Underground Airlines(40)

“But so I came up here, and someone down Freedman Town, they told me you the doc who sees to runners, least sometimes.”

Dr. Venezia-Karbach’s eyes flashed, and her arms uncrossed from her chest so she could plant her fists on her hips. She didn’t like that the word was out on her. I had rattled the woman for sure. I stared at her pleadingly, and she looked back, and behind her the 1954 schoolteacher waited for her students to arrive, an unlikely hero in Salvation Army shoes, surrounded by her uncertain future.

“All right. I understand.” The sternness in Dr. V’s eyes softened, and her mouth twisted at the corners. She was keeping her voice firm, but with effort now. Something else was trying to find its way out, pity or empathy or kindness. “And what is it that you want?”

“All I want to do is see him,” I said. “That’s all. Just—before y’all spirit him away. Up north. I just gotta see him one time. I need him to know I never did forget about him.”

And there were tears in my eyes now, of course. Seems like one thing I could always manage was to conjure up some tears into my eyes. I was still nearly naked, just in my underpants, and it only added to the awkward urgency of our exchange, that we bore this relation to each other—doctor and patient, woman and man. “I just want him to know I never let him out of my heart. I never did. I just want to see him and tell him that. That’s all that I want.”

She should have simply said, “I’m sorry.” She should have said there was nothing she could do. I could only imagine the firm instructions she got from Father Barton, the sternness with which his admonitions of silence were delivered. But the ripples were passing over her, the ripples of want. She wanted to help me. She needed to. It was the flip side of the reflexive hatred of Slim and Slim’s fat pal—someone like Dr. V, white and liberal and a child of her era: she wanted and needed for the poor black man in her office, he of humble circumstance and simple hopes, to see that she was not like the sneering bigots and whiphands of the world, that she was a person of conscience. She was different.

Barton would demand that she keep her peace, do as he did in the diner and disclaim all knowledge. But Barton wasn’t there—he was an abstraction, and I was there in her office. Mr. Morton was real, hands knitted together, eyes wide with need.

“The problem is,” she said slowly, “that I don’t actually know his location.”

“Look, I don’t want to hurt him,” I said, “or take him or nothing. I just want to see his face. I want to hold him one more time.”

“You’re not hearing me. I don’t know his location.”

“But—but you went to him. I thought—you didn’t help him?”

She nodded minutely, bird head popping down, then up. “Yes. But I don’t know where.”

Goddamn it. Fucking priest. Shifty, snake-eyed, base-covering little hypocrite.

“What do you mean?”

“Look, okay.” Her hand ran again through her hair. “I never know much with these—these situations. I get a call from someone. I don’t know who it is. It’s a different number every time. Okay? That’s how this goes. I have a phone they give me, and it rings and I answer it and they tell me where to go.”

“Where?”

“Downtown.”

“Where?’

“The mall. Circle Centre Mall.”

I nodded. I knew it. Right downtown. You could see its parking garage from the statue of Abe the Martyr.

“But that’s not where I met him. That’s just where the car picked me up. It was a taxicab, but not—it wasn’t in service. It was just for me.”

Barton at work: cutout operation, prepaid phones, wheels within wheels.

“So where’d the car take you? It take you to him?”

“Yes, but. Blindfolded.”

They packed her into the car, drove her for at least an hour, drove her around and around in circles, north and then south, until she could have no idea where she was, and then they guided her out of the car and down a path. Rough beneath her feet. Slipping some. Still blindfolded. When they took off the mask, it was dark, totally dark, then someone turned on a flashlight, and there he was.

“There he was,” I repeated softly, remembering the delicate, intelligent face I had seen in the photograph. Dr. V was remembering it, too, standing before me quiet and thoughtful, reliving the moment when she saw him. She gathered some strength, stepped forward, and laid her small hands on mine. “You should be happy, Mr. Morton. I have never seen anyone like that young man. Never. And now he’s going to be free. He’s going to be fine.”

No, he’s not, I thought. Because I’m not any damn Mr. Morton, and I’m getting closer. Because I’m a wolf and I’ll find him, today, because Bridge said if you can’t find the man.…I offered Dr. Venezia-Karbach a weak, watery smile. “Is he all right, though? What kind of place is this they holding the man?”

“I don’t know, really.” She shook her head softly. “It was a room. I don’t know. There was a generator of some kind, but it kept cutting out, and the lights would flicker on and off.”

“So like a—like some kinda empty building?”

My mind turned. Sprinted out in different directions—warehouse district, abandoned homes, unfinished building projects. “What about all your things?” I gestured around the room—stethoscope, laryngoscope, tongue depressors, gauze. “What about all the doctor things?”