“I’m gonna have to talk to my people about that, sir. I’ll call you back.”
“What’s your phone number?”
“I can’t give that out,” Hay said, and hung up. “I did that to shake them up. They’re amateurs. I’ll make them wait for the next call. They won’t like that.” Hay looked me in the eye. “That guy I was talking to. Do you think he’s black?”
“I don’t see how it matters,” I said.
“Every bit of intelligence matters when you’re dealing with kidnappers.”
That made sense to me. I told him I didn’t think the kidnapper was black.
“Why not?” he asked.
“Instinct,” I answered. “Ear and instinct.”
An hour or two went by. I left to reassure my mother that everything was under control. While I was at home, Mill phoned again. I asked Sean to tell her I was out. I walked back to the scene. Police had barricaded the street. I got back to the house facing 398 King at the same time as the linguistic expert. He told Hay the voice on the phone was of a young man in his twenties. He was in no position to speculate on the race of the young man. You just can’t tell, he said.
Hay dialed the number again.
“Took you an hour and a half,” the voice said. “What’s going on?” “Let’s get to know each other a little,” Hay said. “What did you say your name was again?”
“I didn’t.”
“Just your first name, then.” “Glen.”
“So, Glen, how old are you?”
“Why?”
“Just asking. You sound like my son. About the same age, I mean.”
“That’s nice. Where’s the money?”
“My boss vetoed that one. He told me no way. Not a chance. He said I was out of luck if I wanted money for you guys. He said you had to release one hostage before I could do any serious negotiating with you.”
“Just a minute.” We waited, briefly. Glen returned to the line. “You can have the old man. We’re letting him out. Hold your fire.”
Aberdeen walked out of the house. We saw him nod, and he appeared to say thank you to his captors. It took him a minute to make his way down the steps. A cop helped him down and tried to get him to hurry to the sidewalk. But Ab couldn’t move quickly enough. The officer picked him up and carried him to our headquarters.
Ab was led into the house. When Hay started to fire away with questions, Aberdeen fainted. “Jesus Christ,” Hay said. “Elevate his feet. Check his breathing.” I was beside Ab. I had already checked his breathing. His chest was rising and falling. I felt his pulse.
A wet cloth was applied to Ab’s face. I held his hand. It was cool. Just bones, and skin. It was weightless. I noticed his nails. They were clean, and clipped, and as pink and transparent as mine.
Ab came to. He was groggy, and of little help to the cops. He couldn’t recall how many men were in the house. He hadn’t seen my father or Watson. He did say that the man who had released him was young.
“Black?” Hay asked.
Ab fainted again.
“Enough questions,” I said. “Get him to a hospital.”
An ambulance was waiting around the corner. Ab was carried out within a minute. I called home to tell Sean that Ab had been taken to the hospital, but that he hadn’t been visibly injured.
Hay waved me off the phone. He called Glen again. “Do you guys need anything to eat? Hamburgers? Fries? It’s on us.”
“Food would be good,” Glen said.
“How many burgers you need?”
“Five. Hey! Tricky. Very tricky.”
Hay gave the thumbs-up sign to his fellow cops. “I’m not tricking anybody. I just need to know how many burgers you want. You like fries?”
“Yeah. And drinks.”
“What about Cane and Watson? Aren’t they eating?” “I’m not being tricked again.”
“Glen, we know those two are in there with you. I’m just asking if it’s okay to send them burgers, too.”
“Yes, goddamn it, the five burgers will do. Hold the mustard on one of them. I can’t stand the stuff. And hurry up, would you? We’re starving.”
Hay gave another thumbs up to his partners. And so it went. The food arrived. My father was dispatched to lift it off the doorstep. He stared out at the street, waved, I am sure, in case my mother was able to see this on television — two camera crews were back at the police barriers — and stepped back inside. I hoped he would make a run for it. Later, he said he would never have run out on Watson.
I went home again to see my mother. She wasn’t watching it on TV. She was drinking mint tea and barely moving. Sean was with her. I hugged her and went back to the police headquarters.
