A Moment of Silence: Midnight III (The Midnight Series Book 3) (71 page)

“Your debt was one year and nine months, ‘without incident,’ ” he said.

“Incident?” I repeated.

“When your sponsors who purchased you went to pick you up, I’m told they encountered an accident. I’m not accusing you of causing the accident. I wasn’t there. I didn’t see it. But whatever the case, the Department of Corrections lost two men and a truck. That’s a little messy. Your sponsor’s team
contacted me
, not the local police or
prison authorities. In less than thirty minutes, I deployed my team to clean up the scene. That increased your debt,” he said, calm and sly.

“I’m a businessman,” I said. “I have capital. Talk to me. How much did it cost you, sir, the helicopter ride?” We both sat up. He looked like he wanted knock my head off. The woman came back to refill the drinking water. I was already tired of her.

“It’s a holiday, son. Our accountant is adding it up,” he said, pleased with himself. The woman got on her knees and began dipping her sponge in the cold water bowl, and wiping and patting the General down. When she was done, she left. “That wasn’t the only mess I had to clean up. There was the matter of cleaning up your identity, separating you from ‘Jordan Mann.’ Making sure he’s the convict and you are not. That took time, burned up some of my connections, caused me to use up some favors that were owed to me, and I had to do some favors that I never intended to do as well.”

“Are you saying wthat legally I’m free, not a fugitive or even a convict?”

“I see you look skeptical.” He chuckled. “Right now, there’s a Jordan Mann serving your sentence. He arrived at Clinton last night same time you were scheduled to arrive, wearing your clothes, doing your time in your place.” My mind raced, although the heat and moisture in the air did slow my thoughts some. Was the prisoner walking downhill escorted by the guard the one who was doing time in my place?

“What about the fact that they already had my blood and urine and fingerprints?” I asked swiftly. “His profile won’t match up with mine,” I added.

“That’s the expensive cleanup job that I’ve been alluding to. That increased my special services and your debt. But those services I already made happen. Although it is not a simple matter to delete one man’s records and data, and alter another man’s records and data, my efforts were a success. It turns out that you are going to live well as long as you follow the General’s orders and pay the General what you owe him.”

“How much is that?” I asked. “Tell it to me straight.”

“Five painless years. You go to the school in Switzerland for one and a half years, full time, in fact overtime including summers. Graduate, and then you serve the remaining three-and-a-half years under contract,” he said, scheming.

“Under contract as what?”

“A member of a secret mercenary army, the Elite Global Organization of Soldiers. You won’t have to wear the uniform you hate so much. It’s a private company. I own it. You will not be a part of the United States military. But you will be under my management and command. I’ll contract you out to elite customers and move you to countries all around the world. You’ll be highly paid. And when your time is up, you walk away,” he said, clapping his hands once and splattering the water in his palms.

“I’d rather . . .” I began saying, and he interrupted.

Now I saw and understood the reason why him and me were naked in a strange steam bath. He needed to have this unexpected, strange, and “classified” conversation in a place where it couldn’t be overheard, recorded, filmed, or reported on. Not only because of me and the murder I had committed and been convicted of, but because of the moves he had already taken, that I never requested and that he was now responsible for.

Teacher Karim Ali had given us a clear definition of the word criminal. He said a criminal is a person, network or institution, business, or system that violates and operates and participates in activities outside of the established laws of the legitimate government or recognized governing body of a city, state, country, or territory. According to Teacher Karim’s definition, me taking the murder of Lance Polite into my own hands was criminal. At the same time, that definition meant that the General is a criminal, and the U.S. military is criminal too. Perhaps that was the reason Ricky Santiaga said “There is no such thing as a bad man.” Because of the system we live in, we all fit the criminal definition perfectly. The only way out of that truth it seemed, was to change the system, completely.

