Pipe Dream (25 page)

“This time,” she whispered, “it’s gon’ be different.”

With those words reverberating in her mind, Pookie touched Leroy’s hair, then ran her hand along the side of his face, then down the center of his torso until she reached the top of his pants. She worked her hand around his waist and with a gentle tug on the edges of about three of the bills, extracted the money from his pocket.

And then she was in the aisle of the train, walking quickly to the next car, whispering to herself that this time, it was going to be different.

*       *       *

By the time the first 16th District officer walked inside 30th Street Station, Amtrak police had already ceased train operations, radioed Morgan’s description to the conductors, and posted every available officer inside the station. SEPTA—the local transit authority that runs trains in and out of 30th Street—sent over a large contingent of police and replaced its trains with buses. The postal police got word of the situation and blocked off the entrance to the main post office across the street.

The result was something just short of bedlam.

Amtrak police were running up and down the steps, trying hard to look like nothing was wrong. SEPTA police were filtering into the station, walking back and forth in groups of three or four. The postal police were changing into riot gear at the main post office across the street. And to make matters worse, Philadelphia police were gathering outside the station like they were preparing to lay siege to the entire block.

To the casual observer, the whole scene probably looked like just what it was—a disaster in the making. With so many police from so many different departments all gathered in one place, there were more than enough bodies to handle whatever resistance Morgan or anyone else was prepared to offer. The only problem was, no one had bothered to organize them under a single command. So everybody was doing the same thing as everybody else, and they just ended up in each other’s way.

Amtrak officers asked baggage handlers and clerks and conductors if they had seen anyone matching Morgan’s description. When they said no, SEPTA police came through and asked them the same question. When they said no too, Philadelphia police came through and asked the same question.

By the time the police got down to the platform where the 12:15 to Atlanta was waiting, even a fool could see that something was wrong. People gathered at the windows of the train, watching the officers walk back and forth on the platform. But when they asked the conductors what the problem was, they were told that someone had lost a child.

The conductors had been instructed to say that until the Amtrak police could figure out the safest way to evacuate the trains without risking Morgan’s escape. But by the time they decided that the safest thing to do was to post officers in each car and evacuate the trains one car at a time, it was too late.

Morgan was up and running.

He spotted the police milling around on the platform and immediately began to move through the aisle of the train, hoping to lose himself in the crowd. His mind was racing, frantically searching for a way out. But every time he thought he had figured out something, reality crept in and told him in no uncertain terms that it could never work. Still, he kept moving.

He reached the end of the car and tried the door to the bathroom. It was locked. He walked through to the next car, willing his legs to move faster. They wouldn’t. He pushed through the aisles and strained to keep from knocking people over. Then he clutched his garment bag and stood behind a group of people who were gathered at the window of the train.

As Morgan stood there, he removed his jacket and laid it on the seat in front of him, hoping that the absence of the jacket would throw everyone off just enough to allow him to walk out of the car and the station unchallenged. He leisurely removed his shirt from his pants to cover the gun he had tucked in the small of his back. Then he took a deep breath, backed away from the crowd, and started toward the end of the car, angling for the bathroom door. When he tried the door, it was locked.

Morgan held back the curses he felt rising in his throat, then reached for the door to walk through to the next car. The door opened before he could turn the handle. When he looked up, he was staring into the eyes of the same man he had talked to earlier—the conductor who had told him there wouldn’t be anything leaving for the next half hour.

For a moment, their eyes locked. Morgan didn’t see anything there. Not fear, not recognition, just an irritated look that told him the conductor wanted to get by.

“I thought you said we’d be leaving in a few minutes,” Morgan said, checking to see if the other man remembered him.

“Excuse me?” the conductor said, trying to sound confused.

“Didn’t you . . . never mind. I’ll just get out of your way.”

Morgan walked through to the next car just as an Amtrak policeman was walking through the door at the far end. The conductor, praying that the man he knew to be wanted by the police wouldn’t open fire, turned around at the last second and pointed at Morgan. Too late, the Amtrak officer reached for his gun.

