The Illegal (18 page)

A
FTER TAKING THE OVERNIGHT TRIP FROM
B
UTTERSBY
and disembarking in Clarkson, Keita entered the bus station that he had been using since he had gone into hiding in Freedom State.

The Clarkson bus station allowed him access to a locker, with in-and-out privileges, for thirty dollars a month. It also offered a hot shower with towel service for five dollars. Keita stood for ten long minutes under the stream of hot water. He had to present himself well at all times. It horrified him to think that poor hygiene or odour might draw attention to his paperless status. People who smelled and looked clean always got more respect. Keita hadn’t showered since the day before the marathon. Nobody would see him or arrest him or deport him in the shower, so he lingered and allowed himself to think.

He would not live to an old age. He might not make it to thirty. It didn’t matter. He just needed to stay alive long enough to run again, to run as many times as necessary to help his sister. He prayed for strength. And in the noise of the pounding water, he cried.

Keita turned off the shower, wrapped the towel around his waist and over the hernia and approached his locker. The facilities were run by a short black man. He stood at four foot ten and called himself My Hero, and he had muscles from head to toe. My Hero was offering Keita a second towel.

“Here, man. An extra. No charge. Just take it, from brother to
brother.” Keita took the towel and began to dry himself off. He waited for a moment of privacy, but My Hero planted himself with crossed arms and stared.

“You’re in shape, dude,” he said. “Fine shape.”

My Hero was as dark as Keita. He kept his hair cropped short like a soldier’s and had an arrow tattooed on each forearm.

Keita dried his feet.

“You got calf muscles like grenades,” My Hero was saying. “Little bombs you got there. I’d say you’re a runner.”

“You got me there,” Keita said. He ditched the towel and dressed quickly.

“If I was you, I’d run to AfricTown,” My Hero said.

“I beg your pardon?”

“Most folks who come by here ain’t what you’d call regularized. You in a hunting ground, smack-dab in the middle of Clarkson. You need to run to the caves, boy. But seeing as they ain’t no caves in Freedom State, all you got is AfricTown. You can blend in there and hope they don’t catch you.”

Keita put his running clothes in his small knapsack and shouldered it. He put the big knapsack with the remainder of his clothes into his locker and shut it. “Got to go.” He smiled at My Hero, said goodbye and left.

Keita’s first priority was to set up a bank account with the four-thousand-dollar cheque from the Buttersby Marathon in his pocket. If he could deposit the money, he could wire it to Charity’s captors.

He was wearing dress pants, a dress shirt, white socks and dress shoes. Charity would have scolded him for undermining his overall look with the socks.
You look like a clown.
But Keita had forgotten dress socks, and now he had other priorities. At all times, he had to be prepared to run.

Keita found an intersection with a bank on every corner. First he saw the Bank of Montreal, the J.P. Morgan Chase Bank and the Bank of Freedom State. But he selected Family Credit Union, because the
building featured a sign that advertised it as a “People’s Bank” and showed a photo of an employee greeting customers representing every conceivable racial group.

Three tellers glanced in his direction and returned to their business. He asked a woman at the reception desk if he could speak to someone about opening an account.

“Certainly,” she said, motioning for him to sit.

He waited ten minutes until a man in a blue suit came to meet him. The man had a ruddy face and walked with a deliberate, heavy stride, legs wide apart, suggesting he had an irritation in his groin.

“James Bell. May I help you?” the man said, offering his hand.

Keita shook it and gave his name. “I would like to open an account.”

Bell led Keita to a coffee counter. “Coffee?”

“I will have it with six milks and two sugars, please.”

The man suppressed a grin, poured a few ounces from a coffee thermos, passed over a bowl of milk and sugar packets, and said, “Here, you can mix and match.”

They moved to a tiny office, which had a desk, a computer, a filing cabinet and one extra chair. Bell invited Keita to sit across from him.

“What kind of account would you like to open?”

Keita looked Bell in the eye. “May I speak frankly?”

“Of course,” Bell said, sitting back, straightening his tie.

He was built as thick as a football player. How did people in this country get so solid? Keita wondered. Bell had a square ring on his middle finger. Back home, Keita had heard that in the Pink Palace, if an interrogator intended to do you harm, he would slide a ring off one finger and onto another. A bad omen. Bell’s big square ring tapped the countertop.

Keita looked up and began. “I have a cheque for four thousand dollars from the Buttersby Marathon, and I wish to use it to open an account.”

“That shouldn’t be a problem.”

Keita lowered his voice a notch and held the man with his gaze. “But I have no ID.”

“Have your valuables been stolen?” Bell said.

“They were taken from me, but not in the sense of an ordinary theft.”

“Have you called the police?”

“No.”

