Not Long for This World

by Gar Anthony Haywood

  Raines struck a relaxed pose beside the majestic executive and suggested with a flip of his right hand that Gunner choose between the two chairs facing him. “Make yourself comfortable, Mr. Gunner. Please.”

  His rottweilers, now standing alongside each other at their master’s left hand, seemed determined to wait for Gunner’s acceptance of Raines’s invitation before sitting down themselves. Sam looked as if no amount of waiting would particularly annoy him, but Dave was already showing signs of restlessness. He kept baring the teeth on the right side of his mouth intermittently, spasmodically, apparently unable to control the bizarre grin.

  Gunner chose the chair on Raines’s right and both dogs sank slowly to the floor, mollified.

  “Nice trick,” Gunner said to Raines.

  Raines glanced at the dogs and merely smiled. “Can I get you something to drink?”

  “With or without a lecture on temperance?”

  “Without. Of course.”

  Gunner ordered Wild Turkey on the rocks and watched as Raines moved to the wall directly behind him, folded back a fake segment of the bookcase there, and exposed a well-stocked wet bar hidden behind it. Keeping his back to Gunner as he worked on their drinks, Raines said, “So tell me. What makes you think I can help you find Rookie Davidson?”

  Pleased to see Raines get right to the point, Gunner shrugged, wasting the movement on a man whose eyes were turned elsewhere. “He’s a gangbanger on the run. A lost lamb in search of a shepherd. Who better than you to take him in?”

  “You think I’m hiding him?”

  “I didn’t say that.”

  “Then why the visit?”

  Opting to say nothing about his night in San Fernando for the moment, Gunner said, “Because I’m down to the end of my dance card, and frankly, there aren’t many other names left on it. The category I’m sifting through now is ‘Rookie’s Acquaintances’—no matter how remote—and that deals you in. Or wouldn’t you call Rookie an acquaintance?”

  Raines brought Gunner his drink and carried one for himself back to his chair on the other side of the desk, finally sitting down himself. His smooth handsome face was set in a doll-like expression of uncanny placidity. “I know the boy, of course. We’ve talked many times.”

  “About what?”

  “I’m an ordained minister, Mr. Gunner. What would you suspect we talked about?”

  “I wouldn’t presume to guess. For all I know, Reverend, you’re a sports nut who liked to lecture the kid on the immorality of the NFL draft.”

  Raines let the unflappable cast of neutrality on his face speak for his appreciation of Gunner’s wit, and he said matter-of-factly, “We talked about God. About the power of Jesus Christ to change lives, no matter how dark or unsavory. We talked about love and forgiveness, and about the true meaning of manhood and brotherhood.

  “Would it help you to know what specific passages of Scripture I referred to? Romans Ten, thirteen; Psalm One Hundred and Three, eight; Second Corinthians Five, seventeen. Are you familiar with any of these readings, Mr. Gunner?”

  Gunner shook his head. “Not very, no.”

  “Are you a Christian?”

  “Depending on how loosely you use the term, I suppose I am. Fundamentally speaking, anyway.”

  “But not in practice.”

  “The nature of my work inhibits my practice of a great number of things, Reverend. Golf. Tennis. Sex. My faith, such as it is, is no exception.” Gunner sampled his drink, raised the glass in his hand slightly, and said, “But I thought the booze was supposed to come with no strings attached.”

  Raines grinned. “Sorry. I did promise not to badger you, didn’t I?”

  Gunner ignored the rhetorical question and asked Raines when he had seen Rookie Davidson last.

  The Reverend paused to taste his own drink, as if he had to think about it. “Three weeks ago. Four, at the most.”

  “Where?”

  “At our church. In my office. It was in the evening, late. Around ten, I think. I’d told him he could come see me whenever the Spirit moved him, and that was usually about the time he’d drop by. He had to sneak away from his ‘homies’ to talk to me, you understand, so evening visits during the week were about the best he could do.”

