by Carl Weber
Uncle Willie nodded. “Yes, you can give me my bonus, and then you two can get to steppin’. I need to go buy myself a fly new suit before I go pay a visit to Monique tonight.”
“No, motherfucker, it’s not gonna go down that way,” Lynn said. “She’s gonna give your greedy ass that money, but only on one condition.”
“What might that be?” he asked with a condescending smirk. He clearly thought he was in control of this situation, and seemed to be amused by the idea of us making any demands on him.
“You take the money and get the hell out of town.”
He looked at me. “Is your girl stupid, Desiree? Didn’t you explain everything to her? I’m going to get Monique; there is no way in hell I’m leaving town.”
Lynn charged at his desk and got in his personal space. “Yes, you are leaving town. Some things came up, and you need to be out of this office in the next ten minutes.”
Even with Lynn right up in his face, he didn’t lose his cool. He took his feet off the desk and sat up, folding his hands calmly in front of him. He looked at me and asked, “What is she talking about?”
“She had a little run-in with Tia last night.”
“So, what does that have to do with me? If anything, she’s the one who should be getting out of town.”
“It’s more serious than that,” I said, wishing he would stop asking questions and just get going.
“What are you not telling me?” he asked suspiciously. “How do I know y’all aren’t just making up this shit to cut me out?”
I sighed, realizing it was stupid of me to ever think he would leave just because I told him to. “Okay, it was more than a run-in. She tried to kill Tia.”
He actually laughed. “Damn, girl, you have absolutely no self-control, do you? The army taught you well. You’re a killing machine.”
“Willie, shut up and listen for once, will you? The bishop spotted Lynn, and he knows she was working as your secretary. The cops could show up here at any time.”
“Oh, now I see your dilemma, but I still don’t see what that has to do with me. I’ll just tell the cops I fired her. Maybe I’ll even tell them she tried to attack me, and now she’s going after my clients at First Jamaica Ministries.”
“What the fuck is wrong with you?” Lynn yelled at him, her chest heaving up and down. She looked like she was about ready to explode.
“I’ve got other interests in New York, namely Monique Wilson. I’m not leaving because you fucked up.”
“Look, Uncle Willie, just take the check and get the hell outta here,” I pleaded. The way Lynn’s temper was escalating, things could only get worse. I envisioned the cops busting in while the two of them were in the middle of a fistfight.
“I told you that he was a selfish, limp-dick motherfucker,” Lynn snapped.
“And you’re a stupid dike who can’t do anything right,” he shot back. “I don’t know how my niece can stand your ass. To tell you the truth, I was rooting for that boy Pippie to get with her.”
That was it. Lynn snapped, and she was over the desk and on top of him in no time. It happened so fast I didn’t have time to react. Uncle Willie reacted, though. He threw Lynn off of him, and she landed on her ass, angrier than a hornet.
Uncle Willie stood over her, laughing. “Ha! Some soldier you are. You’ll be dead in no time when they deploy your ass back to the Middle East.”
In a rage, Lynn jumped up from the floor, pulled a knife out of her jacket, and dove at Willie.
“Lynn, no!” I screamed, but it was too late. She had already plunged the blade into his chest.
“I am a motherfuckin’ soldier. What you got to say about that now?” she yelled.
There was silence from Willie.
She turned around to me, a wild look in her eyes. The knife was still sticking out of Willie’s chest.
“What did you just do?” I whispered as I backed away from her slowly, bumping into the wall behind me.
Lynn came toward me, holding out her hand, but I was too afraid to move. “Come on, Des. He’s not a threat to you anymore,” she said, still hyped up on adrenaline.
I shook my head. How the hell had everything gone so far off the rails? I couldn’t move. I just needed a minute to think.
“Come on, babe,” she said. “We just have to— Oh, shit! We have to go now!” she yelled as she looked out the window behind me.
The alarm in her voice shocked me out of my stupor. “Oh my God. The cops are here?”
“No,” she said, grabbing my hand and dragging me out of the office and into the ladies’ room across the hall. “The bishop is coming in the building.”
As we crouched down in the bathroom, we heard slow footsteps passing by the door. My breathing became more rapid; I felt like I was on the verge of a panic attack.
Lynn put her hands on my shoulders and whispered, “Des, calm down. I got this. You know I will always protect you.”
She cracked open the door and peeked down the hall. “He just went in the office,” she said. “We don’t have much time.”
I didn’t know what her plan was, but I was incapable of doing anything at this point, so I had to put all my trust in her. She pulled out her cell phone and dialed 911.
In a panicky voice, she whispered, “Yes, I just saw a man with a knife go into 207-97 Street in Forest Hills, second floor, screaming and shouting like a lunatic. He said he was going to kill the man inside. Hello? Hel—”
I watched her hang up the phone in the middle of her last “hello” then pull out the battery. She turned to me, giving me a smile that was meant to reassure me: She would always take care of me.
“It’s now or never. It’s time to go finish what we started. Take care of the last part of your plan and get the hell out of New York.”
