Darkness Descending

by Penny Mickelbury

  Mimi gave Peggy and big hug and her seat at the bar, and bought her a drink. “You’re quite stunning this evening, Miss Brown.”

  “I look stunning every evening, my love,” Peggy said archly, accepting her glass of champagne. She was sheathed in shimmering turquoise satin and dripping jewels. “Where’s that gorgeous lieutenant?”

  “Working. Why, won’t I do?”

  Peggy gave her a slow up and down. “In a pinch, I suppose.”

  Mimi hooted and gave her another big hug. “When can we take you to dinner? Or better still, up to the mountains? Gianna’s been promising to take a few days off, and we’ve got a couple of months before it starts to snow up there.”

  “Will the boys be there, too?”

  “The boys” were Mimi’s best friend Freddy Schuyler and his partner Cedric Foster. Freddy, a former Washington Redskin and owner of popular night spot peopled by the young and trendy, had a cabin in the Cacoctin Mountains north of Washington in Garrett County, Maryland that was her and Gianna’s de facto vacation home. They’d taken Peggy for a visit and she’d fallen in love with Freddy and Cedric and the cabin.

  “If we give them enough advance notice,” Mimi said.

  “Can we go for Thanksgiving?” Peggy asked.

  “That’s an excellent idea,” Mimi said. She’d mention it to Gianna tonight or tomorrow. “So, how’s everything with you?”

  Peggy gave and elaborate shrug and wiggled her hand in a side to side motion. “So, so. Can’t complain. You?”

  Mimi shrugged. “Same old, same old.”

  “Well, not exactly, is it?” Peggy arched an already raised left brow until it seemed to reach her scalp line. “I mean, this business with the Doms and Ags. I never heard of such! I sent my friend Earlene over there to that club to see what was what and oh, my dear! The things she told me! I’m thinking about going over there myself. I want to see those dancing girls. Earlene says they’re quite lovely, though they apparently do some quite nasty things on top of that bar. Have you seen them?”

  Mimi was laughing so hard she could do no more than shake her head. When finally she could speak she allowed that no, she hadn’t seen The Snatch Dancers yet but she planned to, and the name sent Peggy on another verbal tangent that caused Mimi to get up and leave. “I’ve got to go eat, I’m starving, and you’re going to kill me, Miss Brown. Good night.”

  She made her way through the main room, around the bar and down the hall that ran between the restaurant and the bar, to the office. She knocked, heard a harried “come in,” and opened the door to find both Marianne and Renee, one seated at each of the desks placed on adjacent walls. She hadn’t seen Marianne leave the bar.

  “I knew you’d show up tonight,” Renee said, standing to give her hug. “I told Mare you’d show up. You always do when there’s trouble.”

  Mimi backed away and looked at her, to see if she was kidding. She wasn’t. “Maybe I should leave, then,” she said, and she wasn’t kidding, either.

  “Ignore, her, Mimi. You said you wanted dinner, didn’t you?” Marianne started for the door. “Let’s go do that and leave ol’ sourpuss in her to grouse all by herself.”

  “What’s she grousing about, and what’s it got to do with me?” Mimi really was pissed and she really wanted Renee to know it.

  “Those stories you’ve done about that bar across town, and about the super butches. Then that rally tonight all over TV, I knew we’d get spill-over and sure enough, we did. Half a dozen of ‘em showed up here.” Renee shook her head in disgust. “My Sunday night shot to shit.”

  “Nobody told you to come over here,” Marianne said. “You could have stayed home. I didn’t need you running over here.”

  “You’d have let ‘em in,” Renee said, belligerent and accusing.

  “What ‘them’ are you talking about?” Mimi asked.

  “Pay attention, Mimi,” Renee said, as if talking to someone very young or very intellectually challenged. “The super butches. What’ve you been calling them, Doms and Ags? Such stupid shit! Where do they come up with these names?”

  “You refused to let people in because you don’t like how they look?”

  “Don’t take that tone with me, Mimi. I’m running a business here and yes, I make decisions about who comes in based on how they look.”

  “And I make decisions on where I go based on people’s behavior and I don’t like yours. Good night.”

  Marianne grabbed her arm. “Mimi! What are you doing? You can’t just leave like that!”

  “Sure I can. If I weren’t with Gianna, you probably wouldn’t let me in, would you, Renee? You’d find something unacceptable about the way I look, like the color of my skin.”

  “That’s a shitty thing to say!”

  “What you just said about an entire group of people, none of whom you know, was pretty shitty, too. That’s discrimination of the worst kind, Renee, the kind based on a stereotype. No difference between what you just said and those who say no Blacks, no Jews, no Hispanics allowed. No gays allowed.”

  “No, it is not the same thing!” Renee was as furious as Mimi. “My God, you’ve seen them. They look like gangster hoodlums, wearing those horrible baggy pants and shoes with the strings untied. They look—”

  “Unacceptable?” Mimi offered.

  Renee nodded emphatically. “Exactly. So since you understand what I’m talking about, why are you giving me such a hard time?”

  Mimi shook her head. “I’ve got to go.”