  “Why was he seeing you and not Darrel Lovejoy? Wasn’t Lovejoy the Patrol figure gangbangers usually dealt with?”

  “Usually, yes. But that was only because most of the kids we deal with want little or nothing to do with religion, at least initially. Those kids, I generally let Darrel have first crack at. ’Bangers he thought would be totally unresponsive to what I have to say, he worked with alone; the ones he felt I might be able to reach, he passed on to me. That was the Patrol’s way. I think I should tell you, however, that Rookie was brought to me not by Darrel but by someone outside of the Peace Patrol altogether.”

  “And who was that?”

  “A former member of the church. A relative.”

  Gunner remembered his brief meeting with Teddy Davidson, and how concerned the retread tire magnate had professed to be about doing the “Christian thing.”

  “You talking about the brother? Teddy Davidson?”

  Raines nodded. The admission seemed to make him uncomfortable, somehow.

  “You know Davidson very well?”

  “Not very. He’d shake my hand after Sunday services, and I’d see him from time to time at one church service group meeting or another, but that was about it. I don’t see him at all, anymore.”

  “Why is that?”

  “As I stated earlier, he’s a former member of the church. My understanding is, he’s an excitable young man who has trouble getting along with people. Apparently, words between himself and several others were exchanged one evening at a Christian Youth Fellowship meeting, and a scuffle broke out. He left that night and never came back. I haven’t seen him since.”

  Somehow, the story fit Teddy Davidson to a tee.

  “Fortunately for Rookie, he brought his little brother to my attention before all this happened,” Raines said, continuing without being prompted. “Given another week to work with him, I’d have sold the boy on the Lord, lock, stock, and barrel. I’m certain of it.”

  “You must have been quite surprised, then, when you heard he was wanted in connection with Lovejoy’s murder.”

  “Yes. I was. His Imperial Blue credentials aside, Mr. Gunner, this is still just a fifteen-year-old boy we’re talking about.”

  “With a rap sheet six pages long.”

  “Yes. Maybe so. But take it from someone who knows him: Like the vast majority of children involved in gangs, Rookie’s really nothing more than a frightened little boy with murderers for friends. Does that in itself make him as ruthless and unrepentant as they? I don’t think so.”

  “Then that leads us to ask an obvious question, doesn’t it?”

  “Why he would participate in Darrel’s murder.”

  “Yes.”

  “Are you absolutely certain he did?”

  “Absolutely, no. Reasonably, yes.” Raines, appeared to take the news badly; he actually blinked twice. “At least, when I spoke to him last night, I didn’t hear any vehement denials.”

  The look on Raines’s face was one of surprise, nothing more and nothing less. “You spoke to him?”

  Gunner sipped lightly at his Wild Turkey and nodded. “I saw him. He was holed up in an empty house out in the San Fernando Valley. An odd-shaped single-story tract job at”—he consulted his pocket notebook—“Nine thirty-nine Brand Boulevard in the city of San Fernando. Maybe you know the place.”

  Raines actually reacted fully this time, though his frown wasn’t much to see; you had to be looking for it even to know it was there. “San Fernando, you say?”

  “That’s right.”

  The minister put his unfinished drink down and said, “I believe you’re talking about our house. The church’s house.” It was not a confession, just a statement of fact. “But you already knew that, didn’t you?�
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  “As a matter of fact, I did.”

  “And you say Rookie was there last night?”

  “Yes.”

  “Alone?”

  “More or less. Wasn’t he permitted to have guests?”

  “He wasn’t permitted to be there at all, Mr. Gunner. At least, not by me.” His anger seemed genuine. “Where is Rookie now?”

  “I’d like to know that myself. To make a long story short, he left without saying goodbye.”

  “Was he actually inside the house?”

  Gunner nodded.

  “Then he must have broken in. He certainly didn’t have a key.” He saw the dull look on Gunner’s face and understood that their discussion had shifted from casual conversation to formal interrogation, and that from here on in, nothing he had to say was going to go unquestioned as the Gospel truth. What the investigator wanted now was to be convinced that he had known nothing of Rookie’s presence in San Fernando—not merely assured of it.

