Balance of Power

Chapter Five

Bernard C. Daniels awoke in a flophouse two doors down from Mickey's, his home being three blocks away and therefore too far to walk after several days of riotous drinking throughout the town of Weehawken.

He rummaged around in his pockets. The two hundred dollars was missing. Well, I hope I enjoyed some of it, he thought as he scratched the tracks of a flea that had made its home on his scalp.

Then he discovered something that made him feel very sad. His credit at Mickey's Pub was no longer good.

He should have asked the Grand Vizier for more. But then, that would have been gone by now, too, he realized.

"What day is it?" he asked the bartender.

"It's Friday, Barney."

He looked at the luminous clock over the bourbons, scotches and ryes which rested atop planks of wood where the bar's mirrors had been. It read 8:30. It was already dark outside. "I'd better go," he said.

If he didn't hurry for his appointment with the woman, he would be late. Four days late instead of three.

The cab fare came to $4.95.

Barney handed the driver a five-dollar bill the bartender had lent him. The driver swiveled his big neck, rolled and folded to resemble the Michelin Tire Man, and yelled after him: "You promised me a big tip. I never would have came to this here neighborhood for a nickel."

Bernard C. Daniels could not be bothered with boorish taxi drivers, not amid the squalor surrounding him.

He checked the number on the building. It was correct. It was wedged between unending rows of dirty, drab brownstones. Every window on the block appeared dark, hiding faded shades and curtains, when there were curtains.

A weak street light glowed like a lonely torch high above the garbage cans and metal gratings that protected cellars. A single dog scurried with undue noise across the black-topped gutter. Traffic lights blinked their useless signals, Barney heard the cab pull away as he mounted the steps. It left with a grumble.

The brownstone seemed identical to the others until Barney noticed the door and discovered it was only a distant relative of those stench-filled houses surrounding it.

His knock told him. There was no doorbell. Only a thin layer of the door was wood. The knock sounded like steel, extremely heavy steel. Then Barney noticed that the windows were not really openings to the street at his level. There were Venetian blinds, all right, but they were permanently mounted on steel sheets that closed up the window.

He knocked again.

His instinct warned him, but only a split second before he felt the gentle point against his back. How many times had he felt that tender prelude to pain, that first searching of a man unsure of his blade? If he had thought, he might not have done what he did. But years of survival did not allow the mind time to think. There was a point at which the body took over, dictating its demands.

Without will, Barney's right hand slashed around, twisting his body down and away from the blade and finding a target for the line of bone from his pinky tip to his wrist. It was a black temple. It cracked with a snapping sound.

The man's head took off, followed by his neat small body encased in a neat black suit. The spectre tottered momentarily, then fell backward and would have tumbled down the steps, but for more than a dozen men identically dressed in neat black suits.

They were packed into the staircase behind him and the mass of their bodies caught their comrade.

A small bright blade with bluish edges tinkled beneath their feet on the stone steps. They all held similar blades. And they closed in on Barney almost noiselessly, a sea of shaven skulls making waves under the yellow light of the street lamp.

Barney pressed his back to the metal door and prepared to die.

Just then, two men moving so fast they were little more than blurs shot out of the darkness and into the moving sea of shining black heads.

In an instant, the quiet street was filled with screams and the groans of dying men as blade after shimmering blade dropped to the ground and bodies twisted like wire fell on top of them.

For Barney, it was a vision of hell, witnessing the torment of men convulsed by pain and glad to die in order to end that pain.

Barney thought about that pain as he fired up a cigarette and winked at the two white men who were causing it. Better them than me, he thought philosophically.

But one of the men was not white. He was an aged Oriental sporting a turquoise kimono. "Jesus Christ," Barney muttered.

It was all very confusing to him. Here were two guys, the same two guys he was sure were out to hit him, saving his life. And fighting like bastards to boot. He had never seen fighting like that. It was effortless, artful, utterly economical of movement, totally effective. Were it not for the carnage surrounding them, the young white man and the old Oriental could have been dancing a ballet.

Very confusing. He would have to think about this matter. He would think about it immediately, in fact, just as soon as he had a drink of tequila to help him think better.

As the two men silenced the last of the mob, Barney rose to dust himself off. His eyes followed the movements of the men as they dashed out of sight. The thin young man disappeared like a bullet. The old Oriental followed, his robe floating behind him.

But just as Barney was preparing to knock again, the Oriental returned. Standing beneath the street lamp, grinning broadly, the old man stiffened like a tiny tin samurai soldier and flicked Barney an elegant salute.