Robert Hay and Glen, the abductor, had more telephone conversations. A few hours went by. Hay promised them Chinese food for dinner. And then he made them wait endlessly for it. It was dusk outside. It was eight p.m. Hay held on to the food. He called Glen.
“Send over that Chinese food, I saw it delivered,” Glen said. “Release those men, and I’ll send you the food.” “Why should we do that?”
“It’s late,” Hay said. “It will be night soon. You want to stay up all night with cops surrounding your house?” “We are getting pretty sick of it.”
“We’ll send you in the Chinese food if you let those men out.”
“Just a minute.” Glen returned to the phone in a minute. “You sure know how to wear a guy down. Here they come. We were never going to do anything to them. We didn’t even want Cane or that old guy. Both of them sort of stumbled onto the scene and we had no choice but to grab ‘em.”
My father opened the door. He let Norville Watson out first. The man had a shaggy head of white hair. My father walked down the steps with Watson. A cop hustled them over to our house.
“Are they armed?” Hay asked them right off. “Pistols and the like,” Watson said.
“Hello, son,” my father said, smiling. “Glad you came home. Officer, they each have a revolver.” “Each?” “There are three of them. In their twenties, I would say.”
“White?”
“They wore masks and gloves. We couldn’t see their skin.”
“Your son says he thinks Glen is white.”
“He’s right,” Dad said.
“How can you tell?” Watson asked.
“Instinct,” my father said. “Instinct, and a knowledge of speech cadence.”
Hay grinned. He called up Glen. He talked them into walking out of the house. Hands up. Sorry. No Chinese food. But they’d get a square meal in jail. Inspector Hay would personally guarantee them that.
Chapter 18
THE TORONTO TIMES RAN THE STORY on page 1.
DOCTORS FREED UNHURT
NEO-NAZIS CHARGED WITH ABDUCTION
— Mahatma Grafton, Oakville
The sensational abductions of the physicians Norville Watson and Langston Cane — one a white, right-wing urologist and the other a black civil rights activist — escalated with a third hostage-taking yesterday, but ended hours later when all three were released unharmed from a fashionable house in downtown Oakville.
Three white men were arrested outside the house. Charged with kidnapping, forcible confinement, uttering threats, and various weapons offenses are Glen Houghton, 25, of Pickering; Peter Ash, 23, of Oakville; and Brian Cheltham, 21, of Burlington. Police say all three are members of the Salvation Front, a Toronto-based neo-Nazi hate group that denies the Holocaust and advocates the deportation of blacks and Asians.
The abduction of Watson seven days ago sparked widespread concern when a group calling itself Africa First claimed it was holding the urologist and demanded, in exchange for his release, $1 million and the release of a number of black federal penitentiary inmates.
During the first days of the Watson kidnapping, Africa First claimed “it was time for African peoples of the world to unite against white oppressors” and that “capitalists and governments must be forced by law to hire blacks and racial minorities first.”
Police interviewed hundreds of blacks in efforts to track down the kidnappers. However, it now appears that Africa First was a front set up by neo-Nazis aiming to discredit black militants and to foment public hostility toward racial minorities.
Cane, who complained from the first days of Watson’s disappearance that police investigators were focusing unfairly on black suspects, said in an interview yesterday that he was abducted at 6:30 a.m. yesterday while walking in downtown Oakville.
“I was walking by a house I’ve passed a hundred times before, and I noticed a strange car in the driveway. I also noticed that flowers had been trampled in the garden. I saw a piece of litter that looked like a medical prescription stuck in a bush near the front door. I went to pick it up, and it turned out to be a blank prescription form bearing Dr. Watson’s letterhead. An armed, masked man burst from the door. I managed to stomp on a few more flowers before I was forced inside. Unfortunately, I had no blank prescription forms to scatter to the winds.”
Cane said the primary motive of his kidnappers was to turn the public against racial minorities and controversial measures such as employment equity.
