiggling askew on the shaved head. He slowed before stopping about five feet away and reflexively touched a hand to his ear. 'I don't have to talk to you.'
'Monday night you sounded like all you wanted to do is talk.'
'I would have. Till you and the nigger cops and kike money-changers – '
'Tell you what, Yary. You stop the slurs, and I won't fracture your skull. What do you say?'
He kept his distance. 'Go ahead.'
'What brought you to the library?'
'A bus. It was real big, see? With seats and windows and everything. '
I shook my head and sighed. 'The foreman said he'd look the other way if I needed to get rough with you.'
'You can't do that. You'd lose your license or whatever.'
I sidled a little closer to Yary. He thought about backing off before deciding he couldn't and keep face.
'Just had a talk with a couple of the boys at the clubhouse.'
Yary didn't reply.
'You know, Gun. Rick and Tone? They said to give you their best.'
'How do you…' Yary squinted, then jammed his hands in his pockets, suddenly looking very young.
'They told me where you were, Gun. After a while.'
'Look, I don't want no trouble from you.'
'Little late for that.'
'You don't understand. None of you understand us, the Trust, the Movement. We're just trying to get back what's ours, that's all. What the race mixers… what the government's let the others take away. One thing I learned from that, from Martin Luther King and Jesse Jackson and their kind. You can win in this country if you just keep talking, just keep in people's faces so they can't believe that you're still around, bothering them, making them face what the truth is. About how everything's been taken away from people who earned it by people who didn't. Once I chased this big nig-once I purified the crew here, one of them started listening to me.
Hearing what I was saying.'
'Why did you go to the debate?'
'To get some publicity, man. Free publicity. But even the TV and radio don't care about Andrus and her 'friends.' They're shoveling all this shit about the right to die. That's not the point, don't you see it? It ain't the right to die we got to worry about. It's the right to live, to take back what's ours from them that took it from us.'
'You don't see Andrus and her crowd as a threat, then.'
'Threat? Threat, shit no. Those assholes are just a distraction, get it? They're just being used to get attention for issues that don't mean shit so the real issues, the raping of our people by the others, don't get settled.'
Watching Yary talk, become animated and sincere, I decided he scared me more than Rick with his automatic.
Finally, Yary said, 'So what do you think?'
'What do I think?'
'Yeah. About the Trust, the Movement.'
'I think from your rap sheet that you're not as nonviolent as you make out.'
'That was then, man. This is now, you know? I learned my lesson, learned it real good. Now I'm into friendly persuasion.'
'I think Rick and the others are thinking about taking the Trust in a different direction.'
Yary clouded over. 'The fuck you telling me?'
'When I visited the old clubhouse today, I got an armed response.'
'Armed? With what?'
'A Colt forty-five.'
'I don't believe it. I don't fucking believe it.'
'Yes you do. You just don't want to admit it.'
'They wouldn't do that. They're not that stupid.'
'They're that stupid, Gun. Stupid and impatient. Not everybody's interested in waiting out the revolution.'
Yary started to tell me how it wasn't a revolution, but just the people taking back what was theirs. I cut him off by walking over to the foreman, who had started toward us.
The foreman said hopefully, 'He giving you any trouble?'
'Sorry. Model prisoner.'
'Shit.'
'Thanks for letting me take him for a while.'
'Take him forever, you want to.'
Yary walked by us, eyes straight ahead. As he rejoined the crew, he said something and laughed. One guy paid no attention, but the other laughed too. With Yary, not at him.
The foreman said to me, 'Fucking judges, make me feel like shit,' and spat over the railing.
21
'MERRY CHRISTMAS, JOHN.'
Nancy had put on a fuzzy mauve robe before she'd gone into her kitchen. Now she was at the side of the bed, holding a carrying tray in front of her, steam rising from coffee cake and ceramic mugs.
'What's in the mugs?'
'Your leftover cider concoction. Waste not, want not.'
I'd mulled the cider, with cinnamon sticks and orange sections, the night before as Nancy made popcorn and strung the product on threads like a rosary, whole cranberries playing the Our Fathers. After lacing the cider with bourbon, we'd looped the strings of popcorn and cranberries over lights and ornaments on the short, full spruce tree we'd spent a cold hour selecting at a Lions' Club lot in Brighton. Shopping for the tree reminded me that I had to act on Bo's advice regarding a Gore-Tex running suit. Late December was feeling more and more like the tundra time of February.
I hadn't seen Bo for a week or so, but I'd been training religiously without him. Following my talk with Gunther Yary, the case for Maisy Andrus had slowed down, as some cases will. After checking to make sure all the people she'd offended were staying home for the holidays, I'd contracted out to another investigator who needed someone to spell his people on an extended surveillance. I did stay in touch with Ines Roja by telephone, me confirming there were no further notes, she advising that the professor and Tucker Hebert sounded happy and relaxed on Sint Maarten the two times she'd heard from them. Andrus wanted to meet with me when they got back, Ines and I agreeing on a breakfast conference for January 18. Around bites, Nancy said, 'You realize this is the best Christmas I can remember?'
She snuggled close enough for me to inhale the herbal shampoo still clinging to the roots of her hair. After decorating the tree, we'd agreed to exchange gifts in the morning and slipped into bed, making slow, drowsy love as the lights twinkled five colors in computer-chip sequence.
'Where are my presents?'
Nancy took another gulp of cider. 'Under the tree, junior.'
'I want my presents.'
'And here I thought you were finally showing the patience maturity is supposed to bring.'
'I want my presents now.'
'Okay, okay. Smallest to largest?'
