More Church Folk

by Michele Andrea Bowen

  “It does things to the male anatomy,” Denzelle said in a quiet voice.

  “Big things!!!! Boom!!!” Obadiah shouted out.

  “Obie, stop,” Lena admonished in between chuckles. She knew exactly what had happened to Denzelle. In fact, she had made it her mission in life to get the inside scoop on all of this when he came back from Africa all upset over this WP21 stuff.

  “I can’t imagine what a full dose would do to a man,” Denzelle began, now speaking in the most “preacherly” voice he could muster up, causing Obadiah to laugh harder. “But that little bit I was exposed to gave me enough stamina and mileage to take it all the way to the bridge, and then some.”

  “Oh my,” Saphronia said, winking at Precious, as if to say, “Girl, we need to get some of that while we are in Durham.”

  Precious started grinning. Saphronia had a point. She glanced over at Tyrone and blew him a kiss.

  Essie and Johnnie, who had been very quiet because they didn’t want to miss a thing, sneaked a look at their men, and thought about the benefits of WP21.

  Denzelle had not missed any of those silent “Guuurrrrllll, did you hear that” messages transpiring between these first ladies, future bishops’ wives, and first-lady-to-be. But as comical as it was, they needed to hear the real deal on this drug.

  “I hate to break up this party,” he began drily, now sounding like an FBI agent, “but you all need to understand that this stuff is deadly and highly addictive. We have just lost one person at this conference as a direct result of using this drug. And I can tell you that when you come down from that high, you are sick. It feels like the worst flu virus you’ve ever had. You have diarrhea, nausea, and your joints are stiff and swollen, and it’s a miserable feeling.

  “The only thing that stops those symptoms is another small dose of the drug. You have to keep it in your system. And if you use it too long and too much, then stop, you lose some important things—like stamina, the ability to perform, and for some unfortunate men, you are not enhanced, but de-hanced if you know what I mean.”

  “Oh… no, we don’t want our men taking nothing like that,” Johnnie exclaimed, and then looked at Eddie as if to say, “Take that mess and I’ll kill you.”

  Denzelle smiled. He knew just what to say to a roomful of black church women on the subject of their men. He continued.

  “I met Uncle Lee Lee and members of his family. They are not bad people. They are not drug dealers. They didn’t even make up this stuff to be used as a drug. And they certainly didn’t come up with it just to ship it off to America.

  “From what I’ve gathered, they wanted to use it in exchange for control over getting some luxury items at bargain-basement prices. It’s the smuggling business that had some connections here in the States that first got the Bureau’s attention. Now it’s become something much bigger and deadlier—especially to black men.”

  “Plus, this Uncle Lee Lee probably figured out real quick just how much Rucker was going to cheat him and his family,” Percy said solemnly.

  “True, Bishop,” Denzelle told him. “And remember, only a small amount of the pure and original drug made it to the States. As far as I know, Rucker and his boys tried everything to get it over here in a large quantity but couldn’t make that work. Between Uncle Lee Lee and his great-great-nephew Chief getting mad at Rucker and his folk, and then getting the drug out of Mozambique and past customs in the US, they were not able to do what they planned.”

  “So, what in the world are they selling at this conference, since we know that the original plans blew up in their faces?”

  “Bishop Tate,” Denzelle began and then said, “I mean Reverend…”

  “Naw son, gone and prophesy me into the episcopacy,” Eddie said with a big grin.

  “Okay, Bishop,” Denzelle told him. “Look, you know that we, meaning the feds, let them bring in enough of that stuff to have a small inventory they could work with. My superiors wanted to follow the trail to the real drug dealers, who they knew would home in on this operation as soon as it left the conference. Fortunately for us, they ran out of their product so early in the game, they had to go to the local drug cartel to meet supply-and-demand issues.”

  “But now,” Eddie said, “the folks they hired to make the drug made up something that was far worse than anything that affected you when you took that little ‘cop taste’ of WP21.”