“Are you a citizen of Freedom State?” Bell asked.

Keita’s eyes drifted to the office door. Nobody barred it, and no police officers waited outside. Keita strove to keep his voice even and calm.

“If you examine the cheque, you will see that it is valid.”

Bell tapped his ring against the table again. It made Keita jump in his seat.

“Sir,” he said firmly. “I can’t help you if you don’t have full identification. For starters, I would need your passport, driver’s licence, birth certificate and national citizenship card.”

Surely there was a way to work with this gentleman. In Zantoroland, slipping a fifty-dollar bill under the table would solve the problem.

“Mr. Bell,” Keita said, “let me assure you that I am trustworthy and that this cheque is valid. I see that you are a bank for the people. I am not asking for a loan. I just want to deposit my money.”

“It’s against the law for me to open a bank account without your full identification,” Bell said. “Technically, I am supposed to report anyone who attempts to open an account without papers.” He cleared his throat and tightened his tie.

The man’s smile, handshake and coffee had meant nothing. Absolutely nothing. Keita could be deported tomorrow or receive news that his sister had died, and it would make no difference to James Bell. Keita’s knees ached from the bus ride. His thighs still burned from the marathon. It was best to walk before he had to run. Best to leave before he overstayed his welcome.

Keita rose from his chair. “Thank you for your time and for the coffee.”

Now that Keita was leaving, the banker brightened considerably.
“Thank you for considering us, sir, and have yourself a wonderful day.” He extended a thick hand. It was a hand that had been strengthened by a gym membership and fed by hot cereal in the morning, lunch at midday and meat every night.

Keita reached out for the obligatory shake, but to him, the banker’s cold palm felt like a wall. The wall had a door, and the door had a lock, and the lock needed a key. Some people had keys to this world, but Keita was not one of them.

T
HE PRIME MINISTER HAD DECREED THAT OFFERING
cabinet ministers chauffeur-driven limos did not conform with the Family Party’s tax-cutting values, so Rocco drove himself to work. Rocco didn’t mind. It gave him time to think. This morning, he had his mind on the “fireside consultations” that the PM and his sidekick, Geoffrey Moore, had made him set up so that it would appear he was doing something about Illegals in Freedom State.

It was Geoffrey’s brilliant idea that Rocco should invite concerned citizens from all walks of life to small, informal discussions. In the intimacy of his corner office with the gas fireplace, Rocco would solicit their opinions about what to do, and he would put it all in a stupid report that would go absolutely nowhere and fail to impress a single government critic but allow the government to claim that it was soliciting public input.

In the last twenty-four hours, Rocco had decided whom to invite to his next fireside consultation. He put the fix in to secure that good-looking woman who had beaten him at Buttersby: Candace Freixa. He had looked her up on the results board after the race. She was a cop. Who better to contribute than a black law enforcement officer? And he had invited Ivernia Beech. He remembered her as the funder of the national student essay prize, and he knew that she was a lefty. Lately, she had written him a letter complaining of the “draconian measures” used to deport people without proper papers,
asking, Did the government not realize that some of these deportees might face death in their own countries? She would not in a million years vote for the Family Party. But Rocco needed at least one social misfit to attend each session, so he’d had an aide call her up. He could have his meeting and get the PM’s aide off his back.

Rocco parked in the outdoor lot behind the government office known as the Freedom Building. He checked his watch: 7:05 a.m. Plenty of time. The PM liked all of his ministers to be in their offices by 7:30. First thing in the morning was the PM’s favourite time to come calling. Some mornings, Rocco heard laughter coming from other offices down the hall. Four cabinet ministers had played with the PM on the rugby squad that won the World Cup thirty years earlier. But Rocco was not one of them. He didn’t regret it. Thirty years ago, Rocco was dropping out of university and setting up his first used car dealership. He had been careful with his money. He did not need this job. If his career in politics went belly-up, well, worse things had happened.

Rocco closed the door to his Volvo station wagon, turned and found himself face to face with a young boy. White. Or maybe not. His hair was loosely curled, but you couldn’t exactly call him black. About twelve? Lost? He wore a school uniform. Rocco caught the letters on the boy’s blazer:
Clarkson Academy FTG
.

“Sir,” the boy said, reaching out his hand.

Rocco shook it, because that’s what you did when you met a future voter.

“John Falconer, sir,” the boy said. “We met before. Congratulations on your performance in Buttersby.”

“Now I remember you,” Rocco said. “You won that essay competition, and you live in AfricTown.”

“That’s right, sir. You promised me an interview.”

Come to think of it, Rocco
had
said that he would meet the boy. John was an energetic one. Like a puppy. Best to get this over with. “What do you wish to talk about, and can we wrap it up in ten minutes?”

