Dominion

by Randy Alcorn

  “No problem. That’s why God gives us brothers, huh? Listen, one other thing I’ve been thinking about, and I want you both to hear it. I’m in a tough position here because I don’t want to violate client confidences. I know you’ve been investigating Councilman Norcoast, though I don’t know the details. Let’s just say I have some info on Norcoast. It may not be relevant, but it could be.”

  “What do you mean?” Ollie asked.

  “Look, Ollie, if you can get a court order against me to divulge information, I’ll do it. Frankly, you may know about it already or it may not be worth your trouble, but it could be, I don’t know. I just want you to be aware I’ll bend if you can hit me with something official.”

  “I’ll keep it in mind. One other thing. After you turn over some more rocks down there, I could really use you in Sacramento. Let’s stay in touch, okay?”

  Ollie hung up the phone and shuffled through some papers. He looked at Clarence. “This morning I talked with the principal at Jefferson, Mr. Fielding. I asked him about the girl.”

  “Gracie?”

  “I’d get in the habit of calling her Miss Miller. Anyway, he told me he was really surprised she’d volunteered for the interview with you. He has a feel for who volunteers for stuff like this. She isn’t the type. She’s a regular crack user and sometimes crank. Fielding said he wished he had the power to take control of the drug situation there, but thanks to the ACLU, he has no freedom to search lockers.”

  “Okay, so she’s a druggie. What else did he say?”

  “Hangs with a bad crowd. Shoplifter. Petty thief. Looks for the quick buck, needs it for her crack. Hangs with the gangs. Rollin’ 60s mostly, but has contacts with three or four different Crip sets. She’s an oddity, not a full gang sister who hangs with the girlfriends, but she’s popular with the guys for other reasons.”

  “I’ll bet.”

  “The principal also said she has no respect for authority. Zero academic interest. Never does her homework. In the old days that would mean she’d flunk out. Now it just means she’s not valedictorian. She even managed a few Ds and an F, which Fielding says is almost impossible if you’ve got any brains at all, and he says she does. He told me one other thing I found very interesting.”

  “What’s that?”

  “With all her lousy grades there wasn’t a single B, but there was one A, and her teacher says she’s a natural at it.”

  “What class? PE?”

  “Nope. Drama.”

  Ollie walked into McDonald’s. He perused the tables for a blonde girl who looked like she wanted attention. He intended to give her the kind she didn’t want.

  “I’m Detective Ollie Chandler,” he said, holding out his badge.

  “I’m impressed,” Gracie said, batting her eyes with practiced effect.

  “You’re not really impressed,” Ollie said, “but you will be. I’m thinking of offering you a deal.”

  “What do you mean?”

  “Well, here’s how I size you up. Besides being a crackhead, you’re a miserable student who got an A in drama, and your teacher says you’re one heck of an actress. Congratulations. Maybe after you get out of jail, you can get a bus ticket to Hollywood.”

  She flinched, but only slightly. “I don’t know what you’re talking about.”

  “You working more than one scam, is that it? Okay. Clarence Abernathy. Now do you know what I’m talking about?”

  “Look, I liked the guy. I didn’t turn him in. It was my uncle.”

  “Yeah, after you told him you slept together. Played that pretty cool, didn’t you? Whoever hired you as an actress for this little B movie thought statutory rape and a drug charge would bring him down, huh? Well, maybe Clarence has an alibi you don’t know about. And maybe you’re in big trouble for framing a man, lying about him, and giving false testimony to officers of the law. Want to go off to one of those creepy jails for minor girls, Gracie? The ones where the wardens are as weird as the inmates? See, we know who hired you for this job. We know who paid you off. Now I might be willing to make a deal to get them. Or I could offer them a deal and go after you. How about it? Feel like talking?”

  “Not really,” she said, coldly but with noticeably less confidence than she’d had a minute earlier.

  “Here’s my card,” Ollie said. “No, I won’t be writing my home number on it, thank you. Just call me at the office if you change your mind. I wouldn’t wait too long, though. Somebody’ll take me up on the deal if you won’t. You’re expendable, Gracie. Remember that. When push comes to shove, they’ll sell you out. Your only chance is to sell them out first.”

