Freaky Deaky

Chapter 21

Chris and Greta were in his dad's king-size bed with both the gooseneck lamps, mounted above the headboard, turned on: Chris reading Robin Abbott's May-August 1970 journal, Greta reading photocopied material from various Donnell Lewis case files. She told Chris her first husband never read in bed, he watched TV. Then corrected that. "I mean the only husband I ever had." Chris said, "Uh-huh." He had on a pair of his dad's reading glasses, and she felt she was seeing another side of him. Greta looked over one time and said, "Excuse me, do I know you?" About eleven thirty he went out to the kitchen and brought back two cans of beer. Greta looked at him in his underwear and said, "You have scars on your legs," sounding surprised. "What in the world happened to you?" He got back in bed and told her about the old Vietnamese guy standing on the hand grenade, Greta sitting up chewing on her thumbnail, not saying a word. He finished and she kissed him, her eyes moist. They kissed some more and Greta asked Chris who did he think he was, Woody Allen? Woody was always making out in bed with Diane Keaton or somebody with his glasses on. In movies, anyway. They let it happen and made love, trying to take their time but then hurrying to get there. While they were drinking their beer Greta said, "Whenever you feel like showing me your scars, you can." Then after a few minutes she said, "Here your glasses, Dad," and they got back to reading, feeling at home with each other propped up on their pillows.

They would tell each other about parts they were reading.

Greta said Donnell Lewis had been arrested fourteen times but only went to prison once. She asked Chris, "You ever hear of being charged with creating an improper diversion? Violation of ordinance N.H. 613.404." He was selling Black Panther newspapers in downtown Detroit when he spotted a couple of undercover detectives watching him. So he pointed to them and told everybody that came by to look out for the pigs. He also called them fascist buffoon fools. The detectives said they were watching for pickpockets and when Donnell revealed their identity, that was the improper diversion. Three other times, while he was selling Black Panther papers, he was arrested for resisting and obstructing. Once he had to go to Detroit Generalto get ten stitches in the top of his head. The arresting officer said Donnell ran into a wall trying to avoid arrest. He was in a store collecting money for their kids' breakfast program and was arrested for attempting to commit extortion. The charge was reduced to soliciting for a charitable organization without a license. He was arrested another time for malicious destruction of property, painting Free Huey Newton on the side of the Penobscot Building. "Who's Huey Newton?"

"The guy that started the Black Panthers."

"How's the journal?"

Chris said, "I'm up to the rock concert at Goose Lake, two hundred thousand people. Robin says, 'Fifteen-dollar admission a bummer. Should be a free concert. The promoter, a smart-ass youth-culture rip-off artist, asks if we give our newspapers away free. . . . Dope scene unreal. Trash bags of Jamaican carried by strolling vendors. Organically grown mescaline. Blotter acid goes for a buck. Medics report bad trips, but not many. Strychnine poisoning. What else is new?' "

"Did you take dope?"

"I smoked pot and ate marshmallows for a few years. Listen, Robin says, 'It's private property, no pigs allowed. But they infiltrate. Beware of guys with short hair wearing dime-store beads, Bermuda shorts and tennies. I kid you not. Everything but a sign that says HI, I'M A NARC.' Here's Woody. This is good. 'Woody's case of champagne lasts a half day. He has booze in the limo and is completely smashed at all times. Woody's pissed. Went to the lake and couldn't get any chicks to take off their bathing suits. Even offered them money.' Listen to this. 'Hope I don't end up balling Woody out of the kindness of my heart.' "

He looked over at Greta looking at him.

"You think she did?"

"It doesn't say."

"She must be almost forty now."

"Yeah?"

"It just seems weird."