"Thank you, sir," Barney said, his voice echoing down the street, and returned the salute. Then the old man was gone.

Barney knocked twice more. After a long silence, the door surrendered and opened to him over a field of white plush carpeting. Standing at the door was the Grand Vizier of the Afro-Muslim Brotherhood, two flesh-colored Band-Aids decorating his forehead. Flesh-colored here meant brown, but against the Vizier's eggplant skin, the two strips of tape stood out like an accusation.

"Am I late?" Barney asked.

"What you done?" the Grand Vizier yelled, looking out over the heap of broken bodies in the street. One of the Vizier's large black hands came down to Barney's right shoulder and lifted him like a toy.

"Leave him alone, y'hear?" came a woman's voice. "I'll take care of him, Malcolm."

"Yes, ma'am," the Grand Vizier said and allowed Barney's feet to touch the floor.

She wore white slacks and a white blouse and Barney almost couldn't see her because of the camouflage. The whole interior of the building, fireplace, sofa, lamps, walls, ceiling, steps leading upstairs, all were painted bunding white. Marble, wood and cloth, all as white as the inside of a bathtub factory run amok with hospital orders.

Her platinum hair fit the decor perfectly. Barney shook his head as if to clear it. There was something about her. Something. He tried to think but couldn't.

Malcolm, the Grand Vizier, stood out, as he left the room, like an ink blot on a snowy towel. In the room, a faint fragrance of lilacs replaced the stink of garbage outside. Barney sniffed. He preferred the garbage.

"Beautiful," said the woman, peeking out the door.

She reached for a telephone, which was hidden by its absence of color, on a white table Barney could barely make out against the white wall.

"Yes," she said. "Yes. Tell them, Malcolm, that their friends have all gone to Allah and will be rewarded there. Don't forget to mention that it was a white devil who killed them. Very good. Was it clean? Immediate death? Good. Well done, Malcolm."

Barney heard, rather than saw, her hang up. She smiled, a pale, thin-lipped smile. "You killed all those men out there."

"I had some help," Barney admitted. "A hundred-year-old Chinaman did most of it."

The woman laughed. "You're charming," she said. "And the rest of the Peaches of Mecca will be impressed."

"The what?"

"The Peaches of Mecca. The bodyguard of a new revolution, a freedom movement so sweeping it astounds the imagination and thrills the soul. Of course, you just wiped out most of the Peaches. We'll have to get some new recruits."

"Got a drink?"

"You're a cold, hard professional, aren't you? Money is your grounds for loyalty, isn't it? You're cool, precise, knowledgeable about espionage, death, and destruction. You think only of the dollar and the power it gives you, isn't that right?"

"Sure. Got a drink?" he repeated.

She walked over to a well-camouflaged white bar. "What'll you have?" she asked.

"Tequila." The very word touched his heart.

She poured him a tumbler full of very expensive Bolivian firewater and handed it to him.

"You have quite a reputation for being a competent agent, Mr. Daniels," she said.

He poured the contents of the glass down his grateful throat. "Agents with reputations are not competent, madam. They are dead. May I have another?" He held up the glass.

"Of course. I want you to know before we begin, Mr. Daniels, that you will always have a drink waiting for you in my home."

"That's real southern hospitality, ma'am," Barney said smoothly, accepting his second drink.

"Anytime you want one, you just come on over and help yourself to my bar, hear?"

"Yes'm."

"Even if I'm not at home, I will leave instructions that you be admitted anytime you need a little drinky-poo."

"I'll remember that, ma'am." She smiled at him like a sleek white cat. "I'm sure you will, Mr. Daniels."

She sat down next to him on a white sofa. "That was clever, what you said about agents with reputations being dead."

"Pleased to hear it, ma'am."

"Because you're going to be dead soon."

"So you tell me."

"Unless I help you. And I plan to help you."

"That's right neighborly. How's about a little blast?" He offered her his empty glass again. "Tequila," he said.

"In a minute. We want to talk first."

"We do?"

"What do you think the black man wants, Mr. Daniels?"

Barney furrowed his brow in concentration.

"Can't say I know which black man you're talking about, ma'am," he said.

"You're a bigot, Mr. Daniels." Her eyes flashed. "You don't know anything about the freedom movement, and you don't care."

"I resent that," Barney said, rising. He eased his way toward the bar. "I care about freedom as much as anybody. There is nothing more important to me than freedom. At this very moment, in fact, the prospect of receiving a free drink from your bar is foremost in my mind."