  Gracie watched Ollie walk out the door and drive out of the parking lot, talking on his phone as he drove. She tugged on a quarter wedged tightly in her jeans. It popped out like a yanked tooth. She walked hurriedly to the pay phone in front of McDonald’s, peering down the street to make sure Ollie was out of sight.

  Ollie turned and drove down a side street, then circled around. He parked a street over from the McDonald’s, where he watched her through his binoculars, still talking on his phone.

  “Got it? Yeah. She’s at our pay phone now. Same one she kept using yesterday. Just punched in a number and hasn’t said anything. Must be listening to a message, waiting to talk. Wait, no, now she’s punching in another number. Hold on, she just hung up. Obviously not enough time for a trace. Barely enough time for a busy signal. Wait a minute, I think she dialed a beeper number and entered in the pay phone number for the return call. My bet is, Mr. Beeper’s gonna call her back right there at Ronald’s.”

  Ollie smiled broadly as he opened up his first of two Big Macs. “I love this job,” he said aloud. He continued to watch Gracie, who looked impatient and agitated, shivering in the cold. Suddenly she picked up the phone. On his cellular he said, “Okay she’s on now. You’ve got it, right?”

  He kept rooting for her to stay on the line longer. Seven minutes later she hung up.

  “Yeah? Terrific,” Ollie said. “The Delores Williams residence at Twelfth and Switzer? Wait a minute. I think I know her son. Davey Williams. Better known as Shadow.”

  “Okay, Sheila, remember, this is confidential police business, all right? It’s not to be shared with anyone else in your office. Understand?”

  “Yes.” Sheila sounded nervous over the phone. “I won’t get in trouble for this, will I?”

  “No,” Ollie said. “Now, you’re sure no one else is in the office? And if a call comes in and gets picked up on the private line answering machines, you’ll know?”

  “Yes, I’ll know.”

  “All right. Call me back as soon as you hear something, just like we talked about, okay?”

  “Okay.”

  Ollie put down the phone and picked up a laser-printed page that read, “Harper: Counting on you to take care of the job. Make it soon.” He put it in the fax machine. “I’ve deleted our return number in our fax, so it won’t show up on his printout,” he said to Clarence. “I’ve also got a blocker on this line, in case he has caller ID. He won’t know where the fax is coming from.”

  Ollie dialed, pressed “Start,” and watched the paper pull through. He waited about a minute, pressed “Redial,” and ran the same page through again. He waited another minute, and did exactly the same thing a third time.

  “What do we do now?” Clarence asked.

  “We wait.”

  “I’m puzzled,” Dani said to Zeke. “As I’ve studied you on earth, despite all that was done to you, I saw no bitterness. How could you forgive people so easily?”

  “‘Member the Carpenter’s parable of that man forgiven a huge debt by his king? Then the man refused to forgive someone who owed him far less.”

  “Yes, I remember.”

  “Well, great-granddaughter, I reckon that’s one of those passages you should go back and study. You haven’t learned its full meaning yet. The Carpenter was sayin’ our debt to God is infinitely beyond our capacity to repay. He was also sayin’ our deb
t to God is infinitely greater than any person’s debt to us, no matter how cruel or unjust they’ve been. Compared to our sins against God, anybody’s sins against us is small potatoes. He was also sayin’ that when we experience God’s forgiveness, it changes us into forgiving people. Jesus said, if you’re forgiven you must forgive others. Once you understand our sins against him and his forgiveness for us, how can you not forgive others?”

  “I guess I sometimes saw the worst in people,” Dani said.

  “There’s plenty of bad to see, that’s for sure,” Zeke said. “The answer isn’t to pretend people don’t do bad things, but to realize God sees us at our worst and still loves us. And by his grace he helps us to see others at their worst but still love them. No sinner is beyond his reach, chile. Bitterness, that’s just a self-imposed prison. It’s a terrible cost to yourself and your loved ones. It’s a cost I wasn’t willin’ to pay. Bitterness never relieves suffering, it only causes it. I used to pray for the overseers and masters who beat me. I knew they wasn’t beyond God’s grace because I wasn’t. One of the slaves, ol’ Elmo, he used to say the massas didn’t deserve forgiveness. I said,” Course they doesn’t deserve forgiveness, Elmo. No man does. If you deserved forgiveness, you wouldn’t need it.’

