The Demands of the Dead (3 page)

She was right. But this was wrong. Now we were both upset, when we were both trying to be strong for each other and the Manleys. I tried to compose myself.

“You're right,” I said.

“I know.” She smiled, but I'd hurt her. And now I couldn't ask her about her message to me, that we needed to talk, or the encrypted email she'd sent, without making things worse.

I pulled in to the long country road that led to the Manley's property, 300 acres of two hundred-year old forest on a river, where four children and hundreds of adults had been taught how to survive, fight, hunt, fish, trap, and hide in the woods by an eclectic African American ex-banker and his Afro-Brazilian wife. Mr. Manley had made his fortune as one of the first black men in international finance, then traveled the world collecting skills. None of us had ever known whether to believe that he learned how to fight from Brazilian wrestlers and Chinese boxers and how to survive from the grandchildren of Apache Scouts, but his skills made us what we were and put him in demand with every military agency in the country. His two real children and his two adopted ones, we all lived by them on our different paths. Now there were only two of us left, and Mr. Manley would not teach again. The school was closed. Only the house remained.

The bumpy road smoothed out and I turned the familiar corner to the clearing where the house was. The grass was wilder and more overgrown than its usual, casual state. In contrast to the typical unkempt stubble, this lawn was a wildman's beard. Mrs. Manley was probably having to care for everything herself, as Mr. Manley sunk deeper into himself.

Ebony, the Rhodesian Ridgeback, and Butler, the Doberman, came running out to the car as we pulled in. They didn't bark: they were like their owners, quiet and directed. Mrs. Manley walked slowly behind them, her caramel skin matching the maple panels of the house behind her. The dogs sniffed me and then went to, and stayed with, Maria. Animals liked me, but loved her. I looked from Mrs. Manley to Maria. Mrs. Manley, at fifty two, looked fifteen years younger and had an abundance of everything: big boobs, big hips, small waist, big curly brown hair with gray streaks. Maria's body was small, taught, controlled, sculpted. Their height, their skin, and their emotionality were matched. They dazzled me as they always did.

Mrs. Manley's smile was real, but tired. She kissed us both on the cheek and we all walked to the house together. “He's waiting for you on the deck”, she said in Portuguese, which her husband didn't speak.

“Is he better or worse?” Maria asked.

“The same.”

“And you?”

She looked up to meet my eyes for a second, shook her head. “The same, too. I'll make coffee.”

The kitchen looked out through glass sliding doors on a big deck we'd helped build twelve years before. Mr. Manley sat out there, amidst a few empty chairs. The deck looked out on to the property, down a big hill to the river, which looked deceptively close but which was a long and winding hike. There were more direct paths, but few only a few of us knew them. Butler and Ebony waited by the door to be let out. I opened the door and they went to their master while Maria made coffee and Mrs. Manley sat at the kitchen table. “He's been out there since sunrise,” she whispered.

“We'll go to him in a minute,” I said. We continued in Portuguese because she was still much more comfortable in it – one of the reasons she liked our visits was the chance to speak in the language she thought in.

Maria brought us our coffees – Mrs. Manley liked a Colombian roast made in a french press - and joined us. Mr. Manley never drank it, no coffee, no alcohol, so we didn't make him one.

“Has there been any progress on the case?” She asked.

“I think so. I have... I think that the men in the Street Crimes Unit who shot Shawn were working for some other, corrupt group in the police department. I think that we can find out who they were working for through the discovery process in the civil suit – we can ask for emails, phone records, and financial records. We should be able to use that to find out who was responsible for the murders.”

She nodded, then looked at Maria.

“He's right,” Maria said. “Filing this suit is the best chance we have of finding the truth of what happened.”

“He doesn't want to do it.”

“I know.”

“He doesn't want to fight.”

“I know.”

She looked at Maria again. “I think you should talk to him first.” Maria stopped a moment as if to set her will, and went out the doors to the deck. We watched her put her hand on Mr. Manley's shoulder, lean down to hug him, and then slide into the chair beside him.

Mrs. Manley turned her tired, but benevolent smile on me again. “Baby boy, why don't you marry the girl? You were always the one for her, I knew it even when you were kids and she was with Shawn.”

“I... we... we're not together!”

“Aha,” she said, enjoying herself for the first time.

We sat like that for a long time before Maria came back inside. She told me with her eyes that she'd failed. “You're up,” she said.

Mr. Manley stood up as I got to the deck, a third wolf between Ebony and Butler, a leaner, fiercer creature, six inches shorter than me, white stubble and short hair, still the alpha of the pack, still the strongest man I knew. His smile was sad, like seeing me made him proud and broke his heart at once. I knew the feeling. Seeing him did the same to me.

“Walk with me,” he said.

He led me down the deck stairs, past the dojo below the deck. We were all good fighters, but Shawn and I liked the dojo better than Maria and Walter, who were better scouts. The heavy bag, speed bag platform, grappling mats, and weight benches were covered with dust. The wing chun dummy, at least, held out shiny, clean wooden arms. At least the master was doing
something
down there. The dogs followed, sniffing and investigating as we walked, running ahead and doubling back. We walked side by side down the hill, past the sand pit, past the clearing with rocks where we would sit for lessons with him, and wound our way into the thicker pines in silence. Walking with him was good, even though his grief was like a weight, and I couldn't help him carry it because I was weighed down with my own.

The sun descended from the sky as we walked and sat just above the horizon when we got to the river. He turned to me, then to the river.

“You told me what Shawn said to you, last time you saw him,” he said. This was Mr. Manley's style, one he probably acquired from his own teachers, to go back over the same lessons in stories.