"Here's what she thinks of Mark," Chris said. " 'Nice bod, but spoiled, can be quite bitchy with others but will lick my hand to get me to look at him. Susceptible to bullshit I haven't used since junior high.' Here's the good part. Robin says, 'We put up a sign on the limo, TOTAL FREEDOM NOW! that brings TV guy with camera crew. Smart-ass TV guy asks, Freedom from what? I give him stock response. Freedom from everything, man. Freedom from government, freedom from misery, from hunger, etc. etc. through anarchy. Smart-ass TV guy calls me a Marxist. I tell him, No way. He says, But you're preaching Marxism, aren't you? Zap answer: If Marx says he wasn't a Marxist, why should I call myself one? You want labels, man, we want change. Chairman Mao said to seek truth from facts and it will bring on perpetual revolution. Can you dig it? It's here, man, and it won't go away.' "

Greta was still looking at him.

"Did everybody talk like that?"

"I think she was putting the guy on," Chris said. "You'd hear students yelling 'Smash the state,' and some of them were serious, not just turned on by the excitement. I was in Washington, there must have been a half million people in the streets, all protesting the war and you could feel it. We knew we were right, we had to be--so many people together. . . . I mean you could really feel it."

"But you went to war," Greta said.

"I was against it," Chris said, "because it didn't make sense. But I still wanted to know what war was like."

He was aware of sights and sounds from that other time, strange ones, glimpses of Khiem Hanh and the smell of wood smoke, glimpses of Woodstock too, beads and headbands and dirty jeans, the smell of grass, the rain, faces with glazed smiles. . . .

"I try to remember the way it was," Chris said, "and I get it mixed up with the way it was shown in movies, with the hippies so much wiser and laid back than the straights. Except in the Woodstock movie where the young guy says, 'People who are nowhere come here because they think they're gonna be with people who are somewhere.' And the guy's dopey girlfriend doesn't get it. She says, 'Yeah, well, like there's plenty of freedom. We ball and everything. . . . ' She was being used and didn't know it. You saw so much of that. All kinds of dumb kids taken advantage of by guys pretending to be gurus or Jesus, they had the hair, the beard. Or some asshole who called himself the Pussycat Prince and wore flowers in his hair and played a flute. All of them with that smug, stoned grin, like they knew something you didn't."

"Where are they now?" Greta said.

Robin and Donnell were at the Gnome on Woodward Avenue, a new-wave Middle Eastern restaurant that featured jazz, the McKinney brothers on piano and bass. Robin suggested it, her apartment was only a few blocks away. Donnell knew the place from bringing Mr. Woody here now and again; the man not caring too much for the lamb dishes, but ate up the way the brothers performed on show tunes. Donnell arrived a half hour late, picked up a scotch and Perrier at the bar, waved to the McKinneys and joined Robin, waiting in a booth with a glass of red wine, playing with her braid. He let her tell him, with three cigarette butts in the ashtray and another one going, she just got here; then felt her looking him over as he sipped his drink and settled in, letting his gaze wander over to the sound of mellow jazz.

She said, "I hope you have more to say than the last time we were together. Remember, in the bathroom? You watched yourself in the mirror . . . I suppose to see what a good time you were having." She said, "When I called today, the first time, did you have any idea who it was?"

"Yeah, I knew."

"You did not."

Donnell said, "Girl, I'm being nice to you. How long I can manage it is something else. I do remember us being in the bathroom. Only I ought to tell you, that wasn't the last time I had any pussy, understand? I've had some since then. Now we have that out of the way, you tell me what we come here for. See, I have to get back home soon, case Mr. Woody wakes up in the dark and don't know where he's at."

Robin said, "Yeah, but have you done it in a bathroom since then?"

Donnell said, "Shit," and had to grin at her. He took a sip of his drink. "Let's get to it. Tell me you setting the bombs or somebody else?"

"You remember Skip?"

"Which one was he?"

"Kind of a biker type with a ponytail."

"Look like a bum. Huey P. Newton's lawyer had a ponytail and that man was wealthy. Yeah, I remember Skip. He's the one done the bombs, huh?"

Robin gave him a nod. "What happened to the one today?"

