The Midnight Club_ A Novel - James Patterson [37]
As he walked, he remembered his brother: the year and a half when Marcus had been champion; the shocking murder; then self-righteous editorials about the tragedy in every newspaper.
A memorial service had been held in Harlem. That had been on December 30, six months ago. It seemed even longer to Parker, as he thought of it now.
Inside the cavernous Morningside Chapel, he had waited for the noise from his brother’s mourners to quiet down. As he did, Isiah Parker felt that he was standing outside of himself, able to watch the unreal scene from some other dimension.
His voice finally rose, softly at first, then clear and powerful, without any musical accompaniment. He had sung like this at his brother’s championship fight in Madison Square Garden. Bill Cosby and Ali had been there; so had Don King, Dustin Hoffman, Jesse Jackson. The closeness of Marcus and Isiah Parker had been publicized before the fight. Isiah Parker’s baritone singing voice was a discovery, though. In a strange way, it was more emotional than the championship fight itself.
In Morningside Chapel that December, Parker’s voice brought tears. His singing had never been more lilting and beautiful. Grown men and women wept inside the chapel. Cynical observers of the fight game wept; also thousands out on Morn-ingside Drive, many of them in flowing Muslim gowns.
There was something so unjust about this death. Marcus Parker had been twenty-four years old when he died. Marcus had represented so many hopes, so many dreams buried inside the Harlem neighborhood…Someone is going to pay, Isiah Parker had promised himself at those last rites in Morningside Chapel. And someone was beginning to pay. Just beginning.
36
TWO DAYS AFTER THE murder of Oliver Barnwell, Parker stopped at a vacant telephone booth on the corner of 125th Street. He had to be sure about what he was doing next.
“This is Isiah Parker,” he said when someone came on the line. There was a hesitation on the other end. It wasn’t quite six A.M. He had woken the Man up.
Finally, he heard a voice. “I was going to get in touch with you. Let’s not talk over the phone, Isiah. Where can we meet?”
“Take your regular New York Central train to work,” Parker said. “But this morning, get off at the One Hundred Twenty-fifth Street station. I’ll be waiting. Don’t worry, nobody up here knows you. Nobody will see us together. At least, not anybody who matters to you.”
Parker hung up the pay telephone. He walked on, proceeding west along 125th, past more steel-gated storefronts, past the Apollo Theatre.
As he walked, he thought he liked the idea, meeting the Man up here in Harlem this time. Twice before, they had met—at large, crowded hotel bars in midtown.
Another time, they’d had a rendezvous in the town where the Man lived, Mamaroneck.
At seven-thirty, Parker was pacing the ancient wooden train platform at 125th Street. He watched several commuter trains arrive at the station, journeying from suburban Connecticut and Westchester, heading toward Grand Central Station. The tracks were built over an ornate waiting room that dated back to the early part of the century.
The platform overlooked central Harlem, with a view to the Hudson River and the New Jersey Palisades. The sun was bright that morning, casting a glow over the desolate buildings and the streets down below.
Isiah Parker had great affection for the beautiful and imposing railroad station. When he had been growing up, his mother and father had brought him and his brother there to embark on day trips—upstate to Bear Mountain, West Point, Newburgh, sometimes New Paltz, or the Catskill Game Farm.
A commuter train steaming south from Westchester finally rumbled into the station. A few desperate-looking merchants climbed out of the silver and blue cars.
Most of the passengers didn’t bother to look out at the desolation of Harlem. They didn’t want to