Darkness Descending: A Mimi Patterson/Gianna Maglione Mystery (The Mimi Patterson/Gianna Maglione Mysteries)

by Penny Mickelbury

  “I’m not asking about religion, I’m asking about an organization, if one exists. How would a group of ministers go about deciding to preach a sermon on the same topic if they don’t have an official organization to facilitate that? How would men as different as Charles Bailey, with his raggedy little storefront church in the Black ghetto, and Elwood Burgess, with his suburban palace and its five thousand members in the white suburbs, ever even meet each other, to say nothing of agreeing to do something together, if there’s no organization? And if there is an organization, that’s not religion, Edgar, that’s politics, and that’s most definitely my business.”

  Mimi well understood that Edgar Whitfield had been a reporter for almost fifty years, all of them right here in this same newsroom, and that he harbored proprietary notions about what he did. He’d first got the job of Religion Editor way back when nobody else wanted it, back when religion in America was a simple matter of being Protestant, Catholic or Jewish: Mainstream Protestant, mainstream Catholic, mainstream Jewish. Now that there was nothing at all simple and very little mainstream about religion as it was practiced in America, or in the world, the paper didn’t know what to do with a man who not only didn’t know the difference between Buddhists, Hindus and Muslims but who didn’t care to know, so Edgar remained Religion Editor in name only while the paper’s bosses waited for him to retire or die. Meanwhile, a host of other reporters covered the many aspects and facets of religion and spirituality, from the ordination of homosexual priests in the Anglican Church to the abuse charges leveled against priests in the Catholic Church, from the increased interest in Eastern spiritual philosophies, to the increased interest in all manner of fundamentalism. Used to the politically correct way of doing things, Mimi had come to the person nominally responsible. Big mistake. And didn’t the paper have a mandatory retirement age? Edgar must be at least seventy.

  “Look, Edgar, just forget I asked.” Frustrated, she stalked away to look for her pal Tyler Carson, to ask him which of the reporters who wrote about religion most likely would know the answer to her question.

  “Elwood Burgess is no man of God.”

  Mimi walked back to Edgar’s desk. “What did you say?”

  “I said Elwood Burgess is no man of God.”

  “What do you mean by that?”

  “He uses the pulpit for personal gain, not to preach the gospel.”

  “You mean so he can collect tax free money?”

  “And so he can recruit for his so-called army. You’re right about one thing,” Edgar said, a bit grudgingly. “What Burgess does is definitely more politics than it is religion.”

  This is what Mimi was after and it had been right here in her own backyard the entire time. “I heard something about an army but I dismissed it as idle talk.”

  Whitfield shook his head so vehemently that blowsy white tufts of hair danced in the breeze. “That’s what everybody thought and now it’s too late to do anything about it.”

  Mimi continued to play her part. “Do anything about what, Edgar? Now I’m really confused.” She grabbed the chair from the adjacent desk, pulled it close to Edgar, sat down, and took her micro recorder from her pocket. Edgar glanced at it but didn’t blink or hesitate. In fact he seemed relieved to be able to talk about what he knew.

  “He used to be with the police, Burgess did. This was a long time ago, way before your time, back when police could do the kinds of things he did and get away with it. You can probably guess what kinds of things I mean, you being Black and all?” He made it a question and Mimi nodded her answer. She already knew all this but she was loathe to do anything that would take the wind from Edgar’s sails now that he’d unfurled them. “Somebody finally put a stop to him. Nobody ever knew for certain who it was, but the speculation was that it was a Negro Vietnam veteran.”

  Mimi gave Edgar the surprise reaction he expected. “Why do you say that?”

  For the first time the old guy displayed a trace of humor. “Because somebody was taking shots at Burgess with some kind of high-powered gun, and the shots always got close to him. Too close, as if the shooter missed intentionally. The speculation was that he—the shooter—wanted Burgess to know that he could kill him at any time. Burgess got the message.”

  “He ceased his police brutality?”

  “He left the police department,” Edgar said with a satisfied nod. His blue eyes blazed. “But he was just getting started. He bought himself some divinity degrees—not real ones from recognized theological schools—and set himself up as a preacher, recruiting the worst elements from the police departments, and back then, the bad element pool was well stocked. Over-stocked, even.”

