«I don't give a shit what you hope. Don't bother with us,» said Barenga.
«I couldn't help overhearing you talk to the clerk,» he said.
«Well, then, you just stop up your ears iffen you can't help none,» said Barenga; Piggy and Philander laughed.
«When you asked which room Vickie Stoner was in, I thought that was rather gross. As a matter of fact, I found it incredible that anyone would be stupid enough to publicly ask where to reach his victim. Incredibly stupid.»
«You want to get your ass busted, honkey?» said Barenga.
«I don't know if your little monkey brain can absorb this, but when you publicly announce you are on a hunt, then you become the hunted.»
«What you jivin', man? Get outta here.»
Lhasa Nilsson sighed. He looked down the hallway right, he looked down the hallway left, and having made sure no one could see him, took a little automatic pistol from the pocket of his lounging jacket and put a copper-tipped .25 caliber bullet between the left and right eyes of a black man whose nickname he never bothered to find out was Piggy. The shot made a soft, hardly noticeable crack, like a dish breaking over a sofa. Piggy's head jerked slightly and he collapsed right where he had been standing.
Nilsson stepped into the room and kicked the door closed.
«Get him under the bed,» ordered Nilsson.
Philander and Barenga couldn't grasp what had happened. They stared dumbly at Piggy, who looked as if he were sleeping on the floor except for a little fountain of blood bubbling from the bridge of his nose.
«Move him under the bed,» said Nilsson again, and Barenga and Philander suddenly understood what had happened. They stuffed Piggy under the bed, avoiding each other's eyes.
«There's a bloodstain there,» said Nilsson, nodding toward the spot where Piggy had fallen. «Clean it up.»
Philander rose to get a cloth, but Nilsson nodded to the supreme commander of the Black Liberation Army of Free Africa. «No. You. What's your name?»
«Abdul Kareem Barenga.»
«What kind of name is that?»
«Afro-Arab,» Barenga said.
«It is neither African nor Arab. Put some water on the cloth. Now this is what you're going to do. While I was waiting in the hall I heard you order food. You are going to tip the waiter very well. You are going to tip him ten dollars and then you will hold another hundred in your hand while you say you are looking for a white girl whom you will describe. You will not say Vickie Stoner, but you will describe the red hair and the freckles, and will say that she is someone you fancy and came to New York to find. You will not let the waiter in the room, but you … what's your name?»
«Philander.»
«You, Philander, will take the tray and hold the door. Take the tray with your left hand and hold the door open with your right. You will allow the waiter to partially enter, but not beyond the open door. I will stand behind it with this little weapon here, which is more than suficient for both of you and the waiter should that be necessary. Do you understand?»
«What if the waiter don't know where she is?»
«Waiters, cooks, liverymen, butlers, gardeners, keepers of the chamber, keepers of the gate, know these things. They are traditionally the breach in the walls of every castle. It is an old family saying of ours … breach in the wall of a castle? I see you don't know what that is. Well, a long time ago people defended themselves by living in stone houses that were actually forts. A fort is a place designed to be safe from attack, hard to get into.»
«Like a bank, or them new liquor stores,» said Philander.
«Right,» said Nilsson. «And we discovered a long time ago that servants were a breach in this wall, meaning an opening. As if someone left the door to the liquor store open at night.»
«Dig, baby,» said Barenga. «That's strategy. Like the great black Hannibal.»
«The what Hannibal?»
«Hannibal, black. He African. Greatest general what ever generalled.»
«I don't know why I'm bothering,» said Nilsson. «But we apparently have some time. First, Hannibal was a great general but not the greatest. He lost to Scipio Africanus.»
«Another African,» said Barenga, smiling.
«No, he got the name Africanus after defeating Hannibal at the battle of Zama in North Africa. Scipio was Roman.»
«The guineas got him?» asked Barenga in astonishment.
«Yes. In a way.»
«They done in black Hannibal?»
«He wasn't black,» said Nilsson. «He was Carthaginian. That's now North Africa. But the Carthaginians were Phoenicians. They came from Phoenicia … what would now be Lebanon. He was white. A semite.»
«Them Semites ain't black?»
«No. Never were. Still aren't, except those who have bred with blacks.»
«But Hannibal black, real black. I seen it on TV. The Afro-Sheen hair commercial. Hannibal even got corn rows. Now, no white man got corn row hair.»
«Just because it's on television doesn't make it so.»
«I seen it. I seen it with my own eyes. He got this boss gold helmet with feathers and corn row hair.»
«I give up,» said Nilsson. «Do you have money for the waiter?»
«I don't tip no …» Barenga saw the nasty little barrel level at his head. «Got no bread, man.»
Nilsson's left hand skillfully went to a pocket without disturbing his concentration on his gun. He threw some new American money on the bed. «Remember now. Ten dollars tip. Keep him just the other side of the door. You fancy this redheaded girl with freckles. You hold the hundred dollars up. And take off that stupid little beanie. No one is going to believe you'd throw away a hundred to find a woman, not with that silly little thing on your head.»
«Them my Afro colors,» said Barenga.
«Put it away.»
There were three raps at the door. «Room service.»
The beanie disappeared behind Barenga on the bed.
«Come in,» said Barenga. He smiled nervously at the little gun.
Philander opened the door with his right hand and with his left wheeled a two-layered stainless steel cart, draped with white cloth, into the room. Barenga rose from the bed and went to the door.
The waiter was a round jello-soft little man with a cherub's pink face. He opted for liberalism and racial consciousness the instant he saw the ten-dollar bill in Barenga's hand. As he pocketed it, he said «Thank you, sir,» although only three minutes before he had told the room service captain that he would probably wrap the food trays around those niggers' heads.
Barenga pushed the tray into the room behind him but still stood in the open door. Before the waiter could turn to go, Barenga held the hundred-dollar bill in his right hand, waving it slowly like someone teasing a house cat with an old slipper.
The waiter saw the bill and stopped. He could see the light green and the dark green ink on the creamy colored paper. He saw the extra zeroes in the corner of the bill. He decided that liberalism was too weak a posture to adopt in the latter third of the twentieth century. He would become an advocate of radical power.
«Yes, sir,» he said, his watery blue eyes meeting Barenga's. «Will there be anything else, sir?» He looked again at the bill in Barenga's hand.
Barenga was wondering how he and Philander could keep the hundred. It would be a good start on capitalizing the revolution. He saw the movement of Nilsson's sleeve behind the door and decided the revolution would have to wait.
«Yeah, man,» Barenga said. «You know the people in this hotel?»
«Yes, sir. I think so.»
«Well, I'm looking for a special one. This one is a little red-haired honkey with freckles.»
«A girl, sir?» the waiter said, telling himself that distaste and revulsion were unworthy emotions for a radical to feel, just because a black man asked about a white woman.
«Well, of all the sheeit,» said Barenga. «Yeah, a girl. I look like I like boys?» He waggled the hundred-dollar bill at the waiter.