Читать книгу Demeter’s Dream - Tony Thistlewood - Страница 8

Noah saw them first: two white men in jeans and short-sleeved shirts, standing on the bank of the Anacostia River. The men, seemingly engrossed in studying the contents of a large plastic bottle containing some of the river’s polluted water, didn’t appear to notice the two black youths.

Nearly fifty percent of the population of Washington, D.C. is African-American. In Southeast Washington, across the polluted Anacostia River before it flows into the Potomac River, the percentage of blacks is considerably higher, much nearer one-hundred percent than fifty.

Named after the Anacostan Native Americans who used to inhabit its banks, the river was once one of the most polluted in North America. Even so, despite its still unhealthy condition, the banks of the river are very popular recreational areas.

The state of the river didn’t concern the two black teenagers, Noah and his elder brother, Merc. What they had their eyes on was a man-bag hanging temptingly and insecurely from a white man’s belt. On a signal from Merc, Noah slid down the bank and plunged noisily into the water about ten yards from where the two men were standing.

‘Help! Help! I can’t swim,’ Noah yelled in a heartrending performance of a drowning youth; had he been on the silver screen, he would have been nominated for an Oscar for sure.

The two white men immediately dropped the plastic bottle and raced to Noah’s aid. They knelt by the bank and tried to grab Noah’s arms as he threshed about in the murky water, apparently gripped by panic. Suddenly, Noah’s wildly flailing hands grabbed an arm of each of the white men. Panic stricken, he held on tightly but seemed to resist their efforts to pull him to the bank.

Meanwhile, Merc, sharp knife in hand, quietly crept up behind the two men. With amazing deftness, he cut the thin cord holding the man-bag and slid away with his prize without either of the two men noticing him.

When Noah saw that his brother was well away, his panic seemed to increase so violently that he pulled the two men into the river on top of him. Virtually climbing over his two saviors, Noah scrambled up the bank and raced after his brother. He found him behind the recreational buildings impatiently revving the motor of a stolen Vespa scooter.

**

Two hours later, Noah, now in dry tee-shirt and jeans, and his brother, Merc, were sitting in a cubicle in Dion’s rundown diner no more than half-a-mile from the river, when the proprietor, a large African-American with a big belly and a gray-flecked goatee beard, sidled up to them.

‘Well, well, now what have you two lowlifes been up to today, I wonder?’ Dion, the proprietor, asked plonking his large frame on the bench opposite the brothers.

‘We ain’t been doing nothing,’ Merc protested.

‘Now I find that hard to believe because you two boys only come in here when you’re flush with ill-gotten gains. So why don’t you show Uncle Dion what you’ve got there?’ Dion asked.

‘You ain’t our uncle,’ Noah objected.

‘I’m the nearest thing you boys have got to a male relative – at least one that is a free man. Now, remind me, why is your Pappy in jail? Stealing cars, ain’t it?’

‘Yeah, you know it is,’ Merc growled.

‘Right, and he only stole Mercedes Benz, which is why he called you Merc. Soooo sweet!’ Dion enthused sarcastically. ‘Now show me what you’ve got there,’ he added in a much more menacing tone and holding out his hand as he was speaking.

Merc reluctantly gave Dion the man-bag.

‘Well, my-oh-my, what have we got here?’ Dion said on opening the man-bag and pulling out a small wad. He peeled off a fifty-dollar bill and waved it under Merc’s nose.

‘Now this here little bit of green stuff is going to get you two boys a nice burger and a bucket of fries each…’

‘Fifty bucks for a burger and fries!’ Merc yelled. ‘Oh man! That’s daylight robbery, that is. You stealing from your kin...’

‘Now you watch your mouth, young Merc, or you’ll get nothing. Well now, if you prefer, you can keep the money, and I’ll call the cops…’

‘Hey, now that’s blackmail, man’ Noah moaned.

‘Yeah, ain’t it though? But you see here now nigger boy; I am a religious man and prefer to call it justice,’ Dion said, leering threateningly at the boys.

‘Now, what else have we got here? Oh-my-oh-my, would you look at this,’ Dion said, waving a blue US passport in the air. ‘Now this is worth big money. Big, that is, if you know what you are doing. Ah, I can see from the look on your ugly black faces that you ain’t got a clue what to do with this here passport. Well, I think it’s your lucky day, boys, because your ol’ Uncle Dion here, has contacts…good contacts.

‘Now what else have we got in this little ol’ bag?’ Dion continued, and emptied the remaining contents of the man-bag onto the table.

‘Well, my-oh-my, would you look at this. If my old eyes ain’t deceiving me, we have got ourselves a little old-style cell phone. Now ain’t that lucky…’

‘Why lucky? If it’s old, it ain’t worth much,’ Noah said.

‘Oh, such innocence! Why, boy, old is better because this here cell phone won’t have fingerprint, voice, or iris recognition instead of a password, and that makes it much, much more thief-friendly…’

‘We still need to know the password…’ Merc began.