"We'll get to that. First I want to know about Skippy. Where's he at, hiding someplace?"

"We'll have to get to that, too," Robin said. "After I called this morning, did you present my demands to Woody?"

Donnell smiled a little. "Yeah, I presented your demands. I'm trying to think of what Mr. Woody said. I think he said, 'Oh, really?' Something like that."

He watched Robin draw on her cigarette and blow the smoke out hard and then flick ash.

She said, "Well, obviously the bomb didn't go off."

Donnell didn't say anything.

"If it did it would've been on the news." She drew on her cigarette again. "We have to trust each other. Look, I know you're cool, okay? So don't overdo it."

"Girl, you the one called the meeting."

"I want to hear you say something, that's all. I want to be sure."

Donnell said, "Wait now. You blow up the man's car knowing I could've been in it, but not caring shit whether I was or not."

She was shaking her head saying, "No, uh-unh," even before he finished. "I never thought that for a minute."

"You didn't have to think it, you knew it. You send me a bag of dynamite, leave it by the door, and you want to know can you trust me. I have to think on that one, see if it makes any sense."

He listened to Robin say his name, "Donnell?" with a nice tone, slowing up and looking him in the eye, like to let him know this was from her soul. "We haven't seen each other in sixteen years. That's a long time, isn't it?"

Donnell said, "Let me get the McKinneys to play something bluesy."

That jerked her line.

"Don't do that. Don't fuck with me, okay? I'm saying it's been a long time, I wasn't thinking of you one way or the other. I wasn't even sure you worked for him. I saw you only once and thought, Is that Donnell? But when I was talking to you on the phone, this morning, I knew. I felt some awfully nice vibes. I wanted to call you right back, really, and say, Hey, let's do this together."

"Except there was a bomb gonna explode. You said to me I'd hear it in about two minutes. Oh, you were angry, I could hear that too."

Robin waited a moment, staring at him. "It didn't go off, did it?"

"Let me tell you what I feel about this, kind of vibes I get," Donnell said. "A person that sends bombs, they into heavy shit. What I see you doing, you're thinking how you can use me, being on the inside. See, I understand that. You're not thinking to favor me none 'less it helps you."

"We both make out," Robin said. "You've been with Woody how long, three years? And you're still driving him around. What else--cleaning up after him? You need somebody on the outside."

"I'm looking at that," Donnell said, "as it happens to fit into my plan. But do I need somebody outside known for making bombs? That's the question I ask myself. What happens the police want to talk to you?"

"They already have. It was all show, nothing to it."

The woman wanting him to think it was nothing. Donnell eased back against the cushion, watching her smoke her cigarette like she was enjoying it.

"They got on you quick, didn't they?"

She said to him, "They use computers now, Donnell."

He didn't care for that shitty tone of voice.

"They feed in names and if you know either one of the Ricks brothers and you happen to have a sheet, there it is. The cops talked to you, didn't they? What's the difference?"

"Man, we cool, huh?"

She said, "I'm not worried. Are you?"

Donnell put his arms on the table again. "They talk to Skippy?"

"Skippy's well hidden."

"Bet you thought you were, too, but they come knocking at your door." Donnell leaned on his arms, getting closer to her. "I'm gonna tell you something. There's a dude knows what you're doing. The dude even guessed close to what I'm doing. I mean it was barely in my head what I'm doing and the dude knew it."

She wasn't cool now, unh-unh, staring at him.

"You hear what I'm saying? This dude is on us."

"Who is he?"

"Name Mankowski."

That poked her.

She said, "I know him--he's a cop." And stubbed her cigarette out, hard.

"Used to be. They suspended his ass, threw him out. But he keeps coming around like this." Donnell reached across the table, laying the palm of his hand in front of her. "You know what I'm saying? Comes by with his hand out. The dude's looking to score."

She was still on the edge of her seat.

"But I met him. He was one of the cops."

"He show you I.D.?"

"I don't remember."