But I am a Muslim man. I believe there are good and bad men, no matter what the situation. Islam is my belief and my way. I thought all these men, including myself, would be better, live better, and do better if Islam were the rules of law. It’s a faith, and the guidelines are clear. And men can work and earn, live and love, and protect what any right thinking man wants to protect: his family. In order to do so though, men would have to gain a discipline and lose something also. Men would have to sacrifice some vices and habits and occupations that do more harm than good. Humble ourselves and lose something to gain something much better and much greater.

“Think about it before you speak, son. I’ll give you twenty-four hours to make your choice.”

“And what if I just buy back my freedom, pay you the debt back in cash or gold?” I proposed.

“Not possible. In this instance the time is worth more than any money you could put together and that I would accept.”

“So are you saying that I don’t have the option to serve out my sentence and be done with this?” I asked just to be clear.

“I told you, you are already serving your sentence and then some.”

“And then some,” I repeated.

“Yeah, right about now, Jordan Mann is seated in the hole and under close scrutiny and investigation. What else could he be? There are two corrections officers who died transporting him to prison,” the General said, which translated in my ear as “checkmate.”

“What about that man?” I asked.

“Who?”

“The one serving the time as Jordan Mann.”

“Don’t worry about him. He’s a slave, a prisoner of war paying down his debt, which has nothing to do with you,” the General said firmly. “If he wasn’t paying it at Clinton, he would be paying it elsewhere in another not-so-nice place. In the prison system, son, you are just a body, a number. You’re human waste.”

“But, he’s not me,” I said, really at a loss for words.

“If he causes any mess, he could easily be eliminated in a sudden prison fight. If he interrupts big business, that will be his fate. He is whoever I say he is. Listen, son, when I was your age, I ran into some troubles. I figured out that there were only two sides in this world, simple. There’s the winners and the losers and they’re both heavily armed. I figured out that what makes the winners the winners is that they have authority, a license to hold, a license to kill . . . and get away with it. So you decide which team you want to be a part of, the winners or the losers. If you’re stubborn or stupid, if you swim against the tide or go against the grain, you’ll have no support. You’ll have opened up a can of snakes, and at least one of them will eat you.” He gritted his teeth.

“Take your time. You have twenty-four hours,” he threatened, politely.

I had voices streaming through my thoughts: my own voice, the voices of my father and grandfather, Teacher Karim Ali’s voice, Santiaga’s, DeQuan’s, and the voice of that girl who gave that speech in the jail. Seated in the back of the Hummer, on impulse, I did what she recommended. “Check the label,” she had said. I pulled down the black jumper I wore this afternoon. I flipped the collar and checked the label. It had the letters
HWM
embossed on it. The snorkel had the same label and letters, as did the boots. I smiled. When I was on the yacht with Clementine Moody, he had handed me a note on a small notepad embossed with the capital letters
HWM.
Long before, my wife had told me that no one knew what her uncle actually did for a living. They only knew what he’d done in the past. Knitting the facts together, the tiniest sloppy mistakes that paid and powerful men are bound to make because no man is perfect, I got it. Clementine Moody was either the owner of HWM or their highly placed and paid consultant.

“What does
HWM
stand for?” I asked, suddenly breaking the silence of the ride to wherever was the General’s next destination.

“Human Waste Management, they are your sponsors. How did you know?” he asked. “That’s classified information.”

“Their logo is stamped on this uniform they gave me last night, and the coat and the boots,” I said.

“They’re an up-and-coming powerhouse corporation. The privatization of every service available in the world is on the horizon, including the privatization of prisons and the military and even the privatizing of the individual. That’s why I am in the lineup, son. I’m going to remain working high up in the military mainstream, and meanwhile, I’m investing, building and betting on the dark horse. Same as I figured out when I was young, exactly who had the authority to hold and fire their weapons. After a long career, I realized that the ‘endless military budget,’ of trillions of dollars—I needed a cut of that, not just great benefits and a paycheck. I had put in the work and the time. I had traveled the entire range of the globe, every nook and cranny. I had introduced kings and queens and corporate heads and politicians and military higher-ups and even presidents and prime ministers to each other. Through my efforts and introductions, I had created many multi-million-dollar financial business marriages. But, only through owning my own company could I get the cut I deserved. I chose what I know, the military. The creation of a global private army.” He watched me through the rearview to measure his impact. “You know, son, the dark horse will win.” He chuckled. He sounded like Slaughter to me.