Morgan released his garment bag, dropped to one knee, pulled the gun from the small of his back, and squeezed off a round, hitting the officer in the shoulder and knocking the gun from his hand. As Morgan picked up his garment bag and ran toward the end of the train, Pookie came through the same door as the Amtrak policeman, walking toward Morgan.

She looked down and saw the policeman on the floor. Then she looked up and saw Morgan’s gun. The first thing she thought about was the money. She couldn’t let the man with the gun get the money because this time, it was going to be different. This time, she was going to make a better life for herself. She was going to stop living the way she had been living for the past year and a half. She was going to get herself together. She was going to start all over. And the only thing that was going to allow her to do that was the money.

She took a step backward and reached into her pocket to make sure the money was still there. Morgan thought she was reaching for a gun. She saw him taking aim and started to yell something. But before Pookie could take another step or say another word, Morgan squeezed off two rounds, hitting her square in the chest with each shot.

The impact of the bullets lifted Pookie’s feet from the floor and tossed her backward like a rag doll. When she landed, the breath rushed from her mouth in a great
whoosh,
like the sound of a bat being swung mightily at the air. Her head bounced against the floor of the train and her eyes lost their focus. The only thing she saw was the blur that was Morgan stepping over her on his way to the next car.

As Pookie lay bleeding, the life ebbing from her body in a slow and steady stream, she tried to tighten her grip around the money, holding on to it like some strange talisman. And then she mouthed Leroy’s name. It was the one word that she knew could bring her peace.

Leroy thought he was dreaming when he heard the gunshots. He was at the back door of the house again, and Rock and Butter were struggling with Podres. There was the first shot, then three more shots. And then, as often happens in dreams, everything split into fragments.

People running down the steps and out the back door. Butter and Rock scuffling to remove the money and drugs from the dead man’s pockets. Pookie crying. Leroy hiding. Then something that hadn’t been there before—the sound of Pookie calling his name.

Leroy’s eyes flew open. He looked around him and saw that Pookie was gone. Then, as an afterthought, he felt his pocket and saw that the money was gone. Enraged, he looked out into the aisle of the train.

A woman was screaming from the next car, repeating over and over again, “He shot her! Oh God, he shot her!”

Others followed the woman, running toward the back of the train and trying to squeeze out from between the cars. Leroy wondered why they didn’t just use the doors. And when he looked at the doors in the sleeper car he saw why. They were closed.

Dazed, he started to walk toward the car the people were running from, the eerie sound of Pookie calling his name repeating itself in his mind like a forbidden chant. He didn’t know what he was walking to, but he did know what he was walking to. He didn’t know why he was going there, but he did know why he was going there. It was the strangest feeling he’d ever had. He was like a ghost, passing through the world of the living on his journey to the world of the dead.

“Go back,” a man warned him. “He’s got a gun up there.”

Leroy kept going, pulled toward his destiny by an unseen force, drawn to it like waves are drawn to moonbeams. He kept going and he knew before he got there what he would see. But knowing wasn’t enough. He had to see her, to feel her. Leroy opened the door, and his legs almost gave out at the sight of her.

“Pooookie!” he screamed.

She looked up at him, but she couldn’t see his face. In fact, she couldn’t see anything. She could only hear a voice, the same sweet voice she had come to know so well, the voice that she would follow to the ends of the earth.

“Leroy,” she said, her weak voice fading with each breath.

“Ssshhh.” Leroy reached down to pick her up. “Don’t talk, baby. I got you.”

The injured Amtrak officer lay a few feet away, taking in the exchange and inching toward the gun that had been knocked from his hand by the impact of Morgan’s bullet.

“It’s gon’ be different this time?” Pookie said, the blood staining Leroy’s arms as he lifted her.

“Yeah, baby,” Leroy said, a single tear rolling down his cheek as he watched her life pour out in a crimson rush. “It’ll be different.”

