Finding Gideon(118)
“Are you okay, son?” She was crying. “Are you okay? I need to know you’re okay.”
“I’m okay. I’m okay. I had some bad intel on you guys. You’re safe.”
“Am I? Are we?”
“Medianoche is dead. Mr. Midnight is dead.”
Her voice shook. “All of the people he worked with?”
“All gone. The one who was the leader, the Beast, is dead too.”
She paused and looked at Steven.
I waited for her to talk about the Beast.
She said, “Alvin White was murdered. It was on the news. The newscaster you like, Jewell Stewark, she reported it three nights in a row. It was on Facebook. It was in The Atlanta Journal-Constitution.”
“He was my friend. He was my first best friend. Never had friends growing up.”
“He was a great man. I admired him for trying so hard at everything.”
“I know what they did. One by one or two by two, they all paid. Not that it will do any good for him or his family, but they paid.” Then I added, “Yeah. Medianoche is dead.”
“Where are you?”
“On a flight. Leaving the epicenter of hell. Heading back to North America.”
“Will you come here? I need to see you, face-to-face.”
“Since you’re okay, New York for a day or two, then there. I hear Steven and Robert in the background. Tell the boys I will come there and take them roller-skating; then we can go to Funtime on Buford Highway and bowl a few games. Friday I can take them to a baseball game.”
“Here in Atlanta?”
“In Chicago. Friday we can fly to Chicago, spend the night, spend Saturday at Wrigley, then fly back Saturday night. They can bring their homework with them. If you approve.”
“As long as they are back in time for second service at church.”
“You go to church?”
“We go to a Catholic church. They need church.”
“I’ll have them back from Chicago in time.”
“I would like to go. I would like to get away from here.”
“You can go too.”
She paused. “They thought you were dead too.”
“I’m fine.”
She dabbed her eyes. “Will you take your brothers to Woodstock to practice shooting at cans and bottles?”
“No, I won’t do that anymore.”
“No, take them. And I want to go too. I need to remember how to use a gun.”
“What happened down there that has turned you pro NRA?”
“I want them to know how to use a gun.”
“In case people like me come in that direction.”
Silence sat between us.
I said, “You need to remember how to use a gun. When have you used one?”
She paused. “Never. I have never touched one. Not since I was very young.”
I let that contradiction go, but that excited utterance went into my memory bank. There was a lot I wanted to talk to her about, but now wasn’t the time. I needed to know if she had known that Medianoche was alive, and I needed to know about her and the Beast. She had never mentioned the Beast. I needed to know who my mother really was, and why all the lies and secrecy. Catherine took the phone and went to the kitchen. She told me about how she had run to the townhome where Jeremy Bentham was staying, had taken the boys there to hide.
He wasn’t there with her. I didn’t know how much he knew about our lives.
Catherine, the woman formerly known as Thelma, handed the phone to Hawks. I never would have imagined them ever being in the same room, let alone inside of Catherine’s home.
She told me she had drowned a preacher in the Chattahoochee River.
I said, “Thanks, Hawks.”
“Have you called our jefe?”
“No. Are you crying? Is he okay?”
“You went off grid like an idiot. He’s not happy about that.”
“You’re crying.”
“Just my allergies. Just my allergies. They act up when I get too worried about a fool.”
We talked for a moment. The Bajan had gone back to the living room.
Hawks said, “Jeremy Bentham.”
“What happened?”
“When your momma got to his townhome, she asked him a few questions. Asked him why there was no record of him existing until recently, as if he had just been invented.”
“How did she know there weren’t any records of him? What was his answer?”
“Well, you had told your momma to look around his stuff, and she did what you asked. Not long after, he got in his car, drove away, and vanished from the face of the earth.”
“You made him vanish?”
“The Bajan did. We had Horsemen coming out the ying-yang; Shotgun had been killed up on South Cobb Drive, and I wasn’t taking any chances. Shotgun managed to take out three people in the same kind of suits, left them all so they’d have to have closed-casket funerals, and I knew they had to be associated with the Horsemen. I just didn’t know if more were already here.”