“They were kids, rank amateurs,” said Canadian Intelligence Bureau Inspector Robert Hay, who conducted negotiations by telephone with the abductors during an eight-hour standoff in one of the wealthiest neighborhoods in Canada.
Hay said three men claiming to be university students rented the house at 398 King Street a month ago. After Watson was abducted last week, Africa First released its first set of demands. Police stalled while they hunted for the kidnappers.
Police were finally led to the house by Cane’s son, also named Langston. In a bizarre coincidence, Cane’s son was walking with Aberdeen Williams, an 88-year-old family friend, on King Street yesterday when Williams noticed the same trampled flowers that had attracted Cane’s attention. Williams knocked on the door at 398 King while Cane’s son hid behind a car. The abductors opened the door and forced Williams inside. Cane’s son immediately alerted the police.
“They were right under our noses,” Hay said. “That was the only clever thing they did. We never suspected that what appeared to be a group of militant black extremists would be in downtown Oakville. They would have been too visible.”
I would have kept reading, but my father interrupted me.
“Hey, son, why don’t you put down that paper and have breakfast with me?”
I fixed him fried eggs, sausages, brown toast, orange juice, and coffee. My father has always enjoyed watching people fix things for him. He deserved the pleasure this time around.
He had a singular ability to talk and to eat, but not to appear to be doing both at the same time. At one point he held egg and toast on the tines of his fork, amid his description of his day in the company of Norville Watson. I wondered how he’d ever get around to that food, but the next thing I knew the food was gone and my father’s mouth empty. He must have eaten and swallowed when I blinked.
“They had the two of us in a room. I actually slept in a double bed with Norville Watson. Do you know how much room that man takes on a bed? He’s six four. His ankles stick out the end. He didn’t sleep. But I did. He told me I snored. I told him it served him right for turning me down on that apartment on Palmerston Boulevard. I asked him why the hell he did that to a struggling student, anyway. And he said, ‘Let it drop, Cane, would you? I made a mistake. But you pushed me, and when I was a young man, I didn’t like people pushing me. But that was a lifetime ago. That was 1951. This is 1995. That’s forty-four years, Cane. In less than forty-four years, nations have gone to war and made up and gone to war and made up again. So when are you going to let it drop?’ And do you know what I told him, son? I told him that as of now, it was dropped.
“We talked about our children. Did you know that one of his sons is severely disabled? Lives in a group home. His wife has rheumatoid arthritis. I told him my mother had suffered from arthritis in her final years. We talked about our captors. They wore masks the whole time they were with us. You know what they gave us to eat? Canned ravioli. Canned peas. Canned peaches. Neo-Nazis can’t cook worth shit. Norville Watson was constipated up to his ears. Kept asking our captors for fiber. They didn’t have a clue what he was talking about.
“Did I think I was going to die? We’re all going to die, son. I wouldn’t want to die just yet. I want to see more of you, for example. I want to be around to help your mother. But I’ve led a long life. I’ve had a good life. I’ve done the things I wanted to do. I wasn’t all that worried about it. I didn’t think they were going to hurt us.
“Watson and I agreed that they were white. I asked them why they were wearing masks. ‘Cause we don’t want to be identified later,’ the leader said. He acknowledged his name was Glen. I had the feeling it was his real name. He was a simple kid. Doing a stupid thing, but a simple kid.
“I said to him, ‘But you’re white. Is it that you don’t want me to see you’re white, since you been writing all that Africa First stuff for the papers to eat up?’
“‘What makes you so sure we’re white?’ Glen said. So I said, ‘The way you talk. The way you walk. The way you act. Tell me one thing about black people, if you want me to believe you’re black. Tell me one interesting thing about black history. Did you know that black people were the first non-Natives to discover America? They got here two thousand years before Columbus.’
“‘Bullshit,’ Glen said. So I said, ‘You’d never say that if you were black. You would say, Tell me about that nutty theory, anyway. That’s what you would have said.’
