Underground Airlines(78)

I looked at her when the talking was done. “You don’t have to do any of this,” I said. “You’ve got your money.”

She turned her head slowly and looked at me.

“But what about Steubenville?” she said, and I blinked.

“What?”

“You don’t think it’ll work. The whole crazy business with the man in Steubenville. The guy who said he can get me into that database.”

“TorchLight,” I said, then, “No. No, I doubt it.”

“So?”

“So?”

I knew her expression so well. I saw what she was seeing: opportunity.

“But if this plan—if her—I’m sorry, what—”

“Ada.”

Martha smiled at her. “Thank you. If Ada’s idea works, and we can get in there, then don’t you think there will be a way to access it directly? Once we’re inside? Once we’re in there? Isn’t that right?”

“Right.”

“Right. So. So I can’t miss that chance.”

“But…” I started, but something in her face—in her eyes. I stopped.

“I will call my sister. She will hang on to Lionel another day.”

“Yeah. I know. Martha…”

I stopped.

“It’s dangerous,” she said, speaking very slowly. “It is very risky. I understand. But. But—if there is a way to find out what has happened to that man.” This was in the form of a question, but her voice had no questioning in it. “Then that is what I am going to do. I have to.”

“You gotta understand, though—”

“I know.”

“I can’t promise anything.”

My protests were halfhearted. She was firm, but I could have talked her out of it. I could have told her there was some other way. I could have opened myself all the way up, torn off the blank mask, and shown her my face. I could have told her to forget the whole damn thing.

But this was my chance, and I knew it. I told her that if this was what she wanted, I wanted her to have it. I told her that if she helped me get in, I would try to get her what she needed. I told her that because I needed her. I had to have her. My empathy was woven, as ever, with cunning.

We spent the rest of that day cosseted in the lawyer’s house and with the lawyer’s people, refining and fine-tuning, building our story. Shai went up and down the stairs, collecting articles of clothing from the closet of the lawyer, from the closet of the lawyer’s dead wife. I ended up in a peach-colored sweater and in pants of Marlon’s, black pants without pockets. “There, that’s right,” he said. “That’s good. Trust me, man: down here they don’t like niggers having places they can stick shit.”

We did not see the old man himself again, but I heard him—three or four times I heard him—from an adjoining bedroom, moaning in his sleep.





6.



Thursday morning. Vivid and clear. Me and Martha, decked out and ready to go. Closing the doors of her sedan in the wide parking lot of Garments of the Greater South.

Martha, showered and shining, in a sharp red professional skirt and blazer, a piece of green jewelry pinned at her breast; timeless pieces from the collection of the lawyer’s long-dead wife. Martha in good old fancy-white-lady drag, and me in the peach sweater and pocketless pants, already wearing the servant’s smile, already rolling in the bashful gait. Lifting the black rolling suitcase out of the trunk, loaded with the tools of the trade.

I eased the bag down onto the asphalt while Martha waited. I pulled out the handle of the suitcase. She started, and I followed. I was in charge of the bag. This was the South. She glanced back and I looked up and we looked at each other, just for a second, one last human look to go in on.

The plantation had not been hard to find. Coming off State Route 4, we saw a big green sign, a dedicated exit, as for a university or military base or theme park. The exit sign went so far as to proclaim the company motto—AMERICAN GROWN, SOUTHERN SEWN!—along with the logo I had seen previously on Jackdaw’s collarbone, the proud uppercase G with the other letters tucked safely inside. The logo that was supposedly waiting for me somewhere, somewhere in the endless South, emblazoned on that envelope, the needle in the haystack I was going to find.

That same logo was on each of the three buildings that together formed GGSI headquarters, three glass-walled skyscrapers standing lordly above the parking lot, blinking back the sun. The logo was on one of the flags flapping above the concrete plaza in front of the buildings. There were three altogether—one flag for the company, one for the state, and one for the United States of America. Flags and recessed concrete and a handsome fountain. There was a statue, a giant abstract bronze, rounded and swooping, which as you got closer turned out not to be abstract at all: it was a boll, a simple boll made heroic, a cotton boll like a triumphal arch.

I had seen corporate plazas. Corporate plazas in Manhattan, in Boston, in Washington, DC. This was no different. Exactly the same.

I held tightly to the grip of the rolling suitcase. I came up alongside Martha, but her sunglasses were on. Her human eyes were hidden now. She stopped just outside the door of the center building, and I rushed past her to open it. She walked past me and did not say thank you. Deep in her character, ready to go.