Street of Angels

by Joe Derkacht

  For the moment, Cedric watched in tight-lipped silence. “And?” He finally asked the detective.

  Chance exhaled a plume of smoke from the corner of his mouth. “It’s simple, Rev. While it’s all pretty damning evidence to me, it’s fairly slim, come right down to it. That is, unless you can supply me with something solid, a real motive.

  “Something better,” he said, smiling sardonically at Cedric, “than that he hates me, Calneh’s top homicide cop.

  “Rev?” If he hoped the older man would flinch or otherwise yield in some respect, it hadn’t worked. “Maybe you weren’t jesting a minute ago, maybe there was something between you--you and that pretty young wife of his?”

  Cedric shook his head in disgust. “You always seem to know what’s happening on Flowers. Is that what you think?”

  His eyes glittered in response. “Well, Cedric, not really. Considering the hours you keep--unless maybe she was creepin’ over here mornings, while you were supposed to be in prayer?”

  He exhaled smoke and glanced down at the cigarette in his hand as if surprised to see it. Scowling to himself, he continued smoking.

  “There has to be a motive somewhere,” he insisted.

  Cedric remained gravely silent.

  “If my crack about your prayer time offended you, it was just a crack--sorry.”

  Rev. Champion sighed gloomily. “You look in the mirror every morning?”

  “Me? What’s that to do with the price of tea in China?”

  “You killed his brother. Maybe you can’t see it, but it really is as simple as that. Anyone who’s friendly or halfway civil to someone he hates, that puts you on his list. Me and my congregation being generally friendly to you, or at least not joining his crusade against you...”

  He spread his hands in a gesture to complete the thought, and stared bleakly across the street.

  “Not quite what I would like to take to the D.A.,” Chance muttered past his cigarette.

  “Huh!” Cedric snorted. “I don’t believe you’ll be takin’ that to any D.A. in this town.”

  “You sound pretty sure of yourself.”

  “With the history between you two? People see your name associated with this case, they’ll know you framed him.”

  “Assume, I hope you mean.” Chance paused, a grim smile cracking his face. “Until they hear you’re my star witness. With your testimony I’ll have finally nailed his--his backsides to the wall.”

  “You don’t understand, do you?”

  “Motive goes a long way in establishing a case, even without an actual eyewitness,” he argued.

  Cedric leaned against the pergola’s framework with one shoulder. “I shouldn’t have to explain, least of all to you.”

  “I suppose not,” Chance sighed. “But for the sake of argument, let’s pretend I am too white to understand.”

  For someone as observant, astute, and experienced as Cedric knew Chance Odoms to be, he shouldn’t have to explain. Unless... maybe Chance really couldn’t understand?

  “Go ahead, explain it to the white boy,” Chance said.

  Cedric took a deep breath before beginning. “Do you have any idea of how fragile, how wounded, the community is?”

  The detective said nothing, instead narrowing his eyes and continuing to smoke his cigarette.

  “For me to accuse Brother Erwin would be like--like stabbing him in the back in broad daylight. It would be--to a lot of folks--the worst sort of betrayal, simple as that.

  “Whoo!” He exclaimed forcefully. “I don’t really think you have any idea of the hatred, and of the suspicions, it would cause between my church and his--and of me.” He shook his head in refusal. “No, I certainly can’t do it.”

  Chance’s eyes were glittery hard. “So a man gets away with murder and you look the other way.”

  “Not murder. He burned down a building--maybe.”

  Chance clenched his teeth, obviously angry. “You get my point.”

  “Yes, but do you get mine?”

  Chance ground out his cigarette beneath his heel, and lit another. He aimed the smoke toward the street.

  “The long and short of it--it’s Calneh,” Cedric said. “There’s a reputation between the two of you and a long history for all sorts of evil between the white authorities and my community. You want more rioting, more people hurt and killed because of yet another incident in a long line of incidents?”

  “You really think that’s how people would see it?”

  “You don’t?”