“Sir, I am writing and directing a film documentary for a special Grade 9 project.”

“How about if we walk and talk?”

They took the stairs up one flight to Rocco’s corner office. John explained that he wished to shadow him over the next month.

“Shadow me?” Now they were in his office. While Rocco opened the fridge and poured a glass of apple juice, the boy stepped back to videotape him. Rocco frowned.

“It’s just for school,” John said. He swung the camera around to film the far side of the office. He walked toward another door.

“Your own bathroom? Multiple stalls and sinks, all to yourself? How cool is that? Man! A rowing machine. Who gets to have a bathroom big enough for a rowing machine? I bet that keeps you in good shape, sir. I bet you could run that marathon in three hours, if you set your mind to it.”

The kid was getting annoying. And Rocco had things to do. “About the shadowing. You’ll have to submit a request in writing.”

“Sir, why is the Family Party deporting people without documentation?”

“Every country has a right to self-determination. That includes enforcing the rules of citizenship.”

The kid lowered his video camera. “Bathroom break,” he said, and he disappeared into Rocco’s private bathroom.

Rocco heard the kid piss. He heard a tap running. After the toilet flushed, he heard the window opening. The building was a century old. You could lift up the window and jump right out, if, say, the PM’s executive assistant was undermining your sanity. If you felt depressed about the stream of illegal refugees arriving by boat on the nation’s thousands of kilometres of unprotected coastline. Why was that kid opening the window? Rocco hoped the boy was just checking out the sights, and that he wouldn’t do anything stupid. Rocco had just begun to move toward the bathroom door when Graeme Wellington and Geoffrey Moore walked into his office.

Rocco turned to greet his boss and his nemesis.

The prime minister sat on the corner of Rocco’s desk. He always did that. It was his pretense of humility, lowering his height so that he would not appear to be looking down on you. Rocco was six feet tall but seemed like a midget in comparison to the PM, who was six-six. The PM was the tallest man in his cabinet, and Rocco the shortest male. Every man in the cabinet had to be tall and slender. Even the media had commented on this, derisively referring to cabinet as “Rugby Central.” The PM’s unelected aide took the comfortable corner chair.

“Prime Minister,” Rocco said.

“Good to see you at it early in the morning, chap,” the PM said. “How goes the battle?”

“Well,” Rocco said.

“I hear congratulations are in order,” the PM said.

“Sir?”

“Don’t underestimate me, Rock. I make time for the sports pages. I hear that you ran a marathon the other day. The Buttersby Marathon.”

“Yes, sir. I was aiming to break three hours and fifteen minutes, but came in twenty-nine seconds too slow.”

“Exactly how long is a marathon?” the PM asked.

Rocco wondered if Wellington was pulling his leg. He chose to play it straight.

“It’s 42.2 kilometres, sir—or 26 miles, 385 yards, if you prefer imperial.”

“That must have taken training. Good on you, Rock. Fit as a fiddle. Rock, sit down.”

Wellington waited for Rocco to sink into the chair behind the desk, and then looked look down into his eyes. “So. How’s it going with the boats?”

Before the Family Party took power, about seventy-five ships had been landing, unauthorized, in Freedom State each year. That represented about five thousand Illegals annually. Rocco’s department was tasked with cutting down the number of ships dropping
refugees on the shores of Freedom State. Rocco hadn’t made a dent in those numbers, although lately he had heard that the Coast Guard had redirected a few ships back to Zantoroland. Oddly, those orders had not come from Rocco’s office, but he wasn’t about to flag that for the prime minister.

“Rocco?” the PM said.

“It has been a struggle to reduce those numbers. We are working on it.”

“Soldier on, Rocco,” the PM said.

Rocco knew exactly what was up. Reminding him of his failure to intercept the refugee boats was intended to soften him up for a request. Or an order. The PM liked to frame his orders as if they were requests.

The PM cleared his throat. “You heard about this cock-up involving the prostitute from AfricTown.”

“Geoffrey called me about it while I was running the marathon, and I saw the story in the
Telegram
.”

“So did we. And we were none too pleased to see you quoted in that article,” Geoffrey said.

Rocco ignored Geoffrey and addressed the prime minister. “I didn’t give the reporter anything. I don’t have anything to give.”

“Do you have any details about the dead girl?” Wellington asked.

“Not a thing. My department’s Deportation Squad was not involved.”

The PM reached down and touched Rocco’s arm. “Are you quite sure?”

“Shall I have my people double-check?”

“Not just now,” Geoffrey said.

“She came from AfricTown,” Wellington said.

“So I heard,” Rocco said.

“We already have one reporter stirring the pot. But she’s a lightweight, and I want this story to die.” The PM stood and cleared his throat. “Rock, I need to ask something of you.”

