The Sam Hathorne that the people of Pleasantville rarely get to see resides in a five-bedroom colonial on three-quarters of an acre on North MacGregor Drive. The house sits on a bend in the winding road, with a view, through a parklike stand of trees in the front yard, of the landscaped path along Brays Bayou. MacGregor Drive, north and south, is lined with palatial homes owned almost exclusively by moneyed blacks who took over the neighborhood after segregation and its hand tool, deed restrictions, were outlawed. They were suddenly free to leave places like Pleasantville for something better, for there is always something better, and soon the first black families were moving to MacGregor–running out the Jews who’d built the homes, who had themselves been run out of WASPy River Oaks–and leaving empty properties along Pleasantville Drive, Norvic, Ledwicke, and Guinevere, homes that were then bought up by the likes of Jelly Lopez and Bill Rodriguez, Patricia Rios, Arturo Vega and his family. It was a snake that bit its own tail, the way some things changed only to remain the same. Sam’s driver, Frankie, answers the front door. Inside the foyer, the dark wood floors gleam under the twinkling light of a teardrop chandelier overhead. Jay hears Sam’s voice coming from the great room. Down the hallway ahead, he can see the length of Vivian Hathorne’s toned calf and the pointed heel of her left shoe dangling off the edge of a leather couch. They have gathered in the living room, the whole family, all except Axel, who is still at the central police station downtown, coordinating from there a citywide search for Jay’s daughter. Cynthia pushes past Frankie into the house, down the hallway, and into the living room. When Jay enters behind her, he tells everyone–Vivian, Ola and Camille, Delia and Gwen–to get out. “Not you,” he says to Neal. “And definitely not you,” he says to Sam, who is in the same dove gray suit he was wearing before court was abruptly halted this morning. He takes off his wire-rimmed glasses, slowly wiping the lenses with a handkerchief embroidered with the initials SPH. He doesn’t say a word. Vivian stands, a drink in hand. “What’s going on here?” she says to Sam when she sees Jay and Cynthia eyeing him, when she senses the electricity running under everything.
“If you could give us a minute,” Cynthia says.
Vivian turns to her husband and whispers, “What did you do?”
“You’re drunk, Viv.”
“Come on, Mom,” Ola says, leading her mother from the living room, looking nervously over her shoulder as her three sisters follow her out. Frankie stands guard by the front door, as if he’s expecting another intrusion any second now. In the living room, it’s just Neal and Sam, Cynthia and Jay.
“Where’s my daughter?”
Neal looks from Jay to his grandfather, then back again, confused. “Axel’s still at the station. I’m sure we would have heard by now if he knew something.”
“I’m asking you, Sam. Where is my child?”
Sam carefully folds his handkerchief, then slides his glasses back on, taking time to adjust the stems, to smooth the tightly coiled hairs along his temples. Jay crosses the room, closing the gap between them by pressing his face close to the old man’s. “I will kill you, Sam, understand? I will kill you with my bare hands if you don’t tell me right now where she is.”
“I don’t know where she is.” Sam shrugs, the gesture as cold as the ice cubes he drops, one by one, into the bottom of a crystal glass resting on the bar behind him. “Cobb is a loose cannon.” He starts to pour a finger of whiskey, but Jay knocks the glass, the whole bottle, out of his hand. It shatters on the parquet wood, the brown liquid creeping across the polished floor, seeping into the fringe of an Oriental rug in the center of the room. “He was supposed to scare you, that was all,” Sam says.
“By going after my kid?”
“No,” Sam says softly. “I told you, he’s a loose cannon.”
Cynthia falls into the nearest chair, her hands landing in a perfect prayer position. They are, even now, still shaking. “You have to fix this, Sam. Fix this.”
“Did you know?” Jay asks her.
“Not about this.”
Neal, taking in the scene, unsure of what exactly he’s seeing, turns to stare directly, pleadingly, at his grandfather. “What are they talking about, Pop?”
“Ask him,” Jay says. “Ask Samuel P. Hathorne, HNIC, Mr. Head Nigger in Charge, ask him how he sold out his own people, his own family even.”
“What?”
“Why’d you do it, Sam? What did Parker promise you?”
“You don’t know what you’re talking about, don’t know a thing about what I’ve done for Pleasantville, for my family, for every colored person in this city, including you. It’s easy to stand on the outside, son, raising a fist, not so easy to get close enough to power to twist a wrist, to work this city from the inside out. Those folks out in Pleasantville have never wanted for anything on my watch. So don’t talk to me about selling out. I know what I’m doing here.”
“As long as you’re the one sitting on top, the one holding all the cards, folks lining up to kiss your ring, to have you take their walk to the big house for them, coming back to deliver crumbs, streetlights, an elementary school–”