Underground Airlines(9)
“What can I help you with?”
The gardener was a tired middle-aged black man, a dozen lifetimes of this kind of yard-work bullshit already behind him. Not old, but getting there fast. Tired this morning, bones and fingers tired. Wanting to get this job done, get back in his truck before the rain came, if it was coming.
“Yeah, yeah,” I said, talking quickly, licking my lips, addled and rapid. “Yeah, I tell ya, man, I been wandering. You feel me? Been wandering today.”
He raised his eyebrows just the tiniest bit. He wore forest-green coveralls with the name RUBEN stitched into a white oval above the breast pocket and CIRCLE CITY LAWNSCAPING in big stenciled block letters on the back.
I hustled out my words. “Yeah, so I saw this was a church, okay, and I just felt like I had to come on down here. ’Cause listen, man, it just happens I been hearing the angels, man, and they been saying I need to get right. Get right with God. Angels been saying what I need to do is go on and get right today.”
“Well, you won’t be doing it here, man.” Ruben turned his cracked lips up for a brief smile. “This is not a church. It’s a community center.”
“What? Oh.”
“Church own it, but it ain’t a church. And it’s closed, man.”
“Well, shit.”
Ruben liked that. He ground out a laugh, gravelly and low. “Sorry, boss. The what-you-call-it—you know, the diocese—they closed this place up a while back. Six months ago, something? They got us coming by once a week to keep it from getting overgrown and all. That’s it.”
“Oh, wow. Wow, wow. Guess my angels got they wires crossed.”
“I guess they did.”
We both laughed a little then, me and my man Ruben, and I stood and swayed in my drunkenness and shook my head and took a good hard look at that building. Not so grand a structure as Saint Catherine’s up there on Meridian Street, not by a long shot: old, wood-sided, one-storied, a flat black roof. The front of the building had but one door, up a short walkway lined with box hedges and ivy. One of the windows was broken, a shatter scar down the middle of it like an unhealed wound. At the door handle, though, was a bright glint of gold.
I held my eyes to that door for a second, squinting hopefully, as if to open it by force of will and get the salvation I was seeking.
“All right, well.” Ruben raised his leaf blower. “I better get back to it.”
“Hold up a sec,” I said, in a burst of inspiration. “Y’all hiring?”
His brows arched with fresh skepticism. “I dunno. You gotta ask Rick about that.”
“Rick?”
“Yeah. Rick or I guess—Rick or Tiny.”
“Tiny?”
“That’s right.”
“You got a number?”
“It’s on the truck, man.”
Ruben was done with me. He turned away and fired up his leaf blower and called “Good luck” over its roar as I tippled over to that truck, a Pakistani pickup on high wheels towing an enclosed flatbed trailer cluttered with mowers and rakes and shit. Both the truck and the trailer had CIRCLE CITY LAWNSCAPING painted on the side, and under the name was the number.
The whole community center was about as big as a Monopoly house, and it looked older than sin, older than Adam and Eve the sinners.
Except for the lock on the door. That lock was brass, and it looked shiny and new.
I smiled to myself as I got the number off the side of the truck, feeling pretty pleased at having noticed that detail. Happy about having gotten—guided by the ATM receipt—to the bank, to the Catholic community center, to Ruben, to the door. Happy with all I’d done even before Bridge and his people managed to get me the full file. I was feeling the pleasure of discovery, the pleasure of the job.
That’s the problem with doing the devil’s work. It can be pretty satisfying now and again. Pretty goddamn satisfying.
I had with me in Indianapolis all my usual equipment. Some of it was in my room at the Capital City Crossroads, some of it was stashed in the trunk of the car. A variety of costume pieces—some wigs, some fake jewelry, and various basic elements of facial camouflage: a tube of spirit gum, a few shades of foundation, an eyebrow pencil. I had six different pairs of clear-glass spectacles and six different sets of colored contact lenses. Other tools, too: a set of picks and rakes for cracking locks, plus a backup set. Lanyards with name tags, fake badges in fake badge holders. Clothes and shoes. My phone and its charger and its various accessories; the computer. Paperwork for Jim Dirkson, and three more complete sets on three other names, all of it comprehensively backstopped, every phone number connected to a real phone, a real person who knew what to say if somebody called. Cash, too, of course—rolls of bills in rubber bands, available for my use for incidental expenses, all of which were to be reported at the completion of each assignment.
I had a gun, but it stayed in the hotel. Almost all the time, that’s where I kept it. I am an undercover operative in a dangerous line of work, but understand that I am also an African American male living in the United States of America. There are going to be checkpoints. I am going to get stopped. Every once in a while I’m going to have to dump out my bag under the watchful eye of some kind of lawman. Sheriff’s deputy, patrol officer, state trooper, what have you. Might just be some shopping-center wage-slave shithead rolling up on his Segway, flashing his costume-shop tin, wanting to prove his cock size to the girl at the sunglasses kiosk.