  Denzelle sighed. He wished he had not shared that information. They were never going to let him live it down. He tried to ignore Eddie Tate, which was kind of hard amid the snickers going around the room. He said, “According to the toxicology report, Bishop Giles was not an anomaly. Others can be affected by that drug in the exact same way. So, I’m forewarning you all to expect some more casualties before this conference is over.”

  “Casualties would be a blessing over another straight-up fatality,” Queen Esther said. “The preachers in charge of this operation don’t know enough about that drug. And sadly, we can expect at least one more fatality. I hate to talk like that but it’s the truth.”

  “Yeah,” Denzelle said. “I hope that it isn’t Bishop Hemphill. He uses the drug on a constant basis. I was watching him sign his name at the registration table, and I noticed that his fingers were very stiff and swollen. I know from the small portion of the drug that one of my local informants was able to buy, that the first level of adverse side effects is stiff and swollen extremities that can get very painful if left untreated.

  “Bishop Babatunde takes the drug, too. But he will only do it on occasion and not in large doses—at least let’s hope the doses are small enough to stop him from getting hurt from WP21. Rev. Sonny Washington uses it even less than Babatunde. And Rev. Marcel Brown along with Bishop Caruthers, takes even less than Washington.”

  “But they don’t mind giving what they wouldn’t dare take themselves to others.”

  “No, not at all, Miss Queen Esther. But that’s how it is with people like that—especially people dealing drugs. And we”—Denzelle looked around the room with those big round eyes that never missed anything—“we have to work together to stop it. If that poison is let loose in Durham, it is going to tear our community to shreds. And I’m not having that—not in the city I grew up in.”

  TWENTY-ONE

  Denzelle’s mobile phone rang twice before he reached it. He walked off to take the call. He was frowning when he came back to join the others. Just minutes ago he had been ready to hop on the Bull City mascot and ride that bull all the way to justice’s being served. But this phone call turned everything they had just discussed completely upside down.

  He opened up the briefcase to reveal a double-barreled, sawed-off shotgun, a thirty-eight, which he promptly strapped to his ankle, and a forty-five, which he anchored down in the back of his slacks.

  “Man, you better not trip and fall with all of that artillery packed up on you,” Thayline’s husband Willis said.

  “Dang, man,” Obadiah exclaimed, eyes lighting up like a little kid’s at the sight of all of that hardware, “I didn’t know you rolled like that!”

  Eddie closed his eyes and rubbed the bridge of his nose. His associate pastor was John Shaft.

  Saphronia knew that Gospel United preachers didn’t shortchange when it came to protection—even the super-saved ones like Bishop James. But Rev. Flowers had taken it to an entirely different level. All of sudden she had an irresistible urge to sing the theme song from the movie Shaft.

  “Who is the man who would risk his life for another man?” Saphronia sang in her off-key monotone voice.

  “Shaft!” Precious added.

  “Can you dig it?” Essie, Johnnie, and Thayline chimed in.

  Denzelle didn’t want to laugh. This was serious and these black people were in this living room singing the theme from Shaft. He tried to get everybody back on track. They had some work to do to get prepared for tomorrow’s meeting. A bust was going down sometime close to the election for the bishops, and they needed to know th
e details.

  “Look,” he began in his most intimidating FBI voice, but was interrupted by the loud and very insistent knocking at the door.

  Joseph looked at his wife and asked, “You know who that is?”

  Queen Esther shook her head.

  “I mean you have the entire Gospel United Church sitting right here. I can’t imagine who else you’ve invited to the house,” he said.

  “Joseph!” Queen Esther admonished. “You are going to make these people feel unwelcome.”

  Joseph’s eyes got wide. He didn’t want his guests to think he didn’t want them at his house—to the contrary. He was very happy to have these folks here. These people didn’t take any mess off anybody entertaining foolishness—particularly if the fools were claiming to be church folk. They were determined to put their foot on the Devil’s neck, right before they busted a cap in the behind of his minions. They were his kind of people, and certainly welcome in his home. He said, “Y’all, I am glad you are here. Just wanted to make sure my baby, Queen, did not feel sorry for some of those other black people over at the Governor’s Inn, and told them that it was okay to come by here for some home-cooked food.”