Pookie pulled Leroy’s face down to hers, and with lips that grew colder with each passing second, she kissed him. The kiss said everything she couldn’t. It was an apology, and a promise, and a symbol, and a gift. It was all she had left to give.

“I love you, Leroy,” she said softly.

And then she was gone.

“I love you, too,” he said, another tear rolling slowly behind the first.

Leroy placed her in a seat and took the money from her hand. He looked at her once more, then started to walk toward the other end of the car.

“Leroy Johnson!” a voice called.

Leroy turned around and saw the injured Amtrak police officer aiming a gun at him. Then he looked at the end of the car and saw a group of policemen gathering at the door, walking through the opening slowly as if they were expecting him to make a sudden move.

“Give it up, Leroy!” an officer shouted.

For a moment, Leroy thought of doing just that. But then he looked at Pookie, lying there wrapped in a strange sort of peace he’d never seen before.

“Turn around slowly and put your hands in the air!” another officer called out.

Leroy heard the voice, but he didn’t hear it. He could only think of Pookie. He could only hear her dying voice whispering, “I love you.” He could only feel her lips clinging to his. He could only see her peace.

He looked at her again, and he knew what he had to do.

“It’s gon’ be different this time, Pookie,” he mumbled.

“Stop!” an officer screamed from behind him.

Leroy ignored him and ran toward the Amtrak officer who lay on the floor. The officer shot once, missing badly. He shot again, and hit Leroy in the groin. He fired once more, and the top of Leroy’s head seemed to explode.

When Leroy finally stumbled and fell, he landed right in front of the officer. And the final sensation he felt before drifting away in death was something he’d never felt in life. Peace.

Black had never seen Clarisse cry before, not even as a child. But she was crying then, each tear punctuating the sound of the gunshots and the screams of the people running by in a panic.

She cried because they both knew what those sounds meant. Neither she nor Black had to say it aloud. Leroy, or Pookie, or both, had been caught. And now the police were looking for the two of them.

Black looked out into the aisle of the train and saw police combing the cars, looking at each person, opening the door to each compartment, searching as if they knew what they were looking for. When they got closer to the sleeper compartment, Black slipped back behind the door and tried to think. Clarisse sat down on the bunk behind him and cried.

“Look, Clarisse,” he said. “You gotta stop cryin’. We ain’t got time for that.”

She cried harder. Black looked out the window and saw police crowding the platform. Then he heard them coming closer to their compartment and he almost started crying, too.

“I gotta go,” Clarisse said, lunging for the door.

Black reached out and tried to grab her, but she was out of the compartment and into the aisle before he could stop her. The next thing he heard was a man calling out to Clarisse and footsteps running past their compartment. From the sound of it, she had panicked and run away.

It was all the diversion Black needed.

He came out of the door and started to walk the other way, hoping they wouldn’t hurt her and trying hard not to care. He reached the end of the car and was about to climb out from between the space leading to the next car before he heard a gunshot and the sound of Clarisse screaming for someone to stop. When he heard her voice, something inside of him clicked. It may have been the beginnings of a conscience, but he couldn’t really say for sure. All he knew at that moment was that he could never go on knowing that he had let something happen to Clarisse because of him.

He stared at the end of the platform, toward the sound of Clarisse’s voice. It didn’t take long to spot her. A white man with brown hair was holding her by the neck and walking backward toward the steps that led to ground level, above the train platforms. The man was carrying a bag and favoring his right leg. He looked like he might have been shot.

“I’ll kill her,” he said, sounding desperate. “If I don’t make it outta here, she dies.”

Black started toward the man who was dragging Clarisse, then stopped and looked around, trying not to look as confused as he felt. Not that there was any question as to what he should have done. He should have turned his back and walked away from it all. He should have closed his ears to the sound of Clarisse’s cries and opened his eyes to reality. He should have run away. But he couldn’t.