“Norville Watson cut in to say, ‘Anybody with a drop of instruction about the history of the world knows it’s preposterous to suggest that black people discovered America.’
“‘I’m with the doctor,’ Glen said.
“‘I’m a doctor, too,’ I said.
“‘He’s a specialist. You’re no specialist. I’m with the specialist.’
“‘Next time I deliver a baby or resuscitate someone who has stopped breathing, I’ll apologize for being a GP. Speaking about emergency care, let me tell you a story. This specialist here. This here white guy? Once, he just about saved my son’s life. My son came into the hospital bleeding all over the floor and this white doctor patched him up. So what do you have against black people, Glen? Why are you putting out all that nonsense under the name of Africa First? It just gets folks riled up about black people.’
“‘Exactly,’ Glen said. ‘I can see one person helping another, if they’re bleeding, or whatever. But things have gone too far. The minorities are taking over. White people can’t even get jobs. They can’t get into med schools. We’re being crowded out in our own country.’
“‘I’m not after your job. My son isn’t after your job. We’re all after the same jobs.’
“‘That’s bullshit, mister. Minorities and Jews are running the economy.’
“Watson nudged me. He was trying to tell me to back off. ‘I understand what you’re saying,’ Watson said. ‘You want to have jobs. You want a future. You want an education. Those are good things to want.’ That Watson was a clever old fox. He knew just what to say. Probably because he still buys into some of that shit. Doesn’t matter. He’s a good man, in his own way. He’s got some upside-down views of the world, but —”
I cut my father off. “If you think he’s still a racist, why do you suddenly like the man you spent half your lifetime hating?”
“I didn’t hate him. I opposed him. Hate takes something out of you. When you start hating people, you start hating yourself.”
“Why would you even want to talk with a guy like that?”
“Nobody wants to take a grudge into the grave. It doesn’t feel right. You find yourself thinking you’d like to be able to do something heroic for the very person you fought the hardest.”
We walked out onto the back porch and sat in the sun and drank lemonade at seven in the morning.
“Son, I want to talk to you a
bout something important. This trip to Baltimore. You’re doing it to hurt me.” “Hurt you?”
“You’re trying to dig up painful things from my past.”
“It’s not got anything to do with hurting you. It’s to know my past. I have to know. My life can’t go on until I know these things. It’s your fault, in a way. You planted all those stories in me. I have to get to the end of them.”
“I don’t care what research you do with the others. My father, or grandfather, or great-grandfather. But don’t dig around in Mill’s background, or mine.”
“Why?”
“I’d rather be the one to tell you about myself.”
“Are you about to tell me one of the stories I never heard?”
“No. No story. I’m going to tell you straight. This hurts too much to turn into a story. When I was in college, in the States, after the war, I did some stupid things. I committed a petty theft. I stole sixty dollars from a cash box belonging to my fraternity at Lincoln University. And I cheated on an exam. I did them on the same day, and I got caught at both. Actually, I was lucky they were the only things I got caught at. On long weekends here and there, I’d been doing a bit of tomcatting and other things on the seamy side of Baltimore. Anyway, I was expelled. It was fortunate for me that my father had clout. He had been to Lincoln. And his father, too. They had both become prominent A.M.E. ministers. My father persuaded the Lincoln people to keep the whole thing off my records. I was being expelled, but on the books it would appear as if I had merely dropped out.”
“Is that it? Are you saying the major secret all these years is that you cheated on an exam and stole sixty dollars when you were twenty years old?” “Twenty-two.”
“I can’t believe that’s it.”
“You don’t understand the politics of shame. Shame in one’s family, and in one’s community. I came from a family of people with great accomplishments, son, and —”
“I know something of that, Dad.”
“I guess you do.”
“So that’s it. You have been unhappy about me digging around in Baltimore, just because of that story? Sorry, but I can’t believe it. There’s more.” He smiled. I knew I was right. “Your story doesn’t explain why you’ve gone all these years saying nothing to Mill.”