  “If I interpret that funny look you’re giving me correctly, Mr. Gunner, you don’t believe me.”

  Gunner wouldn’t say, one way or the other.

  “You think I put Rookie up in the house, is that it?”

  Gunner shrugged and said, “I’ve been wrong before, Reverend. But what would you think? Any other explanation for his being there involves more coincidences than I’d care to count.”

  Raines shook his head. “Not really. The boy knew the house was there and empty. Why wouldn’t he take advantage of it eventually?”

  “How’s that again?”

  “That’s right. Rookie knew the house was there because he’d been there before. Last month sometime. I could be mistaken, but I believe Rookie was part of a group Darrel took up to the house one weekend to do some work on the place. Painting and minor repairs, that sort of thing. We bought the property to convert it into a shelter for homeless mothers, and it was Darrel’s idea to let gangbangers help get it into shape, to make sort of a youth work program out of the project. To tell you the truth, it should have occurred to me sooner that Rookie might be there. I don’t know why it didn’t.”

  “And if it had? Had you gone out to take a look and found him there, what then?”

  “I would have done the sensible thing, of course. I’d have tried everything in my power to convince Rookie to turn himself over to the authorities. What else could I do?”

  “As a preacher,” Gunner said, “probably nothing. But as the kid’s friend, you might have felt there were some other options available to you. You might have agreed to let him stay, for instance.”

  Raines shook his head confidently, smiling at the absurdity of the suggestion. “No. I wouldn’t have made that grave a mistake.”

  A grave mistake for whom? Gunner wondered. For Rookie—or for him?

  “You don’t believe he’s innocent?”

  “I hope and pray that he is … but I have no way of knowing for certain, one way or the other. My advice to him in any case would be the same: Give yourself up. Allow God and the judicial system to decide your fate.”

  “You wouldn’t have any idea where he might be now, would you?”

  “The assumption being, if I put him up once, I’d put him up again, somewhere else. No, Mr. Gunner. I have no idea.”

  His annoyance was visible but not intrusive. Something stirred on the floor beside him and Gunner looked down, to find the rottweiler named Dave getting antsy again, glaring at him with renewed discontent, as if his master’s pique was something they shared equally.

  “He thinks I’m angry,” Raines said, tipping his head toward the dog. He was trying to dilute the scowl on his face with a smile but was having only mixed results. “He has a keen sense of emotions, especially mine, but the more complex ones seem to give him trouble. Abject frustration, for example.”

  Gunner waited for him to explain.

  “You see, you’ve misjudged me, Mr. Gunner. Like the police who came before you, you obviously assume that, because I am a man of God committed to the task of delivering young people from the ravages of Satan, I see them all through rose-colored glasses, as supreme innocents the world has defiled but whom God can make right again. You think I’m incapable of or unwilling to separate the wheat from the chaff, to differentiate between those who can be saved and those who will never be. You are wrong. My vision of Cuzzes and Hoods, Troopers and Rollers and Blues and Tees, couldn’t be clearer.

  “It may appall some people to hear me say it, but there are many children in our community I would not waste my breath trying to save. It’s a small minority, certainly, but one that’s nevertheless beyond my reach, just too far gone. Considering the forces I’m up against, I feel blessed to have the power to touch any of them.

  “Gangbangers are children who are born lost, Mr. Gunner. From the very beginning, they’re given nothing to build upon, nothing to hope for. Vermin-infested living quarters, mothers and fathers on crack or booze, run-down schools and indifferent teachers … they leave their mother’s womb not long for this world.

  “And yet many of them can be saved. With Darrel’s help, and with experience, I’ve learned to know these children when I see them … just as I’ve learned to know the others, whose bond with Satan is too great for my mortal abilities to ever compromise. In other words, I am not so great a fool as to treat all gangbangers equally. If I treated Rookie like someone who had the potential to turn away from sin and toward a life in Christ, it is only because that potential was there, and not because I imagined it.

