He spotted Leo right away, sitting alone at a corner of the bar. He was pretty much a permanent fixture at the Hi-De-Ho. Always there in that corner. He wore a jogging suit and a baseball cap, which was supposed to make him look younger. But the deep lines in Leo’s gaunt face gave away his age. Omar could hardly imagine this man was ever young.
‘You’re early,’ Leo said, with a low, lazy voice.
Omar pulled up a barstool. ‘You want to do me a favor?’
‘Why would I want to do that?’
Omar took out the rumpled twenties. ‘It’s for Evans. Evans from Cleveland.’
‘When?’
‘Tomorrow.’
‘Action?’
‘Security.’
‘Oh la la … ’ Leo sang. Omar wondered if he was being laughed at, but controlled himself. He couldn’t afford any nasty business right now. He thought of Evans’s note.
‘Can I count on you?’ Omar asked. He alone heard how formal and official those few words sounded.
‘Tomorrow night,’ Leo said. ‘Same time.’
The Antioch College campus in Yellow Springs, Ohio resembled a vacation resort. The sun gave the proud redbrick academic buildings an extra glow. In the middle of the campus was a large quad. Beyond the faculties and student dorms were meadows and fields and woods and wooden houses. It was a pleasant late-summer day.
Omar checked his watch. One-thirty. That morning he had gone straight home from the factory, slept for two hours, had breakfast, and then driven to Yellow Springs. He felt refreshed, even though he knew that the clear-headedness was mostly thanks to adrenaline. He looked at the black girls with their soft afros and big silver hoop earrings. Girls in halter tops and long flowered skirts. Their satin skin. Boys in brightly colored dashikis. They must be about his age, but they seemed much younger. Everyone appeared so carefree today, laughing and flirting with each other.
He observed, from a short distance, the activity on the quad. His hand glided over the inside pocket of his leather coat; he felt the heaviness of his .38 and the .45 Leo had sold him the previous evening. If those students only knew. Their innocent blitheness had something contagious about it, but at the same time their lightheartedness irritated him. Like this was some kind of party. Evans hadn’t asked him to be in charge for nothing: he knew that the event’s organizers were being shadowed by the FBI. There was always the danger of provocation, so everyone was patted down at the entrance. He hadn’t seen Evans yet—the man probably kept himself at a safe distance.
Omar went over to the auditorium entrance. A young guy in black pants and a black T-shirt was frisking people as they went in. He looked like a bouncer—Omar had seen him before at nationalist meetings—and it looked as though he might burst out of that tight T-shirt any minute, his biceps and torso were so pumped up. He had tried to phone Evans but his number had been disconnected. What did Evans expect him to do? ‘You’re in charge.’ The students thronged inside. The bouncer giggled along with the girls, ran his huge hands lightly over the boys’ bodies. Omar turned to look back across the nearly empty quad. The sun reflected off the white and red tiles. He squinted a bit, saw only the bright white light. He heard the excited chatter behind him. He felt invisible. He thought back on the night classes at the University of Akron. He’d gone four times, just to please his mother. He saw the white walls of the classroom, the students chatting at their desks about the courses they were taking, the books they’d read; he saw the satisfied look on their faces, their excitement about the future. They truly believed they were safe within the university’s white walls, that it was just a matter of time before they would conquer the world outside those walls. He hated them. It didn’t matter if they were black or white. Every time he was on campus he became invisible, crossed an imaginary bridge that led to an island where nothing was real, nothing was tangible, where the buildings were like a reflection of the sky, the air white and rarefied. After class he’d always fled the building to drive over to Howard St. The yellow and red and orange neon lights of the bars and clubs flashed welcomingly at him, as though he had just landed back on earth. The air smelled different on Howard St. He always got a whiff of perfume and dust and alcohol. The hot, rancid, bittersweet smell of sex. Eunice, who smiled at him as soon as he entered the High Hat. The familiarity of that smile, of her perfect blue-black skin. The way she laughed off the grousing of the whores and the pimps. After her shift she usually made out with John behind the bar. He’d never seen a woman so totally surrender herself to a man. Eunice wasn’t one to play games. Wasn’t afraid of getting hurt. She trusted the half-white, baseball-crazy John. They were a nice couple.
Omar even preferred the sweltering heat of the factory to the vacuity of the university classroom. There, at least, he wasn’t kidding himself.
He opened his eyes. Clenched his fists. Music spilled out from the auditorium. He heard conga riffs, brisk Latin rhythms. He squeezed between the students and tapped the bouncer on the shoulder.
‘Leave it to me,’ he said.
‘And who are you?’
‘Ben Hassan. I’m in charge.’
‘Says who?’
‘You know that as well as I do.’
‘Don’t get bent out of shape, man. Everybody’s already inside.’
Omar opened his jacket. Offered the bouncer a glimpse of the gleaming metal.
‘What, am I supposed to be afraid now?’ He didn’t look at Omar, but waved some more students through. ‘Go ahead, asshole,’ he hissed, and then turned and walked off.
Omar began awkwardly frisking the last few boys. On stage, a small black man with an African cap sat behind two enormous congas. He drummed so fast that you could only see the motion, not his hands themselves. His hands disappeared in the forceful, compelling rhythms that flew off the congas.
A man with a beard and an afro pushed his way in.
‘Hey, you!’ Omar shouted.
‘What?’ The man looked back, irritated. He wore a red-and-yellow dashiki. His skin was deep brown.
‘Just wait.’
‘What for?’
‘So I can frisk you.’
‘What’re you talking about? I’m one of The Last Poets from New York, you fool. I’ve gotta perform now.’
‘I don’t care if you’re James Brown. I’m in charge of security here. Nobody just walks on through. Otherwise get lost.’
The man raised his hands. ‘Can you reach?’ he asked condescendingly while Omar’s hands patted under his dashiki and along his pant legs. ‘That tickles.’
Omar stood at the back of the auditorium, near the exit. He was sweating but couldn’t take off his leather jacket because of the guns in his inside pockets. The weight of the metal tugged at his shoulders. For the first time that day, he was relaxed. He watched the drummer on stage. The guy looked like he was in a trance. The complex rhythms seemed completely effortless. Omar leaned against the wall. It was like he was listening to an entire orchestra of drummers—he heard a bassline rhythm and a melody at the same time, but the melody wasn’t really being played, it just wafted up from those natural rhythms like a wispy vapor; he caught snippets of soft, mysterious tones that were gone, evaporated, before he even