  “I’m looking for answers here, not more questions, if you don’t mind.”

  “And if questions are all you can find?”

  Chance snorted. “So where’s justice?”

  “So where’s justice?” Cedric repeated, staring at his black wingtips. He noticed they needed a touch of polish. “There’s justice, all right, just like there’s always been. Sometimes we just have to wait till that ol’ sweet chariot swings low, brother. That’s one thing I’ve learned for sure in this old world.”

  “The religious angle, eh?” Chance muttered. He stared morosely at the confines of the pergola, at its mixture of green and dried leaves and rotting wood.

  “From what I’ve seen and from what I’ve read in the Book, sooner or later, it all comes out about the way I would expect things.”

  “You know,” Chance said, tapping the envelope beside him, “this could easily find its way into the hands of the ATF or the FBI without my name attached to it.”

  Rising deliberately to his feet, Cedric locked eyes with Chance. “Where were you when it was Klan boys burnin’ down or blowin’ up churches? Have you thought of that?”

  Between puffs on his cigarette, Chance said, “This happened on my street, in my neighborhood.” For good measure, he pointed a finger at Cedric. “To your church.”

  “Well, that’s the easy answer,” he rumbled in exasperation.

  “Doesn’t seem easy to me,” Chance replied, peering at the glowing ash of his cigarette. He sucked deeply on the cigarette, and blew out a series of smoke rings worthy of contemplation. “You want to know the difference between us?”

  “I can think of more than one.”

  “Let me give you my take.”

  Cedric nodded.

  “You’re in the business of seeing people get justified. Which is as it should be, you being in the ministry. Me, I’m in the business of seeing them get their just desserts--which is also as it should be, considering I’m a policeman.”

  A car horn honked suddenly, a carload of teenagers driving past. The minister turned and waved. Distantly, he commented, “It’s how you go about it that concerns me.”

  “Meaning?”

  “Not everybody you investigate is guilty.”

  Chance laughed dryly. “You’re more cynical than I am, if you really think that’s how I operate.”

  “Some people have reason to be cynical,” the minister replied.

  As the detective watched, Cedric crossed the street and opened the door of his Cadillac. A few moments later the engine roared to life and he drove away. Chance guessed Cedric didn’t think too highly of anonymously handing the photos over to the proper authorities. Frustrated, mulling his options, he stubbed out his cigarette on the bench and flicked the butt onto the concrete, where there were dozens of others. He took a deep breath and rubbed his eyes with both hands. While the ATF had quickly come to a conclusion of arson in the case, in the intervening months they’d failed to develop a single viable lead. The pictures, he was sure, would break the case wide open for them. Another score for the good guys.

  But considering the circumstances, the labyrinthine convolutions of matters as they stood in the black community and his own relationship to it, particularly with Erwin, maybe leaving things alone was the only alternative. Maybe justice would stir up a hornet’s nest and result in a lot of innocent bystanders getting stung. The real hornet, though, was the so-called Brothe
r Erwin.

  “I hate hornets,” Chance muttered. Manila envelope in hand, he levered himself to his feet and headed home. He didn’t know if everyone felt the same, but he did know that every time he saw a hornet, he wanted to kill it.

  Problem was, Erwin wasn’t some hornet he could kill. Worse yet, as he saw it, as long as Erwin went free and unpunished, he was breeding other hornets. Couldn’t Cedric see that? Couldn’t he see that sweeping Erwin’s crimes under the rug would only embolden the man to worse crimes? Or was it the minister’s intent to use divine justice as an excuse to hide his head in the sand?

  A viselike headache gripped him by the time he turned in at his own gate. Maybe he should quit smoking, he thought to himself. Maybe he should swear off his twelve cups of coffee a day? By the time he reached the kitchen, where he threw together a ham sandwich, he had forgotten about the question of coffee and cigarettes. He lit up a Camel, while coffee brewed on the stove, ignoring Anna Lee’s proscription against smoking in the house. She was in Chapel Hill for a few days, helping Cecily pack for a year of study in Europe.