  Mimi knew all this, but she smiled enjoyment of the old man’s well-turned phrases and their imagery.

  “We’ve got to stop meeting this way, Edgar, your generation and mine, each thinking the other is hopelessly out of touch.”

  He emitted a surprised bark of laughter. “I’m pleased that you don’t find it hopeless.”

  “Do you?”

  He nodded sadly. “I’m afraid so. But! Let’s return to Officer Burgess, shall we? And by the way, when you talk to him, which I’m assuming you will, call him that: Officer instead of Doctor. It’ll turn him purple with apoplexy!” The old man almost giggled at the thought, then returned to his story, which was that Burgess initially built his church on cops and their families, preying on old style Southern racist sympathies, of which there were plenty in D.C. and environs thirty-five years ago. As his congregation expanded to encompass and include the general population of the neighborhood, Burgess refined his message and his presentation. He stopped looking and sounding so much like the redneck he was. He used some of the many thousands of dollars he was raking in to establish programs for young people. He toned down his strident anti-government message and re-introduced it to his congregation as a tax assistance program. The church grew, and grew more prosperous as new congregants, more sophisticated than the coarse PG County residents who had been bedrock of the church, realized that they had a forum not only for their religious beliefs, but for their political ones as well. Not only could Burgess now carry an anti-government, anti- Black message, he could preach against abortion, women’s rights, homosexuality, and all those other religions that didn’t interpret the Divine message the way he did. And those youth programs and taxpayer assistance programs became armies: Cadres of trained “Christian soldiers” who carried out specific “missions” under Burgess’s direction.

  Mimi was still listening though Edgar had stopped talking. For a moment she couldn’t think of anything to say. “What kind of missions,” she finally managed.

  “I’ve been reading your stories. I read the entire paper, cover to cover, each and every day, you know, and I read your stories very carefully. That Inspector Frank O’Connell. He’s one of Burgess’s soldiers. The dereliction of duty you alluded to would not have been an oversight on his part.”

  “How can I prove that, Edgar?”

  He gave her a long, steady look, held her gaze as tightly as if he had a grip on her hands with his. “Come by at the end of the day. I’m here until six forty-five.”

  Mimi knew he was finished talking. She stood up and slid her chair back to the desk where it belonged. She didn’t want to leave. “One more question, Edgar, please. Why would Burgess ally himself with Charles Bailey?”

  “I don’t know Bailey but I do know that many of the Black ministers are as pedagogic and pedantic as Burgess, and so blinded by their fundamentalist fervor that they don’t understand they’re nailing themselves to their own crosses, so to speak.”

  “You mean, for example, how the homophobia of the Black church contributes to the spread of AIDS?”

  He gave her a beatific smile. “Perhaps not hopeless after all.” Then he rattled off the names of half a dozen pastors of independent, non-denominational churches who likely would have shared the Burgess and Bailey message on Sunday.

  Mimi returned to her desk on th
e other side of the football-field sized newsroom. She wasn’t exactly sure what she was feeling but her thoughts were all over the place. All the years she’d been at the paper she’d never spoken to Edgar Whitfield, and after what she’d just experienced, she realized that everything she thought she knew about him was totally incorrect. He might be old but he certainly wasn’t out of touch.

  She removed the cassette with the Whitfield interview and popped in the one with Burgess’s Sunday service on it. She put on her headphones, leaned back in her chair propped her feet on the desk, and closed her eyes. The sound quality was as good as what she’d gotten recording Bailey’s service; the little recorders were surprisingly reliable. She’d managed a seat in the second row of Bailey’s church and the recorder picked up every word of his sermon as well as the plop-plop-plop of water into the almost full plastic containers situated in the four corners of the little church. The intern who’d attended Burgess’s church must have sat directly beneath a speaker, bless his observant little heart. Every word was there with perfect clarity, the same words that Charles Bailey had uttered. She had fast forwarded through the sermon the first time, just to make certain that it was there. Now she listened carefully and closely, listening for the subliminal message as well as to the spoken words. If ever interred in a POW camp and forced to listen to this garbage on a regular basis, Mimi would opt for Bailey over Burgess. Bailey at least sounded like he believed what he was saying. Burgess oozed unctuousness. How could anybody take him seriously as a spiritual leader? Then again, perhaps nobody did. Perhaps that’s not why five thousand people listened to him every Sunday morning.