  “Elmo says to me, ‘I just wants what I deserves. I wants what’s comin’ to me.’ I said, ‘Don’t go sayin’ that, Elmo. If we gets what we deserves, then all we gets is hell.’”

  “I knew that,” Dani said, “but somehow I never experienced it at the depth you did.”

  “I remembers one ol’ hound named Rosco. You gived Rosco a bone and he’d bury it. Then he’d always dig it back up just to be sure it was still there. When he was still a pup, every day he made his rounds. He’d go to twenty or thirty places, bury his bones, but he’d never let them lie. He’d just keep diggin’ ’em up again. That’s how peoples can be. They maybe bury sins a little bit, say they’ve forgiven, but they never forget where them ol’ bones is. They always go back, dig ’em up again and again. So they can still wallows in their pity and comforts theirselves by thinkin’ how they’s victims. As if that made ’em righteous. Sad thing is, by pushin’ away God’s grace to others, they push away his grace to them.”

  “Detective Chandler? This is Sheila.” Ollie pressed the speakerphone.

  “Did Mr. Harper call?” Ollie asked.

  “He sure did. Just like you said. He sounded really upset.”

  “Good. Who did he ask for?”

  “No one,” Sheila said.

  “No one?”

  “He said somebody was sending him a bunch of nonsense faxes and I should tell whoever it is to knock it off. Mr. Harper was moving out of here just when I got hired, so I didn’t know him well, but I sure never heard him this upset. He asked me who was sending the faxes. I said I really wasn’t sure.”

  “Perfect, Sheila. You’ve done your job. Treat yourself to a Dove Bar or something.”

  “Oh, I couldn’t.” She laughed. “I’m on a diet.”

  “Okay. I’ll have one for you. Remember, this is police business. Confidential. Can’t tell Norcoast or Gray or anybody, right?”

  “Right. One other thing—before he got off, Mr. Harper asked if Jean, our office manager, was back from a conference in L.A. He didn’t say he wanted to talk to her, but if she’d been here I think he would have. I’m not even sure how he knew she was in L.A.”

  “Jean, huh? Are they friends?”

  “They worked together closely when Mr. Harper was in our office. That’s all I know.”

  “Okay, thanks again, Sheila.” Ollie hung up the phone and smiled at Clarence. “Now we know for sure the original was faxed from Norcoast’s office to Harper’s, because that’s where he assumed it came from today. I’m disappointed he called the main number rather than Gray’s or Norcoast’s private line. I was hoping he’d show us exactly which of them sent the fax. Granted, you got it off Norcoast’s computer, so it was probably him, but probably isn’t good enough. Anyway, at least we know we’re on the right track.”

  “That fax doesn’t say what the ‘job’ is,” Clarence said. “But Harper had to know exactly what it meant, right?”

  “Right. And that had to be stated in some previous voice conversation, probably one of those phone calls from Norcoast’s office. No one would be stupid enough to put any specifics in print. We can’t prove exactly what was said, when, and by whom. We certainly can’t prove someone told Harper to send up some hit men to 920 North Jack Street. But this,” he held up the paper he’d faxed to Harper, “is our cash cow. We’ve got to milk it for all it’s worth.”

  Clarence sat down in Jess Foley’s office, along with Winston. “Look, Clarence,” Jess said, “This morning I met with Raylon and one of the Trib attorneys. As you can imagine, we’re in a very difficult position with the charges brought against you. We want to make a proposal.”

  “Let me guess, a leave of absence? Or are you asking for my resignation?”

  “If you resign, that’s your choice,” Jess said. “It might be best for you and your family, I don’t know. Personally, I hope you don’t. But meanwhile we’re offering you a paid leave of absence. Winston and I have discussed it, and we can fill your slot with other columns until this thing gets resolved. What do you think?”

