of crime and justice and revenge do you mean?”
22
“The worst,” he said. “You think of the worst crime you 23
can imagine and then make it worse. And then you will 24
have a glimmer of what I have done.”
25
The whiskey was having an effect on both of us. My vi-26
sion was skewed and the tone in his voice tended toward S 27
humanity.
R 28
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“I don’t need to know this,” I said. “I don’t need to be a 2
part of it.”
3
“But I paid you.”
4
“To rent my basement, not to start a private prison.
5
Damn, man. I don’t know you. The police could come 6
down here and find you all locked up. They could get me 7
on kidnapping and who knows what else? No. No.”
8
“Have you spent my money?” Bennet asked.
9
“I’ll give you back what I have and then repay the rest.”
10
“You need money, Charles. Why not take it when you 11
can?”
12
“What do you know about me? What do you know 13
about what I need?”
14
“Everything.” He smiled and nodded.
15
“Like what?”
16
“I know where you went to high school and who your 17
friends were. Clarance and Ricky, who you also call Cat.
18
I know that you worked at Harbor Savings and that 19
you embezzled four hundred and thirty dollars from your 20
drawer . . .”
21
Whiskey softened the blow. I wondered if it was part of 22
Bennet’s plan to get me drunk.
23
“. . . The bank president, who liked you at first, felt be-24
trayed, and blacklisted you among the town business com-25
munity. Your mother and father are dead and no one else in 26
your family is much interested in your well-being. You 27 S
drink too much and you cried for five days after your 28 R
mother’s death. You had three years at Long Island City 122
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The Man in My Basement
College. But you dropped out, didn’t you? I don’t know 1
why you left. You had passing grades.” Bennet peered at me 2
with a Milquetoast expression on his face. “You’re broke, 3
you don’t have a job, and there’s a thirty-thousand-dollar 4
mortgage hanging over your head that might lose your line 5
their home.”
6
“Where the hell did you get all that?”
7
“There’s a man who used to work for me, a Filo Nunn.
8
He now has a job for the investigation division of Mor-9
ganthau and Haup.”
10
“Who’s that?”
11
“You wouldn’t know, Charlie, but the bank president 12
did. He started stuttering when Nunn got on the line. He 13
understood that even the smallest toehold with that firm 14
would completely transform his career in finance.”
15
Bennet refilled my glass. I didn’t even know that it was 16
empty.
17
“So this guy, Nunn, found all that out? But you said 18
that he doesn’t even work for you anymore.”
19
“Filo Nunn owes me his life.” Anniston Bennet smiled 20
again. If he had been a child, I would have said that he 21
thought he was cute.
22
“I’m sorry, Mr. Bennet, but I can’t go along with this.
23
No. I will not be a part of this.”
24
“That’s final?” Bennet asked.
25
I nodded.
26
“But what if I made you a deal? What if I gave you the S 27
twenty-five thousand dollars now and we went ahead as R 28
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1
we’d planned? Then in two weeks you tell me what you 2
think. If the answer is still no, then I’ll leave. If it’s not I 3
stay the rest of the time and double the final payment. All 4
in cash. Always in cash.”
5
I don’t think the money interested me even that far 6
back. And I was worried that once Bennet dug in, he’d be 7
hard to dislodge. I was drunk but not that drunk. I re-8
member the night and every word that was spoken. Maybe 9
the whiskey made me less fearful. The consequences that 10
bothered me earlier (and the next morning, for that mat-11
ter) seemed manageable.
12
But that’s not why I agreed to Bennet’s request.
13
I agreed because of knowledge and intimacy. Anniston 14
Bennet knew more about me than any other person —
15
and he was still willing to enter this business deal. Those 16
shocking blue eyes looked right into mine and knew what 17
they were seeing. Not like Bethany and not like Clarance.
18
Unlike Uncle Brent, Bennet made no judgments. If he 19
felt he was better than me, it was only because he felt bet-20
ter than everyone, and that, in some strange whiskey-21
soaked way, made me an equal in the world — at least in 22
the world as seen through his eyes.
23
“Yeah, all right,” I said. “Let’s do this thing.”
24
Bennet smiled and retrieved the satchel from the floor 25
next to his cell. He took five bound stacks of twenty-26
dollar bills.
27 S
“Twenty-five thousand, as we agreed,” he said.
28 R
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The Man in My Basement
Then he came out with an ugly chunk of black metal 1
that had some mechanical purpose that was not immedi-2
ately obvious.
3
“It’s an original lock used to hold down a line of slaves 4
in the old slaving ships,” Bennet told me. Along with the 5
lock there was a brass key with a cylindrical tip that had 6
teeth and slats made to fit the archaic mechanism. “It’s 7
over a hundred and fifty years old. I got it in Mali.”
8
As far as I knew there was no one in the Blakey family 9
who had ever been a slave. We came over as indentured 10
servants and sailors on Spanish and Portuguese ships. It 11
was even intimated that one distant cousin was himself a 12
slaver, selling black bodies on the wharves of New York 13
City from a ship called the Dahomey.
14
Many of my relatives didn’t like to think that they were 15
a part of the mass of blacks in this country. They would 16
say, secretly, that they were no different from the English 17
or Irish immigrants. But most Negroes, even the old fam-18
ilies that dotted our neighborhood, understood that racism 19
doesn’t ask for a pedigree. I knew that many white people 20
didn’t like me because of my dark skin. I wasn’t stupid. At 21
the same time I didn’t feel the pang or tug of identity 22
when slavery was mentioned.
23
But that lock was a vicious thing. It must have weighed 24
four pounds. The loop of metal used to secure the bolt was 25
half an inch thick. I could imagine that ugly device hold-26
ing down twenty men in the cold fastness of the Atlantic.
S 27
R 28
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Bennet worked the key, which was new, in the lock and 2
the long loop came away from the barrel-like body.