  “Shit!” She sat up straight and dropped her feet to the floor. She’d almost missed it, what with her thoughts drifting about like clouds. She backed up the tape, then replayed the section following the end of the sermon. Both Bailey and Burgess had concluded by asking for a show of support for the wronged Frank O’Connell, but Burgess had a special something that Bailey did not: O’Connell in the flesh. He must have been up there with Burgess because Burgess said, “Here he is,” and there was loud clapping and cheering that went on for a while. Then, during a break in the adulation, Mimi heard, “God hates fags.” It was loud and strident and there was a moment of dead silence in the church, as if God had said, “Say what?” Then the words came again, louder and stronger: “God hates faggots!” And the clapping and cheering erupted and the organ began to play and a song started.

  Mimi switched off the machine and sat there looking at it. Who had said, “God hates fags”? It wasn’t Burgess, she was certain of that. O’Connell? Had he actually stood in front of a packed church on a Sunday morning and said that? She was half way across the newsroom before she remembered that Carolyn wasn’t at work; she was off Mondays and Tuesdays. The intern! Who was the intern who’d attended Burgess’s church service? She telescoped the huge room, looking for an intern-like face, then got control of herself. She wouldn’t know him if she tripped over him.

  “Shit,” she said again, and dropped back down into her chair. God hates fags. If that was O’Connell, he was finished in the D.C. police department. Might not be enough to get him fired, but certainly sufficient to make certain that he never got another command, and perhaps not another promotion. Would the chief tell her if that was O’Connell’s voice? Perhaps, but he’d probably also confiscate the tape. Inspector Davis? She didn’t know him well enough. And the one cop she did know well enough... She made her decision. She grabbed her rucksack, tossed the necessary equipment into it, including her laptop, and started for the door.

  “Patterson!” She heard her name yelled over the newsroom din.

  Mimi looked for the source of the summons, saw the receptionist waving her arms, and headed for her. “What’s up, Maggie?”

  “Visitor in the lobby. Some guy wants to talk to you about the Hilliard person you’ve been writing about.”

  Maggie was newsroom legend. Nobody knew how old she was and she wasn’t telling. She dressed like a hippie, talked like a Valley Girl, had a memory like an elephant, and the personality of Morticia.

  “All right. Tell security I’m on my way down. Thanks, Maggie.”

  “And Patterson? It’d be really nice if you let me know when you’re leaving the building, you know? That way I’m not, like, looking for you and you’re not here.”

  Mimi nodded, told Maggie where she was going, and left, wondering whether she’d just lied. It was her intention to go to police headquarters to find Gianna and ask her to listen to the Burgess tape, ask her to identify Mr. God Hates Fags as O’Connell or not. Now she was wondering how Gianna would react. Mimi sometimes forgot that Gianna was a cop, all cop, with a cop’s instincts and feelings, and as such, she’d be in no hurry to help Mimi nail O’Connell’s hide to the nearest tree, even if she acknowledged that maybe he deserved it. So, if not Gianna, then who? Dare she call on Ernie Binion again so soon? She weighed the possibility, was turning it over, when the elevator doors opened and she was all but pushed out into the lobby by the tightly packed crowd. She was headed for the security desk when a neatly dressed man approached her. His hair was very short and he wore a full, neatly trimmed beard. He had on a knit skull cap and tiny wire-rimmed glasses. He looked about twenty-eight or twenty nine, maybe a couple of years older—about Natasha Hilliard’s age, Mimi was thinking—when he got close enough for her to see his eyes. She backed up a step. He also looked crazy.

  “Are you M. Montgomery Patterson?” It was an accusation, not a query.

  “You have information about Natasha Hilliard?”

