After his talk with Raoul, Martin went back to the apartment, showered and packed his personal belongings in his backpack. Something told him that he was going to be busy working on Sloan’s disappearance in the coming days. If he was allowed, he wanted to be ready to assist in tracking Sloan. Just as he was fading into sleep he remembered he was to make a presentation to his Economics class in two days. He made a mental note to call his Advisor and tell him he would be out of touch the next few days and fell asleep.
Martin was awaken by a dog barking loudly from the street outside the apartment. He yawned, stretched and rolled out of bed. Light pored in through the window. As he sat on the edge of the mattress, his mind cleared and be went over all that had happened the prior day. He thought of Sloan and wondered where he would be today and then thought of all he had to do to begin his search. There was so much to do, but he knew he had to have a plan, a logical sequence to find Sloan. First he had to determine if his theory of Sloan’s defection was correct. Raoul had not helped, but Martin’s intuition was that he was covering for his friend. So he had to assume that the reason Sloan had stopped by was to say goodbye.
As he walked outside, the morning was gray and moisture was in the air, a typical fall day in Pittsburgh. He walked briskly over the bridge with the Castro Library looming ahead. Fortunately, the Cuban coffee kiosk was open in the park and Martin devoured two sweet cakes dripping with honey and a café con leche as he waited for the Library to open at 8 A.M. As soon as the guard opened the heavy iron doors, he walked up the stone steps and entered the cavernous structure. He went to the second floor archives where Kurt Sloan was supposed to have worked.
The air was chilly in the dusty, marbled 160-year-old library. Recently, the Atlantica government had begun to save the computerized records to the year 2000, plus inventory records from its beginning with an idea to destroy older items not considered valuable. Some came from the late 1700’s, when the City of Pittsburgh was founded by the British. Sloan’s primary job, as he’d explained one night to Martin, was to process and eliminate unnecessary historical records. Those that might be useful were to be transferred to the Administration’s permanent digital file system. Martin wondered if this work may have provided him access to valuable security information.
The library was a fascinating structure and he found a booklet that described its history and why it was built.
There were carryover stories about the poor boy from Scotland, Andrew Carnegie, who became a billionaire and then gave much away to the people of the area. Martin believed this to be fiction. Martin knew that Carnegie, like all the “founders” of this city, were white, English and Protestants, some even poor. Martin’s take on Carnegie’s story was that he was a white man, in the right place, at the right time.
Martin entered a room, lined with shelves to the ceiling. He saw an old woman seated behind the desk, wrapped in a deep red shawl, bent over a large, pale green cloth covered manuscript. The woman was running her finger along the lines of the book. Martin walked right up and stood over her as she continued to follow the sentences in the book. She never paused or seemed to notice him. He stood silently as she came to the end of the page and began to start along the top line of the right hand page. It was then she noticed someone standing over her. She methodically put down her reading glasses and looked slowly up at Martin.
“May I help you, young man?” she said hoarsely.
“Maybe you can. I want to know if you knew an Anglo who, up until a few days ago, did research here at the Library. His name is Kurt Sloan.”
“Kurt Sloan. No, can’t say that I can remember anyone by that name. What was his specialty?” she requested.
“Good question. I believe he was doing research on the history of this area. At least I think so.”
“History you say. Of this area, you say,” she said as she paused and then added, “Well, no one comes to mind.
And why is this so important?”
“He’s a friend. I need to know where he is because I have to tell him something very important. You see he’s from the old Pittsburgh, probably your Pittsburgh. His family was here for a couple hundred years, and he was working on a project for the Administration going through all the old City records. Do you understand?” he said softly.
“First, you are correct, my Pittsburgh. Second, as to your question, I do understand. Look at this!” she said turning the now closed book around, sliding it in front of Martin.
The faded green book had large, but barely readable script on the cover.
“History of the City of Pittsburgh”, Martin said out loud as he ran his hand over the old cover. “So you’re a history person, too, I see. Then you must know, my friend Kurt Sloan. Tall, about thirty-five, with brown hair. “
“Oh you mean Mister Meager. I’m sure that’s Mister Meager. Marshall Meager I call him. I have names for everyone,” she sighed as she looked at Martin.
“What would you call me?” he said.
“I don’t know, young man. I haven’t really looked at you long enough. You see I have to look at people a while before I can give them a name,” she finished.
“Mr. Mulatto, maybe?” he stoically replied, giving her a deep stare from his oval tanned face.