" 'Cause he don't have none."

Confusing the poor woman.

"Then what's he up to?"

"What I'm telling you, girl, the dude's Mr. Shakedown. Was on their rape squad when they threw him out. And before that, guess what he was?"

"You know, at first," Greta said, "he doesn't seem like a bad guy. I mean getting arrested for creating an improper diversion. . . . But here's something else." She turned her head on the pillow to look at Chris. "You awake?"

"Yeah, I'm reading."

"Anything good?"

"I think I've found it. The part Robin doesn't want anybody to read."

"Go ahead, I'll wait."

"No, tell me about Donnell."

"Well, he and some other Black Panthers . . ." Greta looked at the sheet resting against her raised knees. "Here it is . . . were arrested and charged with kidnapping and beating a fellow member of the party. Young guy, eighteen years old. He said they beat him with, quote, blunt instruments and then burned him with cigarette lighters and poured scalding water on him mixed with grease. The victim admitted himself to New Grace and the hospital called the police. Upon being questioned he told them the names of his assailants, including Donnell, saying they had accused him of breaking rule number eight of the Black Panther Party. But then in court, at the pretrial examination, he changed his mind. He said he couldn't identify his assailants and that the police coerced him into signing the complaint. So Donnell and his buddies were released. He was picked up right after that on a federal gun charge, convicted and sent to prison."

Chris said, "What's rule number eight?"

Greta looked at the sheet again.

"It's written out. 'No party member will commit any crimes against other party members or black people at all, and cannot steal or take from the people, not even a needle or a piece of thread.' "

They looked at each other, heads turned on their pillows.

"I learn interesting facts in bed with you," Greta said. "When I was little, Camille and Robert Taylor and I would get in bed with our dad and he'd read the Bobbsey Twins to us."

Chris said, "Now you get the Ricks brothers and other crazies." He pushed his glasses up on his nose and looked at Robin's journal. "Here's the part about Mark, her opinion of him. Robin says, 'Mark digs the sound, the cant, the beat of revolution. He wants to be part of it, but political-science-wise knows next to nothing, zilch. He asks if I believe in the Movement, if I'm a member of the Communist Party. Why sure, Mark. He's either dumb or naive, but, man, is he loaded! I tell him to come by my tent tonight and I'll lay it out for him. So to speak.' "

"Her tent?"

"This is when they were at Goose Lake. The Ricks boys slept in the limo they rented and Robin had her own tent. She says in case she met somebody interesting."

"Mark wasn't interesting enough?"

"She was using him. Listen." Chris looked at the journal. "She finishes with Mark by saying, 'This guy is so impressionable. He's dying to be a star. If you want him, take him.' Then she has written in capital letters, 'TAKE HIM FOR EVERYTHING HE'S GOT!' "

Chris imagined Robin looking through old journals, this one, reliving those days, coming to this page and the words reaching out to grab her. It was worthless as evidence, but it let you look into her head. Chris closed the journal. It was quiet, Greta not saying a word. He was thinking she'd fallen asleep as he turned his head on the pillow, expecting to see her eyes closed.

She was staring at him. She said, "Is that what I'm doing? With Woody?"

Robin had become the ice woman, blowing her smoke out slow, stroking her braid, a thoughtful act, stroking in time to "Little Girl Blue" in the background, Robin looking at Donnell with quiet eyes, saying, "Man, it's been a long time coming."

"What has?"

"Getting on track and feeling good about it. Yeah, now, finally I can see where we're going." Saying the words with a slight nod of the head, moving with the mellow beat.

Donnell liked how she did that. The woman was in time and looking good, for her age.

"I'm not saying we don't have a problem," Robin said. "If this Polack, Mankowski, is acting officially, and that was the impression I got, then it's a major problem. Not because he's especially bright--I don't think he is. The way he tried to set me up, get me to talk, didn't show a lot of finesse. But if he's got the whole fucking police force behind him--"

"He was kicked off the police," Donnell said. "I've told you that, and he don't like it one bit."