"You get back here. Come back to this couch this second; or I'll order Malcolm to smash every bottle in the house."

"I'm coming, I'm coming." He sat down, his empty glass clutched in his hand.

"You are a backward, white liberal bigot who doesn't understand the freedom movement. So I will explain it to you."

"I was afraid of that," Barney mumbled.

"It's the great spirit rising from the newly emerged nations of Africa. It's written on the wind. The black man is pure. Untrammeled by white corruption, untouched by either communism or capitalism. He is the future."

Barney sensed movement in the tightly wrapped milk-colored stretch pants and the full blouse that tightened at the waist. "What's so pure about him?" he asked, managing to tear his gaze from the sight of the woman's full bouncing breasts.

"He never had a past. The white man robbed him of it."

"Certainly," Barney said, as though seeing for the first time in the light shed by this dizzy daffodil. Nevertheless, surrounding this ripe albino plant was green, green money, all watered by liquor. The black man was pure, yes indeedy. Barney couldn't argue with that. "He's like writing on a clean blackboard," Barney offered.

"Exactly," said the woman, flowering with sudden happiness. "He's been robbed, whipped, raped, castrated, and ciphered as a human being."

Barney nodded knowingly. "That'd make anyone pure," he said.

"Right. Perhaps I was wrong about you, Mr. Daniels. Perhaps you are interested in more than money."

"But of course," Barney said gallantly. "I never would have come here if I didn't believe I would be working for a good cause."

"Ah, wonderful. A man who wants more than money. Good. We're running short of funds now anyhow."

Barney started for the door.

"Stop," the woman called, wedging herself between Barney and the door before he could locate the white doorknob. "We have plenty of money. Millions," she yelled into his face.

"Millions?" Barney asked.

"Millions." She pulled him toward her. He attempted to fight his way free, but his left hand which was reaching for the door drew itself inexplicably around her waist instead. And his right hand somehow began playing brazenly with her jiggling breast and his lips were laboring above, working their independent way from her mouth down her neck to her erect pink nipples, and oh, goodness gracious, her pants were coming off.

"Take me upstairs and make love to me," she whispered hoarsely.

"Yes, yes," Barney obeyed, lifting her off the smooth carpeting and heading directly for the stairwell with only a small detour to the bar to pick up a bottle.

In the round white bed, Barney worked his hands over the woman's silky body. She teased his ear with her teeth.

"You will kill for me," she hissed, fired with passion.

"Yeah," Barney said.

She pulled him on top of her. "You'll spy for me."

"Yeah."

"You'll do anything I say." With agonizing slowness, she opened her legs to him.

"Yeah."

"Anything."

"You name it," Barney said, bringing her to full gallop.

"Anything," she moaned.

With intoxicating relief, Barney spent himself. "Well, almost anything, honey," he said, puffing. "Can't rush into things, you know."

She was mad, but not too mad. About as mad as a satisfied woman can get. "Roll over," she said, tweaking his cheek.

Barney did, and his eye fell on the bottle he had brought up with him. It was bourbon. What the hell, he thought. He would start cultivating a taste for the stuff. It was easier than trekking nude past Malcolm to retrieve the tequila.

"Forgot the glasses."

"Drink from the bottle. Give me a cigarette." She sat up in bed, her firm, sharp breasts peering out above the sheets. Barney handed her a pack of smokes.

He took a swig. It went down hot and good. It was fine bourbon. There was much to be said about the drink.

"How about me?" the woman asked. She extended her hand for the bottle.

Barney examined the hand. It had fine lines. It was a fine hand. If he had another bottle of bourbon, he certainly would have put it into that hand.

"Well, how about me?"

It was a good question. Barney took another swallow, a long one. She had a right as his bed partner to share in the bourbon. An inalienable right. She certainly had that right. And it was her bourbon. Barney swallowed again and moved her hand away.

She settled for a cigarette. They lay back contentedly, she smoking, Barney drinking, and she told him about the Afro-Muslim Brotherhood.

Her name was Gloria X and she was its leader although only a handful of people knew it. It was a secret society aimed at fomenting a sense of outrage among the black people, to make them angry enough to revolt against their white oppressors.

"Enough, enough," Barney said, waving away her prepared speech. "What is it you want me to do? Paint my face with shoe polish and join the Peaches of Mecca?"

"I want you to kill someone."

"Anyone special?"

"A prominent civil rights leader whose middle-of-the-road policy is holding back the cause of black nationalism and the freedom movement."

"How do you know I won't go racing off to the police with this information?"