“Here to help, sir.”

Geoffrey stood up to come closer to the PM. Rocco knew the little prick was scheming to get him fired.

“How about going to AfricTown?” Wellington said. “Tonight. Have a good time. Watch a show. Go to the Bombay Booty. Would you like that?”

“Why?”

“We’ve set it up for you. Go see the show. If you meet a girl named Darlene, say, around midnight, you can ask about the girl who went missing. Who she was. What happened to her. That would be very interesting to us, if you happened to find that out.”

“Sir?” Rocco said. “I’m not convinced this is a—”

Wellington clapped Rocco on the shoulder. “Settled. So, are you already planning your next marathon? Running for hours must take concentration. Good stuff. Stay fit, stay focused. Geoffrey?” The executive assistant stood to attention and followed his master out the door.

Rocco rubbed his temples. “Good dog, Whoa-Boy,” he muttered. The PM was setting him up. But for what, exactly? Maybe Rocco could turn this to his advantage. The PM had something to hide.

The bathroom door opened. Nearly gave him a heart attack. He’d totally forgotten: the kid from the Clarkson Academy.

“About that interview,” John said. “I have just a few questions and—”

“No time now.” Rocco put up his hand. “On your way out, make an appointment with June.”

“Yes, sir.” The boy turned to leave.

“Wait. What have you been doing all this time?”

“Sir. I heard people come into your office. I didn’t want to interrupt your business.”

The kid was savvy. Rocco, too, had learned how to read each situation, back when he was starting his sales business.

Rocco sent the kid off, and changed into his running gear. Beside the window in his bathroom, a door opened to a set of stairs—an
old-style fire escape—leading to an alley behind the building. It was one of Rocco’s favourite features of the office. He slipped out the back and headed in the direction of Ruddings Park. His quads ached as if someone had pounded them with a cricket bat, but he needed a run. His morning had already been shot to smithereens, and he had to clear his head. He was going to have to outmanoeuvre the PM and his lackey. Fine. He had always enjoyed a competitive challenge.

A
T THREE THAT AFTERNOON,
J
UNE, HIS ASSISTANT, PUT A
call through to Rocco’s office. The caller had a smooth, suave voice, richly accented—possibly from Zantoroland.

“Sir,” said the caller, “just a call to inform you of the modalities of this evening’s visit.”

Rocco was given an ID number to use at the Bombay Booty, and he was told that his driver would have a password to enter AfricTown without complications from the thugs who patrolled AfricTown Road, stopping cars and demanding tolls that they cooked up on the spot depending on the make of the car and the look of the driver.

A year before the election that brought the Family Party to power, Geoffrey Moore had driven to AfricTown one night on his own, without going through proper channels. He had not even informed Lula DiStefano. He might have a Harvard degree, but he was still as stupid as a mama’s boy. On an isolated stretch of AfricTown Road, three men had wandered out of the bushes and onto the road and blocked Geoffrey’s car. When he refused to pay a toll, they smashed his headlights, side-view mirrors and back window. He was ordered out of the car and made to remove his shirt, pants and shoes. When Geoffrey swore at them, he was ordered to take off his socks and underwear. Only then was he allowed to turn around and drive back to Clarkson.

Geoffrey was so enraged that after he returned home he hired a film crew to hide on AfricTown Road and record similar thuggery. Clips from these encounters had formed the centrepiece of the
Family Party’s election campaign. In the ads, young masked black men were seen thumping cars with baseball bats and dragging men onto the road.
Do you believe in law and order? Vote against illegals in Freedom State. Vote for the Family Party
.

As Rocco prepared to leave his office, June put her hand on his arm.

“Not a word, June.”

“You’re venturing into my backyard, so I have a word of advice.” She looked at him with calm confidence. No judgment.

Rocco could see that she wanted to help him. He was lucky to have her. “Shoot.”

“Bring your runners.”

“Pardon?”

“You’re a marathoner, so bring your running shoes in case you have to leave quickly.”

Rocco met a driver in an anonymous car outside his office at seven that night. Rocco had come prepared for trouble. He wore a comfortable shirt, a blazer he could ditch, loose pants with running shorts instead of underwear and—as June had suggested—running shoes. If the driver didn’t show, or if Rocco had to get out early, he could always run home.

They proceeded to AfricTown. The driver gave a code number when the roadside thugs stopped the car, and magically, the thugs let them through. The car drove south on AfricTown Road, passing an endless row of shipping containers converted into windowless homes for entire families. Children wandered across the road, unsupervised. People lugged pails of water to and from water taps. A man banged nails through a corrugated tin roof. Teenagers relieved themselves openly on the side of the road. A woman fried fish on a barbecue grill by the roadside, while customers waited in line.