“Yet I fear a backlash. Just look at what happened to those prosperous blacks in Tulsa not too long ago.”
He turned toward her, his hand on her knee. “Don’t you see, my sweet? All the more reason this object from the heavens, sent to us by the god force you and I know oversees our lives, is meant to be the way in which we might well make millions…monies we can well use for any number of enterprises for the advancement of the negro people.”
His hand moved upward, massaging her inner thigh.
She moaned slightly but caught herself from being carried away by desire. “Then it might be harnessed for destructive purposes.”
“Only if it falls into the wrong hands. Between us and Queenie, we won’t let that happen. Yes, she is about fattening her pockets, but she is sincere about our improvement. Both can be accomplished.”
“This is so damn dangerous.”
He smiled, his hand moving further up without interference. “And exciting.”
McNair sat back, Toliver’s hand now between her legs. “Yes,” she murmured.
The moon continued to beam down on them.
CHAPTER THIRTEEN
Bessie Coleman brought the bi-plane in low over the parkland in Poughkeepsie. The morning sun ascended in the horizon. “We might be waking up some of the swells,” she said to Henson, who sat in the seat behind her. “They don’t have to roll out of the sack to make it to the assembly line like us proletarians you know.”
“Yeah, well, too much sleep is bad for you,” he cracked.
“How about I swing over those big houses over there?” she said above the roar of the propeller and engine. The plane was a WWI-era British made Bristol and had seen better days. It had been borrowed from a friend of hers, a one-legged air jockey named Bull Hogan. Patches and sewn up sections predominated its canvas skin. But Coleman’s confidence in the machine remaining aloft had buoyed Henson, and off they’d gone from an airfield about 100 miles away.
They had been reconnoitering the area for nearly half an hour. Henson had seen one house with stained-glass windows, but knew from Ellsmere the house was three stories and this one was only two.
“Hey, just beyond those trees,” he said, pointing in the direction he meant.
“Okay.” A three-story Gothic Revival with turrets and gables came into view. A row of rectangular religious-themed stained-glass windows framed the second story of the mansion.
“I think that’s John the Baptist’s head on a plate in the middle,” Coleman observed.
“Yeah,” he said, hauntingly recalling his stepmother Nelle reciting Bible verses as she beat the hell out of him and his sisters. He shook it off. “Anyplace to set down?”
“Well,” she drawled, “there is that bridge. Looks sturdy enough and plenty long enough.”
“Girl, you done gone simple? What about the traffic?”
“They’d clear out when they see me coming.” She half-turned her head to grin at him.
“And when the police come, what then? Even if we’re not near the plane, they’ll confiscate this relic.”
They were following the ribbon of the Hudson when they both saw their possible solution below atop a rise of land off the river.
“Looks like it used to be a paper mill,” Coleman said.
“Whale rendering was big around here once upon a time, too,” Henson said, not sure why he should recall that bit of history or how he knew it. Numerous windows in the abandoned plant had been busted out and the doors boarded over. There was a good sized paved lot that must have been used for trucks hauling away loads of paper.
“Is that going to be long enough?” Henson wondered aloud, referring to the lot.
“Son, I can put this thing down on the head of an anteater.” Coleman banked the plane and took a pass over the plant, evidently calculating the lot’s length. She circled back and, cutting the engine speed, brought the craft down quickly, Henson’s stomach suddenly in his throat. But she got them on the ground and taxied to a stop with room to spare ahead of the main building.
They got out. Cars passed by on the highway, but a plane landing at an abandoned factory didn’t garner that much attention. Maybe the motorists thought this was some financier come to inspect his new property. With their leather helmets and goggles on, from a distance, you couldn’t tell they were black—that might have been seen as an anomaly. Dressed in plain clothes, Coleman in khakis like Henson, the two made their way back to the mansion. Passing others on the street, both were pleased they were unmolested.
“Guess they figure we’re the help what with these big houses around,” Henson said to her.
“And it don’t hurt we’ve seen a few of us colored out and about,” the aviatrix noted.
“There is that,” he replied dryly.
The house in question sat on a leafy hillock at the end of what would be considered more of a lane than a street. This, too, coincided with what Henrik Ellsmere had told Henson.
“Let’s check out the garage first.”
“Right.”
The way the house was constructed, partially into the hill itself, the three-car garage was on level ground with earth and greenery over that. Creeper vines hung over the tops of the segmented doors. Each garage door had its own window set in the middle. Henson and Coleman, both on tip-toe, looked into each one.
“No cars,” Coleman said.
Henson remarked, “Did they clear out after the professor escaped? Hedging he might bring the law back?”
“Or this joint isn’t populated most of the time, anyway.”
Henson nodded, pointing toward the house. “One way to find out.”
To the side of the garage was a winding set of concrete steps. They took these up through shrubbery on either side at intervals which brought them to a portico and the expanse of the porch.
“The gardening