  “Come on, Joseph, I wouldn’t do that,” Queen Esther protested.

  “Okay…”

  The pounding cut him off.

  “Okay… okay,” Joseph yelled, and hurried to answer the door. He looked out the panel on the side of the front door. Why were the undertaker man from Memphis, that Hamilton brother, and Lucille Grey’s boy Grady standing on his porch looking mad and crazy, and as if they wanted to shoot somebody?

  Grady Grey hoped Mr. Green would hurry up and open this door. He could see him peeking through the window panels on the side of his front door. He and Dotsy Hamilton really needed an audience with Denzelle Flowers before something ugly jumped off over this WP21 in the Bull City. They were not happy over what was going on down in their carefully carved-out territory in Durham.

  Grady and Dotsy had each, in his own right, worked to monopolize certain commercial-friendly sections of the Bottom, a section of Durham’s old-school black community that wasn’t too far from North Carolina Central University. Grady’s business consisted of the acquisition and sale of stolen home merchandise—mostly office supplies, furniture, and equipment. Business was booming with the increase of the use of home-based computers. And folks buying Grady’s computers also needed the accessories that made all of this work—like printers, computer printing paper, a mouse, and so forth.

  Dotsy Hamilton had formed a gentlemen’s agreement with Grady several years ago to stay away from this area of the illegal commerce in Durham. After several unsuccessful business ventures, Dotsy found his niche in the regulation and enforcement side of larceny and other criminal activities. The consortium of crooks and thieves who attempted to conduct business in as orderly a manner as possible in this type of industry, hired Dotsy Hamilton to deal with the people who worked for them. It was Dotsy’s job to handle “employees” who talked too much and bragged about what was going on to people in the neighborhood, had part-time employment as informants for the police department, pilfered funds when collecting money, or were bullies to civilians or innocent law-abiding citizens.

  There was a code of business ethics and procedures that needed to be followed at this level of corporate activity. And when some knuckleheads got to smelling themselves and violated rules, trouble followed. The police hated it when criminals caused problems for decent folk. And decent folk, who always outnumbered the criminal element in a neighborhood, hated it as well. All it took was for one person too many to come to a block party or neighborhood gathering with complaints about those trifling thugs tearing up the community, and it was on.

  Those black people would set up all kinds of neighborhood snoop activities, and then would bug and pester the cops, be all on television, and worry the mayor until the crooks had to leave that area and go and try to set up shop somewhere else. Even worse, they would stop patronizing your business, and then go and put the word out that you were bad, so that no one else would want to be bothered with you, either.

  These were the people Dotsy had to handle. Some he simply talked to. Others he roughed up a bit. A few he had to chase with his car, shooting at them out of the car window to emphasize a point. And then there was that very small group of insubordinate employees he had to drag to a private location for a special meeting with their superiors. The people who hired Dotsy really had some very serious issues with insubordination and violation of company policies.

  Prior to that inferior quality of WP21 infiltrating the community, Grady and Dotsy had been having a good run with their respective businesses. They were making plenty of money. And they were not seen as a menace to the communities they served. Folks liked them, and wouldn’t turn them in when the cops came around needing to make an arrest just so folks on the other side of town could feel “safe.”

  But all of that goodwill and good business had started coming to a screeching halt when some rotten preachers and those two white boys came up in their territory selling WP21. Two old men in the neighborhood had died after taking the drug for two days straight. One middle-aged man had been rushed to Duke Medical Center in the middle of the night when he couldn’t straighten out his body. His mistress and wife fought and cussed each other out all the way to the hospital. They just about drove the poor ambulance people crazy.