I nodded, and she grabbed my hand. With one last look down the hall to be sure the coast was clear, we bolted out of the building.
Ross
47
I stayed outside of the office building in Queens, waiting to see what would happen next. Would the church secretary and her girlfriend come out alone, or would Jackson be with them? If the three of them were together, I would definitely be following them. I needed to gather as much information as possible to put the pieces of the puzzle together. In light of what Bentley had told me, this guy was likely an imposter, and I needed to know what was driving his game. Why was he consistently sticking his nose in church matters, always with the outcome of broken relationships? Dude was definitely up to something. I just had to figure out what it was.
To satisfy any lingering doubt, I picked up my phone and had Siri find the number for the Johnson Morris Endeavor agency in Manhattan.
A professional-sounding secretary picked up on the first ring. “Johnson Morris Endeavor. How may I direct your call?”
“Can I please speak to Jackson Young?” I said.
“I’m sorry. Mr. Young works out of our Los Angeles office. I can give you the direct number and his extension if you’d like.”
“Thank you. That would be great. Oh, and can I have the number to your Queens, New York, satellite office too?”
“Sir, I’m sorry, but we don’t have a Queens office.”
I hung up the phone, satisfied that I was right. The guy in this building was posing as Jackson Young, and this office building was a front for something else. The first order of business was to get Aaron to destroy the contract he had signed with this fake. I hoped to God that he had read all the fine print. The choir had been winning a few competitions lately, and it would be a shame if this guy had tricked Aaron into signing something that gave away any cash prizes they received.
Unfortunately, Aaron’s phone went directly to voice mail again. Next I tried the bishop’s number, which rang a few times but also went to voice mail. I put away my phone and turned on the car, pulling away from the curb. I would head to the church to see if either one of them was there.
When I got to the corner, I was shocked to see the b
ishop’s car pass by me, headed in the direction of Jackson’s office. What the hell was going on? First the church secretary and now the bishop? I beeped my horn, but he didn’t look in my direction. Instead, his attention was focused straight ahead; his face wore an expression of pure anger. Maybe he was putting the pieces together too—at least I hoped that’s what was going on.
I circled back around the block, thinking I could catch him before he went in the building. He needed to know what I’d discovered. Maybe we could go in and confront Jackson together.
By the time I returned to the building, it appeared I was too late. I saw the bishop’s car parked in the spot I had vacated, but he was nowhere in sight. I decided to find another parking space and go into the office building myself, offer the bishop some backup. It was time to face this fucking pretender and demand some answers.
I pulled into a space and turned off the car. Just as I stepped out onto the sidewalk, I spotted Desiree and her little friend coming out of the building. Unlike before, when they paused to get all lovey-dovey, this time they looked nervously up and down the block like two competitors in the Hunger Games before racing to Desiree’s car. Her tires squealed when they took off, obviously in a hurry to put some distance between them and that building. I wasn’t sure what the hell was going on in there, but those two sure didn’t want any part of it.
As I stood on the sidewalk watching Desiree’s car round one corner, I heard another car barreling down the road from the other direction. I turned around to see an NYPD cruiser coming to a screeching halt in front of Jackson’s office.
What the fuck was going on?
Two uniformed cops got out of the cruiser and ran into the building. Not long after, a second car arrived, this one an unmarked black sedan. The plainclothes cops from that car, a man and a woman, ran into the building with their guns drawn. This could not be good. All of a sudden, I was concerned for the bishop’s safety. Shit had gotten deep in a hurry.
I wanted to race up the stairs behind them, but two more police cars pulled up and more cops ran into the building with their weapons in full view. My instincts as a black man in America kicked in: You do not run behind police with guns drawn unless you want to be shot by those cops.
So, I stood outside the building with a growing crowd of noisy onlookers. The fact that I didn’t hear any shots was a small comfort, but I still had no idea what was happening in there. The cop standing near the crowd to keep us at a safe distance was carrying his radio. My heart sank when I heard this transmission: “Cancel the bus and send a meat wagon.” I had watched enough Law & Order to know what that meant. They didn’t need an ambulance at the scene; they needed the coroner’s truck. Someone was dead inside that building.
I started praying silently for the safety of Bishop Wilson. A short time later, my prayers were answered, but not in the way I had hoped. Bishop Wilson came out of the building on his own two feet. He wasn’t dead, but he was being escorted by the two plainclothes cops…with his hands cuffed behind his back.
Bishop
48
Times like this, the only thing I had was my faith in God. I couldn’t quite believe that I was sitting in a police station, my hands chained to a desk. It felt like some bad mid-’80s detective movie, except this was all too real.
I’d invoked my Miranda rights, which meant the police couldn’t talk to me until my lawyer was present. That didn’t mean they would stop talking about me, though. Every time I glanced up, I’d catch cops staring at me, huddled together in conversation. It wasn’t every day that a big-time preacher from the largest black church in the borough was caught holding a murder weapon over a dead body. Considering the number of famous people who attended services at my church, this had to be pretty damn close to a celebrity arrest. The officers were clearly getting a kick out of the drama.
