The real magic happens next morning

“Money is magic. You better believe.”

Oh I believed him.

“And I don’t mean metaphorically or figuratively or whatnot. I’m no poet.”

That, I could see.

“But money is *literally* magic. Take yourself out of the context of modern life. Imagine you’re a medieval Scotsman transported to Manhattan through some cruel twist of fate. You’re hungry. You’re bewildered, you’re cold. And you see all this confectionery lining the glass walls of Starbucks but nobody would let you touch it. But then, you see these people walking in showing this magic piece of plastic or whatnot to the man who owns the pastry and just walking out with hot food and drink.”

I nodded. Fat boy was starting to get more and more animated.

“Amazon! What the hell is that? You click some magic buttons on a little magic device in your hand and boom! Within twenty-four hours material goods from the other corner of the world appear at your doorstep! Magic.”

Oh I knew about the magic of money. He didn’t have to explain it to me. The youngest child of a single black mother of four. Raised in the projects and homeless shelters. Bought my first suit on graduation for eighty bucks and seventy-three thousand in student debt, I knew full well the wonder and freedom of even a modestly full savings account.

“Besides, it’s not like you’d be doing anything illegal or immoral or wrong in any other way. You’re an officer of law aren’t you? Well let me tell you, all you’d do by handing that little black notebook to my friends at ICE is help protect the legal borders of United States of America and apprehend the illegals.”

He wasn’t wrong.

“Let me tell you brother…”. He had the gall to address me as such. Fucking fedora wearing, patchy-ass beard on triple-chin no-neck goober. I let myself acknowledge the immediate dislike I’d felt for him the moment he’d sat himself down across from me at the bar and addressed me by my first name. No black man his age would ever dare approach uniformed men like that. Some people have no sense of their privilege.

“… these people aren’t exactly helping the blacks. Whose jobs do you think they really take flipping burgers for two dollars an hour under the table at the bodegas? You think it’s the Italians lining up for those jobs? The Jews? No! It’s some black guy who’d have a roof over his head and food for his family on the table with that job. They are not your friends.”

“Ok… cool it with the racism white boy.” I responded. “I will get you the notebook but that has nothing to do with me being black or you being white or anyone else being brown anything like that. I’m a cop. I have a job to do. It’s a hard job. Just like that, people at ICE have a job to do. And it’s a pretty thankless job too.”

“Got it. Got it. Agreed. Agreed. We don’t have to be on the same page hundred percent but our objectives align.” He raised his hands in faux surrender.

“Now tell me. Who’s paying the money and where is it from?”

“Don’t even worry about that. We can make it completely legal. It can be the fee for your investigative work. You are allowed to do PI work on the side, aren’t you? Or we can make it all cash. It’s just a little something our little sub-Reddit crowd-sourced. The notebook had been a legend in our circles for a while. We knew she was collecting the names and addresses of businesses that would hire illegals, hospitals and doctors that would treat them, principals that would admit their kids in schools. We knew the network existed and we knew she was at the center of it. When you busted her for possession and nothing showed up in the evidence log we knew the notebook was still at her place. But when our guys didn’t find it there, there was only one possibility left. Why didn’t you hand it in with the other evidence by the way?”

I wanted to tell him it was none of his business but I ended up explaining how I’d picked up the notebook almost subconsciously scouring Lorena’s apartment and how I’d curiously forgotten it in my inner jacket pocket for three days. This had never happened before. I wanted to tell him I’d felt as though the notebook had made me do it. I’d felt as though the notebook had plans of its own but saying that out loud would only make me sound like the magical negro and I had no intention of becoming a trope.

“Here, how about you keep the money”. He threw a bundle of hundred crisp, new Harriet Tubmans on the table. Didn’t even try to hide it. I had to say this was big money for me. It could mean freedom from debt and the first bricks on a house where I could keep both Rita and moma. Eventually raise a family. Nobody in this bloodline had ever owned property.

I looked down at Harriet staring back at me from the face of the twenty-dollar bill. She looked disgusted.

I put the money in my pocket. Why not? As far as the law was concerned the notebook did not even exist. It’s changing of hands from one officer of the government to another wouldn’t even really happen. Nothing that was not documented was real, as I’d learned in the business of evidence gathering.

---

That night I put the bundle of Harriets next to the black notebook on my nightstand and fell asleep thinking of being debt free.

I woke up in the middle of the night to thunderous roars of muskets and galloping horses.

Harriet was standing by my bed staring at me.

“Get up boy.” She said. “They’re coming.”

Boom!

Clank!

Tock tock tock!

Seemed to be a war raging on outside my window in the dead of night. But it wasn’t my window at all. Where was I? The space was oddly familiar but the wood appeared hundreds of years old, quite unlike the cheap cardboard walls of my apartment.

“I said get up”. She yelled, her eyes glowing balls of fury.

“What? What’s happening? Where am I?”

“They got it! They got my notebook. No place is safe now. They’re raiding all the havens along the railroad.”

“But I…”

“We! Don’t! Have! Time!”

I found myself rushing out of bed towards a creaky chair which was covered in what I assumed were my clothes.

Bang!

Somebody kicked the door in before I could put on the pantaloons.

The last thing I saw was a white conical hood.

---

“As you asked for, meet Dave.” Fat boy introduced me to his friend. “He’s an ICE agent, an officer of law like yourself. You can hand the notebook to him directly and it would all stay within the government”. He smiled and the room seemed a little darker.

I handed Dave the notebook. He started nonchalantly flipping through it but then stopped. Looked at me.

“What the hell is this?”

“What?” I took the notebook from him. It seemed different. Older. I studied the leather and was caught off-guard by the fact that it appeared real. That’s not how I remembered it.

Inside there were no lines on the pages and the writing was in cursive. Beautiful.

“Jonathan Jeremiah’s farm house, three hours west on horseback outside Austin”

I flipped some more pages.

“Egger Hammond’s speakeasy downtown Charlottesville”

It was the same thing. Pages upon pages of addresses and listings. Some with descriptions of what services the place could and could not offer. They were arranged in geographical order, from… south… to… north.

These were no addresses you could put in your GPS and let the self-driving Tesla take you to.

Google maps wouldn’t know what to do with these addresses.

They spoke of a world long forgotten, and erased.

I flipped through the notebook and turned it around and examined it. It looked to be in good condition but there was no denying it. The pages were yellow from the acid of centuries. It was sturdy but also I knew that any moment this notebook would turn to dust in my hands.

I couldn’t help but chuckle. “Oh Harriet”.

“What the fuck are you talking about?” Fat boy was bewildered and agitated.

I pulled his bundle of twenties out of my pocket and threw it on the table.

“Like you said.” I nodded at the bills. “Money is magic.”