Page 42

“You did a real good job with that story,” Sylvester says, pausing for a second. “And I gotta tell you, I can relate.”

“Oh yeah?” Kwame wants to record, but it would surely spook Sylvester. He understands this entire conversation will be completely off the record without wasting his breath asking.

“My own pops got sent away when I was a kid,” Sylvester says. “Bullshit charges. Said he stole from the necktie factory he’d worked at for fifteen years. They made him a scapegoat for a white supervisor who got caught pocketing money from the union dues. My dad didn’t even know what hit him. Just gone one day. Ten years for something everyone knew he didn’t do.”

Sylvester stops to collect himself, as if he needs a minute to accept this reality. Kwame can bet that’s happened more than a few times over the years.

“I was twelve,” Sylvester continues. “All of a sudden, I was the man of the house. My mom took in laundry to make money. I hustled too. Shined shoes down by the train station, sold papers, whatever it took. Three little sisters depended on me. Got my job doing groundskeeping at Tate at the ripe old age of sixteen. My mom was doing the washing for the headmaster. I told them I was eighteen, not that they really cared. That job saved us. No one would hire my pops when he got out, not with a record. But I worked my ass off. Put every one of my sisters through college on that paycheck.”

Kwame nods in admiration but lets Sylvester keep going.

“Tate hasn’t always been the easiest place to work, but it’s given me a lot,” Sylvester says. “You can see why I got spooked when you came snooping around.”

“When I asked about Wade Freeman.”

Sylvester’s eyes drop to the table. “Yeah. I hadn’t heard that name in about fifty years.”

“Were you friends?”

“I wasn’t friends with any of the boys at the school. It didn’t work like that. Just because our skin was the same color didn’t change anything. We were cordial. And I was rooting for them. Truth be told, maybe I was a little jealous too. Getting the typa education I could only have dreamed of, while I was cutting grass.”

“I get that.”

“I wasn’t much older than they were, and I tried to watch out for them. Offer a few words of advice when I could, like what professors I knew to be bad news. Most of the students went home for the holidays and breaks, but Wade and them couldn’t afford to, so I would use my keys to let them stay in the guest cottages they put the VIPs and muckety-mucks in and see how the other half lived for a minute. Stuff like that. Little things to show I had their back. I don’t know if it made a difference.”

“I’m sure it did.”

Sylvester shakes his head. “But when it came down to it, I didn’t do enough… for Wade, at least.”

“How so?”

“Don’t nobody know this, not even my sisters. But… I saw Wade the night he went missing. Late. And I saw who he was with and I never told a soul. Even when the police came ’round asking.”

“Who was he with?” Kwame waits for the answer he knows in his bones he’s been looking for.

“Two guys. Roger Macon and his sidekick Larry… Lawrence Hartwell.”

There it is. Not exactly a smoking gun, but an eyewitness who puts Simone’s father-in-law together with Wade the night he died.

“You know what’s funny. It’s been years since I’ve thought about Larry. That smug son of a bitch tried to send me money when my grandson had a bout of cancer back in ’09 and the school raised donations for him. I nearly ripped that check right up before I could even make out the amount. Didn’t want a cent from him. From any of them, really, but bills are bills and it helped Colin get the treatment that cured him, so… Then I forgot about Larry again until a couple months back they had a big ole shindig for him at the school. I hadn’t laid eyes on him since way back in the sixties. And had no intention of crossing paths with him that night, so I made myself scarce. I ’bout tripped over my broom when I met the gal married to his grandson. Larry Hartwell with a Black relation! She’s a fine thing, too. Stone-cold fox.”

Kwame practically snorts soda out of his nose at Sylvester’s description of Simone. Right on, old-timer, he thinks. Now’s a moment when he could—probably should—reveal his connection to Simone. He thinks about it for just a split second, but then decides it’ll just be a distraction, even if keeping it to himself is a little shady. He takes a swig of Coke to wash down his hesitations and continues with his questions.

“Were they friends? Wade and those other kids? I mean, was it strange for the three of them to be hanging around together?”

“I didn’t get the sense that Wade was in trouble, or in danger, when I saw them, if that’s what you mean. Which is partly why I didn’t think much of it. Then… Wade disappeared, and I didn’t know what to make of it.”

“So why didn’t you tell the police what you saw?”

Guilt crawls across Sylvester’s face, pulling down the corners of his mouth. “I wasn’t supposed to be there. I worked days, but I’d been sleeping on campus some nights. We were behind on rent, got kicked out. My mom and sisters were staying with my grandma, but there wasn’t room for me. The dorms were quiet, peaceful. I’d crash in one of the maintenance closets. Figured nobody would notice. I couldn’t lose that job. And if I told anyone what I saw, it would have meant implicating the school itself—two of their best and brightest being last seen with Wade? They distanced themselves from all of it real fast, happy to go with the story that no one there knew anything, saw anything. They were all ‘no comment,’ all day long, and then conveniently it was summer break and it could blow over. So if I’d said something…”

“You would have been caught up in it…” Kwame can’t even imagine how much pressure that had to be for Sylvester, supporting his whole family, having nowhere to sleep except a dingy closet, and then carrying around the weight of what he’d had to do to protect his livelihood.

“And probably would’ve lost my job. Even dredging it up now… it’s a risk. That’s why I didn’t want to talk at the school. I wasn’t trying to be rude, but there are ears everywhere on that campus.”

“I get it. You got any idea where they went that night?”

Sylvester flips his palms upward on the table to show he’s got nothing. “None. I saw them get in the car together. Roger had this sweet cherry-red Pontiac GTO that no eighteen-year-old had any business having, so you couldn’t miss it. I watched them drive off and then I took myself straight to bed. Then, next day, Wade’s just gone. For a while, a part of me convinced myself he maybe just took off. I knew it couldn’t be true, but I wanted it to be.”