Underground Airlines(23)
They had found a speech in his pocket, sticky with blood, the address he had planned to give that fateful morning, February 12, before the pistol shot laid him low. Secretary Seward read it aloud to Congress, and they wept—even the Confederates wept—when Seward got to the words I traced now with my forefinger, words chiseled into the stone at the base of the statue. I HOPE THAT WE MAY MEET AGAIN UNDER ONE FLAG OF UNION.
What emerged from that fraught session of Congress, in the spring of 1861, was a revised version of Senator Crittenden’s complicated compromise, one of the last-ditch failed union-saving efforts from the year before, seen in fresh light and taken up with fresh energy, while the new Confederate government was suspended, then abandoned.
Six amendments and four resolutions, preserving slavery where it was, preventing its extension elsewhere; balancing northern sentiment and southern interest, northern principles and southern economic welfare. And the clincher, inscribed here in marble as it is inscribed in the Constitution: the Eighteenth Amendment, making the whole rest of them permanent and everlasting. Eternal compromise. The great legislative Hail Mary: No future amendment of the Constitution shall affect the five preceding articles…
I read it in Lincoln’s shadow that early morning, and it seemed as it always did to me: impossible, illegal—childish, even, like the child who wishes for infinite wishes. And yet it has worked, so far. It has held.
Cook yawned. The nurses came out of the Starbucks, chatting happily, steam rising from their cup lids. I craned my neck and stared up at him, at Old Abe, Honest Abe, Abraham the Martyr. Big hands palms up, long fingers outstretched, his homely features solemn and beatified, looking south down Meridian Street.
“You see how they posed him, looking down the street? That’s where the hotel was.” Willie Cook pointed south on Meridian Street, then jerked his handsome face up at Old Abe. “Poor guy’s gonna stand there forever with birds shitting on his head, looking at where he got killed.”
I mustered a hollow laugh, but Officer Cook wasn’t paying attention: he was watching the man who was coming now, a powerfully built black man crossing Market Street with his hands jammed in the pockets of gray slacks.
“All right,” murmured Officer Cook. “Here we go now.”
He stood up straight as the man came up the steps toward us. He was very tall and very dark-skinned—midnight, I calculated automatically, offhandedly: midnight, purple tone, a number 121 or 122. His eyes were bright and yellow, hidden deep in his head, shifting questioningly back and forth from Cook to me, me to Cook, taking us in. I read the man as muscle, a body man; what was called, in Airlines slang, a baggage handler. I looked down Market to see what kind of car he’d come out of, but wherever he had parked was out of view.
Cook raised his hand cheerfully, but the newcomer spoke first.
“Who is this?”
“This here’s Jim. Jim’s new business. Jim, meet Mr. Maris.”
Maris nodded at me once, not impolitely, then turned back to Cook, repeating the words new business in mildly accented English. I couldn’t tell if he was upset or uncertain of the expression or what. My mind chewed on the accent. African. West African? He wore a cheap blue work shirt with the sleeves rolled up, and he had the thick forearms of a prizefighter. I’ve known tall men before, but there was something about this Maris’s tallness that made you want to turn around and run.
“You must spread your legs and raise your arms, Jim.”
Cook looked with amusement at me, soft-bellied Jim Dirkson, then back at Maris. “Does he look like he’s carrying a gun to you?”
Maris stepped forward into the shadow of the statue and efficiently ran his big hands over my body. “I am sorry,” he said. “It is necessary.” I shrugged. “Oh. It’s okay. I understand.”
Right as I said it, though, he came out of my back pocket with my butterfly knife, which at the last minute before leaving the hotel I had taken out of my toiletries bag and jammed into my back pocket. Maris held it up to me with a grave expression, then showed it to Cook, who looked at me with eyebrows raised. I blushed, looked down.
“I’ve uh—I’m sorry. I’ve been advised to be careful.”
Cook looked steadily at me for a second, but then he laughed. Maris did not laugh. Wordlessly he slipped the knife inside his breast pocket, then cocked his head, considering me.
“And what of Jim, if anything, is known by our favorite?”
Maris delivered this inquiry to Officer Cook with a solemn expression, pronouncing the word favorite with three syllables: fave-o-writ. The slight lilt in Maris’s voice contrasted pleasantly with the formality of his speaking style, like violet flowers in rich, dark soil. Definitely West African. I wondered if his prints were on file somewhere, if his name or alias was on a watch list. In Bridge’s building in Gaithersburg or in Washington, at Counterterrorism. A Liberian; a friend to the cause.
“Oh, he knows, he knows,” said Cook. He smiled at Maris, who did not smile back. “Father Sunshine’s just being a little particular. You know how he gets.”
Maris’s eyes narrowed, and his nostrils flared. His dislike for Officer Cook rose off of him like steam. “He does not like to take on new projects until old projects have been completed.”
“Right,” said Cook. “He don’t like to, but he will. He’s done it before.”