“We need a set of passes,” Bland explained. “And they need to be in the name of this man Daniel McKiernan. Hiram, it was McKiernan who once held Otha, and now holds his family. We need these as precise as we can make them. They have a long way to travel, and our agents, they fall on the smallest things—being out on the roads at an hour forbidden by obscure law, confusing the arrival time for the local ferry, or just bad luck.”
“I can fabricate the passes,” I said. “But I need an original sample of his style. As many as possible. Perhaps Otha’s free papers?”
“Nah,” Otha said. “That don’t work. I intrigued with another man to have myself bought from McKiernan, and it was that other man who gave me my papers.”
“There is another way,” said Raymond. “There was a time, not too distant, when just across the river, it was legal to own a man—in some ways, it still is. Nevertheless, among the men who most advantaged themselves through slavery, there was one of particular importance to my family—Jedikiah Simpson. Mr. Simpson owned me, my mother, my father, and Otha.”
“This was the man your mother ran from?” I asked. “The one who sold Otha south?”
“The same,” Raymond said. “Now Jedikiah Simpson is long dead. But his son has taken possession of the old place. He also owns a home here in the city, just north of Washington Square. Elon Simpson, on account of his wealth, is held to be a gentleman in the city’s most respectable circles. But we know that he is not respectable at all. We know, for instance, that he kept his investment in slavery by selling his slaves farther south.”
“Have you ever crossed paths with him?” I asked.
“No, not yet,” Raymond said.
“But we got eyes on him,” Otha said. “Both here in the city and on his place down South. And from that we know Elon Simpson still has business with Daniel McKiernan.”
Everyone was quiet for a minute, waiting to see if I had yet seen the plot. But they need not have waited, it was forming as they spoke. So I looked to Otha and nodded to confirm my comprehension.
“A letter, a receipt of sale, anything,” I said. “I just need some correspondence between Simpson and McKiernan. A break-in, perhaps?”
“No,” Raymond said. “Bland has a more delicate option.”
They were all three smiling now, like children holding on to a secret.
“Tell me,” I said.
“How bout I show you,” Bland said.
* * *
—
And so that night I found myself standing in an alley with Bland, watching the street through the glow of gas-light, positioning ourselves in such a way that the street could not watch us. Our eyes were set on the home of Elon Simpson. We were right off of Washington Square, a part of the city marked by well-appointed brownstones with shuttered windows and a park hailing back to this country’s birth. Here was the seat of this city’s Quality—and the seat of our dead.
I had, by then, done my share of reading on Philadelphia, so I knew that, in another time, when the Task was here in Pennsylvania, the city had fallen victim to a wave of fever. And among the men who combatted this fever was Benjamin Rush, a famous doctor, which is hard to countenance given the theory he put forth in defense of the city. Colored people were immune to the fever, he told Philadelphia, and more than immune, their very presence could alter the air itself, sucking up the scourge and holding it captive in our fetid black bodies. And so tasking men were brought in by the hundreds on the alleged black magic of our bodies. They all died. And when the city began to fill with their corpses, its masters searched for a space far from the whites who were felled by the disease. And they chose a patch of land where no one lived, and tossed us into pits. Years later, after the fever had been forgotten, after the war had birthed this new country, they built rows and rows of well-appointed houses right on top of those people, and named a square for their liberating general. It struck me that even here, in the free North, the luxuries of this world were built right on top of us.
“How did you come to this?” I asked. We had been standing there for hours, Bland and I, watching the house.