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.”The newspaper dropped out of Bill’s fingers.Why, this was terrific! This wasn’t muggers.This was Hayden’s work.The Harlem Equality League was the same place where Miller had gone to work.This Buckles girl had been kidnapped out of the Harlem Equality League! Almost, Bill visualized the white naked shape of a woman; the shape was huge of breast and hip like the statue of a goddess but unlike a statue it wasn’t made of stone; it was made of flesh, the flesh of a white woman and the newspapers had erected it on the market-place where all the city would come and see.Hayden was clever, Hayden with his strict business, his strict cold turkey business.This kidnapping! There would be promotions in the organization as sure as fate.Smearing that nigger bellyaching bunch! Smearing all the niggers! Who was this Suzy Buckles? Her name was an American name; her grandfather had an American name but she must be a Red to be working for niggers.Serves her right if she was raped!He tore off his pyjamas and glided, naked, to the closet.He took a blue suit off its hanger, put it on the dresser, pulled open the dresser drawer, fished out a pair of shorts, grabbed and discarded a white shirt with a red pencil line for a light blue shirt.He got into the shorts, whipped the trousers on, zipped up the fly, slid into the shirt.He glanced over at Isabelle.She was sleeping, her face pallid, the soft round hill of her hip under sheet and blanket, the blanket snug under her chin.A blanket, he reflected ironically; New York in May was too cold for the Carreau blue blood.He smiled at her in her sleep.She was like a river flower, he felt, a woman like a river flower, beautiful and perfect and full of river heat.He stared at her, softening inside; a son of hers would be something; the baby might be as blond as his own kid brother, Joe, or dark like Isabelle or a combination.But who the hell wanted a child to tie him down? She was tied to family and to church tight enough as it was.Her family name was still Carreau and not Johnson.Or rather Johnson-Trent.He didn’t even have his own name.He sighed, sensing himself as a shadow compared to the bulk and solidity of her family.The Carreaus never changed.All Isabelle wanted was to live as her ancestors had lived, to meet at the family celebrations and parties in New Orleans, in New Iberville, in all the French sugar towns of Louisiana, rooted, and never to be shaken by new ideas.A child would pull her further away from him; a child would inherit the family stories of the colonial Carreaus, the incense and confessional of the Carreau Church.Dressed, he tiptoed out of the hotel room into the corridor.In his tension, the corridor seemed a hundred miles long, Isabelle at one end, Hayden at the other.He took the elevator down to the street.Ahead of him, beyond the intersection of Clark Street and Columbia Heights, he saw the sky-high towers of Wall Street Manhattan, battlements of stone, perpendicular and magic-windowed like a fantastic city of some fantastic future.He walked down Columbia Heights between the brownstones and mechanically as if he had just arrived here, landed from some boat in the Harbor, he stared at each corner street sign, Pineapple Street; Orange Street; streets named after the warm fruits that had once come in ships bottoms to the piers below.At each street corner, the towers were framed between the brownstones, the Manhattan city, the powerhouse city.He neared the brownstone where he had an apartment under another name, unlocked the white painted inner door.Inside, there was a mirror above a walnut table.He climbed the stairs, inserted a second key into the lock.He entered, shut the door, and Hayden was in the living room.“Surprised?” Hayden said from the Morris chair.In his dark brown suit, white shirt, he was dressed for the towers across the river, for the forty-third floor of the organization’s offices.“Some.I usually get here first.I didn’t know you had a key, too.”“I have.”“Congratulations, Mr.Hayden.”“Congratulations?”“That Buckles girl development.”“That’s all very well,” Hayden said.“Aden is capable enough.” His voice was unenthusiastic, his eyes cold.It dawned on Bill that Hayden was worried.Hayden worried? Hayden? Bill’s heart pounded.“Is it about Miller?” he asked.“No.Why?”“I thought — ”“Miller, I presume, has been disposed of? Did you know that Buckles is Miller’s girl?”So that was it, Bill decided.“No,” he said.“Sit down,” Hayden exclaimed irritably.“Don’t stand there hovering like a doorman.Miller has been disposed of, hasn’t he?”Bill bit on his lips angrily.“I asked you a question?” Hayden said.“I suppose so.That nigger — ”“Spare me your usual invective this morning.However, it doesn’t matter very much whether Miller has been disposed of as yet or not.”“None of the papers I read said Buckles was his girl.”“That, too, is unimportant.”Bill stared, frightened.For Christ sake, what did matter then? His eyes lowered to Hayden’s crossed legs and lifted once more to the frowning face.“May I ask why?” he hazarded a question.“Governor Heney will answer you tonight.”“Tonight?”“Tonight.He has notified me that you are to be present.I am to be present.Everyone in the organization who has had anything to do with the Harlem venture will be present.” Hayden clasped his hands together.“But I don’t understand.The Governor’ll be pleased.The press — ”“The Governor hasn’t flown north two days ahead of schedule to congratulate us.”“Have you seen him?”“Last night.”“Then he didn’t see the press?”“We knew what the headlines would be last night
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