A young black cop walked by the gossiping group, but he didn’t join in their laughter. He nodded sadly as he passed by me, and I felt a terrible wave of guilt, like I’d let that man down. I was a well-respected leader in the black community, and it must have been hard for him to see me in this position, so far fallen. Of course, I wasn’t guilty of the murder, but he had no way of knowing that. And I was definitely guilty of poor judgment. Until my dying day, I would be trying to understand why I chose to go to Jackson’s office instead of just calling the police after Tia’s attack. My jealousy and desire for revenge against Jackson Young had turned out to be my own undoing, and now I was truly scared that it might land me behind bars.
“Bishop?”
I looked up to see Keisha Anderson coming toward me. She was a cop, but she was also a member of my church, and I could see the pain in her eyes too. I owed Keisha a lot. If she hadn’t been at the murder scene, who knows if I would even be alive at the moment? Before they cuffed me, a couple of the officers seemed hell-bent on roughing me up. I didn’t know if it was my elevated status in the community or my race, but they seemed to have it out for me. In their minds I was already guilty without the benefit of a trial. If Keisha hadn’t stopped them, I could have been just one more name on a list of detainees abused by the police department.
“Hello, Keisha,” I said, feeling happy to see her and humiliated at the same time.
She looked down at the chains that held me to the desk, giving me an apologetic look. If she didn’t know for sure that I was innocent, she definitely wanted to believe it.
“Bishop, we’re going to take you down to Central Booking in about ten minutes. Ross Parker would like to have a few words with you, if that’s okay.”
This surprised me. I hadn’t been given a phone call yet, so how had Ross found me here?
I nodded, and she led me to a small room, where she chained me to another desk.
Ross came in and sat down in a chair on the other side of the desk. Keisha sat at another desk about five feet away, but she looked like she was trying her best to respect our need for privacy by busying herself with paperwork.
“Ross, I didn’t do it!” I blurted out.
“I know you didn’t do it, Bishop,” he said firmly, and I was flooded with a wave of relief. After being in a room full of people laughing at my predicament, it felt good to know someone had total faith in me.
He leaned in closer and spoke quietly. “Bishop, I was there.”
I looked at him, wide-eyed. “You were there?”
“I always knew there was something wrong with that guy. I was trying to gather information. I wanted proof that I could bring to you and Aaron, instead of some gut feeling.”
I nodded. “I had that same gut feeling. I just wish I had called the police instead of taking matters into my own hands. Look where that got me,” I said, glancing down at my chains.
“You weren’t the only one in his office this morning,” Ross said. Keisha shifted in her chair. She didn’t look in our direction, but it was clear she was paying attention to everything that was being said.
“Ross, tell me what you saw,” I prodded. His information might hold the key to my freedom. The fact that he had been at the scene at all today felt like divine intervention. What had led him to spy on Jackson on this of all mornings?
“Your secretary was there this morning too, with another woman.”
“You saw Desiree at Jackson Young’s office?” I asked. “What was she doing there?”
“First of all, his name is not Jackson Young. The guy is a fake. But I’ll tell you about that later. Right now we need to figure out what happened up there and get you out of here.”
I nodded. “So what was Desiree doing there?” I asked again.
He shrugged. “I don’t know, but she and her friend flew out of there in a big hurry not long after you went inside.”
This confused me. If they left the building after I went in, how had I not seen them? There were still so many unanswered questions, but I prayed that at the bottom of all of this was the proof of my innocence.
“This woman that she was with—what did she loo
k like?”
He pulled out his phone and opened up his video app. “This is them. I took it this morning when they were going in the building. I couldn’t figure out what Desiree would be doing at the office, but I didn’t get a good feeling.” He turned the phone to show me the picture. The mystery woman was turned sideways, pressed up against Desiree, but there was no mistaking her.
“That’s the woman who attacked Tia last night!” I shouted.
With that, Keisha got up from her desk and approached us. “Ross, I think you need to get the bishop a lawyer. Quick.”
He nodded then looked at me. “Anyone in particular?”
“Call Monique and tell her to get in touch with John Simpkins.”
“You sure?” he asked.
“Yes. He may be an arrogant ass, but he’s one of the best attorneys in the business, and right now, he’s exactly what I need.”
“Are you going to be all right here, Bishop?”
Keisha said to Ross, “Go take care of that now. I’ll make sure the bishop is okay. And here’s my number. Call me if anything comes up.”
Aaron
49
The rumbling in my stomach reminded me that I hadn’t eaten anything since the night before. Ever since Pippie’s funeral, where Ross and I aired our differences, my creative juices had been flowing. It was a relief, because when Tia left me, I was worried that I would never feel inspired to write another song. Now I was finally in the groove again, and I’d been so wrapped up in writing this morning that I hadn’t noticed how many hours had gone by. It was past noon and I was suddenly starving. I jotted down a few more notes on the paper and then put everything away in my desk in the choir room.
I decided to stop by the bishop’s office to see if he wanted to grab lunch with me. We hadn’t talked in a while, and I wanted to check in with him to see how he was holding up in light of his marital issues.