  “None of this is to say, however, that I assisted Rookie in any way in his flight from the authorities. The fact of the matter is, he never came to me to ask for help. Perhaps that seems odd to you.”

  Gunner remained noncommittal. “Perhaps.”

  “It shouldn’t. Were you half as well versed in the beliefs of Willie Raines as Rookie, you would understand, as he must have, that I could not possibly have helped him run from the police without violating everything I and the Peace Patrol have ever stood for. Ask anyone who knows me what my feelings are about those who refuse to accept responsibility for their own actions; they’ll tell you. They’ll tell you I have only one word for such people: cowards. If a man is willing to reap the rewards of the next world, Mr. Gunner, he has to be willing to bear the just punishments of this one when he falters. Many of the lessons gangbangers need to learn can only be learned through Christ; but the lessons that pertain to consequence—to the concept of paying a fair price to society for one’s assaults against it—are better taught by man.”

  He took up his drink again and sat back to enjoy it.

  “Quite a philosophy,” Gunner said. “Was it Lovejoy’s as well?”

  Raines shrugged. “For the most part.”

  “What were the points of dissension?”

  “It was more a matter of degrees than actual points of dissension. Darrel’s approach to ’bangers was just softer overall than mine. Perhaps being closer to them on a day-to-day basis had something to do with that, I don’t know.”

  “You two never had any real problems getting along, then.”

  “No. Never. I loved Darrel like a son, and he never gave me any reason to believe he didn’t feel as warmly about me.” He paused, as if catching himself about to take a bad fall. “But how did we come to be talking about him?”

  Gunner shrugged and finished his drink. “Would you rather talk about Whitey Most?”

  The Reverend’s face said no—not now, not ever.

  “The name does mean something to you, then,” Gunner said.

  “He’s a crack dealer,” Raines said.

  “Rookie’s crack dealer.”

  “Yes.”

  “How well do you know him?”

  “I don’t know him at all. I’ve simply buried enough of the children he preys upon to know of him. And Rookie’s mentioned his name once of twice, of course. What about him?”

  “I was wondering if he and the Patrol had ever had any serious differe
nces of opinion you might be aware of.”

  “By the Patrol, whom do you mean? Darrel? Or me?”

  “Let’s start with Darrel.”

  “First, define ‘differences of opinion.’”

  Gunner shrugged again. “Anything that might have led to bad blood between the two. They were two men who worked the same side of the street but had wholly conflicting merchandise to sell. I would think they must have locked horns at one time or another.”

  Raines got up to freshen his drink and said, “Darrel was not in the habit of confronting drug pushers directly, Mr. Gunner. He was too smart for that. But there were occasions when he had to exchange words with one, certainly. As you point out, his influence upon the children in this community was constantly at odds with that of men like Most; they used to threaten him all the time.

  “Whether Most himself ever did so, however, I can’t say. At least, I don’t recall Darrel ever mentioning it if he did.” He came back to his seat. “As for me, the only experience I’ve ever had with Most, good or bad, was at a public rally the Southern California Alliance of Christian Churches held at George Washington Carver Park last July. I said a few words to the crowd and Most tried to shout me down, created quite a disturbance. The police cited him and he went away. That’s all there was to it.”

  “And you never heard from him afterward?”

  “No,”

  Raines thought he was being helpful, but he was really only making Gunner’s life that much harder to bear. For all his magnanimous cooperation, he had managed neither to shed new light on Darrel Lovejoy’s murder nor implicate himself in it, a rare double play that to all extents and purposes transported Gunner back in time to the moment of his introduction to a pair of imposing rottweilers named Sam and Dave: a moment otherwise known as Square One.

  On the outside chance that Raines might slip up and contradict himself in time, assuming he knew more about Rookie Davidson’s whereabouts than he was telling, for instance, Gunner could have asked for a fresh drink of his own and run the minister through a second, more grueling round of inane questions. However, he chose not to do so for one simple reason: He believed every word Raines had said.