Want her? Was that a droop of disinterest, Wadson wanted to know?
She consented but only after he promised his help.
"Sho. Anyfing," panted the Reverend Wadson. "First dis."
Ingrid smiled her perfect smooth-skinned smile. Reverend Wadson thought at that moment she needed no skin lighteners. Never a lotion on that face.
She asked to kiss him.
He allowed as that would be all right.
Down went the zipper of his trousers. Ingrid reached up and brought her long hair behind her head in two handfuls.
Reverend Wadson lunged forward, body and desire out of control.
Suddenly Ingrid pulled back.
"Drop your gun, Reverend," she said and gone was the lilt of Sweden from her voice.
"Hah?" Wadson said.
"Drop that gun you're carrying," she repeated. "A gorilla with a gun is dangerous."
"Bitch," said the reverend and was about to bang her yellow head into the furniture when he felt a tingle around a very delicate part of his body. It was as if she had slipped a ring on it.
"Oh, my Lawd," said the reverend, looking down in horror. For there was a ring down there, a white metal band, but surrounding the band was his own blood, a thin line. His desire disappeared like a yoyo coming back to the hand that launched it, but the white metal ring closed down to the size of his diminishing desire. And the blood was still there.
"Don't worry, Reverend, that's just a little blood. Do you want to see more?"
And then there was pain in that most delicate place. Reverend Wadson looked down in horror at the growing red drippings.
He grabbed the ring but could not tug it off without tearing his flesh.
"Ah kill you," bellowed the massive man.
"And you lose it, sweety," said Ingrid and she held up a little black box the size of a box of restaurant souvenir matches. It had a small red plastic toggle switch set in the center. She moved the switch forward and the pain in his groin eased. She moved it back and it felt as if someone were sticking pins in a circle around his organ.
"Close up your pants, Reverend. We're going out."
"S'right. Ah gots speech to make. Yessuh, black is beauty. De mos' beautiful. Got to get on wif it right now. Racism, it doan sleep. No suh. Black, it you basic beauty."
"Can the crap, Reverend. You're coming with me."
"Ah's bleeding," wailed Wadson.
"Don't worry. You'll live."
Wadson's big brown eyes looked at the blond woman with distrust.
"C'mon, I didn't go to this trouble to mug you, Reverend."
Reverend Wadson stuffed a used Kleenex around the metallic ring that bound him like a slave. He hoped that it might loosen and with a jerk he could get it off. But it did not loosen and he realized that the little box she held was stronger than a gun. There was some sort of radio wave the box operated on that made the ring smaller or larger. If he were to get a wall between him and that thing, why, the ring might slip off easily.
"If radio contact is broken," said the blond, "you lose everything. The ring closes for good and goodbye your preaching instrument."
Reverend Wadson smiled and handed over his pearl-handled revolver, handle first. He made sure he was always near her as they left the hotel. But not too close. Whenever his big brown hammy paws got near the instrument Ingrid carried, he felt a stinging pain in a most painful place.
They got into Ingrid's car. She drove and told him to get into the back seat where he sat with his hands hovering over his groin. It dawned on him that this was the first waking moment of his adult life that he was with a beautiful woman without organizing some program to get himself into her pants.
CHAPTER SEVEN
The building was only three blocks from Macy's in the center of Manhattan but when Macy's and Gimbel's rang their closing bells, the whole area cleared out as if it were a blackboard and God had wiped the wet eraser of night over it.
Reverend Wadson slumped deeper into the back seat of the car as it pulled to a stop in front of an old lime-stained brick building that looked like a hiring hall for rats. He looked cautiously out his side window, then craned his neck to look behind the car.
"Ah doan laks dis place," he said. "This neighborhood not safe dis time of night."
"I'll protect you, Porkchop," Ingrid said.
"Ain' got my piece," said Wadson. "Ain' nobody got no right make somebody go into some place like dis without him got a piece to protects him."
"Like those old white people you turned loose in that jungle tonight? That got burned alive?"
"Weren't my fault," Reverend Wadson said. If he could just get her talking, maybe he could get his hands on that little black box she kept pressed between her legs as she drove. "Dey volunteers. Dey volunteer to make up fo' centuries of white oppression."
Ingrid carefully took off her driving gloves. She seemed in no hurry to leave the car, as if she were waiting for a signal. Wadson moved up slightly on the edge of the seat. One big hand around her neck and her own hands would probably fly up to her throat to save herself. Then he could pluck that little black box from between her legs. But carefully. Carefully.
"They were poor old people who didn't know any better," Ingrid said. "They believed all that bilge that they heard from fakers like you and others just like you. You should have protected them."
"Not my job to give dem protection. Gubbermint not give me 'nough money to give de protection. Gubbermint cheat de black man again and now try to blame dat accident on the black man. Oh, when will it end, dis oppression?" he moaned.
"The strong have an obligation to protect the weak," said Ingrid. "In the old colonies of the western world, that used to be called the white man's burden. Nowadays, in these jungles…" she paused and started to turn toward him "… it's the jungle bunny's burden."
Wadson had almost reached the edge of his seat when Ingrid turned and gave him a full bright smile of perfect pearlescent teeth. "You move another inch toward me, darkie, and you're going to be singing soprano for the rest of your life."
Reverend Wadson slumped back in the corner of the seat again.
"Ah still doan lak dis place," he said.
"If we're attacked by a marauding band, you can give them all your all-inen-are-brothers sermon. That should raise their consciousness. Assuming they have any."
She seemed satisfied that Wadson had given up any aggressive plans, so she turned back and continued looking out the front window. Just to remind him, she touched the red toggle switch atop the black box.
"All right, all right," Wadson said hurriedly then groaned in relief as the pressure was relieved slightly.
The pain was bearable but it was always there. Wadson didn't trust that Ingrid not to mess with that switch so he sat still. Very still. His day would come. One day, he'd get her and she wouldn't have that little black box and he would have his gun and he would do his number on her and then when he was all done, he would turn her over to the Saxon Lords for a toy and they would teach her not to mess with the black man, not to subjugate him and his nobility to her own…
Someone was coming down the street. Three men moved along toward them. Black men. Young black men with big floppy hats and platform shoes and skin-tight trousers. Was that who she was waiting for?
The three men stopped ten feet from the car, peering through the windshield. One bent closer for a better look, saw Ingrid's white blond hair, and pointed toward her. The other two bent over for a better look. They smiled, bright sunshine smiles in their midnight faces. Hitching up their trousers, they sauntered over to the car.