  And one younger man had arrived at Lincoln Community Health Center wrapped in a huge comforter, walking crazy, hoping that they had something to relieve him of his obvious distress. His anxiety level went up even higher when the attending physician came at him with a needle three inches long to do something about his “medical problem.”

  Grady was mad, and when he met up with his new friend, Cleotis Clayton, decided that they were going to the source of all of their problems—church folk. Joseph opened the door and waved his hands for them to come in. He had been surprised to see Grady and Dotsy at his home. But as soon as he laid eyes on Cleotis Clayton, he knew this had something to do with the very thing they were dealing with.

  Seeing Cleotis Clayton and the other two men, one with the freshly done curl, and the other with a flat-top fade, walking into the Greens’ living room was like watching manna come down from Heaven to Murcheson, Percy, Theophilus, and Eddie. Never in a million years would they have expected Cleotis to come to them. They were the ones who were responsible for his last trip to jail.

  Cleotis walked over to Saphronia and gave her a warm hug.

  “Mrs. James, it is always a pleasure to see you. I hope you are doing well.”

  “Thank you, Cleotis,” Saphronia told him, smiling, causing several eyebrows to rise. No one would have expected her to know, let alone be on warm and fuzzy speaking terms with a man like Cleotis Clayton.

  Precious gave Cleotis a hug, too. She knew why he was such a big fan of Saphronia James. Cleotis had been at that ho’ house in Richmond when Saphronia busted in and then commenced to whipping Marcel Brown’s behind. Saphronia had been Cleotis’s ace ever since, and he would hurt anybody who dared to even look at her wrong.

  “You all know each other?” Susie James asked.

  “Long story, Mrs. James,” was all Saphronia said.

  Essie’s eyes narrowed. She was going to get Saphronia off to the side and find out more about this.

  “Grady Grey,” Denzelle said, and shook the hand of a man he’d been friends with in high school before they decided to operate from opposite sides of the law.

  “My man, Rev. Flowers,” Grady told him with a big grin spreading across his face. “Long time no see, negro. What’s it been?”

  “Four years,” Denzelle said.

  Grady opened up his man-purse, or a cool bag that looked like a plain pocketbook that was popular among the brothers who considered themselves true players, pulled out some curl activator, and sprayed his hair. He put the activator away and then pulled the back of his hair, which was hanging over his
royal blue Members Only jacket, away from the collar for a few seconds, so that it wouldn’t get too wet and greasy.

  “Look,” Grady said. “I asked my man C here to come over here with us, so that I could school you church people on what was happening in my business zone.”

  “What business zone you talking ’bout, Grady Grey?” Lena asked him before Obadiah thought to stop her from saying anything, all the while wondering how Grady, Dotsy, and this other man had known they were at the Greens’ house.

  “The one I’ve had for the last three years,” he answered, and then turned to Denzelle and said, “Look, player, C, Dotsy, and me here need some immunity if you want to know the deal. Okay?”

  “All depends on what you have for me, man,” Denzelle told him.

  He’d had to fight his superiors for the right to grant immunity for a potential suspect in this case. It had been a knock-down, drag-out, get-down-and-dirty brawl to get those white boys to let a brother excuse another brother who was clearly doing wrong in the eyes of the law. And Denzelle was not about to let some foolishness cause him to lose what he had fought so hard to get.

  “How about if he tells you how the drug has left the Triennial Conference and made its way to the streets of Durham, caused two deaths, and seriously injured a brother, and who is behind it?” Cleotis said. “And how about if he tells you who helped to get the counterfeit version of WP21 into the conference, and then who made it.”

  “Daggone, Grady. You know all of that?”

  Grady nodded, then said, “Denzelle, when have you known me not to know what’s up when somebody was trying to encroach on my territory?”

  “Okay, man,” Denzelle conceded. “I will make sure you have full immunity.”

  “Look, Denzelle man, there are those two white boys who have been making a bootleg version of WP21.”

  “Uhhh, excuse me, Pastor,” Cleotis said to Denzelle. “But before we get started, I’m gonna need some immunity from you, too.”