  He removed himself, with his cigarette, mug of coffee, a sandwich, and the manila envelope, to the back yard gazebo. Between bites of sandwich and inhalations of tobacco smoke and coffee fumes, he breathed deeply of Anna Lee’s garden. Probably his imagination, he thought ruefully, after all his years of smoking, that he still had a sense of smell or taste. Not for the first time that day, he wished he could kick the habit. Too late in the day to start now. Maybe tomorrow.

  He had slipped a broad-tipped, black felt pen into one pocket while he was in the kitchen. Now he took out the marker and wrote a name on the envelope in large block letters. The street address, once he polished off the ham sandwich and returned to the house to dig up a Calneh phone book, would go on later. As much as he hated to admit it, Cedric was right; he couldn’t turn the pictures over to the D.A., and he couldn’t turn them over to the ATF or to the FBI or the Fire Marshal’s office, either. But if he couldn’t send the pictures to them, there was still someone to whom they could be sent. Certainly, there was at least one person in Calneh who should find them interesting.

  ****

  Chapter 31

  Everything bothered John Willimon about Cedric’s Sunday morning service. First, most everybody there was black, and he wasn’t. Not that he overtly disliked blacks or held anything against them--it was just the matter of being different from them and them being different from him, and him surrounded by so many people who were not his kind. Later on, he thought himself an idiot, considering they were no less human and that he knew the scriptures, the New Testament anyway, which said racial and ethnic and gender and social differences were of no consequence to God. But, for goshalmighty’s sakes, they were different, and he wasn’t blind! Which pointed all the more to the fact that God is Spirit and searches out the heart of a man, while frail, sinful human beings judge by what they see with their eyes.

  The color differences were not the only ones that disturbed Rev. Willimon. It seemed everything they did was different. As much as he had acknowledged his own foolishness about the pulpit issue to Cedric, it was still uncomfortable for him to see the preacher step out from behind the pulpit and pace about like a caged lion while delivering a sermon. Actually caged was totally inapt since, even more disturbingly, the preacher sometimes stepped down from the stage and walked the aisles while preaching. For some reason the man felt it necessary to be closer to his flock, or it was a theatrical gesture better left to--to theatre! Quite frankly he couldn’t decide which it was, though he did have to admit to himself that the congregation seemed greatly moved by these displays. As for his own congregation, he instinctively knew people would have run for the exits.

  The music, like the crowd’s responsiveness to the preacher’s preaching (which was not necessarily of the 3-point sermon kind, another bone for him to pick), was much too loud, too, even boisterous. And did they have to stand so much? He knew he didn’t like standing for all the hymns in his own services. Standing was for the choir--let the congregation rest. And people clapped along with the music, some of them shouting and moving about like they were dancing. Couldn’t they keep all that to the privacy of their homes, or more likely the dance hall?

  And what was with all that business of raising their hands and singing with their eyes closed? Even worse, he knew the musicians could not have learned how to play in a church setting. At times the pianist played all sorts of riffs and flourishes that no white man, certainly, unless it was Jerry Lee Lewis, would ever think to play. His eyes almost bugged out, when he realized a set of drums and various guitars had been brought in for the service. Wasn’t all that thumpa-thumpa-thumpa straight from the jungle? That was a real problem. Obviously, he would have to talk to Cedric about it. And as far as the songs went, they seldom used the hymnals. Everybody seemed to know the songs by heart, songs that for the most part he had never heard before in his entire life, and were more like choruses that seemingly sprang into existence for that very moment.

  The offering was probably the worst part of the entire service. It was much too showy. One of the elders stood up and made a plea for the people to come forward to lay their tithes and offerings on the altar, which in his church was the communion table. To his amazement, everyone surged forward at the same time, until Cedric was forced to ask the people to come by rows. John Willimon had never seen such a display in his life, especially the exaggerated strutting of some of the men, as they walked across the front of the church to lay down their dollars or checks. He did have to admit to himself, though, that the tactic, as he thought of it, had impressive results. From where he sat, it looked like there wasn’t a square inch of table that wasn’t covered with money. A lot of singles in there, maybe, and fives, but nonetheless covered.