"Because, Mr. Daniels." She smiled evilly.

"Because what?"

She stared directly into his eyes, her coldness reaching to the pit of Barney's stomach. "Because I know what happened in Puerta del Rey. That's an interesting scar you carry," she said, touching the "CIA" brand on his belly.

Barney turned toward her. He was about to speak. He was about to tell her that he himself did not remember what happened in Hispania that led him through the jungle and into the hut where he had been tied and cut and burned with the glowing poker, that he did not remember the thing buried deep in his brain, the event that caused him not to care when they cut him and beat him and branded him and yet kept him alive in spite of the torture.

He was going to tell her, but she cut him off. "So I know, Mr. Daniels, that you have no love for this government or its agencies or, for that matter, for white men."

So she didn't know. She didn't know any more than he did.

"And besides, Mr. Daniels," she continued, "if you refuse I will have you killed. Now hush up. The news is coming on."

Gloria X flipped a switch at the bed table and a transistorized television set on the opposite wall instantly lit up.

Barney sipped the bourbon, once again trying to remember Hispania but failing, as always. Something had happened there. Something.

The newscast reported on the usual goings on of the planet. A revolution in Chile, a flood in Missouri. A drought threatened in New Jersey, and a civil rights threat in New York.

Gloria X began to emit happy little squeals as the television flashed a picture of a fat black man. Daniels had seen him several times on TV in South

America. He was called a national civil rights leader. He spoke a lot, but was never shown with a following of more than forty persons, most of them white Episcopal ministers.

He was Calder Raisin, national director of the Union of Racial Justice, commonly called URGE, fat, pompous, invariably making wild inaccurate statements calculated to offend whites and at best amuse blacks who paid him no attention anyway.

The affected voice bellowed out of the TV set. "The Block Mon," Raisin shouted, "will not tolerate lily-white hospital staffs. At least one out of every five doctors must be black, in both public and private hospitals." It took Barney a while to understand that "Block Mon" meant "black man." Maybe Raisin's gulping adenoidal pronunciation was a new proof of high culture.

"Mr. Raisin," the television reporter quizzed, "where will the country get all these black, doctors?"

"After centuries of educational deprivation, the Block Mon must be given doctor's degrees. I demahnd a massive medical education program for Blacks, and, if need be, an easing of the discriminatory standards of medical boards."

"Would you name these discriminatory standards?"

"I would be glad to. Because of segregated and inferior education, the Block Mon has more difficulty getting into medical school, let alone passing tests given by white medical boards of examination. I demahnd immediate abolition of entrance examinations for medical schools. I demahnd the end of testing to pass. I demahnd the end of the strict standards of medical schools as just another technique of Jim Crow segregation, northern style."

"And if your demahnds... er, demands... are not met by the medical schools?" the reporter asked.

"We shall begin a sick-in, utilizing every badly needed hospital bed. I call upon everyone, Block Mon and white alike, who has a passion for racial justice to register at a hospital. I have here a list of phony symptoms guaranteed to get you admitted. When the truly sick are dying in the streets because there are no beds for them, perhaps then the medical schools will face up to the need to create more black doctors."

The camera panned back, revealing the portly Mr. Calder Raisin clad in a white hospital gown, standing by an empty bed. His voice was taken off the audio and a commercial for throat lozenges went on.

"Oh. Oh," squealed Gloria X. "He's great. Great. Just great. Great."

With each great, Barney felt her squeeze a tender spot of his anatomy.

"Great," Gloria X said. Barney pinched her hand. She ignored the pinch. "Great, he was great, darling. Wasn't he wonderful?"

Barney sipped the bourbon and grunted. "He's not my type."

"Well, he is mine," Gloria X said. "He's my husband."

Barney looked at her.

She leaned over, brushed the bottle away from Barney's mouth onto the floor, and ran her tongue over his lips.

"He's really great," she whispered. "It's a shame you're going to have to kill him."

Barney pushed her away from him. "Now wait a second. First you tell me you're married to this chocolate donut..."

Gloria nodded. "He's great," she said.

"And then you tell me to go out and kill him."

She smiled.

"May I ask why?" he said after a pause.

"To further the cause of black freedom," she said. "To eliminate Raisin's middle-of-the-road policy from the rising black consciousness. To demonstrate to my followers that personal sacrifice in the cause of freedom is glorious..."

"And to collect the insurance money?"

"It's a bundle, big boy." She winked.

"That's what I thought," Barney said. He took a deep swig from the bourbon bottle and rolled away from her.