Flashback

Knowing he was wasting time and making himself more of a target, Nick said, “You seem to know quite a bit about Shakespeare, Mr. Soul Dad.”

The old man threw his head back and laughed deeply and delightedly. His teeth were large and white and only one was missing on the upper right side, despite his age. Something about the laugh made Nick think that the old man was Jamaican, although he had none of the accent. Whether he was laughing at being called Mr. Soul Dad or because of the Shakespeare compliment, Nick had no clue.

“I lived for more than forty years in a small railroad-yard shack in Buffalo, New York, with a sterno-addicted philosophy professor of great learning, Mr. Bottom,” said Soul Dad. “Some things rub off.”

Nick knew it was stupid to ask a question and drag things out with this old man, but sometimes one had to be stupid. “Soul Dad,” he said softly, “what are you in here for?”

Again that full-throated laugh. “I am in here for living under an overpass in winter and fouling the view of the Platte River for people paying much money to live in a tall glass tower along the river park,” said Soul Dad. “What, may I ask in return, are you here for, Mr. Bottom? Or, rather, whom are you searching for here?”

“Delroy… Brown.”

Soul Dad showed his strong teeth again in a broad grin. “How gallant of you to leave out the n-word, Mr. Bottom. And I agree with you on the choice. Of all the things I have seen and suffered in my eighty-nine years of life, my people’s return to the never-really-abandoned n-word of our centuries of servitude is the greatest self-inflicted folly.”

Soul Dad turned and pointed to a hovel halfway up the first tier behind home plate, where, of course, all the seats had long since been torn out. “Mr. Delroy Nigger Brown is there, sir, and expecting you.”

“Thank you,” Nick said absurdly and started to step forward.

Blocking the gesture from the sight of those behind him, Soul Dad held up a hand with one finger raised. “They plan to kill you,” the old man said very softly.

Nick paused.

“Not Mr. Brown, whom you seek, but a certain Bad Nigger Ajax. You know the man?”

“I know the man,” Nick said just as softly. He’d been the arresting officer and his testimony had sent Ajax away more than ten years before for repeatedly sodomizing a six-year-old girl. The girl had died of internal hemorrhaging.

“It will be like this,” said Soul Dad in the same quick, soft, reverberant whisper. “Mr. Brown will invite you into his tent-hovel. You will wisely decline. Mr. Brown will say, ‘Let us step up here where it is private.’ Ten steps up, Mr. Ajax will pop up from behind another tent and shoot you in the face. His friends—or, rather, his fearful acolytes, since Mr. Ajax has no friends here—will block the view of your sniper with their bodies while Mr. Ajax escapes into the crowds toward left field. The pistol will not be found.”

Nick stared at the old man. Eighty-nine years old. Soul Dad—whatever his original name was—had been born in the early days of World War II.

Before Nick could speak, even inanely to say “Thank you” again—although he had no idea if the old man was telling the truth or setting him up for some other form of assassination—Soul Dad put his hands together, bowed, turned, and walked away down what once was the third-base line.

Nick took two steps back while surveying the maze of tents and shacks filling the entire first tier behind home plate. “Did you hear that?” he whispered.

“We heard it,” came Sato’s voice in his ear. “I am looking at a photo of Ajax right now.”

Nick licked his dry and chapped lips. “Any suggestions on what I should do?”

“Mr. Campos suggests that you should come back through the centerfield fence, Bottom-san. He says to jog and weave. Ajax’s pistol is probably of small caliber.”

Sweat was running into Nick’s eyes but he resisted the urge to wipe it away. “I’m going to go up and find Delroy. Can you react fast enough to take Ajax out when and if he pops up?”

“It will be in deep shadow up there.” Sato’s voice was calm in Nick’s ear. “He will expose himself for only a second. And I have something to confess to you, Bottom-san.”

“What?”

“All American black men look pretty much the same to me, Bottom-san.”

Nick laughed despite himself. “Bad Nigger Ajax weighs around three hundred pounds,” he said, covering his mouth with his hand so no one in the stands could read his lips. How many pitchers have done that here with their mitts? he wondered.

“I confess, Bottom-san, that all three-hundred-pound American blacks look the same to me. So sorry.”

“Well,” said Nick behind his hand, “shoot the one aiming a gun at me. If you can.”

“Warden Polansky will not appreciate the paperwork,” Sato said with no hint of emotion. Nick had no idea if the big security chief was joking. And he didn’t care.