  She left, feeling more unsettled than she had in a long time, because of what Renee said but also because of how shocked Marianne appeared to be. Was it possible that Marianne wasn’t aware of Renee’s thoughts and feelings on such matters? Mimi knew from Gianna, and from her own experience, that Marianne was a kind and generous woman, perhaps to a fault. Renee had been right about one thing: Marianne never would have refused admittance to somebody because of how they looked. Had they never discussed such things before opening the Bayou? Probably not. How would they have known to say, “By the way, what’s going to be our policy on admitting Doms and Ags?”

  Mimi’s anger had carried her out into the night and half way to the parking lot where her car was before it receded enough to let her realize how hungry she was. Now what was she going to do? It was Sunday night in D.C. Where would she find anything worth eating...Chinatown! She reclaimed her car, put the top down, popped in a Donna Summer CD, and headed across town. At the first stop light she called Gianna to see if she’d gotten home yet, to see if she was hungry. When she got no answer she considered calling her cell phone, then decided against it. She might still be with Officer Ali and it wouldn’t be prudent to interrupt whatever that was all about.

  Traffic in Chinatown was as dense as if it were high noon on a week day. No place to park within four blocks of her favorite restaurant, and she was in no mood to walk that far just to eat, then to have to walk that far to get back to her car. In truth, she was too tired for it. She was exhausted. She’d planned to be asleep by now. Curled up next to Gianna, music playing softly, and deeply asleep. “She works hard for the money,” Donna sang, and Mimi wondered if some times it wasn’t too hard, or at least too many hours. How often were their lives put on hold because of the work they did? But how happy would they be, either of them, if they didn’t do the work they did? She didn’t have to say the answer to herself as she made a U turn in the middle of Seventh Street under the Pagoda Arch and headed home. She’d scramble some eggs, toast an English muffin, have another glass of wine—or two—and get in bed with a book. Poor substitute for Gianna but at least she’d get more sleep with the book for company.

  CHAPTER NINE

  HUNDREDS GATHER ON HARLEY STREET

  TO MOURN SLAIN HISTORIAN

  By M. Montgomery Patterson

  Staff Writer

  More than three hundred mourners gathered last

  night at the litter-strewn vacant lot where 29-year old

  Natasha Hilliard was murde
red two weekends ago. The

  occasion was notable not only because, for the first time

  in recent memory, lesbians and gays of all ages and races

  came together for a single purpose, but also because it

  acknowledged the existence of a group of lesbians known

  as Ags or Doms—shorthand for Aggressives or Dominants.

  These are women, predominantly young and Black or

  Latina, who are masculine in appearance and frequently

  in behavior. “I suppose it’s what used to be called ‘butch,’”

  said Caroline Silbert, executive director of the Metropolitan

  Washington Gay and Lesbian Community Organization.

  “Though I’m not entirely comfortable with having to

  place labels on people,” she added.

  The murdered woman was known to frequent The

  Snatch, a bar on Harley Street that caters to Doms and

  Ags. She had just left that establishment when she

  was shot in the back on the night of September

  19th, then stabbed repeatedly and left to bleed to death.

  She apparently had kept that aspect of her life secret

  from her friends and acquaintances in academia, as she

  kept her academic life secret from her friends and

  acquaintances at The Snatch. “I had no idea she

  was a historian and university professor,” said

  Delores Phillips, co-owner of the Harley Street club.

  “In fact, I knew very little about her at all, which

  I now regret,” Phillips said.

  According to Phillips, Silbert and others, Doms

  and Ags are perceived negatively, and some even

  consider them dangerous, the assumption being

  that they have gang affiliations. Women who self-

  identify as Doms and Ags find those perceptions

  insulting as well as hurtful. “I don’t like it that

  people think of us as some kind of freaks,” said

  27-year old Kelly Jones. “Either that or they don’t

  see us at all.” Jones, a mechanic for the city’s

  transit authority, lost her job in Richmond, VA

  because of her appearance. “People ask me why

  I want a man’s job. If I’m doing it, it’s not a man’s

  job, is it? And why shouldn’t I earn $35 an hour?

  I’m a master mechanic. I trained long and hard

  to acquire the skills I have.”

  The women don’t understand why anybody

  would find their appearance threatening. “I

  can understand why somebody wouldn’t like

  what I wear. I don’t like the clothes some other

  people wear, but I wouldn’t hate them for it,” said

  28-year old Terry Carson, a big rig driver for a

  national grocery chain. “Why is it OK for all

  kinds of other people to be accepted for how they

  look, but not us? The government says don’t

  fear Muslims and Middle Easterners because

  they’re not all terrorists. But it’s all right to

  fear me and think I’m a hoodlum because of

  how I look?”

  And how they look also is a problem for

  some restaurant and nightclub owners who

  deny entrance to Doms and Ags, including some

  gay and lesbian-owned establishments. “Do you

  have any idea how that makes us feel?” asked

  25-year old Tyra Simmons. “It’s bad enough

  when straight people treat us like garbage, but

  it really hurts when our own people do it.”

