why Sam had seemed reluctant to talk about it.
But what were they getting in return? It didn’t have to be anything very much. Most of the people I’d seen so far struck me as classic high school dropouts. Nevertheless, Sam had to be offering them something they felt they couldn’t get anywhere else, the way they were treating him. Even if it hadn’t been for Andrea, I think I would have stayed just out of curiosity, to find out what it was.
At that point, of course, I still thought I had a choice.
11
The moment Russell Crosby saw the venue, he knew it was going to be OK. This was Russ’s third time. By now he had a feel for these things.
It was a one-story frame house with a deep veranda located on a backstreet a couple of miles south of the city center, in an area called Pittsburgh. The main drag was called McDaniel, which ran all the way up to Peachtree. The time he went to scope it out, Russ got off the bus at the next neighborhood up, Mechanicsville.
Russell had grown up in rural Washington, and had never actually seen a black person except on TV until he was fifteen and went into Seattle with some buddies. Even now, twenty years later, he had hardly had any dealings with them, good or bad. Nevertheless, the idea of going into a black neighborhood terrified him. Blacks were tough and proud and mean and
But above all what scared him was the question of visibility. Russell knew he shouldn’t be thinking this way, as though something other than God’s will might be done. That was heresy. But looking at it from a strictly practical point of view, the success of the operations they had undertaken so far depended to a large extent on a profile so low as to be invisible. They came and went virtually unseen by anyone other than their victims. No one else noticed them at the time, and there was no one left to remember them afterward. But Russell knew that no white person could be invisible in a place like Mechanicsville. It didn’t matter that people had never seen you before and would never see you again. They already knew you. You were the enemy. There was nowhere you could go without being watched, nothing you could do without it being an object of interest.
So Pittsburgh came as a big relief. It was predominantly black, but with a way different feel, an old-fashioned neighborhood with a certain battered charm and a lush, green look which was almost rural. On McDaniel there were a couple of jerry-built food stores with heavy wire mesh over the windows. There were no national franchises at this end of town, no big-name brands or fancy advertising. Handwritten posters spelled out the price of fatback and beer and beans. There were also two places of worship, the Freedom Holiness Church of God in Christ and the African Methodist Free Church of Full Gospel.
That was down in the valley, on the flat. On either side, the cross-streets ran steeply up, the blacktop pitted with cracks and potholes. The houses were all small, a few barely more than shacks. All were of wood, some of it unpainted. Most had big porches with beat-up chairs set out and screens to keep out the bugs. But the basic look was country: mature trees laden with an abundance of verdure, gauds of foliage spilling out and over every surface, explosions of crepe myrtle, nature gone nuclear. A pall of kudzu vine had transformed some of the lower trees and shrubs into fantastic shapes, castles and monsters.
Kids of all ages were running loose in the street. A skinny old black guy with braces and a cane stopped to chat with a white-trash mother who had three children in a stroller built for one. A real sharp dude in a powder-blue suit with a purple shirt and white slip-on shoes was having a loud argument with a spectacular woman with a peach-shaped ass sheathed in a tight white dress which showed the outline of her panties. Behind a picket fence, two toddlers played in the copper-red earth.
Russ moseyed around a little, just to get the general feel, then walked down Carson Street itself, just once, and caught the bus back into town. He’d seen enough to know that it was going to be OK as far as the location was concerned. But that was only one of his worries. The other was his partner.
It was a big honor, of course, being the one chosen to handle this difficult assignment. By rights, Andy should have come, but after what happened with Dale his nerves were understandably shot. In the end, Rick had proposed Russell. He’d accepted, but with a heavy heart, because he knew that the subject of the initiation was Pat. The problem wasn’t just that Pat’d been born in the South, which meant blacks. The problem was Pat himself.
Any doubts he might have had about that were erased when he went down to the Greyhound station on International Boulevard to meet Pat off the bus from St. Louis, and the jerk had walked down the steps practically arm-in-arm with some babe he’d picked up. Russell hadn’t made the mistake of saying anything then, of course. He’d just strolled across as though heading for another bus himself, barged into Pat and slipped a business card into his hand. The card was from a motel on Ponce de Leon, a short walk from the hotel where he himself was staying. On the back of the card, Russell had drawn a map showing how to get there from the bus station.
The idea was that Pat should go straight to the motel, check in and wait for Russell to call him. Instead, the stupid ditz hung around the Greyhound station for about ten minutes while the girl worked the pay phone, and then they both went inside and sat there for another half hour over a couple of shakes. Next thing, they started sucking face across the table with a fervor that got noticed by plenty of people besides Russ. “Hey, get a room!” someone murmured. The young lovers were still at it when the waitress came up and said something to them. Pat threw a bill on the table and they headed outside, climbed into a cab and drove off together.
Russell would have aborted the whole operation there and then, except that he was worried about the effect that two fuckups in a row might have on morale. If people got the idea that they were on a losing streak, it would get harder and harder to turn the thing around. His next thought was to bone Pat in the ear but good when he called the motel later, but he thought better of that too. Pat’s breach of discipline had been so serious that it had to be dealt with face to face. He didn’t say a word about it on the phone, just set up the meeting for that evening and then headed off to check out the target.
Russell had chosen the location for the meeting with care. It was right downtown, just east of Five Points, a big chain pizza house with seating for over a hundred on two levels. In the early evening, the place was pretty busy with a youngish crowd that they’d fit right into. Turnover was fast, service impersonal. He got to the place early, found a table in a corner and ordered a slice of pizza and a coffee. He’d finished both and accepted a refill before Pat showed, twenty minutes late.
“Kind of got lost,” he said by way of greeting. “Went the wrong way on the subway, ended up in some suburb way to hell up north.”
Pat looked like a male hooker in his battered leather jacket, tight jeans and a huge Western-style belt. When the waitress came around, he ordered a whole pizza with pepperoni, double cheese and extra anchovies, plus a side of rings, a large Coke and a Caesar. Maxed-out as she was, that got her attention.
“That supper just for you, honey, or should I fix a plate for your friend?”
“I’m OK,” said Russell quickly.
“He could use a little meat on his bones at that,” said the waitress, glancing at Pat’s skinny torso.
When she’d gone, Russell gave Pat a cold, hard look.
“You’re something else, you know that? We can’t even go to a fucking pizza house without you coming on like the most unforgettable person anyone’s ever met!”
Russ expected Pat to be crushed by this. Instead, he looked offended.
“Hey, what’s the problem? I’m hungry, OK?”
“I bet! You’ve been up all night slamming body with that ’ho you snared on the bus, right?”
Pat tried to speak, but Russell overrode him.
“You know the rules! No contact beyond what’s absolutely necessary. I took Andy to Kansas, we spoke maybe ten words to anyone the whole time we were out! But you? You meet some fresh nugs on the road, next thing you’re swapping spit in the middle of a crowded bus station! Then you take off in a cab together, and now