“The HWM corp, is it owned by a black man?” I asked.

“Yes, but he’s extremely private. He uses his vice president with dexterity. He’s the owner. The VP is ‘the face.’ The owner is a good guy, though. I’ve known him for years.” Then I knew. The General and his brother-in-law had each formed their own corporations and they were feeding one another. Moody had come from the hospital industry, while the General was from the military. The two biggest hustles in the world had joined hands secretly. So secretly that now they were buying and selling humans, their body parts in individual pieces, or their bodies in whole. The American prisons
were their playgrounds that stored the inventory known as “human waste.” The entire globe was their marketplace. They were even buying what Allah had gifted each of us in varying degrees, our time on Earth. Furthermore, the learned Clementine Moody had the balls to name his business Human Waste Management. I had gotten that feeling from him when I was riding on his yacht. He believed he could do more with people’s lives and deaths than people could do for themselves. And he believed that people who were not pursuing Ivy League degrees and the status he achieved were actually “waste.”

“I’ll come for your decision tomorrow at eighteen hundred hours,” the General said when he dropped me back at the lone stone house in the cold wilderness. It was almost ten p.m.

Now the lights were on in the house. I saw a man moving through the lighted curtain.

This is life
, I said to myself.
You can’t kill every immoral man
, I cautioned myself.
But if there’s a man in there with my wife, he’s a dead man.

I walked around to the side of the house, sure that whoever was there heard the Hummer roll up over the ice. I heard the door open and feet crushing snow as he stepped out. I walked around front so swiftly he was startled. Before I could snap his neck I saw his face. It was Marcus.

*  *  *

Seated in her attic bedroom, purposely in the dark, I was behind a wooden pillar and the beam of moonlight. I waited. He told me she would soon come. I told him not to mention that I was here. I wanted to send him out and away. But, I did realize that would be too cruel due to the cold isolated location. Aside from that, he seemed less crazy than before. I’m sure it was the outcome of being in the atmosphere and presence of my lovely wife, his sister, who he had missed out on when he was young. He also told me that he had been working for her, managing her New York vending business. “She needed me to deal with the men,” he said proudly. I smiled.
Turns out he works for me.
But I knew he didn’t need to hear that. I let it go.

I heard a vehicle roll up. I didn’t look. She always saw too much. I didn’t want to give myself away by appearing in the window or peering through the curtains before I could feel and see her true reaction. I smiled. She is eighteen now. Had her license, was driving now. Then I heard voices two flights down but couldn’t distinguish their words. She didn’t run right up. So I guess he kept his word and didn’t tell her I was here.

Half an hour later, I heard her approaching slowly. It was strange because she was usually so swift. When she finally appeared, she was carrying something on her back. I stood still as a statue. She turned to pull out a dresser drawer and I saw my baby on her back.
Alhamdulillah
! My racing heart was beating now like a war drum. So loud I thought she could hear it. She placed our baby in the drawer after laying a blanket inside of it. She bent over and gently laid the drawer on the floor at the top of her cot. She began to undress. On her blouse a pendant of gold wings glistened.
Badass, she had even become a pilot
. Her hair was still wild beneath her
hijab
. She removed it. It was thick and braided into only two braids, even longer than before. Giving birth had made it grow. I had missed watching all of that happen. Her sculpted shoulders were still exquisite and her back a diamond cut. Her waist was still tiny ballerina and her butt African lovely.
Still training, she had made that happen. She must still be shooting her bows and arrows.
Her arms were lean and tight. She turned around and leaned back against her dresser. Her milk and honey breasts and hips more beautiful than heaven.