“He said, 'I don't care what kind of person you are, Mark. If you're a cop, we're enemies.'” I felt the anger, the betrayal, and the resentment rising up as I repeated his words.

“Did that sound like Shawn to you?”

Shawn was far too thoughtful, knew me too well, to say something like that. It didn't make any sense. That was why it hit me so hard.“He
said
it,” I said, as my anger started to shift targets.

He smiled quietly, looked up at my eyes. “I know he did, boy. He did the same thing to Maria, and to me. To me, he said: 'You taught us all the skills, but you don't know what to do with them.'

“Do you know why Miss Silvia married me?” As he spoke his pet name for Mrs. Manley, his voice was still full of affection. The emotions, the walking, the storytelling – maybe he was coming out of the despair?

“You were in Brazil, working for Chase, and you met her through her brother at a jujutsu dojo in Rio, right?”

“Yes, but I was saving this story to explain to Shawn about how skill can and can't be directed. Miss Silvia was a student activist against the dictatorship. She taught peasants how to read, she did street theatre mocking the generals that were running the country at the time. When they caught her, her brother called me, hoping that I could pull strings at my bank, through the bank get to the government, from the government to the police, to let her go. It worked, but they demanded that she leave. We got married and got out of the country together. Do you think she should have stayed and fought it out with the generals?”

“But that isn't fair, Mr. Manley. She did her part. She did the right thing. And only then did she leave.” Butler ran ahead along the river, then looked back at us.

“Four kids, three lawyers,” he said, as Ebony nudged my hand with her nose.

“Shawn was the only real lawyer among us,” I said.

We let ourselves be led by the dogs. The trail wound too long to walk in any day and it was already dark, so we turned around and walked back up the way we came.

“Maria's mother and father survived something like what Miss Silvia did, in Mexico. Did you know that?”

“I didn't... I don't think Maria did...does. They don't talk about it.”

“Maria's mother met Miss Silvia in Jackson Heights at a Mexican store. Not five minutes of conversation before Maria's mother told Miss Silvia that she had a daughter she was terrified for. When she brought Maria to me, she said she wanted her to learn how to fight, how to survive, so she wouldn't be scared of anybody.”

“It worked.”

“Both of her parents came here fleeing what they called the Dirty War, when the police and army assassinated and disappeared people who opposed them. They were students, activists, like Miss Silvia.

“My own father was a militant too. He was a young admirer of Marcus Garvey. He was proud of my successes, but he believed I became personally successful because others struggled for my rights. Like Shawn, he died disappointed I didn't do more for the cause. What do you think he would say if he knew the cause took my sons?”

“I know your sons were proud of your choices.”

“I'm not filing the suit.”

“You can't give up yet! I know more about the shooters now, I can find out who was behind it --”

“Son, you need to recognize a fight that can't be won. To recognize a fight that's not worth starting. I thought I taught you boys that, but none of you learned.”

“Even if the truth doesn't come out, the city will settle for a lot of money. It could send a message not to do this again. You could use the money to fund Shawn's legal projects, honor his memory.”

“I was donating to Shawn's legal projects before they killed him. I was proud of him. My word is final. I am asking you, now, son, not to bring this up again with me, if you respect my grief.”

We were outside the house, below the deck again. He pointed upstairs.

“That woman up there bore me two sons. I can't bring them back to her. Please stop reminding me of that, for a while at least.”

“Okay. I'm sorry sir.” This, then, was my own fight that couldn't be won.

While we were walking, the girls were cooking. The result was a remarkable Sopa Azteca. Mr. Manley was more talkative at dinner than he had been in months. Closing the matter with me and Maria had lifted a weight from him. Not from me. Indeed, while Maria and Miss Silvia tried to keep the evening light, I was the one who dragged it down. Maria drove us back to the city. When we got on the road, she tried to console me.

“We tried,” she said.

“He wants us to live our lives, but I can't yet. I don't know how he can.”

“It'll get better, Mark. I promise.”

She came inside for a while and we sat together on my couch. She put her head on my shoulder. I remembered the email.

“What does it mean, 'we the dead demand much more than revenge'?”

She'd been falling asleep. “It sounds like something from the leader of the Zapatistas, the rebels in Mexico. Subcomandante Marcos talks about how they're driven by the demands of the dead.” She leaned back, claimed her own side of the couch, so she could look at me.

“Why did you send that to me? Why encrypt it?”

“Mark, I never sent you an encrypted email with that message.”

"Then what did you want to talk to me about, your phone message?"

"A job that came up at the firm... some kind of bioprospecting, but in Chiapas, too. I thought, if you went, we might get some answers about --"

My phone rang. I looked from her to the phone, and back to a New York cell number I didn't recognize.

“Pick it up,” she said. I did.

“How fast can you get on a plane to Mexico City?” Hoffman asked. “And also, I am downstairs, if you want to let me in.”

I stood up. “Professor Hoffman's downstairs.”

“Hoffman from the firm?”

“That's the one.”

She stood up suddenly and adjusted her clothes. Her posture changed and her body language started to transform to a professional mode. “Why is he downstairs? Mark?”

“He's... going to offer me the job you were talking about. But now it's not the seed survey. It's as a death investigator. In, ah, Mexico. I'm going to let him in. Can you stay? Would you mind?”

She shook her head at me and ran to the bathroom. “Go down and come back up slowly, please.”

Maria must have been thinking what I was. If he came here to talk to us instead of having me meet him at the firm, he must have been pressed for time - or, he didn't trust the firm.

Hoffman came into the apartment, opened a briefcase, and spread papers all over the floor.

“It's two Mexican police who were killed,” he started before I could offer him coffee. “So your first question is probably why involve Americans in an investigation when two Mexican police died?”