‘Oh, dear me, and I thought you boys were streetwise. Seems I was wrong about that. Don’t you know that 80% of the naive, middle-class Whiteys in this country use their birthdays as passwords for their cell phones? And what have we here?’ Dion asked, holding up the passport.

‘A passport!’ Noah and Merc yelled in unison.

‘Yeah! Which means we have the Whitey’s date-of-birth,’ Dion said, opening the passport as he was speaking.

‘This here passport says that Robert Stewart Ranoch was born March 23, 1974,’ Dion said.

He dropped the passport on the table, and then eagerly grabbed the cell phone, turned it on and, when prompted for the password, entered 032374.

‘Et voila! As the Frenchies say,’ Dion said, showing the lit-up cell phone to the brothers.

‘Now, the first thing a good blackmailer would do, like if I were one…but I’m not, because I’m a religious man…would be to check out the contact list for any interesting names,’ Dion said and began flicking through the contact list on the cell phone.

‘Well, my-oh-my, how disappointing is that. This dude has one boring life; he don’t know no one of any interest. In fact, he don’t know hardly anyone at all. Oh well, let’s see if he’s taken any worthwhile pics,’ Dion said, clearly loosing enthusiasm for the cell phone.

Suddenly, Dion jerked forward and his whole demeanor changed. He became agitated, excited, as he fiddled with an image on the cell phone. Eventually satisfied that he had maximized the picture, he placed the cell phone on the table in front of the two boys.

‘With this here pic, we, my young friends, have hit the jackpot,’ Dion said quietly.

‘We?’ Noah queried.

‘Yeah, we, because you two boys ain’t got no idea what you’ve got here, have you?’ Dion asked.

Merc picked up the cell phone and studied the picture. Noah looked over his shoulder.

‘It’s just a photo of a car being driven up a ramp into a truck. What’s so cool about that, man?’ Merc asked tossing the phone onto the table.

‘It ain’t no ordinary photo, boy; it’s a video clip. And, better still, it ain’t no ordinary car; that there is a Tesla; and it ain’t no ordinary Tesla neither. That there is the Tesla the FBI are searching for…’

‘The FBI! Are they offering a reward?’ Noah exclaimed.

‘A reward! Don’t be so stupid, bro. What are we going to do? Walk into the FBI and say, “Look what we found on this cell phone we stole”. I don’t think so bro,’ Merc said.

‘And that’s why you need ol’ Uncle Dion here,’ Dion said. ‘We have to put a safe distance between this,’ Dion said, tapping the cell phone with a long, podgy index finger, ‘And us.’

‘And how do we do that UncleDion?’ Noah asked sarcastically.

‘Oh, that bit’s child’s play. I’m surprised you children haven’t gotten on to it. What we do is this: we forward that there video to your cell phone, and then you forward it to your ol’ Uncle Dion’s cell phone. I will then email it to my computer and transfer it onto a memory stick. I will then delete the video from both my computer and my cell phone, while you delete it from your cell phone. Then there will then be no link between this here stolen cell phone and the memory stick.’

‘Gotcha! And how much is the FBI going to give as a reward?’ Noah asked excitedly.

‘It ain’t,’ Dion replied, sighing deeply. ‘But a TV station will pay big, and I mean BEEEG money for this here little video. So, what we will do is this: I will take the memory stick to a TV station I know and see how much I can get out of them. Then we will meet back here tomorrow afternoon and split the proceeds sixty/forty,’ Dion said.

The boys knew that it would be useless to argue with the big man; they might end up with nothing.

**

Early the next morning, Dion Elpis marched confidently into the foyer of the WNS-TV building in downtown Washington and up to the reception desk. Behind the desk, a silver-haired white man wearing a dark-blue uniform, white shirt and a blue tie with a wavy company logo motif, sat busily pounding away on a computer keyboard. The concierge, called Frank according to the badge on his lapel, looked up when he heard Dion nonchalantly tapping the memory stick on the desk.

‘What can I do for you?’ Frank asked.

Dion was annoyed, but not surprised, that he wasn’t addressed as “sir”, but he let it pass.

‘I have here,’ Dion said, waving the memory stick in Frank’s white face, ‘is something that your newsroom will be very interested in…and I mean very interested…’

‘Let me take-a-look…’ Frank said, holding out his hand.

‘Oh, no, no, no,’ Dion said, waving a finger at the concierge. ‘I will only give this to someone who has negotiating authority,’ he continued as pompously as he could muster.

‘If I can’t see what it is, I can’t direct you to the right area,’ Frank persisted.

‘What I have here is information that, according to your news program last night, the FBI no less, are very, very keen to have.’

‘Concerning what?’ Frank asked.

‘Concerning a certain Tesla motor vehicle.’

‘I see. If you would like to take a seat over there, I’ll see who is available,’ Frank said, pointing to the other side of the foyer.

The concierge waited until Dion was well out of earshot before picking up a phone and dialing a number.