"Like a bank, or them new liquor stores," said Philander.
"Right," said Nilsson. "And we discovered a long time ago that servants were a breach in this wall, meaning an opening. As if someone left the door to the liquor store open at night."
"Dig, baby," said Barenga. "That's strategy. Like the great black Hannibal."
"The what Hannibal?"
"Hannibal, black. He African. Greatest general what ever generalled."
"I don't know why I'm bothering," said Nilsson. "But we apparently have some time. First, Hannibal was a great general but not the greatest. He lost to Scipio Africanus."
"Another African," said Barenga, smiling.
"No, he got the name Africanus after defeating Hannibal at the battle of Zama in North Africa. Scipio was Roman."
"The guineas got him?" asked Barenga in astonishment.
"Yes. In a way."
"They done in black Hannibal?"
"He wasn't black," said Nilsson. "He was Carthaginian. That's now North Africa. But the Carthaginians were Phoenicians. They came from Phoenicia .. . what would now be Lebanon. He was white. A semite."
"Them Semites ain't black?"
"No. Never were. Still aren't, except those who have bred with blacks."
"But Hannibal black, real black. I seen it on TV. The Afro-Sheen hair commercial. Hannibal even got corn rows. Now, no white man got corn row hair."
"Just because it's on television doesn't make it so."
"I seen it. I seen it with my own eyes. He got this boss gold helmet with feathers and corn row hair."
"I give up," said Nilsson. "Do you have money for the waiter?"
"I don't tip no . . ." Barenga saw the nasty little barrel level at his head. "Got no bread, man."
Nilsson's left hand skillfully went to a pocket without disturbing his concentration on his gun. He threw some new American money on the bed. "Remember now. Ten dollars tip. Keep him just the other side of the door. You fancy this redheaded girl with freckles. You hold the hundred dollars up. And take off that stupid little beanie. No one is going to believe you'd throw away a hundred to find a woman, not with that silly little thing on your head."
"Them my Afro colors," said Barenga.
"Put it away."
There were three raps at the door. "Room service."
The beanie disappeared behind Barenga on the bed.
"Come in," said Barenga. He smiled nervously at the little gun.
Philander opened the door with his right hand and with his left wheeled a two-layered stainless steel cart, draped with white cloth, into the room. Barenga rose from the bed and went to the door.
The waiter was a round jello-soft little man with a cherub's pink face. He opted for liberalism and racial consciousness the instant he saw the ten-dollar bill in Barenga's hand. As he pocketed it, he said "Thank you, sir," although only three minutes before he had told the room service captain that he would probably wrap the food trays around those niggers' heads.
Barenga pushed the tray into the room behind him but still stood in the open door. Before the waiter could turn to go, Barenga held the hundred-dollar bill in his right hand, waving it slowly like someone teasing a house cat with an old slipper.
The waiter saw the bill and stopped. He could see the light green and the dark green ink on the creamy colored paper. He saw the extra zeroes in the corner of the bill. He decided that liberalism was too weak a posture to adopt in the latter third of the twentieth century. He would become an advocate of radical power.
"Yes, sir," he said, his watery blue eyes meeting Barenga's. "Will there be anything else, sir?" He looked again at the bill in Barenga's hand.
Barenga was wondering how he and Philander could keep the hundred. It would be a good start on capitalizing the revolution. He saw the movement of Nilsson's sleeve behind the door and decided the revolution would have to wait.
"Yeah, man," Barenga said. "You know the people in this hotel?"
"Yes, sir. I think so."
"Well, I'm looking for a special one. This one is a little red-haired honkey with freckles."
"A girl, sir?" the waiter said, telling himself that distaste and revulsion were unworthy emotions for a radical to feel, just because a black man asked about a white woman.
"Well, of all the sheeit," said Barenga. "Yeah, a girl. I look like I like boys?" He waggled the hundred-dollar bill at the waiter.
"There is such a young lady," the waiter said.
"Ummm?"
The waiter said nothing else, so Barenga said, "Well, where is she?"
The waiter looked at the hundred-dollar bill again and without taking his eyes off it, said, "She is in Room 1821. That's on the eighteenth floor. She is with an elderly gentleman of the Oriental persuasion and another young man."
"He a dink too?"
"A dink?"
"Yeah. A gook. A Jap."
"No, sir. He is an American."
Barenga had decided. That hundred dollars was just too much to pay for such horseshit information. He curled it back into his hand and stuffed it into the slit pocket of his dashiki.
"Thanks, man," he said, backed up and quickly closed the door on the startled waiter.
He turned to Nilsson with a small happy smile.
"How'dldo?"
"Fine, until you stole that hundred dollars from the waiter," Lhasa said.
In the hallway, the waiter was staring at the closed door and reaching the same conclusion. One hundred dollars was a lot of money. It could buy 50 sheets or maybe enough wood for 10 crosses to burn on someone's lawn, or hundreds of feet of heavy rope for lynchings.
Barenga moved back warily as Lhasa came from behind the door. "Give me back the hundred," Nilsson said. The gun was still aimed at Barenga, its evil black hole seeming to stare at him in black dark hatred.
Lhasa smiled.
The door swung open behind him. "Listen here, you fucking blootch," the waiter shouted as he barged into the room. "You owe me."
The swinging door hit Lhasa Nilsson in the middle of the back and he was propelled forward a few steps toward the bed on which Philander sat. He pulled himself up short, turned to the waiter, who had stopped, speechless, inside the doorway, and squeezed the trigger of the small .25 caliber revolver. A hole opened in the waiter's throat like a red flower opening to greet the sunshine. The waiter's eyes widened. His mouth worked as if he were going to talk, to impart one last piece of wisdom. Then he fell forward onto the rug.
Nilsson moved forward quickly and kicked the door shut. "Get him under the bed," he snarled. Barenga moved quickly, hoisting the pudgy waiter by the armpits. "Philander, you help me," he said, his voice dripping hurt.
Philander hopped up from the bed and grabbed the dead waiter's feet.
"Man, you didn't have to do that," Philander complained to Lhasa Nilsson.
"Shut up," Nilsson said. "We're going to have to hurry now. The waiter will be missed. Take off his jacket before you put him away."
Barenga began to open the buttons.
"Tell me," said Nilsson, "do you wear any trousers under that ridiculous sheet you parade around in?"
Barenga shook his head.
"All right, then, take off his pants too."
Barenga and Philander stripped the waiter and finally Barenga stood up with jacket and trousers over his arm. Philander rolled the waiter's body under the bed and straightened out the bedspread so it was neat again and would discourage anyone from a random look under the bed.
"Which of you wants to play waiter?" asked Nilsson.
Barenga looked at Philander. Philander looked at him. No one spoke. Being asked to be a waiter was as bad as being asked to tap dance on a watermelon rind.
"One of you has to wheel this cart of food up to Room 1821. Now which one'll do it?"
Barenga looked at Philander. Philander looked at him.
As Barenga looked at Philander, he heard that frightful click again and it froze him in his position. And then the hissing thwap of a shot, and then the first spurt of blood out of Philander's left temple, before Philander dropped to the floor.