  Except that it was so obviously open to carnal display, he would have considered taking offerings the same way in his own congregation. Too bad, he thought.

  The altar call unsettled him just as much. For every service he held in the church, he always concluded with an appeal for people to come to Christ, to come forward and be saved. But when Cedric made his appeal, those that came forward came with weeping and wailing. Did they have to be so noisy about it? It seemed to him that only lunatics had responded, though of course even lunatics needed salvation.

  “Wasn’t that lovely?”

  “Pardon me?” He turned to his left, where Stella sat with her son Angel.

  “Wasn’t the service lovely?” She repeated.

  He nodded, at a complete loss for words. Around them the congregation was breaking up, milling about the sanctuary, or clustered in groups seemingly unwilling to leave the building. In his own services, most people had cleared the building within five minutes of his concluding remarks.

  Gradually, in the span of half an hour, the surrounding pews emptied, though isolated knots of people remained, some conversing and others in obvious postures of prayer. Somehow, Cedric knew to leave him undisturbed. Finally, the last stragglers left, and he became an island unto himself.

  Feeling wrung out, he took a handkerchief from his back pocket and ran it over his forehead. At the same time, there was something in him that felt absolutely exhilarated.

  He couldn’t know the black congregation, watching his responses throughout the service, had determined that the white minister was a colossal dud. What they couldn’t know, in turn, judging him from the outside as they did, was that he had been changed and that those changes would reverberate throughout his life and ministry for years to come.

  ****

  Chapter 32

  The gilt-framed dining room mirror revealed a nervous Sharese, as she made doubly sure the breakfast silverware was placed at just the perfect distance from Erwin’s plate. Thankfully, his usual 90-minute sojourn in the bathroom wasn’t quite through, leaving time for repair of her hair and makeup, if anything was amiss.

 
; “I’m lucky--so blessed--to have him,” she corrected herself, checking the mirror. She grimaced, lips parted to inspect her perfect white teeth, to make sure she had not misapplied her lipstick. “Blessed, so blessed.”

  Maybe if she said it often enough and convincingly enough, she would begin to believe it herself. Wasn’t that what Erwin preached, that you could create your own reality by the words you spoke? She hoped he was right. It wasn’t easy, two perfectionists living in the same house.

  The chiming of the oak wall clock warned her it was 8:00, time to serve breakfast. Within seconds, Erwin would make his entrance. True to form, he was in his seat when she returned from the kitchen. She was careful not to splatter grease, as she removed his eggs with a metal spatula, the yolks as hard as rubber, like he preferred, from the pan and placed them on his plate.

  Appraising her appearance as she served him, he smiled thinly. “Good morning.”

  She dished out his fried potatoes from a serving dish on the table, along with a thick slice of ham, and anxiously searched the table. What was wrong? The silverware was properly placed, he had his buttered toast on a bread plate, his crystal salt and pepper shakers, Tabasco sauce, coffee, sugar and cream--with a start, she realized she had forgotten his morning paper.

  “I’m sorry,” she said lamely. “I’ll bring it right now.” She would have fibbed, said the newspaper hadn’t come yet, but a fib didn’t work too well if used too often, and made things worse on the days it really had not yet come. He had begun eating before she returned, paper in hand, slipping the rubber band off and unfolding it for him.

  “Here it is, darling,” she said, voice pitched sweetly to make up for her mistake.

  “Ummh.” He took the paper without thanking her and began to scan the pages, front and back, turning them quickly, pointedly ignoring her.

  She wanted to ask him what he was searching for but instead sat down and laid her napkin across her lap. Head bowed, she mumbled thanks, knowing he had already said grace without her.