"You think he doesn't like it or you know it?"

"I know it. I talked to the dude."

"Well, if all he wants is money. . . ." She gave a little shrug with the beat.

"He's working for himself, nobody else."

"He told you that?"

This woman could be irritating.

"It was he didn't tell me. He had, I might suspect him. Look, the dude bumped me up to twenty-five thousand to get your bomb out of the swimming pool. He's in it for bread, nothing else, and he'll keep coming back. I know, I've seen the kind." Donnell hunched over the table on his arms. "Listen to me. The dude will come back and he'll come back. He'll leave the police if he hasn't done it already. The man smells a score. But that's only the one problem. I see another one. I see too many people."

"You mean Skip," Robin said.

"Exactly. Your friend Skippy. What do we need him for? See, he's the kind of problem you can tell goodbye and it's gone. Like you say to him you not interested in the deal no more, you give up on it, he leaves."

"I don't think it would be quite that easy," Robin said.

"Sit on it till he goes away. That's easy. What I'm saying to you, I don't see cutting it three ways when we don't need to. I'm looking now at the economics of it. This kind of deal come along, you do it one time, understand? You pick a number, the most of what you can get, and that's all."

"If that's what you're worried about," Robin said, "there's no problem. You get half of a two-way split."

"I'm thinking more than half, and your number depends on my number."

"Okay, what's your number?"

"One million. I like the sound of it, I like the idea of it. One million, a one and six oughts."

"Take off and spend it, huh?"

"Stay right where I am. It's none of your business what I do with it."

Donnell watched Robin get out another cigarette saying, "Okay, if you're satisfied with a mil let's go for two and Skip and I split the other one."

Donnell shook his head. "I get more than you."

"Why?"

"It's my idea."

"Gee, I thought it was mine," Robin said.

Giving him that shitty tone again.

"I mean since I'm the one who called in the first place."

"Yeah, and how'd you expect the man to pay you? Cash? He suppose to leave it some place you tell him?"

He watched her shrug, being cool.

"That's one way."

"You dumb as shit," Donnell said. "Can you see the man go in the bank for the money? Drunk as usual, everybody looking at him? Everybody knowing his business? What did I say to you on the phone? I said, 'That gonna be cash or you take a check?' And you got mad, commence to threaten me, saying, 'Oh, you want to play, huh?' Giving me all this shit on the phone. You remember? Was only this morning."

Still being cool. Look at her blow the smoke, sip the wine, getting her head straight, what she wanted to say. Smiling at him now, just a speck of smile showing.

"What I get from that," Robin said, "you were serious. We could actually get paid by check?"

"There's a way."

"He could stop payment."

"I said there's a way to do it."

"This is wild," Robin said. "Far out."

She turned her head to gaze off at the piano, listening but not moving, Donnell watching her, remembering the woman in the bathroom a long, long time ago. Pants on the floor, her sweater pushed up, seeing the back of her head in the mirror, all that long hair, seeing a nice dreamy smile in her eyes when he looked at her. . . . Her eyes came back to him from the piano.

"Skip killed a guy one time."

"You mean little Markie?"

"Before. He did it for money. What I'm saying is, you can count on him."

"I admire that kind," Donnell said, "but it don't mean we need him."

"I was thinking he could get rid of our problem, the guy with his hand out."

Donnell hesitated. The idea stopped him, hit him cold. He didn't want to think about it, but said, "He'd do that?"

"If I asked him to."

"That's all?"

"If you say he's in."

Donnell shrugged, not saying yes or no, maybe not minding the guy being in if you could count on him and take his word. There were things to work out in this deal. It wasn't entirely set in his mind. Though it seemed to be in Robin's, the way she was smiling for real now, letting it come. . . .

Robin saying, "The extortion corporation, we accept checks. Hey, but we write Woody's driver's license I.D. on the back, right? In case he tries to stiff us."