  “Stop writing about her,” he said in the same tone of voice. “You demean and disgust her family and her memory. Don’t write any more.”

  Anger rose up fast in Mimi. “Excuse me,” she said instead of the ‘Fuck you’ she wanted to say, and started to walk around him.

  “Don’t you dare walk away from me,” he said, his tone so menacing that Mimi stopped and turned back toward him.

  “Who the hell do you think you’re talking to?” The fury in her voice and eyes matched his and he wavered for just an instant.

  “You are to write no more about the abomination that infiltrated Natasha and ruined her life. It is against Allah.”

  Mimi turned away from him again. Another religious zealot. Trying to engage in a rational conversation with him would be as big a waste of time as trying to talk to Charles Bailey. Give me Edgar Whitfield any day, she was thinking, when the blow to the middle of her back staggered her. She turned and the second blow caught her on the side of the head, sending her flying backward. “You stupid son of a bitch!”

  Infuriated, he charged her. “You evil woman! You speak and act against the laws of Allah and you will be punished!”

  Mimi swung her rucksack as hard as she could. It connected with the side of his head just as three security guards rushed him. They pushed her out of the way to get to him, sending her careening across the polished marble floor and into one of the center columns. One guard finished the job of knocking him to the ground and the other two each grabbed an arm. They had to work to hold on because he was kicking like a drunken mule and screaming about retribution and the will of Allah. The guard who’d knocked him down knelt on his legs and the two holding his arms managed to get handcuffs on him. The kicking and screaming continued, drawing a dangerously large crowd.

  “Death to you and to all homosexuals!” he screamed as the guards worked to control him. “Death to all infidels! Homosexuality is an abomination!”

  Mimi struggled to her feet as four D.C. cops bounded into the lobby. In seconds, they had the kicking, screaming man out the door, two of the cops carrying the front end, two carrying the legs that Mimi wagered would be broken by the time he got to Central Lock-Up if he didn’t settle down. She touched her face where it hurt and it hurt even more. Her rucksack had spilled open and its contents scattered across the floor. The micro recorder was in pieces and the laptop had popped open. She bent to begin retrieving th
ings, felt dizzy, and swayed. One of the guards wrapped his arms around her, steadying her.

  “I’ve got you, Miss Patterson,” he said.

  “And not a moment too soon,” she replied, waiting for the wooziness to pass. “I think I’m going to have a pretty good headache.”

  “Not as good as the one he’s gonna have,” the guard said. He held her at arm’s length and took a good look. “Think you oughta see a medic?”

  She touched the sore place on her face again, looking for blood. It hurt like hell but that was all. She shook her head, regretted the action, then spoke the words. “I don’t think so. Not unless I look a lot worse than I feel, and I’m trusting you to tell me the truth.”

  He gave her a sideways grin. “Like I said, you look a hell of a lot better than the other guy’s gonna look. Who the hell is he, by the way?”

  “No idea. Maggie said somebody in the lobby wanted to talk to me about one of my stories.”

  “Yeah,” the guard said, “I could tell, all the damn screaming about Allah and homosexuals and infidels. Crazy son of a bitch.” He looked around at the cleared-out lobby and beckoned to another guard who trotted over. Mimi saw why: He had stripes on his arm and out-ranked her protector.

  “You all right, Miss Patterson?” the sergeant asked, giving her a critical look. “He landed one on you, didn’t he, crazy little son of a bitch.”

  “Two, to be precise, but I’m fine, and I appreciate your coming to the rescue, both of you. If I can just collect my belongings, I’ll be on my way.”

  “Oh, no, Ma’am. We’ve got to do the paperwork now,” the sergeant said.

  “What paperwork?”

  “Filing the charges. So far I count assault, battery and trespass. I’m sure the cops will have a few more to add by the time they get him to Central Lock-up.”

  “Oh, I don’t know,” Mimi said, wishing she was someplace else.

  “Not up to you,” the sergeant said. “The paper will press charges. That’s policy. One of their employees was assaulted on their property, they’re gonna throw the book at that guy. He’ll wish he’d never seen a newspaper when they finish with him.”