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is only groundwork.
They enjoy the power of manipulating both us and the media.
That's what I have so far. It's what I'm prepared to talk about, anyway."
The President nodded solemnly. "I have a good feeling about you, Alex," he
said. "I'm glad we met for a couple of minutes here. I was told that you have
two children," he said. He reached into his jacket and handed me a
presidential tie clasp and a pin especially designed for kids. "Keepsakes are
important, I think.
You see, I believe in tradition as well as in change."
President Byrnes shook my hand again, looked me directly in the eye for a
moment, and then left the room.
I understood that I had just been welcomed to the team, and the sole purpose
of the team was to protect the President's life. I found that I was powerfully
motivated to do just that. I looked down at the tie clasp and pin for Damon
and Jannie and was strangely moved.
"SO DID YOU get to meet the royal couple yet?" Nana Mama asked when I entered
her kitchen about four that afternoon.
She was making something in a big gray stewpot that smelled like the
proverbial ambrosia. It was white bean soup, one of my favorites. Rosie the
cat was prowling around on the counters, purring contentedly Rosie in the
kitchen.
At the same time Nana cooked at the counter, she was doing the crossword
puzzle in the Washington Post. A book of her word jumbles was also out in
view. So was No Stone Unturned -- The Life and Times of Maggie Kuhn.
Complicated woman, my grandmother.
"Did I meet who?" I pretended not to understand her crystal-.
clear and very pointed question to me. I was playing the game that the two of
us have had going for many years, and probably will until death do us part
somehow, sometime, someway.
"Meet whom, Dr. Cross. The President and Mrs. President, of course. The
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well-to-do white folks who live in the White House, looking down on the rest
of us. Tom and Sally up in Camelot for the nineties."
I smiled at her usual high-spirited and occasionally bittersweet banter. I
looked in the fridgc. "I didn't come home for the third and fourth degree, you
know. I'm going to make a sandwich from this brisket. It looks moist and
tender. Or are looks deceiving?"
"Of course they are, but this brisket is moist and you could cut it with a
soup spoon. Seems as if they work very short hours over at the White House,
considering all that they have to do.
Somehow, I suspected as much. But I could never prove it until now. So who did
you meet?"
I couldn't resist. I had been going to tell her this much anyway.
"I met and talked with the President this morning."
"You met Tom?"
Nana pretended to take a punch in the manner of the heavyweight boxer George
Foreman. She did a stumbling stutter-step back from the counter. She even
cracked a tiny smile. "Well, tell me all about Tom, for heaven's sake. And
Sally. Does Sally wear a black pillbox hat inside the White House in the
daytime?"
"I think that was Jacqueline Kennedy. Actually, I liked President Byrnes," I
said as I commenced making a thick brisket sandwich on fresh rye with bib
lettuce, tomatoes, and a dab of mayonnaise, lots of pepper, a whisk of salt.
"You would. You like everybody unless they kill somebody," Nana said as she
began to slice up some more tomatoes. "Now that you've met Mr. President, you
can get back on the Sojourner Truth School case. That's very important to the
people in this house. The Gray House. No black people care very much about the
President and his problems anymore. Nor should they."
"Is that a fact, Mrs. Farrakhan?" I said as I bit into my sandwich.
Delicious, as promised. Cut it with a soup spoon, melts in the mouth.
"Should be a fact, if it isn't. It's close to a fact, anyway. I'll admit that
it's a sad state of affairs, but it's the sad state we all live in. Don't you
agree? You must."
"You ever hear of mellowing with age?" I asked her. "Your brisket is terrific,
by the way."
"You ever hear of getting better, not getting older? You ever hear of taking
care of one's own kind? You ever hear about teeny-tiny, darling black children
being murdered in our neighborhood, Alex, and nobody doing enough to make it
stop? Of course the brisket is excellent. You see, I am getting better."
I reached into my trouser pocket and took out the clasp and pin that the
President had given me. "The President knew I had two children. He gave me
these keepsakes for them." I handed them over to Nana. She took them, and for
once in her life, she was speechless.
"Tell them that these are from Tom and that he's a fine man trying to do the
right thing."
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I finished half of my overstuffed sandwich and took the remaining half With me
out of the kitchen. If you can't stand the heat and all that. "Thanks for the
delicious sandwich, and the advice. In that order."
"Where are you going now?" Nana called after me. She was winding up again. "We
were talking about an important matter.
Genocide against black people right here in Washington, our nation's capital.
They don't care what happens in these neighborhoods, Alex. They is them, and
them is white, and you're collaborating with the enemy."
"Actually, I'm going out to put in a few hours on the Truth School murder
case," I called back as I continued toward the front door, and blessed escape
from the tirade. I couldn't see Nana Mama anymore, but I could hear her voice
trailing behind me like a banshee cry, or maybe the caw of a field crow.
"Alex has finally found his senses!" she exclaimed in a loud, shrill voice.
"There's hope after all. There's hope. Oh, thank you, Black Lord in Heaven."
The old goat can still get my goat, and I love her for it. I just don't want
to listen to her annoying rap sometimes.
I beeped the car horn of my old Porsche on the way out of the driveway. It's
our signal that everything is all right between us. From inside the house, I
heard Nana call out: "Beep back at you!"
I WAS BACK on the mean streets of inner Washington, the underside of the
capital. I was a homicide detective again. I loved it with a strange passion,
but there were times when I hated it with all my heart.
We were doing all that could humanly be done on both cases.
I had set up surveillance on the Truth School during the day and also had day
and night surveillance on Shanelie Green's gravesite.
Often psycho killers showed up at victims' graves. They were ghouls, after
all.
The circus was definitely in town.
Two of them.
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