  Clarence looked at Winston, who didn’t return his gaze. Then he looked at Jess, who was clearly less comfortable doing this than editing a newspaper.

  “What I think is that neither Raylon nor you nor any of the Trib attorneys has even asked me if I did anything wrong. Maybe it’s because you’re assuming I did. Well, I didn’t. And maybe what matters to you isn’t whether I’m guilty, but just that I’ve been accused. Well, I’m innocent, and if it makes the Trib look bad because somebody lied about me, too bad for the Trib. To walk away would be to say I was guilty. It would be just what whoever set me up wants. I’m staying, and I’m going to keep writing. Of course, you can fire me. But if you do, tell Raylon when I prove I’m innocent, I’m going to sue the Trib. Maybe even a class-action suit—discriminating against a minority employee. Yeah. Tell Raylon to chew on that for a while.”

  Clarence marched straight to his desk, choosing the column subject he considered most likely to infuriate Raylon Berkley and Reggie Norcoast. He pulled out a file full of notes and typed emphatically, pounding his fingers on the keys.

  The Center for New Black Leadership’s board members—including Shelby Steele, Glenn Loury, and Phyllis Berry Myers—say the time has come for emphasizing black self-reliance, economic power, and social stability. They maintain that calling for personal responsibility must no longer be caricatured as “blaming the victim.” They say, “We will promote and celebrate black achievement as evidence of our humanity, rather than lament and advertise black failure as evidence of our victimization.”

  The Center is part of a ground-swell movement most readers haven’t heard of, since it receives so little media attention (due to journalists’ annoying habit of considering liberal extremists the only “real blacks”).

  But clearly, a new day is dawning among black Americans. I find it both refreshing and hopeful. I call upon the Trib and other media to give this important new movement the coverage it deserves. I for one will be featuring the efforts of some of the leaders in this movement in future columns.

  “Ready for this?” Ollie asked Clarence. “I think we’ve traced bank account records from Norcoast’s office to Harper’s.”

  “You can do that?”

  “It wasn’t official,” Ollie said. “I was just talking about the situation with Ray in Sacramento, and bang, next thing I know I get this fax.” He waved the paper. “Some interesting transactions. Like, thirty-five-thousand dollars wired from Norcoast’s campaign account to Matthew Harper’s personal account. The date was September 2.”

  “Same day as the murder.”

  “I might have expected it the next day, after the job was done, but apparently they jumped the gun to make sure he was
ready with the cash when our perps showed up in Sacramento. Of course, if the payoff had been a day later, the money probably wouldn’t have been wired at all, once they knew the shooters blew the hit.”

  “This is a lot of speculation, Ollie.”

  “Yeah, but take a look at this.” He showed him another account from U.S. National Bank of Sacramento. “Harper withdrew the thirty-five thousand two hours after it was wired. And see this notation?” Clarence nodded. “That means cash. Thirty-five thousand in cash. If he was going to buy a boat, make a down payment on a house, whatever, he would’ve written a check. When you take out that kind of cash, it means you don’t want a paper trail linking you to whoever you’re going to hand it over to.”

  “But Norcoast’s office has to have financial records. They’ve got to be able to explain the thirty-five thousand.”

  “No doubt they can explain it. Harper does political consulting on the side. He might have even made a phony billing sheet for his time. But no matter how they explain it, I say it’s no coincidence the shooters came up with thirty-two thousand in cash to get that Mercedes. How many people besides Harper and our perps do you suppose were walking around Sacramento with that kind of money?”

  “What next, Ollie?”

  “I could go a couple of directions. One, keep working behind the scenes, building the case, and go for Harper in one fell swoop. Two, contact Harper, ask him some questions, see if I can get him nervous and flush him out.”

  “Which are you going to do?”

  “My gut tells me I should send in my dogs and see if I can flush this bird out in the open.” Ollie picked up the phone and dialed Harper’s private line, pressing the speakerphone for Clarences benefit, and turning the volume on low.

  “Yeah, Mr. Harper, this is Ollie Chandler, Portland Police. I’m calling to ask you a few questions about a case I’m working on.”

  “What can I do for you, officer?”