“Oh, I don’t think so. That’s a derogatory name. I only give pleasant names to my people,” she quietly responded, pulling the heavy book back in front of her.
“Okay, lady. Who is Mr. Meager? Describe him.”
“Oh, he’s an ordinary man, but of the old ways. I mean he doesn’t look like he belongs here, in Pittsburgh, now!
He reminded me of someone from the old days. A silent, scholarly type. Sort of out of his element, one might say.”
“Why would you say that?” Martin said.
“He never talked. He was always reading or thumbing his way through the oldest of books,” she answered.
“But why did you call him Mr. Meager?” he said.
“He was like a squirrel. He would bring a small bag of food with him. Occasionally during his sessions, he would open up his bag and pull out some bread or crackers. He would break off a piece and put it in his mouth without looking. He would just keep reading. It was odd. I spend quite a bit of time in this Library. It’s my home, yet it seemed that Mr. Meager was also always here and he never seemed to eat anything but his little pieces of bread or crackers. A couple times I would ask him if he wanted to share one of my sandwiches. He would look up and slowly smile, but say no, that he had plenty to eat. He was a quiet bird. Also, he read very slowly and always took notes in an old, brown leather journal. He just looked to me like a Mr. Meager.”
“So, why do you think he’s the man I asked you about?”
“Well, he seemed a learned man and an Anglo. Not many of us around anymore, young man. In fact, none that I’ve seen lately,” she answered spryly, looking him right in the eyes.
“Well that’s their - your - fault. We didn’t tell all those white people to leave. They deserted, just like your Mr.
Meager may have done. The problem is that if he left, he may have taken valuable data with him which is why I’m here this morning. I need to know what was he reading when he was here. Say the last couple of weeks. Do you know?” Martin said in a much harsher tone.
“He looked mostly at maps of the City, old maps from the City Planning Commission Division. He also read all the old newspapers. He said none of this material was in his work area. I assume his was more technical. This here is all the public information, newspapers, video’s and the like. That’s what he said.”
“So this is what anyone off the street can look at?”
“That’s right. I guess his work place had the more valuable materials. It’s like when you go into an old bookstore, the old classics, first editions and the like, are in a locked case. As you can see, all of what I have here is wide open. We have no secrets here, which is why I don’t know why you’re checking up on such a nice, quiet man as Mr. Meager,
I really don’t.”
“That’s none of your business and his name is Sloan. One last thing, did he ever talk to anyone else in here about what he was looking for?” he asked.
“Only Miss Flipper”.
“Who, lady, is Miss Flipper?” Martin sarcastically replied.
“Can’t miss her. She’s ups there at the front desk”, she said, pointing down the hall. “She’s the Head Librarian.
She’s been here for years. Knows every book on this floor. Looks like, well, you should go look at her and decide for yourself if she isn’t Miss Flipper.”
“I think I will. I may be back, so you try and think of anything else about Sloan, ah, Mr. Meager that you can”, he said as he walked in toward the main room on the second floor.
As he walked down the marbled hall, he couldn’t help notice all the ornate decorations of long ago. Whether to refurbish this epic of the past was a decision the Administration had been putting off for years. Since all data was available on line, the remnants of the vast library buildings would no longer be needed and could be closed.
The cost to repair it would be astronomical. As he walked along the dark corridor, he returned to the immediate problem of Kurt Sloan. ‘This is where Sloan was spending all his time, so this is where he could have come up with some critical data,’ he thought, as he walked towards the main entrance.
He immediately saw Miss Flipper sitting behind a huge wooden desk that was raised on a platform, like a judge in court. She looked like a seal with glasses.
“Have a minute?” Martin said to the solidly built woman with her gray hair pulled back in a bun behind her head. She didn’t acknowledge him as she leafed through a weathered notebook with faded alphabetical lettering on red tabs.
She didn’t answer, but kept writing and turning pages. Miss Flipper was not ready to respond to him. He looked at her and thought of the other woman he’d just left. These are lost people, remnants from the prior Anglo rule.
It must be bewildering to them. He remembered reading statistics for his dissertation of the Millennium Year 2000. At that time only twenty percent of the Pittsburgh population was black. Currently Alleghenia was almost split between Africanos and Latinos with a small minority of Anglos.
He stared at the woman who still didn’t look up at him. She just turned the page of her book again.He finally cleared his throat and said more forcefully, “Miss, I need a minute of your time.”
She still didn’t look up, but slowly closed the book and shuffled a stack of cards before neatly putting them into a case.