  Several of those who attended the Hilliard

  memorial service saw it as a potential turning

  point for that kind of attitude. “It was a tribute

  to Tosh,” one woman said, “but in a way, it was

  a tribute to all of us.”

  “Tell her she comes in voluntarily or she comes in under arrest, in cuffs,” Gianna stated. “Same goes for the Hilliards and for Ray Washington. Do these people think we’re inviting them to Sunday afternoon tea and they can either accept our invitation or decline it? Arrest every one of them if you have to, but no more kid gloves.”

  Gianna was up and pacing and borderline angry as she addressed her team that Monday morning. She understood that the Hilliards were grieving the loss of their daughter and that Lily Spenser was grieving the loss of her mother and that Lisa Last Name Unknown (because Cassie didn’t remember it) had had bad experiences with cops in the past. But what they all needed to understand was that she had a murderer and three rapists to catch and that reality took precedence over their feelings.

  “We really may have to charge that Washington character,” Linda said. “He’s giving us nothing but lies and bullshit.”

  “Then charge him,” Gianna snapped. “Go to his home right now and get him, Linda, you and Tim. Bobby, I want you here to walk me through the deep and skinny on Mr. Washington, step by step. Kenny, sic the ABC Board and the Department of Licenses and Permits on him. If there’s any way to shut him down, even if it’s just for a day, do it. I want his full and undivided attention and I want it today.”

  Linda and Tim left. Kenny got on the telephone. Bobby corralled the thick stack of files on Ray Washington and the Pink Panther, ready to answer when his boss was ready to question. Gianna resumed her pacing. She stopped in front of the board where the crime scene photographs hung. She looked up at Natasha Hilliard’s dead body, then across the room at Cassie. “This Lisa, would anybody else know her last name? Think, Cass! I can’t believe all those people hang out in that club, that they all see each other at least once a week, and that nobody knows anybody’s full name, telephone number or address. Didn’t you ever call her?”

  Cassie nodded. “But it was an answering service. She checks for messages several times a day, then returns calls, usually from her job.”

  “Dammit! What kind of people have we become? Eric, take that number and do whatever you need to do to ID that answering service, then subpoena their records, and get this girl’s name. And somebody else saw and heard that guy go after Tosh. Cassie, get me more names! You said this was a big event, right? People partying in the park. Somebody else saw that confrontation and can help us out with a description of the guy.”

  “Darlene’s checking. She remembers the incident but she wasn’t close enough to it hear or see anything. She did have her camcorder, though, and she’s looking for the cassettes from that day.”

  “Go to her house and help her,” Gianna snapped, and Cassie rushed out.

  Gianna continued to prowl the room. She stopped at the artist’s sketch of Joyce Brown’s rapists and tapped each one of them. “Alice, you haven’t seen anybody who even remotely resembles these sketches?”

  Alice walked over to the board where the sketches were hanging. “To tell you the truth, Lieutenant, these sketches look like everybody and nobody. Poor Joyce. I think it’s all running together in her mind. Any one of those bastards looked like the others ‘cause they were doing the same thing to her, and I think these sketches represent pieces of all of ‘em. Which isn’t to say I’m through looking,” she hastened to add.

  “I know you’re not, Alice. And while you’re looking, make time for a little chat with the Mid-Town undercovers, find out if they ever got any official word from Command that they were to fail or refuse to provide aid to any patron of The Snatch or the Pink Panther, or to any homosexual.”

  “What?” Eric had been calm and quiet up to this point, listening and taking notes, keeping a list of those things he knew Gianna wanted expedited. “O’Connell couldn’t have been stupid enough to issue an order like that! Could he?”

  “That’s what I’m trying to find out.”

  “You think that’s possible, Lieutenant?” Alice asked.

  “Yes,
I do,” Gianna answered. “And one more thing, Alice. If we succeed in closing the Pink Panther’s doors for a few days, which I hope we do, I’d like you to show some interest in becoming a member of the Ark of the Covenant Tabernacle Church.”

  Alice’s face lit up and she rubbed her hands gleefully together. “Oh, I’d love to! I give really good Church Sister, and after what I’ve read about the good Reverend Bailey in the newspaper, why I just can’t wait to be in the presence of such a good Christian servant of the Lord.”

  Alice’s Southern accent had gotten more pronounced with every word, and by the time she finished her sentence Gianna didn’t understand a word of what she was saying, but she knew that Charles William Bailey was in for it.

  “It’s really quite a simple request, Edgar,” Mimi said between clinched teeth, which she hoped moderated the sarcasm. “Do you know whether there’s a way to find out which of the non-denominational and super conservative churches preached the same sermon in support of Frank O’Connell yesterday? Either these guys are organized or they aren’t, and I think they are. I need to find that organization, but if don’t know anything about it, Edgar, just say you don’t know. No harm in that.”

  “I’m just asking why you want to know. Why can’t you answer?”

  “Because it’s none of your business,” Mimi snapped.

  “I’m the Religion editor, it is my business. You’re asking about religion, that makes it my business.”

  “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.”