Underground Airlines(51)

“Well, my goodness. Are you calling from your meeting?” Janice had a little southern accent of her own, a late-modern southern accent, more Atlanta than Little Rock. I put her in her late twenties. Red lipstick, sensible shoes. A dog at home, something cute and loyal.

“Yes,” I said carefully. “That’s right. Still here.”

“And are you checking up on me, sir?”

Janice’s tone was sugary, chipper, borderline flirtatious. In response I tried out a noise, something I had never heard performed but imagined must exist, a matching of tone with tone: I chuckled. A gruff Bridge-style chuckle.

“No, my dear. I am not checking up on you.”

“Well, sir, maybe you should be.”

I wondered if he ever called her Jan. I wondered if she called him Lou. I wondered if Lou saw Jan at the office Christmas party. I wondered if he brought his wife, sipped eggnog, made toasts, got tipsy, took a cab home, coached soccer, saved for college, took the minivan to the minivan place when the brakes were squealing. I wondered about the whole normal human world.

“What is it I can do for you, sir?”

What could she do for me? Having come this far, what happened now? I focused on the voice, the manner, the best way to get what I needed rather than thinking about what I was doing and why. Had I stopped to think, I might have asked myself the very logical question: Was I out of my goddamn mind?

What was I hoping to get, giving Janice that cold, slow, mild accent, I was not yet entirely sure, nor did I know why I’d done it.

Because of a dagger on a file? Because of some sloppy grammar? Because of an unusual pattern of fact?

It was none of those. I had seen messy files before. I had seen strange facts in cases before, and sometimes they had been reconciled and other times not. What was different this time, what had driven me to my unusual action, was Bridge’s voice. The way he had sounded in our last call, tight and tense as a bent wire. His voice on the phone at 9:36, calling early for the first time ever.

My hand drummed on the desk, as my hands were always doing.

“I just had a quick question for you. About the case.” I had dropped back into an all-business tone: Fun time is over, Janice.

“And which case is that?”

My mind reeled momentarily. How many cases? How many runners? How many Jackdaws? How many of me?

I gave her the case number, and she said, “What?”

I gave it to her again. I read it slow, digit by digit, and she repeated it back and said she was sorry but she just did not know which case I was referring to. “That number is just not coming up.”

“The boy,” I started, and almost gave the name, then I stopped. I held my breath. That number is just not coming up.

“Should I ask Marlena?”

“No—no, that’s not…forget it. Forget I called.”

I didn’t smoke or pace around in tight circles. I didn’t even think, really. I hung up the phone and went onto the balcony and stood and listened to the distant howl of sirens while the rain blew around me in curtains. It was weird how calming it was, how it gave me this—I won’t say peace, not peace, exactly, but a peaceful sense of the irreversible. I was a stone that was falling. I had jumped, and there was no way to jump back.

That number is just not coming up, she said. Not coming up.

The thing is, there had to be a file. If there was a runner, there was a file. The service didn’t freelance. That’s how it worked, by custom and by law. Plantation loses someone, they file with a local magistrate who issues a transcript and requests the participation of federal law enforcement. It’s the judge’s chambers that notifies the marshals. That’s how it works—that’s how it’s been working since 1787.

There had to be a file, but there was no file.

Mr. Bridge knew facts I didn’t know; he always did. That’s how it worked. But I knew with a sudden certainty that behind every fact of this case there was an unknown fact, felt but not seen, like a kidnapper with his rough arm wrapped around a victim’s neck.

Now I could feel it, I could feel the storm rain slick and warm against my skin, and now my heart began to race, now it began to slam, now the adrenaline was galloping along in my veins.

An official case had never been opened. No home-state judge had issued a transcript certifying the claimant’s description. No slave commissioner in the Southern District of Indiana had been put on alert. There was no real hunt. There was no case. There was only a file.

If the marshals weren’t hunting Jackdaw so he could be returned—if we weren’t hunting him so he could be returned—then why were we hunting him? What would happen to Jackdaw when we found him?

That was the easiest question to answer.



I was a monster, but way down underneath I was good. Wasn’t I? Wasn’t I good? Didn’t I have some good part of me, buried deep underground, beneath Jim Dirkson and Kenny Morton and Albie the gardener and whoever and whatever else I was? I was good below it. I was, and I am. Good underground. In the buried parts of me are good things.

A still picture, me and Castle, whispering joy, telling stories, cabin by the northernmost fence, making plans, whispering quiet crazy hopeful.

I started moving quickly. I toweled off the rain I’d let fall onto my head and my face. While the computer was turning on I changed my shirt, then I spent five minutes on basic research, old-fashioned digging, three paragraphs of history, ten minutes of tracing lines on the map with my finger.